Atlantic to the left, Race Point behind us, we hauled our buckets and baskets and red and yellow plastic beach pails over dune-tops, into hollows, and along the overgrown sand road to the cranberry bog. It was a bright Sunday in early November. Joshua, my fisherman-husband, had glanced at the neighbor’s trees that morning and […]
craft
Once a Boy With Toys, Now a Master Metalsmith
Lucas Burnley’s ‘Cypops’ benefit local tots
ORLEANS — You’re 16 years old, into metalwork, and a fan of “Rambo.” Choosing your first project at welding school is easy. “You make a knife,” says Lucas Burnley of his initial foray into the hobby that would become his trade. Growing up outside Albuquerque, N.M., in a “super outdoorsy” family and at a time […]
PROVINCELANDS
One Bird, One Man, One Boat
Watching a shorebird is like watching a comet: you have to trick your eye into detecting it. To find a comet, you look sideways at the sky until your peripheral vision — more powerful at night than your regular vision — picks out a blotch of white from the neater points of light around it. […]
metaphysics
Ghost Hunters Are a Spirited Group
Cape-based paranormal detectives see their work as more science-based than sensational
Ghost hunter Joni Kosmach points a hand-held infrared camera into the shadows. Black, metallic, and blinking with strange energy, it looks like something a Navy SEAL might wield — or a character in “The X Files.” “Is there anyone with us?” Kosmach asks. “Would anyone like to talk to us today?” Crouching on the cement […]
ECONOMY
A Tale of Two Floatie Shops
Dueling Wellfleet stores weather zoning conflicts, no-name storms, and the arrival of the sharks
WELLFLEET — Along the pine-fringed stretch of Route 6 in South Wellfleet, farm stands have come and gone, motels have changed hands, and a clam shack has turned into a patisserie. But there is one roadside scene that hasn’t changed much over the years — give or take a few giant inflatable dinosaurs. Two souvenir […]
people
Provincetown’s Master Storyteller
Beata Cook steals the show with tales of gay life in the ’40s
PROVINCETOWN — Bartender, bullet maker, bookkeeper — Beata Cook has been all these things. Not necessarily in that order. But who cares about chronology when you’re listening to a master raconteur? It’s a hot Sunday afternoon in late July, and Cook, dressed in shorts and a white tank top that matches her close-cropped hair, has […]