There’s a gift in this Thanksgiving issue of the Independent. It’s a special section called Young Voices, a collection of articles from past issues of the newspaper written by next-generation reporters who have come to Provincetown thanks to donations to the Local Journalism Project. In two previous collections, the themes were nature and environment (2022) and the arts (2023). This year, the stories are about people.
Thirteen writers have their work in this latest book, and their subjects are remarkably varied, from Eastham turnip farmer Bob Wells to Provincetown educator and human rights champion Ngina Lythcott to Donna Walo Clancy, who writes murder mysteries that she publishes herself and sells at the Wellfleet flea market. (The books have titles like Death by Chowder and Until Jam Do Us Part.)
Writing about local characters — especially people who have been here a long time and are well known in the community — is not an easy assignment. How do you sum up accurately in just 800 words a persona like Peter Cook’s, someone who has lived in Provincetown for nearly 80 years and is full of stories? Oliver Egger, one of our summer journalism fellows, somehow managed to do it.
Taking on stories like these is an invaluable experience for young writers. It requires a kind of listening that goes beyond simply transcribing words and, when it works, leads to revelations. It requires writers to care about the people they are meeting — people they don’t know. In that sense, these assignments amount to boot camp in democracy: they are fundamentally about taking account of others.
The voices of many of these distinctive Outer Cape characters come through clearly in this year’s collection, as when Paul Sullivan writes that drag queen Dina Martina has “been an entertainer her whole life, if not longer.” Josephine de La Bruyère doesn’t really need to tell us that Dougie Freeman’s stories are “fantastic, dizzying, wildly crafted” because she’s incorporated his storytelling mania into her own writing: “Dougie Freeman, who shampooed Julia Child (head like a cabbage), who styled Farrah Fawcett, Holly Woodlawn, Lily Tomlin, who never would have guessed Cunanan a murderer, and who will, yes, answer the question, just two more minutes, a couple more clients to list, (this is important) who had ins with the mob but would absolutely never name names and who, for the record, has indeed met Whitey Bulger, promises to get to the point in just a bit.”
There’s an unexpected reward in having these aspiring journalists come from away and asking them to write about us. They sometimes see us with clearer eyes than we see ourselves.
Amelia Roth-Dishy, just out of college in 2023, sat with Joseph Pellegrino at his Wellfleet home and captured with startling clarity the former selectman, Little League coach, and World War II veteran as he approached his 100th birthday. He told her his recipe for homemade birdfeed and his thoughts on whether there is an afterlife: he wasn’t sure — better to live day by day. I’m grateful that Pellegrino, who died a year ago, lives on in these pages.
