David,
Your mention of mushrooms makes me wonder if you are aware of Anna Tsing’s The
Mushroom at the End of the World. Google books describes it as follows,
“Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in
human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to
nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also
an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices.
In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just
mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins
we have made?”
I thought of you because of the Northwest, where the mushrooms are harvested in
the wild by, among others, Hmong tribesmen who fought alongside the US military
in our misadventure in Vietnam, transmitted through several levels of
intermediaries from different southeast Asian/Chinese groups and wind up on
gourmet restaurant tables in Tokyo. Sounds like the sort of thing in which you
might be interested.
John
Sent from my iPad
On Oct 31, 2017, at 8:53, david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 30, 2017, at 4:03 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Torgeir,
You can plant a berry tree or bush and always know where it is – no hunting
involved, only picking. But in the case of mushrooms, at least the
mushrooms and toadstools I’m familiar with, they would grow in mysterious
places and for reasons unknown. I’ve had some appear in my backyard and
looked them up on the internet and they “seemed” to be mushrooms rather than
toadstools, but I wasn’t positive and so threw them out. In modern times
they are farmed just like any other farm product, but they still grow wild,
and some people still hunt them. J IMHO
Absolutely. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Mushroom hunting is
strangely like crabbing. After a while you have some idea where crab are
likely to be, but likely is only likely. Old guys will tell you that the
reason fishing is called fishing is because it isn’t called catching. Which
is an annoying statement on many counts.
Another reader has set me thinking about Mimo’s gall and the Latin gallus and
the Scots term gallus and how bile and the gallows and all that got mixed up
with a Roman name. No doubt there are implications.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
