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Richard Gaines's Page

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What is your main interest(s)? All of these questions are optional!: Sustainable Lifestyles, Alternative Energy

If you have an interest not mentioned above, you can note it here.: Political media
Wild Foods
Mushroom studies and uses
Appropriate technologies

Anything you'd like to tell about yourself? Where do you live? (optional!): I would like to help introduce democracy to the american political system.

I otherwise have studied many aspects of mostly fleshy fungi for the past 35 years focusing on edible mushrooms but also with strong interests in taxonomy, ecology, forestry, health and medicine; lichens and their taxonomy, relationships and uses; and mushroom and lichen dye applications. I have been leading mushroom forays, and doing weekend workshops and college seminars, on mushroom identification, edible mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms, and mushroom and lichen dyes since the late seventies.

I have been participating in ancestral and early living skills gatherings for the past 25 years and am familiar with the basics.

I am interested in the advancement of appropriate technologies from the most primal to the most technologically current. I am not in favor of technologies that remove people from their ability to be economically and environmentally sustainable. I believe that medicine should be demystified and removed from the exclusive domain of elite practitioners (and that we should have single payer health care). That we are reliant on political and economic systems and technologies that isolate people from their ability to be regionally independent and sustainable is a matter of concern to me.

My first reason for joining this site was to gain additional exposure for the mushroom and lichen workshops I put on.
I am also concerned about the ethics and sustainability of wildcrafting.