Things money can't buy

My fervent wish is that the idiots and assholes of the world who think that money can buy everything, would understand this and take it to heart. The problem is that they won't, and the world will continue on its road toward obliteration. Because if it's not a nuclear war that will end life in the world as we know it, it will be nature's revenge on us in the form of a pandemic or plague or extreme weather conditions, for our abuse of this planet in the name of greed (the incessant need for more money).

The same goes for those who are obsessed with power, who think that power and pushing people around can create a better world. Harassment and abuse have never led to anything good. Unfortunately, wealth and power often go together, and it's not a good mixture.


 

Fascinating blog post from NY State Parks and Historic Sites

I subscribe to their blog, and this post appeared in my emails yesterday. I wanted to share it with you. It's entitled 'Growing the Future in Gilded Age Greenhouses'
https://nystateparks.blog/2020/01/21/growing-the-future-in-gilded-age-greenhouses/#like-8286

Visiting the Sonnenberg area of NY State and these greenhouses is on my bucket list. I'll have to save it for when I have more time to spend in NY State (when I'm retired, in other words!).

Anything having to do with gardens, plants, seeds, greenhouses, state parks, conservation and preservation hooks me immediately and makes me happy. Reading about this today made my day. It helps to obliterate all the bad and depressing news in the world.

A winter garden

It has been a mild winter this year in Oslo, and I'm not complaining. Temperatures have hovered around the 40 degree F mark, and even when we've had days when they've dipped to freezing followed by snow, the temperatures rise again, it rains, and the snow disappears. These are the winters I like, and I hope there are more of them in the coming years. 

I visited the garden this morning after mass. A beautiful sunny day...... I was the only one in the garden except for the birds, who were merrily chirping as though it was already spring. They were out en masse, as were the crows, seagulls, and magpies. And on my walk home, the ducks were out also. Yes, ducks. The mallards have returned to the water pools at Alexander Kiellands plass, and they were having a great time. 

It was nice to be back in the garden; there was frost on the grass and on the leaves of the perennials that are just waiting to bloom anew once spring comes. It can't come too soon for my taste. My fervent hope for the coming garden season is that it won't rain as much as it did last year. Too much rain is not good for a garden, just as too little rain is not good either. 

Feeling invisible

I've been reflecting on the dynamics that occur in conversations between men and women, either personal conversations between two people of the opposite sex or in mixed-gender social settings. The personal conversations that I can comment on are those I've had, or those that women friends of mine have had that they have commented on to me. In social settings, I am an active participant in the general conversations about society, politics, and work, but at one recent gathering, I stopped talking toward the end of the evening and just observed the people in the room. It was interesting to intuit the dynamics present in the room. During the early part of the evening, I observed an egalitarian interflow of ideas and comments between men and women, but toward the end of the evening it changed, and I'm not sure why, perhaps because the men let down their guard more? Perhaps because the topics of conversation became more serious? It is this change in dynamics that interested me as an observer and as a woman. The thing that struck me was that the men did not follow up on the women's opinions and thoughts, not in the same way as they did with the men present. Their comments and in-depth talk were mostly aimed at the other men. Perhaps this was the case simply because they felt more comfortable discussing with men because it is a generational thing--most of the men are in their early sixties or older. It can be a generational thing--that men are more preoccupied with impressing (and possibly competing with) the other men in the room as has so often been the case through the centuries, so that listening to women is an afterthought and not a priority. I liked all of the men in the room, so my observations have nothing to do with not liking them. It's just that it felt as though they were accommodating women's opinions without agreeing with or sanctioning them, and they did not follow up on women's comments, or if they did, they did so in a dominating way which is a sure way to end a conversation. In other words, they did not engage further, and it felt as though that was a deliberate choice. It made me wonder if this was because they do not consider women to be as important as they are (generational?). I have never felt that way in conversation with men who are thirty or forty years younger than the men at this gathering. It is a strange way to feel, and the reason I felt that way is because I did not feel comfortable after a while expressing my opinions, and I noticed one other woman give up the fight to be heard as well. What happens is that you open your mouth to comment on a particular topic of interest, and you are suddenly overridden by a man who does not listen to your comments or wait until you finish speaking before he jumps in with his opinion or thought in a dominating overriding fashion. Or you open your mouth and your comment is ignored--essentially, not followed up. The fight to be heard is a question of how to deal with this type of behaviour from some of the men in the room. I noticed that the women were much more likely to listen to the men's comments and to let them finish talking before they commented. It felt strange to me, and at some point, it felt as though women were unwanted, even invisible. I may be overreacting, but the feeling was strong. Some male work colleagues over a certain age also behave in this way, whereas I rarely have that feeling with the women I converse with, which tells me that I have been lucky with my choice of female friends and female work colleagues with whom I converse. It makes me sad that men can dismiss women in this way, even though I know that it has gone on for centuries. It also makes me sad to think that perhaps this is another price that women have to pay for growing older in our society, that they are expected to know their place, take it, and be happy with it (sit down and be quiet). My mother used to say that getting older made her feel invisible. I share her view. But then ask me what she didn't do. The answer is--write in order to become visible.

Reflections on the new year so far

Since the new year started, the world has continued its downward spiral into chaos. Whether we end up in true chaos remains to be seen. Of course, one can look at it the other way--that everything that has happened is business as usual, or politics as usual. Who can say? Since the beginning of January, the American president took out a high-ranking Iranian general, Iran responded by bombing American military bases in Iraq, Iran's military shot down a commercial plane carrying innocent passengers using two missiles and killing all onboard, Iran withdrew from its nuclear treaty, there have been several earthquakes in Puerto Rico of all places, hurricanes along the English coast, Australia's bushfires are out of control and it's estimated that a billion animals have died in addition to nearly twenty-five people, Meghan and Harry (Megxit) have seceded from the British monarchy in order to pursue independent lives, the push for impeachment of the American president continues, 2020 is an election year for the American presidency, leading most to wonder how impeachment proceedings will affect election activities during the year, one of Norway's prominent young writers/artists who committed suicide on Christmas Day was buried on January 3rd in one of the saddest and rawest funeral services I have witnessed on national TV, climate change continues to dominate global conversations (as well it should), top companies in the USA and in Norway are having economic problems/going bankrupt leading them to close stores nationwide and lay off many people. And the list goes on. It's as though all the world's loans and bills 'came due' simultaneously, meaning that we now have to pay back and pay out in full for our greed and foolishness and ostrich-like behaviour.

We cannot afford to keep our heads stuck in the sand any longer. We cannot shove the problems before us for the next generation to solve. Greed has caused so many problems, globalism likewise. The quest for greater profits, large company mergers, global solutions for what should be national solutions, global expansion at all costs in the name of profit, is killing the world slowly. Respect for the life around us has taken a back seat. We cannot continue on this path.

I have talked to many people, young and middle-aged, about these problems, and most agree that we need to change the way we live our lives. It doesn't have to be dramatic, but if everyone does their part, there will be noticeable change on a global scale. We can start by living simpler lives, walking and exercising more, eating less (and cutting down on meat consumption), buying less food and not throwing it away when it is unused, buying what we need instead of buying impulsively, watching less TV, not buying new cell phones and new cars every year or every other year, repairing appliances instead of tossing them (this also means that companies must step up to the plate and do their part to manufacture appliances that last longer than five years, in other words, they need to eliminate built-in obsolescence in the name of profit). We can cut down/eliminate our use of plastic bags, and try not to buy bottled water (although this means that community water purification systems have to function optimally at all times in order to provide drinkable tap water). We need national healthcare in the USA that is affordable and equitable for all. We need to elect politicians who think this way, who are interested in preserving the planet, who are not hypocrites when it comes to how they live, who are service-oriented and kind people. We need more Jimmy and Rosalynn Carters, who have spent their retirement years building homes for others, not just thinking of themselves or traveling around the country lecturing and earning millions for their lectures so that they can buy fancy homes. We need politicians who are willing to serve and to inspire their constituents. We need more respect for others and less argumentativeness, we need more service-oriented attitudes and less self-entitlement, we need more generosity and less greed, we need more kindness and less bullying and hate talk. We need to get on the same page in order to solve the problems in front of us; the solutions are not black and white. We cannot rely on religion to show us the way, because many religions have their own internal problems to solve first before they can preach to their followers about how they should live. In short, we cannot wait for others to show us how to live; the changes must come from us, from the grassroots, and move upward. It should not take a world war or a pandemic to force us into the action necessary to change us and to save our planet.

Adjusting to continuous change

This coming year promises a good number of changes in my workplace. Most of them will be physical, in the sense that they involve physically moving several research groups and equipment from one floor to another floor in our building. That was decided a while ago, but as always, it takes a while for changes to be effectuated. The physical move will happen in March. Those research groups remaining behind will be sharing lab space with the routine functions and services in my department; those functions and services need more room, so the next major change and adjustment will involve how we share that space, how we discuss our needs amicably and find a solution that works for everyone. The reality however is that there is not nearly enough space for everyone, so some people are bound to be less satisfied than others with the agreed-upon solution.

Even if you decided to never actively adapt and change, to remain 'the same as you always were', you would never achieve that. Nothing stands still; all aspects of life and of work life change and will force themselves upon you. That is the nature of life. We are constantly adjusting to change, and it is best to stay open to change rather than fight it. The way research was done thirty years ago and the way it is done now are quite different. Thirty years ago it seemed as though everything about academic research science was more stable; now it seems more like big business that changes strategy every two to three years in order to maximize profits. When the daily stability of research life disappeared, it was difficult to adjust to that. After all, we were brought up on the idea that research needed stability, constancy, in order to thrive. In the 1990s, it was possible to work on one research project for ten years; you could get funding for one topic, e.g. apoptosis and cancer, and you had the time to experiment and to try new research plans. That is harder, if not impossible, nowadays; scientists change their research directions every three or four years in order to follow the trends of funding. Just in the cancer field alone, molecular genetics and genomics were trendy in the 1990s, as was apoptosis and cell death generally, then in the 2000s came cellular senescence, inflammation and its role in cancer, the search for cures for breast and prostate cancers, and the focus on many new and exciting techniques/technologies like microarray gene expression, RNA interference, knockout mice, and CRISPR. Immunotherapy to treat cancers has dominated research science for the past five or so years. So if you want funding and a career in academic science, you follow the current trends. That is what the younger scientists have learned; some of the older ones still fight against this reality.

It was easier to understand your role in a lab setting years ago--as a technician, PhD student, or postdoc. You knew you could rely on a group leader to guide you, and that group leader was often your mentor if you were a PhD student or postdoc. There were not multiple mentors as there are now. Your PhD years were not micromanaged by universities the way they are now. Thirty years ago the idea that you could be the lone scientist in the lab was encouraged; nowadays it is discouraged in favour of working as a team. If you want to work as an individual rather than in a team, if you want to promote and try out your own ideas, you are considered to be a non-team player, and that is anathema at present. The infrastructure of research science has also changed considerably; we share our workdays with IT personnel, administrators, middle-managers, accountants, among others. They were more behind the scenes thirty years ago. You won't get very far these days without the infrastructure of science. If you need lab consumables, you must deal with administrators and accounting people, because you are no longer allowed to order items on your own. You are no longer allowed to download any computer programs on your own; that is taken care of for you by the IT department, and the power they have to deny or approve specific programs can determine what may or may not get done in a research project.  

Academic science is big business now, with huge grant awards going to a small number of recipients. Those recipients often lead large research groups, e.g. centers of excellence. These large groups collaborate at the national and international levels with other large groups. Small research groups (four or five people) without national and international collaborators are not funded and eventually die away. That is the current strategy. If you don't like big business, you won't enjoy academic research science now. If you're young and you know this, the best thing you can do is to adjust your life accordingly--find another arena in which to use your talents and to shine.