All photographs by Jack Bouchard. 

instagram: @gnarbouchard

Every year, approximately 6.5 million animals are brought to shelters around the country. That is over 6 million animals who are homeless, abandoned and oftentimes abused or neglected. Many others are not rescued, and 2.7 million are euthanized in kill shelters every year. And for what? So people can have a purebred dog with perfectly pointed ears and just the right colored fur? Sorry, but the cost benefit analysis is just not adding up on this one. 

A little over a year ago my family adopted our beautiful, friendly and stubborn mutt Stella. Her story is sad, much like all the other dogs posted on adoption websites, but seeing her, you would never know. After being wronged by so many humans during her life, all she wants is to make up for lost time and receive as much love as possible. Like seriously, she won’t leave you alone until you pet her for at least 20 minutes, and if you don’t acknowledge her when she walks in...

Right before the Feb. 22 game between the Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers, Florida’s Aleksander Barkov and Vegas’ Max Pacioretty took the ceremonial opening puck from Team USA captain Mike Eruzione. Eruzione, the captain of the 1980 U.S. Olympic “Miracle” team, scored the winning goal against the Soviet National hockey team exactly four decades ago. Frozen in time is veteran sportscaster Al Michaels shout of exuberance:” Do you believe in Miracles? YES!”

Having spent most of my adult life in New England, I have always been impressed with the popularity of the sport of hockey in this part of the country. Fans and players al

ike indulge in the culture; stories of the big bad Bruins of Orr, Esposito and Company are still told. Back in the day, there were popular bumper stickers and tee shirts that read: “Jesus Saves… Esposito scores on the rebound!”

As an older student...

Coming to college is a terrifying and emotional rollercoaster for most; you probably have never left home for this long before and find yourself in a completely new environment with a bunch of new people that you’ve ultimately never seen before. But it can – and will also be – so

me of the best years of your life.

Being a senior, you never really look back on all the memories you make until it’s time to say goodbye. You’ve made countless memories and probably have a good amount of stories that are unexplainable.

UNH teaches us leadership skills as well as how to make friendships that will last forever. It gives us stories that we hope our parents never find out about as well as experiences that have shaped who we are today. Here are some of those stories.

EMILY CLARK:

Having only spent two years at UNH, Emily has made up for lost time. A New Hampshire resident, Emily spent her first two years at Great Bay Community College...

“Stars were falling across the sky myriad and random, speeding across brief vectors from their origins in night to their destinies in dust and nothingness”

– Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, pg. 347

Life floats by in a heartbeat. Ninety-three million miles from the sun, the Earth has orbited and rotated and danced its dance for nearly 4.5 billion years. And for most of that time, it has hosted life. There have been countless lives, falling across the sky like stars myriad and random, speeding across brief vectors from their origins in the night to their destinies in dust and nothingness, as Cormac McCarthy would say. It’s said that everything – including humans – is made of star stuff: sashaying and shimmering pieces of recycled life repurposed to conceive countless more dancers on the stage of existence. And somewhere along the way, life stumbled upon a method to speed up the death-and-rebirth cycle: violence.

Violenc...

When I was in third grade, my friend Allie and I were playing in my basement and went looking for some toys in the back storage room. You might ask: Why were we looking so hard? No idea, but we were. We came across a huge trash bag inside of a bin. So naturally, as any 8 year old would, we opened it. My Little Pony, American Girl Doll clothes, spy gear... We hit absolute jackpot. We looked at each other with confusion and from what I remember, we both just kinda stared for a second, trying to put the pieces together. It’s December, why would mom and dad hide this, how come it was hidden, this is the stuff I put on my Christmas list—NO WAY.

Allie and I discussed the probability that the rumors could be true. Was he fake? The fat guy with a beard who made toys with little people and then flew them around the world in one night on a sleigh led by animals with no wings that could fly? It was too legit to be fake. 

Being the...

After ten years of negligence from the federal government while the e-cigarette and vape trend took off, a local community decided to act. With a 6-1-2 vote, the Dover City Council voted in favor of the Tobacco 21 (T21) ordinance to raise the legal tobacco product purchasing age to 21
on June 27, 2018.

The FDA and legislators were “asleep at the switch on this one,” said Dana Mitchell, Prevention
Coordiator at Dover Youth to Youth, a youth advocacy group with a focus on alcohol and drug abuse. As the coordinator of Youth to Youth, Mitchell worked alongside members of the program to push T21 forward and get it passed in Dover.

Dover is one of the many communities nationwide that has been impacted by the rapid growth
of a vaping outbreak that has been growing for a decade. Since Dover’s T21 ordinance was
passed, there have been 2,290 cases of vaping product use lung injury and 47 deaths in the
United States, acc...

DAY 1: I’m in a van with my friend I met only three months prior to this trip and five other girls I do not know. There is a tall and tanned man driving us, making small talk with us in broken English. 

“Where are you from?” “Where are you studying?” “Have you ever been to Morocco before?”

Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) by Shakira is playing on the radio. We’re driving on a barely paved road as mopeds zoom past us. One moped driving next to our van had a man driving, and a woman behind him with a head scarf covering every inch of her face but her eyes. The only thing that separated the man and woman was an infant baby being held by the woman. No seatbelts, no helmets, no carrier for the infant baby; just the two seat moped and the open, warm African air.  

I peered out the window taking in everything about this foreign landscape.  

Suddenly the van came to a halt in the middle of the city center. The door flung open and...