By Whitney Peckman

Dear Neighbor,

I love sautéed mushrooms! I’m excited to find more varieties in the markets nowadays. I have an old friend who is an expert at mushroom identifying. She illustrated Foraging for Edible Wild Mushrooms. But even if you only eat the commercially grown button ‘shrooms, you can enjoy the real story of mycelium and its fruiting body, the ‘shroom, on the Netflix movie, “Fantastic Fungi.”

Mycelium is, to my non-science brain, mysterious and magical. It is an example of “we don’t know what we don’t know, until we do;” then our knowledge and curiosity grow exponentially, much like mycelium. It grows to support life in so many ways I’d never guessed before. Mycelium, the branches and threads weaving their way over and through the soil, and even in the ocean, contribute to the decomposition of plant materials; they release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere; they transport water and help plants absorb nutrients; they are food for many soil creatures too small to see but which are essential parts of our ecosystem. And, they provide beauty and inspiration. But, be careful — some are toxic.

These days, many of us are becoming conscious of what I will call our “civic mycelium” — the toxic kind. Creeping threads of mistrust and fabrication are forming a net of conspiracy theories over our land. Toxic fruits of uncontrollable fear and anger tempt us with their ubiquity in our groups and clubs and churches and, of course, on the internet.

They are often undefined, yet dangerous, and more and more we feel the toxicity, and the toxicity becomes addictive. An internet mycelium sucks us in. How are we to determine if they are, in fact, benign or deadly? We consume so much that we know in our guts is really not valid, not true. We consume, but we don’t question if we are being poisoned; if not poisoned, certainly absorbed into a group-think that we often blindly accept, unchallenged. It is easier to buy into what is easily claimed as “fact.” To do so requires little of us. So little exercise of reason, as we tumble down the long dark passage of the manipulated internet.

In this toxic environment, how do we find delicious mushrooms, ideas, ones that make our dinner more exciting, our life calmer, that wake our taste buds, and calm our nerves, that add so much to egg dishes and pastas and soups, and makes us hungry for peace?

We would begin with searching out books and people who have a long and wide base of knowledge and experience. The internet is our friend when it comes to mushroom hunting. But how is it for looking into our “civic mycelium?”

Our founding fathers created an idea — the idea that people could participate in the decision making that affected their lives, that no king or despot or ruler or church would have control in the liberated community they wished to build. It was, and is, a glorious idea.

The idea/ideal of democracy is much like mycelium; it spreads threading its way into a population, until it blossoms — think of the pro-Democracy Arab Spring. The idea of democracy continues to be our civic mycelium — that which can form the foundation of equity, unity and civil rights for all — but at the same time, it is proving to be elusive, and for some, here and abroad, only barely attained. Yes, of course, we have progressed — the country is not as it was 50 years ago. But a decay is growing now, the toxic threads of fear, anger and isolationism forming a stranglehold net across the idea of democracy. And that mycelium grows daily ever more insidious, ever more toxic to the idea, ideal, the dream of democracy that so much of the world yearns for, and that we stand at the precipice of losing.

“Dear Neighbor” authors are united in a belief that civility and passion can coexist. We believe curiosity and conversation make us a better community.