Low tide on Sears Point. © 2016 Andrew G. Buckley

It wasn’t the brilliance that captured our attention. It was what was in the sky.

Every morning, since April, I have been taking a moment to drive down to the overlook at Lighthouse Beach and check in. It used to be a habit of mine, years ago, to once a weekend drive to various town landings around town and see how things were going.

Not there for more than a minute often. Just an exercise to touch base, like a child might with cherished toys, to reassure that these hidden gems were still there. Forest Beach, Harding’s, Sears Point, Old Mill Boatyard, Bridge Street, the Dike, Water Street, Claflin Landing, the Cow Yard, Cotchpinicut and Ministers Point, Strong Island Road, and Jackknife.

Ideally with a hot chocolate. Sunny days were great, being able to see the surf far off, or a stray boat on the horizon in the off season. But it was the days when the spitting rain, driven by a northeast wind that buffeted my little land craft, that turned this from a simple regular exercise into a necessity. Tidal and storm erosion could change things overnight. That’s what living here on the elbow teaches you. Expect loss.

The cemeteries here offer centuries of heartbreaking testimony. Tombstones carved with the successive death of children before their parents’ own. Husbands and wives suddenly lost at sea or taken by illness. Some graves have no bodies.

By early April I had made a habit of parking at the overlook on and off, to take a few photos, eat a muffin and drink my coffee, and generally collect my thoughts. Any one of those is a good enough reason to make that a regular stop. There are few places around here so expansive in view and similarly accessible. No wonder that so many TV trucks from far and wide use it as a backdrop for reporters talking about hurricanes and shark attacks.

I had come here early in April, late on a Saturday morning, pulling into a spot near the northernmost pay binoculars. It was one of those early spring days that promise more of June than January. The ocean and beach before me, the lighthouse to my right, and the Mack Memorial to the drowned sailors and life savers of the Wadena Disaster behind me, it was easy to savor the blue of it all.

While I snapped a photo to share this scene with friends far and wide, a new icon came up on my Facebook. It said “LIVE.” Which I took to mean like a live broadcast, although it could have meant live, as in I live under a bridge but it is OK because at least I have a roof and decent WiFi.

Thus began, with increasing frequency, my daily series Cape Cod Coffee Break. Typically in the morning, typically at the overlook (at the same parking spot), typically only a couple of minutes and typically with a inexplicably poor 4G signal from Verizon. A little report on the current weather conditions, followed by shout outs to friends with birthdays and perhaps a mention of something interesting happening. Every once in a while, a friend might show up, or more recently people who have been watching. What’s particularly nice is making new friends from far away who recognize the view. But I’ve been thinking about something more.

By casually documenting the conditions in this one spot every day, I’m creating a log. Weather and shore conditions. The sea and sky and beach. So while I am mentioning the birthday of NPR’s Jack Speer or walking over to the plaque relating the diverted voyage of the Mayflower to the mouth of the Hudson, there’s a realtime dataset of the conditions being permanently stored for this location.

Presence of seals across the channel. The narrowing of the channel entrance. The number of tour buses. And the clouds. We especially notice the clouds. This summer, with a prolonged and devastating drought, I reported that there was no warning flag for mariners flown at the Coast Guard Station. Day after day. Likewise, bright, clear days of endless horizon and blue skies. The grass turned to thatch. It was clear but became uninteresting.

Finally last month the clouds returned, with the drama of the repressed. Puffy cumulus racing north to south. Total cover of heavy mist. Last evening’s crescendo of stratus, reflecting the sunset and later surrounding the Hunter’s Moon as it rose from the sea. It was that last that gave me pause to consider.

Having a few very busy mornings, I had to delay my broadcasts until the late afternoon. Seeing the beach from this other perspective, with the sun behind the lighthouse, the beach reflecting the light, I chose to go to Harding’s Beach at dusk. We are now in the days of the 6 p.m. sunset. Much like early April, this time around an equinox seems to hold the best clouds.

Their beauty is totally in reflection, and often to obscure the light. Or to diffuse that energy. Much like the moon, they hold none of their own. We notice most especially when there is nothing else. The solitary cloud, sitting seemingly poignant in its placement, seemingly immobile in the blue or the dark on a random patch on our ceiling. They fascinate, looking down from a plane, or up from our place on the ocean or land. Ephemeral, they look eternal. Insubstantial, they look solid.

When I am able to take a photo, their paintings on the sky make it more interesting. A distraction from seeing further.

As I head to my next coffee break, I see another clear blue day outside. No clouds. No rain to come, for now, but no hiding the true warmth of the sun on the Cape Cod waters and sand. This too shall change, and we will check again tomorrow.

Read this and other columns at capecodchronicle.com.

I was actually kind of angry at that fish sandwich. Not that I am often taken to such emotion at food. But on our last day on Bermuda, having been brought to the winner of the Best Fish Sandwich, Art Mels Spicy Dicy, it was impossible to say no to the entire thing.

What must have been a whole fried filet of the local white fish, breaded and seasoned with something Jen guessed was garlic, then smothered with tartar sauce and cole slaw, served between two slices of thick-cut raisin bread. Half was enough. Jen was smart. She ate half of hers. A completist, I ate all of mine. A good lunch.

It was very, very good. But it was a mistake. We should have shared one. It filled me up to the point I wasn’t even sure I had room for water. Once we got back on our ship, the Norwegian Dawn, I couldn’t eat anything.

Here we were, for seven days aboard this ship, roundtrip from Boston, with all the delicious food we could want, and I couldn’t partake in the bounty of dinner. Not until 10 p.m. was I able to stomach even a little ice cream. The next morning, I couldn’t be sure I was even hungry when I woke up. French toast and eggs Benedict persuaded me, however.

My appetite would only return that evening, just as we were departing King’s Wharf with two days at sea before our return to Boston.

Along the way, I would be finishing up my readings on the Sea Venture. In 1609, the flagship of the third fleet to the struggling Jamestown Colony would wreck here on the “Isle of Devils” en route from London. For 10 months the castaways worked on ways to escape. But the natural bounty of the uninhabited island, with mild weather, surrounded by coral reefs in the middle of the ocean, abounded with pigs, birds, sea turtles and fish.

Considering the state of public health and nutrition in England at the time, it is no wonder that the colonists stranded on Bermuda actually put on weight. And although the governor, Sir Thomas Gates, led an effort to build vessels in which to proceed to the struggling Jamestown, some of the sailors and colonists would, from time to time, wonder why.

This would include my ancestor, Stephen Hopkins. For his musings on the lack of authority of the Governor of Virginia to give anyone orders here on this island in the Atlantic, Hopkins was thrown in shackles and condemned to death for mutiny. If not for the intercession of a few noteworthy persons and the plight of his wife and children at home, he would have swung from a scaffold. So he wouldn’t have ventured across the ocean again, 10 years later aboard the Mayflower. And I wouldn’t exist.

That story is what brought us here, with the Norwegian Dawn being a perfect way to travel to and from our shoot. Time to relax before arriving, time to reflect afterwards, with very limited contact with the rest of the world. With a place to stay and eat all the while in this tiny archipelago. Bermuda, after all, is not the place one can find budget accommodations or meals.

After taking the ferry from one end of Bermuda to the other, in St. George we took a cab to Fort St. Catherine and Gates Bay. Here the shipwreck survivors came ashore. Our cabbie apologized for the beach being so crowded.

We looked north and east along the curving sand that ended at the rocks below the centuries-old fortifications and saw only enough people to fill a school bus. “It’s fine,” we told him, and went snorkeling in clear water that was perhaps a degree or two cooler than the air.

It was hard to leave. In walking back the mile or so to St. George’s, it was very easy to see why Hopkins and others were not in such a hurry to leave this place. How the ease of life compared to that they had come from was preferable – and even more so to the death and disease awaiting them in Virginia. Yet, at the point of the gun, more or less, they did.

Two vessels, the Deliverance and the Patience, were built from salvaged parts and local timber, loaded with two weeks’ worth of provisions gathered from the islands, and set off in May 1610. Within a few weeks, the tanned, rested and well-fed castaways of the Sea Venture arrived in Jamestown, and were met by 60 starving colonist-turnedcannibals – of the nearly 500 who had been there the previous fall.

As governor, Sir Thomas Gates would find that the greatest trouble he would have was not with new arrivals to Virginia, but with his fellow survivors of the Sea Venture. Those whose every glance would say, “I told you so.” Certainly, at the establishment of English America, the idea of questioning authority was hatched on this shore of Bermuda and found fertile fields in Virginia.

That’s why we came to this beach. To see how good it really was. Taking the Norwegian Dawn here was the 21st century equivalent of the Sea Venture. And Bermuda was better still. And leaving quite really stuffed full of its goodness and bounty was the same. If home was so bad to force me to seek a new life in a dangerous, unknown outpost, and I were instead brought to paradise, I would certainly question any effort to leave. Moreso, I would resent being forced to work for months just to be delivered into a living nightmare.

On our balcony overlooking the hundreds of miles of ocean between the Dawn and the Atlantic seaboard, there were hours to explore this. No wonder, 10 years later, in a frigid Provincetown Harbor, did Hopkins and others not of the Separatist community resist the idea that the Virginia Company had any power this far outside their boundaries. No wonder, as soon as things were established in Plymouth, did Hopkins and his family move east, to Cape Cod, while the English colonies moved west.

That is a lesson he would have passed down to his descendants: a distrust of absolute government and organized religion. A lesson hard-learned upon leaving Bermuda with a full belly.

And that’s why I ate the whole sandwich.

Hit and Run History‘s forthcoming documentary, Stephano: The True Story of Shakespeare’s Shipwreck, is a joint production of the Cape Cod Community Media Center and Rhode Island PBS.

Young girl stands up to her harasser, then forced to face her own teachers in court

After three hours sitting on the hard wooden bench, watching shackled and cuffed teenagers pass by in the custody of court officers, and hearing the waiting families discuss their grief, eleven year-old Sofie was led into the Juvenile Court in Barnstable. She was there to tell her story. And so she did.

“I believe you.”

This is what the judge was telling Sofie two weeks later on her return to his courtroom. She was standing next to the lawyer hired by the parents of the boy who had been harassing her in school for months. They sat on the opposite end of the courtroom bench where I sat. He was on the front bench.

From the very beginning of her year at her new school, she had been harassed by this boy. Early on, she asked him why he was doing this. He said, “I just had the feeling from the start about you.”

When she went to her teacher, Sofie was told that he was ADHD and sometimes forgot to take his medication.

This school has no guidance counselor, nor special education teacher. But, Sofie told me, her harasser performed well academically. His behavior evidently didn’t fit the school’s profile of a bully. Yet aware of ongoing problems, the school never informed me that my daughter was being put at risk like this.

Kicking her without provocation. Telling he she is fat (she’s about 10% under average for her age). Slapping her. Getting up during lessons to beatbox in her ear. Intimidating her off the sports field when she didn’t perform up to his standards. Threatening her that if she complained, he would tell the teachers she hit him. Physical and mental abuse.

Not any one thing would be considered harassment. But she was constantly having to deal with this malice again and again and again… and never knowing when or where it was going to come next. Three instances meets the state’s criteria for seeking relief.

In her affidavit to the court, requesting the harassment order, she laid it all out. Then restated verbally it to the judge all on her own in the middle of April. She had been out of school a week already. She talked about being anxious about returning to school after Christmas vacation. At the beginning of the school year, she was a solid A-/B+ student.

By April, she was getting C’s and D’s. She was losing sleep. She went to the doctor for stomach problems. And her weight was down. A letter from her therapist backed up the effects of the trouble she had been experiencing.

Outside, not permitted into the courtroom, were three witnesses. All three from her school. The coach who told me she couldn’t be everywhere and had multiple classes to supervise, and yet marked Sofie down for bad sportsmanship for arguing with this boy. This is the same girl who assists in teaching karate, and is now helping coach softball here in Chatham.

There was the head of the Lower School, who told first me, and then the therapist Sofie had seen about this harassment, “We see everything that goes on here. Nothing happens that we don’t see. There is no bullying at this school.” He went on to say Sofie was simply not fitting in, and suggesting that Sofie see the school’s non-resident psychologist. To address her problems. Pathologizing the victim.

And last of the three was her 5th grade teacher. At our last parent teacher conference this elderly woman could not remember what town Sofie lived in but managed to recall that she had had problems with some boy at her prior school. In response, I reminded her that the problem in 3rd grade was solved by moving Sofie to different classroom at Chatham Elementary School in 4th grade. But no amount of advocacy on my part seemed to make a difference at this school. Peace seemed to be more valued than making sure there was a positive environment within which everyone could learn.

By the time of the last incident, Sofie had long lost her confidence she could bring any problem to these three faculty members. How many times does making a kid say, “I’m sorry,” lose its meaning? They were plainly out of their depth with a boy who desperately needed help controlling his compulsive acting out.

The last straw was, sadly, after an incident that Sofie successfully managed on her own. Despite having told him three times already during the year, this boy began mocking her grandparents’ accent, concluding with the words, “And that is my Austrian accent criticism.” She deflected with a simple, “Gee… thanks.” Unsatisfied, he moved onto criticizing another boy’s schoolwork. At which point, Sofie told him to keep his nose out of other people’s business.

Somehow, these simple words caused him such distress, he ran to the boys room in tears. When their teacher came over to ask what had happened, Sofie told her. Her teacher told her, “You should have let me handle it.”

“But it was offensive,” Sofie countered.

Her teacher persisted, so strongly that Sofie had to sign out for the Girls Room. As she was leaving, a boy in the case asked what was wrong. Her teacher answered, “Oh, nothing. She’s just being a big baby.”

After Sofie told me what happened, we went to talk to the head of the school. She told her story calmly and clearly, just like she later did to the Clerk Magistrate of the Juvenile Court a week later, and then to the judge. The school told me they investigated, but the teacher denied saying anything like this. It was then I realized this school was completely in the dark as to what constitutes bullying these days. Even when she handled it effectively herself, she still couldn’t win, and was shamed for standing up for herself and her classmates.

So if the school would not protect her, she felt she had to ask the court for an order that would.

During this second hearing, Sofie stood her ground when the boy’s attorney badgered her with questions. She had already seen her three teachers enter the courthouse, and be escorted into a separate room by this attorney around the corned from us. We could hear them — the most unhostile witnesses imaginable –conferring with opposing counsel for over an hour. That they were subpoenaed is beside the point. Having failed to protect her, Sofie’s teachers had come to testify against her.

After Sofie finished stating her case, the judge said he didn’t need to have her teachers testify because he knew everything they said would be the exact opposite of what she was claiming. To put a fine point on it, the boy’s attorney said they would refute everything in her affidavit.

“I believe you.” That is what the judge said to Sofie. Even though he felt he couldn’t grant the order for lack of evidence then and there, he said he was leaving the door open should it arise. Upon her leaving the courtroom, he commended her again on her composure, saying one day she would make a fine attorney.

By that evening, Sofie was reading others’ accounts of bullying from years past at that very school. When one alumnus posted his dismay to the school’s Facebook page, the school blocked him. I was blocked. Others were blocked, too, who spoke up for Sofie.

But the very best note came a day later, in a letter from Stella Jade Wolf, a former student of that very same teacher of Sofie’s. Now an adult, Wolf recounted how a little over a decade ago at this school she was bullied from practically Day One. Having received a harassing note, Wolf brought it to this teacher – who destroyed it. The teacher would lie to the Wolf’s parents, dismissing any problems. When Wolf’s grades plummeted, this teacher suggested the girl had a learning disability.

Wolf is a now a teacher herself. She told Sofie that by speaking up about this teacher, it validated the suffering Wolf, the former 5th grader, went through. To follow up, this Wolf wrote to the head of the school to say that what she heard from Sofie was all-too-familiar to her own experience with this same teacher.

Then another alumnus wrote to the school and me, and without making judgments, offered her expertise as a guidance counselor on how the school can move forward on a more proactive anti-bullying program.

No reply has been forthcoming to date. No report on the head of school’s investigation into this incident, as required by state law, was provided to me.

The saddest part is that I had convinced Sofie that these things would never happen at this school. How could I be so sure? I graduated from this school in 1984, Student Council President and voted Most Likely To Succeed. The compassion and kindness I found there then is now missing, painfully so. I am an alumnus of Cape Cod Academy, and I am ashamed of my school.

Having lost its values, and then crudely attempting a cover-up, it is CCA in name only.

(Note: Sofie finished up 5th grade at the Laurel School in Brewster, where she was welcomed warmly, made many friends easily, and thrived academically.)

Two Cape Cod-based travel series head to RIPBS

Partaking in Antiques Roadshow and Curious George? It now comes with a side of South American adventure. And in two different flavors, thanks to a pair of Emmy-nominated series from Cape Cod.

On March 29, 2014, Rhode Island PBS begins interstitial broadcast of new episodes of two series Through My Eyes (TME) and Hit and Run History (HRH). Grassroots productions of the Cape Cod Community Media Center, both series have received numerous accolades and grants for bringing global adventure to underserved audiences.

“Through My Eyes follows two elementary schoolers, Ava and Sofie, as they explore the world,” explains TME director Jen Sexton. Specifically designed for classroom use, the series has received six Massachusetts Cultural Council Grants. “Kids, parents and teachers raved about our past episodes, and told us they wanted more.” TME’s “Skipping School” was nominated for a New England Emmy in 2013.

Offered the chance to accompany HRH to South America, the Cape Cod Travel Girls jumped at the chance. “To the City of Fair Winds,” TME’s first episode in the new series on Rhode Island PBS, introduces young viewers to Argentina’s exciting capital, Buenos Aires.

Meanwhile, the “Gumshoe Historians” of Hit and Run History have been following the story of the first American voyage ‘round the world. Less Ken Burns, and more Anthony Bourdain, HRH’s exploits have taken them all over the Northeast and across to Cape Verde. “Our style of storytelling lends itself to short-form serialization,” says HRH creator and host Andrew Buckley. “This is snackable history.”

Emmy-nominated “7,377 Miles from Home” opens HRH’s new series on Rhode Island PBS. In this episode, footage from two days of travel accompanies an interview with Samantha Addison of the Falklands Islands Radio Service, tracking from Cape Cod to New York, Chile and cross-country on East Falkland. “We lead off with a clear picture of how remote and stark this place really is,” says Buckley.

Under ten minutes in length, the episodes work well for public broadcasters to program between longer shows. As public television stations broadcast commercial-free, there is typically time between the end of a full-length show and the end of the hour.  Hit and Run History and Through My Eyes give public broadcasters the chance to fill that brief slot with high-quality programming that engages, entertains and educates viewers.

“We’re happy to share these two new series with Rhode Island PBS audiences,” said Kathryn Larsen, Director of Programming at WSBE Rhode Island PBS. “In addition to scheduling the episodes at various times on both Rhode Island PBS and Learn, we are reserving a regular time slot for each series to make it easy for audiences to find and follow them.”

Through My Eyes will air on Saturdays at 9:50 p.m. and Hit and Run History will air an hour later at 10:50 p.m., beginning March 29.

WSBE Rhode Island PBS transmits standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) programming over the air on digital 36.1; on Rhode Island cable services: Cox 08 / 1008HD, Verizon FiOS 08 / 508HD, Full Channel 08; on Massachusetts cable services: Comcast 819HD, Verizon 18 / 518HD; on satellite: DirecTV 36 / 3128HD, Dish Network 36.

WSBE Learn transmits over the air on digital 36.2; on cable: Cox 808, Verizon 478, Full Channel 89, Comcast 294 or 312.

A year ago at this time, I was spending a glorious warm and sunny day on Saunders Island in the West Falklands. On this island about the size of the city of Boston with a population of six (that’s people – there were thousands of sheep and penguins), our film crew was packing for departure the next morning.

It had been a good week here a few hundred miles north of the Antarctic Circle, having followed Cape Cod’s John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition to their landing spot on the first-ever voyage ‘round the world.

The next day, Friday, we were to catch the Falkland Islands Government Air Service (FIGAS) bush plane back to the capital of Stanley, and then the weekly LAN Airlines on Saturday for the journey home. Friday was my birthday, too.

Departing on Friday.

Friday the 13th.

So that didn’t work out. Fog crept into the Falklands, and FIGAS used to flying in the prevailing weather of high winds balked at doing the same in fog.

We were stuck, missed the LAN flight home and were stuck for one more week in the Falklands. Over 7,000 miles from home. Happy birthday.

I really do like my birthday, though. It’s May and typically the tulips are all out here on the Cape. Except for this year when they bloomed soon after St. Patrick’s Day. I heard that while I was gone, the weather here was similar to that in the Falklands, the seasons being reversed so that down there it was like November here. Except here was like November here. Or perhaps more like May here, which usually involves week-long nor’easters that blow the blooms off the trees and have us back in our winter parkas for a week or more.

There’s annual town meeting, too, which I have always been pleased Chatham tries to schedule for my convenience. As a student of political science, my point of view was informed by the purest form of direct democracy in the world. And who doesn’t want to cut short their birthday dinner to go sit on a hard chair or bench for four hours of discussion – less than five minutes on a multimillion dollar budget, but perhaps an hour for an article of a thousand dollars or less? Except as a single parent, the real imperative in recent years is to get nine-year-old Sofie to bed on time.

Well, at least there’s a town election we can go to. She loves elections, and always asks me why I chose the person I did, and what job each person is seeking. Having been a selectman, I can kind of describe what it is, but it usually comes out sounding less important than it is. “We sit around a table and talk and vote to ask people who work for the town to do things.” No wonder only three people are running for two spots. It is still three, yes? It’s hard enough to explain all this to her.

But while other people get free drinks on their birthday, fate often conspires against me. Aside from being stranded far from home last year, when I turned 16 a Winnebago hit me in a VW bug in front of the Cape Cod Mall, and years later someone hit me and tried to run me over while I was already on crutches. I was thinking that this year I just ought to wear a helmet and hole up in the basement with some delivery pizza. Except there is no delivery pizza in Chatham, and I’m not so sure about taking the risk of heading out to pick one up.

I’ve been hoping that bad fortune used up all its firepower last year with the stranding. Some years, all I do is sprain my ankle. But that’s more of a sure sign of spring. With big feet and small ankles, I only need to get out on uneven pavement after months inside for me to soon end up face down in the street. Doesn’t count.

Same goes for the recent profile of me in this year’s Chatham Magazine. Written by The Cape Cod Chronicle’s Jennifer Sexton, her words were later changed at the editorial offices of the Hyannis-based publication to claim that I am “currently a Chatham selectman.”

In reality, it has been 10 years this May since I was on the board of selectmen. If it weren’t for the fact that this erroneous correction reflects poorly (and without merit) on Ms. Sexton, or that they misspelled Sofie’s name wrong despite having the correct spelling also provided by Ms. Sexton, I would almost laugh. Could I use this to get a better table at CBI’s Mother’s Day brunch?

But absurdities don’t count. I’m watching out for something seriously bad.

The suspense has been killing me. I really have grown fond of all 10 fingers and all 10 toes, and seeing through both my eyes, and more often than not having the ability to put a couple words together coherently enough to order that pizza. I’d hate to lose any of these.

Especially the pizza. Deliveries gratefully accepted at my bunker through Monday. Drop it and run for your life.

www.avaandsofie.com

A century or two ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a young Cape Codder to head off around Cape Horn to China.

Multi-year voyages, these were as much education as employment, setting the stage for a career on the sea. Go out as a cabin boy, come back as a an able-bodied seaman, then leave as a seaman, come back as a mate, and then mate to shipmaster.

For a three-year voyage, that’s nine years right there. It is no wonder that sea captains typically retired, if they survived, in their 30s. With the capital they had accumulated, they might set up a store to support themselves and their families. So it was a young man’s game, a very young man’s game. But exclusively for men.

How times have changed.

Last spring, my daughter Sofie and her friend Ava took to skies, flying across the globe to visit China’s Pearl River Delta. No pleasure trip this was. That is unless your idea of relaxation is two girls, age 7 and 8, exploring and filming for 13 hour-days of nonstop movement.

Like the ships of old, this young crew were looking to bring back a valuable cargo.

In this case, the cargo was their experiences, to be shared after months of studio work, with voice-overs and film editing. Through My Eyes premiered their China series on WGBH last October as the centerpiece of their Kids’ website. Sofie and Ava’s cargo were 10 videos, documenting their firsthand encounters with the one area of China open to their predecessors centuries earlier. Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau.

I had the honor to participate, and to watch my daughter visit the same places I had 13 years earlier. She had seen pictures of the Five Story Pagoda in Guangzhou, Victoria Peak, overlooking the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and swirling tiles of Senado Square in Macau. I have to admit I still get a little choked up watching the episode in the Foreigners Cemetery in the Pearl River. Having grown up exploring the cemeteries of Chatham, she learned her alphabet reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. Now here she was in a place I had found hidden in the jungle a decade earlier that told the stories of the sailors who nevercame home.

She and Ava got to convey their own personal observations of the people they met and the places they visited. For the elementary school classrooms watching all across the country, what these two girls were saying and doing was gripping. Much more so than if an adult had been on-camera or off, spoon feeding the information they deemed important. Kids see things we don’t.

For centuries, those who have grown up on the Cape have learned to survive by their ingenuity. A seasonal economy in a place with few resources means you have to remain flexible, act on opportunity, and often take those skills elsewhere if you ever wish to have a life here. Yet those houses down on Lower Main Street in Chatham are a testament to the hold of the place on those who would span the globe for their livelihood. It is a good place to live, once you have the means.

That is Cape Cod’s creative economy at work. It was in evidence when Matt Griffin and I set off to tell the story of the Columbia Expedition, and its commander, John Kendrick. It continued when our Hit and Run History crew dove into Cape Verde during the dengue fever epidemic as we followed the Columbia’s track. And when we were stranded in the Falklands for an extra week last year, by making the most of it by getting deeper into our story. We seize every opportunity to increase the value of our cargo.

So these two girls, age 7 and 8, left as globetrotting newbies and returned as an experienced travel show crew. Fittingly, they’ve set their sights now on a trip around Cape Horn this spring. Natural science will be at the fore as they explore the fjords, glaciers and penguins at the very end of the Earth.

And perhaps just as fittingly, Sofie’s added another option to her career plans. Besides wanting to be a veterinarian, she told me, “Once Through My Eyes wraps up, I think I want to open a store. But when I’m older because we still have lots of places to go. Like when I’m a teenager.”

Read this and other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

Following on the success of their China series as the centerpiece of WGBH’s Kids site, Cape Cod’s girl adventurers have been given a great opportunity. Their friends at Hit and Run History, headed down to the tip of South America this spring, have offered the girls cabins for a cruise around Cape Horn with Cruceros Australis.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these girls to share the wonders of glaciers and penguins with classrooms across the country. So many topics can be explored: from marine life to environmental science to culture and maritime history. Just imagine the sorts of adventures Ava and Sofie can share with children in schoolrooms back home, meeting penguins and navigating ice fields.

In exchange for the cruise, TME‘s part of the bargain is to raise the money for the airfare for us all. That’s a fair trade and an excellent way to continue our series. Plus, with HRH‘s professional camera crew, the quality will be even better.

Link: http://wgbh.org/tme

In episode four, Ava and Sofie travel on a scenic ferry ride to meet Castor and Pollux, a sister and brother, and their family for lunch Hong Kong style.

The girls enjoy many interesting new foods, followed by some one-on-one conversations with their new friends. It turns out that the children have a lot in common: both Sofie and Pollux study martial arts, while Ava and Castor both play the violin. All of the children love to draw pictures and read.

Running weekly through the fall, Through My Eyes is the centerpiece of WGBH’s Kids site.  This elementary education travel series follows these two Cape Cod girls as they visit China’s Pearl River Delta in the run up to Easter.

Many thanks to CapeKids clothing store, Air Canada and the Hong Kong Tourism Board for their generous support which made this episode possible.

Boston’s WGBH is PBS’s single largest producer of web and TV content (prime-time and children’s programs), including Nova, Masterpiece, Frontline, Antiques Roadshow, Curious George, Arthur, and The Victory Garden. Learn more aboutChina: Through My Eyes on their Facebook page at facebook.com/tmeyes.