Ponder the improbability of it all. Instead of barren rock, lifeless water, and gaping nothingness, there is a planetary ecosystem teeming with a nearly incomprehensible number of protean life forms, […]
Inner Voices
VIGNETTE
Just Visiting
STEAMERS
Baggage
THE YEAR-ROUNDER
Waiting for the Storm
Imagining what will happen when our turn comes
Do you remember that scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds when a flock of crows silently swoops into a deserted playground — first one, then a few more, and then many […]
HISTORY
Remembering the Hurricane of 1938
85 years ago, an unprecedented disaster hit New England
Sept. 21 is the 85th anniversary of the great Hurricane of 1938, considered the most destructive storm in the recorded history of New England. It followed a path that hurricanes […]
TAKING BACK CHILDHOOD
Why Babies Shouldn’t Be Looking at Screens
New evidence that infants and toddlers are hurt by excessive exposure
A couple of years after smartphones became popular, my friend Joyce told me a story I found troubling. She had recently been on a city bus, sitting in an aisle […]
VIGNETTE
Collector’s Item
STEAMERS
The Wind Procrastinator
THE YEAR-ROUNDER
Hometown: An Ineffable Connection
Trying to put the inexpressible into words
We each tumble into birth somewhere on this planet, and many of us just stay put. In fact, for most of human history the vast majority of people lived and […]
NO-COMPLAINT DEPT.
The Ambient Music of Provincetown
From daybreak to late at night, the mixed-up sounds of a neighborhood
British composer and self-styled “nonmusician” Brian Eno has recorded several albums of “ambient music.” In the liner notes for his Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978), he wrote that ambient […]
INCIDENTALLY
Traffic Delay
Driving down Depot Road in Truro, I saw ahead a small boxlike shape in the road. Slowly pulling closer, I saw that it was a box turtle crossing the road. […]
VIGNETTE
Clearing Out
STEAMERS
Crud is in the Air
RAISING THE RTE
A Deeply Flawed Process
Next time, it could be your concerns that are dismissed
The Provincetown Select Board at its last meeting on Aug. 28 dramatically increased the residential tax exemption (RTE) from 25 percent (where it had held steady for several years) to […]
