A Nice Guy
To the editor:
Todd Silva’s letter in last week’s Independent [“Noises of the Waterfront”] was the most restrained, polite, and neighborly reply imaginable to a jerk.
Imagine complaining about the noise of a fishing boat engine in a town of fishing boats and fishing livelihoods.
The reprobate bought a house there. One assumes it was a voluntary buy. It’s like buying a house in Las Vegas and complaining about the neon lights.
I would have gotten the guy’s name and, having told him to drink less and go to bed earlier, put that name in the letter.
Todd is far nicer than I.
Dan Katz
Truro
Sounds of Life
To the editor:
I’ve lived on and off the waterfront for almost 40 years. Lately, I go down to the beach at sunrise, sit on a friend’s steps, and meditate. I listen to the gulls squawk, the tide lapping, and, if I am very lucky, there will be the sound of a fishing boat leaving the harbor, people heading out to bring us home our dinner.
These sounds are the sounds of life. They are not “noise.”
Marian Roth
Provincetown
One Man’s Vote
To the editor:
I think Mr. Trump is messing with our heads. His tantrums are diverting our brains. Elections aren’t easy.
In Nashville, Tenn., during a heat wave in July and August 1920, the battle for the last state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment, giving American women the right to vote, was brutal and violent. Thirty-five states had already ratified the amendment. The supporters of women’s suffrage knew it would never pass in the Deep South; it had to win in Tennessee.
Gangsters and thugs brought in by anti-suffrage lobbyists ratcheted up the heat. In mid-August, the state legislature assembled to vote on ratification. The vote ended in a tie.
Then 24-year-old Rep. Harry Burn, a farmer’s son from East Tennessee, stood up and changed his vote to yes, breaking the tie. The 19th Amendment would become law.
What was Burn’s reason for changing his vote? “I appreciated the fact,” he said, “that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free 17 million American women from political slavery was mine.” And, he added, ”Because my mother told me to do so.”
The 19th Amendment became a reality because of one man and his one vote. He used his gift of voting, denied for centuries to men and women who fought and died for their human rights in a democracy. They passed this gift to you, their descendants, for you to use as your civil right. Do it. Vote.
Dina Harris
Wellfleet
For Forest and Lyons
To the editor:
Saskia Maxwell Keller’s excellent article “Fighting Racism With More Civic Engagement” [Sept. 24, page A1] made me think about the importance of our local elections. Ms. Maxwell Keller highlighted words from our state Sen. Julian Cyr, encouraging citizens to pay attention to and participate in local government and elections.
In this election cycle, the citizens of Cape Cod have many important local choices to make. I urge all Cape Codders to support Mark Forest and Sheila Lyons for the two open seats on the Board of Barnstable County Commissioners.
The third candidate in the race, Ronald Beaty, is a convicted felon and a strong supporter of Donald Trump. Forest and Lyons have strong records of public service.
Mark Forest teaches government at Cape Cod Community College, is running a graduate program in public administration for Suffolk University, and was chairman of the board at the Housing Assistance Corporation. Sheila Lyons is active in health care and works for Outer Cape Health Services. Both are versed in the major issues facing Cape Cod and have outstanding records of service and accomplishment.
Forest and Lyons are respected professionals and will put the interests of Cape Cod above party politics. I urge you to join me in supporting them. Please, vote for two and vote blue!
Laura Gazzano
Wellfleet
What Hope Asks of Us
To the editor:
I was a little sorry to find the excerpt of a Robert Frost poem in an essay whose title was a play on an Emily Dickinson line [Dennis Minsky, “Hope Is the Thing With Flowers,” Sept. 24, page A3].
“ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers…,” is the first line of one of Dickinson’s earliest published poems (Poems, 1891), but it is the ensuing stanzas that declare how little hope asks of us, a point the sound bite omits: “…That perches in the soul-/ And sings the tune without the words-/ And never stops – at all-/ And sweetest – in the gale – is heard-/ And sore must be the storm-/ That could abash the little Bird/ That kept so many warm-/ I’ve heard it in the chillest land-/ And on the strangest Sea-/ Yet – never – in extremity,/ It asked a crumb – of me.”
Writing around 1860, Dickinson anticipated the modernity that the 20th-century Frost embraced, and I like to think Frost, as an inheritor of Dickinson’s pioneering poetry, owed her homage we can endeavor to pay by admiring the jolt of awareness her poem’s concluding lines elicit.
Holly Ballard-Gardner
Truro
