October Foraging Forecast

Chicken-of-the-Woods, Laetiporus sulphureus will continue to flush on old, live oaks. I was finding them into November but make sure they are still moist on the inside. They can be mealy and hard to eat if they are not moist on the inside. I imagine that the texture feels somewhat like a bioport from the movie eXistenZ. I recently watched this late 90's Cronenberg movie starring Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh so BE CAREFUL when handling a bioport.  I have seen COTW grow to prime size and moisture in around 3 days. Also keep an eye out for oysters on black willows and oaks. If we get rain we may also see some fall oysters.

Click images to learn more and to see where to find them! Also, don't forget to add your finds on the Mushrooms of Texas project on iNaturalist. Follow my adventures @forage.atx.

September Giveaway: Mushroom Tarot from Corvidopolis.com

Mushroom Tarot from Corvidopolis.com

This month's mush love feature is the highly anticipated Mushroom Tarot cards from Corvidopolis. This deck comes with 25 cards and includes the typical Major Arcana archetypes depicted in black & white, with fungal species carefully matched to each card. There are three mushroom specific cards–The Hyphae, The Spore and The Mycelium–representing three lenses through which to approach your reading or interaction with the deck. An info booklet is also included in the tuck box that discusses the 22 cards of the MA and why it is paired with each card for its chosen mushroom.

The original illustrations are all in pen & ink by Chris Adams. Chris Adams is an illustrator, screen printer & extreme mushroom enthusiast living in Corvallis, Oregon. His day job consists of running Corvidopolis–an art & apparel company featuring illustrations hand printed onto shirts & paper–and The Mushroom Tarot. Learn More >

Become a member of CTMS and be entered in a win the set!

(Winner will be announced in September. Drawing will include all CTMS members.)

September Foraging Forecast

With tropical storm activity in the gulf, expect rainfall and then expect mushrooms. Chicken of the Woods, Laetiporus sulphureus will continue to flush on live oaks. Look for Reishi, the "Mushroom of Immortality" or Ganoderma species on dying or dead Pecan trees. If the top of the shelf looks red and varnished and the underside is still white, it is still good to harvest for medicinal purposes.

Click images to learn more and to see where to find them! Also, don't forget to add your finds on the Mushrooms of Texas project on iNaturalist. Follow my adventures @forage.atx.

Soil: The Stage for all Life

Carl Sagan said in the Cosmos series, “if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” What he means is that if we want to make or understand a thing, we have to understand that thing exists within a context. The context can change based upon the information we have, the biases we hold, and/or our perceptions, affecting how we experience reality. The scientific method is a deliberate attempt to move past the limitations of human perception to understand reality, as it truly exists. This has revolutionized some concepts and understandings well beyond what the beliefs earlier people held about the nature of the universe, especially about plants and animals. For example, most people now know that certain microorganisms cause specific diseases. This is the first in a series of essays about the soil ecosystem, Fungal lifestyles, and evolution.

When the rains come, mushrooms visit our gardens, peering at us through the flowers reminding us of the mysterious world just below the soil surface. What are they doing there? Are they hurting my plants? Can I eat them? However, it’s hard to talk about the relationships plants and fungi have without telling the full story of the soil because plants and fungi are but two actors on a stage and the story would be incomplete without all the characters. I also hope that this class will help everyone be better gardeners in general and feel more integrated into the ecosystem they live in.

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MEDIA/nrcs142p2_049822.jpg

Our paradigm for soil is shifting from one that understands the soil as non-living, a purely chemical world in which plants feed on available ions, to an understanding of the soil as an ecosystem, teeming with life. Fungi, as well as the plants, play a key role in guiding the development of the soil, with fungi in particular making nutrients bioavailable to the rest of the system. However, there are many dancers in the ballet of the soil, all playing critical roles. Bacteria fix nitrogen from the air, while protozoa, nematodes, earthworms, and arthropods subsist upon and redistribute these nutrients throughout the soil. Animals also play a role in this drama that Dr. Elaine Ingahm has dubbed “The Soil Food Web.” The story is one of predation and destruction as well as cooperation and regeneration. It’s a story in which humans have forgotten their role and we’re now relearning our part.

https://www.jswcd.org/soil-texture

The setting for our drama is also the place where the story begins. Billions of years ago water covered the earth and minerals dominated the land. Life began to develop and flourish in the water. Slowly organisms developed ways to protect themselves from drying out in the air and began to spread onto land. They were also carried far in land on the wind and in storms, sometimes landing in places favorable to their survival; others were not so lucky. Some of these organisms could demineralize the rocks they were growing on, releasing valuable nutrients from the rocks. Wind and water also break down the rocks through friction, creating smaller and smaller particles. These mineral particles are either sand, silt, or clay and their ratios tell us important information about how water will interact with soil, for example it will drain quickly if it's predominantly sand or quickly become waterlogged if it's predominantly clay. This is where others talking about the soil would begin talking about N-P-K and other macro- and micro- nutrients, however this is not that kind of talk. All the nutrients that plants need to grow already exist around in the soil or in the surrounding environment, they’re just not readily available for the plant. This is what they test for in a soil test, the available nutrients in the soil, and some soil labs will also give recommendations on the amounts of available ions one needs to add to a soil. But that begs the question, how does the old growth forest or the wild-prairie flourish without the ability to directly access the nutrients they need to survive? The organisms of the soil food web, or our cast of dancers, breakdown and make them available.

Hericium coralloides in Bryan, TX. Photo by Author

Beyond the spatial setting for our ballet, we must also address the temporal element. Ecosystems develop successional stages (though as with most things in nature these stages don’t have a distinct boundary but transitionally along a gradient). As I just mentioned, the surface of the earth not covered by water was all rock but when we look around us we know that this is no longer the case. There are forests and grasslands that cover the planet, and even in the most extreme environments, such as deserts and the arctic, have a layer of soil and organisms that utilize that layer. As time passes, this layer grows deeper and deeper as more and more nutrients and organic matter build up in the system leading the complex and diverse ecosystems we experience today. These pioneering organisms paved the way for not only animals to develop but plants as well. An ecosystem’s development and the organisms that survive there depend on the amount of light received annually, the distribution of the light (even night length throughout the year or not), the highest annual temperatures, the lowest annual temperatures, the annual precipitation rate, and the distribution of that precipitation throughout the year. These factors harmonize to allow the development of diverse ecosystems. Below the soil a similar process is taking place as the environment of the soil changes during the course of the day. Some soil organisms actively shape the soil environment to aid in their own and the other organisms they depend on for survival.

Dr. Jerry Glover next to a 14 foot tangle of Indian grass, compass plant, and big bluestem grass he grew. https://onpasture.com/2017/07/03/fourteen-foot-long-roots-thats-what-great-grass-farmers-grow/

While many different dancers move through the scenes of this ballet, one process has orchestrated it all and actually set the stage for the ballet’s current act to begin. Photosynthesis is the chemical process of turning light energy into sugars. Plants didn’t invent it but they have done beautiful things with photosynthesis and made it their own. The plant kingdom has spread across the globe and has many different species. And to reiterate, they took over the world without needing fertilizers or even watering from a person. 

Since we experience plants above ground, sometimes we forget that there is an extensive portion of the organism below the surface also. When we bring plant roots into our discussion, we often focus on them as the site where the plant takes up water and other nutrients to the leaves. However this is only part of the story, most of the sugar produced during photosynthesis, the plant exudes into the soil. The plant custom manufactures exudates to attract specific beneficial bacteria, archaea, and fungi into a space around the root only a few millimeters wide called the rhizosphere. As the root grows it, sheds root hairs, upon which the bacteria, archaea, and fungi also feed. Their populations explode as the plant grows, attracting protozoa and nematodes that feed on the carbon sequestered by the bacteria, archaea, and fungi. 

Gardeners are often familiar with nematodes as root feeder pathogens but there are also nematodes that feed on smaller nematode species, amoebae, flagellates, and ciliates. Tiny arthropods join the ballet next, feeding upon the bacteria, archaea, and fungi, as well as the root feeding nematodes. Earthworms travel through the soil, creating tunnels for water and air to infiltrate the soil, bringing organic matter from the surface feeling into the organic layer, and inoculating the soil with beneficial bacteria, archaea, and fungi. Larger arthropods join in, predating upon the smaller arthropods. Birds and animals the feed on the arthropods and worms or directly from the plants and fungi as well, carrying seeds and nutrients farther away than any the smaller organisms could

This all happens in the top several inches of the soil. Regardless of what the organisms eat, they all excrete “wastes” that other organisms also feed on. Or they simply scavenge the organic matter left in the wake of the feeding predators or shifts in climate. Over time this cycle builds up layer after layer of organic, creating new and better habitat for more plants to begin growing, furthering the cycle. As long as there are no major changes in precipitation and temperature, the system remains stable. This is how the Great Plains of North America was able to build up such rich “Bread basket” soils that were several feet deep in some places and how tropical rainforests sustain such diversity with notoriously “poor” soil.

Mismanagement of soils has been linked to the decline of many human settlements throughout history. The most relevant of these events to the United States is the Dust Bowl from 1930-1936. This occurred when a severe drought collided with farming practices and new gasoline powered tractors. The repeated disturbance of the soil displaced the deep root grass species leaving the Great Plains vulnerable to damage from wind and rain. As the United States and other developed countries continue to emit massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and mistreat the soil through repeated tillage and application of industrial fertilizers and pesticides, we’ll continue to see more frequent and severe droughts and the “dust-bowlification” of not only the North American continent but across the globe.

However, one need not fret because in our understanding of the problem; lies our solution. By promoting a healthy soil ecosystem, we can actually use the soil as a carbon sink for the excess atmospheric CO2. The methods for doing so, on a large and back yard scale, will be covered in future essays. Before we get to that, first we’ll define Fungi and lay out their evolutionary history, then a deep dive into Basidiomycota (the branch of the Fungi evolutionary tree where we find the majority of the Fungi we eat), followed by an overview of Fungal ecology. After going through all that we’ll have laid much of the background info for why the methods for rehabilitating and protecting the soil will function. Not only will we be able to grow beautiful gardens and nutritious vegetables but we’ll also be informed on the best practices for industry, and prevent ourselves from falling for deceptive corporate  greenwashing.

Resources:

Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

Teaming with Fungi by Jeff Lowenfels

Teaming with Nutrients by Jeff Lowenfels

The Permaculture Student 2 by Matt Powers

Radical Mycology by Peter McCoy

The Soil Food Web by Elane Ingahm

Soil Food Web by NRCS

The Dust Bowl

Soil Loss

The Next Dust Bowl by Joseph Romm

Soil as CarbonStorehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight? By Judith D. Schwartz

August Foraging Forecast

Even though August is very hot with very little rainfall, you will start to see Chicken of the Woods, Laetiporus sulphureus start to flush from exposed and damaged heartwood of Texas Escarpment Oaks. It is said to be one of the more easy to recognize mushrooms because of its large size and striking sulphur-yellow to orange color. Some people say that the fungus possesses a remarkably similar texture and taste to chicken. It is advised to just collect young specimens, being bright yellow to orange, as older specimens, being dull yellow to white, become rather woody with age and often developing an acrid flavor. 

Click images to learn more and to see where to find them! Also, don't forget to add your finds on the Mushrooms of Texas project on iNaturalist. Follow my adventures @forage.atx.

August Featured Mushroom & Giveaway

Hi-Fi Myco Pink Oyster Mushrooms

Hi-Fi Myco is Austin's first urban mushroom farm. This month's feature mushroom and giveaway is the Pink Oyster mushroom, Pleurotus djamor. The flavor of the pink oyster mushroom has been described as meaty and fishy. Just like most mushrooms it has quite the umami flavor. When fried until crispy, it resembles bacon or even ham. When cooked, however, the pink color quickly fades. It has a curly cap which is 2 - 5 cm in diameter. This mushroom is rich in protein, contains plenty of B vitamins, and studies show they help regulate blood sugar. Pink Oyster mushrooms are available for purchase on their website for pick-up at the following Farmers Markets: Lakeline, Sunset Valley, Downtown, New Braunfels, and Mueller. 

Become a member of CTMS and be entered in a win a Grow-At-Home Pink Oyster Kit ! (Winner will be announced in September. Drawing will include all CTMS members.)

Should MAPS break up with Amazon? by Phillip Balke

Preface

Hello there CTMS! This is your president with an article for y’all. My goal is to have two articles a month for the Blog, one covering social issues and the other covering mycological science. This the social one for the month. Stay tuned for the science one.

Introduction

On June 30, 2020 the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, MAPS, announced that they had brought in $4,125.38 in the first quarter of 2020 and $42,361.22 in total via Amazon Smile on their Instagram feed which caused the comment section to become fiery as they sometimes do.1,2 Several other mushroom friends shared the MAPS post and received backlash. People were upset with MAPS for taking money from Amazon through the Amazon Smiles program.

Why would people be upset about it? What’s the big deal with taking money from Amazon? If they want to give it away, why not take some? Are they mad at MAPS or at Amazon? Is it worth the negative social implications of taking money from Amazon in the pursuit of a goal? As MAPS is a fixture in the greater mushroom community simply because psychedelic mushrooms fall under the umbrella of what they teach and research, I felt it would be a worthwhile topic for exploration. Hopefully this essay will provide the reader with some information about MAPS and their research, as well provided context for the controversy. 

Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy & Maps

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies or MAPS is 501(c)3 Non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.3 They have researched the various therapeutic benefits of LSD-, Ayahuasca-, Cannabis-, Ibogaine-, and MDMA- assisted psychotherapy.4,5,6,7,8,9,11 Though MAPS has yet to research the therapeutic benefits Magic Mushrooms (Psilocybe cubensis) or the psychedelic component Psilocybin, they do assist in research participant recruitment for other researchers that have.10,11 They are also currently recruiting for a Phase 3 Clinical Trials for their therapy protocol and hope to have MDMA-assisted psychotherapy an FDA prescribable treatment for PTSD by 2022.

Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy is less about the drugs themselves (though they all have different ways of affecting our brains which is fascinating but beyond the scope of this article) but rather the experience and how the person undergoing therapy integrates the experience into a series of sessions with a therapist team.9,11 Protocols can vary from study to study but the general trend is first the therapy participant meets with the therapy team for several sessions to build a report, explore the cause of the PTSD, any emotional triggers, and what to expect on the psychedelic experience. Then the therapy participant goes in for an extra long session in which the drug is given by the therapy team. The participant usually lies on a couch or in a bed and is encouraged to “surrender to the experience.” The therapist team supports and helps guide participants through any potential difficult moments throughout the session, as well as general wellbeing things like getting the participant water or walking to the restroom. After the experience the participant will meet again with the therapy team to discuss the experience, the lessons to be drawn, and process an ineffable experience.

This method of therapy is proving very effective at treating PTSD, as well as helping people quit smoking cigarettes and overcome opioid addiction, treatment resistant depression, and end of life anxiety associated with a terminal diagnosis.9,11 Participants describe being able to see their lives or trauma with some distance, which gives the memory a new perspective or less powerful in the moment. Or so powerful that the surrender and subsequent rebuilding up of the self, the trauma releases its hold on the psyche. Psychedelics disrupt the story we tell ourselves by disrupting our neurochemistry and specifically a neural network called the Default Mode Network.13,14 Having this treatment legally available would certainly save lives or dramatically improve the quality of life in a terminal diagnosis.

Amazon & Amazon Smiles Foundation

Research however, and particularly medical research at the scale of t he current MAPS MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy phase 3 clinical trial, is expensive and this is where Amazon Smile enters the picture. As a non-profit organization, MAPS takes donations from a variety of sources, what is the wrong with taking money from Amazon to further the cause? Amazon Smiles Foundation donates 0.5% of the sales from certain items you purchase on the Amazon website to the charity of your choosing, MAPS being one choice of many.15 This donation occurs without any extra cost to the Amazon customer, so they can feel good how their purchase new belt sander (not all items apply) also helps fund research into psychedelics. The Amazon Corporations operates the Amazon Smiles Foundation and covers all administrative expenses.

The Amazon Smiles Foundation (ASF) since its inception in 2013 has contributed $183.12 million ($183,120,221) to thousands of Charities.15 In 2018, the most current data we have about ASF, Amazon gave the ASF $48.84 million ($44,840,018) while bringing in $232.89 billion ($232,890,000,000) in sales, or 0.0002% of the sales income.16,17 During this same time ASF disbursed $37.481 million ($37,481,047) or 83% of the total donation from Amazon, to the various participating charities and put $7.4 million ($7,398,986) into the foundation coffers bringing that total to $19,238,484 from $11,882,127 at the start of the year.16 A trend that has continued from previous years and revenue that avoids being taxed as it is a donation to a charity, which in this case is completely controlled and paid for by Amazon.18 As we can see, a relatively small amount of the money brought in to amazon goes out to the community through Amazon Smiles. Part of this discrepancy comes from the fact that a significant portion of the revenue Amazon generates doesn’t come from online sale. It comes from other sources like the Amazon Web Services and physical store locations such as Whole Foods.

MAPS, Amazon, & Charitable Giving

Now, let’s return to the MAPS post announcing the amount they have received in the first quarter from Amazon $4,125.2 The first financial Quarter of 2020 includes the COVID-19 global pandemic, which is ravaging the United State particularly hard. As people physically distance and all but completely shift their consumer purchases to online retailers, Amazon has seen a boost in their retail sales, as well as increased TV show and movie rentals through their streaming services due to the closure of movie theaters.19,20 Retail location such as Amazon owned Whole Foods have also received increased sales as people purchase more of the essentials that they used to consume at the workplaces which they now consume, such as toilet paper and cooking more because restaurants are closed.21,22 While the Net income for Amazon was technically down from $3.5 billion in the same quarter last year, they raked in a staggering $2.5 billion, even after donating $4,125 to MAPS. The company is spending $4 billion globally to protect workers which is cutting into profits some.20 However, before we shed a tear for the corporation valued at $1 Trillion, Amazon expect the trends of growth to continue and have even secured cheap loans backstopped by the federal government.20,23

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, complaints of unsafe working conditions, overbearing tracing of worker activities, and low wages plagued Amazon management who, instead of listening to workers concerns and solving the underlying issue, attempted to thwart workers efforts to organize and for unions.24 The pandemic was simply throwing gas onto an already raging fire.25,26,27 Amazon, the second largest employer in the United States behind Walmart, is spending $4 billion on workers safety, and employs approximately 798,000 people.20,28 This means they are paying $5,012 per worker (or approximately $890 more than Amazon gave to MAPS) to improve the safety conditions just for COVID-19, this has nothing to do with improving the baseline working conditions and basic worker dignity. In 2018, Amazon paid $1.6 million for Jeff Bezos’s personal security detail, we have no reason to assume that isn’t part of their normal business expense.29 On November first of that year management raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour and in the Spring of 2019 it was announced to investors that the median salary at Amazon was $30,096 annually, a $390 increase. Note, this is not the average salary, or the salary most employees get, just the middle of the pay scale for Amazon workers. Without more transparency from the corporation to make a more accurate assessment, we’re only left to listen to the repeat messages from Amazon employee labor activists telling us that the company is taking too much.30  For a crude hypothetical that likely over states the amount Amazon is paying to people, they spend an estimated $24 billion ($24,016,608,000) on labor globally.31 A 10% raise would bring that number to $26 billion ($26,418,268,800), or just under 1% of their total sales their 2019 revenue of $280.52 billion. That is to say, perhaps if the trauma of working for Amazon were mitigated and alleviated by increasing wages and investing in better safety standards, perhaps less people would need the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy MAPS is researching; and also that Amazon can certainly afford to make any necessary changes.

The Dark side of Corporate Charitable Giving

The dominance of Amazon over the Internet in a variety of forms and the sheer ability to generate revenue tends to leave me dumbfounded, for context, Amazon has a gross revenue higher than the GDP of 143 countries around the globe.17,32 Early in 2020, Amazon announced that for the first time since 2016 they needed to pay $1.6 million in Federal taxes (to reiterate, Amazon paid $0 in Federal Taxes in 2017-18), a figure considerably lower than one might expect from a company raking almost 300 billion in total revenue.33 They accomplish this through a variety of means, such as deferrals, exemptions, and deductions to most relevant to this discussion being charitable donations.34 For an example we can look at the Amazon Smiles Foundation again. As stated earlier, ASF has over $19 million in the bank, a figure that has grown to that size year over year.16 While it is true they do give away a lot of money, they are not giving it all away and what they don’t give away, they maintain full control over.

Amazon flies Pan-African Flag while publicly smearing black labor organizers for fightings for their coworkers safety. Particularly insulting to not only the Black workers and organizers they ignore but to the struggle that flag represents.

These donations serve a dual function, the aforementioned tax avoidance and public relations.34 One of the most effective means of accomplishing this goal with charitable giving is to latch on to social movements and causes. The initial reaction may be to reject that notion as cynical and claim that the movements have gained enough public support that the corporations also feel like expressing support, often through public statements, changes in logos, and even financial donations. While this may be true, that is also precisely the point, they only feel comfortable voicing support after movements have reached mainstream popularity and thus profitable. The social movement provides them an opportunity to inject their brand into a larger conversation. For example, Amazon’s support for Black lives is conditional on that Black life’s acquiescence to Amazon’s labor regimes and efforts to stop workers from organizing.

In response to the murder of George Floyd and subsequent uprising for Black lives that  swept the United States, Amazon has voice support and donated $10 million to various organization supporting justice and equity for the Black community.35,36 The statement Amazon released June 3rd states, “Black lives matter. We stand in solidarity with our Black employees, customers, and partners, and are committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear.”35 However, two months prior Amazon fired management assistant and a Black man Chris Smalls for organizing a walk out where workers demanded more transparency from Amazon, Personal Protective Equipment for themselves, higher safety standards in response to COVID, among other demands in response to an outbreak in the fulfillment facility he work at (outbreaks are a common occurrence in Amazon warehouses).38,37 Another case in Amazon’s long history of anti-labor behavior.39 Amazon also used their public relations department to publicly smear Mr. Smalls to further discredit the demand and actions he and his coworkers were taking.40 In a similar vein of silencing the voices of workers, in July several Whole Foods employees were sent home without pay and threatened with job loss for wearing Covid-19 masks that said “Black Lives Matter.”41 Completely contradicting the corporation’s own public statement of support for the movement.

Conclusions

After having laid this all out, it should be clear that the people in the comment section were upset that MAPS associated with Amazon, and the justification of those people’s anger. User @_anamalian_’s comment sums this up the best, “Yo, what the heck is all this? I support MAPS every month because I thought y’all had your heads in straight. To be connecting yourselves to Amazon in these times makes me EXTREMELY skeptical of what y’all are actually doing over there. I’m cutting my support right now.”1 MAPS takes donations from small, individual donors who truly believe in the cause MAPS is raising money for, Amazon could care less.3 Frankly though, I have to agree with @_anamalian_, it’s not worth it for MAPS to associate with Amazon. 

To start with, Amazon is a terrible company that treats it’s labor force cruelly and cynically exploits social movements for financial gain. Second, if Amazon, as well as other multi-billion corporations and for that matter individuals, wanted to help communities it would be more effective to pay workers more than to give through charity.50 This would have the secondary effect of strengthening the economy because now workers would actually be able to afford consumer goods beyond the basics; that is if the wages cover the basics. A similar sentiment applies to these entities paying taxes, though that needs to be coupled with Federal, State, and Local programs to implement those tax revenues. Amazon is not for the People.

Finally, MAPS has no problem raising money from other sources, not only the small dollar donors, but large sums from people like Tim Ferris.42 They are a multi-million charity, with a Public Benefit Corporation generating revenue for MAPS in addition to the charitable donations.43,44 The approximately $42 thousand from the Amazon Smiles Foundation is a small fraction of this total revenue, it likely wouldn’t be missed. Especially in light of backlash among grassroots supporters who, if organized, could be a pain for MAPS as this is probably the smallest of criticisms to be levied at MAPS’s actions (which will follow in a future blog post.)45,46,47,48,49

P.S. MAPS has been able to get to this point in their research with documented benefits and no harm caused to anyone from taking the drug. Multiple states have fully legalized cannabis. There is absolutely no justifiable, scientific or moral, reason to keep the substances that MAPS researches as Schedule 1 and illegal. More importantly the people imprisoned for possession and distribution of those substances to be released from prison, have their records expunged, and reparations paid for the draconian War on Drugs. Drug addiction is a mental illness, not a crime but that is also another article for the future.

---

Works Cited

1. MAPS Instagram Post

2. Maps Prep Release about amazon smile

3. MAPS Mission Statement

4. MAPS Research

5. Erowid LSD

6. Erowid Ayahuasca

7. Erowid Cannabis

8. Erowid Ibogaine

9. Erowid MDMA

10. Erowid Mushrooms

11. Psychedelics and Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy:Clinical Implications

12. MDMA Assisted Psycho-Therapy MAPS Infographic

13. How To Change Your Mind By Michael Pollan

14. Default Mode Network Wiki

15.  Amazon Smile

16. AmazonSmile Foundation 2018 Form 990, 

17. Amazon Financial Statements 2015-2019

18. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer- Amazon Smile Foundation

19. How the Pandemic has Improved Amazon

20. Amazon 2020 Q1 Financials

21. The Toilet Paper Shortage Is More Complicated than You Might Think

22. Food Waste Amid The COVID-19 Pandemic

23. Amazon Blows Past $1 Trillion valuation

24. ‘I'm not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn unsafe, grueling conditions at warehouse

25. Cases continue in Amazon Warehouses

26. Amazon Workers Track Their own Covid Cases

27. Amazon Workers Call for more Transparency

28. List of US Largest Employers

29. Amazon reveals what typical U.S. worker makes after its minimum-wage bump

30. The Real Cost of Amazon

31. What might happen if Amazon gave a raise to their employees?

32. List of Countries by GDP

33. Amazon payed fed taxed for the first time since 2016

34. 4 ways giving to charity helps business

35. Amazon donates $10 million to organizations supporting justice and equity

36. Killing of George Floyd

37. Amazon fires warehouse worker who led Staten Island strike for more coronavirus protection

38. Covid outbreak Minnesota warehouse

39. Amazon’s Aggressive Anti-Union Tactics revealed in Leaked 45-min Video

40. Amazon exec Labeled Fired Worker ‘not smart or articulate’ in Leaked PR notes

41. Whole Foods Punished Workers For ‘Black Lives Matter,’ suit Says

42. MAPS ProPublica 

43. MAPS Form 2018 990

44. Maps Public Benefit Corporation

45. The psychedelic renaissance and the limitations of a White-dominant medical framework: A call for indigenous and ethnic minority inclusion 

46. Inclusion of people of color in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: a review of the literature

47. How researchers and advocates of color are forging their own paths in psychedelic-assisted therapy

48. Psychedelic Therapy has a Sexual Abuse Problem

49. Millionaire Couple is Threatening to Create a Magic Mushroom Monopoly

50. How raising the federal minimum wage would help working families and give the economy a boost

Endophyte? I think it might...be

When it comes to fungi, there seems to be nothing left untouched by it, and that's no complaint. Fungi are responsible for decomposition, contribute to soil remediation, can be made into bricks to build homes with, made into coffee substitutes, and so on and so on. You'd think there would be some limited capacity for them to be so integrated and so fascinating.

That is, until the world of endophytes, microbes that live in plants, came along. That’s when everything about fungi got a whole lot more complicated and fascinating. Every plant has a fungal association; some of these fungi can harm the plant, which can lead to the production of secondary metabolites that give way to medicinal properties. Others boost a plants vitality in a number of ways, including increasing drought-resistance. Fungal endophytes are a wonderfully complex frontier of microbiology that has been turning a lot of heads and flipping what we thought we knew about plants upside down.

Let's look at capsaicin, the spicy chemical irritant you feel when eating a jalepeño or chili pepper. This chemical is produced within the fruit as a secondary metabolite, which is a chemical self-defense mechanism. Researchers have recently discovered that a fungal endophyte associated with pepper plants also creates capsaicin and now believe the reason why peppers taste spicy is because of this fungal relationship.

There are plenty of other examples of this too! When researching endophytic fungus and medicinal plants, there are numerous examples of host plants and their fungal counterparts creating the same chemical constituent. Is this a coevolutionary trait of fungal endophytes and their hosts or is it a sharing of genetic material between plant and fungi? I don't know the answer but whatever is happening, I'm sure glad fungi have something to do with it. 

Natalie DURAN

Natalie Duran is Dia Luna Arts, a multi-craft, one woman-owned, and nature-inspired business. Natural colors, sacred geometry, and herbal healing properties are a common place in Natalie Duran's art. She wildcrafts nature's gifts and turn them into her own creative design as a way of perpetuating love back to the world. 90% of the herbs used are straight from Natalie's garden, the other 10% is either ethically wildcrafted or locally sourced from Austin. From loose herbal incense to hand collected butterfly wings turned to jewelry, she strives to share her passion of sustainability and love for nature through art. See her art at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DiaLunaArts

Video Series: Fungi, Art, and the War on Drugs

This talk by Angel Schatz (@forage.atx) is about mushrooms in art. It focuses on the "war on drugs" at the start of colonialism, into the '60s and '70s, and into the modern use in contemporary art, movies, video games, and more. You will see how the spiritual was replaced with the material and the collective consciousness was replaced with individualism and art as a commodity grew out of this paradigm. This event was a part of our on going lecture series, if you appreciate the content, we hope that you can support our mission by donating or becoming a CTMS member at centraltexasmycology.org.

VIDEO REFERENCES

Disney Mushroom Dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJYN1d3f2dc

PBS Prototaxites Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G64DagHuOg

Matango Japanese Horror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=sVyRYjJoZfc

One Step Beyond : ABC 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UuHrm2tHvE

Wormwood: MKUltra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b01DL8DTUGM

Last of Us: Cordyceps Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2TDx5Iqmd4

Hannibal: Amuse Bouche Episode Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvJPEJCV9sY

Mycelial Network Society

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaBtvH7os0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii0VFoup-wk

Entangled Life

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBiudpflFRI/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

July Foraging Forecast

With the recent rain, chanterelle season may go into July. Last July 4th, I spotted a Lobster Mushroom in McKinney Roughs so anything is possible when it continues to rain. Click images to learn more and to see where to find them! Also, don't forget to add your finds on the Mushrooms of Texas project on iNaturalist. Follow my adventures @forage.atx.