Mash Notes, Hate Mail & Other Correspondence

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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by W.D. Ehrhart In September 1814, as Francis Scott Key stood on the deck of a British warship watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry, he was inspired to write a poem that eventually became the “Star-Spangled Banner.” We hear that song a lot these days: at every football game from middle school to the NFL; at NASCAR races and hockey games and commencement ceremonies, and, well, at just about any public event that attracts more than three Americans. I wonder how many of my fellow citizens know that Key’s original poem contains not just the stanza we sing, but three additional stanzas, one of which …

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