Mash Notes, Hate Mail & Other Correspondence

To the Editor: During the early morning hours of April 21, 2020 I had a seemingly psychic premonition that Biden would politically join forces with Trump at some point in the future. I don’t know if my premonition was truly psychic or not. I was fully awake, clean and sober, and I had not been thinking about either Biden or Trump beforehand. The sense I got was that a Biden/Trump alliance would take place in response to an emergency situation. It wasn’t clear whether or not the emergency was related to Covid-19. I didn’t see it in great detail. Rather, I just got the general …

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To the Editor: The end of the world is near, death, death, pandemic, pandemic, we are all in this together, we all in this together…yes, we are, because millions have had Covid-19 and no more are dying than other high flu seasons. Yet all we hear every night are [sic] not calm and reflective reporting—just fear stories. It is sad that we lemmings are so terribly manipulated. … They push the leaders and snip and bark and sensationalize and only report ignorant anecdotal stories with no real background but to blind you from the truth. A pandemic means worldwide, like heart disease, drug overdoses, cancer …

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by Robert C. Koehler The uber-irony about the deadly coronavirus is that, as it claims lives, endangers millions and interrupts the social normal, threatening unprecedented global chaos, it is also quietly informing us what we must do to create a better world — and, indeed, creating it, in certain ways, as we look on in stunned wonder. The “what we must do” part is obvious to many: “After all,” writes Lawrence Wittner, “why not work cooperatively to save humanity from massive global death and economic collapse rather than continue to devote $1.8 trillion a year to waging wars and engaging in vast military buildups with …

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To the Editor: “Clean drinking water is a human right,” says the N.H. Palestine Education Network (N.H. PEN). N.H. PEN has supported the “Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine,” a Massachusetts based organization (waterjusticeinpalestine.org) that has sponsored walks to raise funds to assist Palestinians who live in either Gaza or in the West Bank to gain access to water. Another Massachusetts group linked to the “Alliance” is 1for3.org, which works closely with Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, Palestine, to promote water security. According to the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, “95 percent of the Gaza Strip’s two million residents, including 991,400 children, are without …

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Dear Editor, What can be learned from the coronavirus pandemic? Preparing for epidemics before they happen saves lives. Responding to epidemics at the first signs of outbreak saves lives and reduces damage. Denying there is a problem enables the catastrophe to accelerate. Delaying response causes preventable deaths and costs uncountable fortune. The cost of early preparation, prevention and response is substantial. The cost of early preparation, prevention and response is very low, compared to the cost of doing nothing. Can we apply these lessons to the global climate crisis? We are suffering early signs: hurricanes are more powerful and damaging; droughts are more severe and …

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Never saw the like of it before: four sets of railroad tracks on one side, four lanes of traffic on another, parking lots on either side, barely space for bushes and a patch of grass, an early April day, sun shining— and there, beside the fir tree, a fox. There, another.  Smaller.  And another! Three, four, five, six!  Incredible. A vixen and her six small kits, the mother keeping watch, aware of us, fifteen feet away, my wife and I, but not alarmed so long as we stood still, her babies tussling, tumbling, racing, pouncing, prancing, chasing one another, having fun, though never far from …

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