In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, perhaps your mind strays toward violent-enough thoughts about your own family, and you’re not feeling the need to see a new horror film […]
Op-Eds
OP-ED
Healing the Wariness in Our Bones
Around a winter fire, a chance to warm our souls and consider peace
The rhododendrons make me laugh. After a long stretch of autumn, the sun came out, the temperature rose into the 60s for a minute, and they got all pink, as […]
OP-ED
Demand a Middle East Ceasefire Now
U.S. tax dollars are funding atrocities in Gaza
On the Outer Cape, we spoke up against Trump’s policy of family separation at the U.S. border in 2018. We spoke up against the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, […]
LEADERSHIP
The Housing Crisis Has Become Chaos
The laws of economics overwhelm the few tools of government
The dramatic loss of affordable housing on the Outer Cape has been called a “crisis” for more than 30 years. Naming it a crisis has not slowed the market forces […]
KEEPING WATCH
We Are Not the Apex of Creation
Reflections of a retired English teacher
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
SANCTUARY
The Peace of Ponds
Leaving the sturm und drang of our burning world behind
When the various weights of our world press at my shoulders, I head to one of Wellfleet’s hidden ponds. At the parking lot at Great, as children yelp and harried […]
TRIBUTE
Josephine Del Deo, By Your Side
The woman behind so much of what Provincetown is fought hard against what it isn’t
Saturday, August 8, 1970 Just got into town yesterday, after quite a few years away. What a lot of exciting changes! Instead of taking boring Route 6, I took the […]
APPRECIATION
Paul Brodeur: A Complex and Creative Life
He was a passionate writer who changed our world for the better
Imagine what went through the head of a cub reporter at the Provincetown Advocate in 1978 when he was informed that Paul Brodeur, the prolific novelist, environmental journalist, and New […]
OP-ED
A Cucumber for Breakfast
What if there had been no vegetable garden this year?
The first thing I ate this morning was a $60 cucumber. I washed it and set it on a cutting board, contemplating how best to use something that seemed so […]
CIVIL RIGHTS
The Narrowing of the Public Square
An ominous decision from the Supreme Court on serving same-sex couples
The Supreme Court’s June decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, allowing businesses to refuse to serve same-sex couples based on religious objections, took me back to a day in […]
OP-ED
Trying to Help and Getting It Wrong
What a painted pond turtle on Mill Road taught me
Driving down Mill Road in Eastham a few weeks ago, I spotted a painted pond turtle on the pavement. Being a human who has enjoyed enough success, by my modest […]
LETTER FROM ACROSS THE POND
The Loss of Enchantment
The pink river dolphins don’t dance anymore
I think I might have been around 16 years old, so my cultural indoctrination was well underway. For years, I had been a devotee of Jacques Cousteau and his beautiful […]
KEEPING WATCH
Holtec Threatens a Common, Open-Access Resource
Reflections of a retired English teacher
We Americans, whether as individual consumers, small-business owners, or CEOs of large corporations, are locked in a free market system that rewards the exploitation of a wide swath of open-access […]
