Monthly Archives: July 2014

TOO BIG FOR OUR BRIDGES?

Forgotten in the celebrating of the 100th anniversary of the Cape Cod Canal is its contradictory effect on Cape life. The purpose of the canal was to save ships the time, money, and danger of going all the way around the treacherous Cape itself. Incidentally it turned us into an island of sorts, profoundly affecting […]

July 31, 2014 – 2:21 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Illegal Immigration: a heart problem

It’s heartening to see all the letters shaming the protestors of immigrant children being received at Camp Edwards. Clearly, for many of us, humanity trumps nationality or legality, at least for children. Our nation’s illegal immigration problem is often posed as a leaky border problem. It may be more of a heart problem. It’s not […]

July 28, 2014 – 10:42 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged | Comments (0)

WHAT-WE’RE-COMING-TO-DEPT. “Spartacus”

Late in the evening, tired, our guard down, we plop in front of the TV looking for a little entertainment. We give “Deadwood” a try. People seem to like it. This version of a frontier town has virtually everyone issuing the f-bomb every other word (surely a contemporary overlay; was vocabulary so impoverished then?). And […]

July 22, 2014 – 5:37 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Pilgrim Progress : the beat goes on

Pilgrim has withstood a virtual tsunami of bad news the last couple of years. It seems like just about everybody wants it to go away. All Cape and Vineyard towns, the governor, and our state and US representatives– all want to see it closed, for reasons that have been rehearsed almost daily in this paper. […]

July 18, 2014 – 9:36 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

Kline House: Class struggle in Truro

Truro’s protracted battle with the Klines continues. The latest chapter, reported on in the Times on July 6 is the $178,000 it has cost so far to enforce the law—that is, tear down this house declared illegal by the courts—and whether the town can afford to go on enforcing its own zoning. Christopher Lucy, former […]

July 15, 2014 – 11:11 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Michael Moore’s story of capitalism: the only one?

Speaking, as I was in a recent column, about stories of our nations’ meaning, stories we can—or cannot–imagine being taught in the schools, or without embarrassment telling our children. In 2009 I did a column about Michael Moore’s movie with the ironic title, “Capitalism: a Love story.” This movie is the most powerful and inspirational […]

July 10, 2014 – 10:39 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

New Citizen life being born in Wellfleet?

Something new, an unprecedented form of citizenship, may be taking shape in Wellfleet, the Little Town That Could. It’s not clear even to those who are part of its emergence (including this writer) what this new thing is, or might be. At this point it could go in any of several directions, become this or […]

July 7, 2014 – 11:06 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Reminding ourselves of the story of progress

You hear the word “story” a lot these years. One way of thinking about the current national mood of discontent is that we—our feckless Congress but the rest of us, too– have lost track of the story. What the story is or was and where we were in it. It’s as if the bookmark had […]

July 1, 2014 – 10:48 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)