Memories and the concept of time

Twenty years ago today, March 4, 2001, my mother passed away. Thirty-six years ago, March 7, 1985, my father passed away. Twenty years ago and thirty-six years ago. It seems so long ago, these parcels of years, and yet sometimes they seem like artificial constructs to help me locate my memories. They contribute to the reality of memory. Sometimes the past seem so real, as though it is right there in front of me. The people in that past are gone, but the memories of them are not. The memories are vivid and real. The concept of time and the reality of memory are intertwined. I cannot explain the connection, but I don't think one exists without the other. It is when I begin to consider and reflect upon memory, that I also begin to reflect upon the concept of time. No one can or has satisfactorily answered the question--what is time? We say that time is linear, because it apparently keeps moving us forward. But is it really linear? The Oxford online dictionary defines time as the "indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole". It's a vague definition, but it's a starting point for reflection. 

It was not until I started working in a garden that I became aware of the reality that time is also circular. Or perhaps better put, a garden manifests circular time within the human concept of linear time, if that is possible. Our gardens have no memory, they just do what they do independent of the human concept of linear time. A gardener plants seeds, watches them grow into mature flowers that produce seeds, the annual flowers die, become compost and then soil again, which is used for next season's garden, as are the seeds. It's a cycle that continues annually in perpetuity, starting in spring, continuing into summer and fall, then winter, and then back to spring. It can continue in this way for many years, given the right conditions. Perennial plants come back each year barring a natural disaster--the same plant, just new stems and new growth. The actual plants don't really die. It's the closest thing to immortality that we may be witness to on this earth. Do we know why they come back, year after year? Apparently there is no specific lifespan for plants, except for the annuals. The annual plants must be seeded anew. But eventually, even perennial plants die, as do our house plants that can live for decades given the right conditions. Death comes to all living things. 

I remember my parents, sitting in their living room in the apartment where I grew up, reading in the evenings. I remember my mother feeding the birds from her kitchen window each morning. I remember eating breakfast before we left for school, listening to 'Rambling with Gambling' on the radio. I remember commuting to and from Manhattan for several years with my father, and meeting him for lunch in Manhattan. I remember my father's illnesses and knowing we would lose him; I 'saw' and 'knew' the future. I remember shopping with my mother and driving around lower Westchester County with her on one of our many fun car rides. I remembering seeing a future without her and how painful it would be to lose her too. I remember my brother, who is dead six years as of this writing. I did not 'see' his death coming. They have been dead for many years, but they remain in my memory. All those memories of beloved people, places and experiences co-exist. And that is what I wonder about. Memories are dependent upon functioning brain neurons that transmit electrical signals to other neurons via synapses. Without neurons and neural networks, there are no memories. Plants do not have neurons, so they do not have memories, and so no concept of time, or none that they are 'aware' of. We have them, and so we have memories. But how and where are those memories truly situated in time? Or can we even ask those questions?

There are some physicists who theorize that time as we know it is not real, that it is simply a construct devised to help us differentiate between the present and our perception of the past. The 'block universe' theory, as their theory is called, can be summarized as follows. "The theory, which is backed up by Einstein’s theory of relativity, states that space and time are part of a four dimensional structure where everything that has happened has its own coordinates in spacetime" (Time is NOT real – Physicists show EVERYTHING happens at the same time | Science | News | Express.co.uk). In this theory, all our past experiences co-exist simultaneously with all our present and future experiences. If that is the case, there is no 'time', at least not as we define it. Stated in a different way: "Your birth is out there in space-time. Your death, too, is in space-time. Every moment of your life is out there, somewhere, in space-time. So says the block universe model of our world" (The block universe theory, where time travel is possible but time passing is an illusion - ABC News). What made the strongest impression upon me from the second article was reading that "Everything is relative: what is past to you, will be future to someone else. So if I travel back to the past I'm travelling to what is someone else's future. That means the past won't be any different, in kind, to the present." 

My brain seems able to grasp these concepts, however briefly. But they are also confusing. The philosophy and science involved in these concepts can seem overwhelming. In the end, they are mysteries that may or may not be elucidated in my lifetime. I hope however that they will be. I also hope that one day there could be time travel between the coordinates in the block universe. How cool that would be, to be able to visit 'a past moment with loved ones who are now gone', or even in another context, visit a 'future you'. How that would come to pass is anyone's guess. I don't see it happening for several more centuries. And yet sci-fi writers have written about time travel for years. They could visualize the future, at least one they 'saw', and committed that vision to paper. We who exist now were the future to their present, but we are also the past to someone else. It makes sense, and then it doesn't. But I like the idea that all the constructs of time exist equally and simultaneously. 

Television shows from the 1960s and 1970s

We watched all of these television shows as children and teenagers growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. Looking at them all from today's vantage point, I'd say that these decades were the golden age of television. And when I compare the television offerings on regular channels today to the shows from  these decades, I'd have to say that the shows on regular channels (linear tv) cannot hold a candle to the old shows. Most of what passes for tv entertainment on the regular channels at present is a wasteland. Streaming channels like Netflix and HBO have supplanted the regular channels, and they are far and away a better deal in terms of watching good films and series. 

Here are some of the shows we watched, enjoyed, and sometimes loved:

1960s shows

• Bewitched 
• Bonanza
• Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
• Flipper
• Get Smart
• Gilligan's Island
• Gomer Pyle USMC
• Green Acres
• Hogan's Heroes
• I Spy
• Land of the Giants
• Leave It to Beaver
• Maya
• My Favorite Martian 
• My Three Sons
• Petticoat Junction
• Star Trek: The Original Series
• That Girl
• The Addams Family
• The Andy Griffith Show
• The Avengers
• The Dick Van Dyke Show
• The Beverly Hillbillies
• The Donna Reed Show
• The Flintstones
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
• The Lucy Show
• The Munsters
• The Prisoner
• The Twilight Zone

1970s shows

• All in the Family
• Columbo
• Kojak
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker 
• M*A*S*H
• Night Gallery
• Quincy, M.E.
• Sanford and Son
• The Bob Newhart Show
• The Brady Bunch
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show
• The Partridge Family
• The Rockford Files
• The Six Million Dollar Man
• The Streets of San Francisco
• The Waltons
• WKRP in Cincinnati

Trying to find sanity

Someone should develop this as an app, it would be a rather apt app, especially in these pandemic times. 😀  

A year of the pandemic

Mid-March will mark the one-year anniversary of the month in 2020 when life as we knew it came to a grinding halt. Normalcy disappeared, replaced by uncertainty and a fair amount of gloom and doom. People were told to work from home if they could. Day-care centers closed, likewise most schools and universities. Restaurants, bars, theaters, movie theaters, malls and shops also closed. Plane travel ceased, as did international travel. Supermarkets remained open, as did shops deemed essential for the daily lives of men and women. Norway did not institute a curfew, but all of the above closings constituted a lockdown of society, however partial. 

When the pandemic first began, my husband and I were glued to all the news programs we could find about the coronavirus. We watched the news religiously, and read the rapidly multiplying scientific articles about the virus. We wanted to learn as much about it as we could. Norwegian immunology and virology experts weighed in with their opinions. Politicians and health officials collaborated on a daily basis. I watched Andrew Cuomo and Anthony Fauci in the USA update the public on the latest about the virus and the numbers of people infected as well as the number of deaths. Intensive care units in hospitals were overwhelmed, as were funeral homes. The media photos of mass burials around the world will stay in my mind for always. 

There was nowhere to go, so we went nowhere. We ordered food delivered to our home from time to time. I stocked up on face masks in anticipation of the coming winter; I knew the pandemic would not be over by then. Last March, however, I had a different kind of hope than I do now. Having never experienced a pandemic before, I went into it, probably like many others, with expectations that the scientists would have it covered and that it might also just die out like the flu viruses often do after wintertime. But the infection rate of this virus didn't seem to wax and wane with the seasons. It worsened after vacation times, whether it was summer vacation, autumn vacation, or Christmas vacation. 

The pandemic was the year that Trump got louder and louder, and grew bigger and bigger until he finally burst. He lost the presidential election, refused to accept that loss, and fomented a rebellion and a capitol invasion that will forever in my mind be linked to the year of the pandemic. People lost their minds, literally, and followed an unstable man into an unstable and divided future. 

I worked from home, and found out that I enjoyed it, until I realized that it might be a permanent situation. But I stayed focused and got my work done, usually by 3 pm each day. That left time in March for watching the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, which I looked forward to watching each day like I used to do when I followed specific soap operas on television many moons ago. When April came, I went to work in my garden after my workday was done. That got me outdoors and kept me physically active and busy so I had no time to think about the virus. It stayed that way until early November, when the garden was closed for the winter. And then came Christmas, followed by the months of January and February which I liken to a wasteland for all they contribute to my life at present. But we are healthy so I can't complain. As the one-year anniversary approaches, I am also glad for Netflix and HBO--for all the movies and series they offer--some of them excellent. There is always something to watch on the streaming channels, unlike regular television channels that are a complete wasteland and waste of time. I also have mostly given up listening to the news--it's depressing and keeps us stuck in the same mindset.

I've realized that having a garden and being to work in it from April until November kept me sane. It got me outdoors together with my fellow gardeners, and we could chat with each other at safe distances. No one took any stupid chances; we behaved and followed the rules for not getting infected. It worked. I am grateful for my garden because it saved me. It provided peace of mind when I could not find it anywhere else. Besides the activities one has to do in a garden in order for it to flourish, the garden let me think of other things, like why did the honeybees gather at the birdbath to drink water. At times there were twenty or thirty of them lined up on the rim of the birdbath. It was an incredible sight to behold, and I loved it. Or the day when the sparrows decided to bathe together en masse in the birdbath--chirping and flapping their wings while enjoying their bath. And then they would all fly away together, and then fly back to the birdbath together. It was truly a communal bee- and bird-bath last summer. 

I bring this up now because I cannot wait to be able to get back to my garden this year. January and February have had me climbing the walls of our apartment. It was bitter cold for most of January, so going outdoors was a chore. I did so anyway since the sun shone and the days were lovely. But cold it was. Just being outdoors kept me sane, even if I froze doing it. But I miss the interactions with other people. Humans are not made for isolation. I went back to work more during the past few months, despite the continued recommendation to work from home. I needed to see co-workers in person. I discovered that I hate zoom meetings and most things digital as far as work-related activities are concerned. I want real-life people that I can physically relate to in real-time, not virtual. I would prefer a room full of masked people that had gathered for a meeting, rather than a zoom meeting. My heart goes out to all those who live alone; it must be difficult whether you are young or old. I feel for students and young people whose social lives have been severely restricted. And yet, what else is there to look forward to if we don't follow the rules? My sense of hope has changed; it is tinged with a sorrow for mankind in case life never really returns to normal. I hope it does, but you never know. And some of that sorrow is for myself, since I never for one moment considered that my yearly trip to NY would disappear last summer and most likely this summer. I miss the other life I have in NY with my good friends and my family. 

I feel for people who don't have a haven, a refuge to go to, to get away from the news, the virus, the regulations and restrictions, the slow vaccination process, the new virus mutant variants, the constant talk about how many people are infected and how many have died. It's all too much, and it overwhelms the mind. I've talked to several people about fuzzy brain function lately, due to the anxiety and stress of living with the pandemic day in and day out. One can only hope that it comes to an end very soon. 

Quotes for weary souls

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. --Robert Louis Stevenson

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. –Epicurus

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body. --Abraham Maslow

Rest when you're weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work. --Ralph Marston

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do. --Eric Hoffer

Some of our life experience makes us weary of love and make it difficult to forgive others. –Parvathy

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary. --Joyce Meyer

We can be tired, weary and emotionally distraught, but after spending time alone with God, we find that He injects into our bodies energy, power and strength. --Charles Stanley

Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, strong; love with tenderness, not passion, wisdom, not foolishness, and strength, lest you become weary and turn away from the love of the Lord. --Saint Bernard

If we grow weary and give up, the goal remains for someone else to achieve. --Zig Ziglar

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. --Paul the Apostle

We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God if we remember how long and how graciously He once waited for us. --Charles Spurgeon

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary. --Charles Spurgeon

I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral. --Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Remembering Frank

I found out yesterday that one of my former bosses at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where I worked in the 1980s, passed away this past August. Frank was one of the cytometry triumvirate at the Laboratory for Investigative Cytology together with Zbigniew and Myron. Myron passed away in 2013 after battling pancreatic cancer for six years. I remember when I interviewed for the job of daily manager of the flow cytometry core facility, I ended up interviewing with Myron and Frank, as well as with Don, who was another senior scientist in the lab. I had experience in biophysical techniques from my first job, and I guess that contributed to my getting the job. 

Myron, Zbigniew and Frank were wonderful men to work for, and I treasure my time in their lab. I've written about this lab several times before in this blog. I had most to do with Frank on a daily basis. He was my immediate boss and he taught me everything I know about flow cytometry. There was almost no scientific question he couldn't answer, and he was generous with his time and help. He was also very protective of his employees and stood firmly on our side whenever conflicts arose with external labs. He seemed to be unflappable, but when he did get mad, which happened once or twice in the seven years I worked with him, it was best not to be on the receiving end of his anger. I pitied the scientists who ended up having any sorts of conflicts with him. They knew that without his help, their projects would become stranded. If he thought something was stupid, he said so, complete with sarcastic comments and a roll of his eyes. And he was usually right. He didn't waste his own time or others' time, and he didn't allow anyone else to waste his employees' time. He put his foot down firmly and simply stopped the nonsense in its tracks. I learned a lot from him about how to protect my own employees through the years. I could wish that some of my other leaders in recent times were as good a leader as he was.  

I have fond memories of my time in the lab--we worked hard together and traveled together to conferences. In August 1987, our lab went to a Society for Analytical Cytology meeting that was held in Cambridge, England. It was my first trip abroad, and I was so looking forward to having a proper British tea experience. I am quite sure that I never shut up about it, and probably drove most people around me crazy. But when we got to Cambridge, I wandered around the city together with Frank and Jola, a postdoc in the lab, trying to find just the right tea shop. It had to be just the right one. Frank was very patient while I hunted around and settled on just the right one. And then we enjoyed great tea, good scones, raspberry jam and clotted cream. I was in heaven. I'm sure Frank humored me, but that was the kind of man he was--he had infinite patience with people he liked, and I was one of them. 

I also remember that all of us (there must have been at least six or seven of us from the lab who traveled to Cambridge) decided to go punting on the river Cam. Frank and another senior scientist Jan took turns trying to punt, which turned out to be not at all easy. Steering a large boat without banging into the other boats and without losing your balance were quite challenging. Frank managed it, but just barely, and I remember thinking that it would be terrible if he fell into the river. There were a couple of times when he and Jan very nearly fell into the water. The fact that Frank was the consummate New Yorker--well-dressed, with nice shoes and leather jacket--would have made falling in even worse as it would have ruined his clothing and shoes. But that was Frank; I don't think he considered the possibility that he could fall into the water or that he couldn't learn to punt. They didn't fall in, and they did learn to punt. Other things I remember about him--he smoked too much, and we were always trying to get him to quit cigarette smoking. One of his technicians would bring him a big bowl of sliced carrots, celery and cucumbers so that he wouldn't smoke on Great American Smokeout Day in November of each year. But he never quit as far as I know. I also remember that at one of our lab parties at his Manhattan apartment, he played Roxy Music's Avalon album for us. To this day, I cannot hear the song More than This without thinking of him. 

As fate would have it, I met my husband Trond at the same conference in Cambridge when he came to sit with our lab group one evening at one of the local pubs. That was the kind of lab group we were--welcoming to others from all countries. You could sit down with us and just start chatting. Our lab in New York was multinational, with scientists from many different countries--among them Poland, Italy, Sweden, and Germany. Scientists visited the lab while traveling through on their way to other meetings in the USA. My husband did just that; he said that he remembers seeing me in the lab when he came to visit Frank and the others. I don't remember that. But we did end up meeting again in Cambridge. Even though I moved to Norway, I stayed in touch with the Memorial lab. Working there was one of the best experiences of my life. 

Stick to your business

Many years ago, my husband and I had the privilege of working in a large lab in California headed by a man whom I can only call a visionary scientist. He was one of those rare scientists who made things happen, whose ideas were ground-breaking and game-changers. It was an exciting time in our lives, when we ourselves were still young scientists who hadn’t yet built scientific careers. Even then, I was an observer in terms of watching how he led his lab, and I learned a lot from him. For starters, he surrounded himself with talented people who were smart and who worked hard. He expected a lot from them, but the rewards for producing were good. He was good at picking the right people to have around him—a good blend of visionaries like himself as well as scientists who were able to translate his ideas into practice using ingenuity and inventiveness and the more technical scientists who were able to use these new ideas and procedures to answer specific questions and to generate more questions. In all cases, these scientists were concerned with the practice of science, and they stuck to their business, to what they were good at. He was also an excellent grant writer who had paid his dues working in national government labs for most of his adult life; he had learned the practice of science and managed to draw in quite a lot of funding for the lab that he headed.

I remember that he visited us here in Oslo some years later. I picked him up at his hotel to drive him back to our house for dinner, to which we had invited another couple who also worked in science. It was a pleasant evening. But what I remember most was the conversation I had with him when we were driving to our house at the beginning of the evening. I had just finished my doctoral work and was starting on my postdoctoral work, but I had some misgivings about pursuing an academic career. I was describing to him my different interests and how I felt pulled in several different directions. I remember exactly what he said to me--‘stick to your business’. That was about twenty years ago. Since then, the world of academic research science has changed tremendously, and it has become harder to stick to the business of just doing science. Business administration, leadership education, public relations and social networking have become part and parcel of an academic scientific career. To some extent, they always were, from the standpoint that it was good to know how to run a lab or to run a research group, but they weren’t the main focus. The main focus was always on the science. Nowadays, it is quite different. There is a multifocal approach to science that I don’t think benefits the profession because the multifocal aspects are time-drainers. Academic scientists are pulled in all directions now; they are supposed to be scientists, grant writers, business leaders, networkers, sales people, administrators, technical managers, and personnel managers. They are expected to understand complicated accounting and budget practices. They are expected to understand a multitude of bureaucratic procedures, all of which involve complicated legal aspects having to do with e.g. patient confidentiality if one works with patient data. One should understand the use of databases, registers, and complex statistical programs. There are lengthy leadership courses to attend so that one can become a good business leader. There are courses having to do with animal welfare if you plan on using animals for experiments, courses about good clinical practice, how to biobank, how to use quality registers, how to create quality presentations, how to write fundable grants, LEAN for hospital administration, and so on. It all ‘sounds’ good in theory, but in practice, they all take valuable time away from the actual doing of science, which is the only activity that will make you a good scientist. Working in the lab and actually doing science are what make you a good scientist. Reading scientific articles, coming up with new ideas based on what you’ve read, trying and failing, making mistakes, learning and following procedures and recipes, making solutions and buffers, reading technical manuals for complicated instrumentation, writing and publishing scientific articles, writing grants—all of those things will ensure that you become a good scientist. Taking a course here and there to learn a new lab procedure that will aid your scientific project is a good idea. Mentoring Masters and PhD students is also a good idea and will help you become a good mentor and manager. Training research technicians and working closely together with them on research projects will make you a good manager, or at least reveal to you whether or not you will qualify to be a research group leader. The rewards for such mentoring and training will be competent workers and independent thinkers who will further your research projects. That is sticking to your business. Attending generalized business leadership courses, although interesting, will not make you a better scientist. But nowadays, it is the norm to be all things to all people. In the space of twenty years, academic science has become less scientific and more business-like. It has been a strange evolution that I don’t think has been beneficial for the profession. The overall idea is perhaps that scientists should be able to adapt themselves to any profession if necessary. But the visionary aspect of science loses out. The purity of science loses out. Academic science has moved in a more mundane direction, concerned more with business administration/practices, PR, salesmanship, networking, self-improvement, public speaking, and interpersonal skills than with much else. Yes, it helps to be able to hold a polished presentation, or to know how to network, but something has been lost in the process. Perhaps it is what I call the eccentricities and difficulties of science and scientists. The practice of science is not supposed to be smooth and predictable, or controllable, or able to be perfectly regulated. The unpredictability of doing research, the not knowing how it all will turn out, is what makes academic science interesting and rewarding. It is the eureka moments in the lab that one remembers, those moments when you know that the practice of pure science is worth it.