Letters: Vox Populi

Tad Friend's "After Burn" (July) was an interesting look at the myriad problems bedeviling the Yanomami. However, Friend's use of the term "Stone Age" to describe the Yanomami connotes a sense of primitivism and cultural timelessness that is not quite accurate. Anthropologists have been trying to dispel these notions for decades; maybe it's time that journalists caught on.

It seems indisputable that wildfire really is the least of the Yanomami's worries. Fires get put out, trees soon start growing back amid the charred stumps, and homes can be rebuilt. But how long will it be before the typical Yanomami dad returns home from a long hard day at the office stitching together sneakers, loads mom and the kids into the minivan, heads over to Pizza Hut or KFC for sustenance, and then drops in on the local 12-screen Cineplex to catch Lethal Weapon 5? Once those genies are out of the bottle and into the rainforest, there will be no coaxing them back inside.

State of this Content

Your thorough package on the backcountry of the Last Frontier ("Alaska? Naturally," June) was absolutely gorgeous. And after living here for almost 30 years, I can qualifiedly commend the restraint that characterized your descriptions of our state's endless natural wonders; even your most glowing adjectives fell short of the reality.

A couple of years ago my husband and I spent 10 days bicycling from Deadhorse to Fairbanks, completely self-supported. So we found the line "Alaska Raw" on your June cover to be especially apt — though your story neglected one nagging detail: the mosquitoes.

Distance Memories

I read Bruce Schoenfeld's "Today Boulder, Tomorrow the World" (Field Notes, July) with great interest. However, I must take exception to his statement that "no American has won an Olympic medal at any distance over 3,000 meters since 1976." Marathoner Joan Benoit won gold in Los Angeles in 1984, and Lynn Jennings took bronze in the 10,000 meters in Barcelona in 1992.

Oh, the Horror

Your page on the travails of the modern prairie dog ("Why Is Everybody Always Pickin' on Me?" Dispatches, July) had me falling off the sofa laughing. It's by far the most bizarrely hilarious thing I have read in months.

Thank you for writing about the awful atrocities done to prairie dogs, but I wish your writer had taken a less flippant tone. I almost got the impression he condoned some of the cruelty. I certainly hope I'm wrong.

Claven the Conqueror

Let me get this straight: a West Virginia postmaster who's practically never sailed before decides to round up a bunch of his drinking buddies and retrace Leif Eriksson's voyage from Greenland on a jury-rigged "authentic Viking boat" ("Tell Us Now the Saga of the Self-Styled Viking, of His Epic Voyage Over the Frozen Sea, of his Glorious and Stirring Triumph ...," July)? And the Postal Service claims that its employees aren't any more prone to erratic behavior than anyone else ...

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