A race riot engulfed New York City that March, sparked by rumors that police had killed a Black teenager accused of shoplifting and fueled by the Depression’s staggering unemployment. Sweeping through other parts of the country were cataclysmic weather events that would force hundreds of thousands to uproot. Political battle lines hardened between FDR and those who declared his New Deal and Social Security Act to be examples of un-American socialism. Distant rumblings of militaristic countries threatening neighbors made people unsettled and anxious. This was America in 1935, when in September, Robb Sagendorph published the first issue of Yankee.
Mel Allen
Magazine
The Gifts We Need | Inside Yankee
I am writing this letter on the cusp of May. What the world and, in particular, New England will be like when you hold this issue remains a mystery. Will we be walking through the streets of Boston or Providence or Burlington? Will cars be streaming to Cape Cod? Will friends be over for a backyard barbecue? Will we lose ourselves in America’s pastime for a few hours at Fenway Park? Or will we still be doing the hard and essential work of staying home, helping to give everyone the best chance at emerging safely through these rough times?
Living
Signs of the Times
Editor Mel Allen on how a bridge construction project in a small town leads to thoughts on how we can all help each other get to the other side.
Summer theater in New England creates treasured memories for both audiences and performers.
Gardens
Furbish’s Lousewort | Up Close
How Maine’s humble Furbish’s lousewort went from supposed extinction to cause célèbre.
I am writing this on an evening in late March. The daylight has lengthened, so now when I come home after work I can walk along the river that flows through the heart of my New Hampshire town, or down the path beside the lake where bikers and dog walkers stroll and see the sky turn red at sunset.
In over 40 years of writing about New Englanders, Yankee editor Mel Allen calls the story of Wil Smith and his daughter Olivia the most inspirational.
Lives are changed when a young asylum seeker in Maine asks a teacher to help him win a national poetry recitation.
Magazine
Sweet Spots | Inside Yankee
This is how spring sneaks up on us in New England. The snow softens, and skiers discover March is the kindest month of all. The first songbirds land in our yards, and we think … It’s coming. By early March, we see sap buckets fastened to maples, plastic tubing threading through the forests, smoke pouring from sugarhouses.
Magazine
True Grit | Inside Yankee
In seeing Yankee’s pages come together, there are times when I think I cannot wait for this issue to leave our office, get bound at the printers, and then be on its way to readers, wherever they are. This is one of those times.
To understand Anaïs Mitchell’s long journey to Broadway fame, it helps to dig down to her Vermont roots.
A small-town celebration tugs at memories and creates new ones.