EXTRA...

GOP decries Maritime Museum's $100k stimulus; Brewster bike path; Dental Care cut; Hospital denies choke hold used; Are Cape's oaks the next to go? Study may reduce turtle bycatch

TODAY's quote: "The fact that some in Congress still don't understand all the ways museums enrich our communities - as educators, as stewards of history and culture, and as economic engines - is cause for concern." - Ford W. Bell, president, American Association of Museums.

Yesterday's on again, off again sunshine kept most people off the bike paths, all except this stalwart on the Brewster to Orleans stretch near Namskaket Marsh. Will Brooks photo.

Critics decry museums' piece of federal stimulus pie
$100,000 for the Cape Cod Maritime Museum on South Street in Hyannis

Cape Cod Bay monitoring center asks selectmen for support
KINGSTON - The board voted to send a letter to state Rep. Tom Calter and Senate President Therese Murray supporting state funding for the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, which monitors the water quality of Cape Cod Bay, its harbors and its tributaries, including the Jones River. The center's state funding was cut for this year, and Marine Policy Coordinator Pat Hughes has been traveling to communities around the bay with details of the center's work. Four Cape Cod towns have given money to the center, including Brewster and Provincetown.. Kingston Reporter.

To New York officials, the $3 million in federal economic stimulus funds they received to transform an old canal freighter into a 259-foot-long floating museum was money well spent...

Millions more have gone to other kinds of museums: the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas; the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky.; the Hunting and Fishing Museum in Pennsylvania and the Los Angeles County Fire Museum in Bellflower, Calif...

Other spending bills moving through Congress do contain money for museums - including $930,000 for the Aerospace Museum of California; $350,000 for the Museum of Aviation in Georgia; and $100,000 for the Cape Cod Maritime Museum. Supporters of the museum funding said it was even more important in a tough economy...Phildelphia Inquirer.
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Hospital Denies Choke Hold Used
Cape Cod Hospital officials are denying reports that hospital employees used a choke hold to restrain an unruly patient who died last week after an altercation with staff members... WCVB.

Pilot Study May Lead to Larger Effort to Reduce Turtle Bycatch

Researchers are using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and satellite-linked data loggers to learn more about turtle behavior in commercial fishing areas and to develop new ways to avoid catching turtles in fishing gear. This marks the first time an ROV has been used to follow turtles in the wild to learn about their behavior and how they interact with their habitat.

Heather Haas, Henry Milliken, Kimberly Murray, and Eric Matzen of NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and colleagues Ron Smolowitz and Matthew Weeks of Coonamessett Farm in East Falmouth, Mass ., have been tracking two juvenile loggerhead turtles with satellite-linked tags since August, and following other non-tagged loggerheads with an ROV...

Temperatures are important because turtles get "cold-stunned" if the waters get too cold and can become stranded, a common occurrence on Cape Cod in the fall... 7th Space.
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Cuts take bite out of Dentist Care
Cape Cod Dentist Care, a program that assists residents who make too much money for MassHealth but too little money to pay for dental coverage, is running out of money. The state stopped funding Cape Cod Dentist Care as of June 30.
   For several years, the state gave the program $90,000 a year, but that stopped in June. Cape Cod Dentist Care has served 675 people since it started in 2003. Boston Business Journal.

In dead Vineyard oaks, a warming warning
Vast die-off of Cape Cod coastal oak trees 5,000 years ago discovered

Ever since a vast tract of Martha's Vineyard forest died two years ago, visitors who stumbled upon the graveyard of gray stalks have called it eerie, bizarre, and sad. Now scientists are calling it something else: a possible climate change lesson.

The 500 acres of dead oak trees were the epicenter of an islandwide infestation of caterpillars that munched their way through millions of leaves for three consecutive springs ending in 2007. Then a severe summer drought hit the island, finishing off tens of thousands of the weakened trees...

Ordinarily, such catastrophic damage would be chalked up to bad luck. But Foster, who is also director of Harvard Forest, the university's experimental forest in Petersham, and other researchers recently discovered a vast die-off of Cape Cod coastal oak trees 5,000 years ago during an abrupt warming period... Globe.
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Mother of Singer Killed by Coyotes Asks That the Animals Be Spared
Even in a country with a lot of wilderness, it was a shocking death...
   The reaction of Ms. Mitchell's grief-stricken mother was perhaps more unusual: Emily Mitchell issued a statement to news organizations in which she asked authorities to spare any coyotes involved in the attack... NY Times.

News tip for watching tomorrow's Governor's races
Oppostion always wins Governors' races after national election

The GOP is watching Tuesday's few elections for signs of a conservative revolution, but a quick check of past results fo similar races is in order.

According to a report today on CNN today, the elections for Governors in the year following every national election since 1977 have been won by the party out of the White House, ergo look for a couple of new GOP Governors on Wednesday. wb