Mushrooming is more than a passion. It’s an obsession, and after two poor seasons in a row, we are finally experiencing some fungus among us in Colorado. Which means that it has become very difficult for me to go hiking or running or biking, because as soon as my mushroom eyes catch glimpse of a […]
Miscellaneous
Early on in the pandemic, a few days before Switzerland’s first lockdown, participants in an international colloquium arrived in Basel and immediately started to flounder as they tried to navigate new norms for social interaction: “Hey,” said one conference-goer to another, waving. “Are you doing the elbow thing? Or are you doing the other thing?” […]
Canada’s politics are stable enough that I can afford to be, more or less, a single-issue voter. Six years ago, I wrote to the incoming member of parliament for my riding – a candidate for whom I did not vote. “Dear Ms. McKenna: Congratulations on your new position as our Member of Parliament. My parents […]
I used to snicker at people who religiously read their daily horoscopes. Astrology is not science. Not even close. “No one has shown that astrology can be used to predict the future or describe what people are like based on their birth dates,” some exasperated person at NASA wrote in a Tumblr post debunking a rumor that […]
I was already half awake when I heard Audrey’s voice at the door of the tent. “Hi ladies,” she said quietly, trying not to wake the others sleeping nearby. “It’s your turn.” My tentmate Jess stirred; it seemed like she had managed to actually get some rest, but I just couldn’t stay asleep with a […]
The other day I was going through someone’s collapsed house on the tip of a mesa in western Colorado. It looked like a small homestead where no one had been in a handful of decades. The front wall with its peaked roof and door still latched shut lay flat where it had fallen. I poked […]
When I was sixteen, my voice teacher predicted I would become a Jack of all trades. It wasn’t a compliment: We were in the midst of a fight, squaring off across the shiny black battlefield of her baby grand piano. She wanted me to concentrate only on singing. But I couldn’t imagine abandoning subjects like […]
Over the last week I traveled from town to town in southwest Colorado giving stage performances at night, telling stories about being here at the height of summer, tales of drought and wildfires and raging thunderstorms. The moon and stars passed over our open-air venues. I gave the show some science and some mysticism, in […]
