To the editor:

As June draws near and Westport Harbor braces for another onslaught of tourists and summer renters, each recurrence of which places more pressure on our small and environmentally fragile community, I am reminded of an onslaught of a different kind, one we have to live with year-round.

I am referring to the visual, aesthetic, and emotional assault that is the ugly dull metal erect tined thing inflicted on anyone with eyes who drives past the divergence of the low and high roads.  It is allegedly a piece of pop art or something like it, but it cannot be this when it is not artistic in any way and when Westport Harbor, land of history, culture, and breathtaking natural beauty, is the exact opposite of any type of imaginable context for "pop" anything.

The fork is nothing more than a horrible blight on the landscape that torments natives and sends precisely the wrong message to visitors — that they are in a place that is like the Hamptons, or one where we don't take nature seriously, and can't live in humility and in harmony with the land — that we must make urban-type "pop" comments and stick them into our precious soil, near our precious trees, like juvenile daggers, to brag that we can make puns worthy of a five-year-old about there being a fork in the road.  It even makes an already dangerous intersection even more dangerous by distracting drivers.

I would like to urge the town to organize a referendum so that every resident who feels this eyesore pierces their sense of place on a daily basis will finally have the chance to vote on whether and how very speedily the horrible fork should be permanently removed.

Kate Chase

Westport