Provincetown Developments
To the editor:
Last week I read an article in the New York Times about a couple who buy rundown houses, fix them up, and then rent to low-income families with Section 8 housing vouchers. They do this because they like fixing up old houses and because they see a need.
I contrast this with two articles in last week’s Independent about Patrick Patrick asking us to help fund his “Barracks” development, with outrageous rents [front page], and Christine Barker’s plan to build a giant hotel-restaurant-condo-parking complex downtown [page A4] with a pier and a ferry so that super-rich tourists can sleep and eat without ever putting one foot downtown and thus not passing any of the small businesses along the way.
Talk about chutzpah.
We are now thinking of giving Barker the old police station on Shank Painter Road so that she can make even more money. I do not understand how anyone expects working people to pay an exorbitant rent for a one-bedroom apartment in any of these developments.
Why do we continue to see our housing problem as solvable only by creating more wealth for developers? What has happened to our civic responsibility?
Let’s put our heads and hearts together and think about how we can protect our diverse and vibrant community. Let’s find a better way of solving the housing needs of working people and artists and young people who come here because it is a safe, open, and beautiful place to live.
Marian Roth
Provincetown
There Was More to George Bryant
To the editor:
I read with growing frustration your March 7 story “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: Leah Dyjak’s queer inquiry into George Bryant’s hoarded art” [page C1]. For while I understand that its focus is Dyjak and her work, I’m upset that the story seems to reduce George Bryant to what sounds like a wacky elderly hoarder who collected junk and smashed plates.
Could not one short paragraph give a fuller picture of this brilliant man and local historian who added much to the town in the decades he lived here? Duane Steele, the former publisher of the Provincetown Advocate, opens his 2015 obituary of Bryant this way: “There is an adage that when a knowledgeable elder dies, it is like a library burning down. One of Provincetown’s richest libraries has burned down.”
He goes on to describe Bryant, a Provincetown native and an architect with a master’s degree from MIT, as “…a man of extraordinary intellect and talents…” and a “…stalwart and passionate elected civil servant…” who served on the board of selectmen, council on aging, board of health, planning board, historic district study committee, and more.
Giving some insight, perhaps, into Bryant’s hoarding, Steele adds: “He researched and collected photographs, artifacts and records of the Provincetown whaling, fishing and salt industries. He delivered talks and wrote numerous articles. He was generous with information and the materials he had collected. It poured out of him. His comprehension of local history was so encyclopedic it took people aback.”
I didn’t know George personally, but I feel compelled to round out the picture of a complex man who was more than what your story implies.
Necee Regis
Wellfleet
Offshore Wind Opponents
To the editor:
Vallorie Oliver, president of ACK for Whales (formerly “Nantucket Residents Against Turbines”), asserts in her Feb. 29 letter that constructing wind turbines off the southern coast of New England could result in the extinction of right whales and that “the juice” is not “worth the squeeze.”
A small number of highly funded organizations with exceptional subterfuge skills continue to interfere with the development of the best and most cost-effective renewable resources that New England offers. Properly executed, offshore wind is New England’s frutti di mare of renewable resources. The juice is worth the squeeze.
Offshore turbines offer the most accessible source of renewable energy. First, New England’s power system can accommodate interconnection of thousands of megawatts of offshore wind resources through capacity available due to recently retired coal, oil, and nuclear resources. Second, New England’s offshore wind productivity is two to four times that of onshore wind and solar resources. Finally, offshore wind can be readily developed without land-use restrictions and increasingly complicated environmental objections.
Ms. Oliver’s organization continues to appeal offshore wind permits, burdening the court system with time-consuming and costly cases with nearly no chance of succeeding. Instead of concealing the truth, these organizations should admit that they are against renewable energy and would seemingly prefer newly sited fossil-fuel-fired power plants.
Those formerly juicy fruits have been squeezed, however. New England’s future power supply depends on a reasonable quantity of offshore wind power production.
Joe Cavicchi
Truro and Arlington
The writer is an economist specializing in wholesale and retail electricity markets.
In Defense of Earthworms
To the editor:
In Jim Gilbert’s otherwise accurate and interesting piece “Of Settlers and Silt” in the March 7 Independent [page B6], the statements about the destructive effects on Cape forests of introduced earthworms don’t seem supported by recent science.
When worms eat dead leaves, they excrete soil (not “dirt”) enriched with beneficial microbes and nitrogen. The latter is an essential and often limiting nutrient for plant (including tree) growth.
A 2014 meta-analysis of studies from all around the world in the prestigious journal Nature found that on average earthworms increase crop yield by 25 percent and above-ground biomass by 23 percent, primarily by making nitrogen available to plants. The same is likely the case for forest trees.
Another issue is the curious statement that earthworm activity somehow increases runoff and, presumably, erosion.
But otherwise Mr. Gilbert’s history is spot-on. I always enjoy his articles.
John Portnoy
Wellfleet
Hopkins and History
To the editor:
It was a joy to read Kevin Gallagher’s fine poem “Hopkins’ Tempests” in the Feb. 29 issue [page C4]. Its protagonist, Stephen Hopkins, had a role not only in Mayflower, Plymouth Colony, and literary history, as the poem shows, but also in local history to the present day.
Many of Stephen Hopkins’s descendants settled on the Outer Cape. One branch of the family settled first in Truro, then on Bound Brook Island in Wellfleet, and later moved into Wellfleet town. From that line, Martha Hopkins married banana entrepreneur Lorenzo Dow Baker. Another descendant, among many, is Joan Hopkins Coughlin, a painter steeped in history who lives in Wellfleet today.
I applaud the Independent’s commitment to publish poetry, rare among newspapers today.
Sharon Dunn
Wellfleet
