Category Archives: Columns

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: 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

GPS almost almost got us killed

Those of us old enough to straddle the digital watershed are probably more sensitive to the downside of killer apps than millennials. In July, an old friend visiting the Cape from out of town was staying in a B&B in Eastham. He had ridden his bike up to Wellfleet for a visit, but when we […]

October 20, 2015 – 12:20 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Secondhome owners’ counter-productive naivete

An explosion of angry letters from secondhome owners dominated the op-ed section of this week’s Provincetown “Banner.” They were miffed by an editorial calling secondhome owners “fair-weather friends” and making a connection between the secondhome market and homelessness [(which is seen as contributing to the recent death of a well-known local artist). “These are hurtful […]

October 5, 2015 – 2:47 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Let’s get curious about the charter school controversy

You’d like to think that Education, in the business of encouraging being thoughtful and curious about things, would be curious about itself. But it would be naïve to expect that. Education isn’t any better at self -examination than any other embedded institution. There was a news story early in August about a ballot question for […]

September 19, 2015 – 8:32 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)