Author Archives: Brent

Nantucket’s school-age population growing, Cape’s shrinking. What’s going on?

“School boom on Nantucket; Student population soars as immigrant population takes root.” Who knew? It was interesting to learn from Saturday’s “Cape Cod Times” front page story that while Cape schools are shrinking, part of the much-lamented youth flight, Nantucket’s are bursting at the seams. “Some public schools on Cape Cod have closed as families […]

September 15, 2014 – 10:20 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Rooting for the deadly underdogs

September averages the busiest month for hurricanes. This year, however, for the second year in a row, the news is the lack of the huge and often deadly storms. You can detect the note of disappointment as weathermen and weather journalists watch those low pressure “waves” coming off the west coast of Africa, encountering hostile […]

September 10, 2014 – 11:32 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Creativity and the bearing of fardels

The meaning of Labor Day, insofar as it means anything these days, is about kicking back, eating hotdogs, drinking beer, in general giving ourselves a “well- earned rest” from our labors. Something like that. Labor is the hard stuff and pleasure is its reward. But there is a school of thought that argues that that’s […]

September 4, 2014 – 2:20 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

How badly do we want to save lives on Route 6?

Two bad Route 6 accidents in Wellfleet within three days in mid-August injured several, killed one (the second fatality in two years) and tied up traffic for hours. As we say after every such terrible accident, this is unacceptable. The next selectmen’s meeting focussed on what to about Route 6. As Rep. Sarah Peake, who […]

August 31, 2014 – 2:18 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Useless nature. And its uses.

Taking a roundabout walk to the beach through the National Seashore, I start noticing all the trees out here by themselves in the middle of nowhere. The Seashore has its celebrated features, the ocean beaches, the bay, the kettle ponds. But then there’s the rest of it, all this stuff in between. There’s no entertainment […]

August 27, 2014 – 10:16 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

NStar spraying and our curious lack of curiosity

NStar, persevering in its bad neighbor policy, has publicized a list of the next victims of its herbicide spraying of plants in its power lines right-of-way. All Cape towns have officially objected to this practice, along with all our legislators, but the virtually universal condemnation falls on deaf ears. The reason for objections are clear: […]

August 21, 2014 – 7:43 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged | Comments (1)

Hiroshima and Pilgrim: rational fear

It’s debatable whether the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, horror though it was, was justifiable as the most life-sparing (at least for Americans) way of forcing Japan to surrender. But one thing is clear– that debut of nuclear power has proved a hard act to follow. The powers-that-be tried hard to erase that initial […]

August 17, 2014 – 2:44 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Knowledge addiction–a problem needing a 12-step solution?

It’s a familiar scenario. Friends sitting around, question comes up: hey, what was the band in that song? What’s the name of the actress in that movie we saw the other day? and what else did she appear in? And someone is on it with the smart phone, producing relief within seconds…Ahhhh. The thirst for […]

August 12, 2014 – 2:36 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Second-home owners in local government? Think twice.

The non-resident taxpayers are getting restless. “Part-time residents want more say in town,” headlines a recent “Cape Codder” story. “Second-home owners in Provincetown are calling for a bigger seat at the table when it comes to local government.” According to the president of the Truro NRT group at a July 5 meeting, “this is not […]

August 8, 2014 – 4:24 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Against Civilization—really?

One of the fundamental ideas of our life, it seems to me—so fundamental that it is not so much an idea as a given, just the water we swim in—is that civilization is a good thing. Built into the definition of the word as usually employed are “ improved,” “refined,” “more highly developed.” Even “more […]

August 5, 2014 – 11:51 am | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)