Rebuilding the COA
To the editor:
Thank you for highlighting the fact that Truro’s Council on Aging had withered to the point that not a single staff member remained to provide the services essential to the well-being of our senior residents [“Truro COA Needs a Director, Outreach Coordinator, Driver, and Cook,” Jan. 12, page A5].
A new COA director has been hired. At the end of the month, she begins the task of rebuilding what was once a thriving community resource.
Truro’s need for affordable housing, its goal of building a sustainable year-round economy, and its commitment to adequate day care for its youngest members while their parents struggle to earn an income have been getting well-deserved attention and support. But the needs of our elders have not. Now we can move forward on this crisis, too.
If Truro is to be a healthy community, we must meet the needs of all, young and old. We are a whole with many parts. We all need shelter, food, health care, and economic well-being.
It is imperative in this moment when everything that gives us life is threatened by climate disruption that we come together as a community, interdependent on one another, all in the same leaking boat. We must care for one another. We must protect our planet and the natural resources that nourish life: our air, our water, and our animal, plant, and human diversity.
Joan Holt
Truro
Fanboy
To the editor:
I am officially a Kai Potter fanboy. “The Remarkable Life of One Dead Tree,” his article on page B3 of the Jan. 19 issue, is an inspired combination of popular science, poetry, and philosophy.
My favorite passage is when he describes an advanced state of decay: “The tree is no longer wood but elements: nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, carbon. All composed of atoms that once vibrated at the center of stars.”
Thank you for the consistently wonderful journalism the Independent brings to the Outer Cape.
David Charles Abell
Provincetown
‘The Future of Us All’
To the editor:
I always read Kai Potter’s columns in your wonderful and oh-so-local newspaper, whether about surfing, gardening, or nature observation, as he has a keen eye and a colorful writing style.
But I was moved to tears by his essay “The Remarkable Life of One Dead Tree,” so that I had to write and express my appreciation.
The mixture of science and storytelling would have made National Geographic proud. To follow step-by-step the natural processes not of a plant’s or tree’s life but instead those following its death was original and unique. And the final two paragraphs describe the future of us all.
Thanks, Kai and the Provincetown Independent.
Annie Ditacchio
North Truro
