About 80 friends of mushrooms/mushroom hunters took part in the event.
As one might expect, the menu was full of fungi:
- Crabmeat soup and bamboo fungus and stinkhorn mushroom
- Bean curd and assorted mushrooms
- Abalone, Bok Choy and Chinese black mushrooms
- Silk Squash, Bamboo Fungus and Enoki mushrooms
- E-Fu Noodles with black mushrooms
2012 is the hundredth anniversary of the composer John Cage's birth. Cage was a co-founder of the NYMS, an avid mushroom hunter and serious mycologist. Cage told stories about mushrooms and mushrooming in his books and in his music.
Gary Lincoff read some of Cage's stories about mushrooms that are part of the performance work and writing. The stories vary in length, but each were told in one minute (Cage speeding up or slowing down the telling according to the story's length). Tudor in another room was playing two of Cage's compositions. They were recorded simultaneously with neither one hearing the other. A number of these stories have to do with mushrooms. In the 1990's NYMS made a compilation and they are planning to do something again this year in honor of Cage's 100th Anniversary.
The program also included a "hymn to mycology" and a fungal gift lottery.
It is curious how mycological societies the world over tend to have the same events in their social programs.
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