FUNGIMANIA E
Susan Goldhor
verything’s coming up mushrooms. Everywhere I look there’s a new film, a new book, a blog or an article showing
how fungi can improve my: a) life; b) physical health; c) mental health; d) the planet; or e) all of the above. Salon: “Amid the pandemic, a foray with fungi transformed me.” On YouTube: “How Fungi Changed My View of the World.” Te New Yorker: “Te Secret Lives of Fungi.” And on and on. And that’s just plain old ordinary mushrooms, I’m not even hinting here about the magic ones (they’ll come later). Am I pleased? No, I’m not. In fact, I’m pissed. And with
a nod to my pal Denis Benjamin, who’s always been good at showing the way, I’ve become a myco-curmudgeon. What is it about this unprecedented of onslaught of mycophilia, mycophagy, and mile wide, inch deep mycology that makes it so irritating? Well, let me count the ways. 1. It’s not mycology; in almost every case (although see
Item 4) it’s just mushrooms. Tere are literally millions (and no, I’m not saying how many millions because it’s just a guess anyway) of species of fungi of which maybe 15,000 produce those ephemeral fruiting bodies we call mushrooms. Okay, so maybe that represents a small segment of mycology. After all, you could be a specialist in one treatment for one problem of a single organ and it would still be medicine and you’d still be a respected doctor. And, as every mushroom club member probably understands, the real point of mushrooms is that in the invisible, microscopic world that almost all fungi inhabit, these fruiting bodies are the charismatic megafungi that we can actually see. Of course, that’s what folks glom (a word undoubtedly derived from the Glomales, notable for their lack of glitz) onto. So sue me. 2. It’s capitalism run rampant. It’s fine for folks to write about
how the forest and its fungi brought them peace of mind, a sense of wonder and harmony, a closure to deep grief and so forth and so on, but those folks are more and more giving way to the capitalist trope of how to make money off all of this peace, wonder and harmony. To quote from Te New York Times: “Mushrooms are showing up in all sorts of wellness products
— coffee for immune support, hot chocolate to help you focus and supplements for inflammation — pushing them into the mainstream and turning them into a major force in the flourishing multibillion-dollar wellness market. “Psychedelic mushrooms are also on investors’ minds. So far,
regulators in the U.S. and Canada are taking baby steps toward allowing limited use of psychedelic mushrooms for treatment of certain mental health conditions (Oregon became the first state to do so in November). But in the past year, more than 20 companies focused on psychedelics have gone public.” Have you tuned in to the Mushroom Hour? You can hear
podcasts by Larry Evans of Telluride Mushroom Festival fame and Reggie of the Oakland Hyphae—the latter a political activist for psilocybin. But it’s not just Larry and Reggie. It’s also Britt (yes the editor of the magazine you’re reading this in) and Suzanne Simard. In other words, unless you know, how can you tell the difference between what’s deeply true,
Continues on page 26. 24 FUNGI Volume 14:4 Fall 2021 “They’re MY
Photo courtesy Chris Mandrell, SIU Carbondale Physics Department.
All that Matters Now S
Joe McFarland
ure, we greedy fungi fanatics dream of having it all: a private foraging sanctuary all to ourselves and nobody
else. If we made the rules, all mushrooms would belong to us and nobody else. All chanterelles, every king bolete, every lobster mushroom, oyster and morel—especially morels, every damned one of them—would tumble into our baskets exclusively and that would be the end of it. Plus, in that dream world, all wild fungi would exist in perfect condition, fresh, with no trace of browsing insects or marauding, human competitors. Immaculate fungi would await us and us alone— unpicked—in the unmolested forests we alone may enter. I dream of that perfect world myself. And, I must say, it’s
totally awesome. Having the entire world to myself truly is unbelievable, if somewhat undeserved. But then there’s that pesky, irrevocable thing called reality. And reality decrees nobody lives in a Utopia where they alone
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