Paradise in the Making

Deanne Stillman does not describe the desert--a sublime, harsh and forbidding environment, a place of endless space and silence, a place of extremes (“Deconstructing Paradise,” April 8). The desert is not a weekend retreat under a bougainvillea branch, all “pretty pictures and scents and sounds.” Her naive desire for “its endlessly warm and open arms” merely reflects the human longing for a return to paradise.

Helena Bongartz

Twentynine Palms

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Stillman or her editors should have come to know the children of the working class a little better. Their parents didn’t work in “tool-and-dye” plants, but in “tool-and-die” plants--die being used in the sense of any device that stamps out a metal part, not the liquid used to add color to clothing.

Paul Lighthill

Palm Springs