recommended for mushroom fiends -- Hamilton Morris: Blood Spore‏

[Chip (OP)]

source: http://harpers.org/archive/2013/07/blood-spore/

Blood Spore

Of murder and mushrooms

In July 2011, on the hottest day of the year, I received a fragile-looking Maxell compact cassette from a retired psychology professor and gerbil-aggression researcher named Gary Davis.

I had been told the cassette contained a recording of two police officers discussing their involvement in the robbery and murder of one Steven Pollock, a physician and pioneering mycologist who — despite invaluable contributions to the field, including an improved technique for growing psychedelic mushrooms on Purina Dog Chow — remains largely unknown.

Carefully labeled police crook 6/17/81, the cassette had for thirty years been stored in a toolbox under two dozen inoperative WWII-era Geiger counters in Davis’s mother’s house. I had offered to pay for the tape but Davis refused, insisting he just wanted it to be heard by as many people as possible, then backtracking and suggesting he wouldn’t mind terribly if I sent him twenty dollars for beer. I was worried about the tape’s integrity and had been reading anxiously about the myriad problems that befall aging magnetic media — binder embrittlement, remanence reduction, even fungal contamination — and the transaction was further charged by a stern warning from another source: “This information should be treated with due caution. Some of these cops, if still living, could be very dangerous.”

The warning was delivered by Paul Stamets, who had told me about the tape but never actually heard it. Once a friend of Pollock’s, Stamets has in recent decades become recognized as the foremost authority on medicinal mushrooms: a taxonomist, author, cultivator extraordinaire, and general fungal hype-man, Stamets travels the country giving lectures on the different ways mushrooms can save both the planet and the human race. It was at one of these lectures, titled “How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World,” that I first had the opportunity to question Stamets in person about the story of the tape. In a sold-out room with theatrically dimmed lights, Stamets begins by opening a specially designed carrying case and removing a large, concentrically banded cylindrical fungus, which he then hoists above his head. “This is agarikon,” he declares with Mosaic solemnity, “and it will prove to be as important for the survival of the human race as the discovery of fire.”

In agarikon, which really looks very much like an unfrosted layer cake, Stamets has detected potent antimicrobial compounds that he predicts will protect us from intercontinental viral storms destined to sweep the globe. He tells the audience of how he cured himself of a stammer with Psilocybe, treated his mother’s breast cancer with Trametes, saved his aunt’s home from carpenter-ant infestation with Metarhizium, and how mycelium — the filamentous network that absorbs nutrients into the fungus — is both earth’s brain and the Internet’s natural progenitor. He does all this wearing a hat made of mushrooms.

... to see the full story and links to the archives, go to http://harpers.org/archive/2013/07/blood-spore/

[neighbor]

it was good up until it cuts off

god damned harpers not letting me have the article for free, trying to make a profit to pay writers. assholes.

ive always really enjoyed the stuff Hamilton's father, Errol Morris, was putting out.  really powerful stuff. his son is talented, and most of his work that ive seen was done through Vice, and its usually pretty alright. I feel like him writing about drugs and drugs alone is holding him back though.

oh and check out the short documentary he does about magic truffles in amsterdam. its a good doc and he looks exactly like what hipster Nosferatu would look like.

[Anti-hero]

Thank you,
A) because I am interested in all things that concern tripping.
B) because I love to trip on shrooms
C) because I can't type A&B enough.
I really think psychedelics are a great way for treating PTSD and other problems that involve a personal insight.

[thetalkingasshole]

I used to be very against this guy
until I met him at Horizons 2013 

I think the most important part of this
is helping foster the understanding of how important,
and flat out amazingly cool,
the worlds mycelium networks

you could even suggest that it is basically the original internet 


also
me wuv shrooms

[jdub]

it was good up until it cuts off

god damned harpers not letting me have the article for free, trying to make a profit to pay writers. assholes.

ive always really enjoyed the stuff Hamilton's father, Errol Morris, was putting out.  really powerful stuff. his son is talented, and most of his work that ive seen was done through Vice, and its usually pretty alright. I feel like him writing about drugs and drugs alone is holding him back though.

oh and check out the short documentary he does about magic truffles in amsterdam. its a good doc and he looks exactly like what hipster Nosferatu would look like.

I read it without paying. Just clicked on the link below the subscription box/message. I forget what it was called.

Dope article. Hamilton is a pretty good writer.

[OXYKANTSTOP]

heres the pdf

oxy

[neighbor]

it was good up until it cuts off

god damned harpers not letting me have the article for free, trying to make a profit to pay writers. assholes.

ive always really enjoyed the stuff Hamilton's father, Errol Morris, was putting out.  really powerful stuff. his son is talented, and most of his work that ive seen was done through Vice, and its usually pretty alright. I feel like him writing about drugs and drugs alone is holding him back though.

oh and check out the short documentary he does about magic truffles in amsterdam. its a good doc and he looks exactly like what hipster Nosferatu would look like.

I read it without paying. Just clicked on the link below the subscription box/message. I forget what it was called.

Dope article. Hamilton is a pretty good writer.

yep, I realized I was an idiot and found the link. and I was wrong, he does write about more than just drugs. he is talented for sure, but I hold serious reverence for his father.
the docs he made about mcnamara, Vernon FL the doc about the small town with highest amount of amputee insurance claims, and some others that escape me, are all brilliant.

[Anti-hero]

This is a derail
But I seen that doc
About the amputees
Crazy shit
And not next level
Like Heavens gate level
Strange the connection
Or disconnection lol

[Tainted]

Did we all read the same article? I thought that was fucking terrible. It jumped back and forth between the murder and ever detail of that dudes mycology/medical career too much. And the parts about his career were so fucking long winded.

And 17 pages, really?

[Dhedmo]

it was good up until it cuts off

god damned harpers not letting me have the article for free, trying to make a profit to pay writers. assholes.

Actually, you can read the whole article without paying. Just click next.

[Snout]

Me, I loved the article, very entertaining. Thanks chipper!