This piece has two themes. The one is a paean to the mythical American cowboy. Having just watched a few Bonanza reruns on TVLand recently, I'll leave that alone. I'll address the second, the tendency to build up our own image by digging a hole and placing the party to which we compare ourselves in it, the better to look down at them.

They made their visit over the Fourth of July, a major American holiday where one can expect a certain amout of high spirits in any American community.

It's also a time of year when there's mostly daylight in that part of the world.

I don't know how many of you watched the series Northern Exposure, but for those who did, there was an episode about the effects of the long days of summer on people, and another on the effects of the long nights. For all the whimsy in that series, those particular details are true. There is a definite effect on mood and mental health generally.

I can tell you myself about the exhilerating lift one gets from the midnight sun: I've been in Fairbanks in midsummer. I wonder if that had anything to do with the thumos experienced by the natives of Hyder. I also wonder, in a pistol-packing community such as it is, what the suicide rate from seasonal affective disorder over the dark, cold winter months might be. (Suicide in winter in Alaska is a serious problem.) But we'll never know, since the visit took place while the sun stayed above the horizon for 22 out of 24 hours.

Also: no school. No trips to the doctor or the hospital. No fires to fight (though one must presume that the Hyderites would not come out on the plus end there, having burned down their fire house and fire engine). No snow removal. No opportunity to judge what the strengths of Stewart probably are. Stewart was judged on its peeling paint, not on its paved streets.

It sounded to me like the authors had already made up their minds before they visited, just from the tone which they used to describe their telephonic and written encounters with the two towns.

I find it especially telling that the barefoot woodcutter was looked at as interesting local color. If she had been from Stewart, I wonder if she would have been looked at as a feisty novelty, or if she would have been depicted as an example of the shoeless nature of the "depressed" Canadian town.

Perhaps the reason there are more satellite dishes in Hyder is that Stewart has cable TV. Did you ever think about that?