Darker My family call me “Mary Fucking Sunshine”. My mother – who claims never to have uttered a coarse word before her progeny developed a whopping case of potty mouth – was the one to apply that moniker to me. I feel sure my nickname was meant both as a loving statement of support for my positive outlook, as well as a dig to point up how annoying that sunny outlook can be. There’s been some dark shit going down these days. I thought last fall when the election debacle unfolded that I had a bead on the shape of darker things to come. I thought that I’d be able to imagine the various policy disasters that one could easily – if grimly – anticipate. But then you fold into this toxic mix a frothy measure of natural disasters, the death of inspiring people – both within the immediate family and the broader human family – and some challenging-though-natural familial developments, and you’ve got a recipe for some serious, I’m-not-fucking-around Doom and Gloom. And so, as my nickna