I received the latest Yankee Magazine titled "Snow Days" a few days ago and much to my surprise it was not the same digest size magazine I had grown used to over the years. Half again as large in size lengthwise and approximately 2 inches taller, I found myself holding what I would consider to be a normal size magazine in my hands. No more digest size Yankee it seems. Imagine that now would ya'. Another new change is that the Yankee is now published six times a year. So just to show those who haven't seen the new issue yet, I snapped a quick comparison picture with my trusty old 'point and shoot' Kodak digital to show the difference between old and new. I have to say that I liked it immediately and with the little girl on the front of the twilight blue cover, in her cap and scarf gazing up into the snowflake laden sky, it gave the new Yankee the flavor of an old Life Magazine or The Saturday Evening Post cover. You know…the ones with the Norman Rockwell prints on the cover. The new editor, Mel Allen, talks about the new change in layout in the editor's letter entitled A Letter to Our Readers that appears on page 8 in this latest issue. He also presents his own unique insight into what he expects some of the initial responses to the changes might be in a Behind the Scenes at Yankee article at the website. I can easily understand why he might think this way what with New Englanders being "set in their ways" as they are and I have to admire the man for trying to answer these anticipated "readers comments". Still, I do believe the change is a delightful and necessary one. It's always seemed to me that the crew at Yankee were trying to stuff an awful lot of content into digest size magazine. For my own two cents worth, despite all the extra room for Yankee's beautiful photos to live on and the easier to use table of contents page and all the other new stuff in the layout, the one beef that I had (and so did my wife) was that the text was still too darn small to be read comfortably. The only reason I say this is simply because I have to believe that the majority of Yankee readers are not of the age group that have naturally sharp, young eyesight but more of the age group that stow reading glasses in just about every room in the house (like yours truly). I'm not asking for a large print edition here, just up the text a half point or two that's all. Anyway, since Mr. Allen was asking for feedback, I sent him one although, with all due respect to him and the crew at Yankee, I don't really figure on any result. Realistically, I would imagine the text size is ok for most folks. I think that this is one change to one old venerable magazine that is for the better.