WHEREAS, the 84thAnnual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists held at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA, 12-16 June 2004 was an extremely well-run meeting which challenged the Resolutions Committee but we did not a few things; and
WHEREAS, Allen Press has posited a unique spelling for Humboldt, but the Local Committee insisted it be spelled correctly hence the sticker on the program cover and yet the Local Committee spelled “M-A-M-L”; and
WHEREAS, Angie Pfeifer of Allen Press is Fine by deed and now by marriage; and
WHEREAS, the local culture reminded many mammalogists of the 60’s, and in fact some locals and members seem as if they never left that era; and
WHEREAS, the American Society of Mammalogists so enjoyed the annual meeting at Humboldt State University in 1984 that we have resolved to return again in 2024, at which time we expect that it will still look and feel like the 60’s; and
WHEREAS, we all enjoyed passing through Merriam’s Life Zones en route to and from foraging bouts in the Jolly Giant cafeteria; and
WHEREAS, mammalogists were perplexed to take talking elevators that repeated themselves to other elevators to other elevators, etc.; and
WHEREAS, we all appreciated the opportunity to tear our social tickets in half and double our pleasure; and
WHEREAS, the course for the Gordon Kirkland Memorial Run for Research covered significant altitudinal variation to make up for last year’s course through the “Plains of Lubbock”; and
WHEREAS, the convenient on-line registration permitted mammalogists to create a personal itinerary that, when printed out, exceeded the length of the entire program, thereby helping to support the local paper industry; and
WHEREAS, we appreciated the encouragement of the Local Committee to plan ahead by submitting our PowerPoint Presentations with our abstracts; and
WHEREAS, we were warned not to touch any buttons on the front of remote controls, and the side buttons worked best on a voice command “next slide please”; and
WHEREAS, Allen Press arranged the layout of the Program so that concurrent sessions appeared to run in succession; and
WHEREAS, Robert Baker proved that hosting the ASM annual meeting is a “hair-curling” experience; and
WHEREAS, we look forward to seeing Brian Arbogast in locks next year; and
WHEREAS, riding rough shod over the rest of the committees was not enough to keep Chris Maguire and the members of the Coordination Committee busy so they demanded a mission statement from other standing committees; and
WHEREAS, Bruce Patterson, Guy Cameron, and Bob Timm demonstrated their governmental philosophy and strategic planning vision by presenting a budget to the Board that included a list of expenditures with blank spaces rather than dollar amounts for each line; and
WHEREAS, Ron Van Den Bussche reported that the Trustees Terry Yates, Jerry Choate and Syd Anderson beat the Dow Jones again, we hope that Ron is not a short version of Enron; and
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors repeatedly tested the hypothesis that Steve Sheffield can deliver a brief report: hypothesis rejected, hypothesis rejected, hypothesis rejected; and
WHEREAS, Sue McLaren did such an excellent job as Recording Secretary that President Patterson saw no need for re-election; and
WHEREAS, the best attended non-plenary talk focused on a species that no mammalogists has ever seen; and
WHEREAS, we did see sasquatch at the Group Photo but we failed to document its existence because the camera mysteriously malfunctioned when sasquatch was visible; and
WHEREAS, with so many stairs and areas of relief we wonder why the photo was on a plain as flat as Lubbock but we will enjoy the photo of the foreheads of so many of our members; and
WHEREAS, DNA sequence data metastasized the ASM and in a related issue Don Wilson repeated told us that as of today there are precisely 5,416 species of mammals; and
WHEREAS, the Society was not surprised to learn that bats in Arkansas (or whatever THEY call that place) are inbred and we are left to wonder about any senior mammalogists born and raised in said place; and
WHEREAS, Jessica Light, described new species of Mexican pocket gophers, Karen Nutt resolved the demography of vagil male ctenodactyls, Kevin Rowe identified supercooled metapopulations, Toni Paiggio upped the biodiversity in long-eared bats, and Debra Shier gave a moving talk on prairie dogs; and
WHEREAS, David Schmidly (without orange hair) noted that two early Presidents, Jefferson and Roosevelt, were accomplished naturalists in contrast to recent Presidents, did CPR on natural history and described the role for Young Turks and Old Farts; and
WHEREAS, Tom Kunz participated in the Old Farts Symposium noted by Schmidly, and Tom subsequently redirected his research into wind power; and
WHEREAS, Terry Brower, Bow-er, Boy-er, who has obviously been operating under various aliases since leaving his alma mater, taught us that female ruminants are from Venus whereas males are from South Texas; and
WHEREAS, we enjoyed gorgeous wildflowers in rainbow colors, beautiful weather, magnificent redwoods, name tags big enough to be read by Young Turks and Old Farts, excellent electronic support for PowerPoint, great bluegrass music by the Compost Mountain Boys, gracious smiling support staff, free flowing beer, real sheets and blankets and lots of stop signs;
THEREFORE, be it resolved that the American Society of Mammalogists express heartfelt thanks to Brian Arbogast, Karen Reiss, Steve Smith, and Humboldt State University for a wonderful, stimulating, and productive meeting.