The Cape Coddah
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☀️ Your Shot at a Cape Fixer-Upper

☀️ Your Shot at a Cape Fixer-Upper

Plus: Baseball's best first job

Cape Coddah
August 07, 2026

Good morning Cape Cod and Happy National Lighthouse Day! We've got more lighthouses per mile than just about anywhere in America. Today's the day to appreciate the beacons that make this place unmistakably Cape Cod.

In this week’s Cape Coddah:

Building a gene family
E-bike worries
Events and live music

Let’s get to it.

🪚 Your Shot at an Outer Cape Fixer-Upper

The National Park Service is looking for people to lease and restore three historic properties inside the Cape Cod National Seashore. All three need serious work, and whoever takes them on is expected to handle the rehabilitation themselves.

Two are in Wellfleet: the Sirna Studio, a 746-square-foot artist's studio, and the Ahearn House, a timber-framed three-quarter Cape on 3.1 acres. The third is the Jedediah Higgins House, a full Cape built in the 1800s on three acres in Truro.

Leases run at least 10 years, and you can apply for one, two, or all three, with a slight edge given to proposals covering all three. Appointment-only tours run Wednesdays from August 12 through September 23. Proposals are due by November 1.

If you've dreamed of restoring an old Cape house, here's your shot. Read more»

🔬 Building a "Gene Family" on Cape Cod

Jacqui Comstock, an oceanographer on Cape Cod, was conceived with both a donated egg and donated sperm. Today she has more than 30 half-siblings, a twin brother, and a growing web of relatives she calls a "gene family."

It started in 1994, when Pam McColl of Brookline answered a Globe ad seeking egg donors. She was promised anonymity and kept it secret for 30 years. Four of her eggs helped a single woman in Newton have twins, one of them Jacqui.

A Graves' disease diagnosis led Jacqui to DNA testing, which cracked the whole thing open. She's since grown close with McColl and connected with 27 sperm-donor siblings, some of whom came to her wedding and meet for yearly reunions. The story also raises real questions about regulation, since the U.S. caps nothing, and the ethics still ahead. Read more»

This newsletter is free to read, always will be, and it's just me behind the scenes. Reading every local story, writing every summary, hitting send every Friday.

If this newsletter is part of your week, your support keeps it alive. A few bucks a month from readers who can chip in makes a real difference.

Monthly or annual, whatever works for you.

Thank you for your support!
~Kari

🔋 E-Bikes and a Growing Safety Worry

Health and safety folks across the Cape and Islands are sounding the alarm about e-bikes, scooters, and similar devices, saying crashes are on the rise.

Nantucket Police Chief Jody Kasper calls it one of the island's biggest public safety issues right now. She likes e-bikes in theory, since they cut down on car traffic, but the trouble comes when people ride heavy, fast machines, essentially dirt bikes, on paths meant for walking and biking.

The injuries can be severe. One Brewster woman lost most of her vision in one eye after being hit from behind on the Rail Trail. Part of the problem is these devices are fast, quiet, and easy to buy.

Officials support a proposed state law that would classify devices by speed, making the rules clearer. Read more»

📸 @bettywileyphoto |📍Chatham

Tag @thecapecoddah to get your photos in the Coddah!

⚾️ Baseball's Best First Job

Here's a fun peek behind the scenes of Cape League baseball. The Orleans Firebirds rely on 14 young volunteers, the bat kids, to keep the bats and balls in order every game.

It's a coveted gig. Kids join for all sorts of reasons: love of the game, the chance to rub elbows with future MLB stars, taking home a cracked bat, or just permission to stay up late. Each kid works about six or seven games, splitting duties between "bats" and "balls."

There's real work involved. Home games mean showing up early to tidy the dugout and get baseballs signed. Vice President Steve Kaser calls it a lot like a first job. The perks? A full uniform and a front-row seat to the action. Most are already itching to return next year. Read more»

SPONSORED BY:
CAPE PINES PHOTOGRAPHY

For those that Carry the Cape with them.

Bring home the place that never really leaves you.

Cape Pines is a collection of fine art photography inspired by the quiet beauty of Cape Cod. Created through observation, stillness, time and reflection, each photograph is designed to reconnect you with a place that lives on in memory. For those who carry the Cape with them, these are more than photographs, they're a way to bring its calm, stillness and sense of place into your home.

See what others are saying, join the monthly journal or browse prints.

A Barnstable County facility called MASSTC has become the first place in the U.S. to test cutting-edge toilet technologies that treat wastewater without a sewer connection.

Cape Cod couple, Judi and Elmer Hirshfield-Bartek, reunited with the off-duty firefighter and his wife who broke through their windshield to pull them from their burning, overturned car after a May crash on I-495.

The first tagged white shark of the Cape season, a 10-foot female named "Marty" after Stop & Shop's in-store robot, has been lingering off the Outer Cape, pinging a receiver off North Truro 15 times.

🦪 An Oyster Man's Take on the Cape

Wellfleet's Alex Hay knows oysters. He runs The Wicked Oyster, Wicked Provisions, and Wellfleet Shellfish Company, and he's been at this a while, having opened his first fish market with his brother at just 15. He spoke with the Globe for National Oyster Day on August 5.

He talked about the oyster's big comeback, with production up tenfold along the East Coast over the past 20 years, after overfishing crashed supply a century ago when New York vendors sold them for a penny apiece. He loves them not just for the taste but because they filter up to 50 gallons of water a day and provide clean, local jobs.

He also touched on the struggle to stay open year-round in Wellfleet, how the Outer Cape's gone mainstream, and his disdain for processed food, yellow cheese especially. His tip for eating an oyster? Try the first one plain, then go easy on the toppings. Read more»

A trained pastry chef offers up a island ice cream guide, rounding up where to score a scoop in every Vineyard town and breaking down the real differences between gelato, sorbet, sherbet, soft serve, and even which cone to pick.

Nantucket has a quiet, hidden Hollywood, dozens of producers, writers, and editors behind movies and shows you know, who summer on the island not to network but to relax with family, offering a rare escape from the industry grind.

A string of severe emergencies this summer has strained Martha's Vineyard's first responders, who say that while total call volume hasn't spiked, the incidents have grown more serious and complex, and chronic staffing shortages are stretching departments thin.

⚖️ Bourne Man & the Harvard Explosion

Federal prosecutors are recommending three years' probation, six months of house arrest, and $28,517 in restitution for Dominick Cardoza, the Bourne man who pleaded guilty to setting off commercial fireworks inside a Harvard Medical School building last Halloween.

Prosecutors describe it as a thoughtless prank, not a calculated crime. Cardoza and his high school friend Logan Patterson of Plymouth broke into the Goldenson building in the middle of the night, tossed a large firework into a wooden locker, and blew the door off, triggering alarms and panic. They ditched their clothes afterward and later joked about the video with friends.

The prosecutor says prison isn't warranted, citing Cardoza's rough upbringing and immaturity. He now works for a landscaping company. Sentencing is set for October 1.
Read more»

👋 Meet: Kobe
🐾 Akita
🎂 8 years old
♀︎ Male
Available to adopt at MSCPA-Cape Cod

SATURDAY - AUGUST 8

SUNDAY - AUGUST 9

PanNeubean Steel @ CC Winery | 12 PM
Munk Duane @ Flying Bridge | 1 PM
Vanna Pacella @ Love Farms | 1 PM
Just the 3 of Us @ Shipwrecked | 2 PM
Paul Brennan @ CC Coffee | 3 PM
Kung Fu @ Naukabout | 3 PM
Dan Labich @ Chatham Squire | 10 PM
Half a Mind @ The Woodshed | 4 PM
Ry McDonald @ Chapin’s Bayside | 4 PM
Mary Mcavoy @ Hooked Bar & Grille | 4 PM
Georgia Heers @ Highfield Hall | 4 PM
Hank Wonder Trio @ CC MOA | 4 PM
LuFFKiD @ Pilot House | 5 PM
Delta Generators @ Neptune’s CC | 5 PM
Catie Flynn @ Oliver’s & Planck’s | 5 PM
Fran Fenton @ Torino | 5 PM
Patty Larkin @ Payomet PAC | 6 PM
Halley Neal @ Love Farms | 6 PM
Jeff Kenniston @ Margaritaville | 7 PM
Chris Richardson @ Chapin’s Bayside | 7:30 PM
Alec MacGillivray @ The Woodshed | 9:30 PM

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll let you know when something's sponsored.}

Friday

88 🌡️ 73 | 🌤️ | 💧 25% | 💨 SW 8 mph

Saturday

84 🌡️ 72 | 🌤️ | 💧 55% | 💨 SW 10 mph

Sunday

89 🌡️ 68 | 🌤️ | 💧 25% | 💨 SW 13 mph

💧🌡️ Water temperature = 69ºF

343 Tonset Road, Orleans
Asking $2.195M
6 🛏️
3.5 🛁
4,626 sqft
2.3 acre lot

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll always let you know when something's sponsored.}

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