Celebrating Our Third Anniversary & Non-Binary Awareness Day
More Tickets Added for Our Anniversary Celebration!
Dear Fellow Myconauts,
It’s our third year of fermenting an intentional community together, centered on learning how to be in better relationships with fungi, which has resulted in learning how to be in better relationship with ourselves and each other too.
Photo by Brianne Agaricus
Previously in the Mycoverse…
Fellow Myconaut Tobias painted us another remarkable portrait of Nausicaä in her fungi cultivation chamber (including her fox-squirrel sidekick Teto).
It’s been a rough week for me as my family navigates health issues so hosting this past week a little more challenging than usual but gosh, I am glad I gave in and went on with the show, because when in community, sharing is reciprocal. And what you need is shared with you when you need it most.
Grateful the Exploring the Mycoverse community and those who show up to make these events so life giving.
Our Third Anniversary Celebration
Monday, July 22nd, 7pm @ Arlington Garden, Pasadena, CA – Free by donation
We’ll be raffling off a copy of the book Entangled Life which inspired the inception of Exploring the Mycoverse (which we’ve read and discussed twice together)!
Note at the time of this publication we’ll be releasing more tickets since this workshop immediately sold out once published on Eventbrite.
Exploring the Mycoverse came into existence three years ago amidst a challenging time for all of us during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when community was scarce. 80+ events later, reaching a community now over 1,000 myconauts, we want to celebrate and create a space for us to reflect on how the Mycoverse has inspired us.
Thanks to the wonderful generosity of fellow myconaut Alice Zhang, she has volunteered to help teach us how to make mini-fungi sculptures out of clay that participants can take home after firing and painting. Alice has generously donated a significant amount of clay for us to donation of clay for us to use, as well as a considerable amount of time to dry and fire the clay sculptures.
This will be a two-part series:
The first part will be centered on creating mini-fungi sculptures together out of clay.
The second part will be focused on painting our sculptures together (August 26th, Eventbrite TBA)
📣 Space and supplies are limited so please RSVP. 📣
Before our discussion, we invite you to:
Bring a relection/story to share with the group on how Exploring the Mycoverse has inspired you!
Reflecting on Non-Binary Awareness Day
Photo by Dominique Bruneau
As the fungi teach us over and over again, we are entangled in many ways once unthinkable. Our struggles and freedom are entangled as well. To quote one of my nonbinary icons, Alok – “I’m nonbinary. Which means that I’m not just challenging the binary between male, female, man, woman, but I’m challenging the binaries, between us and them… our struggle is, your struggle too.”
As a nonbinary person, I’m working to undo the multitudes of binaries that limit us and do us harm – especially, the Man vs Nature binary. We are interconnected with such a vast more-than-human world, so much of we don’t notice. My work lately has been trying to give them the recognition, rights, and attention they deserve.
After all, fungi are the ones who taught me how to accept being a nonbinary person. Such as my nonbinary icon, Schizophyllum commune who has over 23,000 mating types.
It’s been the first full year for me publicly embracing being nonbinary. It’s been so rewarding teaching about queer mycology and connecting with others through it. For instance, teaching queer mycology at UC Santa Cruz this year was a big highlight, connecting with undergrads who are curious and embrace fungi’s nonbinary nature.
Queerness is a way of life, it’s not just about sexuality, but also about how we express ourselves through our way of embodying our gender. How we relate to each other in more equitable ways. Becoming aware of how gender is being performed everywhere we go. Thinking outside of traditional frameworks of how we’re supposed to be and who those frameworks serve.
Publicly embracing being nonbinary has been a liberating way of living and thinking for me. It’s a way of living based on love, relationship, and intention.
Just as fungi need to be centered to help us better understand how ecology works, nonbinary people need to be centered to help us better understand how we relate to each other through gender. We’re all in this together.
Photo by Aspen Ellis
Spores Round Up
I will be presenting at NAMA’s Annual Foray in Washington this year on my work as chair of the Conservation & Stewardship Committee. Tickets are now on sale.
Spread the spores,
Aaron