I’m trying to remember spring cleanup, but with the way the weather was this past summer, it was hard to separate the two seasons. Regardless, with the onset of colder weather prompting a change in Sofie’s wardrobe, and dogs being more inside now (with attendant vacuuming), it is definitely time to clean house. Definitely before the season gets away from us, and the onslaught of presents at Christmas.

A lot of mental housecleaning, too. Maybe not enough for a full column, but still worthy of pondering.

If the goal of the Bridge Street Parking plan was not to make money, but to discourage parking, it did. If the goal was to discourage Lighthouse Beach attendance, it clearly did not. If the goal of charging admission at beaches is to recover costs associated with maintenance (i.e. life guards, beach patrols, etc.), then there seems to be an amazing disconnect – revenue is down at Harding’s Beach because people want to go to Lighthouse Beach.

Harding’s is remote. Lighthouse is close to town. Harding’s has plenty of parking, and charges. Lighthouse has limited parking, but has some Rube Goldberg system for out-of-town beach goers. To maintain Harding’s takes a beach rake and life guards. To maintain Lighthouse it is going to take $100,000 for a very involved beach patrol system. And I, like many, many other people, would rather go to Lighthouse Beach even if not allowed to swim, than go to Harding’s and be able to.

So why not try to recover the cost of maintaining this very popular destination through parking fees?

* * *

There was a strong chord of dissonance sounded recently with rejoicing that the U.S. did not win the Olympic bid for 2016. I say “the U.S.” because Chicago is, still, part of the United States. I don’t care whose hometown it is, or what kind of political feather this would be in someone’s cap.

This is the Olympics, and the United States not only has every right to be considered equally – it is against our nature as Americans not to compete when given the chance. But worse, by rooting against the bid, Americans were rooting against home field advantage for our athletes. Never mind that our Olympic teams will now have to travel to another continent to compete, with their attending families – American families – having to bear the costs of overseas travel.

It’s about our athletes. Anyone bother to ask them what they wanted before running down our Olympic bid?

* * *

Whenever Afghanistan jumps into the public consciousness again, I’m reminded of Rina Amiri. During the winter I wrote my novel “The Bostoner,” I was up in Cambridge and Rina was one of my roommates. She had been a member of the Afghan royal family that was forced to flee in the ‘70s, and had eventually grown up in the Bay area. I recall a few conversations with this Kennedy School scholar about the then-new movement coming out of Pakistan – the Taliban – and her feeling she might never return there. And I recall her idealism, on United Nations Day, asking me to support the United States, under Bill Clinton, refusing to pay the full dues in light of clear patterns of waste and corruption.

It was probably a few short months after the U.S. invasion eight years ago that she did indeed return to help with the formation of the fledgling Afghan government and to especially work on women’s issues. She’s written in the Boston Globe and been on NPR since then, which is always a kick for me to encounter. And now, with the President seriously considering how to proceed in the region, I see she is now Senior Advisor to the U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

This has always personalized Afghanistan to me. When you share a kitchen with someone, it makes it hard to accept that they cannot return to their country, under penalty of death. You then take some pride that the intervention of your country allowed them to return safely to theirs, to work for the welfare of their brutalized countrymen and women. More recently, however, a feeling of shame rises when we in this country, especially those who so value human rights, seem to willing to abandon a whole nation because a determined – but small – and violent faction is giving us the equivalent of a bloody nose.

It should not come as news to anyone claiming a broader international perspective that the work of the world is not done in a season or two. There is no shame in abandoning governments we have previously allied with, but what of their people we asked to believe in America?

Are our ideals so malleable? Are we so fickle? Are we, in the final analysis, just tourists with tanks?

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 do not have a housing problem.  We have an income problem.”

I was glad to hear this coming from Chatham Selectman Sean Summers recently.

In 2001, the first meeting I attended as a newly-minted selectman, outside my own board, was for the affordable housing committee.  I had always been proud of Chatham’s support for efforts to retain its working families.  It stood in such stark contrast to the out-of-town stereotyping that CHATHAM = RICH = CONSERVATIVE = HEARTLESS SNOBS.

However, over the years I’ve seen plenty of the housing for working people in town get redeveloped into high-end second homes, little by little, with little if any regard as to the cumulative effect on the community.  “What difference is just this going to make?” goes the argument.  This is how a town dies.

Meanwhile, as housing costs doubled, tripled, I saw wages stagnate and even fall.  More and more of the town was being covered in living space, and less and less of it was intended for or within reach of the people who lived and worked here.

I write this in the aftermath of our last town meeting.  But I raise this not to talk about the failure of affordable housing amendments to pass.  Rather, there’s a more important impact on Chatham’s housing that did pass – sewers.

Just as town water coming to a neighborhood allowed houses to be built on lots without regard to the proximity of a septic system to a well, by addressing our wastewater needs, we face some very serious side effects. With sewers, homes can now be built without worrying about the impact of their septic systems on the environment.

Yes, in years past we’ve seen a bylaw amendment enacted that would prohibit greater building on a lot that is newly sewered than was allowed prior to its sewering. But then, we’ve recently seen that Dunkin Donuts is not fast food, and an attempt to push poor families into our industrial zone (established because such uses were incompatible with residential areas).  There is a very human urge to fully exploit a public convenience when given the opportunity to make a private profit.

Hence, density will increase.  It is necessary to plan for the impacts, yet we seem stymied by a system that the public perceives as too closely affected by large property owners in town, and driven pell-mell towards a goal of 10 percent affordable housing so as to fit into a one-size-fits-all mandate by the state. In other words, not just doing the right thing for the wrong reason, but looking as if it was being done it for all the worst reasons.

There are many good reasons to assure that working people can live here.  Continuity.  Stability.  Fairness.  Hope.

But sadly we’ve continued to address just one side of the equation: lowering housing costs to match what our current local economy pays.  There seems to be no effort whatsoever to improve and diversify the economy.   Any talk of it seems to have the greatest thinking of the mid-20th century behind it, “General Motors is not going to build a factory here.”  That’s no news flash.  As if heavy industry is the only solution to improving a local economy.

Our national economy is changing.  We need to adapt.  We’ve heard time and time again that young people – whose education we’ve spent good money on — are leaving the Cape because they want more than waiting tables, swinging a hammer or making beds.  There are plenty of expensive, gorgeous places in this country where smart people move to start businesses because they are encouraged by these communities.

Meanwhile, there just seems something very wrong that two of the largest employers in town are Chatham Bars Inn and town government.

If asked, most people here would agree that any healthy town needs more balance in its economy and its people.  Educationally, we’re not a backward town by any measure, but there seems to be mulish unwillingness to look any further than addressing state mandates with short-term fixes.

We should not be looking to solve the problems others say we have.  We should be planning for what is inevitable (a rapid growth in density), and for what we all agree is a public priority (a way people can afford to live here).  If we start a public dialogue now, we might just be able to come up with some creative solutions, perhaps many small ideas, that can put us back in charge of our future.

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.

MARSHFIELD – It was standing-room-only at the Ventress Memorial Library this past Wednesday.  Like nothing we ever expected, the premiere of the first installment of Hit and Run History: The Columbia Expedition went off with a bang.

With the first of the daffodil shoots foolishly poking out from the until-now frozen earth, Sofie and I have returned to the back yard for our major activities.  Clearing the sleds from under the blue spruce.  Trimming back the weaker of the branches on the pear trees.  Making a final decision on the location of that next thornless blackberry bush.  Picking up remnants of dog toys, and rescuing those still intact from the inevitable mower blade.

It is a time for spring cleaning.  Having spent the fall and winter on a creative project, I am faced with the myriad tasks that must be done — best be done now, than to be discovered in the summer in a panic.  Where is the tent?  I thought we had charcoal in this closet… somewhere.  The bicycle pump, you say?  I know we have two of them.  Try under the Christmas lights.

Not to even get into boat-prep issues.  That’s a column unto itself.

As described a few months ago, when working alone outside, podcasts like American Public Media’s Marketplace keep me company.  It has really kept me on top of business and economic issues just as they are at the forefront of public consciousness.  So it is an astounding contrast, too, the degrees to which some public officials seem to be far, far behind the curve.

There appears to be a complete unwillingness to see the current economic conditions as anything more than a departure from the norm.  Something that will “gotten over” in the matter of a few months, rather than a major correction — by that term meaning we now quickly return to the way things should have been all along.

This is not a departure down; rather the recent prosperity was a departure up.  Consumers stopped saving anything in the past decade and borrowed too much.  Optimism to spend, as recently prescribed by a sadly-misguided County Commissioner Bill Doherty, is not going to pull us out of this situation.  Toxic assets will become safer when all borrowers actually pay their debts off — first.

The sad reality is that plenty of service-based businesses were founded here and nationwide, based upon increasing affluence.  We have come to realize that much of this affluence was an illusion.  For example, buyers were willing to pay $2 million for a second home on the Cape because a) the value of their 401k was expected to only increase, b) the Cape house could always be rented seasonally at a high rate, and c) the buyer’s primary residence would fetch a high price when sold for the inevitable retirement here.

Now two of those legs have been kicked out from that three-legged stool (and the third may be just as illusory).  Optimism had brought the home price to a level as unsustainable as the rest of the economy.  As reality sets in, the price has dropped to a truer value set by that smaller pool of buyers who still possess the resources to purchase.

Yet too many of leaders in government, to varying degrees insulated from the gyrations of the private economy by the inviolate perks of public benefits, still fail to grasp three basic truths:

First, their constituents now have less money.

Second, that any money their constituents struggle to earn in these tough times should be saved.

And third, this is how it is going to be for a couple years, at least. As Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s new Director of Research, told The Economist just last week, “We are closer to the beginning than we are to the end.”

Once this sort of mental spring cleaning — looking at what is actually around us, what we have and what we don’t, what still works and what is irreparably broken — hopefully will lead to some serious planning for the knock-on effects of what is being called our “Deprecession.”

For example, history tells us that in tough times, more shellfish permits are issued.  Yet the price of shellfish has stayed stagnant or even gone down, partly due to a lack of economic planning for increased supply.

Or with decreased household income, expect that many more local high school graduates will attending Cape Cod Community College (regardless of whether they were accepted to four-year schools off-Cape).  That means more 18 to 22 year olds here through the winter.  They will be needing jobs that provide a regular income.  Regular, as in a regular wage with regular hours, not seasonally tip-based gigs.

(Note:  They will not be needing housing.  They’ll be saving money by staying at home.)

These are but two examples, and are not the usual bad economy-homeless shelter-food pantry concerns.  The needs of middle class people who live here – yes, residents – are calling out to be addressed by our towns.  Now.

Nostalgia for the goods times won’t cut it, nor will unfounded optimism.  Spring is the time to re-assess.  And we need to get to work.

The most recent solution-in-search-of-a-problem championed by the local media is regionalization of government services. Sewers. Fire. Police. Schools.

Now, I am sure there are some savings that can be found when you have over a dozen municipalities occupying an area roughly the same square mileage and population as Jacksonville, Florida.

But the justification for regionalization now seems to be that this will help stem the tide of young adults leaving Cape Cod. Like maybe lower taxes? Or better schools because they’re bigger and cheaper? Sorry, I’m trying to play devil’s advocate here, but coming from a small town with a very low tax rate, by this reasoning we should have tons of young families. Instead, we’re the oldest town in the state. Maybe we’re just not doing it BIG ENOUGH?

This is how I summed up a query on Facebook, posted to friends who grew up on the Cape but have since moved away these two questions:  1) Why did you leave? and, 2) What would induce you to return?

The answers were not terribly surprising.  Not having any 4-year institution of higher learning in the area, many said they went away to school and then became ensconced wherever they were.  They liked what they found in the wider world.

It may sound heretical in this resort community, but yes, there are many, many other beautiful places in the world.  They are as much in competition with us for tourists as for that most locally-undervalued person – the full-time, year-round, wage-earning 25-45 year-old resident.

But, greater, was a theme of opportunity.  Specifically, one respondent answered why she left Cape Cod:

• a) Nowhere to work
• b) Nowhere to work in winter (yes, two things entirely)
• c) No career opportunities (see a and b)
• d) Its once cool austerity and grittiness has been replaced with cheesy gift shops and “quaint” cuteness imported from cities in an attempt to make it something it’s not
• e) Arts, shopping, etc.

She went onto explain, “I’ve lived in NYC for over 16 years. My living space is extremely small, my housing expenses astronomical and taxes are through the roof-BUT I have opportunity here — to make money, work in any industry (almost) I choose. Almost everything is accessible. I sorely miss the ocean, but the benefits outweigh the costs. Lower taxes and better schools would never entice me to move back. Even if housing were free, it would still make more financial sense to pay $90 per square foot and live some place where I could make a living. Simple as that.”

As for what would get her to move back:  “Jobs, jobs and jobs.”

Another friend who has worked both on and off-Cape (and likes performing those small town self-services like bringing his own trash to the dump), has the skills to earn much more elsewhere.  But the opportunities just aren’t there for his highly-trained spouse.

Talking directly to my concern, he observed, “Regionalization of services is a partial solution to budget woes, but it’s long-term and painful, and it’s not at all a reason someone moves to an area.”

Now, certainly this is an unscientific sampling, and I do not pass this off as representative of a cross-section of the Cape Cod Diaspora.  But they are for the most part well-educated, high earning, upstanding, responsible adults.  Just the sort of people you would want living next door, who on those rainy days when you get back from the supermarket and are trying to get everything inside, offer to lend a hand.  Or when the power goes out.  Or to check on your house when you’re on vacation.

The media here on the Cape have failed its expatriate children by failing to ask them what THEY WANT.  Instead, powers-that-be have announced what they are willing to do: make local government more efficient by making it bigger.  I’m reminded of a quote from the movie “Contact” – “First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”

Specifically, and to its credit, The Chronicle has deflated the argument that there will be any reduction of costs by regionalizing Chatham and Harwich schools.  That there would be a greater benefit to students by more educational programs is, however highly dubious.  Perhaps marginally, but no serious claims are being made that SAT scores will jump, or we’ll be getting state of the art gymnasium or science lab.

Worse, the “big schools” idea flies in the face of reams of studies that suggest what parents and teachers want most, and the environment in which students thrive best, are small, neighborhood schools with low teacher-pupil ratios.  So even if the argument is that better schools will attract more families to move here, we’re offering a Chevy Suburban when the customer clearly wants a Toyota Prius.  They want smaller, not bigger.  More control, not less.

I am concerned that what really is going on is yet another lurch away from Town Meeting control of any budgetary issues.  When regionalized, a bill for the service is simply rendered upon the Town.  Voters on the floor of Town Meeting do not have the chance, as they do with a purely-municipal budget item, to pick apart the budget, item-by-item.  With regionalization, those who work for the larger bureaucracy serve a larger population — and thus, are accountable to virtually no one.

In essence, we would be going in the opposite direction of what is most desired by those we so righteously protest to help.  But if we are serious about returning to a more balanced community, welcoming those of all ages, the answer bears repeating: “Jobs, jobs and jobs.”

Read this and other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.