Category Archives: Columns

ME AND MY FRIEND VS. MY FRIEND AND I

For the Annals of Inter-generational Communication, the following report. Twice in the last week younger people of my acquaintance made a remarkable grammatical self-correction mid- sentence. Emily and Amanda, both around 30, in separate conversations with people of their parents’ generation, began to start a sentence with “me and my friend, (my sister, whatever)…” and […]

September 27, 2016 – 1:16 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Nuclear power: what a mess.

What a mess. Nuclear power was once touted as miracle of the future which would provide virtually free electricity. A nuclear power plant’s smokestack-less, clean profile was the very image of the sexy future. The world rushed to embrace it. 60 years later, sadder-but-wiser, we know that nuclear power has inherent flaws as a technology. […]

September 22, 2016 – 12:30 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

THINKING ABOUT NATURAL VS. HUMAN ISSUES

Life on Cape Cod is seasoned with all the news stories involving what can be characterized—perhaps misleadingly–as conflicts between natural and human interests. You could devote a whole section of the newspaper to them, along with sports, business, and food. On the one hand it’s pretty cool that great white sharks are taking an interest […]

August 29, 2016 – 1:23 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The appeal of the sheepdog option.

I find myself (as Commander-in-Chief of this space every two weeks) trying to come up with something useful to say about the gun issue. Ever since reading the statistics showing that countries with low per capita gun ownership have much lower rates of homicides by guns, my take on guns, like that of most people […]

August 4, 2016 – 9:07 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Our essential regional terminology–is it shifting?

Last year I saw a map showing the “Lower Cape” stopping with Eastham, the “Outer Cape” as a separate region consisting of Wellfleet, Truro, and P’town. In a recent issue of “Cape Life” magazine, a list of restaurants makes the same distinction. Hey, wait a minute, I thought, that’s gotta be wrong. Lower and Outer […]

July 18, 2016 – 12:04 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

Wellfleet: historians needed

The Wellfleet Historical Society, a venerable artifact itself, has new, enlarged space on Main Street and a new burst of energy and vision. The new slogans are “taking history to the streets” and “not just objects”–the old stuff that has been collecting dust for decades–”but stories.” “Stories” sounds good, but perhaps easier said than done. […]

June 23, 2016 – 12:14 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

What does and doesn’t make it to Town Meeting

Town Meeting time again in Wellfleet, that seasonal punctuation mark. Being of a naively, even romantically, democratic bent I’ve always thought, without thinking a whole lot, that anything of importance to this town would get voted on by Town Meeting. I mean, that’s the whole purpose of Town Meeting government, right? To give people—all the […]

April 26, 2016 – 10:50 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | 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)

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)

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)