Reply All | Letters: The 9.22.13 Issue

I am a forester who has managed large tracts of private timberland in California and used prescribed fires, clear-cutting and thinning to maintain healthy forests for 30 years. These strategies mimic natural cycles. Harvesting the timber pays for the fuel management, and society gets to use the wood for housing, fiber and carbon-neutral energy production. Timber cutting is sustainable, but increasingly illegal. Environmental activists have successfully misled urban voters, influencing legislation that bans the very practices that can prevent or lessen wildfires. An extreme solution would be to stop fighting forest fires altogether. If a fire is mild enough to extinguish, it is probably doing more good than harm. If the fire is too dangerous, why spend millions of dollars to pay firefighters, who wait for the weather to change so they can declare victory? HENRY ALDEN, Petaluma, Calif., posted on nytimes.com

A major issue not mentioned in this article is the societal aversion to smoke. The managers of prescribed fires are often subject to intense pressure to "stop that fire right now!" because smoke is bad for people's health. Managers of these "optional" fires are liable not only for any physical damage from their fire but also for any difficulty the smoke causes. But smoke from a fire that was not started or condoned by managers — a wildfire — is usually seen as just an unfortunate aspect of living in an area where these things happen. The officials in charge of suppressing that fire are more likely to be seen positively, often as heroes, even when the fire was made inappropriately severe by the failure to reduce potential fuels and modify man-made structures before the fire arrived. D.C., Sonora, Calif., posted on nytimes.com

Juxtapose "humility is endangered if not extinct" + "people have no idea how fire spreads" @girlgeekanalyst, quoting a column by Frank Bruni and the cover article about wildfires

EAT, PRAY, LOVE, GET RICH, WRITE A NOVEL NO ONE EXPECTS

What is too often ignored about Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" is the fact that it was — despite its trite ending, wherein Gilbert falls in love with a man — a well-written book. I read it before it was Oprahed, and I remember thinking, enviously, "This woman is a marketing genius." Gilbert offered herself as girlfriend to the masses, poured out her heart, laughed at herself, gave readers the opportunity to run away from their lives and then sat back and said, essentially, "We all make mistakes, but ain't life grand?" Anyone who doesn't understand why the book sold so well does not understand women. PATRICIA MAHER, Santa Cruz, Calif., posted on nytimes.com

Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" was entertaining as a travelogue, but there was an awful lot of navel-gazing. And yet this article makes me want to read Gilbert's new novel, to see if it will have its own voice and not that self-help magazine style. Ours is a country of second and third chances — even for literary fiction. MARY OWENS, Boston, posted on nytimes.com

"Eat, Pray, Love" was self-absorbed? So is every other autobiographical story I've ever read and admired. Becoming infatuated with your own life, and how to get through it and learn from it, is one of the most productive things you can do. Writing is self-absorption. Don't knock it until you look at it all in context. JOHN RYAN MARTINE JR., Queens, posted on nytimes.co,

RIFF: ONLINE COMMENTS

Reading the letters to the editor of major publications was far more enlightening before they began publishing online posts to show how hip they are. Readers used to review their logic and their writing to increase their chances of being selected for print; now, they just amp up their snark and blast away. DAVID MACHLOWITZ, Westfield, N.J., posted on nytimes.com

Perhaps due to the sophistication of its readers — or more likely the work of the moderator through which they must pass — nytimes.com comments sections tend to be an enlightening but overly tame bellwether of public mood. Knowledge of the filter's presence imposes self-censorship and an excess of manners that bleaches away some of the "acid yawps" of a comments section. We should be wary of imposing too much civility. Like others, I often find the comments section more interesting than the articles that elicit them. But we can stand a bit less filtering. DAVID M. KLEINMAN, New York, posted on nytimes.com

Anonymous comments are cowardly graffiti. Real writers are required to use real names; why not online "commenters"? STEVE HEILIG, San Francisco

E-mail letters to magazine@nytimes.com or post comments at nytimes.com/magazine. Letters should include the writer's name, address and daytime telephone number. We are unable to acknowledge or return unpublished submissions. Letters and comments are edited for length and clarity. The address of The New York Times Magazine is 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018.

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