apparently I *did* need html-to-text.

package.json

@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@
     "express": "^4.9.5",
     "express-session": "^1.8.2",
     "heapdump": "^0.3.0",
+    "html-to-text": "1.5.0",
     "jimp": "0.2.20",
     "less": "^2.0.0",
     "logrotate-stream": "^0.2.3",

src/emailer.js

@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ var	async = require('async'),
 	nconf = require('nconf'),
 	templates = require('templates.js'),
 	nodemailer = require('nodemailer'),
+	htmlToText = require('html-to-text'),
 	url = require('url'),
 
 	User = require('./user'),