There was plenty to read in this morning’s Sunday Monitor, but I’m hoping readers found their way deep into the Books section (pages D4-5) and read Ann Davis’s short review of Bark, a book I’d never heard of but which sure sounds cool. The book isn’t about dogs (my first guess) but rather about the bark of trees. Never given it much thought?… 0

I’ve received a few comments from readers today about the lead photograph on today’s front page. The picture shows Democratic Gov. John Lynch speaking before a joint session of the Legislature in his final State of the State address. Sitting to his side are House Speaker Bill O’Brien and Senate President… 9

What if much of what we think we know about the AIDS epidemic is wrong? That’s the idea behind a forthcoming book by Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin. If that first name rings a bell, it should. Timberg is a former Concord Monitor journalist who made his mark here as a particularly creative and smart city hall reporter in the 1990s. These days, he is an editor at the Washington… 1

  I had a note from a reader in deepest New Hampton last night. His paper didn’t reach him amid the ice and sleet and whatever else was falling from the sky Friday morning.  Was there a way, he wondered, to access the Monitor’s daily puzzles via concordmonitor.com? In fact, yes. The e-edition of the newspaper, which you’ll find near  the bottom of… 0

Last Saturday, we published a column from a Portsmouth physician worried that the Republicans would repeal President Obama’s health reform and replace it with nothing. If that happened, he said, we’d all end up like a woman he knows who can’t afford insurance. Her plan? “God is my health insurance,” she said. I used that quote as the headline of the… 1

Fans of the Monitor Comics page no doubt noticed something a little askew this morning. Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip pokes fun at Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, both presumably on stage at a presidential debate in Florida. Asked for their favorite colors, Romney replies, “Amber, because of our waves of grain, and purple because of our mountain majesties.” Given… 0

  Regular Monitor readers might be fans of Mel Graykin of Deerfield, a talented writer on the newspaper’s board of contributors. In recent months, she’s written about community bake sales, hiking in the Whites, the future of libraries and more. That’s Mel Graykin. But who in the world is Justine Graykin? Turns out, they’re one and the same. Justine is… 0

Has Grant Bosse finally fallen under the spell of the Monitor editorial board? We’ve been pushing for a statewide income tax for the past, oh, 100 years or so – and making terrific progress, too, you might have noticed. This morning I got an email from Bosse, a conservative writer on the newspaper’s board of contributors. Would I be interested in publishing a column… 0

Some stories and photographs that appear in the Monitor are so obviously going to stir controversy that we can anticipate it before it arrives. But a complaint I received last week took me by surprise. At issue was a five-sentence news item produced by the New Hampshire office of the Associated Press and published in the Jan. 8 Monitor on the Local & State page. Here’s… 1

In the past 24 hours, I’ve received a couple of phone messages from readers worried about what they perceived as the Monitor’s recent turn toward conservatism. Come again? The first caller complained that we spent the entire presidential primary election cycle ignoring the Democrats. This was not just a Republican contest, she argued. And there are plenty of Democrats… 7

While we were busy chasing the final hours of the New Hampshire presidential primary, I got a few complaints from readers that seemed worth exploring: 1. I had a phone message from a reader on Tuesday morning who was utterly fed up with the volume of presidential primary news in the Monitor. He complained that he wasn’t… 0

My previously scheduled Election Night appearance on Fox News was summarily canceled late last week when the producer suddenly discovered that the Monitor had endorsed a presidential candidate in tomorrow’s election – which was apparently against the rules for Fox guests. I was miffed, but it didn’t end there. I took a call from a different Fox producer asking… 2

  Did you notice something missing in your Sunday Monitor this morning? There was, alas, no Katy Burns on the Viewpoints page, and no Chase Binder on the Travel page. (In fact, no Travel page!) Fear not: It’s temporary. Burns’s column appeared in the Saturday edition to make room this morning for a full-page chart comparing the Republican presidential candidates… 0