Category Archives: Posts

PILGRIM AND EVERSOURCE: WHAT TO DO ABOUT COMPANIES IN CONTEMPT?

Laws are codified public sentiment. They are supposed to represent what’s right. They exist to protect us. But sometimes laws don’t feel like that. Case in point: the laws that allow two local companies to act like outlaws. I’m speaking of course of Entergy and Eversource, both widely perceived to be endangering the public health […]

April 19, 2016 – 7:02 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

SHARING SPIETH’S COLLAPSE

Once in a while, a story needs to be plucked from the sports section of the newspaper and put in the general news section. Jordan Spieth has become quite well known over the last couple of years as a precocious professional golfer, perhaps the next Tiger Woods. But since last Sunday, the final day of […]

April 14, 2016 – 1:30 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

TERRORISM AND INEQUALITY

Here’s an obvious question that doesn’t get asked enough: if there were not so much economic inequality in the world would we have to worry as much about terrorism? At the Nuclear Security Summit recently concluded, Obama warned again about nukes getting in the hands of terrorists. Pretty scary. It would, as he emphasized, make […]

April 5, 2016 – 12:54 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Are we “lower” and “outer” or only “outer?”

I saw a map recently showing the “Lower Cape” stopping with Eastham, the “Outer Cape” as a separate region consisting of Wellfleet, Truro, and P’town. Hey, wait a minute, I thought, that’s gotta be wrong. Lower and Outer are not separate regions. Outer is part of Lower. Some years back, a team of academic researchers, […]

March 10, 2016 – 1:45 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged | Comments (0)

Against sideline-ism

Bernie Sanders should get the nomination (and then win the election) because he makes the clearest, most believable and trusted appeal to the self-interest of a strong majority of Americans. The trouble is that a lot of us don’t vote self-interest. We don’t vote for the candidate we really think will best represent us. A […]

February 27, 2016 – 2:59 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The argument vs. pleasure

In the war against drug addiction, the strategy that gets the most press is taking the drug itself out of play, mostly through law enforcement. But until we succeed in ridding the world of such potent, life-wrecking pleasures, there should be more emphasis on learning to live in a world that has such temptations in […]

February 13, 2016 – 1:14 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

“Heroin: Cape Cod, USA”: an irony

One critical voice in the local discussion of the HBO documentary “Heroin: Cape Cod, U.S.A.” worries about the film’s possible impact on business. Won’t the influential expose of our heroin problem sully our pristine, bucolic image and cause people to think twice before vacationing and spending their tourist dollars here? At first that complaint seemed […]

January 28, 2016 – 3:22 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

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)

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)