Letters To The Editor: Jan. 4, 2024

Educate, Don’t Normalize

Editor:

I read with concern about the opening of Seaside Cannabis. My concern became alarm as the owner of the shop used the words "normalizing" recreational marijuana. Normalizing drug use in a town with a regional middle school is irresponsible. Adult use of THC is a choice. Normalizing drug use gives teens, preteens and even children the message it is OK to get high. We need to educate students about the risks of THC cannabis use, not normalize it.

Kate Ryan

Brewster

Revise Historic Preservation Regs

Editor:

It is not often that one gets to go to a meeting held by a historic preservation committee where on the agenda is the demolition of two houses one has lived in for a collective 25 years. Such was my experience last night before the Harwich Historic Preservation Committee.

Let me say from the outside that the committee clearly tried to get the petitioners to consider alternatives. Let me say that they made efforts to encourage modifications rather than tear downs. The trains, however, had left the station. Nothing seemed to resonate with what could only be described as the petitioners’ eagerness to create their own history.

Prior to the meeting I had accepted demolition of the two houses as a fait accompli. I attended the meeting to pitch for a preservation mechanism with more teeth to it than the present demolition delay bylaw, though, I admit, I was in the grip of the erasure of family posterity. I gave the committee my memory of Harwich Port in 1957 when I had a paper route between Ben’s Package Store and Snow Inn Road. My clients, 32 of them, were substantially located on Route 28. Snow Inn was my last stop. Twelve of my delivery destinations no longer exist. I also mentioned the icon of demolition shame on Cape Cod, the demolition of the Exchange Hall, which I remember well, having worked on a Saturday on the upper floors while my stepfather pushed lumber over the building’s edge to the street with his small bulldozer. The town passed on $19,000 of remedial work required on the outside of the building, opting to give Fred Crowell $16,000 to tear it down. In effect, the town’s shortsightedness continues.

It is my hope that the town will find a way to mandate relocation of historic structures should a petitioner want to “clear the lot.” That challenge might lead to a sympathetic remodeling on an existing site. While I can hear petitioners crying about additional expenses, trade off for the sake of community could be value engineered so that we all might benefit from the froth that is now so prevalent.

Matt Sutphin

Harwich Center

Cheney’s Book ‘Chilling’

Editor:

Though I don’t expect many will, I encourage all Trump supporters and worshipers, MAGA hatters, election deniers and anyone on the fence to read Liz Cheney’s chilling new book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and Warning.”

She courageously pulls no punches and doesn’t hesitate to name names of those who lied and are still lying about, organized, or participated in the Jan. 6 domestic terrorist attack and insurrection at the Capitol. She also points an accusatory finger at those who refused to condemn Donald Trump, his lawyers, sycophants, and collaborators for seeking to illegally overturn the 2020 election.

You know she has hit a nerve with Trump when he attacks her as “Crazy Liz Cheney” for telling the truth about him and what he did before and after the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection that resulted in multiple federal and state felony criminal charges against him and many of his enablers and co-conspirators.

I suspect the actions of Kevin McCarthy described in her book is one of the reasons he is resigning from the House a year before his term expires. She chastises McCarthy along with a long list of those who joined Trump in his failed coup, aided or promoted it or sat by silently before and after the election, including Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Michael Flynn, Fox News, and several of its anchors and almost all House and Senate Republicans who kowtow to Trump.

Liz Cheney is a patriot in the mold of John McCain and does not lie. Read her book and the truth will set you free of Trump.

George Myers

Venice, Fla.