A Cape Cod Notebook

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My Ithaca Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

A childhood of six houses in four states left one writer craving the continuity other kids took for granted. Only after retiring to Dennis Port did he see that the Cape summers of his youth had been his home all along.

Summer Embers Sep 15, 2026

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A swim alone off Surfside on the Tuesday after Labor Day becomes the starting point for a meditation on scale: how a tiny island and an endless ocean can hold the same feeling as a highway through the desert. The season is turning, and this essay sits in that turn a while before letting it go.

Family Table Collaborative’s parking lot presence Sep 08, 2026

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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.

Great Whites to Spielberg: What Did We Ever Do to You? Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

New fishing restrictions on Nantucket extend protections for great white sharks that began on Cape Cod Bay and the Outer Cape. Tom Moroney connects those rules to the lasting damage Jaws did to the species' reputation, and to his own past coverage of a now-defunct shark tournament on the Vineyard.

The oldest gravestone Aug 25, 2026

Show notes

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.

Augustitus Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

On Nantucket, the height of summer means being outnumbered by tourists two to one. A meditation on Augustitus, the exhaustion and thrill of a place at its busiest, borrowed from a phrase coined nearly a century ago.

The Restaurant Fee-for-All Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

A pizza order gone slightly sideways sends Tom Moroney down a rabbit hole of restaurant surcharges, tip-shaming, and the economics behind why your cheeseburger costs what it costs.

Zen and the art of painting a boathouse Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

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.

When empty nest hits home Jul 28, 2026

Show notes

Turns out empty nest syndrome doesn't require actual children. Susan Moeller follows a gray catbird family that set up shop in the viburnum by the kitchen window, from sloppy first nest to turquoise eggs to a six hour screaming fit from an anxious dad. Then, silence. And a lot of feelings about it.

The Drought Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

Nantucket wakes most summer mornings wrapped in fog, yet the island is deep in drought. With a sole-source aquifer and no neighboring town to lean on, water restrictions have divided the island between lawns left to go golden and lawns kept impossibly green by private wells. A meditation on scarcity, privilege, and the strange beauty of a place learning to live with less water.

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A Cape Cod Notebook

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