Category Archives: Posts

Email terrorism

On December 15th our two largest cities get emails threatening their school systems. New York decides it’s clearly an amateurish prank and does nothing about it. LA takes it seriously and cancels about 1000 schools. Most of a million kids stay home, confounding parental expectations, throwing how many workplaces off when at least some of […]

Wellfleet’s formula biz bylaw shot down

In 2011 Wellfleet voted in a bylaw to ban “formula businesses.” The logic of the bylaw is that such chains and franchises as McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and other usual suspects would have a deleterious effect on our quality-of-life and the character of our town. Some months later Cumberland Farms proposed enlarging its long-grandfathered store […]

“BRIDGE OF SPIES”: COMFORTING BUT CONFUSED.

“Bridge of Spies,” the popular and critically well-received movie that’s been playing locally, is an entertaining true story, comforting in a way we have come to expect of Spielberg. Tom Hanks is always enough to restore your faith in the species. Decency, honor, stubbornness in the service of virtue seem built into his very physiognomy. […]

Schulz on Thoreau: who’s the hermit here?

A recent “New Yorker” carries a hatchet job on, of all iconic Americans, HenryDavid Thoreau. In her contemptuous “What have we been thinking?” attitude toward the last 150 years of treasuring Thoreau, Kathryn Schulz comes across as more of a solipsistic crank than she construes Thoreau to be. Useful literary criticism starts with understanding why […]

The De-fusing of the f-bomb

It’s f—— sad. It really is. What’s happened to this word so f—— powerful that you could f—— end a marriage with it or start or a f—— fight. Or, the word having the power of a punch itself, not even f—— have to. I can’t spell it out here, one of the few places […]

Pilgrim now admittedly unsafe.

The announcement that Pilgrim will close by July 2019 is a cause for celebration. But there is, when you think about it, a sobering side effect. The decision to close the plant because spending the money necessary to make it safe would make it unprofitable is an implicit admission that it is unsafe. In fact, […]

Say it ain’t so,Tom

I suppose everybody has seen the story: “Tom Brady endorses Trump.” No way. Our Tom Brady? I’m aware that a lot of professional athletes, like other wealthy people, are of the Republican persuasion. But Trump? Seriously? This throws me into moral confusion. I’ve been enjoying this season, with its backstory of the inflategate thing and […]

The bottomline is Entergy’s only concern

It has made the headlines here and in Boston: Entergy, the parent company of Pilgrim nuclear power plant is, at long last, considering closing it down. The gist of the story: after years of faltering performance plant has recently been ranked as one of the worst in the nation. If the cost of making the […]

Pilgrim shutdown and the real role of the NRC

Today’s big front page story suggests that the shutdown of Pilgrim may be imminent now that this antiquated plant has fallen to worst-in-nation status. This is heartening new to the great majority of Cape Codders who want to see the end this upwind threat defused at long last. But any celebrating would be premature. Governor […]

The meaning of the Trump phenomenon

Along with everyone else, it seems, I’ve been trying to come up with an explanation for the Trump phenomenon. Phenomenon because it’s impossible to imagine that anyone would vote for the man himself. And of course not everyone is mystified; not, for instance, the millions who apparently crave him above all other fellow humans for […]