Mash Notes, Hate Mail & Other Correspondence

by Jean Stimmell I was psyched to see “Unstuck in Time,” a new film about Kurt Vonnegut by Robert Weide and Don Argott. I had devoured Kurt’s most famous book, Slaughterhouse-Five, when it came out in 1969, soon after I got back from serving in Vietnam. As someone who viewed my war as unnecessary, illegal, and immoral, I could identify with his anti-war stance and how he questioned authority. Later, I became intrigued with him for being a wounded warrior, as were my patients, after working in the VA treating veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In  Slaughterhouse-Five, the narrator and Billy Pilgrim, …

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To the Editor: By the time George Jones and Tammy Wynette released their 1980 number-one hit single, “Two Story House,” the divorce was final. The lyrics say it all: “We live in a two-story house. She’s got her story and I’ve got mine.” Now, over 40 years later, it appears we-the-people have reached a similar impasse, finding ourselves split into two factions so alienated by cultural warfare that facts no longer matter. In divorce litigation, unscrupulous attorneys know exactly how to spin the narrative and convert destructive emotion into billable hours. Hence the popular cliché: “Only the lawyers win.” The same may be said for …

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Dear Editor: This week, Attorney General John Formella announced that New Hampshire would join nine other Republican-controlled states in their lawsuit to overturn the Biden Administration’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate on all Federal contractors and contracted employees. This is another in a long line of myopic, dangerous and reckless actions taken by Republicans to undermine our efforts to end the worst public health crisis in our history. Considering the makeup of the current Supreme Court, with five extreme right wing Justices, including three Trump appointees, I would be very surprised if they do not decide in favor of the Plaintiffs. If they do, it would overturn …

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To the Editor: The Community Rights Movement in New England is grieving the loss of a water protector. Gail Mills of Nottingham, N.H., passed away this month, having paid forward a legacy of community activism that inspired local activists across the country. Townspeople in Nottingham faced their Goliath in the mid-2000’s when USA Springs, LLC management decided to extract and bottle water from a local aquifer, to sell overseas in Italy. Gail and her husband, Chris, encouraged the community to stand their ground and do everything within their power to prevent permits from being issued by the state. What they learned through infuriating experience was …

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by W.D. Ehrhart I have spent my entire life reading. As Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away.” Even in Vietnam, as an 18-year-old, I read whatever I could get my hands on from John Updike’s Rabbit, Run to Voltaire’s Candide to John Cleland’s Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. I don’t read many books more than once because there are so many good books to read, but I’ve read multiple times David Howarth’s 1066: The Year of the Conquest, and Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the …

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