2013 - Marvelous May

It's a tradition.

I really couldn't let April slip away without noting a wicked-super visit from our son, Doug and his friend, Luke from Virginia.  Here to celebrate our April/May birthdays, watch his bro, Sean perform Shakespeare, and introduce Luke to New England, it was an action-packed few days.  They biked through Fort Hill, took beach pictures, saw the herring run in Brewster, caught chickens at our friend, Stephan's Great Cape Herb Shop, went to the Whydah Pirate Museum in Provincetown, attended one of Sean's fire spinning events on the beach and consumed mass quantities of yummy food.  A very happy birthday to ALL of my boys!

The herring are running!

Not only were the herring running, but the stripers, too.  Lucky for us that our fisherman friends have a generous nature and share mouth-watering fillets fresh off the hook.  

Approach to Salt Pond in Eastham

With Spring in full tilt come reminders of the special place in which we reside.  The gardener chasing an empty pot across his yard translates in my mind to the ocean breezes we get to enjoy all summer.  Sun-drenched days beg to take a camera along wherever I go, which has resulted in four more of my photos being chosen for the 2013 Eastham Chamber of Commerce summer booklet.  Flowers I've forgotten that I planted are bursting through the layers of mulch that I finally got down at the end of winter.  I've traded warm woolen hats and gloves for straw hats with brims and rubbery garden gloves, which always prompts eye-witness reports from people who spot me in the yard as they drive by.  We are also beginning what I call "Marathon Days" when we have B&B guests checking out of both rooms at 11 a.m. and Team Daniels  goes into action for the new ones checking in by 2 p.m.   And, tulips...did I mention mouthwatering colors of tulips everywhere?  And, hummingbirds?  

Ahhhhhhh.

Great whites are in the news again, but this time with a focus on treating them as a community asset.  The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy (AWSC), a new Massachusetts nonprofit committed to raising public awareness of white sharks has launched a 60 day online campaign running through June 20th to pre-sell 1,500 great white shark license plates, a necessity for the manufacturer to make the plates.  The AWSC maintains that these giant sea creatures have brought many extra visitors to Cape Cod and they play a critical role in maintaining the health of our ocean's ecosystem, as well as being good for tourism.  

The town of Eastham demonstrated some fancy maneuvers this month, demonstrating once again Tip O'Neal's infamous "politics begins at home" statement.  After months of town meetings which shared information gathered from various sources, passionate letters to the editors of local papers, polarization of neighbors about the health of our water, various proposals which ranged from doing nothing to spending 114+ million dollars on a new town water system, the time to vote together as a town finally came this month.  The meeting, which is normally held at Town Hall took over the high school gym to accomodate the expected turn-out and cars were lined up for miles to enter, delaying the start of the meeting, which ultimately only finished at 11:15 p.m. after relentlessly contentious debate.  Though the evening was rife with clashing egos, heckling and booing of the moderator, we can always count on at least one local character to provide a little humor, and as usual, Nick Nickerson came through.  The Nickerson family literally did come over on the Mayflower and has lived and shaped the Cape for generations, so the name carries a certain weight, as only a "sand-kicker" does around here.  On a town warrant that concerned the use of a plot that had previously been designated "open land", but some wanted to change to low-income housing, Nick delivered an impassioned plea to preserve the former turnip field, recalling that they used to grow Eastham turnips the size of bowling balls and throw away the ones we see now.  Regular readers may recall that Eastham celebrates its exceptional turnip crop in November with an annual Turnip Festival.  After yielding the microphone, Nick apparently thought of something else he really wanted to say, but was drowned out by the actual vote which the moderator insisted on pushing forward.  Not one to be silenced, Nick returned to the microphone to demand that he be heard, only to find out that the vote had already gone his way.  It was a delightful "oops" moment that broke the building tension as he humbly found his way back to his seat claiming deafness from sitting on a tractor too long.  We love you, Nick!  And, incidentally, Eastham remains the only town on the Cape without Town water, continuing to rely on our wells until such time that a more reasonable proposal for change is accepted by the Town Water Committee.  Our new friends, Tom & Lois Johnson are kicking that process off with a thank-you party and a sparkly new petition to get things going.  The one thing everyone could agree on is that no one would ever be tempted by the $150 fee to be the moderator of a town hall meeting.  And that's the way we do politics in Eastham.

Just say NO

Despite a cool and rainy Memorial Day Weekend forecast, when the Stop & Shop parking lot fills up to capacity and everyone on the roads are from out of town, it's officially summer on the Cape.  Visitors in May came from Italy, Germany, the UK, Florida, North Carolina, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Georgia.  There were college roommate reunions, geneaology researchers, pre-birth getaways, a B&B owner's pre-season getaway, parent visits, weddings, graduations and anniversaries.  Welcome all, have loads of fun and please be gentle.

'Easthamsters' from the past