Ellen Reed has
graciously offered to host the Holiday Potluck at her house on the
Saturday the 6th at 6:00 pm. Bring a main dish or dessert or
both. I imagine we may see a few more chanterelle dishes this time. A few
members have suggested/requested that the dishes be labeled with a recipe
name and a statement of the mushroom species contained within. I know
other clubs follow this practice (some even limiting each recipe to one
species), and it seems both sensible and courteous.
Last Month
At the November meeting, R. Peter Herman from New Mexico State University
gave a wonderful talk about mycorrhizal fungi and the importance of their
relationships with desert plants. Thank you Dr. Herman for journeying from
Las Cruces and sharing with us your knowledge and experience.
Certainly less exciting than Dr. Herman's talk was the club's
unanimous acceptance of the revised Bylaws.
We also added two new memberships during the month: Scott Stoleson from Sandia
Park and Tom and Evi Shaw in San Angelo, TX.
New Officers
Until last month's meeting I suspected that members volunteered for
the nominating committee so they themselves could pin the responsibilities
of office on someone else. This year's nominations have caused me to
reconsider. Of the three members of the committee, two ended up
nominating themselves for the top offices. Thanks to Ruth, Doris, and
Larry for undertaking the responsibility this year.
During 1997 Doris and MaryLee shared the duties of the
Vice-Presidency; now in '98 Sharon Chong will assist Peg Hooton with
office of Treasurer. Below is the full list of Next year's officers.
For many clubs and interest groups, the World Wide Web provides an
incredible vehicle for the sharing of information and ideas. It is
proving an increasingly useful tool for Mycologists, both amateur and
professional, allowing rapid and widespread query and communication.
The NMMS Web Site has entered it's third year. It began and remained
for some time in almost complete obscurity. The main features from its
onset have been up-to-date copies of the monthly newsletter in HTML
(hypertext markup language) format and an ever-growing list of mycology links from my personal Web
page:
http://www.swcp.com/mycowest/links
.
The NMMS homepage itself is a one-page information sheet which provides
for the reader a concise introduction of NMMS, whether viewed on
the Web or read in printed form. The address (URL) for our homepage is
http://www.swcp.com/mycowest/nmms/clubpage.htm
.
For the last two years I have actually been "publishing" the
Newsletter in three formats: HTML to be viewed on the Web,
text, which I send via Email, and the word processed version
I fold and stick in the mail. It was becoming increasingly apparent that
this was a wasteful duplication (actually triplication) of effort. So for
the last three issues, I have created only the HTML version, posting it on
the Web; the copies for mailing I print directly from Netscape (a
Web-browsing software), which also exports a text copy I can send by
email.
Somewhere between a third and a half of our membership now has Email,
which I consider remarkable. To this growing group I have been sending a
text copy of the Newsletter as well as their printed copy through the
mail. I had hoped to be able to email the HTML copy to these folks so they
could enjoy receiving a nicely formatted Newsletter. I sent out a
questionnaire to this group to determine what email capabilities exist
among the membership. Although the responses were few, they were adequate
to tell me that the software in use encompasses a wide variety of
capabilities. After a bit of further research and experimentation, I
decided, at least for now, that text is still best choice of format to
send via Email. (Netscape and the newer versions of Eudora will read and
display a HTML formatted document, but other, commonly used email
softwares will not.)
I realize that for some members, the last few paragraphs must sound
like complete nonsense; I remember not long ago when Latin fungus names
and terms like "adnate" and "adnexed" sounded like that to me, so I can
sympathize.