Monthly Archives: January 2016

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]