Finding and using my voice in 2010

I’m not going to wait until New Year’s Eve to sum up 2010. I’d like to say it’s been a great year overall, but I cannot. It definitely had its high points; I’d have to say most of them on the creative front. Starting this blog was one of the high points of this year, and it is a labor of love. I write for free, I love doing it, and I hope to continue. So many ideas pop into my head each day and as long as there are things to write about, I’ll continue writing.  

I wish my daily work life was as inspiring and creative, but it’s not. After over twenty years in academic research science, I have finally reached the point where I can say, it’s just a job. I do it for the money, and it feels ok to say that now. During the 1980s and 1990s I lived for my work. Now I work to live, and any free time I have I want to spend on my creative projects. I finally found my voice and started using it in earnest in 2010, so that is another high point of the year. I’ve been stumbling over using my voice—it’s been there, it’s been waiting to be used, but I’ve always tried to still it for one reason or another. It defied me and jumped out earlier this year. It knew what was best for me. And I’m following its lead, because it is forcing me to be honest with myself in a way that I have never been before. It forces me to face my life each day and ask the question—is this or that working for you? If the answer is no, my inner voice is saying, why are you using time on these things? Why are you wasting your time? And believe me, that’s a powerful inspiration. It means the difference between three hours wasted on the couch watching TV, versus three hours spent immersed in discovering new inroads into my creative self. Sometimes I cannot believe I’ve wasted so much time.

Some of that wasted time has been on stupidities at work, on impossible projects and impossible people. I have to wonder why I did it, and I guess the answer is that I loved my work for so long, and then suddenly I didn’t anymore. How did I get to that point? I guess enough disappointments, bad behavior and lack of professionalism on the part of workplace leaders has gotten to me. I’ve had enough of being treated like a non-entity at work. I am invisible to my workplace—all my competence, training, expertise and wisdom go largely unnoticed. I find that sad. I don’t understand why this is the case, but perhaps the fact that I am not a political animal has played a big role. My work place has been described by the husband of a colleague (who used to work at my hospital) as a ‘merciless power struggle’. I never really understood quite what he meant until 2010. Workplace leaders are primarily concerned with what’s in it for them—in terms of power, positions, salaries and prestige. The fallout of the merger hit us for real this year. With the exception of the leaders who sit at the top like God and make decisions for the rest of us, no one was spared and there was nowhere to hide. Budgets were cut. Strategies were re-written. Projects were not funded. There were no new students. The current infrastructure is imploding and no one can do a thing to stop it. It will crash and burn and I will stand by and watch it happen. I may even rejoice. Nothing works at work anymore—I mean nothing. It is typified in the new copy machine that sits in the room outside the secretaries’ offices. It is a copier, scanner and fax machine in one. It cost easily 20-30,000 USD. No one knows how to use it. If you try to get one copy, you get two even if you only want one. Scan to email? Sure—just follow the instructions—it doesn’t work. No one knows how to use it as a fax machine either; and the old fax machine has been disabled so that we can no longer send or receive faxes. I have a printer/scanner/copier/fax machine at home. I paid 100 USD for it. It works. I just don’t get it—how stupidity took over at work. People are demoralized and it shows on their faces. I’m sure it shows on mine.

This past week was the last straw for me. I ended my membership in the scientists’ union that I have been a member of for many years now. For the past three years I have been a board member of the local union chapter, and this past year I have served as secretary for the new board of the local union chapter that now serves Oslo University Hospital (a merger of four city hospitals). This chapter is headed by a man who is essentially a male chauvinist and a bully. I don’t suffer fools and I definitely don’t suffer male chauvinists. Anyone who knows me knows that. So suffice it to say that we have butted heads. I was evaluated as professor-competent a few years ago together with another colleague at my workplace. This union leader does not believe that we are professor-competent and refuses to accept this fact. He goes around telling people that we are ‘sneaking our way’ through the system and he refuses to back off. It is harassment, pure and simple. He has unilaterally decided that he will be the judge of whether we are worthy of this professor-competent designation or not. With ‘friends’ like this in my union (that exists to protect the interests of its members), who needs enemies? I just add this to the list of crap that I have had to endure, not only this year but in previous years. The problem with the union leader stems from the fact that I refused to badmouth a woman whom this man does not like. This woman has helped me in previous years, and the union leader does not like this fact nor does he like her. I was ordered by him to stop talking to her in a union capacity and I refused. So his ‘punishment’ of me was to try to destroy my professional credibility.  So it was easier to withdraw my membership. I have been in Norway for twenty-one years, and I have done nothing but fight for my rights and for my professional credibility since I arrived here. When I first started at my hospital, my Master’s degree from New York University was deemed to be less worth than the Norwegian Master’s degree--fight #1. This led to a reduction in salary for the job that I took over from a woman who had the same education as me (she is Norwegian), and I spent nearly a year trying to get the salary restored to its original level—fight #2. Getting a salary raise each year? Forget it—fight #3. No one would take responsibility for being my ‘boss’ (supporting my salary requests) when it came to this type of thing—but when they wanted the fruit of my hard work—data and results to write their papers---hey, then I was worth talking to. This has gone on for years. I finally got my PhD in 1999, did my three-year post-doc stint, and set out to establish my independent research profile as a scientist. I worked together with three other women and we were a great team. I’ve written about this before. Suffice it to say that we were productive in terms of publications, and I managed to get two of them through Master’s and PhD programs without any major problems. If you ask either one of them, they’ll tell you that I am a good and fair leader. I know this because they’ve told me to my face. How was I rewarded for this? I was told by my leaders that I could not establish my own research group officially. I ignored them and did it unofficially. It ended up not mattering either way because small research groups are not rewarded financially in Norway. This past year I was offered a leadership position (that I was ready for and should have been offered ten years ago but was denied it then when I asked for it) only to have it retracted, then offered again, and finally retracted over a period of three months before my workplace leadership finally figured out what they really wanted, and that was to cut my position, but they ended up not being legally able to do this. We have now reached the point where all the NOs that I have gotten over the past twenty years have led to the current situation—that had they said YES to most of the things I asked for in the context of my professional advancement, they would be enjoying the benefits of my loyalty and hard work. Instead they are trying to figure out what to do with me because I no longer really know which way to turn anymore. When you get told NO long enough, you give up and give in. There have been no mentors, no advisors, no supporters, no career guides---nothing. All my decisions have been made in a vacuum. I have turned to my husband for advice and help and have gotten them, but he is not my boss. He could not pull the strings that should have been pulled for me a long time ago. Simply put, I was a fool to stay so long in one workplace. I should have left after I finished my PhD. But there were so few other places to go to ten years ago. And now, I am done fighting.  

A song by Sivert Høyem--Moon Landing

This is a fantastic song, for all those people who are making changes in their lives and who need to feel like 'their universe is expanding'. He certainly has captured in the lyrics and the music how it feels to be getting ready for the next change in life. You can find the song on YouTube--here's the link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zug2U__TE

Moon Landing 

Hold on my enemy!
If you got it in for me
It's just fog and fantasy
We'll come to some understanding

(CHORUS))
I'm going to make this my own moon landing
I'm going to give this the best that I've got
You see right from the start we've been drifting apart
It's our actual standing
I'm going to make this my own ..

I don't need no enemy
to keep me awake at night
No one 's gonna go for free
We'll travel very light

For now I've had enough from you
I'm done and so are you
go see what you can do
The universe is expanding

(CHORUS)

I'm going to make this my own moon landing
I'm going to give this the best that I've got
You see right from the start we've been drifting apart
It's our actual standing
I'm going to make this my own ..


I don't need no enemy
to keep me awake at night
No one 's gonna go for free
We'll travel very light

For now I've had enough from you
I'm done and so are you
Go see what you can do
The universe is expanding
The silence is commanding ..

I'm going to make this my own moon landing
I'm going to give this the best that I've got
You see right from the start we've been drifting apart
It's our actual standing
I'm going to make this my own ..

Questions I don’t have the answers to, but still I ask them

·         Why isn’t there more justice in the world?

·         Why aren’t women treated as men’s equals in the world?

·         Why does it feel so impossible sometimes to get a break?

·         Why don’t we demand better behavior from ourselves and others?

·         Why do we continue to do things we know are not good for us?

·         Why do we stay in jobs that we know we have outgrown?

·         Why do we stay in relationships with people who do not really care about us?

·         Why do we tolerate bad behavior from others over and over again?

·         Why do we allow harassment and bullying in social situations to occur without trying to stop them?

·         Why is it so hard to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you?’

·         Why do we stay silent when we know we should have spoken up?

·         Why do we choose to be cowards rather than to be brave?

·         Why is it so difficult to stand alone against the crowd, especially as we get older?

·         Why don’t we take care of our hearts and souls and minds as much as we take care of our bodies?

·         Why isn’t a spiritual life important to more people?

·         Why is it so difficult for people to talk about spiritual things?

·         Why is it so difficult to believe in God?

·         Why do we trust human beings, but not God, with our hearts and souls?

·         Why is adult life full of disappointments?

·         Why are we often so unprepared to deal with disappointments?

·         Why can’t we let ourselves really follow the advice ‘let go and let God?’

·         Why can’t we live in the moment and enjoy it for all it is worth?

·         Why can’t we seize today and make the most of it, and not worry about what will happen tomorrow?

Good conversations

Good conversations are worth their weight in gold. To know and feel that you really connect with another human being--friend, family member or colleague--is to know that you have reached a level of communication that touches the very heart of you. It is a healing experience to know that you and your feelings and thoughts are valued by another human being. I believe that good conversations can help us feel better about ourselves and our surroundings, and it is my opinion at least that there are far too few good conversations. Perhaps this is due to that we are always rushing about, or always ‘tuned in and tuned out’ on our cell phones or I-pods or computers, so that we don’t have time to pay attention to and to listen to others who may want to connect with us. All I know is that each time I experience a good conversation with someone; I want more of them, not less. I want to connect with others around me, but I want to do it in a way that makes us both feel valued. I know it’s not possible to have good conversations all the time. I accept that. But I don’t want to reach a point where they are the exception rather than the rule. There are ways of having a good conversation as well--certain behaviors such as eye contact and empathy and interest in others-- that shine through in people who are good conversationalists. They are interested in getting to know others and they communicate this in a way that says they have the time and inclination to do so. They are not interested in dominating, belittling, or hurting others. There can be no good conversation with people who enjoy dominating, belittling or hurting others when they open their mouths to talk with others. In a work context, dealing with such people can be a demoralizing experience.

I have become more aware of the importance of good conversations recently because I have been witness to the opposite on more than one occasion in the past week or two in a work context. The overall feeling at the end of them has been disappointment, even anger at having wasted my time. This has occurred mostly in settings (meetings) where the aim was to have a constructive dialog about one thing or another, but which ended up with one person dominating the meeting in an unhealthy, bullying way. I mostly just want to run from such people and such meetings. There is no conversation with such people, no dialog, no mutual understanding, just someone shouting or being aggressive and telling you how you should think or feel. And if that person is not telling you how to think or feel, then he is telling you how HE thinks or feels, and of course how he thinks or feels is paramount. I am thinking of one person in particular, a man whom I have to deal with in a work-related capacity—a man I would rather not have much to do with. He is a destructive force. That is my dilemma these days-- how to deal with his bullying and childish tactics. He destroys the good conversations that go on around him (and mostly without him) because he is not caring or kind enough to hold good conversations with others, thus he envies and resents others’ abilities to do so. He has been given ample opportunity to participate, to connect, to share his thoughts and feelings. No one has been unkind to him. Yet he has chosen to treat his colleagues as chattel, and if he cannot ‘own’ them, he tries to destroy them. But first he threatens them with something that he can hurt them with, because he has the power to do so as a leader. If this does not work, then he moves in for the kill. I watch him from a distance and wonder when he will crash and burn, because he will crash and burn eventually.

It is because of him that I value good conversations and good behavior so much more now. I want to be around people who elevate me and themselves with their talk, their behavior, their thoughts and feelings. If nothing but garbage comes out of your mouth—insults, threats, and curses—then you have become garbage. We get to choose in this life how we want to be towards ourselves and others. It was said by a much wiser person than me—‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. This is applicable for how one speaks to others as well as to how one behaves toward others. I think more people should have someone tape their conversations with others, so that they can learn from them before it is too late, before they are claimed by the garbage heap to which they end up in after years of treating others like garbage with their filthy mouths and bad behavior.

What Rollo May Said

·         The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity. 

·         Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.  

·         The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt. 

·         Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity

·         It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.  

·         Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.  

·         Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. 

·         If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.  

·         Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death. 

·         Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness. 

·         Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. 

·         Depression is the inability to construct a future. 

·         Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is. 

·         It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way. 

·         Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about. 

·         One does not become fully human painlessly. 

Rollo May is one of my all-time favorite writers. My father got me interested in reading his books. For more information about him, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollo_May

A love of libraries

My parents met in a library; my mother was an associate librarian working at the Brooklyn public library together with my father (he was head librarian). I grew up in a family that loved books and everything related to books and publications of all kinds. From the earliest days of childhood, we were taken to the local library (Warner Library in Tarrytown) by our parents and encouraged to find books of interest and to explore the library. I can remember watching children’s films at the library; I can also remember the feelings of being in the library. It was an interesting and peaceful place—serene. But I knew that it contained a wealth of knowledge, all of it at my fingertips. My father wrote his Master’s degree thesis about the history of the Warner Library; after he died my mother gave a copy of his thesis to the library so they would have it for historical/ research purposes. I read his thesis and it was quite interesting. I can see in my mind’s eye him sitting and writing the thesis, mulling over specific sections and trying to best formulate his thoughts. He moved into the world of atomic energy when he went to work for a nuclear energy company in Manhattan as their chief librarian. He always came home with some interesting stories about his day and we would sit at the dinner table and discuss them in detail. And when I decided to major in science in college, he would come home with different publications from his library about different technologies and research projects being done at some of the national laboratories around the USA, e.g. at Los Alamos, New Mexico. One of those publications had to do with the technique of flow cytometry and how it was developing at Los Alamos; the quirk of fate (and synchronicity) here is that it was the utilization of this technique in the flow cytometry core facility at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center that became my job during the 1980s. And to make the story complete--in 1985 I attended an excellent flow cytometry course offered by the lab at Los Alamos. I got a chance to meet a lot of interesting people and to see a lot of New Mexico together with two of my colleagues, Haika and Bob, who attended the course with me.

My mother did not give in to old age. She kept herself active both physically and mentally. During her seventies she volunteered at the Warner Library up until she began to have dizzy spells. Working at the library was an activity she loved and I understand completely why she did so. It kept her involved with other people—both fellow librarians and the many different people who frequented the library. If I was visiting her during these years on my annual trips to New York, she was always proud to tell me that she had to go to work at the library for a few hours. It never bothered her that she was not paid for her work; that is how much she enjoyed being there.

Libraries are such interesting places; there are so many nooks to explore and aisles of books to wander down. I remember that about the Warner Library from my childhood. I bring up the topic of libraries because I have spent some time this autumn doing consultant work for the science and math library at the University of Oslo. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable and fun experience so far, and I am thankful for the opportunity to reconnect with the world of libraries and to otherwise connect with a dynamic and enthusiastic group of women who are an inspiration to me. I have helped promote the library’s extremely interesting lectures and conferences through the use of Facebook and Twitter. One thing is certain--libraries now are quite different places than the ones I remember from my youth; they are digital media educational institutions and it is fascinating and fun to experience them as they are now. 

Season of Good Cheer

And now begins the holiday season—the season of good cheer—the stores are already decorating for Christmas, it has already snowed once, and Thanksgiving is just around the corner, ready to usher us into the month of December. I have been celebrating Thanksgiving in Oslo since I moved here in 1989. The first year I was here Trond and I scoured the city looking for a large turkey, and finally found one in a supermarket called Coop OBS. I think I paid around 70 dollars at that time for the turkey; prices have come down considerably since then. Turkey is now much more popular than ever before and can often be served at Christmastime instead of the traditional baked pork ribs and meat cakes. But in 1989 it was a novelty and many of our friends enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I would make turkey with bread and onion stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce (it wasn’t easy years ago to find fresh cranberries either), corn bread or muffins, pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie. What I would often do on my annual trips to New York was to stock up on the things I needed for Thanksgiving—canned pumpkin, ground corn flour, dried mincemeat and fresh cranberries that I usually froze until I needed them. It’s now fairly easy to find pumpkins; I bake the shell and scrape out the soft pumpkin in order to make pies and bread. In later years I have begun to make pumpkin soup and it has become a favorite. Sometimes my mother or friends would send me what I needed for Thanksgiving by regular mail and that was always nice. I remember that a former colleague from Sloan-Kettering who was doing a guest sabbatical at my hospital institute in 1991 smuggled a turkey and fresh cranberries in his luggage on a return trip to Oslo after a short visit to the USA. The cranberries got smashed and ended up staining his clothing, but we did enjoy the turkey and it made for a great story afterwards. That was of course pre-9/11; nowadays you would not be caught dead doing anything like this—you would never get your luggage through security. We have celebrated Thanksgiving several times with colleagues (mostly American) and that has been fun too—nice to get together with other Americans and celebrate what really is the most ‘American’ of USA holidays. And many of them knew exactly where to go in Oslo to get this or that item that was needed for the Thanksgiving meal.

My stepdaughter Caroline really likes pumpkin pie and I enjoy making it for her. She has also learned to make it herself. I love it too and am always glad when there is pie left over after Thanksgiving. Finding evaporated milk to mix into the pie filling was not easy years ago but it is easier now. It was always a challenge to find what I needed for Thanksgiving but I have always managed to do so each year. It has also been a challenge at times to actually prepare the meal. I baked a Thanksgiving turkey for the first time in 1989 in an old electric oven that had once belonged to my husband’s parents. That was a huge mistake, because every time I opened the oven door to baste the turkey, the temperature would drop dramatically, and then the oven would take a long time to heat up again. Suffice it to say that our company showed up at around 6pm but the turkey wasn’t ready until around 10pm. I learned from that experience!

I usually prepare food for Thanksgiving and my husband takes care of food for Christmas. We usually have traditional Norwegian food for Christmas and I look forward to it each year—pork ribs, meat cakes, sour white cabbage, sweet red cabbage, potatoes, and of course aquavit (it has to be expensive because that tastes best). He also makes salted sheep ribs (called pinnekjøtt) and serves them together with a turnip/carrot puree and potatoes (this meal is more typical of West Norway); it is excellent.

I look forward to Thanksgiving and then the Christmas season each year. I don’t think I would make it through the long gray dark winters without these holidays to look forward to. They get me through November and December; then there are the months of January and February to suffer through and then we’re on our way to spring. I am often reminded of my parents at the holidays—they also enjoyed preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas and it was a special time for us. After my father died, my mother continued to celebrate Christmas at her house and we often went there. She always enjoyed Christmas shopping and it was always fun to shop with her. She always overspent and we were always telling her not to do so. But she never listened and in truth this was fine because we knew this time of year meant a lot to her. We would watch the Christmas shows and films together—‘A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, It’s a Wonderful Life, Scrooge, A Christmas Carol, Home Alone’—and I still watch them. I’ve added to the list with ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ as well as ‘Dinner for One’ (Same Procedure as Last Year with Miss Sophie and her butler—very funny if you’ve never seen it).  I miss my parents especially at this time of year, but I know they are watching over me and us and sending their love and best wishes for happiness and good cheer. My parents never forgot the less fortunate at Christmas—there were always extra donations for the poor and the purchases of clothing and food for the different charity drives that were set up to help them. This is the way we were raised and it was a good way to be raised—to think of others and to want to help the less fortunate. And at Thanksgiving it is good to be reminded of all the blessings we in fact have. I know that reminder is good for me—to forget my complaints and small woes, because how could they possibly compare with what the poor and the starving have to face every day?  

Haiku for the day

The smiling devil 

In Oslo is wishing for 

Some luck and money. 

A song by Everlast--Today (Watch Me Shine)

(I really like this song--here are the lyrics)

Yesterday is just a dream I don't remember
Tomorrow, still a hope I've yet to endure
I'm out of time
I'm out of rhyme
I'm out of reason
Seasons change and leave me out in the cold
The story's old
The tale been told by many a scholar
Got a fistful of dollar
And pocketful of love
God above if you hear me cryin'
I've tried to sell my soul
But no one's buyin'
Lord, strike me down now if I'm lyin'
[Bronx Style Bob:] Lord strike me down
[x3]
It's gettin' cold
It's time for dyin'

[CHORUS]
Come on and watch me shine
Like the world is mine (check it out) today
Come on and watch me shine (check it out)
Like the world is mine today
Watch me shine (check it out)

Then the man was free from sin
[Bronx Style Bob:] free from sin
Cast the first stone then began the violence
[Bronx Style Bob:] began the violence
Let the man whose words ring true
Find More lyrics at www.sweetslyrics.com 
Speak on up till his voice breaks through the silence
[Bronx Style Bob:] through the silence
Let the ones who lose their way
Live to see just one more day in the sunshine
[Bronx Style Bob:] La-la-la-la-la-la-laaa
Let the ones who choose to stray
Recognize the price they'll pay
In their lifetime
[Bronx Style Bob:] in their lifetime
[x2]

[CHORUS]

Sit in the way and wait for my roads to cross
You nail me down and you watch me bleed
[Bronx Style Bob:] watch me bleed
So lay my head against the earth
Plant my body like a seed
[Bronx Style Bob:] plant my body like a seed
You can't always get the things you want, love (check it out)
[Bronx Style Bob:] tell me what you want
You get what you deserve
Or maybe what you need
[Bronx Style Bob:] tell me what you need
So fill my hole with precious dirt, love
Till the soil and part the weed

[CHORUS]

New Public Management in a Nutshell

I don't know where this cartoon originally came from, but it's a good one. It demonstrates the system of New Public Management in a nutshell.

"In this economic crisis, we unfortunately have no option but to terminate Andre".

Exploitation of good scientists and the perpetuation of lies

Yesterday was one of those days that tested my patience big-time and I don’t think I passed the test. The day started out with a seminar (sponsored by Forskerforbundet) dealing with the problem of the lack of permanent positions for research scientists in Norway. Some of the lectures were good, others were not. I left the seminar during the early afternoon feeling a bit provoked by several of the lectures. One of the speakers (who belongs to an elite group of MD scientists that are well-funded with big research groups) was trying to defend his (and the new hospital conglomerate’s) position concerning keeping non-MD scientists working in temporary positions in biomedical research. His line of defense was that the lack of permanent (‘tenured’) positions keeps scientists competitive and on the cutting-edge and that to ‘reward’ them with a permanent stable job would take that edge away and lead to mediocrity. He also said that there was no fate worse than being a poor to mediocre scientist—that this was a fate worse than death in his estimation. I am sure he managed to alienate a good number of scientists sitting in the audience who perhaps have had problems recently producing enough articles to qualify for the status of good scientist. Because that is how this speaker defines a good scientist—as a researcher who produces a good number of articles per year. How lucky for him—he has a huge group while the majority of the scientists sitting in the audience do not. It was easy for him to reveal his arrogance and it was infuriating to listen to because he displayed no understanding whatsoever for the current situation that many non-MD scientists find themselves in these days.

I realize that when I talk about academic biomedical science in Norway, there is no possible way for those outside of the system and the country to understand how unbelievably elitist the system has been for so many years. It is not possible to understand it without knowledge of the history that underlies the elitism. Biomedical research science has mostly been done by MDs for years, and the system is set up so as to prioritize, promote and to reward MDs who want to do research. Years ago this meant that MDs who had hospital jobs could do research on the side; it perhaps would be better to say that they were provided with technicians who did the lab work for them and provided the doctors with data so that they could write articles. If they accumulated enough articles they could submit a thesis with these articles and defend it, obtaining the degree of doctor of medicine (corresponding to a PhD degree in other countries). Doctors could go into the lab and do some of the research work if they wanted, but they did not have to—it was not a requirement for the degree. They could take as long as they wanted to finish the degree and they were often in their forties when they finished. This was the way it was done when I started working at my hospital’s research institute twenty years ago. The PhD system has changed over the years, but doctors are still prioritized when they start PhD programs from the standpoint that they are often offered technical help while non-MD PhD students are not. This has never sat well with me because as far as I am concerned, if both groups start a PhD program and are doing it full-time, as is the case with the new system, I don’t understand why the MD-PhD students should get preferential treatment. But they still do, at least at my hospital. At one point they also got a slightly higher salary than non-MD PhD students, although this is not the case anymore. All of this was and is done to encourage MDs to get interested in research and to take PhD degrees. That looks good for a hospital trying to present itself as a research hospital. The sad thing is that my hospital has never been particularly interested in promoting its non-MD PhD students or scientists. I find it sad because implicit in this philosophy is the idea that MDs have a better grip on biomedical research problems than non-MDs. I simply don’t buy into this philosophy. It has gotten better in the past five or so years, such that non-MDs who are doing biomedical research have better chances at making it in the system than they used to. But there is still a long way to go. It is strange that already during the 1980s in New York City at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute it was not a problem for non-MDs to lead major biomedical research programs. The same was and is true of the University of California at San Francisco during the early 1990s. There were a number of non-MD staff scientists at both places working on biomedical/cancer research projects and/or leading those programs. MDs and non-MDs also worked together in teams and it worked just fine. That’s how it should be—teamwork—a team of equals. I could continue on down the list of institutions where this worked. In Norway, I just don’t get it. I’ve been told that non-MD researchers cannot teach in medical school—again I don’t understand why they couldn’t teach histology or pathology or cell biology, if they’ve specialized in these fields and taken their PhDs in them. I know non-MD scientists in the USA who taught medical school courses and who were appointed to professorships in clinical specialties without having an MD. But that’s the USA. No matter how many times I’ve been told that the USA is elitist, capitalistic, competitive (ad nauseum) in its approach to most things, I can tell you that I have never experienced as much elitism in biomedical research science as I have in Norway. The discrimination is against non-MD biomedical research scientists.

So that leads me to the current problem with lack of job stability for non-MD biomedical research scientists. It’s a complicated situation. Over the past twenty years, common practice was that non-MD PhD students finished their PhDs and started their post-doctoral positions, often in the same lab or in the same institute because mobility was not encouraged and there were too few corporate/industry jobs available anyway (unless they wanted to work in marketing or sales). They were encouraged to continue on an academic track because the MDs leading the research programs saw an opportunity to utilize their competence to help new PhD students and MDs who wanted to do some research but did not want to commit full-time at the outset. The non-MD post-docs wanted to please their group leaders and they wanted some sort of job because they liked biomedical research, so they stayed put and did what they were told and did not react when they realized they were being misused. The group leaders could extend their post-doc positions (via external funding) so that many of them ended up working three post-doc periods in a row (a total of 9 to 12 years). This is not done in the USA. Some of them were told they could work as scientists (also up to 9 years split over three periods). For many non-MD scientists this could mean up to 21 years in untenured positions. This is what happened to many of the non-MD scientists in my generation. When they reached middle age they were out of a job because external funding for their positions ran out. It was ‘expected’ that the hospitals would employ them permanently full-time. When they appealed to their hospitals for help, they were told that there was not enough money to employ them all in permanent positions (which was the case from the start point but they were not told this). Or they were told that they were ‘good but not good enough’, in other words, mediocre--the ‘fate worse than death’ according to the elitist lecturer—whose suggestion would then be to ‘run along’ and find something else to do and let the ‘best’ scientists run the show.  Along the way some of the non-MD scientists figured this crap out and started new jobs elsewhere, perhaps working as salespeople in industry (there were very few possibilities outside of academic research science to do research if you had a PhD during the 1990s). This led to the current situation in some hospital research institutes—at one institute alone there are almost fifty scientists ‘waiting’ for a job, all of whom have done very good work. It’s not that they cannot leave and find another job elsewhere. But perhaps they don’t want to because they’ve invested twenty years in one field—or they have students for whom they are mentors, or a number of reasons, all of which make sense in one way or another except to hospital leadership who now want to be rid of them. I think the system as it has been in Norway is a brutal one, much more brutal  than in the USA, where you are often finished with your PhD in your mid-twenties and your post-doc period by the time you are thirty years old. By that time, your mentor has essentially given you an indication of whether or not you should continue in academia or not, or maybe you’ve figured it out for yourself. If you don’t want to continue in academia, you have many jobs to move into in the corporate and R&D world. Or you can work in civil service, or in pharmaceutical firms. It is not a problem to find a job outside of academia. That has not been the case in Norway. Norway did not plan on having so many non-MDs take PhD degrees and then want to actually use those degrees afterwards.

So what are non-MD scientists who want to do academic biomedical research facing these days? Budget cuts, very few jobs, defensive hospital leadership who know they have a real problem on their hands, a cutthroat competitive environment that in and of itself competes with a socialist undercurrent telling the scientists that they can make it because everyone is equal (such crap—everyone cannot be the best). But do they hear this from the (MD) group leaders they work for? No, because these leaders don’t want to lose their gravy trains—a pool of slave labor that is afraid to open its mouth because if it does, the individual scientists will be labeled as difficult and not team players and they will lose their ‘chance’ at any permanent position that arises. It is an unfair system and it needs to be ripped wide open and exposed for what it is—exploitation of good scientists and the perpetuation of the major lie—that there is a permanent position for each of them—‘just wait around long enough and it will happen’. But it doesn’t and the longer one waits the harder it gets to find something else—because when you are in your fifties, you are considered old in terms of being hired for a new job. My advice to the younger students—know what you are choosing if you choose to remain in academic biomedical research science—you are choosing a dearth of jobs, an uncertain future, a cutthroat environment, competition with MDs for program leaderships and an essentially anonymous identity and existence to hospital leadership. 

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.