The Sweet Spot

Amanita Muscaria aka Fly agaric has been the most glamorized, romanticized mushroom, with its bright red cap embellished with white spots standing on an elegant white stem, featured in fairy tales that mesmerize young minds clueless of its psychedelic properties. So it was no surprise that while still in single digits, one of my dreams was to walk the woods looking for this enchanting organism which was responsible for Alice (in Wonderland) being able to alter her size with just a bite. These fantastical mushrooms, sprawled in a bright red, eye-catching colony while the formidable, powerful Baba Yaga in Russian folklore flies over! As a child my imagination and curiosity saw no bounds, wanting to enter that ecosystem, to emerge in that dream world.   Even though I had a distant dream and fascination, I can’t exactly call myself a mycophile. My connection to wild mushrooms resurfaced due to a quirky tradition that evolved organically within a hiking group that I am a part of....

Long commutes to work were never my favorite. When left with no choice, I preferred driving through the quiet, picturesque New England inroads than the stressful commute of high speed, congested highways to get to work. During election season I noticed these inroads were lined with lawn signs supporting this candidate or that other one. Some candidates, those running at the national level, or a few at the state level, looked familiar. But there were other names on the signs that were always unfamiliar, invariably supporting a Town Selectman. Having been raised in India, I was aware of municipalities, but the title of ‘Selectman’ looked new and always caught my attention and curiosity. Though eager to learn about local government, at that time I was too caught up with a busy tech job and family, that there was never enough time to learn. Incidentally, after moving to a town where the residents are the town government legislative branch and where budgets/ policies are passed within a To...