Inflection points: where creativity stirs a revolution
I was a young Scientist, Graduate student, I just moved out of Europe, Paris of all places to Boston. From Life Science to Chemistry.
I thought I wanted to become a crystallographer and I believe I was one of a hundred who could spell it. I came from the laboratory of Ada Yonath at the Weizmann to Boston College for a fresh new Merkert Chemistry Center. I was in an inflection point on the brink of leaving biology and becoming a chemist. Boston was in an inflection point as well. DEC (Digital computers a giant in computers at the time) was loosing power in an ever growing pace to the PC/Mac world growing around, with jobs going to what was the Triangle in the Carolinas. Lots of Engineers were out of jobs, and many computer experts lost their basis.
I worked 10:00 to 02:00 every day but Saturday, I spent most of my Saturdays at the MFA and took only one evening off, where I joined one of the biggest cultural revolution of the 90s.- I thought I knew it, it just did not say so. I used to do Tuesday night at the bookseller café in Davis Square Cambridge where few former computer engineers, few story lovers and many of the then small storytelling community gathered around Brother Blue to start the underground that made Boston the Mecca of storytelling and changed the way oral literature moved around the world. It was just that everybody was there, and I was a fly on the wall. And the big blue long gifted individual was there to share a call. Storytellers came from all over the world to this venue for several years, and from there a gospel of community storytelling and community of storytellers has emerged. Its hard to explain how much story telling had changed since. Blue was the greatest listener and a teacher of listening. His gift of finding a spark where there is to be a fire is a story by itself. But - it was about what happened around Brother Blue: His followers were changing the attitude from storytelling for storytellers only – to storytelling for everyone gifted. Finding the innovative voice and expanding the definition of storyteller. The performer, the teller, the artist.
It was all there before, but Boston offered new voices, the foreigner, the poet storyteller, the musician and the non – performer one great story owner.
It was putting the great story first that made it a fascinating experience and such that attracted more and more. People came to listen to the one great story, that was often there. It was a listening venue, nurturing innovation in a way most High-tech managers would foster. It was Blue's way and the people around him took it there – but it was also an inflection point.
PC world was chasing super-computers ever so fast out of town, Boston was changing to becoming a campus city and all around the river Biotech world was being created.
Storytelling was a major at a few, but only a few Colleges (Leslie College among or only) and oral history and literature was included in few activities – partly in a few Jewish and Irish cultural places and in pubs.
Boston was to get storytelling out of the African American, Jewish or Irish Heritage or academics to the open as a community building tool for society, for schools.
"Blue nights" at the bookseller was a unique get together of all the powers of story telling, the Jewish story telling community (and coalition), the Irish and Celtic, even the pagan and the African American and the cellar as a junction created mixed potluck events, open-mikes, expanded LANES, and extended Sharing the Fire conference of storytelling on the coldest weekend of the Year every-year. In the 90s Americans felt they were losing their sense of community and many found through Tuesday night in the café that storytelling could give a sense of community. The café meeting was the "twilight-bark" for events and the community as many people came regularly from far up or down state to Tuesday night at the café, and a lousy beer and a Pizza afterward. But it all happened in Boston the center of shift, the city that created Polaroid and revolutionized photography. And Biogen Inc. was happening and a biotech buzz was in the happening. Things have shifted, it was the decade of the NMR, MRi and new things happened slowly at a pace of huge magnets. Cambridge was not to become biotech square until the late Nineties, but it was on the air. Between demonstrations (and shootings) in abortion clinics, the Boston marathon, and the Charles River Paw-wow Boston has turned to biotech capital of the world. Yet, also the Mecca of storytelling.
I learned to listen there, to the story of Boston to finding ones call. I was not looking for a story only I was looking for my own Mt Everest to climb.
I decided I will go for the neglected polymers of life. (Well - only neglected in the life-sciences at the time – I'd go back to sugars. I was interested in bio-computing and sugars and sugar binding proteins, I believed, could be the "magnetic tape of the future". (Yes, I belong to the generation that have buried the magnetic tape media technology during their studies).
It was an inflection point not only in Boston, even Crystallography was redefined, in Israel and around the globe the Ribosome Crystal Structure Summit was to be conquered – in a quest that deserves another story.
I later joined the laboratory of Prof. Vlodavsky to study complex sugars when I realized there is a lack of technology for such studies. There was my Mt. Everest. Since 1995 I was looking for a solution for carbohydrate structure determination. As early as in 1997 I started formulating a solution on the basis of 2d NMR principles and biochips, yet without a full solution. Since 1997 I made this quest public in "Automatic-sequencing carbohydrate polymers by the year 2005" forum. In 1998 I became head of Glycobiology (a title I made up and probably I was the first to ever have this title in industry) in Savion Diagnostics and started lectin database project and in 2000 Glycodata Ltd came to be (later Procognia)– in 2005 the first automatic sequencing tool for the lay-scientist was in the market at "Qiagen" on the basis of lectin array using my technology and Procognia's development, I was the founder of and a few products are in the market today. I hope I helped turning Mt Everest into a hill.
At the end of 2009, November 7th Brother Blue passed away at 88 – and Storytelling survived, many stories survived as well, .but maybe it stopped evolving, for a while.
I have found it out while writing this blog and this blog have turned into this.
A month later on December 10th Ada Yonath received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, her story is still told – she says it will take years for the dust to rest – and that is only the dust of the prize. Maybe then the story will spark.
I was a young Scientist, Graduate student, I just moved out of Europe, Paris of all places to Boston. From Life Science to Chemistry.
I thought I wanted to become a crystallographer and I believe I was one of a hundred who could spell it. I came from the laboratory of Ada Yonath at the Weizmann to Boston College for a fresh new Merkert Chemistry Center. I was in an inflection point on the brink of leaving biology and becoming a chemist. Boston was in an inflection point as well. DEC (Digital computers a giant in computers at the time) was loosing power in an ever growing pace to the PC/Mac world growing around, with jobs going to what was the Triangle in the Carolinas. Lots of Engineers were out of jobs, and many computer experts lost their basis.
I worked 10:00 to 02:00 every day but Saturday, I spent most of my Saturdays at the MFA and took only one evening off, where I joined one of the biggest cultural revolution of the 90s.- I thought I knew it, it just did not say so. I used to do Tuesday night at the bookseller café in Davis Square Cambridge where few former computer engineers, few story lovers and many of the then small storytelling community gathered around Brother Blue to start the underground that made Boston the Mecca of storytelling and changed the way oral literature moved around the world. It was just that everybody was there, and I was a fly on the wall. And the big blue long gifted individual was there to share a call. Storytellers came from all over the world to this venue for several years, and from there a gospel of community storytelling and community of storytellers has emerged. Its hard to explain how much story telling had changed since. Blue was the greatest listener and a teacher of listening. His gift of finding a spark where there is to be a fire is a story by itself. But - it was about what happened around Brother Blue: His followers were changing the attitude from storytelling for storytellers only – to storytelling for everyone gifted. Finding the innovative voice and expanding the definition of storyteller. The performer, the teller, the artist.
It was all there before, but Boston offered new voices, the foreigner, the poet storyteller, the musician and the non – performer one great story owner.
It was putting the great story first that made it a fascinating experience and such that attracted more and more. People came to listen to the one great story, that was often there. It was a listening venue, nurturing innovation in a way most High-tech managers would foster. It was Blue's way and the people around him took it there – but it was also an inflection point.
PC world was chasing super-computers ever so fast out of town, Boston was changing to becoming a campus city and all around the river Biotech world was being created.
Storytelling was a major at a few, but only a few Colleges (Leslie College among or only) and oral history and literature was included in few activities – partly in a few Jewish and Irish cultural places and in pubs.
Boston was to get storytelling out of the African American, Jewish or Irish Heritage or academics to the open as a community building tool for society, for schools.
"Blue nights" at the bookseller was a unique get together of all the powers of story telling, the Jewish story telling community (and coalition), the Irish and Celtic, even the pagan and the African American and the cellar as a junction created mixed potluck events, open-mikes, expanded LANES, and extended Sharing the Fire conference of storytelling on the coldest weekend of the Year every-year. In the 90s Americans felt they were losing their sense of community and many found through Tuesday night in the café that storytelling could give a sense of community. The café meeting was the "twilight-bark" for events and the community as many people came regularly from far up or down state to Tuesday night at the café, and a lousy beer and a Pizza afterward. But it all happened in Boston the center of shift, the city that created Polaroid and revolutionized photography. And Biogen Inc. was happening and a biotech buzz was in the happening. Things have shifted, it was the decade of the NMR, MRi and new things happened slowly at a pace of huge magnets. Cambridge was not to become biotech square until the late Nineties, but it was on the air. Between demonstrations (and shootings) in abortion clinics, the Boston marathon, and the Charles River Paw-wow Boston has turned to biotech capital of the world. Yet, also the Mecca of storytelling.
I learned to listen there, to the story of Boston to finding ones call. I was not looking for a story only I was looking for my own Mt Everest to climb.
I decided I will go for the neglected polymers of life. (Well - only neglected in the life-sciences at the time – I'd go back to sugars. I was interested in bio-computing and sugars and sugar binding proteins, I believed, could be the "magnetic tape of the future". (Yes, I belong to the generation that have buried the magnetic tape media technology during their studies).
It was an inflection point not only in Boston, even Crystallography was redefined, in Israel and around the globe the Ribosome Crystal Structure Summit was to be conquered – in a quest that deserves another story.
I later joined the laboratory of Prof. Vlodavsky to study complex sugars when I realized there is a lack of technology for such studies. There was my Mt. Everest. Since 1995 I was looking for a solution for carbohydrate structure determination. As early as in 1997 I started formulating a solution on the basis of 2d NMR principles and biochips, yet without a full solution. Since 1997 I made this quest public in "Automatic-sequencing carbohydrate polymers by the year 2005" forum. In 1998 I became head of Glycobiology (a title I made up and probably I was the first to ever have this title in industry) in Savion Diagnostics and started lectin database project and in 2000 Glycodata Ltd came to be (later Procognia)– in 2005 the first automatic sequencing tool for the lay-scientist was in the market at "Qiagen" on the basis of lectin array using my technology and Procognia's development, I was the founder of and a few products are in the market today. I hope I helped turning Mt Everest into a hill.
At the end of 2009, November 7th Brother Blue passed away at 88 – and Storytelling survived, many stories survived as well, .but maybe it stopped evolving, for a while.
I have found it out while writing this blog and this blog have turned into this.
A month later on December 10th Ada Yonath received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, her story is still told – she says it will take years for the dust to rest – and that is only the dust of the prize. Maybe then the story will spark.
