Conference aftermath

Scientific conferences are almost frantic activity packed into 4 days, a fevered orgy of interaction, a once a year event celebrating the social, personal aspects of our particular science.  At the end you feel a bit of relief and fatigue, however, TPP, a cagey veteran, has learned how to pace himself and not worry overly about what you missed or could not attend.  Last night was the big banquet (reasonably good, but fire the cook that made the gumbo, or fire whoever told them to wimp out), the awards, a presidential address (pretty good, but overly long - hey, there was a social  going on), and a farewell to friends and colleagues for another year.  Along the way you learn a good many things, you make some new contacts and friends, you get some new ideas (these are all creative people), you admire those who distinguish  themselves with hard work, cleverness, and sometimes luck that opens new doors.  Forty percent of the attendees were students, impressive young people, and you are glad when you can help some of them out and even surprised by the rare one who knows who you are.  But TPP isn't saying farewell to New Orleans just yet; he doesn't get here often and some friends have arrived and we'll take a few days just to mess around because conferences don't leave much time for leisure.  Maybe a drive down into Cajun country would be nice. 

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.

Botanical Meeting - Early Planning

The annual botanical meetings are at the end of this month in New Orleans, the combined memberships of the Botanical Society of America, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the American Bryological and Lichenological Society, the American Fern Society, and the International Association of Plant Taxonomists.  Pretty exciting, huh?  Well, this is for purposes of communicating all manner of things with out colleagues, and mostly it's the only time each year we get to see colleagues from different institutions and countries, former students, and collaborators, both past and maybe future.  People present talks and posters highlighting their research and teaching.  You learn a lot and get a lot of new ideas.  But it's a marathon, a jam-packed few days of solid botanical science.  Participation planning had to take place months ago to get on the program, and even earlier than that if you were organizing some aspect of the meeting.  Travel planning also had to be done already to get reservations taken care of.  Now you begin to decide on a day-to-day schedule so you're where you want to be when you want to be there.  You see, so much is going on, all manner of sessions are going on simultaneously, and for us generalists who have interests spanning more than one field, it's a particular problem because you want to hear this and that over there and back here.  TPP's basic approach is to just check off anything and everything he's interested in seeing and hearing, all the meetings he's supposed to attend, and all the rest.  This spans fields of systematics, paleobotany, structure and development, ecology, pollination, tropical biology, and evolution, but only particular bits of each.  More specialized people just plunk themselves down and stay put.  After you find everything of interest (it took 2 hours to read the whole program) you print out a custom schedule, except then you find out 8 of your "likes" all happen at once, so then you finally have to decide.  The first scan shows quite a few "problems" to resolve.  Some fun things look to be in the offing.  One symposium, a group of invited speakers, are presenting talks on "Yes, Bobby [Jindal], Evolution is Real".  Doubt he'll show up. And where was the seminar on Cajun food?  

Who's happy? Doesn't surprise me!

As virtually all gardeners can attest there is something very satisfying about working with plants.  TPP knows a lot of botanists, and virtually all of them love being a botanist, although they may not like being an academic, but this is something of a different matter.  No matter how disappointing a garden may be one year, gardeners are out there planting the next, a very optimistic attitude.  You can't be a defeatist and garden.  A colleague once said, "It takes a particularly sophisticated and mature intellect to appreciate something as subtle and elegant as a plant".  Well, hard to disagree with that.  And perhaps this leads to a healthy attitude about life in general, certainly a major factor in being happy, so no surprise that this survey finds that "plant people" are the happiest people.  Growing plants keeps you active and interested.  You don't need reality shows to amuse yourself.  All kinds of bloggers complain about the negativity of the internet, but TPP gets very few negative comments.  Questions directed to this blog are almost all people wanting to understand or learn something new, very positive things.  Another news story said that people were more satisfied with wanting something than with having the thing they wanted.  Maybe it's the garden catalogs thing all the time; plant people so very much want their plants to grow well, look beautiful, and produce with profusion even though this only happens every now and again.  So you always have something to work toward, never having that empty feeling than comes from nothing to look forward to.  This botanical blogger is still having fun with plants, and he intends to continue until time comes to be composted.  Do us plant people need a "I grow plants, so I'm happy!" t-shirt or bumper sticker?  Oh, and who are the most miserable people?  Bankers! 

Botanical meetings - Day 3

What happened to Day 2?  It vanished into the dozens of conversations with friends and colleagues, multiple sessions of scientific talks, research discussions, mixers, and business meetings.  Events started at 8 AM and continued through an overly long business meeting that ended at about 9 PM.  Can you exist on a diet of snacks, beer, and wine?  Well, yes!  In this case the evening schedule was so daunting that the decision was made to have a larger than usual lunch, and because the food court has some pretty nice items, including Indian with freshly baked tandoori naan.  So while fortified with food, as soon as the lights were dimmed for a talk, the urge to doze off had to be fought, with great difficulty in a couple of them.  And then a young colleague seeks you out because you possess knowledge in a particular subject area that almost everyone else has forgotten, and you are surprised how much of it you still remember from over 25 years ago.  And what's even more surprising is how many older colleagues are still attending these meetings, and are still active botanists.  You see it isn't just a job, or a career, or an expertise, it's an advocation and these people just love what they do, and the students begin to figure out that you've been a professional botanist for more than twice as long as they've been alive.  Now it's Day 3 and a bit of fatigue is setting in. This afternoon the Phactor delivers a research paper on an invasive legume and the impact of several environmental factors have on its growth.  Not much good news here; the invasive legume will "win", prairie diversity will lose.  And at this very moment, other than knowing that nothing critical is happening, the Phactor has lost his custom-made schedule and has no idea what to attend next.  Sounds like more coffee is in order.  Maybe then the next evo-devo presentation will make more sense.  Let's see what has been learned?  Well, the scanty development of diploid endosperm of waterlilies and their relatives may represent an intermediate stage between the female gametophyte of gymnosperms and the full-fledged triploid endosperm of most flowering plants.  A little gnetophyte, Ephedra monosperma (or E. minima) is easy to propogate and grow for research and teaching.  Have to see if it's available from an online nursery.  Time to run.