Plum Visions for 2024
The people making predictions about what’s going to happen in 2024 have not exactly been spreading visions of peace, love, and prosperity. Depending on which expert you ask, you’re likely to hear that...
View ArticleHere’s Looking at You
“Yesterday,” sang the young Paul McCartney, “all my troubles seemed so far away.” According to most sources, the Beatles’ song is the most covered in history, with more than 2,000 recorded versions....
View ArticleOur Version of Trumpism
The final days of 2023 produced a blizzard of fundraising letters and emails. Quite a few of them came from news organizations making the case that journalism is essential to the preservation of...
View ArticleDoing the Research
The British scientific journal Nature published a remarkable study last month that goes a long way toward explaining why so many people believe things that aren’t true. The implications are terrifying....
View ArticleListening to Vorse
This is the third winter that the Independent has hosted young journalists in a fellowship named for Mary Heaton Vorse, who lived from 1907 until her death in 1966 in the house at 466 Commercial St....
View ArticleA Dearth of Letters
Except for one deliciously pithy communication from Richard Spada, we had a dearth of letters to the editor this week. I don’t understand this, because last week’s issue of the Independent was...
View ArticleGoogle Chooses Evil
I use Google probably a hundred times a day, searching the internet as I check facts. I’ve been feeling a looming wariness as I watch the company’s downshift into AI, which turned to disgust when I...
View ArticleHousing Rears Its Head
Do we spend too much time talking about the Outer Cape’s shortage of reasonably priced housing? Some people we know think so, including friends in Truro who tell us that just because they don’t like...
View ArticleAn Anchor in Provincetown
Last week Teresa and I took ourselves to the Fine Arts Work Center for the first of this winter’s “Fellows Fridays” — showcases of work by the 20 artists and writers who compose this year’s cohort of...
View ArticleState of the Town
What is there to say about the state of the town of Wellfleet? In his ode to Eastham last week, Brendan Noonan wrote that the “terrifying” front page of the Independent “is where Wellfleet’s government...
View ArticleForsaking Science
A significant number of Americans are skeptical of climate science. According to the Pew Research Center, about 3 in 10 say that taking action on climate change is not important, and 14 percent don’t...
View ArticleWhite-Collar Criminals
Before we started the Independent, I worked at the Provincetown Banner, where a weekly feature was the “police blotter.” That’s what we called it, at least, but it wasn’t full of juicy details about...
View ArticleHow Old Is Too Old?
At the start of the recent Wellfleet Community Forum, Sheila Lyons informed the large crowd that had come to talk about the precarious state of town government that Irene Daitch had died the day...
View ArticleNortheast Kingdom News
I received a fine letter this week from Jeff Havlick, a subscriber in Eastham. He enclosed a clipping from the Caledonian Record, the local newspaper in St. Johnsbury, Vt., in what is known as the...
View ArticleNot Mincing Words
When I heard last Friday that Buddy Perkel had died, my heart sank. I thought about the day we first met, nearly 30 years ago. Teresa and I had just bought our house in Wellfleet. Buddy pulled up in...
View ArticleShrinking the Kids
What is it like to live on Outer Cape Cod and have a new baby? The feeling of isolation can be overwhelming, Becky Fischer told Independent reporter Olivia Oldham in last week’s front-page story about...
View ArticleTickled by the Fake
Two weeks ago, page 3 of the Independent was our annual April Fool’s fake front page. We’ve done this for five years, and you might think that readers would have caught on to the joke by now. But no —...
View ArticleShort-Term Sins
Last week the Boston Globe reported “a rare bit of good news on the housing front — at least for vacationers” on Cape Cod: “renting at a reasonable rate might be a little more possible this year due to...
View ArticleLiking Sentences
Is writing a dying art? Sometimes I wonder. Years ago, I taught expository writing to freshmen at a college where many of the students were intensely ambitious. The ones who were most focused on dreams...
View ArticleScare Tactics
In a front-page story in last week’s Independent, Paul Benson took a look at some of the supposed facts that have surfaced in talk about affordable housing on the Outer Cape — in particular, in...
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