Greetings from the Salt Lake City ACS Meeting #1

The ACS meeting is being held in Salt Lake City for the first time ever I believe. I arrived early in order to take some vacation and play. The first day (Wednesday) I took a tour of the city in a van. It was nice because there were only two of us and the other woman happened to be from Newark New Jersey! I learned a lot about this Mormon city (80%) and the other people who live here. Thursday I took a trip to Park City Utah. It is one of the near by ski areas that I skied at back when I was skiing. It was fun to wander Maine street and look at the shops. I ended the day with a late lunch at a restaurant that was right at the Town lift so I could watch the skiers coming and going or end their day of skiing. The snow was good but it is the end of ski season so Spring skiing conditions prevailed, crusty in the morning and mushy in the afternoon.
That evening I went to hear the world famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearse. It was wonderful. I hope I captured it on my new toy a camcorder. I am taking the first pictures with it so we will see.

OK Let's get down to the business of chemistry. I have a press pass for this meeting so I hope to cover as much as possible and blog every night or morning as the case may be. I have more energy in the morning usually.
Yesterday was my first meeting the Joint Subcommittee on Diversity. This committee is organizing a Diversity symposium to be held on Monday morning of the Washington DC ACS meeting in August. There will be a panel of CEO's or CFO's discussion at the Committee on Minority Affairs Luncheon on that same Monday. Stay tuned for details.
At that committee meeting the two in the Presidential secession, Neal Lane and Joseph Francisco attended and asked what they could do and told us their priorities for diversity in the society.
The day ended for me at the Society Committee on Education reception.

If you are on your way to Salt Lake City you should know that they are predicting snow or rain in the valley and heavy snow in the mountains so skiing should be very good on Tuesday. They need the precipitation because of a drought situation. They get all their water from a runoff from the mountain snows and there hasn't been much snow.

Also the ACS is running shuttle buses from most of the hotels to the convention center but if your hotel is on the TRAX line, (light rail) it is free and you can use it to get to the convention center.

Les McQuire has set up a North Jersey Group in the ACS network. I urge you to join this group. The first posting is about the proposed change in high school graduation requirements. I urge you to read this as well both here in this blog and the article in the ACS Network.
So much for Day One at the ACS meeting.
Jeannette