A baker's dozen Voices; the 2023 sampler
Culled from an eclectic year, good company heading into 2024
As the year glides past our stern, merging into a massive wake roiling to the horizon, I cast a net to harvest a handful of columns datelined 2023, bundled for diversity as well as, well, cuz I liked how they turned out.
I chose a baker’s dozen, 13, for the fun of the phrase and because that’s a quarter of 52 pieces that emerged this year.
Seems like I’ve been busy.
Shifting metaphors, my hope is that this is a literary version of a gift-box chocolate sampler. You’ve probably tasted some already; please enjoy another bite. Some will be first-time morsels — hard for writers to admit, I understand that not every reader devours every word of every story. Plus a number of you joined this merry Voice band in recent months, after many of these first appeared.
If you’d like to share, please do with my compliments; one good thing about literary chocolates is they can be enjoyed by more than one person.
And if those who have not yet created a paid Voice subscription are inspired to pony up, helping support 52 more for 2024 (hey that rhymes, that’s nice), great.
Here’s hoping each is tasty company.
Happy happy New Year to you and yours,
Seth
We begin the year’s journey at an unlikely place, cruising Route 28 in West Yarmouth:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/cape-cods-societal-ground-zero
A new governor shows up and provides unusual inspiration to a beautiful young woman:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/mia-and-maura
At a boatbuilder’s creative haven, time slows down:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/pram-skiff-dory-boat-builder
Come Memorial Day, what our sprawling military base could and should become:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/on-memorial-day-joint-base-cape-cod
With “dune shacks” in the news, remembering a literary giant who became “the poet of the dunes,” Harry Kemp:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/shoring-up-literary-giant-harry-kemps
Supposed conflict between protecting open space and building affordable housing really comes down to zoning, not conservation:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/buying-open-space-pushing-big-lot
The J. Robert Oppenheimer blockbuster movie did not include his intriguing Cape Cod connection:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/j-robert-oppenheimers-cape-cod-connection
A “mishoon” is created, an ancient Wampanoag tradition resurrected:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/to-burn-a-mishoon-is-to-hollow-and
As migrants move into a motel, profoundly different ways of expressing humanity:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/yarmouths-shame-marthas-vineyards
Another Cape Cod National Seashore superintendent exits through the revolving door:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/another-national-seashore-superintendent
Our irreverent Congressman once made it possible for me to hang with the Dalai Lama:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/podcast-meeting-the-dalai-lama-thanks
We know what an oyster fest is supposed to be, seems like they don’t in North Carolina:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/you-wont-believe-what-passes-for
Civic discourse is being poisoned; a vision for how selectboards can claw back from this destructive ugliness:
https://sethrolbein.substack.com/p/a-selectboards-essential-mission