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Arts Briefs and Listings

Arts Briefs for July 2 through July 8

By The Independent Jul 2, 2020

Nauset Light at night: a vision at once wondrous and eerie.

Lee Glickenhaus’s multi-exposure compositions of waves are transformational and abstract in intriguing ways. (Photos Lee Glickenhaus)

Clam Trees photograph — This shot is Glickenhaus’s take on the Clam Trees of Rock Harbor. Fabulists like to tell gullible tourists that clams fall from the trees and are plentiful there.

Impressions of Cape Cod: Local Color

Photographer Lee Glickenhaus has a decidedly unpretentious take on his artistic vision. He may be inspired by Ansel Adams and Joel Meyerowitz, but his self-published book of Cape Cod land- and seascapes, Impressions of Cape Cod, has no precious packaging, no spiritual subtext, no dreamlike extremes. He clearly likes to play with multiple exposures and enhanced color in Photoshop. But he has a curious eye, a great sense of composition, and a subtle way with narrative. His Cape Cod subject matter is familiar but not his approach.

“I’m completely self-taught,” he says. “I was the photo editor of my high school yearbook. But I was not good. I knew the fundamentals. And I looked at tens of thousands of other people’s photos and YouTube videos.”

He was a lawyer for 15 years, then

owned an internet business for another 20. He has a second home in Brewster, and he was determined to learn how to shoot well and put together a book on Cape Cod. It’s available at mid-Cape bookstores and online (for a $10 digital or $50 signed hard copy) at capecodphotobook.com. There are also free sample pages, which are very persuasive. —Howard Karren

Of Provincetown, Lost and Found

Lost and Found: Time, Tide and Treasures is, in essence, a history of Provincetown via beachcombed objects: arrowheads, whale bones, buoys, and sailing ropes. “The book is a study of a culture, in a way,” says co-author Amy Heller. “It is a love letter to old Provincetown.”

Co-author Gail Browne says that when she finds a piece of treasure on the beach, be it a pottery shard, china doll head, or coin, she is instantly transported back in time, imagining the person who once grasped it.

The book’s artifacts are also reflexive: they reveal something about its authors and the beachcombing artists — Judy Berkowitz, Betty Bodian, Varujan Boghosian, and Paul Bowen — whose collections fill its pages. Collections speak volumes about their collectors. “I’m nondiscriminatory,” Browne says of her beachcombing style. “I see the beauty in everything.”

“Betty Bodian is really attracted to glass stoppers and bottles,” Heller says. “You can see a direct correlation with the colors in her paintings.”

Multitudes of beach glass collected by Gail Browne. (Photo Amy Heller)

Heller writes of the delight she took as a child beachcombing with her mother in Provincetown, while Browne writes of beachcombing with her twin daughters. Indeed, there is something childlike and magical about the activity. “I don’t think about any bills when I’m beachcombing,” Browne says. “I don’t think of the state of the world.” Adds Heller: “During this pandemic, I’ve reconnected with nature.”

The book itself complements the experience of beachcombing. In its pages are images of windswept sand — Heller’s photographs of meticulously arranged multitudes form grids of like objects that tell a narrative. Even the dust jacket has the texture of sand. “It’s a magnificent obsession,” Heller says. “You can’t stop yourself. If you do, you are a denying a part of your being.”

Lost and Found: Time, Tide and Treasures was published last month by Schiffer Books, lists for $34.99, and can be purchased from East End Books Ptown, Bookshop.org, and other retailers online. —Saskia Maxwell Keller

Summer Melody is an oil on canvas board by Robert Glisson at the Alden Gallery in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Alden Gallery)

Three-person Show at Alden Gallery

The Alden Gallery, at 423 Commercial St. in Provincetown, is offering its first show of the season from Friday, July 3, through July 16.

Work by three artists will be featured: Anne Salas, Linda Reedy, and Robert Glisson. During the Covid-19 crisis, hours are limited to noon to 5 p.m. daily. Appointments can be made by calling 508-487-4230 during gallery hours, or 646-483-8164 at other times.

Catalan Sun 1, an oil on canvas by Michael Page, is at the Hutson Gallery. (Photo courtesy Hutson Gallery)

Hutson Gallery Launches ‘Thirteenth Season’

The Hutson Gallery, at 432 Commercial St. in Provincetown, is presenting “The Thirteenth Season” on Friday, July 3, through July 16. The gallery is open daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment.

The exhibit is a group show of gallery artists — Harry Folsom, Peter Macara, Gay Malin, Jesse Mireles, Felice Newman, Rose Olson, Michael Page, Lynda Schlosberg, Joe Trepiccione, Luanne E Witkowski, and Gary Zack — and guest artist Rowena Perkins.

A Radio Show to Di For

Not only is Lady Di and her weekly show, Leggs Up and Dancing, on WOMR-FM 92.1, back on the air on Friday, July 3, from 5 to 7 p.m., she’s also one of the first DJs on Outermost Community Radio to be literally back in the station’s Provincetown studios, which have been closed during the coronavirus pandemic.

After a four-month hiatus due to health problems, Lady Di will be back singing and grooving to the best tunes of the ’50s through the ’80s. Listeners can send in their requests to [email protected] in the week leading up to the show.

“With the music I play, I always try to lift people’s spirits,” Lady Di tells the Independent. “And I sing along with it, not necessarily in tune.”

Lady Di, who will have been on air 21 years this July, has thousands of listeners all over the world (streaming on womr.org). “I feel my purpose is to bring happiness to people, and maybe a little bit of light if there is any darkness in their lives,” she says. She has raised money for WOMR and countless charities. Lady Di is also known as Vernon Porter — Mason, life coach, and sought-after wedding officiant.

After the pandemic, Di says, “I hope people get educated, appreciate how precious life is, and learn to keep an open heart and open mind. Every single person is different, and they all have different attributes. If you treat people right, you’ll be treated right yourself.” —Saskia Maxwell Keller

Lucy Clark at Berta Walker Gallery

Ballston Moon, by Lucy Clark, four panels and 16 by 64 inches, is on view at Berta Walker Gallery. (Photo courtesy Berta Walker Gallery)

There’s still time to see the current show at Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown, featuring the work of Deb Mell, Joseph Diggs, and Lucy Clark. It’s on view through July 11. The show is part of “A Season of First Landings,” celebrating Provincetown 400.

Clark, who is based in Washington, D.C., and Truro, is one of the newer artists at Walker’s gallery. “Her current paintings reveal the motions and emotions of land and sea that the artist has represented through the rhythms of line and color,” the announcement for the exhibit says.

Berta Walker Gallery, at 208 Bradford St. in Provincetown, is open by appointment only, noon to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. To make an appointment, call 941-350-7135 or go to calendly.com/bertawalker.

Leggs Up and Dancing – WOMR-FM 92.1

By Teresa Parker Jul 1, 2020

“With the music I play, I always try to lift people’s spirits,” Lady Di tells the Independent. “And I sing along with it, not necessarily in tune.”

MYSTERIES

A Whodunit at Whaler’s Wharf

Jeannette de Beauvoir draws inspiration from Provincetown

By Saskia Maxwell Keller May 28, 2020

The Matinée Murders, the newest in Jeannette de Beauvoir’s Sydney Riley series of mystery novels, may be a work of fiction, but it is full of real people and takes place in a town that we know and love.

In it, Sydney, our protagonist, a wedding planner with a knack for the macabre, investigates a series of murders that occur during the Provincetown International Film Festival. The festival is put on by the Provincetown Film Society in mid-June, and many screenings are held at the Waters Edge Cinema, which the society owns, in Whaler’s Wharf. In the process of tracking down the killer, Sydney runs into such real-life personages as Lady Di, the popular WOMR DJ; accountant Chip Capelli; and Whaler’s Wharf owner Ben deRuyter.

Not to worry: you are unlikely to happen on your name hidden within these pages. De Beauvoir says she always asks permission before immortalizing her friends in paper and ink, and never makes them the murderer or victim.

Jeannette de Beauvoir, at Whaler’s Wharf in Provincetown, revisits the site of the fictional crimes she wrote about in her new mystery novel. (Photo Howard Karren)

“Some have joked that I am Provincetown’s Jessica Fletcher,” she says with a chuckle, referring to the detective played by Angela Lansbury in the long-running TV series Murder, She Wrote, “and, at some point, I’ll have to go somewhere else, because I’ll have murdered everybody!”

Though the film festival ended up being canceled this year due to the pandemic, de Beauvoir’s book launch, originally scheduled to be part of it, is marching forward. It will take place virtually, via Zoom on Friday, May 29, hosted by East End Books Ptown. To tune in, visit the bookstore’s Facebook page. There will be a reading, giveaways, and other surprises. Fifty percent of signed book sales (online at eastendbooksptown.com) will go to the Provincetown Film Society to benefit Waters Edge Cinema.

Indeed, the cancellation of the film fest lends the book an extra dose of unreality, an irony not lost on de Beauvoir herself. “If a murder happens during a festival that doesn’t take place,” she says, “is the person still dead?”

But that doesn’t overly concern de Beauvoir. Her Provincetown murder mysteries are meant to be escapist entertainment, she says, and not stories that mirror real life.

So, who is Jeannette de Beauvoir? Her name, perhaps surprisingly, is not a nom de plume. Regarding her relation to the feminist theorist Simone, of the same last name, de Beauvoir says, coyly, “I don’t know that we’re related, but I also don’t know that we’re not.”

Half French, half American, she grew up in Angers, a city in western France, but also lived in Cambridge and Montreal before settling in Provincetown. At first, she enjoyed quiet winters here, then moved in full-time 12 years ago. “My first summer, I walked down Commercial Street and wondered what I had gotten myself into,” she says, “as I tend to be a pretty solitary person.”

And being introverted by nature, she says her life “hasn’t changed all that dramatically” since the pandemic. While sheltering in place in Provincetown, “I sit in a room and write, and that’s what I love to do.” She has been recording her WOMR radio show, Arts Week, broadcast on Thursdays at 12:30 p.m., from home, alternating weekly with Candace Hammond.

De Beauvoir’s literary influences include Mary Stewart, a British novelist who wrote romantic thrillers, and, more recently, mystery writer Phil Rickman. Fascinated as she is by “liminal spaces,” where strange things happen, de Beauvoir says that her novels always have a strong sense of place, whether they’re set in Provincetown, Montreal, or France. She’s especially interested in locales where secrets and history permeate the landscape.

The Matinée Murders, by Jeannette de Beauvoir, published by HomePort Press, will be launched this week at a virtual event at East End Books Ptown. (Photo HomePort Press)

Though she describes her audience as “cozy mystery readers” who have never been to Provincetown — stereotypically, Midwestern housewives who belong to knitting clubs — she is hoping that The Matinée Murders will also be enjoyed by Provincetown natives who will get an added kick from recognizing familiar names and places.

The book can be appreciated on its own, but de Beauvoir gets particular satisfaction in having her characters evolve over the course of a series. “The people are far more interesting to me than the plot,” she says.

De Beauvoir started the Sydney Riley series when, distressed by the current political reality, she wanted to expose her mainstream readership to people they might consider “other,” that is, gay or trans. “If you see these characters, and hear their voices, you might be a little less inclined to think of them as just ‘those people,’ ” she says. “That’s how you change minds, and that’s how you change hearts.

“Provincetown is a great tourist destination,” she adds, “but it is also a place where people who aren’t accepted elsewhere can be accepted. And wouldn’t it be nice if I could spread a little of that, through my books, out into the universe.”

Murder Will Out

The event: Reading and launch of The Matinée Murders, by Jeannette de Beauvoir

The time: Friday, May 29, at 5 p.m.

The place: East End Books Ptown’s Facebook page

The cost: Free

Arts Briefs and Listings

Arts Briefs for May 14 through May 20

By The Independent May 14, 2020

When Sheltering Is Not So Safe

Playwright Candace Perry writes that “a portion of the Clothesline Project has been hanging in our yard in Wellfleet. We take in the shirts each evening and don’t hang them in inclement weather.”

The Clothesline Project originated in Hyannis in 1990, after members of Cape Cod’s Women’s Defense Agenda learned that while 58,000 soldiers lost their lives in the Vietnam War, 51,000 U.S. women were killed by the men who claimed to love them. The Clothesline Project has been displayed locally and all over the world, including last year at the Wellfleet Public Library.

“Each shirt on the clothesline tells a woman’s story,” Perry says. “At this time of sheltering in place there is great fear that sheltering is not so safe for many women and children. It’s in our yard in Wellfleet now to call attention to the concern about battering and to let women know there is help.”

To find out more, go to clotheslineproject.info. Independence House, the Cape Cod resource center addressing domestic and sexual violence, has a 24-hour hotline at 800-439-6507.

WOMR DJs Treat Covid-19 With All That’s Jazz

When the coronavirus hit, Henry and Jane Fischer, the husband and wife DJ team who have been regulars on WOMR in Provincetown since 2005, had to improvise. Their radio show, Dixieland Jazz, Etc., encompasses all types of jazz, ragtime, and swing — “the ‘etcetera’ covers a lot of territory,” Henry tells the Independent. Though the show used to air on odd-numbered Sundays, these days, it’s been almost every Sunday from 9 a.m. to noon (92.1 FM, 91.3 in Orleans, or womr.org). And instead of doing shows live at the WOMR studio in Provincetown, they prerecord them from home.

The couple use an audio editing program to alternate music tracks with prerecorded descriptions or recaps before sending it off to be broadcast. Listeners can email instead of calling in requests. When the Fischers were at WOMR’s studio, they mostly relied on its vast library of recordings, but now they have to comb through their own CD collection, much of it discovered at the swap shop.

Working from home has presented challenges. “Our house has very high ceilings, and it’s hard to get rid of the echo,” Henry says. “We tried using some couch cushions to deaden the sound.” Jane complains that it’s hard to maintain spontaneity with a prerecorded show.

Still, it’s a rewarding way to spend your time during quarantine — Henry and Jane, who taught physics and math, respectively, have been retired since 2001. And it’s a great opportunity to play music by artists who can’t currently perform.

“I have learned so much about jazz since starting the show,” Jane says, though she claims not to be a “moldy fig” or a die-hard jazz purist. —Saskia Maxwell Keller

Tin Pan Alley Home Edition

Sheree Dunwell will be live on Tin Pan Alley’s Facebook page on Sunday at 7 p.m. (Photo Community Auditions)

During the coronavirus lockdown, while Provincetown’s Tin Pan Alley is offering meatballs and mac ’n’ cheese to go, it’s also presenting a kind of “musical takeout” to enjoy at home. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday from 7 to 8 p.m., you can live-stream concerts by the musicians who usually frequent Tin Pan Alley’s piano bar stage, right from its Facebook page.

The virtual concerts are free, co-owner Jack Kelly tells the Independent, and Tin Pan Alley pays the musicians for their time and talent, but he hopes viewers will contribute what they can to the virtual tip jar.

“This is just a purely selfless act to support artists at a time when they have been hurt the hardest,” says Tin Pan Alley’s musical director, Mike Flanagan.

On tap this week are Mike and Brendan Ryan performing on Thursday, May 14. Boston-based singer Sheree Dunwell is live on Sunday, May 17. Flanagan says of Dunwell, “She can sing any style, and she is actually trained in opera. Her musical chops, the way she uses her instrument, are amazing.” —Saskia Maxwell Keller

HEAVENLY CUTS

Local Musicians Mourn the Passing of John Prine

His sharp lyrics were buoyed by a smoke-and-whiskey twang

By Will Powers Apr 23, 2020

On April 7, America lost singer-songwriter John Prine to Covid-19. He was a giant in the world of country and folk music — genres that, it may surprise some to know, resonated deeply on the Outer Cape. So did Prine. Maybe that’s because he was, deep down, a poet. On April 14, Fred Boak hosted a tribute to him on WOMR.

Prine often grappled with death in his lyrics, usually with a heavy dose of humor. On the final song of his most recent album, 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness, Prine, who had survived two bouts of cancer, sings with ironic good cheer about shaking God’s hand in heaven and smoking a nine-mile-long cigarette.

Jim Rohrer, a Wellfleetian and lifelong mandolin player, recalls meeting Prine backstage after a performance in 1973. It was Rohrer’s senior year of high school, and a friend who was fanatic about Prine’s self-titled 1971 debut album persuaded Rohrer to hitchhike with him from New York City to Buffalo for a folk festival where Prine was playing.

“We saw his concerts at the festival,” says Rohrer, “and then we were walking down some hallway and there’s John Prine, sitting on the floor. So, we sat down with him, and we talked to him about his music. He shared his whiskey with us, and we shared our cigarettes with him.”

Rohrer, who became a professional touring bluegrass musician in the late ’80s and early ’90s, says that Prine’s music stayed with him. And not only him — some of Prine’s tunes have become bluegrass standards, such as “Paradise,” from that debut album. Rohrer also recalls reading somewhere that Prine would tune his guitar’s B string a little flat to “make it sound more lonesome.”

“Ever since I read that,” says Rohrer, “whenever I tune my guitar, I do that, too.”

Prine claimed not to care much about politics. But one of his earliest songs, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” a Vietnam War lament, rang true to a new generation of listeners some 40 years later during the war in Iraq.

A younger generation of musicians on the Cape has also been influenced by Prine. Alex Brewer, a country-folk songwriter who lives in Wellfleet and hosts Feed Your Love, the monthly open mic night at Preservation Hall, says he really got into Prine’s music in 2010. His favorite thing about Prine was his emotional range. “He was super-serious at times and funny, too,” says Brewer. “His range is as wide as anybody’s.”

It was partly this range and sensitivity that Brewer recalls being influential for him when, eight years ago, he was trying to write a song about someone he’d known who had committed suicide. He asked himself, “What would John Prine say?” Who else was better at giving difficult emotions a gentle twist?

Brewer, who studied English at Colgate, compares Prine to the New England poet Robert Frost, in that they both possess a certain restraint in their writing — they both valued saying “enough” of the truth and not going overboard into sentimentality.

Monica Rizzio, who grew up in East Texas and now lives in Yarmouth Port, was also aided by Prine in her songwriting. In 2007, after joining the Cape-based band Tripping Lily, Rizzio met Prine at a gig in Cambridge. “He was very, very humble,” she says. The title song on her most recent album, Sunshine Is Free, was consciously written in Prine’s style. Rizzio says she tried to capture his upbeat side and his silliness, and was overjoyed when critics picked up on this, calling it her “John Prine-ish tune.”

Those of us who are heartbroken at Prine’s death can take solace in the fact that local musicians such as Rohrer, Brewer, and Rizzio are keeping him in mind when they tune their guitars and pen their lyrics. In one of his many morbidly comic songs, 1973’s “Please Don’t Bury Me,” Prine almost seems to predict that we’d keep him around after death:

“Please don’t bury me/ Down in the cold cold ground,” he writes. “No I’d druther have ’em cut me up/ And pass me all around/ Throw my brain in a hurricane/ The blind can have my eyes/ And the deaf can take both my ears/ If they don’t mind the size.”

PANDEMIC

WOMR’s John Perrone, 70, Dies of Covid-19

The popular host of the radio show 'Night Shift'

By K.C. Myers Apr 9, 2020

PROVINCETOWN — John Perrone, 70, whose passion for and knowledge of Motown attracted fans from all over world, died of the novel coronavirus on April 5, 2020, the same day the Provincetown Rescue Squad transported him to Cape Cod Hospital.

For more than two weeks, he had been suffering with flu-like symptoms at his Provincetown apartment, where he lived alone, said his cousin, Paula Perrone of South Yarmouth. Though he could not get one of the limited coronavirus tests at first, Outer Cape Health Services did test him on March 25 and he found out he was positive on March 27.

His employer and neighbors were leaving him food at his doorstep; that is how a friend observed he was not doing well on April 5. The friend called 911, and Perrone was taken to the hospital, Paula said.

John Perrone at the WOMR studio, spinning Motown. (Courtesy John Braden)

His cousin and his neighbor had been checking on him frequently by phone. By all accounts, he seemed to be okay, said Tom Boland, owner of Far Land Provisions, where John worked part-time. He had been the afternoon cashier since 2017.

His condition deteriorated rapidly, Boland said. Many of his friends and fellow volunteers at WOMR community radio did not even know he was ill.

“We got sucker punched by a Facebook post,” said Hank Janowsky, a fellow disc jockey and friend.

On Sunday, Paula got the dreaded phone call from a doctor at Cape Cod Hospital. She then called John Braden, executive director of WOMR, and the Far Land owners to ask them to share the news on Facebook. No one from either place has become ill, Paula said.

WOMR closed its studio on March 19. John had not been in the building since March 17, Braden said.

For two decades, fans of the radio show “Night Shift” (Tuesdays from 9 to midnight) and thousands of followers on his YouTube channel, Mosogotam, listened with Perrone to his collection of Motown records and marveled at his ability to remix and stretch versions of Motown classics, Paula said. He had great musical passion.

His extended version of Someday We’ll Be Together by the Supremes had 9.3 million views on YouTube.

“He had a very wry sense of humor,” said Andy Rahorcsak, his friend and fellow DJ. “And he had fans from all over the world who would listen to his show.”

Perrone had connections with people in the recording industry. Part of the fun of his show was interviews with Motown greats. Members of the Supremes were his friends, Rahorcsak said.

Perrone was born in 1949 outside Worcester. He and Paula were part of a large Italian family with many cousins. They would travel to North Truro and Provincetown for vacations.

John became a registered nurse while in the Navy, his cousin said. He lived in Washington, D.C., before moving to Provincetown about 20 years ago. When he retired from nursing at Seashore Point, he got his job at Far Land for what he called “cigarette money,” Janowsky said.

“He was great to work with,” Boland said. “Customers loved him. He would really engage with them.”

Arts Briefs and Listings

Arts Briefs for April 9 through April 15

By Howard Karren Apr 9, 2020

The Porkchop Express Does the Cooking at Home

WOMR has asked its DJs to write to the Independent and describe the experience of recording at home, since Outermost Community Radio (92.1 FM) recently closed its live Provincetown studios due to the Covid-19 crisis. Here’s what we heard from Sean Gardner (a.k.a. DJ Jack Burton or DJ Potato Salad), co-owner of the sandwich shop Pop+Dutch in Provincetown and the host of the soul music show The Porkchop Express, which airs every other Monday night from 9 to 11 p.m., including this Monday, April 13:

WOMR DJ — Sean Gardner, DJ of The Porkchop Express on WOMR, records at home. (Photo courtesy Sean Gardner)

“I was able to transition pretty quickly into recording shows from home during this quarantine period,” Gardner said via email. “Because I already own most of the equipment I needed, I was able, with the help of Matty ‘Dread’ Dunn, to piece together the remaining components and was pretty quick to getting shows on the air.

“I know firsthand, through social media and listener calls, how much people appreciate the local voices coming out of their radios. In our current period of uncertainty, it’s nice to hear those familiar voices and get some sense of comfort and normalcy. In the first week of my quarantine, I recorded shows designed to soothe the brains of our listeners, eclectic sets to go with our uncertain times, all meant to provide some comfort. It was a special treat to gather around my tiny quarantined family and listen to our voices as we cooked, played cards, read books, and recorded more radio.

“The schedule at WOMR is back up to (almost) normal, as those voices I’ve been missing put in the time to learn new technology and share their musical (and spoken word) world with us. I’m thrilled to play a small part in that.”

Cream or Cello With Your Coffee?

Parker Ousley practices his cello at Kohi Coffee in Provincetown in between customers. (Photo Howard Karren)

If you’ve been to Kohi Coffee Co. at 199 Commercial St. in Provincetown recently, you might have wondered about the barista playing a cello in the back. That’s Parker Ousley, a cellist and singer who used to be based in Boston. After the pandemic canceled all of his gigs and closed down the two Boston branches of Kohi, he decided to relocate to Provincetown and keep working for the branch here.

That hasn’t stopped him from practicing, however. “Since we’re takeout only now, I’m the only person in the little shop most of the time — perfect for practicing,” Ousley says. “In the back, near the window that overlooks the water, I’ll stack a couple milk crates to make a seat. These days I’ve been doing a lot of free improvisation. It’s sort of the musician’s version of a diary entry, I guess — my own way of trying to process all of this.”

Parker is no stranger to playing the cello in unusual locations. He made a video, for example, playing Donovan’s “Universal Soldier” in the middle of the woods. “People often think of the cello as an orchestral or formal instrument,” Ousley says, “but it makes more sense to me, considering that it sounds so much like the human voice, to play it in all kinds of places.”

Since graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2018, Parker has performed in a variety of genres, from classical to funk. His technique incorporates guitar-like strumming and fiddle-like bowing patterns. And other than Kohi, you can find his band, Dalia & The Big Violin, on YouTube and Instagram. —Saskia Maxwell Keller

Front-row Virtual Seats to the Provincetown Theater

Whoever originated the phrase “The show must go on” probably didn’t have any inkling of what the coronavirus would do to the theater world. Broadway is dark. Lincoln Center is dark. And everything there is to do in Provincetown with other people is on indefinite hiatus.

The Provincetown Theater has a solution: virtual programming. The Mosquito Story Slam that was originally scheduled for Saturday, April 11, at 7 p.m. (the theme: “Spring Awakening”) will be presented live at the appointed time, only online at provincetowntheater.org/virtual-programming/. Favorite storytellers from slams of the past will do their thing, and the public can submit prompts via email at [email protected] or by visiting bit.ly/mosquitoapril. The virtual performance is free, but donations (submitted online) are appreciated.

And that’s not all. Over the next few weeks, the theater will present recorded performances of past productions, starting with The Laramie Project, a powerful real-life drama about the murder of Matthew Shepard, streaming free (donations appreciated) from Thursday, April 9, at 7 p.m. through Sunday, April 12, on the theater’s YouTube channel.

The Provincetown Theatre's The Laramie Project — The Provincetown Theater’s production of The Laramie Project will be streamed for free online from Thursday through Sunday. (Photo courtesy Provincetown Theater)

The theater’s artistic director, David Drake, adds, “As we did with the production of The Laramie Project in 2018, we will be hosting a ‘community conversation’ for an hour on Tuesday, April 14, beginning at 4 p.m. on our YouTube channel. Community panelists (to be announced) will be speaking about ‘The Importance of Telling Our Stories in a Time of Crisis.’ For details and updates, go to provincetowntheater.org.”

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letters, March 26, 2020

From Susan M. Reverby, Ian Edwards, and Debbie Ullman

By Our Readers Mar 26, 2020

Advice for Second-Home Owners

To the editor:

The Wellfleet Seasonal Residents Assoc. (formerly Wellfleet Nonresident Taxpayers Assoc.) has been keeping members apprised of the effect of the coronavirus on the Outer Cape. I am president of WSRA; the views here are my own.

Those who are thinking of going to their second homes should consider this: people coming from off Cape, even if they feel well, could be healthy carriers of the virus and spread it to others who help them open their homes, turn on their water, or pass them too closely at the grocery. Many full-time residents on the Cape are older, with pre-existing conditions that make them more vulnerable.

Most important, health resources on the Cape are limited. Cape Cod Hospital has only 24 I.C.U. beds. A New York Times story posted Monday quoted the Provincetown Select Board’s Lise King: “If you come here and fall ill you are taking a risk that we won’t have the capacity to help you.”

Overstretching health resources on the Cape affects people with other life-threatening ills. The health services are experiencing the same shortages as other hospitals across the nation, with fewer resources.

In “real life,” I am a medical historian. All epidemics are different, and comparisons to the 1918-19 flu pandemic have limits. Yet we do know from carefully analyzed data of that event what made a difference: those communities that closed down had many fewer deaths.

Please consider all this if you are thinking of coming down to your second home. I also understand the meaning of “home” and how many of us feel about this special place on Earth. But right now, public health measures matter.

Susan M. Reverby
Boston and Wellfleet

Deep Time

To the editor:

Thanks to Dennis Minsky for his thoughtful reflections in “Deep Time and This Day” (March 19) on our obligations to the future.

At the best of times, when we aren’t facing the immediate threat of a global health crisis, it may seem impractical to think about long-horizon time. But it’s hardly absurd to plan for a viable future for generations not yet born.

We often plan for benefits that might accrue after we’re gone. Architects of great cathedrals understood they would never see their visions realized and that future generations would reap the benefits. Anyone with a retirement or life insurance plan knows that, while the future is unknown, it makes sense to save. We’re actually quite good at long-term thinking.

Yet we continue to rip off future generations by knowingly using technologies like fossil fuels that diminish those futures. Is it just lip service to plan for our kids’ better tomorrows? Is that too radical?

Ian Edwards
Provincetown

The writer is founder of Broto: Art–Climate–Science.

Renewing for Life

To the editor:

Two root systems of community for this 12th-generation Eastham woman, living alone among her locust trees, with her birds, books, squirrels, and view of Great Pond: WOMR and the Independent.

Listening to the voice and spirit of Cape Cod: Robert Johnson, sitting in Carol Courneen’s seat this morning, is dishing out heart food in what Jay Critchley in the paper calls these “evanescent moments.”

I’ve barely turned the radio off. Yesterday, Bob Weiser already had me with Eliza Gilkyson and Bruce Cockburn before he put on Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”: “Everybody knows the boat is leaking; everybody knows the captain lied.”

My thanks and love also to the crew of the Independent. I canceled my subscription to the New Yorker to save money, and because after reading each new issue of the local paper, I was getting too far behind on New Yorkers. Not the same, but chock-a-block with familiar, informed, entertaining voices.

When the rain stops I’ll be heading out with my loppers after reading about pruning. And as you create beautiful modular space for your growing circulation with Peter McMahon’s insights, you can renew my subscription for life.

Debbie Ullman
Eastham

Arts Briefs and Listings

Arts Briefs for March 26 through April 1

By Howard Karren Mar 26, 2020

Jim Broussard painting — The Provincetown Public Library, as painted by Jim Broussard. (Photo courtesy Alden Gallery)

Doors Are Closed, but Libraries Still Offer Services

The library is a lifeline for people who need internet access, public information, books, movies, or social contact. So, with all four Outer Cape libraries closed, what resources are available to library patrons?

Amy Raff, director of the Provincetown Public Library, emphasized that people should check the library website for updates, as information changes frequently. She can be reached by phone at 508-487-7094 during regular business hours, or email her at [email protected].

The Eastham Public Library will be staffed to answer phone calls from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, and the Wellfleet Public Library will answer phone calls from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Saturday. Library staff can answer questions and provide help setting up library cards, accessing online services, and providing tech help. Those wishing to reach the Truro Public Library can send an email to [email protected].

Patrons cannot check out books at this time. The Mass. Library Association cited curbside checkout services as creating an “undue risk for whole communities,” because materials cannot be sanitized.

CLAMS cardholders can check out e-books using the Libby app. If you do not have a library card, you can register online for free and access all library services at clamsnet.org.

The free wi-fi at the libraries continues to be available 24 hours a day without a password. All are welcome to use the wi-fi from the parking lot or by sitting outside the library while maintaining social distance.

All late fees will be waived during this period of closure.

Debra DeJonker Berry, director of the Eastham Public Library, said that she hopes to have some staff-led interactive programming on social media soon. She encourages people to use the many streaming services and resources for entertainment and education available through CLAMS. —Molly Newman

Ilona Royce Smithkin to Celebrate Her 100^th

Artist, cabaret chanteuse, bohemian fashion icon, and Provincetown landlord Ilona Royce Smithkin will turn 100 years old on Friday, March 27.

Ilona, who lives year-round in the top-floor apartment at Karilon house on Commercial Street, has asked friends and well-wishers to call by phone and not visit, due to the current COVID-19 health crisis.

She was born in Poland and studied art in Berlin and Antwerp, and, after emigrating to the United States in the late 1930s, at the Art Students League of New York. She has painted countless portraits of the denizens of Provincetown and Greenwich Village, where she had a rent-controlled apartment that she gave up a few years ago.

Famous for her neon red hair and red eyelashes, which she made herself, and her exuberant personality, Ilona was one of the subjects of Advanced Style, a 2014 fashion documentary about older women. She was also known for her “Eyelash Cabaret,” performed with Zoë Lewis on piano. Her artwork has been on sale for years at the Karilon Gallery/Angela Russo Fine Art.

The name of the seven-bedroom Karilon house where Ilona lives is a portmanteau of her name and her friend Karen Katzel’s. They own the cottages and apartments at Poor Richard’s Landing next door.

Curtis Speer, who took the photograph of Ilona above, said he got to know her by taking her figure drawing class at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. When he asked Ilona one Tuesday if he could photograph her, she told him, “If you wait until Friday, I will wear my eyelashes for you.”

“I wish her the very best, a happy birthday,” Angela Russo told the Independent. “I hope she lives another 100 years.”

Paul Lisicky to Give Live-Stream Reading

Paul Lisicky will read from his new book, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, at East End Books Ptown on Friday, March 27, at 5 p.m.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the town’s shelter-in-place mandate, the store itself is closed but the reading will be streamed live on East End Books Ptown’s Facebook page.

Later is about Lisicky’s time in Provincetown in the early 1990s. It was published by Graywolf Press on March 17.

This alfresco exhibit of children’s art is at the corner of Depot and Truro Center roads in Truro. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

Children’s Art Goes Drive-by in Truro Center

TRURO — An exhibit of art by the Sustainable CAPE Children’s Community Garden Group, “Fabulous Fungi,” couldn’t be squelched by the coronavirus pandemic. Since all exhibition spaces have been closed, Sustainable CAPE set up the exhibit outdoors, at the corner of Depot and Truro Center roads, in front of Conservation Framing.

The artwork, depicting various species of mushrooms, was created by local children in the Community Garden Group, which met weekly at the Truro Public Library until it was closed due to the health crisis. A sign on the road said it all: “Social distance with a smile.”

WOMR Will Not Be Silenced

PROVINCETOWN — The threat of coronavirus may have stopped the volunteer DJs on WOMR, Outermost Community Radio, from coming in to the studio. But the show must go on, so many are learning how to prerecord shows from home.

John Braden, the station’s executive director, said he and the operations manager have put together lots of shows recently, but the technology exists to combine music and then drop in public service announcements and comments by the host from the comfort (and isolation) of home. Co-hosts are using the online platform Zoom to prerecord together from their homes, he added.

Operations Manager Matthew Dunn, a.k.a. Matty Dread, who hosts the show Soul Funky Train, also has the technology to do live shows from his house and he will try it soon, Braden said on Friday.

The importance of radio stations has been elevated now that so many people are stuck inside and there is the need to stay current in a constantly changing environment.

“We’re getting a lot of positive feedback,” Braden said. —K.C. Myers

Seventh Season of Twenty Summers Postponed

PROVINCETOWN — The five-week 2020 Season of Twenty Summers, originally scheduled from mid-May to mid-June, has been postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis and tentatively rescheduled from Sept. 25 through Oct. 17.

The announcement was made over the weekend in an email to supporters from Kristina Kearns, the event’s executive director.

Most of the events of Twenty Summers are held at the Hawthorne Barn on Miller Hill Road in Provincetown. There are talks with writers, artists, architects, reporters, and designers, as well as musical performances and artist residencies. This spring would have been the seventh season of Twenty Summers.

In the announcement, Kearns suggested that enthusiasts of Twenty Summers programming can view past performances and talks on video at 20summers.org.

letter from the editor

Fishing on My Side

By Edward Miller Nov 21, 2019

The New York Times reported on Monday that 47 percent of Americans say it’s hard for them to know whether the information they encounter is true. Many people have simply stopped even trying to follow the news because it makes them feel “numb and disoriented, struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact.”

The authors of the Times story quoted a 50-year-old school administrator from West Virginia, who said, “There’s so much information that’s biased, that no one believes anything. There is so much out there and you don’t know what to believe, so it’s like there is nothing.”

This is pretty discouraging for a news junkie like me. Figuring out what to believe is how I happily spend a great deal of my time. I understand why people are turned off by the news these days, but the answer is not to stop believing that news has value.

I got excited this week when I read K.C. Myers’s story about the three finalists for the job of Provincetown town manager (see page 1). One of them, I learned, lives in Webster on Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, which I once years ago spent many hours learning to pronounce. I was told back then that the name, in Nipmuc, means “You fish on your side, I’ll fish on my side, and no one will fish in the middle.” I believed it, of course.

That was before the internet. This week when I looked up the lake, which is said to have the longest name of any place in the U.S., I discovered that it has had many names over the years, and that the tongue-twistingly long one I knew was apparently invented, along with its supposed “meaning,” by Laurence J. Daly, editor of the Webster Times, around 1921.

So I had to revise my cherished belief about that crazy name based on this newly unearthed information. Does that bother me? Well, maybe a little. No one likes to find out that he has been broadcasting a false story for years. Now I have a new story, though, about a small-town newspaper editor, no less. What was he thinking? Was he trying to put Webster on the tourist map? Was he just having some fun?

For me, the fun part of newspaper work is digging around and trying to find out what actually happened and why. Sometimes you don’t know what to believe. And sometimes you discover things that lead you to change your mind about what you used to believe.

The Times article concludes that the loss of a shared sense of reliably believable news is causing people to avoid the news entirely. I’m happy to report that, based on the number of readers who have already subscribed to the Independent at least, that’s definitely not happening on the Outer Cape.

letter from the editor

Where We Stand

By Edward Miller Nov 14, 2019

“Why did you call it the Provincetown Independent?” That’s probably the question we are asked most frequently at our Open Newsroom sessions at the town libraries and in casual conversations about the reasons for launching a newspaper to cover the Outer Cape.

The Independent, it’s true, is about much more than just Provincetown. Our mission is to cover all four of our towns with equal depth and insight into local government, history, and culture. Why not call it the Outer Cape Independent, or something similar that gives a fairer sense of our coverage area?

We thought about it seriously. And we certainly understand the sense of pride that advocates of Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham feel about those towns. We very nearly named the paper the Outermost Post, which got good reactions from many of the people we tested it on.

Naming a new venture is a fraught business. Once you pick a name, you’re pretty much stuck with it. I’m reminded of the ill-fated restaurant in Wellfleet that was named “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” Someone thought that was cute, I imagine. It’s tough to recover from that kind of stumble.

The more we thought about newspaper names, the more we were drawn to the ones that had a solid geographical anchor, that were grounded in a clearly identified place that was right there on the nameplate. Where I grew up the local paper was the Bergen Record. I never liked it as much after its name was shortened to the Record.

I have come to associate that sense of grounding, of a secure anchorage, with Provincetown, even though we don’t live there. When we first bought our dumpy, drafty little house in Wellfleet and came out from the city every weekend to work on fixing its endless flaws, we huddled by the wood stove on Saturday nights listening to Scott Penn on WOMR and felt comforted and connected. And when our own town seemed deserted and cold on winter nights we went to readings at the Fine Arts Work Center crowded with ideas, stories, and characters.

The Independent is devoted to advancing the civic, cultural, and spiritual life of Outer Cape Cod, and Provincetown, the furthest out of these outermost towns, is our capital city — the gravitational center that pulls us to it.

It’s also where newspapers for the Outer Cape have been published since at least the 1850s. Reading the archives of the old Advocate, we find the stories of all of our towns with their fascinating and strange idiosyncracies — all recorded through the decades in the pages of the Provincetown newspaper.

We are proud to be continuing that long tradition in a town like no other, with a name that tells people everywhere exactly where we stand in the world.

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Arts Briefs for July 2 through July 8

Leggs Up and Dancing – WOMR-FM 92.1

A Whodunit at Whaler’s Wharf

Jeannette de Beauvoir draws inspiration from Provincetown

Arts Briefs for May 14 through May 20

Local Musicians Mourn the Passing of John Prine

His sharp lyrics were buoyed by a smoke-and-whiskey twang

WOMR’s John Perrone, 70, Dies of Covid-19

The popular host of the radio show 'Night Shift'

Arts Briefs for April 9 through April 15

Letters, March 26, 2020

From Susan M. Reverby, Ian Edwards, and Debbie Ullman

Advice for Second-Home Owners

Deep Time

Renewing for Life

Arts Briefs for March 26 through April 1

Doors Are Closed, but Libraries Still Offer Services

Ilona Royce Smithkin to Celebrate Her 100^th

Paul Lisicky to Give Live-Stream Reading

Children’s Art Goes Drive-by in Truro Center

WOMR Will Not Be Silenced

Seventh Season of Twenty Summers Postponed

Fishing on My Side

Where We Stand

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Doors Are Closed, but Libraries Still Offer Services

Ilona Royce Smithkin to Celebrate Her 100th

Paul Lisicky to Give Live-Stream Reading

Children’s Art Goes Drive-by in Truro Center

WOMR Will Not Be Silenced

Seventh Season of Twenty Summers Postponed

letter from the editor

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Ilona Royce Smithkin to Celebrate Her 100^th