Author Archives: Brent

TERRORISM AND INEQUALITY

Here’s an obvious question that doesn’t get asked enough: if there were not so much economic inequality in the world would we have to worry as much about terrorism? At the Nuclear Security Summit recently concluded, Obama warned again about nukes getting in the hands of terrorists. Pretty scary. It would, as he emphasized, make […]

April 5, 2016 – 12:54 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

HHERRING RIVER RESTORATION GOES TO TOWN MEETING

The Herring River Restoration in Wellfleet, in the works for years, seems headed for its first town meeting airing. By removing a 1909 dike, the project would restore natural tidal flow to one of the largest wetlands in New England. To proponents of the project—and to judge from public comment it has few opponents– the […]

March 29, 2016 – 2:03 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Are we “lower” and “outer” or only “outer?”

I saw a map recently showing the “Lower Cape” stopping with Eastham, the “Outer Cape” as a separate region consisting of Wellfleet, Truro, and P’town. Hey, wait a minute, I thought, that’s gotta be wrong. Lower and Outer are not separate regions. Outer is part of Lower. Some years back, a team of academic researchers, […]

March 10, 2016 – 1:45 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged | Comments (0)

iNCONVENIENT STORE

In the matter of Cumberland farms vs. the town of Wellfleet, we’ve had several months of waiting for the other shoe to drop. In the fall of 2015, the citizens of Wellfleet read in the newspaper about a court ruling which, if it is not reversed, will have a major impact on the future of […]

March 3, 2016 – 3:54 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Against sideline-ism

Bernie Sanders should get the nomination (and then win the election) because he makes the clearest, most believable and trusted appeal to the self-interest of a strong majority of Americans. The trouble is that a lot of us don’t vote self-interest. We don’t vote for the candidate we really think will best represent us. A […]

February 27, 2016 – 2:59 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Tourist development: Cape Cod and Mexico

Notes on tourist development from down where they really know how to do it. In the late 1980s, a friend wrote me a letter from Mexico. “Hey, you would love this place.” He and his wife were staying in rustic palapas (rudimentary straw-roofed open air structures) on the Mexican Caribbean beach in a place called […]

February 21, 2016 – 1:05 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The argument vs. pleasure

In the war against drug addiction, the strategy that gets the most press is taking the drug itself out of play, mostly through law enforcement. But until we succeed in ridding the world of such potent, life-wrecking pleasures, there should be more emphasis on learning to live in a world that has such temptations in […]

February 13, 2016 – 1:14 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Will capitalism survive “The Big Short”?

Is everyone seeing “The Big Short,” now playing in local theaters? Everyone should be. We should all be thinking and talking about it. It’s a high energy tragi-comedy about about the hit-and-run of the 2008 housing collapse—and about the sort of work that tends to produce that sort of disaster. There are some movies which, […]

February 4, 2016 – 1:41 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

“Heroin: Cape Cod, USA”: an irony

One critical voice in the local discussion of the HBO documentary “Heroin: Cape Cod, U.S.A.” worries about the film’s possible impact on business. Won’t the influential expose of our heroin problem sully our pristine, bucolic image and cause people to think twice before vacationing and spending their tourist dollars here? At first that complaint seemed […]

January 28, 2016 – 3:22 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Heroin: the epidemic and the void

The controversy around the HBO documentary “Heroin: Cape Cod, U.S.A.” seems to involve an unnecessary competition between two quite distinct issues. One: there is currently a crisis of addiction caused apparently by overprescription of painkillers and the availability of cheap heroin. Two: some people are much more susceptible to opioid addiction than others. Both are […]

January 20, 2016 – 11:11 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)