Author Archives: Brent

Our transformation into a tourist town: some key questions

Wellfleet has had seasonal visitors since the late 19th century, but for many decades we were less tourist destination than a small town like most small towns, more here for ourselves than for outsiders. At some point that changed and our primary identification (and reality) began to be that of a tourist town. That crucial […]

January 12, 2016 – 1:43 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

HBO film on Cape opioid epidemic is not much help

One of the somber notes on which 2015 concluded was the airing on HBO of the documentary “Heroin: Cape Cod, U.S.A.” The film ends on an upbeat: one of the local addicts we’ve come to know in the film has been clean for three months and is hopeful about the future. But we have learned […]

January 6, 2016 – 2:21 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

The new Star Wars: a dissenting view.

There seems a conspiracy amongst reviewers to be kind to the new “Star Wars.” Is it out of nostalgia for the generation-and-a-half-old original, respect for an ancient icon? Who knows. In any case, I was unprepared by reviews for the movie. (Had I been properly prepared I wouldn’t have gone at all.) The movie feels […]

January 2, 2016 – 2:51 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Taking Joy

The seasonal injunction to rejoice is always a tall order, even if you’re one of those lucky enough to be comfortable. It seems there are always more reasons, if you read the newspaper, to despair than to rejoice. In fact, given the shape the world is in, despair can seem the only reasonable—the only decent—attitude. […]

December 26, 2015 – 2:36 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged | Comments (0)

REFUSING TO UNDERSTAND TERRORISM

A month after the terrorist attacks on Paris, (and a few days after emails threatening schools systems of our two biggest cities) you would think that we would be working hard to understand this terrible and frightening phenomenon for the usual reasons we try to understand something bad: to keep it from happening to us […]

December 22, 2015 – 7:16 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Comments (0)

Email terrorism

On December 15th our two largest cities get emails threatening their school systems. New York decides it’s clearly an amateurish prank and does nothing about it. LA takes it seriously and cancels about 1000 schools. Most of a million kids stay home, confounding parental expectations, throwing how many workplaces off when at least some of […]

December 18, 2015 – 10:41 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged | Comments (0)

The death, by secondhomes, of outer Cape towns.

It was a shock to read in a recent news story a summary of an independent study on Truro’s future. “By 2035, Truro’s population of year-round residents is predicted to fall from 2,003 to 1337, with new home-buyers choosing seasonal or part-time occupancy . . . . the number of young adults is expected to […]

December 10, 2015 – 12:26 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

To be or not to be Paris

“We are Paris” is the headline these days. (Sometimes even in French to show just how serious we are about our solidarity.) But I imagine a lot of us are expressing thanks this holiday, at least under our breath, that we are not Paris—that we are an ocean away and well buffered from all that […]

December 6, 2015 – 6:42 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Wellfleet’s formula biz bylaw shot down

In 2011 Wellfleet voted in a bylaw to ban “formula businesses.” The logic of the bylaw is that such chains and franchises as McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and other usual suspects would have a deleterious effect on our quality-of-life and the character of our town. Some months later Cumberland Farms proposed enlarging its long-grandfathered store […]

December 1, 2015 – 2:35 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

We’ll Always Have Mars

The title of “The Martian,” a movie that’s been playing in local theaters, is a bit of a joke. The protagonist is not actually a Martian in the sense of a native of our neighboring planet. He’s an Earthling, one of us, but (most likely) as much of a Martian as the Red Planet has […]

November 20, 2015 – 8:58 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)