Author Archives: Brent

The creativity of everyday life

We tend to use the word and concept “creative” very restrictively. Mostly for artists, maybe inventors. Most jobs are not considered creative. Or most lives. There are creative people and there are the rest of us. We tend to put creative people on a pedestal. But if you back off from this common creative/uncreative dichotomy […]

July 1, 2015 – 8:23 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Assisted suicide: a creative response to the ending of life

The Death With Dignity ballot measure narrowly defeated statewide in 2012 actually passed on Cape Cod, with our aging population, suggesting that if the question were left up to those to whom it seems most relevant, the aging themselves, it would pass easily. The debate seems to come down to the interests of the living […]

June 24, 2015 – 6:35 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Computers and the CWQ

Has the computer improved writing? It certainly has increased the number of books published as well as the number of authors (both numbering these days in hundreds of thousands to over a million a year, depending on the estimate and exactly what is being estimated). Computers have made publishing so easy and inexpensive as to […]

June 18, 2015 – 3:21 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The other side of graduation hoopla

We are once again in the late spring graduation season featuring much upbeat newspaper coverage of inspirational speechifying and partying. But this self-congratulatory mood flies in the face of certain realities about the role of education in our society. Of the truths we hold self-evident, that formal education, the more the merrier, is one of […]

June 15, 2015 – 1:52 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Death’s bad reputation.

Death has a very bad reputation in our culture. That sounds like a black humor joke since its badness seems not a matter of reputation at all but inherent in the phenomenon. But to a significant extent, death, or our experience of it, is indeed a social disease: how it is characterized is a large […]

June 5, 2015 – 1:35 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Wellfleet and the idea of safety

At Wellfleet’s recent town meeting we voted to hire another police officer. The logic of that seemed pretty obvious: another officer would make us safer. But that town meeting vote failed to get the required override ratification a few days later. Apparently, a lot of us are not worried about our safety. It does raise […]

May 29, 2015 – 12:23 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

Electronic voting in Eastham means a very big change

In its recent town meeting, Eastham replaced traditional voting by voice or raised hands with electronic voting. It seems a small thing, this change, a matter mostly of efficiency and accuracy. But it has more profound implications than you would think from the debate leading to it, which seemed to focus mostly on the expense […]

May 23, 2015 – 2:24 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Scapegate.

Deflategate has turned into Scapegate, the scapegoating of the league’s most successful QB. The NFL’s investigator concludes that Brady “more probably than not” knew that the ball handler guys did what they did. “More probably than not”–so what’s that, 55-45? 65-35? That’s not a standard of proof that would hold up in any other arena, […]

May 13, 2015 – 11:52 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Contradictions of “tourist destination”

I recently found out something about this small Mexican city, where we’ve spent a chunk of winter the past five years, that changed my whole way of looking at the place. San Miguel de Allende is famous for the colors of its buildings—a rich palette of blood red, oranges, earthy ochres. The way the town […]

May 8, 2015 – 10:46 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The emotional style of the Unconcerned

The letters and other opinion pieces in these pages taking the not-to-worry line on Pilgrim are framed as science-oriented, fact-based , cooler heads vs. a scared, irrational mob of kneejerk naysayers. But it’s not really about the facts. Rather, call it a difference in emotional style: the unruffled, imperturbable unconcerned vs. the concerned, who allow […]

May 1, 2015 – 11:19 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)