Having discussed the modification of classic aquaculture systems to be truly integrative in production of terrific tilapia, vitrious veggies, and cultivated compost I feel like there is no time better to integrate our toxic toxin mediating and mitigating mushroom strategy.

At a prior seminar on slow food at the Cleveland Botanical Garden I addressed the importance of integrating innovative approaches to bioremediation of environmental toxins like lead and mercury. Certainly a synergistic approach would be to use the proactive and proven bioremediation of said hazards with mushroom power.

To address this issue more specifically, I'll focus on the mushroom power alone - to understand how this integrates with the truly sustainable living machine mechanism outlined here, we need only to realize that the mushrooms would feed optimally on the waste from the other components of this system.

As for the mushrooms themselves, these would be grown under conditions as optimal as could be recreated within the transformative center we know and love as the Star Neighborhood Development project, and more specifically the old Hough Bakery Building at Lakeview and Euclid. Connections that should be available through inroads in participation as Technology Chair for Beaming Bioneers Cleveland include one of the world's foremost mushroom experts and advocates, Paul Stamets.

Stamets authored the infamous tome How Mushrooms Can Save the World and possesses countless patents on various valuable strains of shrooms - from bioremediating ones to eating ones, and a few in betweeen which seem to battle more outlandish-seeming applications like the mitigation of termite infestation of the home. As Stamets and so many others have pointed out, that the mycelial webs that mushrooms manifest in natural growth states often mirror other growth patterns - such as the one embodied by our own World Wide Web (internet).

To bring this to more practical application, it will be useful to investigate the potential for inexpensive acquisition of seed-forming startup growths of mushroom strains to specifically ameliorate East Cleveland challenges.

I identify these as follows:

1. Bioremediating mushrooms that specific mitigate lead toxicity. This

strain already exists to soil-enrich and clear toxic buildup of lead within soil - contributed by lead paint content but more prolifically and potently by unleaded gasoline through ages of industrialization.

2. Growing various strains of edible mushrooms like Shittake shrooms which are valued as tasty treats as well as biorich botanicals. Shittake complex is a newly coveted component of cosmetics.

3. Researching other invaluable functional shrooms to then offer as an integrated service for East Cleveland homes in sore need of revamping - i.e. termite infestation mitigation.

I've already identified a list of local mushroom growers and it seems like a next logical step will be to outreach for opportunity to acquire seed startup materials. Suggestions or offers of assistance from the community at large would be most welcome. Thanks!