Rachel White’s True History
To the editor:
Re “Rachel White Remembers” [2023 Summer Guide, page 34]:
I thank the author, Michael Gaucher, and the illustrator, Mary DeAngelis, and the paper for printing it. Our discussion was convoluted, as we skipped around with periods of time and eras and varied subjects, and I was amazed that Michael was able to decipher any of it. I did tell him after I saw it that there would be only one correction for the sake of the true history of my birth.
The midwife didn’t make a “house call” to the house on Pearl Street (which was actually number 36, not 37). I never lived there. That was the address of the mini-hospital and midwifery place where babies, including me, were delivered. After 10 days spent there, which was the normal process in those times after deliveries, I was taken home to 123 Bradford St. in Provincetown, to be nurtured and to grow, and where I stayed until my young adult life.
Michael and Mary, thank you for our wonderful discussion and much laughter through it all.
For those who don’t know Michael, he’s an Elena Hall property owner, and Mary is a fashion designer who formerly owned Silk & Feathers, an upscale shop here. They are multitalented.
Rachel White
Provincetown
Vigilance on Mpox
To the editor:
Thank you for Paul Benson’s June 1 article “Cases Are Few, but Monkeypox Is Still on the Radar” [page A6].
As the article pointed out, there have been increased incidences of Mpox in some areas of the country. And while we are proud of our work last summer in providing more than 2,100 doses of Mpox vaccine, we must remain vigilant to mitigate the risk of spreading Mpox on the Cape and beyond.
We ask your readers to keep in mind that, again this summer and throughout the year, the Outer Cape Health Services testNtreat program will provide free Mpox vaccinations, along with STI testing and treatment, PrEP/PEP access, and referrals. They can call 774-538-3350 to schedule an appointment or stop by the OCHS health center at 49 Harry Kemp Way in Provincetown. We often can offer same-day appointments.
In Massachusetts, only 37 percent of those for whom Mpox vaccination is recommended have received the prescribed two-dose regimen; 55 percent of the same demographic have received only one dose. Our goal, in partnership with the Mass. Dept. of Public Health, is to increase those percentages this summer and beyond. Complete vaccination (two doses) is the best way to prevent severe symptoms of Mpox, including hospitalization.
The combination of almost daily access at OCHS and the clinics offered by the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod makes availability of free Mpox vaccines on the Outer Cape robust. We hope residents and visitors alike continue to avail themselves of these vital community health services.
Rob Swann
Provincetown
The writer is director of operations at Outer Cape Health Services in Provincetown.
Appalled by Clear-Cutting
To the editor:
Thanks so much for your concise and ecologically compassionate column about clear-cutting and how Outer Cape businesses and residents are blatantly ignoring the laws governing the protection of our beautiful and critically important flora and its resident fauna [“With the Forests,” June 1, page A2].
I am saddened and appalled that businesses cut first and argue, fight, and defend their actions later. I also ask why towns have “little appetite for enforcing the rules.” What’s the point of enacting such laws if they are not enforced?
If you need a pitiful example of where the Outer Cape is headed with such ecologically insane and blatantly illegal practices I suggest that you drive the length of the New Jersey shoreline. Then I will tell you what it looked like 60 years ago: it looked like the Cape 60 years ago, if you can remember that quiet, pristine paradise.
Thom Schwarz
Wellfleet
‘In Serene Eccentricity’
To the editor:
Salt for your wounds? Scoop it out of the air. Balm for your poverty? Mine the Wampanoag Sun for diamonds. Simple.
Waking up a fleshy constellation, flickering in and out of a nervous Aurora Borealis — a Black Rose blooming in a midnight vacuum — I get my bearings in a shack shaken to the rafters. Blink: breaking hourglass. Blink: sand everywhere.
Delicious presumption: at pitched moments like these I feel myself a distillation of the dune shack experience — for a jealous breath, possessive (as, in a negative image, Bluebells of the fussing wind and sun, in more formative fields).
But, shiptight, too soon I shut the bangy door behind me, joining my presence to a graffiti graft of residents coming, naturalists going, signing the C-Scape shack, if not the C-Scape guestbook. Trusting our lives are told by the doors we walk through as the rings of trees tell years. In serene eccentricity.
The dunes are signed with my footprints — our footprints — too. Baroquely so. As, in counterpoint, I imagine the dimpled clouds are with the foraging plovers’ dainty feet.
The rest is flight. And nervous pipes. Isn’t that signature enough? Pure absence: as graceful as anxious sand signed by wheeling shadows.
Salt for my wounds? Balm for my poverty? Yes, yes, yes — while the spell lasts. Not a breath longer. Worthy of a residency for nothing.
Luna Brady
Provincetown
Nudity and Honesty
To the editor:
Thanks for the wonderful story “Truro’s Beach Back Then, Unveiled” [May 25, page B5] and the marvelous photo of Ros and Lee Baxandall on the nude beach.
Ros and Lee introduced me to the joys of the Cape and to the freedom of the nude beach in 1973. Somewhere I still have Lee’s redesigned Michelangelo-spoofed T-shirt showing Adam handing off his swim trunks to God.
I remember thinking how weird it was to have political discussions standing naked in the waves. But at least we were more honest about everything then.
Susan Reverby
Wellfleet and Boston
