‘Needlessly Humiliated’

To the editor:

I was disappointed to read your hastily written and poorly researched article “Does OCHS Have a Problem With M.D. Turnover?” (Nov. 28, page 1), in which two of the main sources were me and Dr. Brian O’Malley, who briefly worked at Outer Cape Health Services 40 years ago.

Contrary to your reporting, I was not discouraged that I wouldn’t be seeing a physician at OCHS or confused about the difference between a nurse practitioner and a primary care physician. I am, however, disturbed about having been needlessly humiliated in your newspaper and made the subject of an article for which I repeatedly stated in advance that my only pertinent information was limited to making a medical appointment. Even if your statements about me were correct, which they were not, they were of no benefit to a reader hoping to learn about physician turnover at OCHS.

I also question the Independent’s commitment to accurate reporting. These concerns involve not only the OCHS article, but also the newspaper’s failure to correct a photo caption regarding a pilot whale rescue that, as I timely informed you, misidentified Ballston Beach as Coast Guard Beach.

Jonathan Sperber
Truro

Thanks, Boris

To the editor:

Reading last week’s page 1 story “Pots of Cash Expected After Curaleaf Opens” prompted me to wonder how many people may be sitting in Massachusetts jails right now for the crime of selling marijuana? Will they be released?

My internet search skills were not up to the task of getting the answer to these questions. (Perhaps your reporters can do better.) But I did find this on the A.C.L.U. website:

“Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88 percent were for simply having marijuana. Nationwide, the arrest data revealed one consistent trend: significant racial bias. Despite roughly equal usage rates, blacks are 3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana.”

How depressing and infuriating is it, then, to read that the majority stakeholders in Curaleaf, the corporation behind the recreational cannabis store in Provincetown that is expecting to pull anywhere from $10,000 to $90,000 a day, are — Russian oligarchs?

Who do we have to thank for that decision?

Chris Affleck
Cambridge and Truro

Looking at Ourselves

To the editor:

The cover story of the Sunday, Jan.19 New York Times, with the headline “Art Forces a Small Southern City to Re-think Its Image,” is about Newnan, Ga., where photographer Mary Beth Meehan hung 17 larger-than-life portraits on buildings throughout the city.

All I could think of was Norma Holt and her photographs of older Provincetown women that grace the fish house at the end of Cabral’s Wharf.

The president of the artist-in-residence program of the Georgia town was quoted as saying, “I don’t know if Newnan had looked at itself this closely before now.” That is what I think Norma Holt’s visionary project does for us.

Through her singular portraits she shows us who we are as a whole. Looking into their eyes links us to our past, our fishing industry, and community. Those photographs make me think of who we are now, as a town, and who we will be in the future. Who do we want to be? If our public art leaves us with questions like that, we are lucky, I think, as lucky as we are to have had Norma Holt.

Mary DeAngelis
Provincetown