Mushroom the Journal’s contributors

Mushroom the Journal’s heart is the work of its many contributors. We are proud to recognize the many people who have shared their creations with us over the years.

Leon Shernoff

Leon has served as editor of Mushroom the Journal since 2002, and has written many articles for the magazine. A self-taught mycologist, Leon is also an accomplished musician and chessplayer. He has worked as a computer programmer and web designer. He has designed and created this website, and any uncredited articles are almost certainly his work.

Brian Akers

Brian Akers describes himself as a multi-disciplinary specialist. His doctoral research (Ph.D. 1997, Univ of S. Illinois Carbondale), was on lepiotoid fungi of Florida. It followed intensive prior study in fields other than mycology: Anthropology (M.A.) and Comparative Religion (B.A.). This background has drawn Brian’s attention to fungal connections with diverse spheres of human significance, from cultural patterns to social issues.

His multi-disciplinary research has sometimes addressed fungi utilized as food resources, e.g the djon-djon in Haiti, a Psathyrella sp. But most of his focus has been on ethnographic, archeological and social aspects of psilocybin fungi. Brian’s book The Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico (2006) was well-reviewed in MJ and elsewhere, such as Economic Botany. His most recent Mushroom the Journal appearance (“A Cave in Spain …”) offered in-depth coverage of his study with a team of colleagues, on prehistoric rock art depicting fungi, finding presumptive evidence of Neolithic mushroom rites. The original research was published in Economic Botany, 2011.

Craig Bennett

Craig Bennett is a New Jersey mushroom-hunter who takes a lot of really great photos.

Erlon Bailey

Erlon Bailey is a self-taught mycologist who has been studying fungi for over ten years. He is a administrator and/or moderator of several mushrooms forums online, and works as a mycotherapist and musician. He lives in Maine and is working towards his master’s degree in naturopathic medicine.

Joe and Kathy Brandt

Joe & Kathy Brandt live in Connecticut, and are contributing writers to Mushroom the Journal. Together, they write a regular food column that includes preparation methods and easy-to-follow recipes for many of the most popular edible mushrooms. They have been collecting and cooking wild mushrooms for more than 30 years, and are mycophagy chefs for COMA’s Clark Rogerson Foray.
Professionally, Joe is a retired jewelry manufacturer who writes a jewelry column for the Hersam-Acorn group of weekly newspapers. Kathy is a partner with the law firm of Silver, Golub & Teitell in Stamford, CT, and is a Nurse-Attorney.

John Denk

John Denk is a Chicago-area mushroom-hunter and photographer. His work has been essential in documenting the mycota of the Chicago region.

Susan Goldhor

Susan is a zoologist, (BA Columbia Univ.; Ph.D. Yale; postdoc Stanford) who has done research in dog behavior, livestock feeds, and such specialized aspects of fisheries as turning processing waste into species-selective longline bait. Her research has taken her to from Eastern Anatolia to the Alaskan Aleutians (that is, from A to AA). Joining the Boston Mycological Club got her interested in fungal biology, and this interest has become somewhat obsessive. She is currently President of the BMC, which – she points out – is the world’s oldest amateur mycological club and, like any successful organism, still evolving.

Patrick Harvey

Patrick Harvey first caught morel madness from his late father-in-law, Donald Arnett from Graysville, Indiana. After moving to Saint Louis, he decided he had to do something the OTHER eleven months of the year, so he joined the Missouri Mycological Society to learn about other mushrooms, edible and otherwise. He has contributed many photographic images to MushroomObserver.org, some of which have been published in recent mushroom field guides. He has also pursued research on an early Missouri mushroom expert, Dr. Noah Miller Glatfelter.

Rocky Houghtby

Rocky Houghtby is a student of biology at North Eastern Illinois University, and a volunteer for the fungal herbarium at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History.

Anna Maria Hussey

Anna Maria Reed was born in 1805 in Leckhampstead, Buckinghamshire. In 1831 she married Rev. Dr Thomas John Hussey. In 1847, she contributed the color illustrations to Charles Badham’s classic Treatise on the esculent funguses of England, the first book published in mycophobic England to recommend eating mushrooms. In 1849, the first volume of her great Illustrations of British Mycology appeared; after her tragically early death, the second volume was published posthumously, in 1855.
I was privileged to discover her work early in my tenure as editor, and have used her work widely. Besides being utterly beautiful, they may be the second-earliest illustrations (after those of Nees von Esenbeck) that are still usable today.
In the early days of the magazine, almost no information on her life was available. Following the conventions of the time, she used the name “Mrs. T.J. Hussey” in her published work, where she used a name at all. During the past few years, however, research on her has burgeoned and she has acquired a substantive Wikipedia page and a set of biographical pages in connection with an exhibit of her work at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology.
I hope my use of her work will bring it to the attention of a wider audience.

Pamela Kaminski

Pam Kaminski is a mushroom-hunter and photographer living in Pennsylvania, who made many essential early contributions to Mushroom the Journal.

David P. Lewis

David Lewis is a retired chemist and dedicated mycologist. He has a B.S. and M.S. from Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, where his master’s thesis was based on a study of East Texas mushrooms. He is a Research Associate with the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, and an Honorary Staff member of the Tracy Herbarium at Texas A&M University. Since 2006, he has been the Fungal TWIG (Taxonomic Working Group) leader for the Big Thicket National Preserve All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory. He has been president of the Gulf States Mycological Society since 1998, leading many mushroom walks and making presentations to interested groups; Master Gardeners, Master Naturalists, and Native Plant chapters, and seeking new fungal records for the Gulf coast. David has authored many papers related to mycology and described many species new to science (several species are named for him).
David received The North American Mycological Association’s award for Contributions to Amateur Mycology, and the R.E. Jackson Conservation Award from the Big Thicket Association.
He and his wife Patricia, who he met at a mushroom foray, live on 60 forested acres in Newton County, Texas where they enjoy plants, fungi and wildlife.

Larry Millman

Author-mycologist Lawrence Millman has written 16 books, including such titles as Last Places, Hiking to Siberia, Our Like Will Not Be There Again, An Evening Among Headhunters, A Kayak Full of Ghosts, Fascinating Fungi of New England, and – most recently – Giant Polypores & Stoned Reindeer. He received a Ph.D. from Rutgers University and has inventoried fungi in places as diverse as Western Samoa, Iceland, Panama, Nunavik, Honduras, Alaska, and Nantucket. He specializes in wood-inhabiting species, ascomycetes, and the obscure and the overlooked. You can visit him at his website: www.lawrencemillman.com

Ron Pastorino

Retired as Product Manager from a specialty chemical company in 1998.
Presently Regional Trustee for NAMA.
Served on the Board of Directors for MSSF for several years.
Have won awards in several NAMA Photography Contests.
Have had photos used in Journals, Field Guides, and Wikipedia articles.
Have led Forays for several clubs.
Enjoy hunting, photographing, and ‘scoping old and new species.

Maggie Rogers

Maggie Rogers has been a mainstay of the Oregon Mycological Society for many years. She has contributed to many fungal projects and publications and generally been a sparkplug for mycology wherever she goes.

Stephen Russell

Stephen Russell is the lead organizer for The Hoosier Mushroom Society, the mycological society for the State of Indiana. Their monthly events can be found at www.hoosiermushrooms.org. In the spring he helps to organize speakers and forays for The Morel Festival (www.morelfestival.com) in Brown County , Indiana. This event brings together thousands of mushroom hunters for a weekend of morel hunting and great music. He is also passionate about mushroom cultivation, recently publishing a new book – The Essential Guide to Cultivating Mushrooms – a beginners guide outlining the basics of at-home mushroom cultivation. More recently he has begun a focus on citizen science projects, particularly developing methods for all mushroom hunters to have access to the molecular methods used to get DNA sequences for fungi.

Tim Sage

Tim Sage is a mushroom-hunter from the Washington state who takes some wonderful mushroom photos.

Matt Schink

Matt Schink is an independent mycological researcher living in Philadelphia. He has focused on bioluminescent mushrooms and reishi/ling zhi.

Bob Sommer

Bob Sommer is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis where he has chaired four departments (Psychology, Environmental Design, Rhetoric & Communication, and Art), although not at the same time.
Major Mushroom Activities
Co-author: Field Guide to Mushrooms of Western North America (University of California Press, 2012).
Watercolor paintings Archived online by the Mycological Society of San Francisco (MSSF)
“Easy Edibles” columns in Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming.
Numerous articles on mushrooms in newspapers, newsletters, and magazines.
Member: Mycological Society of San Francisco (MSSF), North American Mycological Society (NAMA), Co-founder Sacramento Area Mushroomers (SAM).
Website (full resumé and publication list): http://sommerr.faculty.ucdavis.edu/

Dianna Smith

Dianna Smith served as Membership Chairperson, Vice President and finally President of the Connecticut-Westchester Mycological Association (COMA) for several years between 2002 and 2013. Since moving from NY to MA in 2013, she co-founded a new club, the Pioneer Valley Mycological Association (PVMA) to serve mushroom enthusiasts who live in western MA. She has been identifying fungi and teaching others about various topics in the field of mycology for over twelve years at numerous nature centers and educational venues throughout the northeast, including the Eagle Hill Research Center in Steuben, Maine. She credits COMA members – and especially author and teacher Gary Lincoff – for encouraging her to learn about mushrooms.

An avid mushroom photographer, her photos can be found in Michael Kuo’s 100 Edible Mushrooms, Gary Lincoff’s The Complete Mushroom Hunter and the newly published reference book Ascomycete Fungi of North America by Michael Beug, Arlene Bessette and Alan Bessette. Nearly a hundred of her mushroom photos are also in the smart device application of The Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America. Several of her mushroom photographs have won awards from the North American Mycological Association (NAMA).

Dianna is currently editor of the North American Mycological Association’s bi-monthly publication, The Mycophile. She serves as well as a member of the Editorial Committee, the Education Committee and the Marketing Committee of NAMA. Dianna received the 2012 Harry and Else Knighton Award from NAMA for her contributions to COMA and the 2012 NAMA Presidential Award for her work on The Mycophile.

Her writings and photos can be seen at her mycology education website http://www.fungikingdom.net.

Eric Smith

Eric Smith is a mushroom-hunter from upstate New York who takes some wonderful mushroom pictures.

Tjakko Stijve

Tjakko Stijve was born in Utrecht (The Netherlands) where he received an education in analytical chemistry. Since 1967 he has lived and worked in Switzerland, where (until his retirement in 1999) he ran a section on food contaminants in the Quality Assurance Department of Nestlé Ltd. For two decades he participated in the work of the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues, and of other international organisations.
Early on he developed an interest in the chemistry of higher fungi, resulting in the publication of many papers on mushroom toxins and on the bioaccumulation of arsenic, selenium, and other potentially toxic trace elements in macrofungi. While studying tryptophan derivatives in the early 1980’s, he came upon the tryptamines bufotenine, psilocin and psilocybin in some fungi. This awakened his curiosity about psychoactive mushrooms, and prompted him to look for the tryptamines in (at that time) unexplored genera such as Inocybe and Pluteus. In the early 1990’s, together with mycologist André de Meijer, he made an inventory of the psychoactive mushrooms growing in Paraná, a State in Southern Brazil.
He is presently involved in a study on the composition and nutritional qualities of Agaricus blazei, the well-known Almond Portobello mushroom from Brazil. Since his retirement, Stijve is regularly writing articles for a wide range of scientific and popular periodicals devoted to mycology.

Ron Tracy

Seventy-two years old, involved with mushrooms since a presentation by the Minnesota mushroom society about 25 years ago, have been a member of the Illinois Mycological Association about that long and served as secretary for five years.
MA in history and anthropology, taught at Niles Township High School for 30 years, have also written for other publications such as Illinois History, Cat Fancy, and Topical Times. Served as the first president of the Primitive Arts Society of Chicago and still have an interest in ethnic art. Along with mushrooming outdoor activities include fishing, canoeing, kayaking, birdwatching, and, most recently, dragonfly watching. Still consider myself a student and read 150 and more books a year as well as numerous magazines and journals. Have a personal library of over 4000 books and 3000 recordings. Some good music, a good book, some good scotch, and a good cigar = happiness

Kevin Wald

Born in 1970’s New York, Kevin now resides in Massachusetts, where among other things he writes a lot of puzzles (many of which can be found on his website at http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~wald). He enjoys finding mushrooms in their natural habitat: 19×19 black-and-white grids.
The photo was taken by Lorinne Lampert. The sandwich, sadly, does not contain mushrooms.

Eleanor Yarrow and Sylvia Stein

Eleanor Yarrow and Sylvia Stein met while playing in a violin ensemble together. Sylvia had been studying fungi for several years with the New York Mycological Society and with her mentor, Dr. Clark Rogerson, mycologist at the New York Botanical Garden. Eleanor became interested in studying fungi through Sylvia and they began spending many hours together identifying fungi that they collected. Eleanor was an excellent photographer who amassed a large photo collection of identified fungi. After a few years of study, Eleanor was hired by the New York Botanical Garden to teach a course on fungi. She taught for several years until she died of cancer in early 1971, at age 47. Dr. Samuel Ristich took over teaching the fungi course at the New York Botanical Garden in the fall of 1971. Eleanor’s husband donated her fungi photos to the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium through Dr. Clark Rogerson. Jerry Sheine was given permission to scan the slides and to a create a file for them which he has shared with some people. – bio by Sandy Sheine