Truffles

First Burmese pythons, now this:

At the Aups market, the black truffle’s price has more than doubled over the past five years, to about €850 per kilo ($560 a pound).

Farmers say production is down by 50-75 percent this winter season and they blame global warming, warning that if thermometers keep rising — as many scientists predict they could — France’s black truffle will one day be just a memory.

Will the madness never end?

3 Comments

  1. John Fleck — as in Whitman College, and KWCW?! I just followed the dots from the Knight Science Journalism Tracker that mentioned you yesterday — and there you were! (If that’s really you). Sue

  2. Indeed, it is I, having parlayed a brief career as a talk show host on KWCW into a lucrative career in the fast-paced, high-paying world of science journalism.

    Where are you, and what are you up to, Sue?

  3. Well, I’ve been some 26 or 27 years in Seattle, doing health services research at the Univ. of WA now. There was a year teaching English in China (happened to be the year of Tiananmen– rather interesting). Been married to Phil Fenner (also Whitman class of ’78) for 10 years.
    Science journalism – that’s quite interesting. That’s where I thought I was headed when I left a PhD program in Botany with an MS degree instead, but I was usurped into health services research through a long story, and have stayed there ever since. Mostly doing health workforce and rural health research these days, although our Prez and his administration has made the research life much more difficult lately, as funding as gone to a trickle. Two step kids – Phil’s twins, soon to turn 21. And a series of wonderful dogs. Let’s see, hiking, X-country skiing, sustainable food efforts, and eating. Oh – and last summer we had the great fun of going on Whitman’s (and Bob Carson’s) cruise to Svalbard (79 degrees latitude!) with Peter, Pam and Wylie Dunlap-Shohl! OK – that’s a very short summary of my life since Whitman. Our 30th reunion is coming up in May.
    Sue

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