Pleasantly surprised by the National Microbiome Initiative

So I got this email a few weeks ago inviting me to the White House. Not every day that I get invited to the White House.  And I thought I was probably on their shit list after removing my name from the "Unified Microbiome Initiative" paper due to it being non open access.  So I asked a colleague if she could teach in my large introductory biology class for me on May 13 and she said yes.  So I RSVP to the meeting and told my mom I would be coming to the DC area (where I grew up).  And I told everyone, proudly "I am going to the White House".I realized I had a tight schedule for flying in and out since I had to be back in Davis Saturday AM.  So I wrote to the White House to ask about the schedule for the event.  You see, I had no information as to what this event was going to be about.And, they did tell me this would work although they would not tell me what the meeting was about.I then bought my tickets and got excited to be going to the White House.  However, fate would not be so kind to me.  My daughter got sick last week (bronchitis, and multiple spin off issues) and so I started to wonder if I really should go away.  So I tried to find out what was happening at this event.  I wrote a few friends who I knew were going and one of them told me there would be a series of talks and another told me they did not know.  So - without much other information to go on, and with a strong desire to take care of my daughter as much a...
Source: The Tree of Life - Category: Microbiology Authors: Source Type: blogs