Botanical meetings - New Orleans

Well,  TPP is back in New Orleans for the annual botanical meetings, back because we done this here before, so while fond and the memories are rather foggy because that was 40 years ago.  So two of my older colleagues, one seven years my senior, and one thirteen years my senior, and both still active faculty, and myself took our lovely wives out to dinner at NOLA.  Wonderful place, wonderful food.  The blueberry lavender flower sorbet was just magical.  The duck and Andouille sausage gumbo was excellent.  This is New Orleans and the food is wonderful.  The street scene is amazing; lots of costumes of various sorts, if you get my drift.  So for the next few days the blogging may be erratic, but it'll be coming from the botanical meetings, live and direct.  Tomorrow is for field trips, and meetings, and a big social mixer.  Another group is also having a conference here in NO, but they won't get mistaken for botanists, or us for them; they dress pretty fancy, black tie and evening gown type of thing tonight.  Botanists just don't do formal, except for one guy, a past-president, who once came in a tux, and everyone just figured he was weird, or making a joke, or something.  Hawaiian shirts are a more usual fashion statement in the botanical world and khakis.  Of course, after so many years, these people are my friends and it's great fun to see them once each year except what with all the science going on it can be hard to socialize with many of them.  There isn't enough time.  Science is a community, and we interact at many different levels, so socializing is a very important thing to do.  The symposium "Yes, Bobby (Jindal), Evolution is True" symposium is on Monday, and TPP will let you know how it goes. 
TPP sees elsewhere that another blogger is getting paid to report on the protist meetings out west in Vancouver.  TPP has been there twice for meetings and it's a lovely city, and again the meetings were nearly 30 years apart.  It does kind of rub my rhubarb that a science blogger is accepting money to do something that they should do anyways, and even worse that TPP hasn't been offered any such support, which is why food came first.  So now, having driven too far, and eaten too much, it's time to get some sleep because the field trip starts early.