Dear Yankee | November/December 2020

Hat Tip from Texas

You probably can’t get much more Southern among your subscribers than I: born in Mississippi, reared in Louisiana, schooled in Tennessee, matured in South Carolina, and now retired to Texas. Still, I must admit that your fall foliage issue [September/October] worked its same old warming potion of nostalgia, yearning, melancholia, and irreplaceable reminiscence as it always has over the years. The entire issue is another keeper, with all the old familiar highways and byways still in place and—to be downright trite about it—working their magic monopoly on autumn. Thank you!

Tom Parks Midland, Texas

Unbroken Links

I grew up among Massachusetts pines just a stone’s throw from a chain of cranberry bogs, but a third and equally vivid fixture of this New England childhood was rainy afternoons with Yankee. I have fond memories of sitting on my living room floor, thumbing through back issues, which 8-year-old me read for the pictures.

Now, two decades later, a few things have changed: I live in Pennsylvania, I get my cranberries at the grocery store (they’ll never match up to the pilfered handfuls from childhood), and I read Yankee for more than just the photos, lovely as they are. There are days (more, recently) when I do not know how to visualize the America I hope exists somewhere—then one of your issues arrives, and I have an inkling again. Thank you for reminding us of the best of ourselves, and for being a consistent voice of tenacity and hope during this uncertain moment in history.

Kaylee J. Schofield Bainbridge, Pennsylvania

Shedding a Little Light

As a Canadian Maritimer with a deep and abiding connection to Quincy, Massachusetts, and someone who until this summer has visited Fenway 45 times, I have to take friendly issue with some journalistic license in “The 85 Best Things to Do in New England” [September/October], which states that Cadillac Mountain is the place “to see the first rays of sun strike the continent.” It is widely acknowledged that Cape Spear in Newfoundland is the easternmost point on our continent. Perhaps it was just justifiable hyperbole? I love your magazine each and every issue. Go Sox.

Danny Joseph Truro, Nova Scotia

Editors’ note: O Canada, you have us there. Our neighbor to the north does indeed light the way for the North American continent. Digging deeper, we found that where the sun shines first in the U.S. is not an easy question to answer—but editor emeritus Jud Hale once gave it his best shot: newengland.com/first-sunrise.

Write us! Send your comments to: editor@yankeemagazine.com. Please include where you live. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. 

Thanksgiving Democracy

We each get one vote with the TV remote for the programs we watch in a daze.

But Grandma’s the boss of the cranberry sauce and the turkey we gather to praise!

—D.A.W.