The Catholic Church and Women Priests

When I visit the Protestant churches and see the presence of women priests and that they are leading the services (and doing a very good job), it makes me wish that my church, the Catholic Church, was more enlightened on exactly this issue. I have never understood why women are not allowed to become priests in the Catholic Church, and I have never understood why male priests are not allowed to marry. Both bans are in my opinion, self-defeating and short-sighted. The Church complains about the lack of vocations, but does not understand that if they allowed women to become priests, they would no longer have problems with the lack of vocations. They would also attract more men into the priesthood if men knew that they could marry and still become priests.

I am disappointed in my Church and in the Vatican powers-that-be--disappointed by their discrimination against women, disappointed by their decisions to make the Church remain a patriarchal institution, disappointed by their refusal to let men marry and still become priests, and disappointed by their fierce desire to resist all forms of change in these areas. Most of the women I know who have worked within the Church—nuns, counselors, teachers, altar ministers, office workers—would have made good priests. They were kind and service-minded women, highly-educated and very empathic. I don’t know if they wanted to be priests, perhaps some of them did. They certainly would have done as good a job, if not better, than most of the male priests I have known. I know a little something about the daily lives of male priests because I worked as a receptionist in my neighborhood church in Tarrytown for several years. One of my jobs was to serve the priests dinner in the evening as well as to clean up after them. Most of the priests were lonely middle-aged men who drank and smoked too much and who overate. Some of them died of cancer in their 50s. Others left the priesthood to marry. The loneliness became too much for them. The ones who remained in the Church were often cynical; I think of one in particular who told his congregation that if he had not become a priest he would have become a criminal and probably would have ended up in jail. He was completely serious. He was controversial from the pulpit, and while this was not necessarily a bad thing, he was not a positive or encouraging person, so he was of little help to those who were in emotional pain or struggling with their faith. Some of the priests would come to talk to me in the evening when I sat in the receptionist’s office; they were honest with me about their loneliness and I know they enjoyed talking to me. I was perhaps seventeen years old at the time. The women I have known who have had various service functions in the Church have managed to live much healthier, happier, less lonely lives. I don’t know why. It is strange to acknowledge this after so many years, but it is the truth. In any case, it is time for the Church to let women in; it is time for it to open its doors to major change. I hope that it happens in my lifetime. 

Bots- og Bede-dag

Today I attended a morning service at the nearby Protestant church, Gamle Aker, the church from 1100 AD that I have written about before in this blog. The last Sunday in October in the Scandinavian Protestant church is called bots-og bede-dag, literally translated penance and prayer day. It is a day to take stock of one’s failings, to ask for forgiveness for them, and to promise to atone for one’s sins. The priest who led the service, who happened to be a woman, talked about how no one wants to focus on sin and personal failings anymore, but that despite this, the realities of sin and personal failings remain. She also encouraged folk to take charge of their own lives and not to rely on others to direct them or to entertain them. She talked about how we can sometimes close doors to others, to opportunities, to love, to many good things, and instead choose to live in passivity and fear. In doing so, we will never see the open doors before us, that could perhaps lead us down new paths and to new ways of living.

I believe in synchronicity; the Encarta dictionary defines it as the coincidence of events that seem related, but are not obviously caused one by the other. This is relevant because the priest’s talk focused on ideas that have preoccupied me for much of my life the past half year--the desire to open new doors and follow new paths, about the fear related to changing one’s life, but also about the exhilaration of knowing that one wants to. But it is not enough to mean well or to want to. That is what the priest meant; she meant that we must act on our good intentions. We have a saying, at least I remember it from growing up—‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. Another (less ominous) way of putting it is ‘if not now, when?’ When are we going to do those good things that we think of but never act on? When are we going to listen to our heart’s desire? When are we going to acknowledge the existence of our soul? The priest reminded us that we do not have a lot of time on this earth. We do not live forever. Our mortality is not a distant fact many thousands of years in the future. For some it is the fate they will face next year, for others many years from now. Nevertheless, death is the great equalizer. It is man’s fate. It is the ‘blight man was born for’, to cite Gerard Manley Hopkins. Another wise person said, ‘live each day as if it were your last’. It sounds perhaps depressing to say this, but it is not. It is a wise way to live but not an easy one. That level of awareness can make one sad as well as happy. We need the balance. Perhaps there has been too much focus on happiness at all costs with no discussion of the importance of sadness in our lives. The yin and the yang as Mara says.

Taking all of this into consideration, I know I cannot be happy with, nor was I ever happy with, a passive life. I do not confuse a passive life with a content or sedate or peaceful life. An active life, filled with choices acted upon, filled with the life and energy that comes from having made decisions about how to live one’s life, leads to peace and to contentment. But the periods of passivity, of anxiety, of angst about making the necessary changes, are also positive in their own way. Rollo May wrote about finding the meaning in human anxiety in his book, The Meaning of Anxiety. He was a psychiatrist, an author, an artist, an activist, and a family man, whose personal values and beliefs shone through in nearly everything he did. He lived a full life and I think I understand what that means now. He described different development stages, one of them being the creative stage, which he meant defined what it meant to be a genuine adult. He stayed true to his heart’s desires and he did not seem overly preoccupied with status or prestige. I believe these two things kill one’s desires and good intentions faster than anything else in both a work and life context. It is hard to stay true to oneself and at the same time be climbing the career ladder to satisfy the wishes of others around you. It is hard to stay true to oneself and to be networking with the ‘in-crowd’ that will ensure your rocket flight to the top, because you may have to do some things that go against your beliefs. What are you willing to give up, or compromise on? I guess we all compromise to some extent, but it becomes more problematic when we approach issues that test our ethics.

Penance and prayer day gives us a chance to look at our failings and our successes, as well as our passiveness and our activeness. It does not mean that we have to condemn ourselves, to walk around feeling guilty, to be unable to forgive ourselves. We cannot be perfect beings on this earth, but we can at least attempt to find the paths that will move us toward living a life that is in harmony with our heart’s desire. We will always be ‘in development’ and unfinished. The important thing is to actively make the journey and to make it a memorable one. 

Halloween time

October has come to an end, and I guess it is fitting that the last day of the month is also Halloween, because it somehow marks the transition from lightness to darkness in a distinct way, as well as marking the start of the holiday season. Halloween (American-style) has finally made it to Norway and taken off in a big way. Many of the ‘dollar’ stores here (like the store Nille) take in a lot of money at this time of year on costumes, candy, candles and the like. There is no problem anymore in finding a pumpkin to carve, and in fact when I went out to buy a small one today I actually got the last one at the store where I bought it. Many Norwegians think that Halloween is commercial and unnecessary, and perhaps they’re right. But there are just as many who enjoy it. And since very few of them really celebrate Julebukk anymore, they cannot really complain too much when the younger generations, who have grown up watching American horror films like Halloween and its sequels, or other such films, want to celebrate Halloween too in their own way. Julebukk is a Christmas tradition where children wear costumes and masks so as not to be recognized and visit friends and neighbors, giving gifts as well as receiving them. In all my years in Norway, I have not once seen children do this, at least not in Oslo. Perhaps they honor this tradition more out on the countryside, I don’t really know.

I have ‘celebrated’ Halloween here since I moved to Norway. In the early 1990s it was difficult to get a hold of a pumpkin, but somehow I always managed to find one at the last minute. After it served its ‘evil’ purpose, I used the pumpkin to make soup and pies, and roasted the seeds and gave them to a friend of mine who really likes them. When my stepdaughter was young she and I would carve a big pumpkin, place a candle in it, turn off all the lights, and wait for my husband to come home from work so that he would get the full impression of the evil smile. In the late 1990s, she decided that she wanted to have a Halloween party, so I helped her with the decorations and baked a pumpkin-shaped cake that we frosted in an orange color and on which we made a pumpkin face. She also decided that she wanted to have bobbing for apples as well, which led to a fairly well-soaked kitchen floor after the partiers were done. She and I tried bobbing for apples before her guests arrived; it was not easy and I don’t know why I ever had the impression that it was. She had gotten some of these ideas from books she had read and movies she had seen. The fun part was watching her friends show up in different costumes—some as witches, some as vampires and some as hoboes. One of the guys dressed up as a woman, and had she not told me that he was a guy, I would have thought he was a woman, that’s how well made-up he was. This was at the time when Halloween was just starting to take hold in Oslo and at that time it was mostly children who were interested in it. Now the adults have gotten involved, dressing up and partying much like we did years ago in the states. I was reminded earlier today of the witch’s hat I bought some years ago that I used to wear when I opened the door to greet the children that have sometimes knocked on our door for candy. Our cat did not like that hat at all, and would back away from me when I was wearing it. I guess it freaked her out for some reason.

I usually watch the Peanuts film ‘It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’ at some point around Halloween. It’s hard to believe this little masterpiece was shown on TV for the first time in 1966. It still wears well with age. These were some of the traditions I grew up with—sitting around with my family watching the Peanuts Halloween and Christmas films as well as other holiday films. My father always enjoyed watching Snoopy pretend to be the WWI flying ace battling the Red Baron; perhaps it reminded him of his own WWII experiences. Those were pleasant times with my family and in truth, watching TV together with people is what I prefer—it is something I almost never do when I am alone.

I think one of the things about not living in America anymore is that all the traditions and holidays that we celebrate as Americans take on extra meaning now that I live here. I need to honor them because they keep me grounded as an American. I celebrate Thanksgiving as well, and it is a holiday that my husband and stepdaughter as well as some friends have come to look forward to. I enjoy preparing for it, as I do for most holidays. Our house is truly Norwegian and American in the way it celebrates most holidays, and sharing American traditions with my stepdaughter as she was growing up has been a lot of fun for both of us.

Touching perfection

I attended a choir concert this past Sunday evening at Frogner church performed by the Frogner Chamber Choir. One of the young women I work with (Mara) sings soprano in the choir and she had invited a number of us to attend. It was a beautiful concert, with religious music by Bach, Bruckner, Duruflé, and Vierne. Bruckner especially appealed to me. It was interesting to watch the members of the choir as they sang. They were happy—it showed in their faces and in their body language, the way they held forth and the way they held their song books. It was clear that they were doing something they loved to do. It was inspiring to watch them. I realized while watching them that a choir is the sum total of all its parts—the sopranos, tenors, altos and basses—and that it needs all of its members. The choir is a team that works well together under the guidance of the conductor. Each person has his or her role to play and each role is important to the choir and to the completeness of the performance. One’s job is to be the best soprano or tenor one can be. No one needs to be anything other than what they are; no one should try to be either. It would not make sense to do so. Why would a soprano try to be a bass when there is no realistic basis for that?

The teamwork in a choir is a great metaphor for life. We all have our roles to play. Each of us has talents that others don’t have. We are all good at something, and if we do the best job possible (a complete job) with that, that is our gift to the team and to society. Each of us contributes to the wholeness of a particular workplace or society. 

Perhaps it is the sense of experiencing a kind of completeness, of feeling that one is touching perfection, which leads to the transcendence that one experiences when listening to a beautiful piece of music or when reading a well-written book or article. It is like capturing a little piece of heaven here on earth, but we cannot hold onto it for more than a moment in time. Life is made up of many such short moments. Experiencing these gifts from others reminds us to use the gifts and talents that God has given us in the best possible way—to give beauty and happiness to others as well. 

The beggar birds

On my way back to work from a lunch-time errand yesterday, I decided to take the metro to a station in the vicinity of my hospital. I finished my errand and walked to the Majorstuen metro station and sat down on one of the benches to wait for the train. Within a few minutes there were five sparrows that landed at my feet, all of them waiting for a handout in the form of a few breadcrumbs or cookie crumbs. I had to laugh, as did the women sitting next to me on my right. I’ve seen the sparrows hop around on the ground and even up on outdoor restaurant tables in their search for crumbs. What made this occasion unusual was the manner in which they approached me and the woman sitting next to me on my left (who was eating a raisin bun). They were totally unafraid, and it was as though they had communicated beforehand how they were going to beg for food. So there they were, at my feet and at hers, five of them, looking up at us as if to say, here we are and we would like some food please. They were chirping happily among themselves all the while they were standing in front of us. I am not sure why they landed in front of me, but I assume they figured the new person might have some food. My bench neighbor did not want to share her bun with them. I on the other hand would have done so had I had some food with me. As it was, I had no time to go and buy a bit of food because my train arrived within five minutes of my sitting down. It struck me how tame the birds have become, and it was a nice reminder of the small sweet things in life that make you smile if you are paying attention. When it comes to the birds, I am always attentive to what they are doing. They are amazing little creatures.  

The Emperor's New Clothes--New Public Management

I attended a breakfast seminar yesterday morning sponsored by Forskerforbundet--my union. Yes, scientists here are unionized (you don’t have to join a union but it is encouraged and smart to do so for a lot of reasons), and Forskerforbundet is definitely one of the largest unions. It is quite an active group and keeps its members well-informed about what is happening on the scientific, political and economic fronts in this country and internationally. The topic of the seminar—‘Have current government politics led to a better everyday life for employees in academia?’--was the reason I decided to attend. The resounding answer for most of the attendees was no. There were four speakers who had brief presentations and then the floor was open for debate. One of the lectures was entitled—‘Accounting as Politics’; it was very enlightening. It was essentially a presentation of New Public Management (NPM), how this management style is defined, and its impact on the public sector when it is implemented. Afterwards it was interesting to hear university and college employees—scientists, teachers and educational administrators—talk about how bad the current situation has become under NPM. NPM in the public sector is the big topic of discussion these days. I found the seminar interesting because the speakers managed to crystallize, explain and confirm the feelings I have had about the changes in my workplace during the past few years. Things just don’t feel right anymore, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what is wrong either. What I do know is that finances and budgets are the only things that interest upper-level management these days; also that scientists are expected to understand complicated accounting practices and are reprimanded if they do not make an effort to understand them. A few years ago I remember telling an accountant in my workplace who called me about some mistake he thought I had made that if he wanted me to spend a lot of time learning his job, then he needed to come into my lab and learn how to do my job while I was busy learning his, because someone had to fill in the gap. There was silence on the other end of the phone and then a click as he hung up on me. I am certain that he made a note somewhere that ‘this woman is difficult’ or something similar. I am difficult—I question authority. I ask-- ‘who made these (new) rules’. We are expected to drop whatever we are doing on a moment’s notice to focus on some monetary or budget issue that is suddenly of prime importance today, but of course we know that tomorrow it will be something else again. It surprises me that no one in upper management has made the connection that the lack of focus on the actual job that a scientist was hired to do (research) due to constant administrative distractions and paper-pushing leads to a fragmented work approach that in turn leads to loss of productivity and reduced efficiency. This never seems to get discussed.

What is NPM, you may ask. A few years ago none of us knew what it was, let alone its impact on our daily work lives. NPM is a management theory that has already seen its day, as far as I can ascertain from the little I have read about it. It is already considered passé in other countries that fell willingly into its snares and then managed to free themselves from it. But Norway appears to have welcomed it with open arms, putting its unique twist on it as only socialist democrats can do. In theory, its tenet is that optimal management of the public budget results in better economic outcomes and increased efficiency (due to competition). It is rather utopian in its quest for perfect efficiency and a perfectly-balanced budget. We all know that in the real world, and especially in the health care system, perfect efficiency and a perfectly-balanced budget are impossible to achieve as long as patients are involved. But this system treats patients as commodities. And it treats the employees in these systems as commodities as well. It’s a cold management style. You are only as valuable to your workplace as your productivity deems you to be. In other words, you are measured by what you produce. The problem with this way of looking at things in the healthcare system and in academia/education is the following—what are doctors and nurses ‘producing’? Hospitals are not factories. Cancer research institutes are not factories. Colleges and universities are not factories. What are academicians, researchers and educators ‘producing’? Looked at in the NPM way, researchers are producing articles about their work. They are being measured by their output. The production of more articles and the production of more PhD and Masters students means more money for the institution one works for and for the individual researcher. The scientists and academicians who survive and who are rewarded in the current environment are those who are well-funded with large research groups. If you are a small research group, the idea of real competition with a large research group is a joke. How can large and small research groups compete on equal playing ground? They are not well-matched from the start point. But this is what we deal with now. We are told that ‘we are good, but not good enough’, and if we only do so-and-so, that we will suddenly get more money and more students. We are encouraged to ‘compete’ and to live up to our ‘potential’ even though most of us realize that the world is such that only a few people ever reach the top or become the best. Those of us who come from non-socialist systems understand this from the start point. But understanding this does not mean that you cannot do good work and find your niche in the system. Accepting that you are not the best in a particular field does not mean that you cannot work in and do good work in that field. But there is little room for that sort of thinking in NPM.

So what is a ‘good employee’ in an NPM system? As far as I can determine, a good employee is obedient, subservient to the goals of a balanced budget and perfect efficiency, and one that does not combat the system in any way. A good employee does not make waves, does not stick his or her head up, and does not state his or her opinion about particular issues. Conflict resolution and negotiation are key words in how to deal with employee problems if you are a leader, and as far as I can see, it mostly means sweeping those problems under the rug and forgetting about them. The rewards for this obedience are many—promotions to higher administrative positions with emphasis on leadership qualities (that promote the further spread of NPM), an automatic network of NPM supporters, and the feeling that you are part of something much bigger than yourself—that you are promoting change and helping your employees ‘reach their potential’ and become more efficient producers. If it wasn’t that this system has been unreservedly and unabashedly adopted as important to the future of public sector workplaces, I would dismiss it as more ‘new age’ thinking like EST and all those self-help philosophies that made their founders unbelievably wealthy. Don’t get me wrong, I can accept that some of those philosophies have helped some people. But by and large, I tend to be suspicious of ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ way of thinking. I don’t hop on the bandwagon just because a million other people are doing so. I like to think for myself and to be able to observe and judge for myself whether something works or not. I am inherently suspicious of anything that promotes utopian thinking. We are imperfect humans. We are not machines or robots. We will never ever manage to achieve perfect efficiency and perfect productivity on this earth. If NPM supporters start by accepting that tenet, we can work from there. It would mean that they would have to reverse their current approaches. That would be best. And then you’ll possibly have me on your side. 

In defense of good leaders

I have been interested in the topic of good leadership for some time, and will be writing more about it in the months to come. I want to write about it because I think it is something that is sorely lacking in most workplaces these days. And the few good leaders who are left are having a tough time of it. It is interesting that there appears to be no correlation between good leadership and the number of management courses one can take to help one become a good leader, but nevertheless, these types of courses are increasing in frequency and workplaces are becoming more insistent that their leaders take these courses. I am open to the idea that people can become good leaders, but I think it has more to do with the type of workplace environment one finds oneself in as a leader plus the type of values a potential leader has. Is the potential leader an ethical person who believes in fairness and in rewarding hard work? Or is the potential leader only interested in promoting himself or herself at the expense of his or her employees, and what type of behavior does the workplace support and reward? These are all relevant questions for discussion. The conclusion may be that good leaders are born that way, not made, but I don’t necessarily believe this either. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but that fact does not diminish my interest in the subject.

I bring up the subject of good leadership because I have been witness to, and experienced myself, poor leadership or lack of leadership in the workplace. I have also experienced good leadership and the differences are viscerally clear to me. I have written a book about passive-aggressive leadership in the workplace and how demoralizing that can be for employees http://www.amazon.com/Blindsided-Recognizing-Dealing-Passive-Aggressive-Leadership-Workplace/dp/1442159200. My feeling is that many workplaces these days promote and support passive-aggressive leadership--that it is a management strategy for systemic procrastination and effective employee control because most of this kind of behavior is always right on the edge of what can be considered ethical, correct or true. In other words, management cannot be taken for this type of behavior toward employees and they get away with quite a lot in this way. Employees suffer, but leaders who are trying to be good effective and empathic leaders also suffer because the system does not support their efficiency, honesty or empathy. Leaders who do not side with the passive-aggressive approach will find themselves at the mercy of bureaucrats and administrators higher up in the system that will make their work lives miserable for not conforming to the current system.

There are many ways to bring down (or at least attempt do so) good leaders in a passive-aggressive work environment. In my book about passive-aggressive workplace leaders, I did not discuss this particular aspect in any detail, but rather focused on the effects this type of environment has on its employees. But much of what I brought up in that book in terms of how to keep ordinary employees (not in management positions) down can also be applied to keeping good leaders down. If passive-aggressive management identifies one or two good leaders (by my definition—ethical, honest, empathetic—and not very adept at playing political games) as ‘problem-people’ in the system, it won’t be too long before those people are ‘silenced’ in some way because they represent a threat. They may find themselves ‘frozen out’ of the popular clique, may be demoted, may be ignored or overlooked for new projects or promotions, or may be the recipients of a new type of behavior that I find quite disturbing. This type of behavior utilizes the employees who work for good leaders who for many reasons may be dissatisfied with that person’s structured approach or expectations or demands on them. If these employees feel stressed or put-upon, or if they feel that the demands of the job are too great or overwhelming, they can now accuse their leader(s) of harassment, which puts the burden of proof not on the employee making the accusation but immediately on the leader (and eventually the workplace) to refute the accusation. The accusation of harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature. In fact, in the instances I have been witness to, with one exception, the accusations have had to do with that the leader(s) were perceived as too tough, too demanding or too strict. In other words, the leaders could say no to these women if it was deemed necessary and this didn’t sit well with them. Why would employees do this to their boss, one might ask? I asked the same question. I have now seen this happen several times in the past few years, and I asked the same question each time. Young women have been the instigators in all of these situations—they have charged middle-aged male leaders with harassment because they have not been able to measure up to the demands of the jobs they were asked to do by these men. Or they were denied something they wanted and instead of waiting to see if the answer could in fact be yes the next time they asked, they took matters into their own hands. Who informed these women that this was a potential strategy for dealing with their situation? The only answer I could come up with was that the bureaucrats and administrators higher-up in the system who did not like these leaders suggested this to these women as a way of causing trouble for those leaders. And these women followed that advice. The result? Management informed these leaders that so-and-so had filed harassment charges against them, resulting in the women being moved into another department or group, which is what they wanted in the first place. The accused leader had no choice but to accept this outcome, and if he or she wished to ‘fight’ to refute the accusation, was informed that one was of course free to do so. But it is common knowledge that this involves using a lot of time to ‘clear’ one’s name and possibly getting a hold of a lawyer or a union representative or both to take the case or look at the situation, which could cause the workplace some grief. If the accused leaders do not have the support of their own leaders, then the likelihood of clearing their good names is very slight. For all intents and purposes this means that these leaders will have unfounded ‘harassment’ charges against them that will remain on their records indefinitely. As long as these leaders do not fight back or raise a ruckus, the passive-aggressive strategy of systemic procrastination levels the conflict to a status quo situation—the women get what they want, which was to get out from under that particular leader and to prevent that leader from having any contact with them whatsoever, and passive-aggressive management gets what it wants—the silencing of what they consider to be a problematic leader. This is what has happened in all the instances I have been witness to. The accused leader is caught between a rock and a hard place; fight the accusing employee or fight management. It is mostly a lose-lose situation. Over time, rumors travel and reputations can be destroyed. It is horrendous that such things can happen in 2010 without repercussions for either the accuser or for management that support them blindly. Things just continue as before at the workplace. But what about those who are unjustly accused? What happens to them? Why is this fair? What about the families of the accused? Have these women doing the accusing taken into account the stress that such situations cause the families of these men? Do these women ever realize that their false accusations cause problems for women who really have been harassed? I doubt it, and this makes them disloyal employees in my book, because if they can do it to one leader they can do it again to another, and in this way they always get what they want in an already tainted workplace. I have to wonder how they live with themselves. It might be worthwhile for the accused leaders to pursue the situations to their ends, because if no one ever does then injustice will always win out.

Women and careers in science

I attended a seminar entitled ’Young Women and Science’ this past Monday afternoon at the Science Library at the University of Oslo that began with an excellent lecture about the topic by a woman named Ellen K. Henriksen who is an associate professor of physics at the University of Oslo. Her talk was followed by an hour-long panel debate about the topic that was very interesting and that touched on a number of issues that could explain why young women are not choosing to pursue science studies or careers in science generally. Dr. Henriksen focused on several research studies that have shown that there are two areas that preoccupy women when it comes to choosing to pursue science studies. The first is that many of them feel that they simply are not smart enough to pursue a career in science—that they will not be good at it or master what they need to master, and the second has to do with the fact that many women want their careers to be meaningful—to feel that they are helping others in society by their work. Many of them thus move away from pursuing the harder sciences like mathematics, chemistry and physics that often lead to academic careers, into medicine and health-related studies. The panel debate focused quite a bit on the importance of smart and enthusiastic teachers in helping to get students hooked on math and science. The lack of such teachers in grade school and high school was held up as a contributing factor for why students (girls and boys) simply don’t choose science these days. The other aspect that was brought up was the lack of role models for women in science. Some of the women scientists in the audience meant that there were no role models, or only one or two when they were younger and wondering what path to take, but that they chose to pursue a career in science despite this lack, but that for many women, the prospect of working in a male-dominated profession for the rest of their working lives was simply not attractive from a professional standpoint. The men on the panel, both in their sixties, also bemoaned the lack of women in their fields and meant that it was important to have a gender balance if it could be achieved. The debate created more questions than it answered, as always with a good debate; it was interesting to listen to and to think about afterwards.

I was lucky to have had two very smart female teachers in high school, one of whom taught math (geometry and trigonometry) and the other who taught advanced biology. Both teachers were inspiring and both encouraged their students to do the best job they could. The advanced biology course ended up being mostly independent study because the teacher was also the assistant principal and was quite busy. She gave us the structure we needed but left us mostly alone to pursue the studies she had set out for us. They consisted of three different projects that we had to complete over the course of one year: learning the anatomy of the cat using a full skeleton to learn the arrangement and names of the different bones; learning basic Mendelian genetics by breeding and crossing fruit flies to get progeny that we could observe and classify; and learning how to map gene loci on different chromosomes. I loved this course and it led to my choosing to major in biology in college. Besides basic biology, I took zoology, microbiology, histology and embryology/developmental biology in college (Fordham University), and advanced cell biology and molecular biology in graduate school (New York University). I did quite well in undergraduate chemistry (inorganic and organic; I loved organic chemistry), but was not so comfortable with either physics or calculus, possibly because the teachers were rather uninspired. I decided fairly early on during college that I did not want to pursue a career in medicine. And even though I loved studying literature as much as science, I knew that I would earn more money in a scientific career of some sort, which was important at that time because I had to be able to support myself once I got out of college. I started my first job as a research technician at a research institute in Manhattan while I was still in graduate school. The research institute was not far from New York University medical school where many of the institute researchers taught. In graduate school I took not only biology courses but computer science courses: one to learn Fortran, an advanced computer programming language; and the other to learn machine language, which is the most basic language that the computer ‘understands’. It was fascinating because we learned about addresses and memory and registers and how to ‘talk’ directly to the computer’s CPU. While I have forgotten most of it, I remember thinking it was such a cool thing to study when I was in my twenties. After one year of classes and lab work in graduate school I started working full-time at the research institute and finished my degree (writing my thesis) at night and on weekends. I mention all of this because at the time I studied science and computer science, I don’t remember that I worried all that much about whether or not I could master this or that subject. Thus, when I was younger, I didn’t worry about the first of the two considerations that young women at present have when choosing whether or not to pursue science. I took the courses I had to take to get my degrees and got good enough grades for the most part. I did hit the wall once with an advanced biochemistry course (that I dropped out of) taught by a particularly boring teacher who disappeared halfway through the semester and then returned for the final exam. No one knew where he had gone and the university did not fire him because he gotten a prize or two and that is a prestigious thing for a university. Prizes bring fame, attention and money in the form of grants and endowments.  And universities often keep bad teachers on staff because they may be good researchers.

Recently, I started to think about the higher-academic level women (PhD and beyond) I’ve met and gotten to know since I first started working in science. There aren’t all that many, to be sure. There were only two women with professor positions in my first job (one was close to eighty years old at that time and the other woman worked for her); the majority of such positions were filled by men at that institute. The three women who worked together in the lab with me in my second job at a top cancer research institute were all post-docs when I started working there. Only one went on to become a professor at a nearby university; eventually all three left academic science. One went on to medical school and became a radiologist, the other moved into industry and became head of global marketing for an international scientific company, and the other moved into university administration and is currently the president of a large city college. They were my role models at the time that I worked together with them, because they were dynamic women with doctorates in their respective fields and because they were enthusiastic about what they did. I remember sitting in taxis together with them on our way to one or another conference, talking about our careers and what we wanted to do and how the sky was the limit. We were young and the world was our oyster. It was an inspiring time that I am grateful to have experienced.

Ironically enough, at the same time that the sciences are having problems recruiting new students, academic science is becoming more difficult to get a foothold in or to remain in, for a number of reasons, some of which have to do with lack of funding, smaller budgets, more ruthless competition, and so on. I have reached a certain plateau—senior scientist with professor competence. I have been a project leader, a section leader, and am now considered a group leader even though I have no real group to lead! Besides myself, there is one other woman at my workplace who could be considered my peer. She is a formal professor and a group leader, but she not very interested in supporting, encouraging, or offering advice to women generally or to younger women who may be wondering about a career in science. Her sole focus is on promoting herself, and I guess I have to wonder if her approach isn’t the smartest given the current conditions. But had I met her earlier on or worked for her type when I was young, I think I would never have pursued academic science. The reason I pursued it at all is mostly due to the positive experience I had working together with the men and women in my second job who were professional, respectful of others, and supportive.

So what are the problems with choosing a career in science these days if you are a woman? Most scientific fields are male-dominated. While that doesn’t have to be a problem, it often is because men tend to network with other men in order to help them get ahead. In the twenty years I’ve been here in Norway, that is the rule, not the exception. Additionally women don’t often attempt to network with other women, so women (especially younger scientists) lose out. Some men I know have turned out to be snakes in the grass—they talk a good game (that they support you) but don’t really do so in practice. They ‘forget’ to mention your name when they could, or they work against you by questioning your qualifications even after you’ve proven that you are qualified for a position or status (professor competence, for example). But they do this too to some of the men I know as well. I miss camaraderie with other scientists, be they men or women, but more women wouldn’t hurt. Academic science is for the most part a lonely profession. I have a collaborator in Italy (a woman about my age) who has the same problems I have, getting new students, little funding and a tiny network of collaborators. We stick together, share our joys and woes, and try to come up with decent projects that we can work on together in order to keep our collaboration viable. She is a nice woman and a smart one—a good combination for the younger people in her research institute to see and to look up to. You might want to choose academic science as a career if you met her. She is a good role model, but she is more the exception than the rule, unfortunately. And she, like me, is honest with the younger generation, women especially. It’s difficult to make it in academic science these days whether you are a man or a woman. So if I was younger, I would probably choose another way to use my love of science, perhaps science journalism or working as an editor for a scientific journal. I know I could have been satisfied in those careers as I have been up to this point in academic science. It remains to be seen what the future has in store for those of us who see the major changes, can do little about them, and who wonder where it all will end.

Nordmarka

I thought I would post some photos that I took on our walk through part of the Nordmarka forest on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day and I was lucky to get some nice photos. Enjoy!

Skjærsjøen lake

Skjærsjøen lake

Autumn Days in Oslo

Yesterday and today were beautiful autumn days in Oslo. It was a shame, as my friend Juli said at lunch, to have to be indoors, linked to our office chairs most of the day while the sunshine and blue skies beckoned to us to come out and play. Luckily, I did manage to get myself outdoors yesterday. My husband and I took a long walk in Nordmarka, which is the forest area north of Oslo. It is a fairly big forest area, with brooks and lakes scattered here and there, as well as rivers running through it. The forest is quite serene in parts even though it is a well-frequented area by walkers and cyclists alike. The cyclists especially zoom past on the gravelly forest roads on their mountain bikes and dressed in their cycling suits and helmets. I call them the Thor Hushovd wannabes, because Thor’s participation in the Tour de France has definitely encouraged interest in bicycling in this country, which is a good thing. But I also understand why the newspapers have written about the ongoing feud between the walkers and the cyclists, because sometimes they whiz by so fast that it could be dangerous if you stood in the way for any reason. But all that aside, it is possible for both to peacefully coexist, and for the most part, they do. Mostly though, I don’t think the cyclists get a chance to see the beauty of the nature around them because they are rushing by it. If I were biking in the forest instead of walking, I’d want to do it leisurely, to stop every now and then to look at the wildflowers or walk down to the river’s edge and look at the water.

Some of the forest trees have completely turned color, while others are halfway there. The reds are particularly vibrant this year. Looking out across Skjærsjøen Lake yesterday, it was possible to see the trees with their foliage in the distance, framing the water’s edge. It’s a beautiful sight and one that reminds me of looking across the Hudson River at the lovely autumn colors of the trees on the Palisades, or the autumn foliage in the forests bounding the Croton Reservoir in upstate New York.

There is something about the colors and the sunlight during the different seasons here in Oslo—the way they change and blend with each other. They make for some lovely photos. During the summer, when we are out on the boat, the gray and blue colors in the sky and clouds contrast with the green and blue colors of the sea water and the brown earth colors on the shore, and it is literally thrilling to see the photographic results. During the autumn, I always have my camera with me on our walks, and there is always something interesting or beautiful to take a picture of, from flowers to foliage to small crawling insects to different bodies of water. I managed to get a picture of a centipede crawling across the road yesterday; I wonder if it made it across without being crushed by the passing bicycles or walking feet. I have to remember sometimes to take pictures of people. I have an ordinary digital camera that I have grown quite fond of using. Its lightness makes it easy to bring along and that is an advantage. I remember back to ten or fifteen years ago when I had my camera bag with my 35mm camera and one or two lenses—it was quite heavy to carry but I did. I got some great photos then, but I have to say that some of the photos I take now with my little digital camera are just as nice. Photographing nature is probably what I like to do most when it comes to photography because nature motifs interest me the most and always have since I was a child and started taking pictures.

The Creative Process

Writing blog posts several times a week as I try to do is a pleasure, not a chore, and I find myself mentally arranging my time schedule during the day now so that I have enough time during the evening to write. I try to hang onto some of the creative ideas that pop up during my work day in order to use my evening time to develop them. The creative process cannot be dictated to, but it can be encouraged by allotting oneself a good slot of time within which to write, read, or be creative in numerous ways. In other words, one should have some time to ‘play’ each day that is all about pursuing one’s creative interests. This form of play for me is not about mindless activity, but rather about letting one’s mind off the leash that it is on for most of the (fairly-structured) work day. For many years I craved that free time but never managed to create the space necessary to allow it to happen. I worked too much, or housework took over, or there were other constant distractions and interruptions, TV being one of the major time-killers. I wanted ‘a room of my own’ a la Virginia Woolf. I don’t see how anything creative can happen without that room. As I have gotten older, I have realized that ‘if not now, when?’ When am I going to allow my creativity to happen? When was I going to finally focus on the creative ideas I have? How long was I going to wait? They are important questions, because I talk to so many people who want to pursue their creative interests but just don’t know how to get there. I know how they feel because I was there myself a few years ago. But I am not there anymore.

One of the first things I had to do was to give up TV watching and surfing mindlessly from one channel to the next in the vain hope that there would be something actually interesting on TV. It has not been difficult to give up watching TV because most of what is on TV these days does not interest me. Reality programs bore me, and except for the occasional movie on one of our movie channels, most of the other regular programs are so much alike that no one particular program stands out. There are just so many animal, nature, history or crime programs that can be watched. I watch a few of them from time to time and then I want to be outdoors myself, photographing nature or taking a long walk up along the river, or some such thing. It was not difficult to give up TV, and once I weaned myself off that particular bad habit, I had to be careful not to fill the extra time with unnecessary housework or other things, because that is another time filler that satisfies the passive part of the brain. I also had to get comfortable with silence again. And by silence I mean lack of distractions—verbal, visual or tactile. It’s not that I’ve been uncomfortable with silence, but more that society around me seems to be uncomfortable with it. I cannot step onto a bus or walk into a store or a mall without some kind of music blaring or without being assaulted by giant TVs that advertise this or that item, or without some well-meaning salesperson attempting to sell me something. I cannot have one work day without an important meeting or without answering numerous emails. There is always something to attend to. Since I live in a city, one might argue that it will be difficult to find silence, and that is true generally unless I find a park with few people in it as happens from time to time. Most importantly, I find silence at home because I have created that space for myself in the evening. I actually look forward to that time now, not because it is ‘my’ time but because I know that when I enter that silent zone, I will be finding out more about myself and that is a worthwhile endeavor. I write on my laptop, and in the beginning I had to fight the temptations to check my email and to surf the net periodically. After a while it became easier not to give in to those temptations. So that now I can honestly say that I use my silent time creatively and it makes me happy to be able to say that. I write for free, yet the activity of writing gives me the most satisfaction these days compared to my work activities. Some people have commented that if I had to write for a living, I would feel differently. Perhaps that is true, I cannot say. I would welcome the opportunity if it came along in the form of some journalistic endeavor or similar. And I do write more than my blog—I write poetry and have been doing so for many years. I have written one book and have plans to write another. It’s just to let it happen, and that is what I am doing these days, letting my creative interests take me where they want to go. I’m enjoying the journey and do not miss the activities I have given up in order to make this possible.

Playground politics

The end of the work week, and not a moment too soon—thank God it’s Friday. I found myself wishing for the end of the work day already around 12 noon, after a particularly ineffective and confusing meeting, but of course I couldn’t leave for home at that time, even though I wanted to. The woman who never played hooky in her entire scholastic career has suddenly learned what that temptation means. I want to run away from most forms for stress. The more uncomfortable the situation, the more I want to exit it. I don’t want to get embroiled in any work-related conflicts after twenty years in Norway because they never get resolved—all people seem to want to do is to hear themselves talk about them ad nauseum) and I see no point in rehashing a lot of situations that have already been discussed and buried. I cannot believe the amount of inefficiency that exists and that people tolerate as part of their work life. Meetings account for much of that wasted time.

The day was a bust because of the ineffective meeting, but also because of a phone call I received from a man who is the leader for an organization that I belong to. He was upset because he felt that another woman whom we both know had been rude to him in a public setting and he wanted me to side with him. It was not a suggestion but more of an order, and I do not take kindly to being told how I should feel or what I should do in most situations. Those who know me know that this is a dead-end approach with me, to try and order me about. His next tactic was to try to make me feel uncertain about another work-related situation that I have asked both him and this other woman for advice about. He kept insisting that I talk only to him about this situation and not to her since he was the leader, and that also does nothing for me. We live in a free country, as I was often wont to hear from my peers in arguments when I was growing up. I absorbed that way of thinking, thankfully. So in the back of my mind, when someone is telling me what to do or trying to bully me into changing my mind, my inner voice is telling me something else--I’m free to decide for myself. We’re not in grade school anymore, where playground politics dictated who you could and couldn’t talk to and who you could play with or ignore. I won’t be bullied into taking sides, and in this particular situation I actually have decided already to side with the woman involved because all she ‘did to him’ was to voice her opinion, and he seems to have a problem with women who do that. I don’t have that problem. I prefer people who state their opinions and who allow others to do the same. I am suspicious of people who always have to be right, always have to dominate, always have to have the last word, always have to drown others out by talking over them, always have to be king of the playground. I often discuss playground politics with one of my co-workers who has done a lot of politically-related committee work in my workplace. She often comments on the childish behavior she sees and has experienced around her. I have to agree. I haven’t seen much to impress me in the way of conflict negotiation/resolution in the twenty years I’ve worked here. It might just be my workplace, but I doubt it. The playground kings dominate and are always trying to push people about and to get them to do what they want them to do. It has never worked particularly well with either her or me.

The most efficient thing I did all day was to clean and organize our laboratory work area together with Aasa, one of my co-workers who shares my dislike of clutter. It took us a couple of hours to get it in order again. We threw away a lot of old boxes, papers, and plastic items, and by the time we were finished, the lab benches were suddenly attractive work areas again. They have looked like a mess for quite a while now. Once again, the elimination of clutter helps to free us mentally. I swear I might start a business to help people organize their daily lives—either at home or at work or both. I think it might even be reasonably successful and that I might enjoy the work—or at least that feeling of efficiency that one gets after finishing up. And best of all, I would not have to deal with the kings of the sandboxes and their playground behavior.

'Trickle down' economics--my version

When I talk to my friends and family in the USA these days, what they say confirms my suspicions that are only heightened each time I read a newspaper or watch the TV news. The American economy is not really getting any better. The economic crisis persists and is becoming chronic. The gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Small businesses are not making it, and middle-level managers in numerous generic corporations are having a hard time finding a new job if they’re laid off. Average people are paying a fortune for health insurance. I don’t care about the Wall Street numbers—the Dow is up today and down the next—who really cares? Where is its connection to reality? It doesn’t seem to me that there is any correlation between stock market numbers and how people and the economy are really doing, at least not a correlation I particularly care about.

When I was online looking at real-estate offerings in upstate NY recently, I was shocked by the number of foreclosures. And when I was visiting a friend in Albany this past August, we drove around her neighborhood and I got a chance to see all of the houses that were for sale. We’re not talking one or two houses within a block or two of where she lives. We’re talking up to ten houses in the space of a block or two. It is a strange sight to see. I wondered what happened to all those unfortunate people who have lost their homes or were forced to sell. I can’t help but wonder if many of them just had the rug pulled out from under them. I think of all the people who lost their pensions in recent years at the hands of greedy and corrupt corporate leaders. The middle class is having a tough time of it. I don’t see an end in sight, especially if talented intelligent people are unable to find a job within two years of being laid off. I know three people who fit this description, all of whom have reached middle-age. Is that the reason they’re not being considered for new positions? Is there age discrimination at work? It reminds me of the nearly two-year period in the late 1970s when my father was unemployed. He was in his early fifties then. He finally did get a job, but that period of unemployment cost him the little health he had left by that time. I remember talking to him about it all, and I know that the stress of being unemployed and his loss of self-esteem were often overwhelming. He was always grateful to the last company he worked for, but he never had much good to say about corporate America in general.

I don’t really understand how it got to the point it’s reached at present. I do know that greed has played a role in creating the current economic crisis. Bad loans that have been prettily-packaged and marketed globally haven’t helped things. Overspending hasn’t helped, either at the personal, corporate or governmental level. I don’t know how the problems will be solved. I don’t think the solution will have anything to do with a political party shift in the White House. The Republicans don’t have any better answers than the Democrats. They just think they do. They keep pushing the idea of rugged individualism as the trait that made America the great nation it once was. And they’re right, it did help, early on, but that trait isn’t enough anymore to make it. There are no rewards for rugged individualism anymore and there are very few rewards for the strong work ethic that used to characterize the generation of Americans I knew and know. I am not sure what happened, but there has been a global shift toward not rewarding hard work and loyalty to a company. What have gotten rewarded in the last thirty years are greed and more greed, dishonest dealings, and unethical behavior—at least that’s how it seems to me. Companies who fire hard-working loyal employees to save money but who keep their CEOs and CFOs who are making multi-million dollar salaries are not my idea of what is good about America. You can give me all the arguments you want—that their leadership is good for the company and that they made their companies successful, etc. But still I ask--what do they need with a 50 million dollar annual salary when there are talented intelligent people who are earning very little on the unemployment line? These unemployed individuals are possibly the same people who helped make those companies successful, because we all know that a leader or leaders can never become successful in a vacuum. So if they reduced their salaries to a million dollars a year, think how many people they could employ with the remaining 49 million dollars. Wouldn’t it be great if some of that wealth could ‘trickle down’ to the middle- and lower classes in the form of jobs or salary increases for the underpaid? I’ve got to applaud Oprah Winfrey for recently giving all of her employees a 10 thousand dollar raise and an iPad http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/16/oprah-doles-out-thousands-to-magazine-staff/?hpt=Sbin. She is a wealthy woman who at least made an attempt to reward her employees. There should be more like her.

I know that there are workers who are lazy, disloyal, uninterested, who feel ‘entitled’ and who have done little or nothing to deem them worthy of a reward. But I personally don’t know these types of people. I do personally know unemployed people who have worked long hours for their companies, traveled for them, given up time with their family for them, who haven’t been there to say goodnight to their children because they had to work. I also know people who are struggling to keep their small businesses afloat while they watch the large companies that they try to compete with, outsource manufacturing of the same types of products to China. The idea that they can compete with these companies and with this type of betrayal is a joke. The small businesses lose. I don’t think it takes an MBA from a prestigious college to figure that out.

I spend a lot of time observing what goes on around me and in the lives of the people I know in the USA and here in Norway. I listen to what people tell me. I look at my own work life and workplace. I see the discrepancies, the hypocrisy, the dishonesty, as well as the positive things--the faith that the younger people have in their futures—that things will be better for their generation. I hope that is true. I also hope that society finds its way back to an appreciation and reward of traits like loyalty and a strong work ethic, as well as fair treatment of loyal employees by company leaders and fair treatment of small businesses by their respective governments.

You know you grew up in the Tarrytowns during the 1960s/1970s if......

I grew up in Tarrytown New York during the 1960s and 70s. I remember a lot of different things from my childhood and teenage life in that small town, and have already talked about some of them in this blog. It is funny what one remembers, and also what one forgets. When I write about my growing up there, I do so from a distance of a good number of years, in other words, I’ve gained perspective, and it is mostly the good memories that remain now. But it was not always so easy to grow up in a small town, especially if you wanted or needed a certain amount of anonymity to survive mentally or emotionally or both. But somehow as you get older, the anonymity is no longer so important. It becomes more important that people know the real you. One’s teenage years are about trying on many different coats to see if one of them fits. If you find one that fits, you hang onto it for a little while because it feels comfortable. The coat can be a clique of friends where you fit in, or doing well in school and winning praise from your teachers and parents, or being part of sports’ teams, or all of those things. Many of these coats are tried on in the context of small town life, where it is safe, even though you don’t really know that at the time. Looking back now, the ‘smallness’ of our lives then is appealing, but when we were young, some of us couldn’t wait to get out into the big world. In those intervening years, much has happened, both to those who stayed put and to those who traveled out. We now have the chance to know what happened in the lives of many of those people, thanks to Facebook. Facebook has closed the gap of those intervening years in a way that nothing else has before or will again in quite the same way.  

 ‘You know you grew up in the Tarrytowns during the 1960s/1970s if’ is a Facebook group that now has close to 670 members.  It is a fairly active group in the sense that there are new posts published regularly, not necessarily daily, but it doesn’t matter. I joined the group a couple of years ago, right after I joined Facebook. I don’t remember how I found the group but I'm glad I did. I know some of the members personally, others I’ve heard of, but most I have never met. What is appealing about the group is what they remember about the Tarrytowns--Tarrytown and North Tarrytown (renamed Sleepy Hollow in 1996); their posts reflect this. Some of the more recent posts have informed about the deaths of two Tarrytown women many people knew and loved, while others wonder about what happened to this or that person. The uploaded photos are priceless, literally a walk down memory lane as well as a walk into town history. Some of the photos are probably worth some money, taken as they were during the early 1960s and 70s. I think especially of the photos of the big fire on Main Street that destroyed a major portion of the building that faces onto Broadway, or of the old General Motors plant on the Hudson River in North Tarrytown. Some of the photos of the old Tarrytown Music Hall are just beautiful. I spent many a Friday night there at the movies. I saw one photo recently on the site of a long trailer truck packed with new cars--a standard sight in Tarrytown at that time--hauling new cars up from the General Motors factory, out onto Broadway where the road would take them out into the world at large to be sold elsewhere. Broadway was (and still is) the main thoroughfare through both towns. When I was a teenager you could visit the little hole-in-the-wall bookstore near Main Street, the Murray Franklin stationery store for cards and gifts, small stores like the Great California Earthquake with its penchant for hippie clothing, larger clothing stores like Genungs, the Baskin & Robbins ice cream store (with the great-tasting pink bubblegum ice cream with actual pieces of bubblegum—talk about chewing and trying not to swallow the gum at the same time as the ice cream, as well as the heavenly mint chocolate chip ice cream), the Pastry Chef (with its memorable cakes—lemon sponge, Boston cream pie, marzipan—all of which remind me of special family events that we always ended up celebrating with a cake of some kind from the Pastry Chef; Jean and I were talking about this recently when I was in NY), several funeral homes, supermarkets and finally the majestic Warner library with its late 19th century bronze sculpted front door http://www.warnerlibrary.org/node/888. I haven’t seen a more beautiful library building except possibly the New York Public Library in Manhattan. It is interesting to see from the newer photos posted on the site how the town has changed since then—Sleepy Hollow high school has undergone extensive renovations, gasoline stations have been replaced by diners, Patriot’s Park is now the site of the Farmer’s Market, the old Woolworth store is now a gourmet food store, supermarket fronts have been spruced up—just to name a few changes within the last decade or so. The riverfront areas of both towns are more or less unrecognizable compared to what I remember from my childhood, except for the train station in Tarrytown and of course the Tappan Zee bridge, which is unchanged and which remains the landmark that identifies that one has finally reached one’s destination on the east side of the river and the bridge—Tarrytown. The riverfront areas have been renovated and built up with apartment building complexes, among other things, and this I know just from my driving around the areas this past summer. I’ve written about these changes in some of my earlier blog posts.

I love looking at many of the old photos of the Tarrytowns on the Tarrytown Facebook site. Recently I came across a paperback book that took me even further back than the 1960s and 70s. It is called Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow (Images of America), and is by and large a collection of black and white photographs from the late 1800s up until 1947. The Introduction to the book states “Not intended to be a comprehensive history, this volume offers selected images of our community from 1609 (artistic renderings of specific areas) until 1947”. The book was written and put together by The Historical Society Inc. serving Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, and published by Arcadia Publishing. It can be purchased through different sellers via Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Tarrytown-Sleepy-Hollow-Images-America/dp/075240881X. It is not an expensive book; I don’t think I paid more than 15 dollars for it. But it is a must-have book if you are a history buff or if you are interested in rediscovering the town you grew up in. I wanted to rediscover Tarrytown, and in doing so I got in touch with those parts of myself that remember and appreciate this beautiful historic Hudson River town.  

Marcus du Sautoy and the Public Understanding of Science

I had the pleasure of listening to Oxford University mathematics professor Marcus du Sautoy talk about Symmetry this past Monday at the University of Oslo. The lecture was entitled Symmetry: Reality’s Riddle. The event was co-sponsored by the New Science Library (Det nye realfagsbiblioteket) and the Freedom of Expression foundation (Fritt Ord). The library building (Vilhelm Bjerknes house) will undergo extensive renovations starting in 2011, supported in part by the Freedom of Expression foundation. When the building renovations are finished in 2012, the library will be used as a center for seminars and debates about science and its role in society. Professor du Sautoy was invited to give a talk because he is also a professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and the library is interested in focusing on this aspect for the future. After listening to du Sautoy talk on Monday, I can understand why. Here is a man who can talk about mathematics in a dynamic way, in a way that captivates an audience while at the same time educating them. This is no mean feat. He is smart, clever, good at what he does, but more importantly, he can talk to people outside his profession and get them interested in his work and in mathematics. He has done this by writing best-selling books, hosting TV and radio programs in Britain, holding lectures internationally and so forth.

During his lecture on Monday, he spent a good deal of time talking about the symmetry found in the mosaic tiles of the Alhambra, a building in Granada Spain designed by Moorish architects. He also talked about M.C. Escher, whose art fascinated many of us when we were younger. He was the artist who drew staircases in space that merged into other staircases and it was impossible to know where one started and the other ended http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/back-bmp/LW389.jpg. What I didn’t know was that Escher has done an entire gallery of symmetry drawings as well http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/gallery-symmetry.htm, and that he was fascinated by the Alhambra. So I can thank Professor du Sautoy for this new bit of knowledge. Overall it was a very interesting lecture, and it struck me while he was talking that he did not have to hold an actual talk about the ‘public understanding of science/mathematics’ in order to impart an understanding of his field. His subject was complex, and this was clear to the audience, but his presentation was not obscure or unintelligible. His talk imparted a general understanding of the complex mathematics underlying symmetry (the number riddles involved—hence the name of the lecture, Symmetry: Reality’s Riddle) in a way that was fun, exciting and challenging. The other thing that struck me was that the audience had a lot of questions for him after his lecture, and that is the sign of a good lecture. People were not afraid to ask questions or to share their own experiences and thoughts, and that simply means that he inspired his audience rather than driving them away. I found myself remembering my calculus professor from my freshman year in college. He was such a poor teacher, even though he probably had a good grasp of his subject. He simply could not communicate his knowledge to his students, and the majority of students failed his class. That did not seem to matter to him. I stuck it out for the full year, but never took a math class again after that. I hit the wall somewhere around ‘integration by partial fractions’ which he could not intelligibly explain to us to save his life. But in high school, I really enjoyed all my math classes, and that was due in no small part to Ms. Moloney, our math teacher, who could explain what needed to be explained in an understandable and fun way. That made all the difference. Good teachers who know how to communicate their knowledge and who do so in interesting and motivating ways are the key to attracting students into math and science professions. Professor du Sautoy is one of them.