With the 300th anniversary of the establishment of the town of Chatham, it only seems appropriate that we take a moment to talk about an issue of dire consequence. This is a problem that has bedeviled this town for some time now, and in the past few weeks it came into public consciousness. It puts in peril that most sacred of institutions, namely, the Cocktail Hour.

I speak, of course, of skydiving.

Now, as a native whose roots go back in the area to a leaky boat from Plymouth, England (if not before, should DNA testing show a little extra familiarity with the original locals), I know as well as anyone how important the Cocktail Hour is to Chatham.

Why, I can’t go just about anywhere on Cape Cod or up to Boston without someone inquiring, upon learning I am from Chatham, about this time-honored custom.

This should surprise no one. We might be waiting in line somewhere and when it is our turn, we will be asked, “What’s your hurry?

Need to get back down to Chatham fast? Late for Cocktail Hour?”

It really is amazing how so many people not from Chatham can be so sensitive to what our priorities are.

Some have even added on “at the country club?” Well, how kind! They must have a pretty high opinion of me. That’s almost embarrassing. Pretty over the top, and perhaps worthy of its own column, but not here.

Now that tradition to which I speak must be hearkening back to my ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, who brought his family with him across on the Mayflower. He was one of the “Strangers,” as the non-religious passengers were referred to, compared to the “Saints” or Separatists who were wishing to leave England to worship as they chose. Hopkins did rather well for himself in Plymouth, and tried to move down to the Cape like his son, Giles (from whom I get my middle name).

But the authorities at Plymouth kept ordering him to move back. The place was depopulating, and for good reason: Hopkins kept brewing beer and getting shut down for it. That’s right, court records show fines levied on Hopkins for making and serving liquor. That was not to be tolerated, so of course Hopkins wanted to get down here. I mean, how are you ever going to establish a tradition of a Cocktail Hour if the guy bringing the booze can’t make it?

No wonder it took until almost another century for Chatham to be founded. Is it any coincidence that, rumor has it, just a year before America saw the publication of the very first Mr. Boston’s Official Bartender’s Guide? That’s what we in the historical biz call “a supposition.” Sounds important.

But just like so much of Chatham’s 300th anniversary, let’s not get bogged down by historical facts or ancient records or how people behaved or what they were called, where their businesses were located and whether or not any one of the people who built and lived in the houses we love so much would be allowed to use their property as they saw fit if they were alive today.

For one, they’d be too poor to buy anything to drink. And besides the Methodists wouldn’t drink at all. But can we please ignore that great big church right in the center of town with the clock tower and focus on the real issue? Can we just think about the skydivers? I mean, how can we not? Always with their flying around, having fun, hooting and hollering, ready to fall RIGHT ON YOUR COCKTAIL PARTY. Oh, yes. We all have them. I myself have four or five per day, and living in the flight path of Chatham Airport, I can tell you that I live in fear of some person having the time of their life just landing right in the middle of all of that.

You see, there’s nothing Chatham hates more than someone else having fun. We didn’t “find our way here” for that. Even if we were born here. It is not appropriate for Chatham, as some people who I never heard of have said, for people hundreds and thousands of feet away to express happiness at flying.

When I think of cocktail parties, I know I think of the quietest, best-behaved people. Like a church. Having lived in many places in Chatham, I can’t tell you how many times I have had to go next door and apologize for racket of flipping the pages in my book disrupting the sanctity and quiet of a neighbor’s cocktail party. If Chatham can’t be a place where fuddy-duddies can get sloshed in peace without being disrupted by the distant howls of happiness from on high, then I don’t know what is appropriate for this town anymore.

Clearly one of these two has to go, and I think we all know which one.

It’s not like these are waterskiers, after all.

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

Cape Cod’s Gumshoe Historians in Woods Hole & Boston

While many larger media empires founder in these ever-shifting seas, Cape Cod’s fishermen-turned-filmmakers have turned as quickly as a catboat.

In the midst of production of their Falklands and Cape Horn series this winter, Hit and Run History took their original pilot episode and began to re-edit it for online. Unveiled today, their very first installment is available for all to watch on their channel on Blip and to download on iTunes.

Creator and Host Andrew Buckley research on the first American voyage ’round the world began in 1995, when he stumbled across the story of Captain John Kendrick. Born on the shores of Pleasant Bay (in what was then Harwich, now South Orleans) in 1740, Kendrick would command the ship Columbia Redeviva as it left Boston in the fall of 1787, just a few weeks after the Unites States Constitution was drafted. Bound for the Pacific Northwest Coast and China, the Columbia Expedition was a desperate gamble by an ad hoc syndicate of merchants to jump start the New England economy, mired for years in the post-Revolutionary war recession.

Introduced by Boston rocker Shea Rose, this very first webisode shows Buckley and Assistant director Matthew Griffin as they begin the process of documenting Columbia’s origin and its voyage. Interviewing Mary Malloy of the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole and MassHumanities Pleun Bouricius, the HRH crew is off to a rough start. But their passion for story is contagious, and despite the long odds of making a travel show based around a forgotten chapter of history, it looks like they could just pull this off.

Are you ready for the adventure of a lifetime?

http://blip.tv/hitandrunhistory/columbia-expedition-01-1-a-rough-start-6205722

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.

On the breezy, sandy shores of the Straits of Magellan, a man in brown coveralls is smoking a plank. One end sits in a repurposed oil drum and slowly the other end of the wood is being pulled in a lateral direction. Warped, the plank is, to sheath the sides of a schooner.

FALKLANDS SERIES PREMIERE!

The crew of Hit and Run History leaves their home on Cape Cod to return once again to the track of the Columbia Expedition. As a Falklands Island Radio Service interview plays, we follow the intrepid Gumshoe Historians on their journey south. We hear HRH’s plans in the Falklands, and what brought Columbia there in February of 1788.

During a brief layover in Santiago, they meet University of Chile History Department Head Celia Cussen. Then it is back to the skies, with HRH winging their way down to Punta Arenas in Patagonia, then east to the Falklands, and finally a long, rugged drive from the airport at Mount Pleasant across a vast, barren landscape to the capital of Stanley.

It’s going to be a long week.

Get the episode on iTunes here –http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hit-and-run-history/id519420962.

Or watch on Hit and Run History‘s new Blip show page blip.tv/hitandrunhistory.

Thanks to LAN Airlines, Ocean State Job Lot, Turismo Chile and the Hotel Orly for helping make this series possible.

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.

The brick measures roughly two inches by seven inches by threeand- a-half inches. Typical red, well-weathered and with a couple chunks taken out around it. It bears the stains of having been submerged in the sea at times, which is only right because of the location where I picked it up.

The flight from Port Stanley Airport was in a two-engine, eight-seater puddle jumper. From the capital of the Falklands, we skimmed around the eastern edge of the islands in the far South Atlantic and west across the treeless open country and rocky outcroppings from field and water.

Ever since arriving here a few days prior, our crew of Hit and Run History kept remarking how cinematic the landscape was. But that was from ground-level. Now, from a couple hundred feet up, we could grasp the immensity of the place. West Falkland is about the size of Rhode Island and has maybe 90 people. Fewer trees. More cattle. And tens of thousands of sheep, at least.

The journey to Saunders Island in the remote west of the Falklands took less than an hour, giving us the time to separate from the coziness of our experience back in Port Stanley.

We were able to witness the sort of treacherous waters that our subject had encountered two centuries hence.

Never having sailed these waters, John Kendrick led the Columbia Expedition – the first American voyage ‘round the world – here in February 1788. Having left Cape Verde a couple of months before, the ship Columbia and sloop Washingtonsought a respite before the treacherous round of Cape Horn. Port Egmont, on the eastern edge of Saunders Island, offered one of the finest harbors in the world according to British explorers.

Touching down on the grass strip on Saunders, we were met by two Land Rover Defenders. The Pole-Evans family owns the entirety of Saunders, which comprises about the same land mass as the city of Boston. They told us the regular population is six. With the addition of our crew of five, we nearly doubled the population.

Soon after getting settled into our cabin, David Pole-Evans, who has lived on the island all his life, showed up to offer a ride to Port Egmont. It was just over the hill from their settlement near Sealers Cove.

Within a couple hours of boarding our flight from Port Stanley, we were standing amidst the tumbledown ruins of Port Egmont. Although the Brits had established a settlement here – their first in the islands – in 1765, the Spanish had forced them to evacuate within a decade, and eventually demolished the place. But due to the natural protection of the topography and abundant fresh water, game birds and anti-scurvy greens, Port Egmont remained for decades a popular place for sealers and whalers from both England the U.S. to use on a seasonal basis.

In the early months of 1788, Kendrick, who grew up on the shores of Pleasant Bay, felt his way toward Port Egmont. Unfamiliar with the area, he overshot the entrance and instead ended up in Brett Harbor, on the backside of Saunders. No one was here.

Making the best of it, they took on the supplies from the countryside they desperately needed. Several of his officers took the chance to make the short trek overland to Port Egmont. We were walking literally in their footsteps.

Having thoroughly documented our time all over Saunders, ranging across to Brett Harbor and down to the natural dry dock where they would have landed their water casks, we were doing what historians need to do. Getting out in direct contact with our topic. If Kendrick was the first American here, we were the first to follow him here to tell his story.

In the Age of Information, one can easily view documents from libraries across the world, or sample photos of an area. But the smell and touch of the place, and the chance to talk with a man like David Pole-Evans right on the shores of Port Egmont, is of a completely higher order. We could see where the warehouse was right on the waterfront, the dock nearby where boats would have landed, and the spot where the tripots were set up for the grisly work of boiling down seal carcasses for oil. The shore, in fact, was littered with cobblestones and the remnants of bricks.

Surveying the area together, David mentioned the bricks here were not of the same dimension as British bricks. Those are flatter than those made in the U.S. It had been determined these bricks were from American ships. Knowing that the American whale and sealing fleet had originated mostly from New England ports like Nantucket and New Bedford, we realized yet again that our path had circled back to home.

This is just the kind of discovery that we feel honored to share with our series on WGBH. This kind of natural storytelling is in the blood of Cape Codders who for centuries, like John Kendrick, ranged across the world. We are happy that we have inspired a new generation as well in the China: Through My Eyes series which premiered a couple weeks back to great public acclaim.

Bringing back stories is one thing, however. Filming our discoveries brings the story of Columbia to a global audience. But before we left Port Egmont, I asked David if I could have one of the bricks. He owns the whole island, after all, and he agreed. The most intact example traveled back 8,000, via Santiago, Chile, and JFK, home to my bookshelf on Cape Cod.

It is possible we could find out where this brick was made, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and the United States Merchant Marine Academy. This simple amalgam of mud, stones and sand has gone more places than most people have. It has an amazing story to share, and we’re looking forward to finding it out.

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

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Hit and Run History is the centerpiece of WGBH’s History page.  Their forthcoming Falklands Ho! series is the third installment following the voyage following John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition around  the world. Hit and Run History thanks LAN Airlines, Turismo Chile and Ocean State Job Lotfor helping make this possible.