Laurel Leathers sends the following update on our friend and Founding President Emeritus, Dr. Chester Leathers:

Rose Mary Leathers asked if I would drop you a quick line to let you know why she and Chet have not been participating in the mushroom activities. You may have heard already, but Chet suffered a mild heart attack in May which led to by-pass surgery. He is on the road to recovery but not yet up to long outings. 

As for me, I have knee replacement surgeries planned for this year. That is what has kept me out of the hunts. Hopefully next year I can get my new bionic knees out in the woods again.  

I miss all of my friends in the club and wish everyone a great season.

Sincerely,

Laurel Leathers 

We assuredly wish both of them a speedy recovery, and look forward to the pleasure of their presence at our future functions. 

Got this announcement from our friends in New Mexico today. I am very tempted to attend. --CCM

The New Mexico Mycological Society will hold its 2017 Foray at Sipapu Ski Resort, approx 25 miles south of Taos, NM. The dates are August 24-27, two weeks after the Regional Foray in Arizona and the weekend following the popular Telluride Mushroom Festival. 

NMMS welcomes and encourages members of NAMA and NAMA-affiliates to join us and our Foray Mycologists Rick Kerrigan, Michael Castellano, and Clark Ovrebo. Field trips will take us into the Carson National Forest, where we'll visit elevations from 8000 to 11,000 ft. 
   
Foray participants are responsible of reserving their own lodging, which is limited. So get on the phone with Sipapu, and reserve a room.

Foray Details and Registration Form are available at NewMexicoMyco.net/Foray.

Just opened registration for the NAMA Regional Foray on Aug. 10-13.

There will be a lot of instruction going on here, including advanced Agaricus identification with Dr. Rick Kerrigan and a novices' mushroom identification workshop with Tom Chapman. Southwestern fungi expert Dr. Scott Bates, of the Arizona Mycota Project, is the chief mycologist. There will be a cooking class with Mary Smiley and an arid-climate cultivation workshop taught by mushroom grower Clinton White. A microscopy workshop and lots of ID sessions round out the instructional offerings.

You can hunt mushrooms each morning, learn mushrooms each afternoon, and eat mushrooms each evening, for four days and three nights. The only catch is that you have to be a NAMA member and get the registration code from them.

Our original plan to hold the NAMA Regional Foray at a summer camp in Pinetop has run into some objections due to their open dormitory-style lodging and a policy against alcohol on their property. Luckily, we have recently arranged to move our event to the Sunrise Park Resort hotel near the ski area. A block of modestly priced hotel rooms has been reserved for us. This will be a little more costly, but not drastically so, and the location should be far superior. Full details will follow, and registrations should open by the beginning of April once all our budgeting is complete.

Local discussion forums have been added to the members' Meet-Up page. Residents of the Phoenix Metro area, Tucson, Prescott, Payson, Flagstaff/Verde Valley area, and the White Mountains now will have their own respective forums for discussion of issues of local concern and arranging ride-sharing with fellow members.

Our annual holiday potluck supper will take place on the evening of Saturday, Dec. 17th at 6:30 PM, at the Maricopa County Cooperative Extension building at 4341 E. Broadway Rd. in Phoenix. 

We will have an educational lecture from mycologist Britt Bunyard, PhD, the publisher and editor in chief of FUNGI Magazine and the director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival.

More information at this link:

• 2016 Winter Meeting & Potluck Dinner
  

Dr. Barry Pryor and his associates at the University of Arizona School of Plant Science are offering repeat sessions of their mushroom cultivation workshop at several locations around the state this summer.

Show Low - June 1

Tucson - June 29

Prescott - August 10

Tucson - August 31

For more information and to register for the course, see:

http://www.azmushroom.org/news/upcoming-workshops 

The Arizona Mushroom Growers Association and the U of A Plant Sciences department are sponsoring a mushroom cultivation workshop on the afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 24th. It will take place at the Cooperative Extension Building on Broadway Road in Phoenix, where we have our annual meetings.

Some people have reported trouble connecting to the new web site. This is a known problem with two easy workarounds that I will describe below.

The difficulty arises when a web browser with relatively strict security settings reads the SSL encryption certificate from our site. Because the domain name on that certificate is "wildapricot.org", it throws up a red flag warning that the site is not "arizonamushroomsociety.org" as was claimed. This is because we are hosting our web site (at least for the time being) with a popular membership software provider, Wild Apricot, and using their certificate instead of our own. 

The certificate and its installation cost some $150 per year, and while I hope to see the club grow large enough someday to afford this without difficulty, right now it is an excess and avoidable expense.

The first and perhaps simplest way to get around this hiccup is to use a different URL identifier for our web site. If you use 

https://arizonamushroomsociety.wildapricot.org

as the address, the site should function in the exact same way, but without the warnings.

Alternatively, you may elect to "trust" the Wild Apricot certificate whenever you connect to the AZ Mushroom Society site at its original name. This should be possible with every web browser and operating system that uses SSL certificates, although how to do so is beyond the scope of this post. Typically the same dialog box or bar that gives you the security warning will also contain a checkbox or button that allows you to proceed to the original website after confirming that you trust the certificate.

Go to the end of the page at this link for an example image:

http://arizona-mushrooms.org/2016/01/23/arizona-mushroom…ng-registrations/

The Annual Holiday Potluck of The Arizona Mushroom Club opened with the announcement of the retirement of founder and long time president Dr. Chester Leathers. After a fun and informative presentation on edible and medicinal plants by Jean Groen, Dr Leathers was commended for his long commitment to the AMC and thanked by the membership.

The membership voted to incorporate as a nonprofit, educational organization. Membership elected a board of directors, who in turn voted on the Bylaws necessary for incorporation. To attain status as a tax deductible charity, the club will be renamed as the Arizona Mushroom Society, Inc.

A considerable amount of enthusiasm was shown for developing more mushroom-related activities, and we are looking forward to the changes this will bring.

Check back here for more exciting updates.

Minutes of the meeting will be posted on this website as soon as they are approved by the board.