He checks out and comments on how sad he looks in the photograph on the cover of Chuck Todd's book ("The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House"):

... but there were trumpeter swans...



... I walked out on the beach to try to get a better view ....



... but Meade climbed down a muddy slope to get closer shots... which you can see over at The Puparazzo... which is mostly about dogs, but our main dog Zeus had flown the coop (to Michigan). And yet when we got back to our car, we encountered a dog... a wonderful Treeing Walker Coonhound.

The Treeing Walker Coonhound has "a clear, ringing bugle voice," and the trumpeter swan has "a deep, trumpet- or bugle-like honking." And from where we were we could also hear the brass of the University of Wisconsin Marching Band wafting over from the stadium a couple miles away.

"'When suffering depression, people get stuck in a spiral of negative thoughts and cannot get out of it,' Dr. Expert said. 'One can imagine that breaking any pattern that prevents a "proper" functioning of the brain can be helpful.' Think of it as tripping a breaker or rebooting your computer."

"Dr. Expert." I love that. The doctor really is Dr. Expert — Dr. Paul Expert. I have no idea how fascinating that would seem if I were high on psilocybin — or should I say breaking a cerebral circuit or rebooting my brain with psilocybin? But I do find that amusing. Dr. Paul Expert! How to trip/medicate like Paul Expert....

Must we be depressed to deserve the brain benefits of psilocybin?

Anecdotally, psychoactive mushrooms may positively affect even nonsufferers. They did for me. 

"Me" = Eugenia Bone, author of "Mycophilia: Revelations From the Weird World of Mushrooms." These names! I feel like I'm reading a work of fiction... a work of fiction possibly titled Dr. Expert and Ms. Eugenia Bone.

I ate the mushroom as part of research for a book. The experience lasted about four hours, much of which I spent outdoors, but seemed to last much longer. I think because everything I was seeing was so new: the way the air was disturbed behind the flight of a bee, the way the trees seemed to respire, how the clouds and breeze and rocks and grass all existed in a kind of churning symbiosis.

I experienced a number of small epiphanies — self-realizations actually — but one in particular remained with me. As the drug wore off, I went indoors to take a hot bath. For a moment I thought that might not be a good idea, as bath time is when women in middle age can be very self-critical and unforgiving, and I didn't want the sight of my waistline to veer me into a bad trip. But while in the tub I envisioned my body as a ship that was taking me through life, and that made it beautiful.

Makes me think of the old George Harrison lyric: "I got born into the material world/Getting worn out in the material world/Use my body like a car/Taking me both near and far..."



I hope you watched that, because it was very trippy, and it might have rebooted your brain in a way that could enhance your experience as as we bring this post in for a landing and get close to Ms. Bone:

I stopped feeling guilty about growing older and regretful about losing my looks. Instead, I felt overwhelming gratitude. It was a tremendous relief that I still feel.

Ah, now, I hope the looming access to psilocybin is not limited to those who can name the right psychological ailment, so that women with body dysmorphia get access, slipping in through the door along with the depressed. That would be depressing. But look how fast the middle-aged woman who feels bad about her naked body jumps from wanting access for herself to the urge to control the young and the festive:

Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting 16-year-olds take magic mushrooms. I'm not suggesting they be used to party at all. What I am advocating for is a mind open to the possibilities of their use to help people in need. Because illiberality doesn't cure disease; curiosity does.

If you want relief from government control, you have to embody the persona of the victim. You must belong to the ranks of the "people in need." Your desire to tweak and tamper with your brain medicinally must be a matter of disease. You must portray yourself as down and trying to get to normal, not normal and seeking a higher ground.

From the Spiritual Sky/Such sweet memories have I....

May I recommend gloves? These are all the brand that I've repeatedly bought for myself (and all the links go to Amazon, which gives me a percentage of your purchase price, so your gift-buying is a way to express appreciation for this blog):

men's driving gloves
women's cashmere-lined gloves
women's driving gloves
men's rabbit-fur-lined gloves

I'm thinking of getting I just bought the driving gloves — in "dazzling blue" — not just (or even mostly) because they might be great/amusing to wear while driving, but because we like to keep the house at 62° (or less) in the wintertime and the backs of my hands get cold. So these would be "driving gloves" in the sense of driving the blog... driving people on the internet crazy... and, as noted above, if you appreciate my driving you around the internet and pointing out interesting sights and keeping up a conversation in what has been an 11-year ride, you can tip the driver by buying your gloves and other presents for yourself and others via those links and through The Althouse Amazon Portal.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH said: "Some, ah, gloves... gloves... howdaya... Oh, little gloves."

"It guarantees that I have really good health care and more disposable income than anyone in my Mississippi family. But way more than I want to admit, I'm wondering what price we pay for these kinds of ID's, and what that price has to do with the extrajudicial disciplining and killing of young black human beings. You have a Michigan State Faculty ID, and seven-year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed in a police raid. You have a Wilberforce University Faculty ID and 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by police for holding a BB gun. I have a Vassar College Faculty ID and police murdered Shereese Francis while she lay face-down on a mattress. You have a University of Missouri Student ID and Mike Brown's unarmed 18-year-old black body lay dead in the street for four and a half hours. But. 'We are winning,' my mentor, Adisa Ajamu, often tells me. 'Improvisation, Transcendence, and Resilience — the DNA of the Black experience — are just synonyms for fighting preparedness for the long winter of war.'"

From "My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK," by Kiese Laymon, who is an English professor at Vassar College and the author of "How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America" and other books.

"... said Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles), who has pushed for stiffer hit-and-run penalties."

From an article in the L.A. Times titled "Hit-and-runs take a rising toll on cyclists."

Hit-and-run collisions involving bicyclists surged 42% from 2002 to 2012 in Los Angeles County, according to a Times analysis of California Highway Patrol crash data.

The increase came as the overall number of hit-and-runs involving cars, cyclists and pedestrians dropped by 30%. Between 2002 and 2012, the most recent data available, more than 5,600 cyclists were injured and at least 36 died in crashes in which drivers fled the scene....

The Los Angeles Police Department closed one in five hit-and-runs from 2008 to 2012, meaning about 80% were unresolved, according to data the department reported last year to the Board of Police Commissioners. Less than half of those cases were closed through an arrest.