Op-Ed

Windmills for Salt, Corn, and Lightbulbs

 The people's will is being flouted by politicians and bureaucrats

By Richard Bartlett 

William Martin's "Cape Cod" is more than a novel, it's a  treasury of history from 1620 to 1990, and written in a most readable  style. One paragraph in particular caught my attention. The Cape has  old grinding mills carefully preserved today, but none of the 2,000  pumping windmills that made the Cape's former salt industry possible.  

Our fore-fathers knew how to use our winds not only to power ships,  but as sources of power for their sustenance and their economy.  

Author Martin tells it in almost poetic words:

"While the pumping mills looked like delicate herons feeding on  the marsh, the grinding mill near the causeway stood as solid and  serene as the First Church itself, and nearly as revered. The arms  turned in the relentless wind that Cape Codders had come to know as  God's breath. The wooden gears squeaked in the cap. The gears turned  the great stones on the middle level of the mill. And the corn filled  the bins on the first floor."

Fast forward to the present. Two out of three Cape Codders and  86% of Massachusetts citizens want to see God's breath, still blowing  strong, power our electricity-dependent lifestyles, for reasons of  Yankee thrift and with a sense of responsibility for their progeny  and our planet.

Their obstructionism should cause them to fail in their next election What a pity that in our democracy the people's will is being  flouted by politicians and bureaucrats from the president to  selectmen. Their resistance to essential progress is inexplicable.  

Their obstructionism should cause them to fail in their next election  so some realists who are sensitive to their constituent's wishes can  serve us.
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Read Mr. Bartlett's other Op Eds below;

• Three stories to melt your heart -- and the ice cap
• Advice to an aging Liberal Lion
• 10 degrees of difference - in the ocean
• An incredible confluence of news stories
• SOS or SOP
• The sky is falling, the sky is falling, windmills in the briny !
• Invisible Structures
• Bill Delahunt; modern mugwump