Cape Cod

So there you are on the television show "Jeopardy."You have a comfortable lead and Alex is reading the Final Jeopardy answer: "The place where the Pilgrims first set foot in America after their long voyage on the Mayflower." What a stroke of luck! This one's a slam dunk. Confidently, you write down your question. "What is Plymouth Rock?"And you watch all your winnings go down the drain. Because your answer is wrong. The actual spot where the Pilgrims first set foot in the New World is Provincetown, Mass.

ORLEANS, Mass. -- Not a whisper of doubt or even tentative skepticism is uttered about Mark Teixeira, who is scrutinized by a demanding jury of scouts sitting in almost daily judgment of his ability and potential. They search for flaws -- trying to find what he can't do -- but everything is overwhelmingly positive.He continues to record high marks on their report cards. This is the most impressive prospect and the fifth youngest among 222 players in the Cape Cod League, composed entirely of college athletes.

Raymond Vernon,85, an internationally renowned business expert, died in Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday from complications of cancer. He helped develop the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.Charles Hollister,63, who was well-known for his research into burying radioactive waste under the ocean, died after falling 60 feet while rock climbing Monday. He was vice president and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Mass.

When Bryan and Patricia Paul bought their Cape Cod 16 years ago in Owings Mills, things were different. "It was an affordable area. Many homes were available," she said. "It was very rural. Quiet. We liked that."Things sure do change.That quiet, rural area that the Pauls liked so much is now a major suburb. Back roads have been replaced by Interstate 795. The corner store is Owings Mills Town Center. A subway stop is just a few miles away. And surrounding older houses -- such as the Pauls' -- are large developments of new homes, some the size of mansions with "affordable" starting prices in the "high $300,000s."

CHATHAM, Mass. -- Baseball in the Cape Cod League is a "finishing school" concept, where college players come to improve, to entertain, enjoy summer vacation and have their talents measured against each other for future financial consideration by professional teams.So many scouts, general managers and farm directors -- even agents apprising likely clients -- show up it suggests some kind of a baseball convention has been called to order. It's not difficult to understand the attraction. This is where the prospects are, which explains the vast manifestation of interest.

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. -- It was another hot and hazy day yesterday on Cape Cod -- just the kind of weather that makes flying airplanes here a complicated and sometimes risky endeavor, according to pilots, instructors and officials at the small airports that dot the peninsula and its islands.Since the disappearance of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s six-seat Piper Saratoga on Friday night, one of the questions asked by mourners and the media has been: Should he have flown at night, over water, in a haze that nearly blotted out the stars?

At 7 p.m. on Nov. 26 a century ago, the steamer Portland sailed from India Wharf in Boston with about 190 passengers and crew. Their destination was Portland, Maine, but their destiny was death in a storm that ultimately would bear the ship's name.George Kenniston Jr., a 20-year-old Bowdoin College student, was aboard, returning from a Thanksgiving at his Aunt Mabel's home in Hyde Park. Waiting in Maine was his brother William, a country doctor who kept a journal.The journal, found recently by a grandson, details how William waited in vain, first for his brother's ship to arrive, then for his brother's body to wash ashore.

The water is chilly. The parking prices are steep, at $10 a day, and so is the climb up the 30-foot dunes to get something to drink. When the weekend sun shines and the wind dies down, the sand is packed virtually blanket-to-blanket with people.And White Crest Beach in Wellfleet, on the outer reach of Cape Cod, may be the best beach you'll ever set foot on.It's not a beach that coddles you like the warm bath of the Caribbean, or spoils you like your favorite resort. It takes a sort of dizzy determination to even get your head wet.But arrive at low tide on a clear, warm day, when its sandbars and tidal pools nestle each other in a curving yin and yang of beige and blue.

Friends and colleagues are mourning the deaths of a Baltimore lawyer and a college nursing instructor in the Thanksgiving Day crash of a small plane near an airport on Cape Cod, Mass.Sharon Dwyer, 44, a teacher, pediatrics nurse and nursing instructor at Villa Julie College since 1991, was pronounced dead at 10: 30 p.m. Thursday, about 12 hours after the accident, an official at Cape Cod Hospital said yesterday.Killed instantly in the crash of the single-engine Beech Craft S-35 was Richard E. Dunne III, 47, of Stevenson.

THE VAST majority of rockfish on this side of the continent were spawned in the Chesapeake Bay, and on a recent visit to Massachusetts I saw some of that progeny on their summer vacation. There's no way to be certain, but scientists tell us there's a 90 percent chance that the fish I saw were from the Chesapeake. So I think I'm safe. All of which provides a premise to describe a scene:A tidal creek on Cape Cod, a serpentine stream in a wide, lush marsh. The wind has picked up at midmorning, and across the sand dunes you can see whitecaps on the ocean.

For a different sort of summer reading list, we asked readers for favorite books that capture the feel of sand and sea. Our own favorites include Dune by Frank Herbert, In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson and Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Satchel, Larry Tye's new biography of Negro League legend Leroy "Satchel" Paige, also promises the gritty feel of a hot, dusty infield. Here are more reader choices to transport you: * Before the Wind, edited by David Gowdey. This compilation of 25 true sailing stories covers everything from Joshua Slocum setting out to sail around the world to Ted Turner on racing strategy.

Nancy Short considers herself a blessed person and calls her little brick Cape Cod in Catonsville - the first house she has ever owned - a divine gift. "The house was on the market for $365,000, the only one I looked at," the 44-year-old physical education teacher recalled. "I was approved for a $300,000 loan and then apologized to the [former owners] for wasting their time." The owners, whom she refers to as "an angelic couple," understood how hard it was to buy a first home and sold it to her for that amount.

In 2001, Mike and Mary Landavere were renting an apartment in an old Victorian home in Catonsville when, after five years, they decided to search for a home of their own. "House prices were climbing every month," Mary Landavere, a freelance decorative painter, remembered. "We had to [make our] move." For the 40-year-old artist, the area and style of house seemed a clear choice. She had grown up in Catonsville and always appreciated older houses, especially their interiors. "The house had to be old," she continued, "but Mike wasn't sure, because [he]

BOSTON -- The cranberry, a Thanksgiving holiday icon in the New World, is bouncing back from a market slump, thanks to the Old World. Four centuries after the bitter berry was embraced by hungry immigrants who left Europe seeking a better life, the cranberry is getting a boost from new markets in Germany, France and, yes, Great Britain, where those first expatriates set sail. "It's been phenomenal," said David Farrimond, general manager of the Cranberry Marketing Committee, a quasi-public agency in Wareham, Mass.

ON THE ROCKY BOTTOM OF DEATH'S Door, a narrow strait in the Wisconsin peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan, lie 128 shipwrecks and one rusting Volkswagen Bug. The shipwrecks are from the age of sail and steam; victims of gales, fog-shrouded nights and hidden shoals. The bug met its end 100 years later in the Age of Aquarius; weather and rocks had nothing to do with it. It seems the car was chronically ill and its hippie owners wanted to give it a grand send-off. So onto the car-ferry it went, and somewhere between Northport and Washington Island, they pushed it overboard.

DETROIT -- While their union membership shrank by 15 percent last year, United Auto Workers officials spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on meetings at splashy resorts from Palm Springs, Calif., to Cape Cod, Mass., and paid tens of thousands more for bowling and shooting tournaments, baseball and golf. More than $22,000 went for souvenir key chains. The spending is outlined in U.S. Labor Department forms that, for the first time, require unions to provide greater details about how they spend members' money.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War Nathaniel Philbrick Viking / 461 pages / $29.95 The passengers on the Mayflower didn't discover New England, or even establish the first English colony in the United States. But they were the first group whose voyage to America wasn't motivated by conquest, cod or commerce. The Pilgrims earned their iconic status in American history by being the first English speakers who came to settle permanently in the New World. The colonists were naive and woefully unprepared, notes Nathaniel Philbrick in Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War. They were duped by the captain they hired to sail the Speedwell, the expedition's original vessel.

On Cape Cod, a mecca for lovers of locally dug shellfish, the menu board at JT's Seafood Restaurant boasts an unlikely message: "All our clams come from Canada." Normally, owner Bud Noyes would be hawking only the freshest local products. But not this year. Not with the red tide. Although it is still early in the season, fewer people seem to be lining up for fried strips and bellies at Noyes' clam shack in Brewster, and those who come ask the same question: "What's going on with the red tide?"

The tale of Stefan and Christine Rubin's Charles Village dream home starts in 1973. Its chapters include an inheritance, storm damage, a family reunited and, ultimately, a loving renovation job. In 1973, Stefan Rubin's parents, Richard Rubin and his wife, Kay Halle, purchased a two-story brick rowhouse on Abell Avenue for $10,000. Then, as now, the street was wide, tree-lined and quiet. The street extends for four blocks, from East 30th Street to University Parkway one block east of Guilford Avenue.

A reader writes about a recent home inspection of a 1950 Cape Cod that he is considering for purchase. At the second floor, the reader noticed several faint black streaks at each rafter/joist in the room that had the only air conditioning return in it. The stains started a foot or so above the floor and followed the angular rise but stopped short of the ceiling. It was only in this room that the reader noticed these streaks. The reader's inspector said the streaks were a result of a combination of the radiator and air conditioning return creating air turbulence, which caused dirt and dust to settle on the wallboards.