Letters column
A weekly column of what readers wrote back about.
Re:
I read your piece on the Sheffield library twice, once for the story and once because I have spent my own career in a Carnegie building that needs the same shelving repair. I sent a copy to my board chair. Whether it changes anything I do not know. But I wanted you to know it was read.
Re:
A small correction. The Cessna 185 on amphibious floats described in the piece is, technically, a 185F, not a 185. Pilots care about these distinctions the way librarians care about the dot in Dewey. The piece itself is otherwise true to the country. Hollis is the kind of pilot we all hoped to be at his age.
Re:
Thank you for the patience with the story. The morning the piece appeared, a small group from the village came in for coffee and we read it aloud. The phone is still on the wall, still disconnected. It is dusted on Wednesdays now, not on Tuesdays, because Tuesdays are for the bread.
Re:
Elena Marrow visited the archive in March and spent four days with the box. The piece honors what she did with that time. We have had three requests for the collection since the piece ran. The first three in two years.
Re:
I have read the piece in a version translated for me by my niece. The maps were accurate. The notebooks were copied with care. The line about the river remembering something — I did not say it as a metaphor. I said it because the river had moved into a bed it had occupied in 1853, and I had seen the older bed in an old map. The river remembered. I would say it again.
Re:
My uncle was one of the men hired back in 2025. He has not stopped talking about the window. He tells the story slightly differently each time. Thank you for asking him about it. I do not think he knew he wanted to be asked.
Send your letter to the editor. Mention the piece by title in the subject line. We read everything that arrives. We publish a selection on Fridays.