‘The World Is Stunned’
To the editor:
A bird flew into my house on the morning of Nov. 6, a little chickadee. The windows had been opened to the fall air, and the screens were gone. I was startled by the fluttering of wings and the unfamiliar sounds of a bird in the confines of my walled-in world. The barrier between us, for a moment, was suspended by this unforeseen guest. Was this a reminder to follow the winged creature out into our shared space, our ecosystem of renewal and survival?
The world is stunned once again. A tidal wave swept the world after 9/11, and for a moment we united in grief and outrage and shock. Only for a moment. Our addiction to fossil fuels won out, superseding all other values and aspirations for our civic community.
In the 2024 election, the primacy of the corporate bottom line disguised the messages from flocks of colonizing billionaires posing benevolently as angels of death, flapping their wings over distressed families of low means and ignored dreams.
A visit to the Pilgrim Springs Trail on this windy day confirmed to me that the air is still breathable and our ability to fly intact.
Take flight.
Jay Critchley
Provincetown
Voters Were Gulled
To the editor:
Heard multiple times in the last week: “I don’t like who he is, but I voted for Trump because I like his policies.”
Exactly what policies did they like? “That he will lower prices and reverse inflation.” “That he will keep criminal migrants from taking our jobs.” “That he will get affordable housing built for people who now can barely make rent.”
But those aren’t policies. They’re empty populist posturings.
In 2016, Trump campaigned with similar slogans. But what he actually did in 2017 was attack public protection laws. Trump’s overwhelming focus was boosting the wealthy and protecting business from responsibility for harms caused to regular citizens, the environment, and public welfare.
In Trump’s first year in office, he targeted 135 protective laws for deregulation in five main areas: worker and consumer safety, health care, consumer financial protection, labor rights, and the environment. Dog-whistle populist slogans were the tools of his tirades but not what he did. Deregulation and wealth-maximizing for friends and cabinet members in the undrained swamp of business lobbying was the administration’s actual agenda — plus weakening our 80-year network of international alliances.
Trump voters: Did you vote to weaken workers against employers’ unfairness? To allow more industrial wastes into the air and water? To make working- and middle-class finances worse while directing extraordinary wealth and tax relief to the richest 5 percent? To support Russian aggression?
This time around, we should expect much more of the same, and a lot of Americans will need to open their eyes and rethink how they’ve been gulled. The future of our nation and the welfare of our planet will depend upon it.
Zygmunt J.B. Plater
Provincetown
More Than Ever
To the editor:
Thank you for having the integrity to endorse Kamala Harris while much larger newspapers (even one whose motto is “Democracy dies in darkness”) were backing away in fear of incurring Trump’s vengeance. We all know what his vengeance can be like: Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, had bulletproof glass windows installed after he aroused Trump’s ire.
The Washington Post, talking to its readers like children, gave a lofty explanation of its failure in an editorial, but the truth became clear when owner Jeff Bezos tweeted out a flowery congratulations to Trump, welcoming his “comeback.” The Post was appeasing a fascist when it refused to endorse, as was every media outlet that attacked Biden’s “cognitive decline” while glossing over Trump’s obvious mental slide, moral failures, and felony convictions.
This has made me doubly grateful for the Independent. Your quiet statement of loyalty to truth-seeking journalism and to democracy has been one of the few things that has comforted me this week. We’ll be needing honorable journalism more than ever now, and it is very hard to find.
Heidi Jon Schmidt
Provincetown
Mencken Was Right
To the editor:
H.L. Mencken famously said, “No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people” (or words to that effect).
Boy, did he have it right.
Chuck Leigh
Provincetown and Truro
Suspending Time
To the editor:
I have recently admired some fine photojournalism in the Provincetown Independent, notably the work of Emily Schiffer and Edward Boches.
Boches’s photographs of multi-generational oyster farmers in Wellfleet [“Women on the Tides,” Oct. 17, page B1] drew me to his current exhibition at Bob Korn Imaging in Eastham. Having recently visited a friend’s grant, I experienced the flats’ great expanse of absence where the sea had withdrawn.
In the Eastham exhibition, Boches’s Wellfleet photographs are contrasted with his photographs of Boston during Covid: black shadows, people-less alleys, urban streets with extended shafts of white light. Although vastly different in many respects, they share a sense of a temporary suspension of time and our fragile hold on the here and now.
Stephen Aiken
Wellfleet
Aging Well
To the editors:
Thank you for Christine Legere’s article “In Eastham, Music, Camaraderie, and HIIT are Hot” [Nov. 7, page A15]. Wendy Marinakis’s High Intensity Interval Training classes are very popular and have greatly increased awareness of the Council on Aging (COA).
There is a misconception that the COA is for old people. It’s for anyone over age 59 who wants to age well. The Eastham COA’s programming promotes vibrant, healthy aging. We offer classes in Zumba, yoga, cooking, painting, technology, and more. Many of our programs can be joined virtually.
Most of our exercise and social programs are free to both year-round and part-time Eastham residents, thanks to funding from the Friends of the Eastham Council on Aging. We welcome nonresidents, space permitting, but ask for a donation.
Beverly Hobbs
Eastham
The writer is chair of the board of the Eastham Council on Aging.
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.
