Quotes from Eugenia Bone

The candy cap was a revelation to me: redolent with the smell of maple, marvelously silky and spongy in texture, earth and meaty and sweet. When you eat a candy cap, your skin smells like maple sugar. When you exercise after eating a candy cap, your sweat smells like maple sugar. When you make love after eating a candy cap . . . well, I leave that to your imagination, but . . . yes.

I asked Dr. White if the same might be true of us, if our physical borders might also be a blur of microbes that connect us to each other and our environment. Do we share an open border connected by microbes with other people? "Well sure," he said. "That's one definition of a family.

A newborn's immune system is underdeveloped, which is convenient because it allows for colonization by Mom's bacteria, but it's also why young children are prone to infection.

Baby's first colonizers are supposed to be predominantly lactobacilli, the microbes picked up in the vaginal canal. Lactobacillus sets up a healthy human gut with positive influence over digestion and immune functions. If other species of bacteria are baby's first colonizers, the baby's microbiome sets up differently, maybe harmfully.