are we mushrooming???

Stanley Park openspacers at OPENSPACEKOREA.ORG
Tue Feb 19 00:31:53 PST 2008


Michael,

Even with my rather short experience of OS participations and practices,
it's enough to say big "YES!"

I surely believe that we will contribute to disorganize and disassemble hard
and rigid organizations of our time and transform them into something
softer, organic, and even lovable! 

Please send me the full article. :-)

Mushrooming...

Love,

park


On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:23:18 -0600, Michael Herman
<michael at michaelherman.com> wrote:

>i read this introduction to an article about mushrooms and other fungi
>today, and of you all, us all, and what we do.  any of this sound anything
>like your experience in open space?
>
>more of this is posted at
>http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/386/going_underground.  the whole
>article is seven pages long, was sent to me scanned rather than as text, but
>i could forward to anyone who mails to me directly.
>
>enjoy...
>
>michaelh
>
>----
>Going Underground Paul Stamets On The Vast, Intelligent Network Beneath Our
>Feet*by* Derrick Jensen
>
>*For several years people from different places and backgrounds kept
>recommending the same oddly titled book to me: Paul Stamets's *Mycelium
>Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the
>World<http://www.powells.com/partner/32206/biblio/1580085792>
>*(Ten Speed Press). Everyone told me it was one of the most mind-bending
>texts they'd ever read. With so many recommendations, I perversely hesitated
>to pick the book up, and when I finally did, I prepared myself to be
>disappointed. *
>
>*I wasn't. Stamets fundamentally changed my view of nature � in particular,
>fungi: yeasts, mushrooms, molds, the whole lot of them.*
>
>*When we think of fungi, most of us picture mushrooms, those slightly
>mysterious, potentially poisonous denizens of dark, damp places. But a
>mushroom is just the fruit of the mycelium, which is an underground network
>of rootlike fibers that can stretch for miles. Stamets calls mycelia the
>"grand disassemblers of nature" because they break down complex substances
>into simpler components. For example, some fungi can take apart the
>hydrogen-carbon bonds that hold petroleum products together. Others have
>shown the potential to clean up nerve-gas agents, dioxins, and plastics.
>They may even be skilled enough to undo the ecological damage pollution has
>wrought. *
>
>*Since reading *Mycelium Running*, I've begun to consider the possibility
>that mycelia know something we don't. Stamets believes they have not just
>the ability to protect the environment but the intelligence to do so on
>purpose. His theory stems in part from the fact that mycelia transmit
>information across their huge networks using the same neurotransmitters that
>our brains do: the chemicals that allow us to think. In fact, recent
>discoveries suggest that humans are more closely related to fungi than we
>are to plants. *
>
>*Almost since life began on earth, mycelia have performed important
>ecological roles: nourishing ecosystems, repairing them, and sometimes even
>helping create them. The fungi's exquisitely fine filaments absorb nutrients
>from the soil and then trade them with the roots of plants for some of the
>energy that the plants produce through photosynthesis. No plant community
>could exist without mycelia. I've long been a resident and defender of
>forests, but Stamets helped me understand that I've been misperceiving my
>home. I thought a forest was made up entirely of trees, but now I know that
>the foundation lies below ground, in the fungi. *
>
>
>
>
>-- 
>
>Michael Herman
>Michael Herman Associates
>
>http://www.michaelherman.com
>http://www.openspaceworld.org
>http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.org
>
>312-280-7838 (mobile)
>
>*
>*
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