Leap Year Brings a Bonus to Saint Mary's: One Last Winter Community Luncheon!

Left to right are Cathy Hatch, Jean Sagara, Robin Comins Unger and Chris Keenan.
Live music is a big part of the popularity of Saint Mary's winter community luncheons.

The best part of having an extra day added to this Leap Year calendar might just be the chance it offers all of us to enjoy one last terrific “bonus” meal at Saint Mary of the Harbor Episcopal Church on February 29^th, 2020. That’s tomorrow, Saturday, from noon till about 1 PM or so, with a lovely meal prepared and served by some dozen or more volunteers, mostly from the church’s congregation. There is no charge for this wonderful meal, and all are invited.

This is a community luncheon intended to welcome absolutely everyone for a congenial meal among friends, both new and old, with Saint Mary’s stunning view of Provincetown Harbor as a backdrop, and live music for all to enjoy. It runs every Saturday during the Cape's two most challenging winter months for many of us: January and February. It’s easy to become a bit isolated when the weather might keep us from getting out and being among the humans, and this welcoming, community luncheon creates a great atmosphere for a little socializing, a lot of music, and something good to eat.

John Carroll and John Luftin made the best ratatouille I've ever tasted!

I hadn’t made it to a single lunch all season until this past Saturday, and had been missing a lot of the folks that I’ve always enjoyed spending a little bit of time with over the winter months.

Boy, did I luck out by catching a ride to the church that day...

Walking across the courtyard I could smell the divine aromas of this homemade meal from 50 feet away, and wonderful, live music was wafting on the air.

My nose led me to big baskets of crusty, really good garlic bread and a beautiful salad of mixed field greens, accompanied by the greatest ratatouille I’ve ever tasted! Saint Mary parishioners John Carroll and John Loftin baked several big pans of that delightful French stew simply brimming with fresh vegetables, in a uniquely flavored sauce that I hope to have the good fortune to enjoy again one day.

Dessert, as usual, was a lovely variety of baked goods such as cookies, brownies, lemon bars, carrot cake and the like, cut bite size so you could taste as many as you wanted, with a platter of these little sweets on every table.

This plate of excellent ratatouille, beautiful mixed salad greens and
great garlic bread was a real hit with last week's St. Mary's crowd. 

Besides great food, this weekly winter event always features live music, courtesy of two or three splendid Cape Cod musicians, together with friends they might bring along from various Cape towns and beyond, and sometimes featuring PTown tunesmiths as well.

Musicians from Eastham, Brewster and lands well beyond will venture out to the beauty of Provincetown on a cold winter's day, all for the love of the music. Diners and servers alike will often join in a sing-along, or dance to the music as it moves them.

This past week brought us Cathy Hatch, a dedicated regular traveling from Yarmouth to play guitar for us nearly every Saturday, along with Jean Sagara of Wellfleet, another regular, playing the fiddle. Our best wishes go out to John, another regular, at home, recovering from an injury and unable to play that day.

Cathy and Jean were joined by Robin Comins Unger and Chris Keenan, who both are frequent visitors to the Outer Cape, traveling from western Massachusetts to a little get-away in Truro as often as they can. They had brought their fiddles along. Each of these many fine musicians plays multiple instruments, and you never know which of dozens of strings, drums, percussion, woodwinds or others we’ll be treated to on any given Saturday.

We thank Saint Mary’s and the volunteers for another great season of food, music and comradery. The eclectic mix of friends and neighbors among the crowd, in the band, and in the kitchen, makes this a wonderful gathering for everyone, with the ambience completed by the view of magnificent Provincetown Harbor, seen from every corner of the dining hall at Saint Mary’s. This remarkable, homespun, weekly tradition should not be missed this winter, with your last chance for the season to join in the fun falling on Saturday, tomorrow, on Leap Day. Come join us in a good meal, live music, perhaps a bit of song and dance... all in a beautiful setting where everyone is truly welcome!

Two More Saturdays at St Mary's Will Finish 2015 Community Luncheon Season

Pasta, garlic bread and salad are a luncheon favorite.

Every Saturday in January and February a Community Luncheon is served at Saint Mary of the Harbor Episcopal Church, at 517 Commercial Street. Everyone is invited, at no charge.
From noon until 1 PM each Saturday, a different lunch every week is served to neighbors, friends and visitors who gather around large, communal tables to share a meal and socialize a bit, and make new friends.

Live music from many instruments is part of the fun.

Trays of cookies, brownies and other treats follow the main course, the coffee flows freely, and folks often sit for a while after lunch enjoying the music that's provided by Cape Cod musicians who entertain diners, playing a variety of instruments and singing throughout the meal.
Some of these musicians are local people, and some have been traveling here to play every Saturday for years. Diners even get up and dance to the music.
Join in on the fun, and a pleasant meal with friends, as these last two Saturdays in February bring another season of these great Community Luncheons to a close.

Visit PTown's Fantastic Soup Kitchen

Volunteers at Provincetown's Soup Kitchen serve up nearly
100 meals a day from November through April each year.

The Soup Kitchen in Provincetown (SKIP) serves a hot lunch every weekday from the first Monday in November through the last Friday in April. The project began many years ago when some local folks noticed there were a number of people essentially living on the beach at the edge of the harbor, sleeping under overturned boats. I met a woman years ago who began, with a group
of people, seeking solutions and community resources to help.
They found there were also many who had housing but were perhaps a bit short on money for groceries in long winter seasons when so many of us have little or no income. And they also found many who would benefit greatly from simply feeling a sense of community, with a place to gather, socialize a bit, and merely spend some time with friends in the midst of a community where it's easy to feel isolated and alone in the off-season.
Eventually, in 1992, the Soup Kitchen in Provincetown was founded, was housed in a few different spots through the years, and finally, a number of years ago, settled into what seems to be its permanent home at the Provincetown United Methodist Church, found at 10 Shank Painter Road . SKIP has evolved into a wonderful, welcoming spot where people from every corner of Provincetown, and from all walks of life, gather for a meal and a bit of fellowship throughout the winter months. Visit the SKIP website and you'll find that their goal is “to provide nutritious and healthy meals in a welcoming and warm atmosphere for all individuals on the Outer Cape who are either in need or seek community.” Several folks come to Provincetown for lunch, from Truro and Wellfleet, and beyond, and all are welcome. In 2013, SKIP served about 11,000 meals, at no charge, to Outer Cape folks from many towns.

A recent Soup Kitchen meal included roasted tomato soup,
Quiche Lorraine with herb roasted potatoes, a green salad,
roasted Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, and the Soup
Kitchen's famous carrot cake for dessert. Fantastic! 

The Soup Kitchen has dozens of volunteers who prepare all those meals, serve them, and then clean up afterwards. Donations of food come from local businesses and residents, and occasionally, for example, fishermen will bring in bushels of clams or crates of fresh fish. Call 508 487-8331 to arrange a donation of food, or you can send a check to SKIP, Post Office Box 538, Provincetown, MA 02657. Visit their website to receive a card acknowledging your donation if you print a donation form and mail it in with your check. You can also donate there directly from your existing PayPal account. SKIP is a 501(c)3 organization and all donations are fully tax deductible.
Whether or not you make a donation, come for lunch at the Soup Kitchen soon. Friday, April 25th, will be their last day for this season. And make sure you mark your calendar for May 3rd, 2014, and save the date for a wonderful SKIP fundraiser at the Crown & Anchor. There will be a gourmet dinner and a concert by Well Strung, the fabulous, sexy, singing string quartet whose amazing instrumental and vocal talents span every conceivable genre of music from classical to hip-hop, from Beethoven to Beyonce, and you won't want to miss this very special event. Call SKIP at 508 487-8331 for reservations. Your support, as always, is greatly appreciated.

Spaghetti Supper Benefits Historic Church

Dan Lacombe is putting on his famous spaghetti supper tonight at the UU Meeting House, 236 Commercial Street, from 5:30 to 8 PM. Everyone is invited to this community dinner. It is a benefit for the Meeting House, one of the most welcoming spots in Provincetown for people of all beliefs and philosophies. If you're not familiar with this remarkable PTown landmark and gathering place, then it's certainly high time you paid a visit and became part of this community.
The poster above tells you all about this complete meal, from salad to dessert, for meat-eaters or vegetarians, and there's even a gluten-free choice while supplies last. It's a good idea to go for dinner early in the evening, before the kitchen starts running low. This is a very popular event and food could run out. You can get your dinner to go if you can't stay and spend some time enjoying the wide cross-section of the community that will come for dinner at large communal tables in the Meeting House "Theater" on the ground floor of this historic church. There will even be live entertainment. This is a great event, supporting one of the organizations that makes this town such an amazing, welcoming place. See you there!

Provincetown's Early Government was Rather a Theocracy With Officials Overseeing "Both Town and Parish"

Postcard shows the second Provincetown Town Hall, C. 1920s. 

According to a book called History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, edited by Simeon L. Deyo, Provincetown had no need for any sort of municipal buildings for the first couple of hundred years after people began settling here. Over the years a number of churches, often called meeting houses, were used for Town Meeting, Selectmen's meetings and other functions of the town's government..
Early church meetings had been held in the homes of residents until 1717, when the general court in Boston granted £150 toward the cost of building Cape Cod's first meetinghouse, with the rest of the money to be raised by the people. It was called the Orthodox, erected not far from the site of today's Catholic church on Prince Street, though its exact location is no longer known.
There was apparently no separation of church and state, and no one felt it was needed. For the first 150 years or more, there was, for nearly all intents and purposes, a single religion, adhered to by nearly every resident. Although there were several churches in Provincetown, the parishioners in one or another held pretty much the same beliefs. At one point, a vote of Town Meeting prohibited building a Methodist church here.
According to History of Barnstable County, "The union of parish and town made unnecessary the erection of public buildings for the use of the town until long after 1800, the several church edifices affording the necessary accommodations for the town meetings and the town officers." The book, published in New York in 1890 by H. W. Blake & Company, continues... "Although it is 169 years since Provincetown was incorporated, it has prior to this, built but one hall for the transaction of the town's business. The reason may be found in the circumstance that until within the recollection of persons now living, the town and parish were in their functions and administration nearly identical, so that the meeting house furnished pulpit and forum. The town government, in its earlier days was therefore essentially a theocracy. A majority of its voters and of its officials, were members of the church of the old standing order, the same persons being generally appointed or elected to serve both town and parish."

Our current Town Hall is pictured above in a post card probably dating back to the late 1920s. It is the second Town Hall to have been built in Provincetown, restored in 2008-2010 with close attention to details such as the original colors in which the building had been painted. See my earlier blog post about the original Town House, as it was called at the time, built on High Pole Hill in 1854.
In the post card above, notice the spire of the Congregational Church, one of a number of Congregational churches built over the years. It was also called Church of the Pilgrims, built in 1843 where the restaurant Saki stands today.

Last Call for Saint Mary's Saturday Luncheon - an extra meal makes up for closing during the blizzard

St Mary's in a vintage photo card

Because of the blizzard that forced the volunteers to cancel St Mary's community luncheon on February 9th, the last meal of the 2013 winter season will be held at noon on March 2nd. I wrote last week about the last luncheon for the year, and attended it myself, or so I thought. During the meal an announcement was made, to the cheers of guests, volunteers and the musicians who travel here to perform each week, that the eight-week luncheon schedule would be extended by one more Saturday, to make up for the dinner lost to the blizzard. Threats of blowing snow, coastal flooding and winds gusting over 50 miles an hour, along with a state-wide travel ban issued by the governor, led to the cancellation. As it turned out, Provincetown had no electricity that day due to storm damage to power lines, so most of us were eating cold food from a can and huddling under extra blankets to stay warm that afternoon, along with about 700,000 other New Englanders without power.
So to make up the lost day there will be one more "last lunch" of the season, a last chance for friends new and old to gather for a meal, to meet and talk, and to enjoy a spirited blend of live music with a magnificent view of Provincetown Harbor as a backdrop. This season's guests have been treated to meals ranging from a traditional Thanksgiving style dinner, complete with roast turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce, to Mary-Jo Avellar's famous chili. At my table a few weeks ago I met a woman from another Cape Cod village who brings various family members to visit Provincetown over a few winter weekends every year, this time visiting with her husband and two grandchildren. They had arrived in hopes of finding Priscilla Jacket's Tandoori Chicken on that day's menu, having tasted it in past years, and knew from the aroma as they walked through the door that this was indeed their lucky day.
I've always thanked the musicians as I've left the church after one of these luncheons, but last week I had a chance to talk to them as they were packing up their instruments. Live music has been a part of this feast many times over the years, but became a regular feature of the dinner about four years ago when Wellfleet musician Jean Sagara read a blurb somewhere asking musicians to volunteer their time on Saturdays in Provincetown. She came to play a few times, when she could, soon arranging her schedule to allow weekly trips to PTown, with her musical partner John Best in tow. Together they are the musical duo Black Whydah, playing various gigs around the cape, and in fact have just finished recording their second CD Places We've Pillaged - Black Whydah 2, available now on CD Baby independent music website, where you can hear a sample from each tune. Jean and John both play a number of different instruments on this compilation of their original music, which might be best described as Celtic new age. They play a few of these tunes, as well as music from many other genres, at St Mary's, joined by countless other fine musicians through the years.
For the last few winer seasons they have been traveling here from Wellfleet for St Mary's luncheons, January through February Saturday's every year, and inviting different Cape Cod musicians to join them every week, giving us a wonderful variety of instruments and musical styles to enjoy. Last week they brought Eastham's Barbara Adams and her fiddle, and were also joined by Provincetown's own April Baxter and her bodhran, a wooden-framed drum of Irish descent. Jean and John each play a variety of instruments, such as the cittern, a stringed European instrument vaguely akin to a large lute and dating back to the 1600s. The mandocello is another unusual stringed instrument you may hear, plucked and strummed like a guitar but with a much different sound. You never know what sort of new (or old) instruments you might find joining in with Saint Mary's piano on any given Saturday, with the crowd sometimes singing along to a familiar song or dancing to a tune they've never heard.
We thank all of the wonderful musicians, as well as the host of volunteers who have prepared and served these meals over the years, all of whom have helped to make these dinners so enjoyable. Join us tomorrow at noon 517 Commercial Street for great music, a bit of fellowship and St Mary's last winter meal by the sea.

One Last Meal in St Mary of the Harbor's 22nd Season of Community Luncheons

Renowned Provincetown Artist Sol Wilson's painting of the Church of Saint Mary of the Harbor
hangs in its hallway at 517 Commercial Street, in PTown's East End

Come and join Provincetown residents and visitors at the Episcopal Church, St Mary's, at noon on Saturday, February 23, for the last community luncheon of the winter of 2013, their 22nd season providing a meal and a bit of fellowship during the harshest part of this sometimes bleak time of the year.
The cold winds and raw weather we often have in the winter can keep people indoors, adding to the isolation many of us feel during the off-season. When the streets are empty of the enormous crowds of summer visitors, when that chilling wind from the north rattles our windows, and when most of us have no job to get us out of the house every day, we can tend to lead rather solitary lives, sometimes not leaving our homes for several days, or longer. We sometimes tend to go without much human contact during the long winter season, and that can leave us feeling down a bit, maybe a little lonely, or sometimes downright depressed.
Every winter, each Saturday during January and February, you'll hear live music in the East End of town, spilling out of the doors of the Church of Saint Mary of the Harbor, along with the smell of a delicious repast being served by volunteers and enjoyed by several dozen of us who have ventured out to share a meal. Various musicians come to join us, playing instruments like the piano, violin, banjo or guitar, and sometimes all of these, while guests enjoy the food, the company and the music. Saint Mary's has hosted this free community luncheon for 22 winters, providing a social gathering place, a nice dinner, and the warmth of companionship set against the majesty of Provincetown's spectacular harbor.
All are welcome, with no reservations required. See you at noon on Saturday as we have one last meal together for the season, and thank all those who have helped in putting on these wonderful community luncheons over the years.