Napi’s: ‘A Great Loss’
To the editor:
Re “After Almost 50 Years, Napi’s Restaurant Closes” [Oct. 24, page A10]:
The end of Napi’s Restaurant, how sad! As a yearly vacationer for 50-plus years at the Cape and now a summer home owner, I find the end of Napi’s a great loss.
What your article doesn’t dwell on, understandably, is that this great restaurant really died several years ago when Napi died. The people who then took it over ran it into the ground, first firing the chef and other employees, then changing the menu to exclude all the customer favorites on which the restaurant had built its reputation.
After that, Napi’s business fell off substantially. But instead of selling the restaurant to someone who understands that tricky business, the managers just plunged ahead in their own ignorant way until it was beyond saving.
How sad — but understandable and expected.
Michael Spielman
Wellfleet and New York City
Dinner for Four
To the editor:
Thank you for Sam Pollak’s great but sad article on the closing of Napi’s. Thanks to the Independent’s work, we have been able to keep abreast of all the issues surrounding the restaurant and owners we so enjoyed.
So many evenings we sat at the bar with Napi, and all the times we sat loving the Milby painting over the tables to the left of the bar.
Then there was the evening we left our house in North Truro and drove through a snowstorm to have dinner at Napi’s. The door was open, and there sat only Napi and Helen. Helen jumped up, welcomed us, and assured us we could order dinner. Then she went into the kitchen and cooked us a wonderful dinner. The four of us had a great evening all by ourselves.
We will miss our times at the end of the bar with Napi and Helen.
Charlie and Joanna Morrison
North Truro
‘Low-Quality Journalism’
To the editors:
Why does the Provincetown Independent publish a full-length article on Truro’s effort to hire an HR coordinator (“Hiring an HR Coordinator Is Top Priority in Truro, Says Tangeman,” Oct. 24, page A4) but not even one quote from someone who opposes creating the new position? After all, Truro voters defeated the budget override needed to fund the position at June’s town election.
A biased use of quotations is and has always been the clearest sign of low-quality news journalism. It’s also a glaring fault in many of the Provincetown Independent’s news articles. I’m a retired journalist and have never and would never subscribe to the Provincetown Independent for this reason.
Joanne Barkan
Truro
Editor’s note: No one spoke against the proposed hiring of an HR coordinator at the May 5 Truro town meeting, which approved the proposal. The writer of this letter did not respond to an invitation to state the reasons for opposing the creation of the new position.
Demolition Reports
To the editor:
Thank you for Christine Legere’s excellent article about the proposed demolition of the 1780 house at 90 Coles Neck Road in Wellfleet [“Owners Say They Can’t Afford to Save Capt. Joseph Hatch House,” Oct. 24, page A5]. Your reporting was objective, factual, and accurate.
It is so helpful for the public to be informed that another relatively intact 18th-century Cape Cod building is at risk.
I emailed Sarah Korjeff, the historic preservation specialist at the Cape Cod Commission, about this proposed demolition, and she replied: “I saw the article in the Independent and was sorry to hear that this building is threatened. There are so few relatively unaltered buildings from this early period on Cape Cod.”
I recently heard an NPR story about a reporter in a small town who was using AI to summarize what was said at town meetings. An interesting discussion ensued about the pros and cons of using AI in this manner. It left me feeling all the more grateful for the work that you do without having AI algorithms make decisions about what we want to hear.
Merrill Mead-Fox
Wellfleet
The writer is co-chair of the Wellfleet Historical Commission.
A Vote for Jill Stein
To the editor:
To hear peace activists insist that we must vote for the war-crime-enabling Democratic Party has made me lose all hope for our nation.
Looking back at all we’ve managed to do over the past year — the ceasefire resolutions, the protests and marches and standouts, the film screenings and study groups, and a presence at farmers markets — I ask myself, what good did any of it do?
Perhaps there are more people expressing their horror and perhaps more hand-wringing and letter-writing. However, when our supposed allies in the struggle for peace and justice end up voting for candidates who continue to support arming a criminal regime, it demonstrates the limit of their activism.
Our humanity demands we take a stand against complicity in these crimes by voting for a candidate who commits to ending them. On Nov. 5, I cannot overlook that my tax dollars have funded and continue to fund what many human rights organizations and legal scholars term a genocide, and I shall vote for Jill Stein.
Thanks to our system where the electoral college subverts the will of the people, our reliably blue state will not affect the election outcome. If we wish to register opposition to ongoing war crimes, we do have that choice. Our vote is the only real power we have.
Mia Saunders
Wellfleet
A Stunning Relief Effort
To the editor:
On Oct. 7, our office announced that we were collecting relief items for western North Carolina, which had been devastated by flooding from Hurricane Helene. Nine police departments signed on to act as dropoff sites. On the Outer Cape, Eastham and Wellfleet police and the Nauset Public Schools collected donations.
We were stunned by the mountains of donations that arrived at the sheriff’s office from all over the Cape. We filled two 18-wheelers with donations. We still have more awaiting a third truck.
The response from the community was extraordinary. Eastham Police Chief Adam Bohannon challenged his town to fill one trailer. They filled four. The Wellfleet Police Dept.’s 16-foot trailer was stuffed floor to ceiling.
At 2 a.m. on Oct. 15, two 18-wheelers donated by C. Carney Trucking from Raynham began the 15-hour journey to Yancey County, N.C. Four sheriff’s office staff who accompanied them saw washed-out roads, downed power lines, and homes turned to matchsticks. CNN reported that North Carolina lost 100 people. Some are still missing. Helene’s death toll is over 230 people across six states, making it the second deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland after Katrina.
One of our trucks broke down along the way. After the first truck was unloaded, the young driver headed back to the disabled vehicle in Connecticut, reloaded a full trailer, and turned back toward the mountains of North Carolina.
The dropoff sites in Yancey County were parking lots turned into distribution sites and massive markets where everything was free. People cooked hot meals for others all day long. My staff and that hardworking young driver from C. Carney Trucking got a lot of hugs and handshakes.
Though the hurricane was catastrophic, your overwhelming generosity proves suffering can be countered by kindness.
Donna D. Buckley
Falmouth
The writer is Barntable County’s sheriff.
Good News Travels Fast
To the editor:
Thank you for the historical context of the annual statement of ownership, management, and circulation in “Special Delivery” [Letter From the Editor, Oct. 10].
Props to you and the USPS: the Independent shows up promptly for me, some 300 miles away, the day after publication. I look forward to reading it each Saturday morning over coffee. The positive and the petty, the flashy mashed up with the mundane, the uplifting alongside the unsettling … it’s all good news when covered, published, and delivered so professionally, thoroughly, and swiftly. Keep that puppy coming!
Tara Chhabra
Saratoga Springs, N.Y. and Eastham
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.
