aspb 2011!

So Eric and I are at the American Society of Plant Biologists' Conference here in Minneapolis MN. Minneapolis is a pretty nice town, granted that we're seeing it at its best. Very clean, lots of "ambassadors" to help people find where there going and to help keep it clean. Neat architecture - a few Frank Lloyd Wright houses hiding around. You can look at the outsides of these houses but since people actually live in them there are no tours. Also, and most amazingly to us from Colorado, there is water Everywhere. Fountains and reflecting pools and lakes... In the actual city there are mostly fountains and they are spectacular.

They also love their beer here, not so much the microbrews like Fort Collins although Fat Tire is available at the finer restaurants, but beer generally is adored. The local beer is called Grain Belt Nordeast, a pleasant, unoffensive light beer, and we walk past its distribution center on the way to the hotel.

Now the hotel is interesting. Eric booked it the week before we left. First he wanted some other hotel, that only had smoking rooms and No Pool! that was a little closer to the convention center. I luckily was there to supervise and said No, no, this won't do at all. So we found this place, which is only non smoking rooms and a pool, and 2.7 miles from the convention center. Fine. It's on Industrial Boulevard. Fine.

Our neighbor on the plane here was a Knights of Columbus charity organizer, very friendly, who said there's lots to do in Minneapolis at night but if as newlyweds we just had sex all night that's fine too. He also said we should take the light rail to downtown and then a cab to the hotel.

We took the light rail to downtown and then asked an ambassador for help, and he pointed us to the 61 bus, which went right to Industrial Boulevard.

The bus arrived, the bus dropped us off, and we were left to walk to the hotel. This proved daunting because Industrial Boulevard is home only to distribution centers for 3M, Nordeast, Restaurant Food Supplies, etc., and they found sidewalks unnecessary. It looked like we were walking to the middle of nothing on a fine Friday afternoon - but at last, the hotel sign was sighted, we were checked in, all was well. Eric nobly handled the roller bag through the industrial jungle.

We ate at the hotel and the waitress was from somewhere much warmer in Africa, but she was very cheerful nonetheless.

The next day we took the free shuttle (!) from the hotel to the Convention Center, got Eric's poster set up, and assessed the situation. There was nothing to do until 12:30, when the inaugural speeches began, so we wandered around the downtown area. The KoC dude on the plane told us about a sweet sculpture garden not far from the convention center, but we haven't made it that far yet. Instead we just walked down Nicollett Mall, where there were an astounding number of crazy people. Mostly this manifests as shouting. There was one dude shouting at the street maps next to the bus stops, just "AAAAAAA! AAAAAAA! AAAAAAA!" while holding a shopping bag, mind you, much like the dude in Toronto that Johnnie showed us on YouTube, so upset that the mall was closed, although in this case the source of his frustration was more mysterious. There are also many street performers like a dude with dreds wearing a dress playing the accordion. Fine. Not harmful, not begging neither.

We looked in a rare books and art store, and the guy tending the store vacuumed around us the whole time we were in there. We took it as a sign that we could afford nothing - quite true - although much of the art was just awesome. Hand done sketches of fowl for hunting, or Dr. Seuss prints, or triptychs of hens and ducks - for example. So he effectively chased us out with his dust-sucker, and we took refuge in Barnes&Noble instead, where I found some nice stationery for all the thank-yous we have left to write. (No refuge for Eric, in other words.)

Then we wended back to the Convention Center in time for the opening remarks, which were amazingly embarrassing. First, Nick Carpita (the president of ASPB who I met in Brazil) told us that "We have a lot to learn about plants and the kind of people they are." I wrote that one down. Then a Lakota dude chanted and wailed on a tom-tom, and then spoke for a long time in gobbledy-gook. He tried to translate it for us but kept getting distracted into asides; the gist was that this was Lakota land, right where we were sitting now, and plants were considered a sovereign nation by the Lakota. When they gathered any of the four plants used for big medicines, they prayed to the plant nation. Also, there are plants that he recently learned about that will let people fly, and others that will let women stop their menstrual cycles. We should really check that one out, he said. His whole deal was supposed to take 5 minutes but it took more like 30. Then an ASPB member, also Lakota, and Nick Carpita wrapped him in a blanket that they had made for him, to symbolize wrapping him in the gratitude of our society.

The awards were given next, and then the first symposium of speeches by last year's award winners happened. It was all very boring and we fell asleep alot. Once we had eaten and returned to the hotel we took a little break at the pool yay and got ready to start over the next day, fresh with no mistakes in it yet.

TBC...