WE WATCHED THE debate along with everyone else in the United States and Michaela kept commenting on Trump's overuse of tanning product: "He's just so . . . orange." Kamala has the nine-year-old vote locked simply for not looking like a lumpy pile of orange-juice pulp. Needless to say Michaela was quite pleased to learn about Taylor Swift's endorsement the following morning.

Michaela has been fairly invested in this election. It may have been hearing us talk about it or listening to stories on the radio about it . . . or maybe it was from watching CNN-10 last year? In any case she seems much more on top of current events than I was at her age.

apologies for the cis-het definition of sex! I was caught off guard and it was early in the morning

It felt good to make a note of this moment and I look forward to sharing it with Michaela in the future. (I feel like my drawings of myself in the first panels look a bit Doonesbury-esque, which is definitely not something I was aiming for.)

Thank you everyone for your very thoughtful notes in response to my description of the surgical biopsy in last week's letter! I fear I overemphasized the pain; it was bad but not horribly so. I should also note that I am very grateful to have only experienced minor pain during exploratory surgery resulting in negative results instead of a different outcome.

Also there was a tragic typo: I meant to write that the shooting in Georgia marks the 23rd time THIS YEAR that a school shooting has resulted in injuries or deaths.

I hope you and yours are well and that anyone out there who is going back to school as a teacher or student or parent is having a good year so far.

Today in Mushroom News

I've been sitting on this for a few weeks but now seems like a good time to share this video of a famous TV hoax in 1991 when a Russian experimental musician claimed that Vladimir Lenin was a mushroom and a lot of people believed this to be true. Here is a short clip of the actual moment, and here is a longer explanation of this bizarre but telling event.

Laurie Raye, *Lenin was a Mushroom*, 2020.

Thank you for reading! If you're new here, welcome. Mushroom Head is a comic diary about me, Claire, a middle-aged lady who lives in Oak Park. Previous installments recorded the time I thought I'd ODed on THC and my experience parenting a person with ADHD as a person who has ADHD. There are also occasional forays into the surreal. If you'd like to get in touch with me, please feel free to respond directly to this email. I'm always happy to hear from you! (Also, you might want to put the Mushroom Head email address into your contacts to avoid having it go to your junk folder.) And if someone forwarded this email to you, I hope you will subscribe, because you are welcome here! Unless you are a bot. In that case, boo, please go away.