RED SKY AT NIGHT HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Visual Stories
RARA AVIS
This Week’s Bird Sightings
Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, Jan. 7 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet […]
ASTRAL PROJECTIONS
This Is No Time for Resolutions
The stars and nature suggest rest and recovery
Every year it’s the same song and dance: we emphasize resolutions, as if we’re going to completely change our lives the minute the calendar rolls over. We’re a week into […]
1951
The Washashore Fabulist
Peter Hunt was an evangelist for the decorative arts. He was also a delightful liar.
One of Provincetown’s most sought-after mid-century tastemakers, Peter Hunt seemed to leave town as mysteriously as he had appeared. At least that’s what the Oct. 18, 1951 installment of the […]
QUIRKS AND CRACKS
That’ll Be ‘Mrs. Jazz Garters’ to You
A collection of nicknames is its own kind of history
Lisa King, a local Provincetown historian who describes herself as a “West-End girl,” grew up hearing stories full of townspeople remembered by their nicknames. Some were straightforward references to people’s […]
1986
In Search of The Rushes
A gay travel time capsule from the pre-internet era
Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a place you’ve never been? Last year, my husband found a poster for a long-shuttered Provincetown guesthouse called The Rushes in an online […]
1960
Coffee Sodas, Condoms, and Coping With the Summer People
At work at the Murray’s Pharmacy soda fountain
The central aisle of a drugstore might seem like a strange place to learn how to strut like a stripper with certain exaggerated shoulder and hip moves. But learn — […]
GRIST FOR THE MILL
A Relic of a Bygone Age
The windmill on Eastham’s Town Green is Cape Cod’s only functional and original gristmill
EASTHAM — Sailors approaching Cape Cod’s ports in the 18th and 19th centuries would have seen the windmills first. They stood like sentinels over the bay, with an astonishing 67 […]
NIGHTLIFE
Even on a Tuesday in Winter, Piggy’s Was Packed
Gay and straight, rich and poor: everyone danced together
Ask people who lived in Provincetown in the 1970s about Piggy’s — a modest bar filled with salvaged wood on Shank Painter Road — and you’re practically certain to see […]
HEART BEAT
The Good Doctor of Provincetown
Dr. Daniel Hiebert was famous in a small town
One December evening in 1971, a masked man knocked on the side door of Dr. Daniel H. Hiebert’s home in Provincetown. “Turn around, I want to see your back,” the […]
1927
The Magic of the Attic
In my genealogical pursuits, countless hours have been spent trying to break down a few “brick walls” — those questions one cannot find definitive answers to — in my great-grandmother […]
MALVACEAE
Down the Garden Path
Once known as Hollyhock Lane, the narrow pathway between 271 and 273 Commercial St. was a frequent postcard subject and tourist attraction as Provincetown became more of a vacation destination […]
HISTORY
In Search of Helltown
Stephan Cohen’s story of a place that’s not quite what popular lore imagines
PROVINCETOWN — It’s here — you just have to picture it. Imagine it’s midwinter in 1871 and your frozen feet are planted on a sandy stretch of what is now […]
THE ESSENTIALS
A New Year’s Tradition Based on an Old-World Confection
This fragrant orange-almond cake rises gently to the occasion
As traditions often do, this one developed at our house out of necessity. It’s a celebratory cake made with oranges and almonds but without wheat flour, milk, butter, or leavening […]
MORNING FLIGHT
When a Bird Ignores Its Zugunruhe
Looking for lingerers and finding the reasons some birds stay here for the winter
Zugunruhe is one of those perfect German words that have no equivalent in English, so we Anglophones just decided to steal it outright. The word translates as “migration-anxiety” and describes […]
