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| Members and spouses of my lab group 2012: Derek Smith, Dave Baker, Roxane Bowden, Verena Starke |
After
leaving the Carnegie Institution at the end of December 2012, many people
wanted to know more than the boilerplate story I gave them about my husband’s
desire to be in California. This reason was in fact true, but the atmosphere of
the Geophysical Laboratory had changed under Rus Hemley’s leadership, and in my
opinion, not for the best. I admit that I was extremely disappointed that
Carnegie President Dick Meserve chose Rus over me. My relationship with Rus
swung from polite to adversarial almost immediately. For example, Rus tried to
tell me, and maybe other staff members, what we should be doing. Many of us
were appointed to committees that held no importance. In general, I felt for
the first time that Carnegie really wasn’t appreciative of the work I was
doing.
Hemley
and staff member Dave Mao had invented a new method for making synthetic
diamonds in the lab using methane gas at high pressure and temperature. They
partnered with some diamond investors from England and Israel, Clive and Ouzi, and formed a
business “Washington Diamonds, LLC” sometime around fall of 2010. Carnegie
Board members and the President were convinced that the diamond business was
going to make them a lot of money. The Carnegie Institution of Washington is a
non-profit organization, so we wondered how a profit-making business would
impact our tax status. More and more we noticed secret business meetings and
locked doors on campus. People gathered in my office frequently to complain
about the commercial venture. Not a day went by without someone expressing
anger about how the “old Lab” was no more.
About
the same time, Bob Hazen was in contact with Jesse Ausubel at the Sloan
Foundation. Hazen, a polymath, was promoting a program to study carbon in the
deep earth, a project that I had started with George Cody, Andrew Steele, Bjorn
Mysen as well as Bob and Rus Hemley years before. When the Sloan grant was
awarded, Cody, Steelie, and I were surprised that Sloan required that
scientists from places other than Carnegie receive the lion’s share of the
funding. I was disappointed that our research was set aside. As the Deep Carbon
project unfolded, some funds came our way, but neither George, Steelie, nor I
engaged much with this effort.
Staff
members began to discuss whether “small” science or “big” science was more
important. Small science referred to what an individual investigator could do
on her/his own. Big science meant you were part of a large consortium or a team
working on, contributing, and possibly leading that effort. Staff member Doug Rumble
was one who made the transition from “small” science to “big” science through
the support of the Sloan Foundation to help design and build a new generation,
large format mass spectrometer. He managed to launch a new career for himself,
being an expert in the instrument’s new findings and consulting around the world
on its utility. Personally, I found this discussion about big vs. small to be
tedious. I had worked in both “small” and “big” science efforts over the years.
I had my own vision for what I wanted to accomplish and resented being told
what I should study. Others felt similarly. My office served as a local
therapist’s office for a significant part of my day. It seemed like 40% of my
valuable time was spent on Lab politics. I could not imagine ending my career
in this environment.
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| Doug Rumble with his children, Ann and Ken (right) and daughter in law Meg, 2012 |
I
started interviewing for potential positions in California starting in 2010. My
first interview was at Humboldt State University, Chris’s alma mater, located
on the coast of Northern California. The position was Associate Dean of the
School of Marine Science. I would be in charge of an oceanographic vessel and
have an office overlooking a beautiful part of the California coast. When I
mentioned my salary requirements and my laboratory wishes, the Dean blanched.
The position was terminated, ostensibly because of the economic downturn.
My
second interview was at Univ. of Southern California to be the Director of
their Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. I had been encouraged by
many of USC’s faculty to apply and think big. When I interviewed, I was asked
if I thought I could direct an institute and do research at the same time. Of
course, I answered confidently. I had done so when working at NSF. When I
thought about this later, I realized how insulting that question was. The two
previous Wrigley directors did both—why couldn’t I? Fortunately, they chose
another candidate. Given recent problems in USC’s administration since then, I
dodged a bullet.
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| When Chris asked what UC Merced looked like: "middle of nowhere and cows" |
My
third interview landed a good offer and startup package at UC Merced. It was
difficult to tell some of my long-term Geophysical Lab colleagues that I would
be leaving the lab. Steelie knew I was interviewing of course, and Steve
Shirey, but I kept things quiet with George Cody and Bjorn Mysen. They
suspected I was looking around and weren’t surprised when I told them I had an
offer and was seriously considering it. Doug Rumble was another story. Chris
and I made a reservation for Doug and his wife Karen at one of our favorite
restaurants. When the wine was served, we let them know we’d be going. My
farewell party after 35+ years was originally to be cake and champagne at 3 pm,
but reason won out, and we had a small symposium followed by a blowout Mexican
dinner.
Nine
months after arriving at UC Merced, my phone rang with the news that Rus Hemley
had stepped down as Director. George Cody replaced him immediately as Acting
Director. Whatever the reasons for the abrupt action, my departure to UC Merced
was a warning sign to the Board of Trustees that things at the Geophysical Lab
were not going well. By the time I left the Lab after 35 and a half years, I
felt like an exile. In early 2014, Dick Meserve retired as President followed
by the appointment of Matthew Scott. Within a year, Scott invited me to a
Carnegie Trustee’s dinner in Palo Alto. Chris and I drove over to attend,
figuring we’d hang out on the sidelines with George Cody, drinking some good
wine. I was fully surprised to be seated at the head table with President Scott
and Board Chairman Steve Fodor and welcomed back to the Carnegie “family”. It
felt good—really good.
Although
my leaving the Lab was based somewhat on negative feelings, I landed at one of
the finest public universities in the world at the time when they were
rebounding from the recession of 2008-2009. My world has expanded enormously
and I’ve been given the opportunity to give back to a community of students,
staff, and faculty some of the wisdom I’ve learned over the years. When I
received the ALS diagnosis in 2016, Carnegie staff responded by throwing a full
blown, outrageously wonderful conference in my honor—Marilyn Madness.
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| Marilyn Madness Geophysical Lab 2016! |
L. Nancy Drew story #2
For
many years, I wrote long email stories about “Nancy Drew”, a ficticious
character who solved mysteries on the Carnegie campus. Her first antagonist was
a raccoon aptly named Rocky, who drank liquid nitrogen from the outdoor tap,
stole cookies from Lunch Club, and created general mayhem. I enjoyed writing
these stories. Below is one that I sent around the campus to let everyone know
I was leaving. I invented names that sounded like names of people on campus:
George Cody, Doug Rumble, Steve Shirey, Andrew Steele, Bjorn Mysen.
On 12.09.2012 20:29, Marilyn Fogel
wrote:
Nancy
had been working hard, maybe even too hard some might say, keeping her head
down and not making too many waves. She'd easily solved the Mystery of the
Missing Forks. It turned out that when she was invited to a party at Dr. Lemon
Peel's house, she saw the forks nailed to the roof of his chicken coop. (The
coop was a favorite feeding spot of our old nemesis Rocky Raccoon).
She
also solved the Case of the Generator with Two Loose Screws. Never
mind
a 6000 amp breaker, raccoons had moved in via the cozy stove pipe
which
malfunctioned in summer. Nancy suspected that Rocky, frustrated by the lack of
access to Dr. Peel's chickens, had moved back to the Broad Branch Rd. campus
once again. Following the storm that resulted in the 2nd generator
failure, Nancy conducted a stake out, carried out a “smoke out” with belching
diesel fuel and set those varmints high tailing back to Rock Creek Park.
So,
this leaves our heroine back in the lab. She'd worked for a variety of scientists
during her tenure. There was Born Again Gleason, who had her grinding bits of
glass and melting it to insane temperatures. She would never forget her summer
with By and Large Roadie in which she was tasked with finding loose
hamiltonians that had escaped from his NMR lab. A month of helping out Dr. Beer
Mug Jumble gave her the latest on top restaurants in the world, along with ion
paths in giant wombat-like mass spectrometers. Nancy did not strictly limit
herself to the Geophysical Lab, either. She did her time in the Geochemistry
Building separating Rhenium and osmium from some really old rocks that all
looked either gray, dark gray, medium gray, or light gray. Her supervisor
there, Dr. Peeved Enquiry was at the pinnacle of Nerdom, with his pens tucked
into his shirt placket and his obsession with diamonds, not as objects in
women's jewelry, but the lightest of gray rocks.
Nancy
wanted to work with a female staff member though. Brooklyn Vocal,
one
of the few female staff members on campus known for her east coast,
brash,
outspoken ways, was high on Nancy’s list. Why, Dr. Vocal was so
yappy
that her postdocs and students needed to work with ear-phones on so that they could
get some peace and quiet and actually think.
Brooklyn
(really from Jersey, not New York, but did you ever hear her
pronounce
"coffee" (cawfee) or "dog" (dawg)?) was on a Mission. Every
leaf,
every feather, every bone, every microbe, every variously-shaded
gray
rock needed to have isotope values measured on them. Nancy wondered why. Was
Dr. Vocal striving for election in the prestigious National Academy like many
of her colleagues? Did she have some special knowledge that at the stroke of some
unknown date the mass spectrometers would turn into pumpkins and mice?
Nancy
needed to solve this mystery. She was assigned, of course, the
tedious
job of weighing microgram quantities of all the above items into little pieces
of tin and silver. (Again Nancy groaned at the waste of good silver going for
science rather than jewelry). She began to wonder, where was Dr. Vocal when she
wasn't being her noisy self? Nancy observed Dr. Peel, Born Again, Dr. Roadie,
Beer Mug, and Peeved Enquiry carrying on numerous closed door chats. From her
father, Chief Detective Drew (now hopelessly confined to a wheelchair), she
borrowed his old listening device. This device, running off of an old car
battery with vacuum tube electronics, could pick up the sound of a flea at 25
meters.
The
next morning, Nancy sauntered into Dr. Vocal's office and asked for
her
"advice" on a problem with her roses, her dog, her boy friend, her
experiments,
and her career. Familiar with that sort of request, Dr. Vocal put on her
“psychologist’s face”, while Nancy sat in the blue office chair and spilled her
guts for an hour. [Vocal always kept a box of tissues at the ready, for those
who cried. Nancy had seen many come out of Vocal’s office red-eyed, but
smiling.]
As
Nancy unloaded, they were interrupted by 2 staff members, 1 director, 3 grad
students, 4 postdocs, and a custodian.
After these interruptions, Brooklyn looked slightly more puzzled than
usual and said, "What were we talking about?" Nancy took the
opportunity to walk to the side of her desk, plant the "bug" in the
mess of papers, samples, tissues, and pens on Vocal's desk. Then said, “Oh, it
was nothing. I just thought I might need some advice about grad school.”
The
next day, Nancy weighed samples all the while listening to
conversations
in Brooklyn’s office. She heard the words “California”,
“negotiations”,
and “transition”. She heard words like “boo hoo” and
“congratulations”.
Piecing it all together she realized that within
months,
there would be a disappearing staff member.
Screwing
up her courage to confront the oft-times stern Dr. Vocal, she
tapped
timidly at the door. “Dr. Vocal? Could we chat?” “What? More
problems
Nancy? Can’t you figure life out on your own? What will happen
when
I move to California?”
Oops,
the word was out. Stay tuned for Chapter 2.
Chapter
2:
If
you’ve made it this far, I’ll write as Marilyn Fogel.
Friends
and colleagues, after 35 wonderful years, I will be leaving the
Lab
and taking a job as Professor of Ecology at the University of
California
at Merced. Not only is Merced the opposite of Washington, DC,
but
UC Merced is the opposite of Carnegie. Merced is an agricultural,
small,
no-restaurant, economically depressed area in the Central Valley of California.
UC Merced was started in 2005, is surrounded by cow pastures, and a work in
progress. After 35 years and at the age of 60 (as of 19/9/12), it offers a
wonderful opportunity for me to do something completely different than I’ve
done before.
My
husband, Chris Swarth, was born and raised in California. When we
married
26 years ago, it was our “plan” to move west after 10 years. But who could
leave the warm, comfortable environment of the Geophysical Lab? It took some
thinking and realizing that this opportunity offers us new people, a new
environment, and a new life, all the while being somewhat “old” people.
We’ll
be leaving DC after Christmas, in January 2013, driving across the US, and
starting to teach by January 15th. My new colleagues on the UC Merced faculty
will be 50% women, and I will be the oldest person in the group!
Following the story, I include a letter from a colleague Neil Irvine,
an igneous petrologist.
From: T. Neil Irvine <nirvine@ciw.edu>
Subject: Re: [GL] Nancy Drew and the Case of the Disappearing Staff Member
Date: November 29, 2012 11:23:36 AM PST
To:
Marilyn Fogel
<m.fogel@gl.ciw.edu>
Cc:
irvine@gl.ciw.edu, lirvine@gmu.edu
November 29, 2012
Dear Marilyn,
I was very sorry to read your message that you were leaving the
Geophysical Lab. All things considered it was not a surprise that you are
going, but the announcement still had impact (even though I have typically
managed to wait until the last minute to respond)! You have been the
brightest of lights around here for the past 35 years—and you unquestionably
rate as the most delightful staff member the Lab has ever had. As
I’ve mentioned to you before (probably more than once), during your first year
or two around here (while you were working with Tom on Upton Street) you
impressed me as being shy and extremely quiet, and I would never have imagined
then that you would turn out to be a star Shakespearian actor, the verbose
“Brooklyn Vocal”, a renegade researcher on Svalbard while simultaneously
sporting a tux and toting a rifle to fight off the polar bears—and on and
on. Certainly the place will never be the same without you!
You have also been an outstanding scientific staff member in respect to your
productivity and your abilities to motivate pre- and post-doctoral fellows and
collaborate with colleagues. You and I are probably as far apart in
our research interests as we could possibly be, nevertheless I have always
thought of you as the second-best person around here to whom I could go to for
reliable advice on my laboratory problems. (You are second only to Larry
Finger, who I necessarily have to keep on a pedestal above all others!)
My personal thanks to you for this help and for everything you have done for
our Lab community.
Lorna and I wish you and Chris the very best in California. We
expect you make a host of new friends there, and we expect you both also to
find and face many new challenges and to laugh your way through them.
I wish you good fortune, too, in finding a host of important new isotopic
and other scientific problems, all of which you can solve!
Sincerely,
Neil (and Lorna) Irvine
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| Advice for others, Marilyn Madness 2016 |
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