August was an incredible month for mushrooms! We have been engaged in a lot of outreach and have hosted many events from book club to metal nights and even got into the forest several times to wild harvest some of the capital region’s most delectable natural gifts!
We started the month out by participating in ‘National Night Out’ at Knickerbacker Park in Lansingburgh. This great community oriented event drew a few hundred guests and allowed local businesses and groups to showcase what we are doing in the North Troy neighborhoods.
With the summer rains encouraging wild mushroom growth we helped many people Identify various fungi growing in backyards, forests, and even playgrounds! We were called in as experts to help discuss possible remediation of brand new wooden chips installed as part of a playground renovation for the Green Island School District. There were at least three different active strains of fungi colonizing the new equipment. What an opportunity for mycelium discovery!
We hosted 2 “Metal in the Moshroom” events in our back lot. The first was the Urine CD release concert featuring the Lunkheads, Anthill Annihilator, x5x1x8x, and Urine.
The second was 4 touring bands from out of the area and a returning local band. Latvian band Death Island out of Irvington, Alien Autopsy out of Rochester, Esoteric Gore from Boston, Malicious Offense from Cohoes, and Scumbag from Yonkers.
Amy and Avery did a site visit at SPAC to get an idea of scope for the decorating for our November 4th Collar City Mushrooms and friends presents: A Mushroom Experience. Guests will enter the Charlie Gate and walk all the way across the SPAC grounds and we plan to make it a completely transportive event engaging all 5 senses!
https://spac.org/whats-on/culinaryartsspac-the-mushroom-experience/
We met with the Capital Cooks team to discuss a class we’ll be teaching in October:
https://capitalcooksny.com/shop-classes/ols/products/xn--1017-cooking-with-mushrooms–hands-on-u77x
Our Mushrooms, Mycelium, and More at Hudson Valley Community College is completely full. We’ll be doing another session in the spring! Stay tuned!
The Chatham Realm Food Market Co-Op did a day long jerky tasting event and secured a lot of new fans!
We sampled some of Indian Ladder Farm’s new Maitake Bier during our Book Club Meeting. Annihilation is our first fictional story and it is quite an entertaining tale!
Our Microscopy only spore syringes are back in stock.
Some of our team drove up to Blue Mountain Lake to Join with Birch Boys and Primo Botanica to hang out with the Fungi Fans at the Mushroom Mania event at the Adirondack Experience Museum.
Indian Ladder Farms Cidery and Brewery has crafted another mushroom infused bier. This one is made with Grifola frondosa is on tap in their tasting room and will be served as part of our SPAC dinner.
Psilocybin Corner
August’s NYMHA Meeting Featured Juliana Mulligan
Juliana Mulligan is a psychotherapist who is formerly opioid dependent, formerly incarcerated, and has been a working member of the ibogaine treatment community for eleven years. In 2011, with the help of ibogaine treatment, Juliana left opioids behind and set off on a path to transform the way drug users and their treatment is approached. She has a Masters in Social Work from NYU and was the Psychedelic Program Coordinator at the Center for Optimal Living for three years. She also runs Inner Vision Ibogaine, which supports people in preparation and integration around ibogaine treatment and offers consulting services. She has worked in multiple ibogaine clinics, presented at a number of psychedelic and harm reduction conferences, and is the author of the Guide to Finding a Safe Ibogaine Clinic and co-author of Fireside’s Warning Signs When Selecting a Psychedelic Facilitator. She has taught about ibogaine at Charite University in Berlin and Southwestern College in New Mexico and has written for multiple publications about ibogaine, including Double Blind Magazine and Chacruna. Most recently, her focus on abuse and ethics in the ibogaine space has led to her survivor advocacy and client support work.
Watch her presentation here:
NYMHA August Meeting Featuring Juliana Mulligan’s Discussion on Ibogaine
Senator Jake Ashby stopped by our booth to reiterate his support for psilocybin accessibility for New Yorkers.
We offered trip support and mushroom identification services during the Pushkina Festival in Afton along with Darkhei Rephua founder Aaron Genuth and Ayden from Garden of Ayden
Here’s a great article on Psychedelic Spotlight detailing the changing laws around the world:
Even National Geographic is showcasing the efficacy of various psychedelic medicines to help heal brain injuries!
Coming Up:
* We will be CLOSED Sundays through the end of October in order to vend at Indian Ladder Farms for their Fall Harvest Marketplace! *
Here’s a snapshot of what we have in September, read on for more details.
Sunday, September 10th, 2pm: Second Sunday Poetry and Prose with hosts Nancy Klepsch and Dan Wilcox. (Yes, We are open this Sunday)
Tuesday, September 12th, 7pm: Our September NYMHA meeting featuring Brroklyn Psychedelic Society Executive Director Colin Pugh and a discussion about creating psychedelic co-ops.
Colin Pugh is the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society (BPS). Colin entered the psychedelic space after losing a friend to suicide in 2014. After his friend’s death, he had a therapeutic experience on MDMA in a community setting that changed his life for the better. This experience led him to joining BPS during its founding in 2015. BPS’s mission is to serve as a prototype of a psychedelic co-op: a democratically governed membership community that facilitates healing, growth and transformation with the help of expanded states of consciousness. BPS’s vision is to make psychedelic healing and community a publicly accessible good through a nationwide network of psychedelic co-ops. Colin is originally from Syracuse, NY and has been living in Brooklyn for 9 years.
Join us in person at Collar City Mushrooms or via zoom here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81854729934?pwd=ZE4xSlJKdm1hbWN0Z3o4UnFBOHJuZz09
September 14 – 17:
Avery will be giving a keynote talk about the changing perspectives surrounding psilocybin use during the 23rd annual Northeast Mycological Federation Mushroom Foray
September 19th:
https://albanypubliclibrary.libcal.com/event/10897034
September 23rd: Mushroom 2 Dance! The Groove Strikes Back! 3 DJS, 1 stage. Hours of dancing! 6pm – 10pm.
September 24th: 6th Annual Broome County Vegan Festival
https://www.broomeanimalsanctuary.com/
September 29th – October 1st: For the Love of Fungi at the Ashokan Center (While We won’t be attending, this is certainly a festival for all things mushroom that you should check out!)
For more info visit:
Thursday, October 5th: 5pm Metal in the Moshroom featuring Laquerhead, Don’t Play, Beasteliaphiliac, and Flatwounds.
Saturday, October 7th: Photographer Eric-Jon Tasker Show featuring Inch and Sky Furrows
Eric-jon Tasker is an artist of multiple disciplines: painting, photography, knitting. Raised in Connecticut, he studied acting in Boston at Emerson college and painting at Mass Art. The 14 years after college he had a career as a recording artist, touring the country with his original compositions in his band Parker House & Theory and solo as Eric-jon. Having settled in Albany, NY, Tasker has returned to his love of oil painting.
Eric-jon’s current works explore formative moments from his own childhood, innocence and influence of culture against contemporary and classical paradigms of beauty blah blah blah. Check out those colors, though, huh? Many of the works are achieved using thousands of pastel pencil strokes much in the way of the impressionists, blending in the eye when viewed from a distance.
Featuring Food by Wizard Burger
Tuesday, October 10th: 7pm: NYMHA Meeting featuring Dr Sunil Kumar Aggarwal
Dr. Aggarwal is a physician and medical geographer. He is a
Board-Certified Fellow of both the American Academy of Physical Medicine
and Rehabilitation and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative
Medicine, where he was named a Top 20 Emerging Leader. He is Past Chair
of the Integrative Medicine Special Interest Group and an inaugural
member of the Safe Use in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies Forum at the
American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. He is a Voluntary
Clinical Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the UW School
of Medicine, an Affiliate Assistant Professor of Geography in the UW
College of Arts and Sciences, an Affiliate Clinical Faculty Member at
Bastyr University School of Naturopathic Medicine, and a Faculty Member
of the National Family Medicine Residency. He serves on the Editorial
Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute’s PDQ Cancer CAM
information summary on cannabis and as an Associate Member of the New
York Academy of Medicine and the Humboldt Institute for
Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research. He maintains a clinical practice
at AIMS and serves as a Hospice Physician and On-Call Palliative
Physician for MultiCare Health System. He has been qualified as an
expert in cannabis and psilocybin medical and religious use in county,
state, and federal courts. He has completed two ketamine-assisted
psychotherapy trainings with the Ketamine Training Center and Orenda
Institute. He has completed MAPS MDMA-Assisted Therapy, 100 hours of
training (Part A-D), certified. He is petitioning for Right to Try
access to psilocybin for patients.
Dr. Aggarwal received a B.S. in chemistry, B.A. in philosophy, and a
minor in religious studies from UC Berkeley. He completed the
NIH-supported Medical Scientist Training Program at the UW School of
Medicine where he received a Ph.D. in medical geography and a Doctorate
of Medicine (M.D.) with a Pathway Certification in Global Health. He was
supported in part by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. He completed
his Medicine Internship in Internal Medicine at Virginia Mason Medical
Center in Seattle, Residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at
the New York University Medical Center, and Clinical Fellowship in
Hospice and Palliative Medicine at the National Institutes of
Health-Clinical Center Pain and Palliative Care Service. See more of Dr.
Aggarwal’s work on his website: http://www.cannabinologist.org/
Sunday, October 15th: 2pm Naomi Bindman and Mickey Carter Suggested $10 donation
Naomi Bindman’s articles, essays, and poetry have appeared in anthologies and journals including VTDigger, Mothering, So to Speak, Friends Journal, Consilience, and Import Sky. She was a finalist in the 2023 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest, and won the 2023 Creative Nonfiction Award from Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose. Naomi has received grants from the Vermont Arts Council, taught memoir-writing workshops funded by the Vermont Humanities Council, and is on the faculty of the Vermont State Colleges. Her memoir, You’re the Words I Sing tells the story of Naomi’s journey back to life performing the songs of her daughter, Ellen, who lost her life in a car crash at seventeen.
Read more about Naomi and her daughter here:
Mickey Carter has performed, taught, and studied drums and percussion all over New England. She plays a wide variety of instruments and styles, from classical percussion to jazz and rock drum set, to hand drums from around the world. Mickey brings her knowledge of all these rhythms and techniques to every project. She counts among her mentors some of the most accomplished international drum and percussion educators and performers, including Dom Famularo, Memo Acevedo, John Beck, Cassio Duarte, and Glen Velez. Mickey currently resides in northern Maine. She is thrilled to play with Naomi Bindman again.
Tuesday, October 17th: 6pm – 8:30pm: Cooking with Mushrooms at Capital Cooks $79.00
Amy and Avery will be demonstrating 3 of our recipes at the Capital Cooks classroom kitchen in Albany. For more details and to register head over to Capital Cooks website:
https://capitalcooksny.com/shop-classes/ols/products/xn--1017-cooking-with-mushrooms–hands-on-u77x
Saturday, October 28th: 5:30pm Dinner on the Farm with Chef Kate Ray $60/seat
Saturday, November 4th: A Mushroom Experience with Collar City Mushrooms and Friends at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Hall of the Pines . Put it on your calendars now! A fully immersive dinner and art extravaganza.
Saturday, November 11th: Trojan Photographer Susan Jadlos’ show, ‘A Touch of Home,’ featuring the musical stylings of LSDaniel.
A few Words from Susan:
I grew up in Troy and it’s been my home for most of my life.
There’s a vibrant “Can Do” attitude that seems to be part of the DNA of the
people who were born here. Troy is beautiful and always evolving. What’s
neat is folks with dreams and aspirations can come to Troy, join our
community and grow their dreams surrounded by like minded people.
I’m lucky to be part of the community. As a child, the orange brick walls of
my alley in South Troy fueled my imagination and continue to be an integral
part of my foundation. Photography is like magic to me. My photographs
and stitched together brickwork are dedicated to the brickmakers and
bricklayers who helped build the walls here in Troy, NY and continue to
inspire me.
Joy, exuberance and beauty in the commonplace and lifting the spirit are
what I hope my work brings to you.
November 18th: Dinner on the Farm with Chef William Lind Jr. $60/seat
December 9th: Dinner on the Farm with Chef Christina Lloyd $60/seat
Collar City Mushrooms 