Here's a big shout out to friends who keep me informed and stimulated, people like Paula who recently presented me with the May 18th edition of The New Yorker which included an article by Hua Hsu, a staff writer at The New Yorker, entitled "Fungus Among Us."
Hsu's piece was rather interesting and a good read. I especially appreciated the comments concerning Merlin Sheldrake. Hsu noted that Sheldrake "was drawn to fungi because they are humble yet astonishingly versatile organisms, 'eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the earth's atmosphere.'"
Further research into the young fungal biologist Sheldrake found him to be the author of the much praised Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures.
Interestingly, The New York Times, May 27th edition, included an article by Jennifer Szalai entitled "Whether You're Making a Meal or Cleaning an Oil Spill, There's a Fungus for That" in which she reported that Sheldrake celebrated the completion of his manuscript in the following manner:
"He dampened a copy of the book and seeded it with spores, eating the oyster mushrooms that sprouted from its pages. Taking another copy, he tore up the pages, mashed them up to release their sugars and fermented the solution into beer. Forget the trite literary pleasures of a gourmet meal or a champagne toast: Here is an author who marked the completion of his book by ingesting it."
Szalai concluded that "reading it (Entangled Life) left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do."
You, dear reader, will not be surprised to learn that I couldn't resist immediately ordering a copy of Entangled Lives, from, of course, an independent book seller.