A NEW ZEALANDER I’ve never met sent me a present last week. When it arrived, I was immersed in our magazine’s latest ruminations on European ambivalence about America, and the unexpected gift from a faraway friend-of-a-friend felt like a tonic.

It turned out to be a handsome paperback collection of “Letters to New York and America: From New Zealand with Love.” Each letter has a page to itself, opposite a photo of the sender. It’s the brainchild of New Zealand writer and publisher Mary Hobbs and her mountain-guide husband Charlie as a gesture of solidarity with Americans after September 11.