Seth Rolbein

Dennis shipbuilders with empty clippers heading home from China found a shocking cargo: bird dung from the Pacific. The Pacific Guano Company turned Woods Hole into a stinking industrial powerhouse, and then it vanished, replaced by the gated mansions of Penzance Point.

Born blind in Hyannis and raised in Harwich, Paul Pena went from Perkins School for the Blind to the San Francisco blues scene, where Steve Miller turned his "Jet Airliner" into a hit. A shortwave radio broadcast from Moscow then led him to teach himself Tuvan throat singing and earn an Academy Award-nominated documentary.

Twice a week, the Family Table Collaborative's donated food truck pulls into Cape Cod parking lots, offering meals to anyone who shows up, no questions asked. What began as a pandemic stopgap has grown into a weekly lifeline serving up to 700 people, built almost entirely on volunteer labor and local generosity.

A tiny, weathered gravestone in Sandwich's Old Burial Ground may be the oldest on Cape Cod, but its inscription was deliberately chiseled away centuries ago. Gravestone historian Steve Broker explains the competing theories, from anti-Quaker sentiment to Puritan objections over sacred imagery.

Painting a boathouse turns out to have a lot in common with yoga: stretching, balance, and the patience of proper prep work. A meditation on ladders, primer, and the quiet satisfaction of a job done right.

A surprising etymology of "tourist," from ancient pilgrims to the invention of the "tourist trap," and a case for seeing visitors as individuals rather than a crowd.

A dog's unblinking vigil at a Cape Cod window becomes a quiet reflection on attention, perception, and all the things just outside the frame of human awareness.

One of many mysteries that attends living on Cape Cod manifests in an unlikely location: Route 6, Harwich, around what most people still call Exit 10 at Route 124, now officially Exit 82.

Seth Rolbein talks about the plans for the Hyannis Library.

Time now for a Cape Cod Notebook. This week, Wellfleet journalist Seth Rolbein talks about four stories form his time on the cape throughout his life.