This summer, as we’ve done for the past couple years, we’ll take the small boat with the flaking paint job and semi-reliable outboard motor out the Oyster Pond, down the river, around the corner of Stage Harbor and into Nantucket Sound. Hugging the coast of Morris Island, we’ll head east along the tight channel and eventually cross over toward the northwest corner of North Monomoy Island.

Approaching the shallows - the flooded expanse that is the Common Flat running well west from Monomoy into the Sound — we’ll cut the engine (assuming it is still running) far from the sand bars that expose themselves for hours during low tide. The clear, clean water around us will be maybe two feet deep. We will be far from any land that is reliably dry, yet the depth of the water for hundreds of yards will be nothing more than up to my knees.

The anchor dropped, we’ll settle into a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips, washed down with pink lemonade, and juicy red plums for dessert. Then it will be into the water, donning the masks and flippers, and armed with dip nets for some serious snorkeling.

This discovery was made when I beached the boat on the edge of the flats, and had gone to test the area with my clam hoe. Sofie had never been clamming before, so it seemed this hot and sunny July day was a prime opportunity. What I didn’t expect to find was nothing. There were just no siphon holes at all in an area where I had always been able to find some clams. We walked up and down the edge of the beach, expanded immensely by the dropping tide, and found no clams, no holes, and of course, no clam diggers.

Pushing the boat off the shore, wading back towards the channel, I was reassessing our plans when something very strong and sharp clamped on my toe. I nearly jumped straight up into the boat. It was a sand crab, just below the surface, unhappy with my intrusion. I donned my pair of black neoprene scuba boots, and maneuvered the boat along the south edge of the channel and into the acres of water that is never quite exposed, nor never quite deep enough to take a boat. We tethered our inner tubes to the boat and floated on the surface, face down with our new masks and snorkels.

Every once in a while, we would see a crab skitter by, and I’d grab my basket rake and pull it up into a bucket. With a little water to rest it, the crab would receive a name and probably a serenade from Sofie while back on the boat. (They are too small to eat, really.) Then it would be returned to the sea, and we’d set off on search of some other prize.

It would be easy to conclude the bounty of clams that were once here have been decimated by sand crabs. It is probably no more their fault than any clammer using a simple wooden-handled rake. But clams are cyclical. Here today, gone tomorrow…here again. Currents change, which affects the flow of nutrients. With South Beach connected to Monomoy, the Atlantic doesn’t wash in here as it once did. Depths of this soft sand change.

The area just north of here, between the east coast of Morris Island and the west shore of South Beach, is becoming more sheltered, and has an environment more conducive to scallops and quahogs. So this is not exactly bad news.

This all brings to mind, however, the ongoing struggle with the federal government regarding the continuing right of Chatham commercial shellfishermen to harvest clams from the flats surrounding Monomoy Island. So much effort and money has been spent on making a case to the policy makers in Washington, and yet the same issues face us, as unresolved as ever. The feds feel restrained by federal law, the politicians are afraid of national environmental groups, and those groups oppose based on principle.

As a selectman, I suggested perhaps, as the town of Chatham builds it case based upon the science and the unique history of shellfishing on Monomoy, that we initiate dialogue with the individual members of the organizations that were reportedly threatening all sort of actions should commercial shellfishing be allowed to continue here. We had heard from our elected representatives and legal counsel that this was a bad idea. No explanation, but this was the “let the process work itself out” argument.

Of course, these same people giving this advice were the one who stood to benefit from acting as intermediaries with, as they put it, “the bird people.” As if they were a bogeyman. Not enough grains of salt were taken with their counsel, then. Politicians will tend to do the thing that gets them the most attention with the least amount of courage. Lawyers will tend to use up every dollar of a retainer that is advanced.

To be honest, I can no more fault them for their nature any more than a crab pinching my toe in the sand as I walk by. The crabs are neither the problem nor the solution. They have become a distraction. If we are serious about fixing this ongoing concern, then we need to start talking to the people with whom we differ, and find how wide the distance really is between our positions on this one area we care for.

“They keep feeling like long weekends,” Sofie said this Monday morning as she picked up her backpack and headed out the door.  “Why?”

I remember the first time she uttered the dreaded three-letter word.  It was my birthday a few years back, and she was just getting into her evening bubble bath.  It started off  as several different questions, “Wha-who-howwwwwwwWHY?”  This truly was the death knell for the last shreds of my parental sanity.

On the other hand, Monday morning’s WHY was definitely worth examining.  The previous weekend we had started off with baseball practice, a bike ride, then heading to Hyannis for our long-delayed digital television purchase, some indulgent investigation of our new HD channels, then the next day’s riding for the Pan Mass Challenge in the Brewster in Bloom Parade, a late lunch at Friendly’s, some helping in her neighbor’s garden, and finally watching a movie on that new HDTV.

Her assessment the next morning was that it felt like a five-day weekend.  And this morning, her aforesaid observation, and wondering about that.

I replied, “Well, maybe with the nicer weather, we can do so much more.”  Might be that with my seven-year-old Barbie Tomboy now passing four feet in height, her world of possible activities is growing as fast as our well-watered yard.

Last week I introduced the concept of “Time flies when you’re having fun.”  I’ll hold off for now on the related idea, “Summer is why we suffer through nine months of winter here.”

When I returned from Germany with my baby girl, alone, in 2004, it was with the desire to have her grow up much as I had.  In a safe small town near the water, surrounded by a large extended family.   And while she’s had a fairly active childhood, with summer rec programs, soccer, skating, tennis, South Beach campouts, and all the rest, I think there’s a certain shift in consciousness that comes about this age following first grade.

Now proficient in reading and math, she not only understands the concept of putting money into her savings account – she can make a sign for the much-anticipated cash cow of a lemonade stand.  She’s started writing her own stories, which leads to a desire to explore.  And unlike when she was younger, she has a greater physical ability to explore in relative safely.  I don’t have to keep an eye on her 100 percent of the time, although I am definitely the preferred playtime companion.  Still.

In February, when we had to take three different flights to get to Munich, I got a preview of this new level of confidence.  She was frequently ahead of me with her carry-on, as we navigated from one side of a large airport to another.  She could read the signs for the terminal or gates, and in reading the clocks be able to tell how much time we had to get there.  The concept of currency exchange still was tough, but then again I’ve traveled with a few adults who after a week were still struggling.

So if this is how we are heading into summer, I can only imagine what I will have on my hands by the end. By Labor Day, I am probably going to be looking back at countless skinned knees, bug bites, bruises, cuts from stepping on shells or sea glass, burns from getting too close to the grill or campfire even though I said stay well away, near-misses with oblivious drivers, sugar high crashes, episodes of getting separated in large crowds, jellyfish stings, waterlogging, stepping in God-knows-what and tracking it in the house, ice-cold garden hose rinse-offs after the beach, slips over the side of the boat or canoe, grumpy days from “sleeping” out in the tent the night before and not getting any rest, bugs eaten while berry picking, rashes from experimentation with poison ivy resistance, a few cat scratches, two bee stings, and at least one random dog bite.

That is, if we are lucky.  Given that she will likely survive intact, the greatest challenge she may face is remembering to regularly write at least some of it down.  This may be the year of the summer journal — to remember why we’re here.

I’ve already written about the scheme of the regional school with Harwich, and how simply bigger is only, well, bigger. Not better. Still, money has been spent on this because the state is pushing all districts to try regionalization, and Harwich needs a new high school. At this upcoming annual town meeting, Chatham voters will be asked to fund yet another $10,000 study to evaluate the benefits and costs of regionalization.

Really?

That amount sticks in my head because it is the same that the Women of Fishing Families were shorted this year for running the Chatham Maritime Festival.

It especially sticks in my head because I don’t think anyone has any doubt but that said “study” on regionalization will be anything but favorable. After all, Harwich (who wants to regionalize with Chatham) is paying half the cost, and the report is mandated by the state (who wants the same). Under the circumstances, it is highly unlikely that the conclusions will be little more than tired old “glass is half-full” assumptions and one-size-fits-all arguments that have been employed in one suburb after the other.

And still, when completed, this study will be used as a gong by pro-regionalization supporters. Before they have even begun, they are citing Peter “I-Never-Met-A-Town-That-Wouldn’t-Be-Better-Off-Regionalized” Francese. Of course, Mr. Francese is a demographer, not an educator. Just last week in a New Hampshire newspaper he predicted Americans would be so angry at the federal government that they would throw out their census forms. Francese had no data to back this up. Instead, he relied upon listening to talk radio.

So this is the guy we’re relying on to make decisions about the future of education.

Really?

In our case, however, Francese looks at the entire Cape and predicts a dwindling school population, coupled with older voter unwillingness to fund the schools. What he doesn’t factor in, specifically for Chatham, is that we steal students from other systems through school choice. We do that because we are small. There’s a cachet to Chatham, too, no doubt. But if we regionalize, we lose that.

In return we’re supposed to get state-of-the-art computer labs.

Really?

We’re supposed to get AP courses.

For all students? No. Just those who qualify. For the classes we can afford to hire a teacher for.

And more sports. Like hockey? The game that we already play with Harwich and the school committee tried to cut funding for recently?

Or maybe football. But hockey and football seasons overlap, and you might be talking some of the same kids then, so you’ll end up with, what, an opportunity for a handful of players from Chatham.

OK, but there is a downside. I can think of several. The first, as I’ve written before, is the way a regional school system’s budget would be presented to Chatham Town Meeting for an up or down vote. If it is amended, there will be a great wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth as it must then be approved by the voters of Harwich.

That shouldn’t be a problem. I can hear that familiar argument trotted out at Chatham Town Meeting: “We have to pass this or else we’ll have to start from scratch.” Democracy in action.

But here’s an even more concrete argument: I have a daughter. Sofie. She’s seven. She’s in first grade. The bus doesn’t come down our road. When she goes to middle school in a few years, she’ll ride her bike a mile and a half. It will take 10 minutes. Or she could walk. Or, in a pinch, I could drive her. That will take less than five minutes.

Same with picking her up.

In Chatham, even the house furthest from the middle school and high school is only five miles away. On the other hand, if the schools were regionalized, with either the middle or high school in Harwich, Sofie is looking at a seven-mile drive. Walking is out. Biking, for most of the year, is out. Other students in Chatham will be looking at up to a 10-mile bus ride. And that’s a straight line - which no bus does. How early are they going to have to get up?

Worse, with so many kids having after school activities, how many times a week am I going to have to go drive all the way into Harwich Center to pick her up? And if she forgets something at home, that’s me having to lose the better part of an hour during a workday on that roundtrip.

And we all know how much kids with drivers licenses love to continue to take the bus. So we’re looking at a convoy, twice a day, of carloads of Chatham teenagers on the roads between Chatham and Harwich.

We cancelled school this winter because of a threat of snow that never materialized. How about real ice- and snow-covered streets? Are they suddenly going to be safer for our kids to drive to school on just because they lead to a regional high school?

Not really. No.

Chatham has a good school system, with good test scores, small class sizes and strong local control. Yet we are being asked to throw good money at a study that says it can get even better if we get hitched with Harwich.

Really?

Sofie’s still the one to turn off the television before me. Unless there’s something for supper she doesn’t want.

I will admit her watching has increased from a couple years ago. At six and a half, she deserves some indulgence in TV watching, especially on crummy, rainy, cold days. I was the same as a kid - probably more so - and how can I fault her tastes when she’s introduced me to the intellectual joys of SpongeBob Squarepants?

But then there are those weekend mornings. By this age she’s learned that she doesn’t need to wake me up as soon as she has, make her own breakfast and get started lazily with her day. Still, often in my early morning haze I don’t hear the television go on. I will hear talking. That might sound a little funny in a household consisting entirely of a single parent (sleeping) and a single child (awake).

When I do emerge from my slumber, quietly so as to not disturb her, I’ll find one of two things: my daughter reading out loud from a book, or her drawing while speaking out the dialogue out the characters in her story.

That’s always preferable to the dreaded Hannah Montana phenomenon. I’ve been able to resist this, mostly, by making it clear that I really do not like this pre-packaged commercial Disney Girl-of-the-Moment. That this star will disappear, mostly likely, as soon as she ages out of her series is a concept I’ve introduced with mixed results to Sofie. This is a cultural force, I understand, and one that, outside of the US, cannot be avoided by a girl between the ages of 4 and 14.

I’ll admit there’s one advantage to television over artwork or reading. Watching TV, by itself, is clean. It does not spread books all over the couch and floor, pencils, pens, papers, scissors and little tidbits of clipped something-or-others onto the kitchen counters and beyond.

With the attendant cleanup that I, as parent, demand of her following all sorts of non-television-oriented activity, I can only be happy that she hasn’t seen the perverse logic. TV = no cleanup. Or maybe she just doesn’t like television that much.

I’m trying to figure out how we got here, to this point of non-infatuation with television. Maybe that’s a backward way to see it. Perhaps, television is less a priority than other more intellectually stimulating activities. Regardless, I’m trying to figure out what I may have done right.

It’s not like she hasn’t watched television from an early age. On the contrary, “Mary Poppins” was part of her morning routine. After breakfast and changing, I’d park her on the couch and put that one movie on. Every morning, the same movie. And she’d fall asleep watching, while I could get some work done.

Was it reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” every night before bedtime? She never really cared for “Goodnight Moon,” so maybe that should have been the tipoff. Nursery rhymes were OK, but this girl’s always wanted a plot.

Could it be her bilingualism, and having grown up in Germany and the U.S., with both languages? Joseph Conrad came to Britain from Poland, speaking little English, and he seemed to have developed some gift for creativity, some say. Maybe it is using different parts of the brain that does it. Television does seem to command attention completely, and especially one part of the brain - the TV-watching part.

Of all things, however, it may come down to something as superficial as different tastes in television. We just don’t watch the same things, and we’ve pretty much segregated our watching. When I watch, it’s on the set in my bedroom. For her, it’s the living room. She enjoys endless re-runs of her kids shows. I like endless reruns of more sophisticated programs. Like “Star Trek.”

So with such incompatibility in viewing, why watch alone when you there are other pursuits that can be done alone? Reading. Drawing. There is a tangible sense of accomplishment with either. A book can be held up - I read this. A drawing can be put on the wall - I drew this. Can’t do that with a TV show.

Maybe it is that simple. Or maybe a combination of everything, along with some random genetic variations. Whatever the reason, there’s a great disincentive to upgrade to a flat screen HD television. Smarter to spend the money on books, crayons, scissors, construction paper, and definitely a new vacuum.

It’s been a funny kind of summer.  At the end of every year, is the recycling of news that tries to put what is going on now – RIGHT NOW – into a larger context of twelve months.  But that is really so much hoopla, with questionable value to the smaller stories affecting our day-to-day lives little anyway.

So much of what living here year-round is wrapped up in the ten weeks in the center of the calendar, that it seems proper to give summer its own cursory analysis. Good or bad, there are equal chances that these observations will have any impact.

I’m giving this summer a mixed review.  For one, I didn’t travel nearly as much as I said I would, which is typical and therefore predictable.  This is summer on Cape Cod, the time locals make money.  Leaving the Cape means leaving the chance to make money – it cannot be swapped out for a week in, say, November.

Still, I hold out hope for the end of August.  The combination of the town’s stellar morning and afternoon summer camp programs, which have provided Sofie (and her single dad) with a chock-o-block schedule, end mid-month.  The interregnum until the beginning of school forces me to be a little creative.  Part of that will involve a trip or two within a drivable 500-mile radius.  DC?  Mt. Washington? Maine?

This prompts a look at the long-range forecast…  which brings us to the weather this summer.  Remarkable, to put it mildly.  I remember a summer here in my high school years, when it rained 20 out of 30 days in June, and the other ten days were cloudy.  Everything that had begun to bloom in May just withered.  Vegetables turned yellow and rotted in the garden.  I reference this to put this summer in perspective.

With the long, bitter cold of this winter, I had a feeling that this was going to be a rainier, milder summer.  The ocean, which controls much of our weather here, was chilled a tad too much six months ago, and retained it through this season.  The hottest it got in Chatham, I think, was about the tenth of August, when it hit 85 at our house.  Otherwise, it was mostly in the 70’s all summer.  And always threatening rain clouds every other day.

On the other hand, I haven’t seen a brown lawn.  Everything is lush – the sort of gratuitous green that can only come from months of warmth AND moisture.  We just don’t get that here.  The small thornless blackberries I planted in May are four feet tall now, and sporting what look to be an endless crop of fruit.  This is going to be a huge year for anyone with apple or other fruit trees.  In turn, that’s going to mean plenty of fat, happy woodland critters this winter.

Speaking of happy critters, I wonder about the double economic boon of the rain.  No, I am not talking about people not going to the beach, but instead going shopping.  By all accounts, the national economy continues to change tourists’ spending habit in the direction of window shopping ONLY.

Instead, all this rain means more work for landscapers.  If you were in the business, you could count on the end of July and beginning of August (with the summertime drought) to finally catch up non-grass mowing tasks.  Maybe get equipment repaired mid-season.  Instead, it has been go, go, go.  The grass is growing faster than ever, it seems, even the unfertilized ones.  That’s cash directly into the pockets of local working people.

And for those people who do not have their sprinklers set automatically to go off even when it is raining, this summer’s weather means a lower water bill.  A modest boon, really, but again more money in the pockets of the public.  Perhaps spent in the local economy (good), put in the bank (better), or used to pay down debt (BEST).

So, on balance, I can’t completely complain about this summer.  Sure, our camping trip out to South Beach resulted in a night of sleeping in the fog, waking up in the fog, navigating our way home in the fog, and after two weeks, I still can feel that cold, damp still cramping my back.

On the other hand, the yard looks great.  Flowers are just going crazy.  Everyone seems to be busy as ever.  I would have preferred it all a little drier, a little sunnier, a little warmer – consistently. But if, say, we got this one out of every four years, I wouldn’t mind.  After all, I have my eyes on planting a big new bed of black raspberry bushes.

We finally hauled the new dory out from under the apple tree in the backyard today.  Well, “new” as in new to me.  The dory itself has been around for a few years.  The trailer tires were flat, vines had wrapped themselves around the shaft of the outboard and mold and moss covered much of the woodwork.  And lots and lots of last fall’s apples covered the floor of the boat.

So I have some work to do.

Just getting it up into the side yard was a bit of a task.  Had to use fix-a-flat to inflate one of the old tires, then get the jack out from under one side of the trailer so that it could be used to lift the even flatter tire on the other side up enough to inflate it.  But that meant taking a shovel and clearing enough space for the jack to fit under the trailer.

Much to my surprise, everything worked out OK.  The tires remained inflated enough long enough to get the trailer to the optimal place in the yard for fix-up.

The first week in May really is a little late to be addressing anything more than general maintenance issues for a boat.  But I have a good excuse – for the past nine months, I’ve been on the trail of the Columbia Expedition, the first American voyage ‘round the world.  The vessels of my concern have been a ship of 212 tons (Columbia Rediviva) and a sloop of 60 feet (Lady Washington).  Following the premiere of our film in Marshfield last week, I gladly welcomed the humble task of fixing up a 12-foot fiberglass dory.

My timing seems to be perfect, too.  May’s 40 days and 40 nights of rain have concluded, which means after a severe application of the power washer (who needs sandpaper and scrapers?), I can repaint the wooden seats and trim.  Before this, I’ll have to get replacement for the rotted rails.  And I’m expecting a visit from Christian Swenson, the Mobile Marine Mechanic, to get the old outboard humming for another season.

Then comes the all-important issue of paint.  Not whether to paint or not, but the color.  Blue being the favorite of greenheads (note the color of those traps in the marshes, my favorite is out.

On the other hand, Sofie’s persistence preference is also not within the realm of consideration:  pink.  Six-year-old little girl-loving pink.  Just no.  We’ll probably go with whatever is left in the garage, and if there’s not enough of one color, we’ll be our regular efficient Yankee selves, and see what can be mixed to make a non-seasick-inducing color.

Then it’s a simple matter of getting new oarlocks, locating a coil of line and maybe a bumper or two, and loading in the rakes and wire clam baskets.  With any luck, weather-willing, we’ll be able to launch by Memorial Day weekend.

The cost of all this is a low-entry fee for the ability to head out on the water with my daughter at a moment’s notice.  There are some now-familiar activities to revisit, like snorkeling on the Common Flats west of Monomoy, or camping out on the beach.  But we’ll also be pulling out the fishing poles, too, since Sofie’s never tried striped bass, certainly not fresh off the ocean.

I’m keenly aware it could be like a blink of an eye before my daughter heads off to do her own things with anyone other than her father.  So there’s a small window of opportunity to show her all these things:  to fix up something that by all accounts appears worn out, to have a goal to motivate you to return, day after day, to work at it, never mind the reward of fully enjoying the waterborne wonderland that surrounds us here in the summer.

Hopefully, some of these lessons will stick.  Then she can get her own boat someday.  That, I tell her, she can paint pink.

Ginger likes her sweater.  I think. Now, I’ve never been one of those dog people who dressed up their dogs to look like little versions of themselves.  No leather jackets.  No sweatsuits emblazoned with a sports team logo. No doggy raincoats, with matching rain hat and rubber boots.  Come to think of it, since the buttons of the last one rusted off, I haven’t even owned a raincoat.  So that’s not exactly an accurate comparison.

But last Christmas, Sofie asked about a present for our two Cardigan Welsh Corgis, Ginger and Colby.  They are sister and brother, but from different litters, and have served not only as surrogate siblings to Sofie, but as comedy team, always ready for her amusement.  Used for herding cattle and ponies in Wales, the breed are working dogs that get a little antsy when they can’t keep an eye on us.  When Sofie was just learning to use a real bed, Ginger slept on the bed while Colby slept underneath.

So when Sofie expressed a desire – no, the expectation – that she should give them a gift for Christmas, it only seemed right. Standing there, in PetSmart in Hyannis, faced by all sorts of dress-up gear for the latest fashionable toy breed.

Oh, sure, they have short legs, but they are otherwise medium-sized dogs.  Colby’s head is almost as big as a German Shepherd and I’ve seen him turn things like femurs and brake handles into tiny bits in the blink of an eye.  So they clothing that caught Sofie’s eye were on the disappointingly small size.

The only thing we could be certain of was a pink and purple striped sweater.  Fully aware of Ginger’s gender, Sofie agreed this was just the thing. Colby could have an extra cow hoof in his stocking, to make up for it.  Nature provided him with a much heavier coat, anyway.

So on Christmas Day last year, I became A Guy Who Dresses Up His Dog.  It fit, which was a relief, I suppose — not like there was any other clothing we could exchange it for.  Ginger didn’t try to get out of it, she didn’t carry in mud and leaves from outside (any more than on her feet), and it didn’t shrink.  In fact, she seemed less agitated and more restful, which I chalk up to drowsiness – always a good thing in the other occupants of a writer’s home.

And then a couple weeks ago, we took a walk down to the Chatham Bakery, with Sofie handling Ginger’s leash like a pro. Because of the dog, we ate our Gingerbread cookies at the picnic table out front.  With all eyes at the booths inside the bakery looking out at us, it was clear I had become THE Guy Who Dresses Up His Dog.

Oh, the shame of it all.

It is just a long, slow descent into a world of rhinestone leash with matching collar and tiara, patent-leather Mary Janes, and fancifully-flowered sunhats.  I flash-forward to a day not too long from now, when I would be clipping Ginger’s claws and wonder if it would ruin her French manicure.

Really, this anxiety is all after-the-fact, of course.  As a father’s indulgence to his five year-old, the cost to my male pride was fairly insignificant.  You pretty much have to set aside all pretense when you have a child, more so with a daughter. Even more so as the single father of a little girl.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve left the house forgetting that just a little while earlier I’d had my hair done up.  Sofie’s insistence notwithstanding, pink barrettes apparently do NOT complement my eyes.

Still, I’m looking for Colby to redeem the male-ness around here.  Christmas may have come and gone, but the sales are just beginning.  Big black leather collar with plenty of spikes should do it — something coyote-busting.

Yet, it is not that easy, when considering Sofie.  Such an accessory would put an end to her near-hourly hugs that squeeze the pulse out of him. I’m more worried about the underside of her mattress getting torn up.  We might have to pull it back a little.  Aviator sunglasses?  Nah.  A shoulder holster?  Might work.  A black Led Zeppelin T-shirt?  Not bad.  But I draw the line at rhinestones.

Last spring while stuck in a slowdown on Route 28 in East Falmouth, I decided to stop idling the car and to pull into Mahoney’s to get a little greenery for our yard. Since our place was built, a sloping escarpment of bare clay has taunted me through the kitchen window. Vegetables didn’t quite work there. Sunflowers looked nice, and the passing birds loved them. But I grew up on Oyster Pond, surrounded by wild berries of all kinds, so it was not surprising I walked out with a small thornless blackberry bush.

Two weeks later, I swung into Crocker’s in Brewster and picked up a mate, just in case it needed a pollinator. Later in the season, we harvested a grand total of four blackberries. I hadn’t planned on any the first year, so this was a real treat.

All this summer, Sofie and I have watched our bounty grow. From the kitchen counter, while nursing bowls of cereal, we have seen these two sprouting hydras blossom and produce clusters of red berries. Waiting for them to ripen into sweet black fruit seems to have taken forever. But two weeks ago we were finally able to find a few that came off the stem with the slightest tug. Terrific taste — and no thorns — and perfectly formed fruit. We end up with a couple handfuls every other day.

I made a bet with Sofie that all our blackberries would be done by the time she started kindergarten. It is a good thing for me that we didn’t actually wager anything. They just continue to come, apparently feeding on nothing more than sunlight and dew. As the wild blackberries we find along our bike rides pass away, our own domesticated bushes continue to produce dessert after dessert. One can only imagine how profuse next summer and fall will be.

If only our local economy showed such adaptability. Throughout our history, inhabitants here learned to be flexible. The soil is relatively poor, the location is off the beaten path, and the harbors are shallow and bounded by sandbars. If it hadn’t been for the fish, nobody would have been here to greet the Pilgrims. And most of their descendants got out as soon as they could, too.

Farming didn’t last long. Salt works lasted until mines were found in Pennsylvania. Whaling worked until the oil came along (and whales didn’t anymore). We had a naval air base until peacetime precluded the need for it. The railroad brought tourists here until the automobile killed that. And now our tourist-based economy is in its throes.

Note that I do not say “death throes.” Just massive changes. These changes are completely beyond the control of the local or state tourism entities, and the forces that drive them are as sympathetic to the plights of an innkeeper or restaurateurs as a hurricane.

Gas costs at least twice as much as it did just a few years ago. People do not have disposable income, so they cut back on trips to the Cape, or on the extras once they get there, like eating out and shopping. On the other hand, Europeans have flooded in with a healthy euro-to-dollar exchange rate. Establishing a business model on a favorable international exchange rate is as wise as it would be to base it upon a finite supply of imported labor whose entry is controlled completely by a federal security bureaucracy. From a gardening perspective, that’s like replanting your entire yard with annuals every year — it is going to look like hell if your garden shop runs out of inventory.

Meanwhile, consider this investment. If Sofie goes to Chatham public schools until she graduates, that will be an investment of at least $100,000 of the taxpayer’s money. Driving over the Sagamore Bridge on Labor Day (a very light traffic count), I saw a few cars loaded with bags destined for one college or another.

The kids in those cars are almost certainly never going to return to live here permanently, and that is an entirely rational decision. Why go deep into debt for college just to come back to a place where breaking your back is required to just get by? We’re losing millions and millions of dollars of long-term capital investment every year. Meanwhile every year our wholesale dependence on a seasonal economy that can be disrupted by something as simple as a few rainy weeks grows more precarious.

Our supposed affluence, measured in what someone from California or Washington, D.C. is willing to spend to buy your modest ranch or Cape, has brought very little lasting benefit to our middle-class families.

We need to diversify our economy to recapture the investment we’ve made in human capital. We need to see that the way to empower people is not impose limits on their income so they can qualify for health insurance and housing. We need to find new avenues that allow people to remain in Chatham year-round, to make the same paycheck they do in January as they do in July, to afford a home without public subsidy, to go out to restaurants and otherwise spend their money here, at home.

Consider that just across the Canal, a huge film complex, Plymouth Rock Studios, is being built that will transform the economy of Southeastern New England. Now at current gas prices, that’s too much of a hike from Chatham. But what local venues will be used for movies and television shows filmed there? There’s a short list: Provincetown, Woods Hole, the National Seashore, Route 6A. Oh, and Chatham. Not for one film. Not for just one time in a few years. More than likely on a regular basis.

Moreover, this is an industry that spawns numerous cottage businesses through subcontracts. With the advance of film technology, there’s no reason why some of what is shot here couldn’t be further developed right here. A non-polluting, non-disruptive, well-paid knowledge and creative economy. Year-round.

That is not at odds with the tourism sector of our economy. It supports it. This is but one example.

Too often when discussing economic development, the public (and sadly, our leaders) thinks in terms of heavy industry. But that’s not where we are going, locally or nationally. Not everything works well forever. Not even blackberries.

This week’s featured op-ed at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

I’m not sure about the garden this year. Last year, we attempted green beans but something’s changed in the soil around our place and the fertile spot that, as a child, kept me well-stocked through the fall and winter now produces, at best, scraggly weeds.

Perhaps I could find another spot in the yard. With food prices going up, up, up, and quality heading in the other direction, there’s a good motivation to grow our own. But age and necessity have provided another option, and its proven a real hit with our house: bread.

While our family was stationed in Germany a few years back, we had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the high quality and low price of food found at the regular supermarket. Massive heads of Boston lettuce for less than a buck. Scores of potato dishes or frozen vegetable mixtures that you’d have to go to a five-star restaurant to beat. A single aisle dedicated to yogurt — none of it low-fat, and all of it better tasting than any pudding or ice cream. The only thing they couldn’t seem to manage were simple orange juice and a decent steak.

But it was the bread that I remember the best. I don’t even remember how many varieties there were at the tiny bakeries on street corners, never mind the ones inside the large supermarkets (even Walmart). All of it fantastic, and all of it cheap.

Three long pepperoni twisted rolls for less than $2. Baguettes with no preservatives that stayed fresh for days. Large crusty white rolls, which proved a godsend to a teething Sofie, for only 10 cents. And sunflower seed bread so dense with kernels that it was referred to as an “egel” (hedgehog).

Main ingredients: flour, salt, water, yeast. Not very hi-tech. But even the worst bread here costs twice as much as another First World country, that at the time had almost $4 gas but managed $1 bread.

But I put up with it. That is until gas went above $3. Some switch must have tripped been tripped, and I broke out the until-then-unused German bread recipe book. First up was the sunflower hedgehog. That required sourdough. Real sourdough. Couldn’t find it anywhere, so I finally found a recipe to make it.

I never knew it could take so long and so much effort to make something go bad. Once we added it to the bread batter, the question arose whether it had gone bad in the right way. What if it went bad 
badly? Would it make us sick?

Being the only man in a house full of women, the only answer I could come up with was, “Heat kills everything.” Besides, I was hungry.

And it does. We ended up with an oblong brick, which while tasty, was heavy enough to be classified as a deadly weapon if raised in anger. It takes two rounds on our toaster set on high to get it warmed up enough to spread anything on it. And, as far as I can tell, it has bran or any other fiber beat — use with caution.

Our attempts at white bread have been even more tasty, but far more benign and breathtakingly simple. With an active and hungry five-year-old around, this stuff goes quickly. It also makes a fun Sunday morning ritual — baking day. Kneading is the best part.  There’s little better for a kid than to sink their hands into sweet-smelling goo.

So reflecting on the possibility of the garden, it may lie fallow this year, replaced by the bread stone. I’ll happily trade away the damage done to my back and knees in a garden for a few minutes of pounding dough. The onset of old age may have been the reasons human went from hunter-gatherers to baking grains in the first place.

Now if we can just set up a barter this summer with a gardener with an excess of cucumbers, tomatoes or green beans…

At the Easter Egg hunt in Chase Park, I ran into Tim Wood and Rowan and asked if they’d seen Sofie. Having just turned five, she’s just a little younger than Rowan. So Tim’s alarm was understandable, figuring I had lost her somewhere in the crowd.

I allayed his concern, explaining, “No, I dropped off her and Chandra here and then parked around the corner.” Glancing about at the gathered masses of kids and parents, I added, “It shouldn’t be too hard to find Chandra in this crowd.” To which Tim had to agree.

And yet, I still had a problem finding the woman I’ve been seeing for three years now - a black woman - in a small park in Chatham. She has the ability to effortlessly dematerialize, which may come from her growing up in Dorchester. It was particularly uncanny in this day’s sea of otherwise pale faces.

So as the candidacy of Barack Obama has risen, and then taken on directly issues of race in America, it has come at a time of increasing seriousness in my relationship with a professional, masters-educated journalist and health care writer, who is also black. Both having a great interest in politics, but being of opposite parties, we’ve become each other’s sounding boards for discussions on television news, talk radio and blogs. Closer to home, however, race is an issue in talking about our future.

The theme common to both the presidential campaigns and any future Chandra and I may have is that race is an unresolved issue in America. Not just in East Crackerbarrell, Georgia, but here on Cape Cod. That makes people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. But in a small place, it is pretty clear when someone is being treated differently.

One early summer evening two years ago, while I was handing out balloons at a Cardinals game in Orleans, Chandra took Sofie to the playground at the opposite end of Eldredge Park. As expected the place was crawling with kids, parents and grandparents. Done with my campaigning, I came over to relieve Chandra from watching Sofie, who was playing with another little girl. I was dressed well, as was Chandra (as always). She went over to a large planter surrounding a tree nearby.

As she did so, the father of the girl Sofie was playing with looked up, looked over at Chandra, looked over at his wife and yelled to her to move their bag, which was eight feet away on the other side of the planter in plain site. This, after she had been there half an hour already with God knows how many other people around. Perhaps the guy realized that he had left his personal possessions exposed - but it took the presence of someone dark skinned nearby to them that flipped his mental switch.

I’d never seen this before. Not blatantly. Perhaps that’s the beauty of growing up in an almost 100 percent white town. You never get bald-faced bigotry demonstrated to you for the simple reason there are no potential victims.

But before the smug that-doesn’t-happen-here attitude kicks in, consider this: More than a few times, we’ve been out at the beach or playground with Sofie - my blond-haired, blue-eyed Alpine princess - and when it has been time to go, another parent will refer to Chandra as Sofie’s mommy. It is not the same parent every time. But every time it happens, the person is white, and is from a large metropolitan area much more diverse than here.

Contrast this with Chandra’s reception here by locals. She’s followed around stores by otherwise inattentive clerks. She’s asked what inn she works at. She’s solicited for cleaning Saturday changeovers. In the fall people ask her when she’s going back. Friends of mine who would come from Jamaica for summer work said this was regular rapport with white people here. So when Chandra is with Sofie, she’s often asked if she is the new au pair. Too often, her experience being black in Chatham has been to be seen first as a servant.

For a person who grew up in the poor all-white town of Chatham, I see that as quite a step. Backward. If that is uncomfortable to read, it is worse to live with. And like concrete, once set, a public perception is tough to change.

When she studied in London, Chandra saw a city where interracial couples were practically the rule. To a lesser extent, it is becoming more common in the U.S. So, as Barack Obama said, the situation is not static. Attitudes are changing, slowly, on both sides. It may take a whole generation of biracial children to break the silent stalemate between those who say “Let go of the past,” and those who answer, “But it just happened five minutes ago - again!”

I hope for that. At some point, being black in America will be no different than being Italian or Irish. Or, like Sofie, part Mexican, part Austrian, part old-line Yankee. Someday. It has taken longer, though, and that’s because they were the original easily-discernible underclass. The nation, as a whole, has had two chances to get it right - first with the Constitution, and second after the Civil War - but ditched it for political expediency.

To be fascinated by American history is to be fascinated with the issue of race. It is a stubborn thing, and an uncomfortable thing. Though I want it to be assigned to history - and history alone - as I go forward with Chandra, the question of race come down to this:

If Sofie were to have a brother or sister, would that son or daughter of mine, more likely to look like her mother or the junior Senator from Illinois, be treated the same by my country and my community?

I’d like to say yes. But the answer today, uncomfortably, is no.