The calendar on the day these words will first appear will read January 27, 2012.  But in our Yankee editorial offices here in Dublin we are already deep into the winter of 2013.  Our colleagues at the Old Farmer’s Almanac, just down the corridor may already know about the weather next winter—but they’re not letting on. Anyway, our job at Yankee is not to make snowfall predictions, but rather how to make next winter’s issue unpredictable.

And more than that.  Fun and useful, entertaining and maybe even provocative.  That process takes time. And a lot of talking. A lot of bad ideas that may start discussion about ideas that may work.

Each Wednesday morning the editors squeeze into a small conference room. On one wall hang the covers from the last few years, reminders in a way of where we have been. On another wall we see the designed layouts for the issue we are working on—now May/June. Each day more pages hang down, like watching a garden grow, except faster.  But those words have already been written, the photos already shot.  What we talk about, instead is the future. Winter months from now.  In a sense we live constantly in a form of time travel, two winters at a time, winter squared.

Each issue is part quilt, part jigsaw puzzle, fitting fragments and pieces together until something coherent, and at times, beautiful emerges. But getting there can be messy—with scraps strewn here and there like so many strays.

Here’s where we are so far: we think there will be a story about wool, another about sleighs, something about the challenges of teaching children how to ski, something about snowplowing,  There’s lots of other ideas clambering to get in—but so far they keep sliding back, as if on an icy slope.

Sometimes a story keeps pestering us. It may begin as a vague notion, but if the idea is good enough it never lets go, jabbing at us meeting after meeting until we relent and figure out how to do it right.   Whether we succeed with the winter of 2013 issue won’t be known until the spring sun melts this year’s snow, then the summer crops come up, and the leaves turn,  and finally, the early dark comes back and the wood is stacked, and you look in the mailbox and there is our new winter issue.

By then, of course,  in this world of winter squared, we’ll be deep into 2014.

During the last several months, I’ve been proofreading some of the copy for advertisements, newsletters, and Yankee stories. This task has made me even more sensitive than usual to the importance of proper language usage.

Recently, while dining at a local restaurant, I overheard this statement from a patron speaking to his waitress:

“I’ll do the duck.”

Oh dear. So many irreverent and inappropriate comments can be made in follow-up to that statement. I will resist for the moment. Let’s just let that gentleman serve as a cautionary tale, for what a difference a word can make.

Proofreading sounded easy enough. I have a decent command of the English language and a good eye for detail. No big deal, right? My wonderful colleague provided a collection of books to aid me in my task. Surely, there’d be no grammar or punctuation conundrum that I couldn’t solve, given enough time to consult these books.

My favorite of these books is Roy Peter Clark’s The Glamour of Grammar. Yet what this book taught me is that grammar and punctuation rules are not hard and fast. On the subject of the old rule to never end a sentence with a preposition, Mr. Clark advises that to follow the old rule “would mark you as a prig and a bore” if you were to say “From where are you coming?” instead of “Where are you coming from?” He further advises that to anyone who will not answer the latter question because it is a sentence ending in a preposition, you should ask, “Where are you coming from, you pompous ass?”

I do like that Roy Peter Clark. Yet these new trends and new rules make the work of a proofreader less cut-and-dried. Like fashion trends (it was once frowned upon to wear white after Labor Day, or anything but black at a funeral), the rules of grammar are modernizing. I rather wish it were not so. It is easier to defend a change in word usage or punctuation when the rules are black-and-white. So, what to do? Well, what’s proven to be the best advice I’ve received: Follow the rules as closely as makes sense, and follow one’s ear, too, for the way a sentence sounds when read aloud. Strive for clarity. And for goodness’ sake, order the duck.

The Sunlight Print Kit.

One of my favorite gifts I found for my daughters this past Christmas was a sunlight print kit at a wonderful local bookstore, The Toadstool Bookshop. I’ve been hoping to do this project with them for quite awhile now and given their ages, 6 and almost 4, I was sure it would hold their interest. The day before we were all headed back to school and work, it was mostly sunny, so we decided it was a good day to tackle the project. I was worried about finding natural objects to work with, but even in winter, there is plenty to choose from.

Materials.

I was lucky and happened upon a live fern on one of my walks so that became my object of choice. We also gathered other things outside our home for the girls to choose from-dried flowers, small lilac twigs, leaves and grasses. Ella has been collecting feathers for some time now so her choice was easy. Lucy’s first try involved some tiny flowers that unfortunately, didn’t end up working well. I think if we had pressed the flowers in a book it would have worked fine, but they weren’t quite flat enough to create a strong impression on the paper so we ended up doing a second one with a couple of oak leaves. This is an incredibly simple process and the results are almost immediate so for those with short attention spans, a perfect activity.

Sunlight paper with fern just placed in sunlight.

To start, we pulled individual sheets of paper from the protective black envelope, then placed our objects of choice on the sunlight paper and covered the paper with the clear plastic top that came with the kit to hold the object in place. We placed the paper in direct sunlight and waited until the bluish paper turned a whitish hue.

The blue paper turns whitish when exposed long enough to the sun.

The sun wasn’t cooperating with us that day and kept disappearing behind passing clouds so the usual 30 seconds turned into more like 15 minutes, but in the end, it worked just as well. When we removed Ella’s feather, the impression left by the object looked blue.

After exposure to the sun, the impression left by the object (in this case a feather) is blue.

We then took the paper, submerged and agitated it completely in water with a few drops of citric acid (we had limes on hand so a few drops of that worked just fine).

Ella sets her print in the water.

We then removed the print from the water fix and lay it flat to dry. The impression where the object was reversed its hue and turned more white while the surrounding area of the paper turned a beautiful deep blue while it dried.

As the print dries, the color surrounding the object turns a deeper blue.

We’re planning to frame the three prints together to put in the girls’ work-in-progress bathroom when it’s completed. And, I’m sure come spring (if we can wait that long), we’ll all head out again to forage for some more objects to experiment with.

The dried prints feature a feather, oak leaves and a fern frond.

Lucy and Ella with their finished sunlight prints.

I will always have a great respect and appreciation for all forms of photography and I suppose this project was a small way of paying homage to that. It’s great to revisit some of the earliest methods for creating images and definitely brought back fond memories for me of working in the darkroom in my parent’s basement when I was younger. That equipment is long gone, but now I wish we had held onto it. I also wanted to share one of Anna Atkins’ beautiful cyanotypes from her book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, published in 1843, for further inspiration. She was a botanist in her day and is considered to be the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images.  Many also recognize her as the first woman photographer.

Cyanotype of algae Dictyota dichotoma from Anna Atkins' book, British Algae, 1843.

If you are interested in creating your own sunlight prints, below is the link to the kit we used. It includes a small book with a brief history of early photography along with ideas for prints including the recipe for how to make your own sunlight paper. It’s also easy to find sunlight paper in various sizes online as well.

http://www.chroniclebooks.com/titles/the-sunlight-print-kit.html

I’ve always found the production cycle of a magazine to be fairly odd. My last blog entry on YankeeMagazine.com was to be entitled, “Christmas in July,” but I got sidetracked and failed to complete it among all the other tasks on my trusty to-do list. So I figure I’ll offer a few thoughts about it here, now that we’re putting Christmas on the shelf for the next 360 days. I think it’s funny that I begin my holiday season on July 1, or thereabouts. You see, we begin work on our November/December issue while the rest of New England is busy perfecting their tan and combing the beach. Talk about getting a jump on the season! I’m jingling bells and basting turkeys by day and dining on fresh lobster in Perkins Cove by night. No wonder I have trouble keeping my dates right and my deadlines tight. It’s all topsy-turvy to me. Fortunately, it helps to get me in the spirit and to get ahead on my Christmas list — even if the big day is still over 5 months away.

Nevertheless, fast forward to September and we are now in January. Huh? What I mean is that on September 1, we begin production on our winter issue, our January/February issue. And this year, for 2012, we decided to shake things up. Mel Allen, our editor, and the team here at Yankee chose to do a special section called Loving Winter: 43 Reasons to Love the Season. It’s an amazing 30-some pages of pure editorial fun, packed with humor, memoirs, recipes and more. Everything you need to know about making the most of winter is contained here, with enough reasons to embrace the season that you’ll be hard-pressed to hibernate this year.

This was a source of inspiration for the concept of our Jan/Feb 2012 cover. It's a winter cover from 1987. The cost for an issue of Yankee Magazine back then was $1.95.

When starting to think about the design of this section we needed an idea that could work well on the cover and also tie into this special package. I decided to call on Erick Ingraham who might as well be an honorary staff member. He’s an illustrator and artist who lives here in Peterborough and probably knows more about Yankee than I do. Erick has been creating pieces for Yankee for many years, having worked with our previous Art Directors, most notably, Jay Porter. I’ve always loved working with Erick and felt that his energy and style were perfect for collaborating on this cover. When he decided to come on board, I knew we’d end up with something special.

Our special Jan/Feb 2012 cover.

The walls of Yankee are filled with wonderful memories, past covers, and unique works of art. For the past 4 years, I’ve passed by the same poster hanging on one of the walls of our second floor. It’s an enlargement of an old Yankee cover from 1987 — a scene in winter with a beautiful, soft illustration of a group of children ice skating on a pond. I pass it multiple times per day and every time I smile. A light bulb went off, and I thought, Here’s a chance to give a nod to Yankee’s past and create a contemporary winter scene of children at play, inspired by this piece of art that I love so much. And who better to illustrate it than Erick? I then started to think of what I loved about winter. There are many things, but one of my fondest memories of winter as a child was the anticipation of a snow day. I thought this worked on many levels — an idea that could transcend generations. Everyone remembers the excitement of a snow day. I mean, who doesn’t recall throwing themselves down in fresh powder and creating the perfect snow angel? And who didn’t enjoy the challenge of a good old-fashioned snowball fight? What better way to spend the day than sledding on your favorite hill with your best friend? And once all the fun was done and you were soaked through, who didn’t run inside to find mom waiting with a warm cup of cocoa and mini-marshmallows to boot? Our cover would display children at play in the snow and embody the spirit of pure joy. I wanted our readers to smile the same way that old cover made me smile.

There’s a lot to be said for winter in New England. Some good, some bad. I like to believe the good outweighs the bad, and my hope for you is that you embrace this winter season and find special ways to create memories of your own. I know I will. Pick up a copy of our issue and discover some of the ways our editors have found to love it too.

Here’s an interesting little secret about magazine editors: We’re time travelers. Yes, it’s true. Okay, it’s not the kind of time travel Hollywood gushes over.  We’re not armed with flux capacitors or sleek looking DeLoreans. I have no idea how the stock market will make out in 2012, what the Red Sox rotation will look like next year, or when Donald Trump’s hair will finally be granted full citizenship.

Our powers are a bit more modest, constructed as they are, entirely around issue planning. This time of year is an especially busy stretch. Just this week I’ve been delving into March-April, planning out a travel story that will run next November-December, and poring over story ideas for 2013, and in a few cases, 2014.

Most recently I’ve been concentrating on the Best of New England selections for our May-June 2012 travel issue. We publish some 300 each year and as the editor of the section, it’s a real treat to work with our travel writers on the places they’re seeing open, change, or just continue to thrive.

Even as a born-and-raised New Englander and a longtime Yankee editor, it’s impossible to know, in detail, every nook-and-cranny of every state. New shops open. Inns are restored. Fresh owners of familiar stops emerge. Then there are longtime local favorites that for whatever reason haven’t popped up on my radar screen yet.

It’s the kind of desk work that makes a man want to hit the open road; to fill up on country fare in Maine, or conquer my fear of heights with a zip line tour in Massachusetts. There are pretzels to gorge on, inns to relax in, and miles and miles of hiking trails to explore.

Of course, I suspect you’ll get the same feeling in May-June when our travel issue comes out. I’m just doing the favor of reporting back from the future to let you know what you have to look forward to.

With a history as long and colorful as Yankee’s, poking through the archives can easily swallow up an hour of your day, or if you’re not careful, the whole darn thing.  During my first month at Yankee, I’ve happily thumbed through the many books that line our corridors, and peered into the contents of well-worn manila folders in the archives closet for jolts of inspiration, or the joy of unearthing a 1917 baking powder company recipe booklet titled “55 Ways to Save Eggs.”

Credit: Aimee Seavey A peek at the Yankee Archives folders.

Last week I came across a folder titled “Animal Rescue League of Boston,” and inside were copies of six black and white photographs.  The top photo was taken in 1919, and featured a horse-drawn carriage, decked out in holiday garland with banners titled “Animal Rescue League” and “Christmas for the Horses.”  The caption underneath explained that it was the sixth annual Christmas dinner for horses, when members of the League would travel throughout the city, delivering “meals of oats, carrots, and apples to the working horses of Boston.”

Credit: Animal Rescue League of Boston Archives Christmas for the Horses.

Christmas dinner for city work horses?!  Be still my animal-loving heart.

Wanting to learn more, I called the Animal Rescue League of Boston, now celebrating its 112th year, and was connected with Jennifer Wooliscroft, the League’s Director of Communications.  Jennifer immediately knew which photograph I was referring to, and was able to fill in the gaps.

She explained that the founder of the Animal Rescue League of Boston, Anna Harris Smith, had been especially passionate about advocating for the shelter and care of the city’s many neglected and hungry animals at the end of the nineteenth century.  This differed somewhat from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), founded 31 years earlier, which focused more on establishing and enforcing animal protection laws.

Anna Harris Smith loved all animals, but had a special soft spot for horses.  It’s easy to forget how important urban work horses were in the days before the automobile, but in the late 19th century and early 20th century, horses were critical in the day-to-day workings of all US cities.  These “draft horses” not only transported all manner of goods within the city and to and from railroad stations, but also facilitated both public and private transportation and emergency services, such as ambulances and fire trucks…before they were trucks.

Anna and the ARL of Boston believed that these horses deserved treats at Christmas just like the rest of us, so the “Christmas Dinner for Horses” campaign was born, and continued into the 21st century.  As recently as 2009, the League still delivered holiday goodies to the rapidly shrinking number of working horses within the city, made even smaller that year by the loss of the Boston Police Department’s 12-member mounted police patrol due to lack of funding.

Credit: Aimee Seavey Photos from the Animal Rescue League of Boston archive folder.

You never know what you’re going to find in the Yankee Archives, or where it’s going to take you.  On this visit I found myself appreciating urban work horses like never before, wondering about what happened to all of the horse manure they must have been generating, arguing with myself about whether or not I should adopt a cat from the adoption page of the Animal Rescue League of Boston’s website (don’t say I didn’t warn you), and thinking about ways I can spread my own oat bag of Christmas cheer this season.

Until next time in the Yankee Archives…

For another take on our editorial history, this time in index form, as well as an explanation of what an authentic “Yankee Story” truly is, I urge you to read the very funny “Perusing the Yankee Index” by Justin Shatwell.

There is no better way to know a famous tourist town than arriving off season, when the tourists  have left, and the locals reclaim their streets, their beaches, their way of life that brought them here in the first place, perhaps generations ago. I rarely visit a beautiful place without daydreaming at some point about what it might be like to live there. And it was no different this time when we came to Provincetown, at the tip of the outer cape.

Credit: Annie Graves Colorful buoys that will soon top the famous lobster trap Christmas tree.

If you’ve been to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the height of summer, you know there are few more entertaining destinations in the country. You can pass a day simply people watching on Commercial Street, the three mile long living carnival of homes, shops and humanity that runs parallel to Cape Cod Bay.

You can walk for hours through the undulating dunes of the Province Lands in the Cape Cod National Seashore. You can simply throw down a blanket on the beach and let the enervating surf cool you down.  And you can share all of this with some 50,000 plus like minded visitors, who are willing to wait for traffic to crawl through town, wait for restaurant tables, wait for parking by the beach.

Credit: Annie Graves Approaching Fisherman's Wharf by boat.

Which is why I love off season.  There may be at best barely 3000 year-rounders to share the streets with you. Like bookend visits, I came to Provincetown in April and again this November, just before the town’s famous Thanksgiving lighting of the Pilgrim Monument. The monument seems to follow your gaze wherever you are in town, or even on the wind swept dunes. The monument symbolizes the town’s pride in its history—and reminds everyone that the pilgrims first made landfall right here in Provincetown Harbor, and signed the Mayflower Compact while anchored offshore. If you had forgotten that fact before coming to town, you won’t soon forget it again after visiting the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum.

Credit: Annie Graves Provincetown's Pilgrim Monument.

Commercial Street beckoned with only a relative handful of cars and pedestrians, all of waving to each other as if we were all in on a wonderful secret.

The Outer Cape’s ocean waters moderates temperatures—flowers bloom here earlier and stay longer.  In April the lovely, well kept homes that hug the narrow, winding streets were already boasting flourishing gardens.

Credit: Annie Graves April flowers start the season with color.

And here I was just days before Thanksgiving, looking at roses refusing to relent to winter’s black and white world.

Credit: Annie Graves A November rose resists the coming cold.

If you want to know the details we checked into the Anchor Inn and Beachhouse.

Credit: Annie Graves The Anchor Inn and Beachhouse.

We were greeted by Molly, the resident Labrador.  Provincetown boasts it is the most dog friendly town in America and that was certainly borne out as no matter where we strolled, we saw dogs and their owners—and you couldn’t walk for more than a few minutes without seeing a welcoming dog dish filled with water.

Credit: Annie Graves Molly taking her ease.

Credit: Annie Graves Just two of Provincetown's many canine residents.

To get a room at the inn with a sweeping view of the bay in summer would have required a reservation made perhaps in the dark heart of winter. But even though a number of B&Bs and inns close up after Columbus day, so too, there are always others who keep welcome signs posted year-round.

Credit: Annie Graves Sunrise from the Anchor Inn and Beachhouse.

The venerable Lobster Pot Restaurant is famous for its “line out the doors and down the street,” our waitress told us as she seated us. Sharing the dining room of this mother and son run restaurant was a couple huddled in one corner, and a playwright from New York City who said he’d been coming for nearly 20 years and celebrating his birthday right here each time at the Lobster Pot. We caught a break since the restaurant would soon close until April. Our meals: blackened tuna sashimi and sole almondine showed why even though it is one of Provincetown’s most famous dining stops, it is one of those rare places that lives up to its following.

Credit: Annie Graves The famous Lobster Pot Restaurant.

Credit: Annie Graves Tuna sashimi at the Lobster Pot.

Credit: Annie Graves Sole almondine at the Lobster Pot.

Mornings start early when your room faces the rising sun.  Which is good because I was ready to explore. On foot. Off season when Commercial Street and the entire town hums to a different rhythm.

Breakfast could not have been more convenient—about five steps from the inn’s front door. Bayside Betsy’s, with its tables looking out to the beach and the brightening sky, all made brighter by delicious and hearty fare. As is the case with so many of Provincetown  eateries, your waiter (in this case Steve) had a personality that mixed serving with comedy.

Credit: Annie Graves Bayside Betsy's serves breakfast with a view.

Credit: Annie Graves Our waiter Steve is part of the experience at Bayside Betsy's.

After breakfast, several hours of meandering followed.

We saw workers fixing, repairing, battening up, at once getting ready for winter, and at the same time laying the foundation for the spring and summer ahead.

Credit: Annie Graves The off season is the right season for repairs.

I don’t think there is a dull block along Commercial Street.  Whether exploring famous MacMillan Wharf with fishing boats bobbing by the dock,

Boats at MacMillan Wharf

Or walking to the end of the pier to look at the famous mural with its tribute to the women who sustained the fishermen on their long, dangerous voyages

Credit: Annie Graves Fisherman's wives art mural at Fisherman's Wharf.

or meandering down alley ways which peek onto the sand and water,

Credit: Annie Graves There were views around every corner in Provincetown.

or just appreciating the trim cottages, or looking at the home where Norman Mailer lived and wrote (now a writer’s colony since his death), a day unfolds at whatever pace you want.

Credit: Annie Graves Walking the waterfront with the Pilgrim Monument in the distance.

Credit: Annie Graves Norman Mailer's house is now a writer's colony.

Off season there are fewer shops open, sure, but also few people tugging at the stuff you want.  I think every store had 50% off sales—and it’s no surprise that the days after Thanksgiving lading to Christmas sees a surge of visitors who come for fun and bargains.

Credit: Annie Graves Plenty of shops remain open in the off season.

Marine Specialties is part shopping mecca and part vaudeville show—in this case the performers being the eclectic shelves filled with anything you might ever imagine to see if a store was stocked by someone with a great sense of humor.  Pith helmets? If you’ve been looking, you’ve come to the right place.

Credit: Annie Graves Marine Specialties offers can't-miss browsing.

Credit: Annie Graves Pith helmets? They've got those.

There are any number of lunch stops, but I discovered Napi’s one spring and we spoke about it for months afterward.

Credit: Annie Graves Napi's restaurant - famous for its food and ambiance.

It is part art gallery, part repository of Provincetown memories, and for decades has stoked the fires of its customers.  I asked our waitress for the recipe of its famous Portuguese kale soup and in moments she returned with a printed copy.

Credit: Annie Graves Portuguese Kale Soup from Napi's.

Portuguese Kale Soup
Recipe from Napi’s in Provincetown, MA

Ingredients
1 lb. linguica
1 lb. chorizo (a spicier version of linguica)
1 bunch kale
1 lb. dried kidney beans or 3 cans of the beans
1 large onion, diced
2 large potatoes, chopped
2 small cans of tomato paste
Salt and pepper to taste
Cider vinegar

Directions

• Follow package directions for soaking beans ( if you use canned skip this step)
• Cut linguica and chorizo into thin rounds and sauté in just enough oil to keep them from burning.
• Remove and place in soup pot.
• Sauté the diced onion in the pan. Add to soup pot.
• Add beans and enough of their water and plain water if necessary to cover to the soup pot.
• Add potatoes, and salt and pepper and tomato paste to taste.
• Cook gently until the beans are as tender as you like.
• Wash kale, remove stems and cut into bite size pieces. Add to soup.
• Cook until the kale is cooked to your taste.
• After the soup has been put into a bowl, add a splash of vinegar.

After lunch we had to climb the Pilgrim Monument, its tower rising over 252 tall. The walk is relatively easy, with gusts of wind at the top all but taking your breath away, but no more so than the hawk’s eye view of the town, the bay, the distant dunes.

Credit: Annie Graves View from atop the Pilgrim Monument.

The museum itself is one of those treasures that can all too easily be overlooked.  There is a room devoted to Polar explorer and Provincetown native Admiral Donald MacMillan’s numerous explorations. And I guarantee you will come away with a greater appreciation of the pilgrim experience after visiting the Pilgrim wing and it’s diorama of the Mayflower.

Credit: Annie Graves A white wolf brought back from one of Admiral MacMillan's polar expeditions.

Credit: Annie Graves The jaw bone of a finback whale leaves childrens' mouths agape.

In summer you may share sunset watching at Race Point in the National Seashore with a hundred or more people—but on this November afternoon, with the wind billowing and sand swirling, we seemingly had the entire coastline to ourselves.  When you are alone on the dune backed shoreline, it is easy to forget that only a mile or so away is a town filled with light and noise and camaraderie. In the Provincelands offseason at twilight it is lovely and lonely, as if on a deserted island.

Credit: Annie Graves Dunes at Race Point.

Credit: Annie Graves Sunset at Race Point.

A final Provincetown dinner had to be fish, fresh from the water just beyond our table at the Central House at the Crown and Anchor Inn.

Credit: Annie Graves You can never go wrong with fresh fish in Provincetown.

The last thing we did the following morning was to gather up those ubiquitous real estate brochures –with cottages and condos, and homes ranging from affordable (especially if you rent it out in high season) to this is great when we win the lottery.

Could we live in Provincetown?  We could. Could you?

Credit: Annie Graves I could live here. Could you?

Each November the City and Regional Magazine Association asks editors of its nearly 70 member publications to choose the best stories, photo essays, designs, covers, and Web content produced that year. I love doing it — it’s a chance to revisit an entire year’s efforts by everyone I work with, including freelance writers, photographers, and bloggers — all the creative people who make Yankee a magazine and a Web site like no other.

But it’s also a hard time. It’s like looking over hundreds of photographs of your children and being asked to choose a dozen favorites.

2011 Covers

Here’s what I do. I take each issue and read it cover to cover as if I were seeing it for the first time. It’s a delicious way to spend an afternoon in November, with the light fading by 4:00, and then when everyone leaves for the day, I’m still surrounded by all these Yankee stories and photos and wonderful Web features.

Here are some of my children, as it were, for 2011. The envelopes, please … (Here’s where a hushed tension grips the room …)

Fresh From the Orchard from the September/October 2011 issue

For best food writing, I entered Amy Traverso’s wonderful “Fresh from the Orchard” from the September/October issue. If you love apples, you come away from this story with knowledge, recipes, and a desire to find some. Right away.

For reporting, I found Ben Hewitt’s “Battle Lines” from the current November/December issue to be the most lucid and most personal accounts of an environmental fight that has been the leading story in New Hampshire this year. All issue stories come down to finding people through which to tell the tale, and Ben Hewitt succeeded. We’ve received more letters praising his evenhanded reporting than for any other story we published this year.

The Restorer from the January/February 2011 Issue

Ian Aldrich’s “The Restorer” in our January/February issue was one of the best profiles I read in any magazine all year, as he recounted Jon Wilson’s determination to bridge the terrible emotional gulf between victim and victimizer.

Joining that story as a dual entry for best profile was Justin Shatwell’s riveting “The Memory/Keeper” in March/April. Readers learned of Joe Manning’s growing obsession with tracking down the descendants of millworkers, once the subject of Lewis Hine’s searing portraits a century ago.

Summer on the Lake from the July/August 2011 issue

One of our photo essay nominations is “Summer on the Lake,” Richard Schultz’s portrayal of a week on Maine’s Sebago Lake, where days seem to drift with the lapping of water on shore, and children form lifetime bonds.

None of these decisions came easy. How do you choose one terrific blog from among so many? How do you choose one travel story that makes you tingle with wanting to go to that place, over another that does the same?

We send out these and another dozen entries in a few days. In a few months the City and Regional Magazine judges will let us know whether they agree that in 2011, some of the best journalism in print and on the Web, both written and visual, came from this office in Dublin, New Hampshire. I hope they do. I think they will.

My first few weeks as both a New Hampshire resident and an employee of Yankee Publishing officially mark my transition from city-mouse office worker to semi-country-mouse assistant editor, and a simultaneous return to vehicle ownership, packed lunches, and the kind of workplace creative energy I haven’t felt since my days as an undergraduate. For a longtime city dweller like me, the transition has been a colorful one.

I grew up in Westford, Massachusetts -– a rural-suburban kind of town, meaning that I lived in a neighborhood with families, but we had room for a chicken coop in the backyard. Nature was readily available, and I spent a lot of time in the woods exploring.

After high school I went to college and then spent seven years in the Boston neighborhoods of Brighton, Brookline, and, most recently, Somerville. I commuted into the city for work by walking or public transportation. I didn’t own a car and didn’t want one, though sometimes – such as when I was trudging up the hill on Vinal Street, saddled down with overflowing canvas totes of groceries — I thought the convenience of trunk space was vastly underrated.

As the years went by, I began to miss the sights and sounds of rural New England, and the ease of quickly transporting myself into fresh country air and the beauty of a country drive or ocean swim. I got out of the city for daytrips and long weekends as often as possible, but it never seemed often enough.

Short trips to places like Acadia National Park in Maine helped cure my city blues.

I knew I was ready for a change, so when the opportunity to work for Yankee Publishing (beloved source of all things New England) as a full-time assistant editor in its Dublin, New Hampshire, headquarters presented itself a year later, I packed my bags and headed for the Monadnock region.

Instead of in Somerville, I now live in charming, historic Keene, New Hampshire, and I’ve swapped my MBTA Charlie Card for a car. Now, instead of a 40-minute city bus ride, my commute to work is half that and looks like this:

Headed towards the Yankee offices in Dublin, NH via Route 101.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, however, I will say that the city bus was a heck of a lot cheaper.)

Instead of getting coffee from a large chain on my way into work, I make it at home or stop in at the Dublin General Store and refill my travel cup for 75 cents.

The Dublin General Store is just down the road.

Instead of a high-rise Boston office building, I work here, at Yankee Publishing in Dublin. Behind these red walls a talented and passionate group of folks work hard to put together a magazine and a Web site that both celebrate and reflect the unique spirit of New England -– a mission I’m equally devoted to, and so proud to now be a part of.

The Yankee Magazine offices in Dublin, NH.

In my first few weeks, I’ve been inspired by the energy and encouragement of my new coworkers, enjoyed lunch from a variety of local independent “general-store”-style cafés, and (last but not least) convinced myself that I do, in fact, remember how to drive.

Like any city mouse, I miss some of the urban benefits that I left behind, but I have no intention of turning back. I know that I’m a country mouse at heart, and I’m home.

A few years ago, Yankee’s editor, Mel Allen, wrote a comprehensive guide outlining the steps to follow if you’re a writer looking to get published in the magazine. And as the online media world continues to evolve, bloggers who are excelling in their fields have been getting scooped up by publishers.

Recently, two such bloggers made the leap from online to print and have not only been published on the pages of Yankee, but have also become editors. Assistant Editor Aimee Seavey and Contributing Editor Christine Chitnis — respected New England bloggers in their own right — got their start on YankeeMagazine.com, and in both cases, they didn’t come to us; we approached them.

Yankee Magazine

When Aimee Seavey wrote in her blog, The Apron Archives, about a maple-cookie recipe she found in an old Yankee Magazine cookbook, she probably never thought that her post would be seen by Communications Manager, Heather Atwell, who liked it so much that she sent it along to me.

The Apron Archives

Aimee’s way of incorporating New England’s history into the recipes she was whipping up in her kitchen to share online was so compelling that I didn’t hesitate to ask her whether she’d be interested in writing a guest blog for us. She was, and her blog about anadama bread was an immediate hit with our audience. By the time she followed it up with a tour of Somerville’s Union Square, there was a permanent blogging position waiting for her on our site.

Credit: Aimee Seavey Anadama bread with butter and jam

Her posts on brown bread in a can and old-fashioned desserts were equally engaging, so it made perfect sense for Senior Lifestyle Editor Amy Traverso to assign her the “One-Pie Town” article for the November/December issue’s “Homegrown” department. It might have ended there — in most cases, probably would have ended there, but the more we got to know Aimee, the more potential we saw in her. And we’re thrilled that she officially joined our team this week!

Aimee Seavey in her office at Yankee Magazine.

Hard to believe that all that stemmed from a recipe pulled from an old cookbook, isn’t it? Although perhaps not as unlikely as the Google image search that led to Christine Chitnis. And if you think we’re not reading your posts, too, just ask Chris Sparling (@chrissparling) whether he’s the only person under 40 who reads Yankee Magazine.

Help make Chris Sparling feel less alone.