Liking Lichen

Yesterday was a long day.  I had a 7 hour class on a new legislative rule.  Can you say boring?  The instructor did her best but rules are inherently boring and we were packed in there like sardines or, worse yet,  airline passengers.  When I told my companions that I was going to another class that evening on lichens all three of them looked at my with sympathy in their eyes and asked, "Why?"  I like lichen.  Quiet, harmless, beautiful and often overlooked, lichen are a cool mixture of fungus and algae And our instructor was awesome.  No power point for us.  We had stories, songs, magnifying glasses, hands on examples, and even paper hats.  We made and wore our paper hats because we wanted to remember George Washington who, with all this troops, nearly starved at Valley Forge but managed to survive because they made a broth out of lichen.  And the biblical manna from heaven?  Most likely scientific explanation is lichen - pieces of it broken off and flying in the wind.  Lichen, there is a million fascinating stories about them.  My favorite is the fruticose lichen.  When looked at under a microscope the fruticose lichen looks like a miniature forest and I feel like the big guy, Gulliver, who traveled to the land of the little people.