Dear Yankee | July 2017

No Baggage, Please

I love Yankee, and I have been reading it since I was a teenager. I love it because it gives me a sense of home, of my culture and that of others. It shows me places that I have been and places I dream of going to. It has given me some of my best recipes and some of my favorite restaurants. It makes me proud to live in New England and proud of the people who surround me.

What Yankee is not, though, is a political forum. Your editor’s letter [“A Traveler’s Best Friend,” May/June] became a political statement that rained down on an issue that should be left lighthearted. Travel is fun—at least, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Needless to say, the last thing I’m going to be doing on my vacation is reading The Boston Globe or the Herald. I’m going to be relaxing while I play with my kids at Mayflower Beach or hike up Arethusa Falls. I hope next year’s travel issue is happy again.

Shaunna Covell Lai Newton, Massachusetts

Trailblazer’s Legacy

I’m one of the 80,000 Student Conservation Association volunteers who can thank Liz Putnam for the outsize impact she’s had on our lives, and also one of the millions who can thank her for conserving our public lands [“The Audacity of Liz Putnam,” May/June]. Her spirit is generous; her convictions about young people’s potential and the value of nature are true. Read this article if you want more hope and inspiration in your life.

Craig Dicht Cleveland Heights, Ohio

‘Marginal’ Note

As a longtime visitor to southern coastal Maine, I read with interest your article about the Marginal Way in Ogunquit [“Walks Worth Their Salt,” March/April]. My mother-in-law walked it daily during the last 10 summers of her life, getting so nut-brown from the sea and salt air that when we plucked her from the bus back in New Jersey at the end of each sojourn, we hardly recognized her.

There was just one omission in your piece. There was not a single mention of the famous poem “On the Marginal Way” by national poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Wilbur. His poem puts the famous walkway in the realm of the sublime and the eternal.

Margo L. MacArthur Andover, New Jersey

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Clarification

The first detailed, comprehensive maps of New Hampshire’s geology date to 1878 and were created by a team led by state geologist Charles H. Hitchcock [“A ‘Very Impressive Rock,’’’ May/June]. However, a tip of the hat is also due to Charles Jackson, New Hampshire’s very first state geologist, and the maps he published more than 30 years earlier.