The Importance of Community
To the editor:
Re “Van Dereck Estate Remains a Tangle of Secrets” [June 13, front page]:
Community is important. Familiarity is important. It is especially important for people who have Alzheimer’s disease. I speak from personal experience. My husband, Frank, was diagnosed in 2010. Without the Provincetown community that welcomes him with open arms, his life would be less full, and his Alzheimer’s would be progressing more rapidly.
When the kind bartenders, staff, and customers at Mac’s Fish House and at the Mews Restaurant all say hi to Frank and ask how he is, his face lights up and he smiles. They acknowledge his existence as a real person. I am grateful for this. The familiarity of living in the same place, knowing instinctively where things are, keeps him oriented and lessens his confusion.
I find it incredibly distressing that Helen Van Dereck Haunstrup, Napi Van Dereck’s widow who suffers from dementia, has lost her community because Bernard McEneaney, her court-appointed guardian, has removed her from her familiar surroundings. She ate dinner almost every night at Napi’s. My husband and I would walk in, and Helen would light up and we’d hug each other. She would walk around the restaurant and walk around in town to see the people she knew and loved and who loved her.
Helen’s caregivers are wonderful. But speaking as a caregiver myself, I know that good care entails the consistency and familiarity of community, which keeps Alzheimer’s patients grounded and not forgotten. They need people other than their caregivers who are in their life, acknowledging them, saying their name, greeting them. And the caregivers also need support.
Mr. McEneaney has stripped Helen of the people who care for her and love her.
Jane Paradise
Provincetown
No Commitment
To the editor:
I am writing to clarify a comment I said to the Independent’s Paul Benson, which he quoted in “House Drops Transfer Fee in Housing Bill” [June 13, front page].
Although I did say that House Speaker Ron Mariano had announced at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce that we were going to do a transfer fee, there was never a commitment by the Speaker or any House member that a transfer fee would be included in the bill.
Because I wasn’t present at the Boston Chamber breakfast this year, after my interview with Benson I went back and looked at the speech to see what was actually said. Here is what the Speaker did say: “…the House is also considering a number of options that could help municipalities finance the development of more affordable housing, including the adoption of a local option transfer fee on certain real estate transactions.”
My comment may have given the impression there was a commitment when clearly there was none.
Sarah Peake
Provincetown
The writer represents the 4th Barnstable District in the Mass. House and is 2nd Assistant Majority Leader.
Our Short Time Here
To the editor:
I hope many of your readers were as deeply moved as I was by Kai Potter’s meditation on his garden [“Remembering That Last Bobwhite’s Song,” June 6, page B1]. The lovely photos and poetic and poignant reflections on nature were a beautiful reminder of our short time on this planet and the agency each of us has by the actions we take or don’t take.
I, too, am a gardener. Raising plants, tending and communing with them is my great joy. I recently got the Merlin app from the Cornell Ornithology Lab to record the birds in my back yard as they greet each new day; my list now includes a red-eyed vireo, tufted titmouse, barn swallows, great crested flycatcher, and much more.
Thanks to a Franciscan monk steeped in Eastern religions, Father Richard Rohr, I receive daily meditations that have opened up the amazing world inside our minds and emotions. Like Kai, I am being awakened to the universe and connection to everyone and everything.
The embrace of self-awareness and gratitude joined with action can change the world.
John Marksbury
North Truro and Palm Springs, Calif.
When Peter Watts Appeared
To the editor:
An old friend sent me a copy of the Independent’s obituary for our mutual lifelong friend Peter Watts, which you published on Aug. 20, 2020.
You reported that Peter “moved to Wellfleet in 1970 with his wife, the late photographer and painter Gloria Nardin.” He did not. He appeared on the Cape in the early ’60s as the significant other of Joan Sinkler (the widow of Dr. Wharton Sinkler), who owned one of only two houses nearly on the beach just north of Newcomb Hollow.
Sometime after Joan’s death, years later, he met Gloria. All three were fixtures of Wellfleet’s and Truro’s artistic and intellectual worlds.
And Peter looked like a Greek god.
Christopher English Walling
New York City
*****
Letters to the Editor
The Provincetown Independent welcomes letters from readers on all subjects. They must be signed with the writer’s name, home address, and telephone number (for verification). Letters will be published only if they have been sent exclusively to the Independent. They should be no more than 300 words and may be edited for clarity, accuracy, conciseness, and good taste. Longer pieces (up to 600 words) may be submitted for consideration as op-ed commentary. Send letters to [email protected] or by mail to P.O. Box 1034, Provincetown, MA 02657. The deadline for letters is Monday at noon for each week’s edition.
