Allen mused:

> When I look over the short course program, I can't figure out, from the
> web pages, exactly what is being offered and by whom, other than in very
> general terms, and I see nothing about Wednesday morning other than "
> Combined Session - Topics of interest to all beekeepers".

I think that the problem here is that the web pages were created
far in advance of the "firming up" of exactly who would be doing
exactly what in the short courses, and have not been updated with
specifics.  Maybe EAS needs a webmaster who can update their web
pages daily.  Know anyone who updates a website daily?  :)

> I was therefore very interested in the campus "daily use fee".

This is a mechanism that allows the school to assure that they
make a consistent profit per attendee, even if the attendee
chooses to not stay on campus.  Yes, it is a rip-off.  The days of
EAS riding free at land-grant universities are long gone.  All
schools are strapped for cash, and we are a source of easy revenue.

I stayed "on campus" at both EAS 2000 (Maryland) and EAS 2002 (NY),
and in both cases I was surprised at just how nice the dorms were.
If the dorms were so nice back when I went to college, I would not
have lived off-campus.

> The AHPA always has lots of free parking for trucks

Well, this is not an AHPA or an ABF meeting.  Not even close.
EAS is not so much about the BUSINESS of beekeeping as it is about
beekeeping for the pure joy of it.  There will be no hand-wringing
over honey prices, no fists will be pounded on podiums, no one will
say impolite things about other countries that produce honey, the
most likely comments made about a large truck would be "wow, what a
gas-guzzler" or "so much chrome, and me without my sunglasses", and
most tellingly, no one will show the least bit of deference to
someone who simply happens to own more hives than someone else.

> if 500 people attend, how do they manage to figure out the program
> and registration?  What am I missing?

Well, it is a lot like a Grateful Dead concert.  You buy tickets well
in advance and travel a long distance to go to the show without knowing
much about what the performance will be like, or what specific things
might happen.  Not knowing what to expect is part of the adventure.
While this requires blind faith that the schedule will be chock-full
of educational and entertaining presentations, such faith is justified.
The doubting Thomases can review the list of speakers.

If it is any help, the EAS 2002 schedule listed a short course in
"Bee Anatomy".  I did not attend the short courses, and arrived
earlier on Wednesday than I had hoped to.  I started kicking myself
when I walked past the room where the course was being taught, and
saw 20 stereo dissecting microscopes, with multiple instructors
moving from student to student, coaxing them through full post-mortems.
So, when they say, for example, "Bee Anatomy", they mean it.  :)

Also like a Grateful Dead concert, some folks go simply because EAS
is THE event of the year, and to not go is to miss out on the social
aspects of the meeting, or miss seeing people that they will only
see at EAS.

Regardless, one can relax and simply go with the flow.  I've yet to
hear anyone say that going to EAS was not "worth it".

I keep waiting from Kim Flottum to open an EAS general session
with the phrase

        "Welcome back my friends,
        to the show that never ends"

but I guess he never was an Emerson, Lake and Palmer fan.


                jim (Who's planning horizon does not extend to August, but
                 likely will show if he is in at least the same time zone)

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