No, this isn’t about Zach’s and my visit to Amsterdam a couple of years ago. Though that was fun.

Yesterday afternoon my friend Kathleen and I went mushrooming on Larch Mountain in the Gorge. Our haul of chanterelles was disappointingly small: those are mine on the right. But we found a bunch of the most beautiful mushrooms I have ever seen. They look black in the photo, but they are really a deep, dark, velvety purple.

They are Cortinarius violaceus, the Violet Cortinarius, also called the Purple Cort. According to several mycological guides I’ve checked,  they are the only member of their large family that it is safe to eat. It is unsettling, though, when a mushroom is labeled “Edible, with Caution.” All of the other cortinarius mushrooms, apparently, contain bad substances called cortinarins. The onset of the deleterious effects is delayed, such that you don’t know you have a problem until 3 to 14 days have passed. Still, the identifying characteristics of the Purple Cort are pretty conclusive.

Kathleen and I have never collected these mushrooms, because we have always had much better luck with chanterelles and have concentrated on them. This year we had to branch out. She got a lot of angelwings, and I got these satanic-looking beauties.

The Purple Corts are said to be not particularly savory. They are also said to darken to black when cooked. I propose to start with those two small ones and see what happens. But aren’t they gorgeous?

Last Thursday evening Zach and I saw a musical called “The Ghosts of Celilo,” which is having its world premiere here in Portland. It was composed by Oregonian Marv Ross (of Quarterflash!) and is a time-twisting story about the intersection between two groups of characters: four ghosts at the bottom of Celilo Falls, which disappeared when the Bonneville Dam went into operation on the Columbia River in 1947, and three young people at an Indian school run by missionaries. The music is an interesting fusion of rock, Native American, and musical-theater influences, and the singer-actors were wonderful. One of the best was Bonnie’s brother, who is a well-known and deservedly acclaimed figure on the Portland stage.

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Sweet–and not just because it gives me the perfect opening for a kids’ bio of Gore I’m updating this month for Lerner Publications. I originally wrote the book when Gore was VP, and last updated it in 1999. The new edition will focus on his global warming crusade rather than his political career, but I’d love to end the book with his announcement that he’s going to run again. Don’t think it’ll happen, but I could be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.

A fat package arrived for me in the mail today. Yay–I finally got around to obtaining a book I should’ve bought when it was published in 1997: Clute and Grant’s Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Even though it’s not completely up to date, it’s 1000+ pages of entries that make me want to abuse Interlibrary Loan and do nothing but read for the rest of my life.