Rep. Keating missing the boat on Cuba [ CCT / 21 February 2012 ]

Let’s talk about Rep. Keating’s take on Cuba. Last July our man in Congress voted to approve an amendment to a bill that would restore Bush-era restrictions on travel to the beleaguered island nation. By way of explanation a Keating spokeswoman said in an email to the Cape Cod Times: “Congressman Keating does not support …

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February 21, 2012 – 1:10 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Can WHAT get its groove back? [op-ed, 7 February 2012 / CCT ]

As noted in several stories in this and other papers and an editorial in these pages, yet another chapter of the ever-compelling saga of Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater ( WHAT), is unfolding. Six of the theater’s best young actors and writers have severed their ties with the mother ship (and even riskier, with that catchy …

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February 7, 2012 – 12:40 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Wellfleet’s opinion of an enlarged Cumby’s is pretty clear [ CCT 24 January 2012 ]

For whatever reason, the little town of Wellfleet, with our off-the-grid self-image has, after long neglect, been coming up on corporate radar. Hard on the heels of Dunkin’ Donuts’ application to enhance its beachhead here with a drive-thru window, Cumberland Farms has applied for a makeover. It proposes to enlarge the store itself and move …

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January 24, 2012 – 6:02 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Should we feel sorry for NStar? [CCT / 10 January 2012]

New year’s resolution: Stop picking on poor little NStar. Only a joke, of course, but you can get to thinking that way. In recent months there has been widespread griping about the power company’s performance in two big storms. Maybe, people have begun to think, the problem of trees falling on wires causing great inconvenience …

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January 24, 2012 – 5:41 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

New Year’s revolution? [27 December 2011 / CCT ]

I wonder how many of us have on our list of New Year’s resolutions not just various items of personal makeover, but revolution itself? Talk about turning over a new leaf. This should be a dangerous time of year, bombarded as we are with the traditional Christmas movies with their essentially revolutionary message: Scrooge’s overthrow …

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December 27, 2011 – 12:03 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Wellfleet’s new bylaw: referendum on the existing Dunkin’ Donuts [13 December 2011 / CCT]

“Wellfleet is runnin’ from Dunkin” went the headline for the story reporting our precedent- setting new bylaw banning formula restaurants (chains, franchises, non-local clones). The town approved it in last April’s town meeting and the attorney general recently signed off on it. Indeed, it was the sudden appearance in our very midst of a Dunkin’ …

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December 14, 2011 – 10:10 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (1)

What’s Wrong with us? Some theories [September 2010 / CCT]

You hear it a lot these days: What’s wrong with us? with our country, with us as a people? There’s this sense that we ain’t the country we used to be. We’ve lost our mojo. Maureen Dowd in a recent column: “The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown.” This malaise has been exacerbated …

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December 1, 2011 – 1:45 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The view is clearer from a glass house [March 2010 / CCT]

A Harvard PhD with great promise guns down academic colleagues. A widely admired advocate against hate crimes gets a sexual charge from images of children being abused. One of the great athletes of our time with an exemplary public image turns out to have had numerous extra-maritial sexual affairs. The level of seriousness of differs …

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December 1, 2011 – 1:31 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Kline house: open space trumps architecture [June 2010 / CCT]

It will be pretty amazing if the Truro ZBA does the right thing and actually orders the razing of the controversial Kline house. That would be a lot of deconstruction: 8300 square feet with, no doubt, a carbon footprint of Sasquatch size. In photos it looks to be substantially built, although various estimates have it …

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December 1, 2011 – 1:25 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

What, if anything, is Juan Williams guilty of? [November 2010 / CCT]

Juan Williams admits he gets nervous when a fellow passenger on a plane is wearing a Muslim outfit. In fact Williams, longtime news analyst on National P ublic Radio, was fired after making this confession to on The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News. The exact quote: “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot…. But when I …

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December 1, 2011 – 1:17 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)