Winter comes to Norway

Scenic Elverum

Icicle formations

Snowy road in Elverum

Snowy Oslo

Trees in Ullevålsveien

Vår Frelsers gravlund (cemetery)

City pigeon

View of St. Olav's Catholic church (hospital to the left)

right before sunrise

Winter sunrise

Christmas potpourri

So many wonderful fragrances and colors at Christmas time, starting with the wonderful evergreen fragrance that emanates from the Christmas tree. Every time you walk through the front door, the first smell you smell is the Christmas tree. This year there were several new ornaments that joined the ornament fold, and they were a welcome sight on the tree.

And then there are the Christmas flowers--amaryllises and poinsettias--so beautiful to look at as they grow and flower during December. This year our three amaryllises had three different colors, white, red, and white with red stripes.

My indoor orange tree produced over sixty small oranges this year; the tree 'casts' the oranges to the floor when they are ripe, quite funny to witness and to listen to when sitting in our living room, as you can hear them rolling along the floor before they hit a piece of furniture. These small fragrant oranges find their way into the smoothies we make each morning.

And as far as fragrances go, I have to mention the Christmas food--especially the smell of boneless pork ribs rolled in and roasted together with garlic, fennel seed, rosemary, sage and thyme that we ate for dinner on Christmas Day, served together with a potpourri of vegetables (eggplant, squash cherry tomatoes, and potatoes). The pork tasted as good as it smelled while roasting in the oven.

Also made duck with orange sauce for Christmas Eve, served together with asparagus, broccoli and orange pieces; it too was very good and very colorful.

Other dinners have included boiled cod one evening, and elk steak another evening, and we're not done yet--my husband will be making salted sheep ribs for New Year's Eve. We've eaten some good cakes and desserts as well--Italian panettone, homemade gingerbread cookies, and orange mousse, among others.

Always a special time of year--Christmas with its food, desserts, trees, ornaments, decorations and flowers. We prepare for it, we enjoy its coming, and we accept its passing, because it moves us into a new year with fresh expectations and challenges. The Christmas season is about honoring our individual traditions (in our home, both American and Norwegian), our family heritage, home and family, our faith, as well as about visits with friends, and having the time to enjoy and to truly appreciate them all.

A Christmas poem

I have been writing poetry for years, and just recently came upon this poem that I wrote when I was a teenager. I thought it might be a good poem for the Christmas season. 

Silent Stars

Wander across sea and sky--

Stars nightborne in flight.

Carry on across all time--

Centuries ago began your light.

Go on and move into the night.

Your silence is heard then,

Your light has touched all men.

And once upon ago two thousand years,

You shone upon no ordinary man. 

copyright 2011 Parables and Voices
P.M. De Angelis

The gift of time

I’ve been enjoying the preparation time for the Christmas holiday, as I always do. There is something about Advent, the spiritual preparation for Christmas, as well as the material preparations in the form of purchases of gifts and food. I am always reminded of how privileged we are at this time of year especially. We have what we need and more. It is actually becoming quite difficult to know what to tell others when they ask what I want for Christmas. And that is true of very many people I know. We don’t really need much more than we have in the materialistic sense. Of course it’s always nice to give and to receive gifts—that’s part of the holiday spirit and what the season is about—but it’s not about how much gifts cost. It’s the thought that counts; we think of others and they think of us. My colleagues and I exchange small gifts each year (we’ve been doing this for years now)—spice tea, Christmas candy, small Christmas decorations, candle-holders, and the like. There have also been a lot of get-togethers with friends this month; I’ve preferred these personal gatherings to the impersonal Christmas work parties, which are usually too large and too loud. Always nice to get together for dinner for a few hours with good friends, or for a coffee break--with time to indulge in good conversation, something that is worth gold in these days of quick efficient communication and rushed activities.  

The gift of time. If we manage to give that to each other, we’ve accomplished something of worth. I think it is the best gift we can give each other. To know that someone wants to take the time to meet us, to spend a few hours with us, to go deeper than surface conversation—those are amazing gifts. I think more people need to know that they are valued by others. Unfortunately, sometimes even in the best of circumstances, there are some who do not feel worthy of the attention of others. They are good people, special people, kind people, but they suffer from lack of self-confidence that holds them back and makes them choose what is often not good for them. I can think of two instances where this is the case, both involving young people. My hope for them is that the warmth of the Christmas season seeps into them and makes them truly understand how much they are loved. 

Living on crumbs

It occurred to me this past week that perhaps abusive workplaces damage employees in more ways than we care to admit. After several recent conversations with colleagues and friends, I can only conclude that this seems to be the case. The type of abusive workplace I am talking about has little to do with physical abuse, although I know that occurs in some workplaces. The most common type of abuse is psychological and emotional, and I firmly believe that years of this type of abuse will damage the recipients, much as a psychologically abusive personal relationship does. And the damage may not be reversible. That is the frightening part. We don’t like to talk about this, but just because we don’t talk about it doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist. The recipients of the abuse may carry their feelings of fear, shame, guilt and loss of self-esteem home with them, and take it out on the people with whom they live. Or if they live alone, they may take it out on themselves by living in unhealthy ways. Whatever the situation, the abuse leaves deep scars, and the employees who have experienced this type of abuse may not be able to leave their work situations, in the same way as an abused spouse may be unable to leave his or her situation. There may be no energy left to do so, or to fight back, or to deal with the situation.

What type of abuse am I talking about? Bullying, derision, grandstanding always at the expense of others, total disregard for the feelings of others, lack of emotional intelligence, verbal aggression, cursing, domination of meetings or conversations by the same people who flatten anyone who tries to get a word in, freezing out specific employees, being negative to what specific employees suggest no matter what the situation, deriding ideas during brainstorming meetings, making employees feel like crap, embarrassing or harassing them publicly (telling employees, ‘if you don’t like it, leave’ or telling employees that they’re lazy or mediocre in a public meeting). The list is endless. Have I seen such behavior in workplaces? Yes I have. What does an abusive workplace do to its employees? What are the scars it leaves on them? I would suggest that it creates a pattern of hope and disappointment that becomes cyclical. In the hope cycle, employees experience a feeling of being uplifted, perhaps because a boss has acknowledged their work for once. I call the experience being ‘grateful for crumbs’. In this case, the crumbs can be, for example, a very infrequent acknowledgment of employees’ work (or existence) in an environment that otherwise criticizes or ignores its employees. In the disappointment cycle, employees feel that their situation is hopeless and that there is little possibility of change. And then comes the hope cycle that brings with it that feeling that change is possible. This is very similar to an abusive relationship—between spouses, or between children and parents, between siblings, and so on.

You can imagine how children would develop in a home environment where parents were critical of and negative about most things they did, and only occasionally ‘threw a dog a bone’. That’s living on crumbs. Or parents who ignore their children, except to ‘show them off’ to others when it’s time to be politically correct. Children are highly sensitive to parental behavior, and they will work overtime to try to ‘read’ their parents. The appreciation of ‘crumbs’ becomes learned behavior after a while, but the recipients of abusive behavior are so focused on trying to ‘please’, that growth in other areas becomes stifled or stunted. They never completely learn self confidence, they become afraid of authority, or they became afraid to voice their opinions or ideas for fear of being derided, yelled at, or embarrassed publicly. The scars persist well into adulthood. The mistake we make as a society is to think that adults can tackle everything that is thrown at them, just because they are adults. The assumption is automatically that they have to tackle everything. What happens when or if they cannot? I’ve seen one example of that recently—someone who hit the wall big-time. There are bullies in the workplace, just as there were on the school playground. When the bullies get control of the workplace, the employees who get beaten up are often the ones who may not have had a lot of self confidence to begin with. Or they may be the ones who are living on crumbs in personal situations as well. Or they may have self confidence, but were raised to not question authority, to not stick their heads up. So if they are unfairly treated, there is no real recourse for them. They are not the ones likely to go over the boss’ head to complain to the higher-ups.

I have been told sometimes that I bring up problems but that I don’t discuss the solutions for them. That may be the case at times, but it may be the case simply because I don’t know what the solutions are. What do you do if you are an older man, for example, whose workplace bullies him, whose wife is sick, whose children depend on him, who knows that his chances of finding another job are next to null at his age? What then? What do you tell that person? Go find another job? Think positive and it will all work out? Blame him for his situation? And even if he is partly to blame, because he has let himself be satisfied with crumbs for many years, how does it help him if society blames him for his entire situation? We like to think that this is not a common situation; the fact is, in my father’s generation, this was a quite common scenario, at least where I grew up. It’s so easy to judge others, and in the end, ourselves. We are often as hard on ourselves as we are on others. The key word is hard. Maybe things would change if more people practiced being softer. Kindness is so underrated. We need more of it in society, in workplaces and in homes. Perhaps the next time a boss is abusive, we need to remind him or her of the value of being kind. That’s at least one solution I can suggest; I have no idea if it will work.  

Fear of the dark and of the creatures that live there

An interesting discussion this past weekend with some friends who were visiting—we ended up talking about the horror movies that have scared us the most. All of us are adults, and all of us ended up being scared, as in many sleepless nights after having viewed them. Scared as in lights on in all rooms of the house when alone, creepy images that seem to be imprinted on our brains forever—that sort of thing. The Grudge, The Ring, and I Am Legend were the films mentioned by several people, and it occurred to me that what these films all have in common are characters that are hideously deformed or grotesque in some way. In The Grudge and The Ring, female characters have been transformed into evil creatures with long dark hair that covers their faces, but when those faces are exposed, they are terrifying. They also have a tendency to glide along hallway walls or to crawl down stairs, and they have a nasty habit of appearing where you would least want them to turn up—in your bed or in an elevator. The shock value alone of having seen them is enough to make you want to sleep with all the lights on for many nights afterwards. The use of children in horror films can also be quite shocking—children who become evil, possessed children, little monsters--as in Children of the Damned; this offends our sense of normalcy. It’s not supposed to be that way. What scares us in I Am Legend are the humanoid monsters with superhuman strength (vampires in the novella by Richard Matheson on which the film was based) who roam the streets of the city by the thousands at night looking for prey. They can scale the outer walls of buildings and cross a city park in record speed, screeching and growling. But they cannot tolerate the light of day, which gives the protagonist (in this film Will Smith) the daylight hours to do the things he must do—find food and fuel for his car, and try to find other survivors like himself. But he must be home by sunset in order to lock down his house so that these creatures cannot find him or get inside his house. But of course you know they will at some point, and that he will make a mistake that will allow them to do so, and that is what is scary—when will it happen? It’s only a question of time. We can empathize with the protagonist; what would we do if we were in his shoes? How would we survive, and would we? Or would we go mad?

When I was a child, I thought that if I concentrated hard enough, I could create the imaginary creatures that scared me. Just that thought alone, that I might have the power to create those creatures, scared me. Where did those scary creatures come from? Perhaps from the fairytales that were read to us as children—among them Grimm’s fairytales about witches (Hansel and Gretel; Snow White), wolves (Little Red Riding Hood) and other odd and sometimes evil creatures. Perhaps they also came from our religious education that taught us about God and the Devil. They did not come from TV or films, as my parents did not purchase a TV until I was almost thirteen years old; I did not start going to movies until I was in my early teens. When I was a teenager, I was sure that by the time I reached adulthood, I would no longer be scared when watching horror or supernatural films. That has not proven to be the case. I need only think of The Shining, I Am Legend, The Grudge, The Exorcist, REC, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (the original TV movie), Burnt Offerings, and a number of other films in this genre, to remind myself of the effect they had on me upon first viewing. I think that fears of the dark or of monsters in the closet or under the bed are primal fears; we do not see well in the dark, whereas our predators (mostly carnivorous animals in early times) did. They had the advantage. So we built shelters to keep them out and used fire to allow us to see but also to keep predators away. We are thankful for the protection of our modern homes—with doors and windows we can lock against anything or anybody that might want to hurt us. We turn on our alarm systems to be warned if an intruder breaks in. But what happens if the intruder is not human? If we keep the lights on, will that keep the non-human intruders away? What scares us is the possibility that our ‘protections’ are merely illusions—can locked doors and windows keep out things that really want to get in? Our locks, alarm systems and indoor lighting cannot protect us against supernatural threats. Films like Paranormal Activity, The Entity, and The Exorcist scare us exactly for this reason. And what happens if people become possessed by evil spirits, as happened in The Shining or in so many other supernatural horror films? How do you fight that type of evil? In the final analysis, perhaps horror films in general make us thankful for the good old routine daily life that we live; we do not have to fight off predators on a daily basis, nor do we have to hunt our own food. Most of us living in industrialized societies do not have to risk our lives each day in order to survive. 

Rainbow in the Akerselva river

I took this video last month on one of my weekend walking tours along the Akerselva river. A lovely autumn day, the rushing water of the river, the spray dancing above the water, catching the sunlight, and suddenly--a rainbow. A lot of people were taking photos of the river that day. Enjoy........

About the film Shoot the Moon

I sat and watched the 1982 film Shoot the Moon last night on TCM; it has to be at least the tenth time I’ve seen the film. It is hands-down the best movie I’ve ever seen about marital problems, impending divorce, and the effects of a broken relationship on children. I love this film for its raw honesty and the incredible acting of Albert Finney (George), Diane Keaton (Faith), and Dana Hill (who plays their eldest daughter Sherry). These are characters that you can actually like and get to know--better put, these are people that you can relate to. Each time I watch the movie, I realize that the entire story resembles life—messy, chaotic, no pat answers, situations that are not explainable or forgivable or black-and-white. There are no easy answers in this movie, and no contrived happy endings. If you choose to interpret the ending as a new beginning for the estranged couple, you are a romantic. I am not so sure, even after the tenth viewing. And that could say more about me than about the character of Faith, who remains ambiguous about her feelings for George even after he dumps her for a younger woman (Sandy, played by Karen Allen) with a small son, moves out, and goes to live with Sandy. I like Faith’s ambiguity; she isn’t sure what she wants, even when she gets involved with Frank (played by Peter Weller), who is the contractor she hires to build the tennis court she has always wanted. She still loves George, even though she knows that so much of their relationship is irretrievably broken. She is jealous of Sandy and has no desire to hear about her. She has four daughters to take care of and does a good job of taking care of them in a difficult situation. She could have demanded more attention and focus on herself; she could have wallowed in self pity. But she doesn’t. Her father’s illness and her mother’s interference in her life are also issues that she deals with, in addition to the demise of her marriage. This too is the way real life is. You don’t get to choose all the time what you want to deal with—one problem at a time. Sometimes there are multiple problems that get dumped on you all at once, and the only choice you have is to sink or swim. George for his part still loves Faith, but he is in love with Sandy because she pays attention to him, like Faith used to before she got totally involved in raising their children. He is also a jealous person, aggressive, and has an explosive temper; he doesn’t like Frank and doesn’t like the idea of Frank hanging around his old home getting to know Faith or his children.

The most poignant scenes in the film are those between Sherry and George, and Sherry and Faith. Sherry, who is a teenager on the verge of adulthood, is most affected by her parents’ split, and desperately tries to understand what is going on. She doesn’t get many clear answers from either parent. What they do manage to impart to her is how much they love her, despite their own problems. Sherry gets to see her parents as flawed people; again, this is how real life is. The scene when she asks her mother why husbands and wives don’t wait for each other as they pass through doors on their way to new rooms—in essence, why they don’t share their new experiences with each other—is touching. Or when she asks her father if he loves Timmy (Sandy’s son) more than his own daughters and George says no. But Sherry knows (and verbalizes) her doubt about his priorities; she knows that Timmy will ultimately usurp her and her sisters’ places in their father’s heart. Sandy will see to that. This is also a reality many people in such a situation do not want to deal with. It’s easier to lie, to say that nothing will be different, when of course nothing could be further from the truth. Children know the truth; they can intuit it. Children in the same family may deal with their parents’ divorce differently. Sherry is the oldest daughter and the hardest hit. It’s hard not to sympathize with her anger and confusion. Shoot the Moon is timeless despite its being thirty years old; it has as much to say to us today about marriage and divorce as it did when it was made.     

The value of being unreasonable

Of all the quotes about change that I posted yesterday, Shaw’s “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man” stuck with me the most, although the others certainly made a memorable impression. I love quotes that get me thinking. This one made me think about how I face and have faced the world and my workplace during the past few years. I don’t think I’ve been very reasonable. I have not always tackled the changes around me, perhaps because there were too many of them to deal with all at one time. I don’t adapt immediately to anything, but I can adapt over time, provided I can see the value in making the change. I don’t always see the value of doing so. Most changes have to do with the way research is done now; the new focus is on getting researchers to accept a research world that is defined by large research groups and extensive national and international group collaborations. A far cry from the research world of twenty years ago, where working in small groups, often alone, was the norm, at least in the environments where I worked. At that time, decisions were often made alone with perhaps some input and advice along the way; now, there are several meetings with multiple individuals to discuss specific issues before a decision is made concerning them. This new approach shifts responsibility for decisions from one person to several persons, which is advantageous in some respects; I can see the value in this approach. However, the loss of autonomy as an independent creative researcher and the dilution of responsibility are two major concerns that could have negative repercussions. It is easier to adapt to change, to fit in and to stop challenging, rather than to stand out or stand alone, to protest, or to challenge the voices of reason telling you to be reasonable. Or better yet, to be realistic. It remains to be seen whether the current trends and approaches will lead to increased productivity and effectiveness (the current definition of progress) or if unreasonableness is the better approach to ensure progress, as Shaw apparently believed. 

Some great quotes about change

·         You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take. -Wayne Gretzy

·         If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living. -Gail Sheehy

·         Change before you have to. -Jack Welch

·         By changing nothing, nothing changes. -Tony Robbins

·         If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. -Tony Robbins

·         Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change. –Jim Rohn

·         When in doubt, choose change. -Lily Leung

·         In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. -Warren Buffett

·         Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. -Andre Gide

·         Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

·         I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. –Michael Jordan

·         The best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing. -Theodore Roosevelt

·         The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. –Elbert Hubbard

·         As soon as anyone starts telling you to be “realistic,” cross that person off your invitation list. –John Eliot

·         God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. -Reinhold Niebuhr

·         The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -George Bernard Shaw

·         Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. –Life’s Little Instruction Book

·         Never too old, never too bad, never too late, never too sick to start from scratch once again. -Bikram Choudhury.

·         Someone was hurt before you, wronged before you, hungry before you, frightened before you, beaten before you, humiliated before you, raped before you… yet, someone survived… You can do anything you choose to do. –Maya Angelou

Reflections on change

If we are honest with ourselves, we know that dealing with changes that are thrown at us is a difficult task, especially in a work situation, but also in our personal lives. Scores of self-help books have been written on the subject of how to deal with change, how to start anew, how to let go of the past, how to let go of situations that we have outgrown, how to face the future, how to start today, how to think positively about change, how to rearrange our mindsets. The irony of life is that we change whether we want to or not. We can try to resist change, block it, ignore it, run from it, or drown it out. It doesn’t matter what we do; change will find us. We look in the mirror and find the subtle changes that tell us that we are getting older. We watch our parents grow old and pass away. We watch our children grow up, move away, and start their own lives and families. We cannot prevent any of it. We cannot make time stand still. No matter what we do or say, life goes on, people move on, careers end, and perhaps throughout all of the inevitable changes, a sense of humor is our saving grace. Or reading the words of others who have thought about and reflected upon the same things. At every point in our lives, we need inspiration, support, positive refills, and encouragement. It is an unfortunate misconception that adults do not need these things. I am often told that children and young adults need them more. And that may be true, but as adults, we still need to be inspired and encouraged. If we have faith in some higher power, something outside ourselves, if we belong to a church or to a spiritual society, we at least can nurture a lifeline to that part of ourselves that rears its head from time to time in an effort to tell us how things are going inside of us, in our hearts and souls. If we don’t have that, there are many books that offer inspiration and encouragement for many of the problems we face.

I often remind myself when I feel stuck in a rut, that some of the best things that ever happened in my own life, happened simply because I changed my life, after much reflection, confusion, disorientation and sometimes anger and depression. I left a painful relationship when I was in my twenties and chose to be alone rather than live a lie. I could have stayed and been miserable. I left a ‘safe’ job in my twenties (a unionized research technician job with great benefits that my father told me to keep) and chose to work in a non-unionized research position, one that allowed me to travel to international conferences, for example, Cambridge England, where I met my husband. I could have stayed in my safe job and refused to move on. But then I would never have met my husband or subsequently completed my PhD. I wasn’t focused on looking for a new relationship at the time I met my husband; I was in fact ready to leave my job in Manhattan after working there seven years, and was interviewing for positions around the USA when I met him in England. Meeting him resulted in my leaving my birth country in my early thirties and moving abroad in order to give that relationship a chance, learning a new language, and embracing a new culture, workplace and degree program. I was not raised in a household that thrived on change. My parents were good solid people, but their lives (and to some extent ours when we were younger) were defined by my father’s illnesses and job problems. Would they have loved to have traveled together to Italy and England when he retired? Of course. But by the time they reached the point when they could have done that, other realities took over their lives. My father died young, at sixty-seven. Neither he nor my mother got the chance to do many of the things their children have done. Their lives became more defined by fear as they grew older, mostly due to my father’s illnesses—afraid to travel, afraid to upset the daily routines, afraid to change the daily routines. That is perhaps the way of life, that each new generation does more and dares more than the previous generation. It’s hard to say. The point is that it is best to be proactive about change, to see the future and to at least try to adjust to what is coming. We cannot know the future, we can only live now, but I still think it best to be open to change and to actually choose it, instead of having it forced upon you. 

How small we are before nature

I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the news coming out of New York and New Jersey concerning Sandy. Some of the news is good, some of it is not. The good news is that so many people are helping each other, volunteering for the relief help, and so on. The bad news is that there are still many areas without electricity, without heat, without water (no shower or toilet facilities), without phone connection; I know people who cannot return to their homes because of these problems. As a friend of mine on Facebook commented—“how small we are before nature, even in one of the most modern cities in the world”. It’s true. We like to think that we can tackle most of the tough things that life throws at us; most of the time we do. But sometimes we cannot, and not through any fault of our own. It’s worth thinking about. Most homes in New York and New Jersey get their gas and electricity from power companies like Con Edison, Hess and the like. If you lost electrical power for a week, your refrigerator would not work, nor would any other electrical device you might have. This means that any food you had in the refrigerator would eventually spoil; ditto for food in the freezers. Unless you had a backup generator, you would be stuck in a situation that many people find themselves in now in New York City boroughs and in New Jersey. Some of them cannot get out of their homes to buy food because the areas they live in remain flooded, or because they cannot use their cars due to lack of fuel. Even if they could buy food, there would be no way to store it without a functioning refrigerator. The question of course is whether there is food to be bought, since deliveries of foodstuffs have been limited or non-existent in some areas. The same is true for car fuel; it is running low and gas stations are reporting long lines at the pumps. As far as food preparation, people can prepare food using gas stoves, providing that the natural gas supply to the stoves is functioning. In Norway however, we would have a huge problem, since most stoves are electric, not gas. We thus would not be able to store food or prepare it. We would also be without shower and toilet facilities. We would not be able to charge our cell phones, even though the cell phone networks might be working. We would not have regular telephone service; we would not have internet or cable TV connections. This would impact on the amount of information we would be privy to, in terms of critical updates on the situation we were experiencing. We would be cut off, in other words, like many residents of New York and New Jersey are, and probably like many residents in Haiti and Cuba are, since they were the first to get hit by Sandy. It is truly hard to believe that given all our modern technology, that we are in fact at the mercy of nature. It is a fallacy to think that we have any real control over what nature can throw at us—hurricanes, storm surges, earthquakes, tsunamis, or tornadoes. We can prepare as best we can, and hope for the best.

Reflections on this past week

Super storm Sandy and its brutal attack on the east coast of the USA was the major news story this past week, after it swept through Haiti and Cuba causing much destruction there first. It was also the event that dominated most of my waking hours this past week, since I was unable to get in touch with a few people until Wednesday evening. I have now heard from family members and friends who were directly affected by the storm, so I know that they’re all safe. Some are still without power, a few just had power restored today, some others are waiting in long lines at gas stations in order to fill up their cars, and one of my friends has not been able to return to her home in Long Beach, New York because of the extensive damage there. I felt very restless this week; I wanted to help, but could not physically do so from here. And it would not have been possible for me to have traveled there either since most flights into and out of the New York area were cancelled. So what I have managed to do is follow the events and updates related to the storm in great detail, and have been able to share them via email and social media with those who were cut off from all forms for news/internet coverage since Monday evening. The feeling of restlessness has lessened, but is one I remember well from 2001 during the 9/11 days; it bothers me to be so far away from my country when bad things happen there. I don’t know that I could even be of much help; perhaps it’s my imagination working overtime. Nevertheless, the restless feeling remains. So I will donate to the Red Cross and hope that eases my worries and restlessness somewhat. Perhaps it comes down to wanting to serve and to be needed? Sometimes I wonder if that is an indication that my job is not providing me with those opportunities.

On another note, a newsworthy event occurred in Oslo as well this past week. Perhaps not earth-shattering for those who work outside the health sector, but for those who work in it—Bente Mikkelsen resigned her position yesterday as the director of Health Southeast Corporation. This corporation owns the hospital I work for; the past few years have been less than pleasant under her rule, to put it mildly. Rather than dwell on her departure, which is rather farcical in and of itself, I’d rather focus on the potential for a brighter future for the hospital. Hopefully the job she leaves behind will be filled by a person with more emotional intelligence and the ability to think independently, by a person who can give and take, by a person who can admit mistakes and take responsibility for them, by a person who can listen to employees and report their concerns up over in the system. There is always hope.  

The unbelievable storm

I was up until 4 am Oslo time last night watching super storm Sandy make landfall on the eastern coast of the USA. It chose the area around Atlantic City as its entrance, and the video footage of the Atlantic Ocean pouring into this casino city was just unbelievable to watch. The Atlantic Ocean has never been the enemy before. Not until last night. Watching it flood these coastal towns was kind of like watching a mini tsunami—scary, unbelievable and fascinating at the same time. I can understand why people want to get close to the fury of a storm to film what it does to everything in its path, but you would have been completely foolhardy to have done so yesterday. I’ve been in Atlantic City, walked along its boardwalk, and enjoyed its shopping and luxurious hotels. Last night it did not look luxurious at all. It made me sad to see the destruction, as it did to see the flooding and destruction in Manhattan and Queens. This is not supposed to happen in these areas. But it did. The monster storm from hell made sure that we will not take anything for granted ever again, not where nature is concerned.

I grew up in Tarrytown, a lovely little town on the Hudson River, about a thirty-minute train ride north of Manhattan. In all the years I lived there, I cannot remember this type of storm occurring. Yes, there were intense storms, with resultant minor flooding here and there. I can remember the Saw Mill River and Bronx River Parkways being flooded and becoming impassable. Once I tried to drive through one of those parkway floods with my car, but had to back out of it as I could not steer my way through it. Luckily I managed to back out of it; not everyone was so fortunate. I was together with a friend of mine; we were commuting home from college that day. Water seeped into my car through the doors, and we had to bail out pails of water from the car afterward. It was a stupid decision on my part to attempt to drive through the rising water, and I learned an important lesson that day for the future about not taking unnecessary risks. But in Tarrytown (and other Hudson River towns) yesterday, there was unprecedented flooding. The Hudson River rose higher and higher due to the storm surge further south. Boats floated inland, having broken free of their moorings. In the town of Ossining, a few miles north of Tarrytown, a boat floated onto the railroad tracks, blocking passage in both directions. The pictures tell the story—proof that the unbelievable happened. I am including two links to online storm photos here. I am sad to see the destruction and flooding, and only hope that most people have come through the storm safely. http://www.businessinsider.com/at-least-16-dead-75-million-without-power--heres-what-hurricane-sandys-destruction-looks-like-photos-2012-10?0=bi

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/8138916414/

A new favorite TV show

I am enjoying (if I can really use that word) watching the new season of The Walking Dead on Fox Crime on Thursday evenings. Perhaps a better way to say it is that I am enjoying being scared and jolted by the twists and turns and scares of the new season. We are about a week behind in Europe compared to the USA. The new episodes (Seed and Sick thus far) contained a lot more exciting action now that Rick and his motley group of survivors have arrived at the prison and made it their home. The ‘walkers’ inhabit certain areas of the prison and need to be dispatched if the group is to live there. Some of those attack scenes were pretty intense; we’re talking a high zombie dispatch rate and a group of survivors who were literally dead-set on taking the prison for themselves. But to spice things up even more, there were also surviving prisoners who were intent on keeping their prison for themselves, which made for a tense conflict in this week’s episode with unfortunate outcomes for some of those prisoners. Rick and his group don’t waste too much time talking; it’s kill or be killed.

I have been online to read about what people are saying about the new season, and a lot of the reviews are quite positive, precisely because there promises to be a lot more excitement during this season. There is less talk and more action, and many of the characters have gotten much tougher. It’s a welcome change from last season which moved slowly and relied on countless numbers of conversations to drive it forward. Not that slow or talky is bad, just that action is more exciting, and that is one of the reasons I tune into a show like this.

The last time I actually looked forward to watching a TV show each week was when The X-Files was on the air. Some of their episodes were completely spooky with assorted creatures and monsters (e.g. Home stands out) and the creep factor was quite high. But I sat and watched them all and dealt with being scared. The Walking Dead is different in that the humans are always under attack by the same type of monster—zombies. So the survivors have learned how to take them out and have become good at doing so. But at the same time viewers are being scared, they are also being comforted, because they know that ultimately the survivors will be able to take care of themselves. That doesn’t mean that favorite characters won’t die off; I’m sure they will as the season progresses, but it’s anyone’s guess as to who they will be. In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the ride--it promises to be a memorable one. 

A supermarket on every corner

Well, it’s official. We are now almost completely surrounded by supermarkets on our city block (three of four corners are occupied), so that soon it will be impossible for me to leave my house without encountering a supermarket. The Turkish convenience store with its friendly proprietors and wonderful variety on one corner closed a few months ago after losing its license to sell beer. And as is always the case when that happens in Norway, they go out of business rather quickly, whether or not they are a small grocery store or a restaurant. You cannot survive without the beer or liquor sales. The same will happen to one of my favorite pizza restaurants right down the road from us; they lost their liquor license a few months ago and that will most likely be their death knell.

Back to the supermarkets. I googled supermarkets in Norway and retrieved this Wikipedia listing. This then is a list of supermarket chains in Norway, broken down into Discount stores, Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, and Convenience stores. To me, they’re all variants on the same theme—supermarkets, large or small.

·         Discount: Bunnpris, Coop Marked, Coop Prix, Kiwi, REMA 1000, RIMI, Rimi Stormarked

·         Supermarkets: Centra, Coop Mega, ICA Gourmet, ICA Supermarked, Meny, SPAR, Ultra

·         Hypermarkets: ICA Maxi, Coop Obs!, Smart Club

·         Convenience Stores: ICA Nær, Joker, 7-eleven, Narvesen

I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by supermarkets if they offered a real variety of groceries, in other words, if they were different from each other. But they are not. Two of the supermarkets are the same chain—Joker (I know, what a name); the other one is Bunnpris (literally translated as ‘bottom price’). I have no major problems with any of them, just that they all offer homogeny. It’s all the same, a standardized foodstuff menu with limited choices. If you want slightly more variety and breadth of choice, you have to go elsewhere, like ICA Maxi, Centra or Meny. Thank God they exist. What makes me laugh is that this is such a small country; at last count, roughly 5 million people. Why do we need so many supermarkets? Soon there will be one supermarket per 100 people or per one large apartment building. I’m not joking. I cannot understand how they all can turn a profit. I’m not sure it matters to the food chain owners, who are wealthy beyond belief. All I can say is, ‘oh bliss--I no longer have to walk too far to find a grocery store’ (a little sarcasm never hurts). 

Treating customers well

Just had to comment on a pleasant experience today with a large company. It’s not every day that you deal with a customer service department in a huge company that actually treats you well, solves your problem for you, or even gets back to you on the same day that you contacted them. All that happened to me today in my dealings with Amazon.com. I had purchased a DVD TV series for several hundred dollars back in May of this year, and it arrived in Oslo in late June when we were on vacation in Germany. Unfortunately, the post office in Oslo only allows the packages to sit in their buildings for fourteen days, so as we were on vacation for about this amount of time, the package was returned to Amazon before I had a chance to pick it up. I contacted Amazon in mid-July to register this incident as a return, and received an authorization number so that I could track the return process and when the package was logged in as ‘returned’. As it took almost eight weeks for the package to arrive in Oslo initially, I figured it would take about the same amount of time for it to arrive back in the USA from whence it was shipped. Due to other matters, I didn’t have a chance to check on the status of the return until today, three months after I first contacted Amazon. I wrote to the customer service department as the package had not been returned by me but by the post office, so that the return process was irregular. I received an email within a few hours from not one, but two customer service reps, within a few hours of each other. The first one wrote to me to tell me that the package had been returned and that it would be no problem for me to get my refund. The second one wrote to tell me the exact amount that would be refunded and how my Amazon gift card and credit card accounts would be credited. No fuss, no bother, no ‘please contact this or that person’ in a long chain of persons, no recriminations or criticism on their part concerning the irregular return process. Rather, personal emails to me that said that they understood that I was disappointed that I had not received my package and that the refund process was initiated and that it would not take long for me to receive my refund, respectively.

How great is this? This is a huge global company at this point in time, and yet they managed to get back to me the same day I wrote to them. Not only that, they managed to resolve the situation immediately. I am a regular and good Amazon customer and have been since the late 1990s. I have never had a customer service problem with this company, which in and of itself is pretty amazing. Their efficient, fast and friendly customer service ensures that I remain a loyal customer. Why is it that they manage this absolutely crucial aspect of running a business—providing excellent customer service--whereas other companies fail so miserably? At Amazon, it seems that the customer is always right. At least that’s been the case in my dealings with them. It just goes to show that just because a company is large doesn’t mean that we need to abandon all hope of being treated well as a customer. I hope their policy of treating the customer well continues. 

Quotes about bureaucracy

As most of you know, I am preoccupied these days with bureaucracy and its fallout, especially in the workplace where it threatens to strangle the very efficiency it proclaims as its sworn goal (efficiency and productivity, which shall be dissected and measured down to their minutest details). 

Bureaucracy is defined as (definition from Merriam Webster online dictionary):

1) a body of nonelective government officials; an administrative policy-making group

2) government characterized by specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority

3) a system of administration marked by officialism, red tape, and proliferation

So I thought I would post some interesting quotes about bureaucracy as today's post. Interesting to consider that some of them were written many years ago. For example, the first quote from The Screwtape Letters, is from 1942. That tells you that these 'systems' have been around for a while. Some bureaucracy is of course necessary to get things basically organized. But at present, it seems that it exists for itself and itself alone--to make itself bigger, better and irreplaceable. We must need it, for without it we are nothing. And I have real problems with this way of thinking. 

--------------------------------------------------

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

― C.S. Lewis, from the Preface of The Screwtape Letters

“Remove the document—and you remove the man.”

― Mikhail Bulgakov

“I sighed. I hated the maze of bureaucracy with a passion, but I've found the best way to deal with it is to smile and act stupid. That way, no one gets confused.”

― Kim Harrison, Dead Witch Walking

 “Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?”

― Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

 “In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.”

― Chaim Potok, Davita's Harp

 “Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.”

― Laurence Gonzales, Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things

“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.”

― Hyman G. Rickover

 “The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.”

― Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

 “Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.”

― Kollontai Alexandra, La Oposición Obrera

“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]”

― Jerry Pournelle

Street art in Oslo

Street art in Oslo is more prevalent now, and some of it is really eye-catching.  I don’t know who the artists are, but I hope you enjoy their work. Feel free to comment if you know who the artists are. I'm only the photographer, but I like what I see.

Random thoughts on writing, street art and 'Living in the Material World'

A very busy week at work, which did not leave me much time for writing of any sort. I have mixed feelings about these kinds of weeks. On the one hand, it’s good to be busy at work. On the other hand, time passes and each day that ticks by is one less day to write and to pursue those small personal dreams. I guess others have the same problem—being torn between personal dreams that have less to do with career ambitions and more to do with personal fulfillment, and workplace ambitions and goals that are held up as meaningful by the workplace. I am always trying to find time to write. It has become my soul’s desire, nothing more, nothing less.

Tired in the evenings, so that doesn’t always bode well for writing, either for its quality or its quantity. In other words, I don’t get many words on a page before my eyes start to close and I feel sleepy. Twenty-five years ago, I could pack another life into my evenings, and I did. I worked sixty to seventy hour weeks then, and sometimes on the weekends. Sometimes I took courses at night—accounting, Italian, business courses, or sometimes I attended evening seminars having to do with investing. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a course. I’m more into learning how to do things myself these days, and less interested in traditional ways of learning. I suppose that has to do with how the brain changes and learns as one grows older. I like that aspect of growing older. Everything feels more fluid and less rigid. There is not one right way to do things anymore, like we were ‘taught’ when we were young.

Inspiration comes from films—I watched ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’,  a documentary film from 2010 about street art as viewed through the eyes of Thierry Guetta, a would-be filmmaker, who followed street artists around the world for years as they pursued their art. One of those artists was Banksy, who ended up using Guetta’s video footage to make this film, because the film that Guetta first made was (presumably) a chaotic mess. Hard to know for sure how tongue-in-cheek this movie really is—is it a hoax film or is it for real? Thierry Guetta followed these street artists and ended up besting them at their own game—setting up a big ‘street art’ show happening in Los Angeles as MBW (Mr. Brainwash) and making millions. By the end of the film, Madonna has hired him to do the artwork for her latest album cover. The question then becomes, who was the brainwasher and who was being brainwashed? Are we being hoodwinked, or is this film for real? The film is well-worth watching, as it is a good introduction to the lives of currently-popular street artists from around the world.

Apropos Madonna (“…You know that we are living in a material world, And I am a material girl”), another good documentary film I watched this past week was from 2011—‘George Harrison: Living in the Material World’ (director Martin Scorsese). Scorsese did a great job with this film; we get a real introduction to the spiritual Beatle, and to his spiritual journey as well as to his progression and evolution as an artist. We also get a real sense of the conflict that pervaded most of his life—how to remain spiritual in a material world. Harrison was truly an amazing artist—creative, spiritual, persistent, focused, dedicated. All of this came through in the film. Mostly when you think of the Beatles, you think of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. This film shows you why George Harrison was an artistic force to be reckoned with. He was way ahead of his time in terms of collaborating musically with ‘foreign’ artists—Ravi Shankar and other Indian musicians--as well as organizing the first charity concert for Bangladesh in 1971. But mostly, I was impressed with his spiritual journey. Here was a man who thought it was important to prepare for death, for the time when he would leave his body for another world. He never denigrated or poked fun at the world of the spirit. And he was a pretty good example of practicing what he preached, with the possible exception of the few periods in his life when he dishonored his body through excessive drug use. I like films about artists of all kinds; I like watching the creative process at work—how artists think, act, work, live in a family, relax—all those things.