Not long ago, the Environmental Health Strategy Center, a member of the Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine, sought people willing to be interviewed about why toxic chemical reforms are important to them. I volunteered, and this interview is the result: Interview with the Environmental Health Strategy Center
American Breakdown
Our Ailing Country, My Body’s Revolt, and the 19th-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life
I know the truth; I know it in my body
When I was a girl, I had a tree. I did not own the tree, but it was mine. It had broad, heart-shaped leaves, and stood in a field at the top of a hill. I was a wild thing. All summer long, I scrambled through green and golden fields. I ran barefoot over the hot tar of the road…
A Reading from “The Butterfly Effect”
Here I am at the legendary New York literary hangout, the KGB Bar, reading excerpts from my essay, “The Butterfly Effect,” which interweaves the parallel stories of the declining monarch numbers and my challenges traveling–with multiple chemical sensitivity–to see them. The essay won the $1000 Robert Fragasso Animal Advocate Award for the Best Creative Nonfiction Essay About Animals, and was…
A Canary in New York
Since this blog is called “One Canary Sings,” I’ve decided I need to blog more actively about this canary’s ongoing efforts to sing, sing, SING about health and the environment. And a lot has been going on since last I submitted a report from the mines. First, I found out that my essay, “The Butterfly Effect,” which intertwines the parallel…
Big Talk Interview about One Canary Sings
In April, 2010, after my book in progress won honorable mention in the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance’s Maine Literary Awards, Suzanne Murphy invited me to join her and Dr. Caroline Teschke for an interview on Big Talk, their acclaimed WMPG radio talk show. Here is that interview: [audio:https://jenniferlunden.com/Audio/bigtalkinterview.mp3|titles=Big Talk]
The Tortoise. And the Hare.
There’s something about a turtle moving across a busy highway that is so sad. It’s the slow, determined plodding of those four short legs—pull and drag, pull and drag, pull and drag.
Pity Party
You are invited to an honest-to-goodness, true blue, no-hold-barred Pity Party in honor of Lunden and her life of suffering and deprivation. There will be no playing of the miniature finger violins. Not even a regular violin will do. No, Lunden’s story of suffering and deprivation can only be met with a full-on cello. The real thing. If you have one, you are welcome to bring it.
On Not Being Productive
With this new discovery of the possible connection between the XMRV retrovirus and Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), I am struck by the magnitude of the desperation for a biological explanation in the CFIDS community. All of us with CFIDS are so excited. But it’s a retrovirus! Like HIV! And we don’t know how it is transmitted. And…
Endurance
I have a picture of me leaning off the edge of a cliff wearing a red-striped harness strapped over my gray track pants. In my gloved hands—right hand in front of me, left hand behind—I grip a rope. I am smiling gamely, because I am with friends, but I have made no bones about the fact that I am scared…