Between issues it often rains

We love getting mail, even letters that do not have checks in them. We do read and share among the staff any letters that are from our readers. This includes e-mails that need to be seen by all the concerned eyes in our company. We get many letters in the mail as well as on-line and found that placing these letters in our print publication just serves to compound a past problem that has already been addressed. Also being a monthly print publication, the time frame is much too long to keep issues alive.

Our answer to addressing this time warp is to post letters of interest here in my on-line column. This also allows for interested parties to respond to the issues involved in a timely matter. So, today on-line we received the following letter about a boo boo we made two issues ago and have since made every effort to correct. Excuses are not going to be given, other than to say we agree we screwed up, we did not mean or want to do it, but it happened. This type of screw up most likely will not happen again due to new safeguards put into place.

So here is the mail that came in today to my e-mail address at: mike@upmag.net . . .

UP Magazine

To: John Colley, UP Magazine Editor

I don’t understand why your publication doesn’t feature a “Letters to the Editor” column . . . like most reputable publications offer. On second thought . . . maybe I do.

I fear your editorial “navigation” compass is off . . . about 180 degrees (maybe it's all the iron ore in dat Superior Yooper soil up dar)! Here’s why, but first let me tell you that, by my calculations, I figure you owe me ten cents ($0.10). Broken down that’s $4.00 (cost of one issue) divided by 80 pages which equals about five cents ($0.05) per page, times two (2) pages which equals ten cents.

Here’s my reasoning. In Vol. 21 - #3 pp. 20-21, “Superior Heartland: Book Two––Woodsmen’s Impression of the City” article by the late, C. Fred Rydholm, you present some pictures, very nice woods scene (purportedly representative of the White Deer Lake Camp), also a nice photo of kids playing on a (presumably) Chicago street––with a not so nice dead horse laying only a few feet away, plus a couple of logging camp scenes. The gist of the story being told explains how two of the men, a George Baker with another White Deer Lake Camp worker, go to Chicago at the invitation of Dr. Dudley to receive some surgery. However, the “big” city is so distasteful that the two men turn around and return to White Deer Lake. Then in Vol. 21 - #4 pp. 20-21 which features as its main picture a horse-drawn sleigh loaded with snow, steam locomotive pulling passenger cars, and scene of snowy woods with snow shoes in the foreground (all these pictures also “presumably” from the White Deer Lake Camp and that era). However, this portion of the story––which the reader was told at the end of the previous issue would be about “Walter McClintock”––is the SAME text used over again telling how George Baker and his traveling companion go to Chicago !!! ??????

What’s my complaint and why the request for a ten cent refund? Only that the publication’s readership has been duped, by a few different pictures in each of those issues but twice we are given the SAME STORY to read! So, what happened to the Walter McClintock segment that was promised to appear in Issue #4 of this volume?

Thus, you can see, why I feel we've been “lied” to . . . after having paid––in our subscription fee––for new material in each issue. Yes, we the readership have been ?”cheated”? out of reading further about the White Deer Lake Camp . . . AND by the end of this Vol. 21 (presuming that future issues WILL––hopefully––offer new material) we will most likely still be behind by two pages of content for this volume year. Thus, I figure you owe me (and all the readership?) ten cents ($0.10)! We won’t go into the potential for a “class action suit” right now.

Thanks for listening to my rant. No doubt Toivo and Eino were allowed to jointly edit this issue of the 21st Volume. I'm just hopeful that Baker and his friend won’t have to travel all the way to Chicago still another time during this volume!

Regardless of what I've said above, I do enjoy, immensely, each issue of your publication!