Jan 01 2008
The Chatham Board of Selectmen regular weekly meeting on December 18th, 2007 included prolonged discussions on state mandates for extra liquor licenses and an introduction to the new head of the Cape Cod Commission.
Dec 12 2007
On the first of December I finished up a major writing and photography project. It had consumed the better part of the past 6 months for me, and had taken longer than expected – partly because of technical issues (my computer is old and slow) and partly because of environmental conditions (it was raining or foggy when I needed it to be clear). So when I raised my head up and finally had a chance to look around, it was the smack in the middle of the holiday season. And it has never been so welcome.
First off, Thanksgiving had just wrapped up, but I was still in a thankful mood. I still had 4 weeks in which to get things together, coherently, for Christmas. As typical of my gender, I will give thought to gifts for loved ones as early as the day before Christmas Eve. But I’ll wait until the shopkeeper is walking to his front door with key in hand at 9 PM on the 24th before I relent and make a commitment to actually buy presents.
This practice, more often than not, benefits local merchants. After all, your store has to be within a few minutes’ drive of my house. And open. Otherwise, everyone on my list runs the danger of getting a pint of outboard motor oil, a pack of Camels and king size-Baby Ruth from Cumberland Farms.
Also, the holidays mean I can’t really get started on anything new until after they’re over. Instead, I can throw any leftover creativity into being in the spirit of things. I don’t think I’ve ever had a tree, in the house, up and decorated all before the winter solstice. Fake trees don’t count. Nor do trees that were up due to lack of taking down from the previous year (I feel that any Christmas tree you eventually have to dust has lost any spiritual or cultural meaning, and is automatically demoted to simply furniture).
Christmas cd’s in the stereo – up. Outside lights – up. Big red ribbon with bells that plays “Sleigh Ride” whenever Sofie presses the button (meaning every chance she gets) by our front door — up. Video I took of Santa arriving at Chatham Fish Pier – uploaded on my YouTube channel.
And I find myself, not one full week into December, with the luxury to contemplate the holidays. Come to think of it, it is kind of funny that we have one holiday of giving thanks, followed by one of giving presents, and then finally one that is about new beginnings and making resolutions – clustered around the absolutely longest nights of the year.
Quite a demonstration on what a lack of sunlight – or fear of the dark — will do to the human mind. It can actually get us to behave in ways that we wish we did the rest of the year. Decently. Kindly. Generously. Maybe even nobly.
Now I juxtapose this against the next upcoming event to grab our attention: the presidential primary season.
As we get closer and closer to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, the behavior on display provides a striking contrast to the season we are now in. So I’ll use the spirit of the holidays to judge the candidates.
(read the rest of the column at The Cape Cod Chronicle here)
Oct 12 2007
A surgeon would operate. A radiologist orders a CAT scan and an MRI. An oncologist would test for cancer. And so forth.
Similar thinking happened here. People don’t like to come out of their area of expertise, because, well, that’s how they’ve chosen to make their living or otherwise define themselves.
As for the patient and their family, they put their trust in their general practitioner, whose head may be spinning from the myriad of approaches, some contradictory or mutually incompatible. And, like so many patients when faced with a systemic problem, we take half measures, or do nothing.
At the housing summit, it was clear how people started off: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The housing authority has said solutions lie within federal and state restrictions and funding formulas, but those only cater to the poor, not the near-poor or middle class. Habitat for Humanity can only get people into home ownership if land is donated, which is a problem in an area where open space is very limited and expensive.
Bill Marsh, a developer, put the blame on zoning that made density the enemy, but has done more to raise the value of his real estate holdings by limiting supply. And the affordable housing committee, using the threat of further Chapter 40B end-runs around zoning, religiously sticks to the need to meet targets set by the state, which are admittedly arbitrary and more relevant to Chelsea and Haverhill than to Chatham and Harwich.
The main thrust is this: State statistics say we do not have enough housing affordable to the lowest 40 percent of income-earners state-wide.
(read the rest of the column at The Cape Cod Chronicle here)
Aug 09 2007
buoyancy as a butterball baby and toddler helped in keeping her confidence. But as a three- and four-year-old, she’s elongated without gaining weight, and actually having to work at staying afloat is now required. Placing her in swimming classes at the Oyster Pond this summer became necessary, along with frequent trips to the freshwater ponds, and a weekly trip to the ocean for Papa to check on her progress.
It is a constant reminder that not all learning is linear. Likewise, I bought Sofie a bike at for her birthday in March. A two-wheeler with training wheels. She was excited, but on the uneven pavement of our driveway and quiet side street, the training wheels would lift the back tire off the ground — and she’d be left pedaling without any traction.
So I took the training wheels off, figuring that since I hadn’t learn to ride a bike seriously until someone had done the same to my bike, we’d see if Sofie might do the same. Still, she hadn’t quite mastered the trio of balancing, pedaling and steering yet. I put the training wheels back on this past week, but saw I could set them higher. The bike is tippy enough to let her work on balance, but not enough to allow her to fall. Non-linear progress.
Two steps forward, one step back still means you’re one step ahead of where you started.
At the recent town meeting in Chatham, I went in with the belief that the result would be a splitting of the difference. Four million dollars for filling the breach would be turned down, but voters would relent on the $150,000 for studying the effects on the Pleasant Bay environment.
But that’s not how it came out. Instead, Selectman Sean Summers made a simple yet compelling case that money spent on the study would just as well be flushed out the breach with the next tide. People are not shortsighted in not seeing the value of having a study that would serve as the basis of plan of action in the coming years. Rather, experience of Chatham voters is that they’ve been paying for study upon study upon study, and feel they have little real progress to show for it.
(Read the rest of the column here at the Cape Cod Chronicle.)
Jul 14 2007
Or so I thought.
The triple head-on collision in South Wellfleet left traffic at a standstill on Route 6 in North Eastham. Eventually I had to call the customer in Truro and say sorry, it just couldn’t happen today. Not if I were going to fit everyone else in. No problem, so we rescheduled.
The day after the Fourth of July on Cape Cod. It was raining. And the schedule of insurance inspections set for me was as tight as a drawn bowstring.
These days, with all the driving back and forth from one appointment to another, I find myself driving over the same roads, again and again, But there’s something different. We all know the way to various supermarkets, and know how to get to shopping in Hyannis, over the canal, or the route to Ptown.
But I’m not trying to go shopping. I’m assigned to go to random residences around the Cape. I’m getting deep into subdivisions that no one except the residents travel in and out of. And while it does give me a greater understanding of the Cape’s population, it has also provided an even greater understanding of traffic. Especially as it changes throughout the seasons.
What I realized most of all is that when it comes to the summer, especially on muggy days at the end of the week, when the sun is refusing to come out, what many drivers truly need is a large bucket of ice water thrown down their sun roofs.
Meaning they need to calm down and pay attention.
(Read the rest of the column at the Cape Cod Chronicle here)
Nov 10 2006
Who’s Voting This Time?
Long ago, while a freshman at American University, I learned the three factors that determine whether a person will vote. The third was age. Second was income. The first was education. The higher the amount you have, the more likely you are to vote. Not coincidentally, these three are also fairly good indicators of whether a person writes a letter to the editor.
Having just come off an election, we’re still sifting through the results. I don’t want to get into who won or lost and why. I’m more interested in the greater issue of who didn’t vote and how we can get and sustain a greater turnout.
Normally, high voter participation is marked by some great controversy. The 1896 election pitted Republican McKinley against William Jennings Bryan, the latter championing the cause of pegging the dollar to silver at a high fixed rate.
With the U.S. firmly on the gold standard, this could have effectively devalued the dollar by 50 percent, doing the same to bank accounts for the urban wealthy and debts for the rural poor.
In that election, income played a larger part than age or education. Everyone in the country had a dog in that fight and turnout reflected it.
What I also learned in that same freshman Intro to American Politics class is that both parties fear greater participation. At the time, Reagan was president and Democrats held both houses on Congress. There was parity, and enough power to go around. Turnout in 1984 was just over 53 percent of those eligible to vote.
That means that, unless there is a complete blow-out, no one is winning election to office with the approval of a majority of the people. Meanwhile, the word “mandate” is thrown around loosely these days by anyone managing to squeak out the narrowest of pluralities. But this should not be unexpected in our winner-take-all system…
(To read the rest of the column, you can click here.)
Feb 10 1998
I was incredibly lucky last night, having just arrived 5 minutes before the Melaka Express left from the Singapore bus station.
The big issues yesterday were:
1) Go to the Chinese Embassy and get a visa.
2) Stop at a drug store and buy Lariam, an anti-malarial which can be purchased without a prescription here, at 1/3 rd the price of that in the US.
3) Get to Melaka.
I got the Lariam. I caught the last bus out at five. A Chinese visa takes three days to a week. My only chance will be in Manila then. Otherwise, I am sunk when my plane arrives into Guangzhou.
Not too much to say except fortune smiled upon me, I have a hotel for 67 ringgit a night and am out this AM to explore the Straits of Melaka. Or at least the streets of Melaka.
