I'm not the brightest light bulb in any given room, a fact frequently suggested by at least 90 percent of the anonymous posters who faithfully post their observations and opinions about life and their fellow human beings on the web pages of this fine newspaper.
But even a 45-watt light bulb gives off a little light, an indisputable fact that has helped guide me along the winding little road of my own humble existence. One of the dozen-or-so things I've learned over the years, is that a person can be very bright, yet not very smart.
You see that kind of thing all the time, even here in Gloucester, where sometimes the light from a particularly high-wattage light bulb can be so blinding that everybody in its presence might as well be operating in the dark.
Take harbor development, and the ongoing, ever-worsening fishermen-government conflict, for example.
A few of the community's 200-watt light bulbs want nothing built on the waterfront unless it's 100-percent marine-industry related.
Such luminaries find Mac Bell's ambitious Commercial Street Birds Eye site plan so, well, random, that they would prefer that hauntingly beautiful, though now sadly decrepit old Fort edifice to sit rotting for another 50 years before allowing its recycling for any use other than converting seaweed into a cure for cancer, ground-up clam shells as an energy source for mechanized bicycle transportation — all great ideas, by the way.
It's no different when it comes to the steadily-worsening hardships and perils confronting Gloucester's entire fishing industry, a problem that began over a decade ago, when the Commerce Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NOAA Fisheries all working against, rather than with, America's commercial fishermen.
Today, the owner-operators and crews of Gloucester's dwindling fishing fleet — down to some 80 boats — stand with both feet on the gallows, and with the noose already around their necks about to be drawn even tighter.
Despite all the bright ideas being floated around these days about how to fix this, and how to repair that, for fishermen, it's two minutes to midnight, and there's hardly any light anywhere to be found.
So right now, saving Gloucester's on-and offshore fishing industry from any further abuse at the hands of the federal government should be this city's Job One.
That's something even a 45-watt light bulb like me can understand.
Jim Munn is a regular Times contributor and longtime local public school running coach.
