Learning by living

Eleanor Roosevelt was married to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, and served as First Lady during his three terms--from 1933 until 1945. Her husband died in 1945. When she married him, she found herself thrust into the limelight of politics and political society, which at first made her uncomfortable, but which she learned to master with time and experience. I recently finished her amazing book You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, first published in 1960 when she was seventy-six years old. She writes from the heart, in an candid and straightforward way, about the following: • Learning to Learn • Fear—the Great Enemy • The Uses of Time • The Difficult Art of Maturity • Readjustment is Endless • Learning to Be Useful• The Right to Be an Individual • How to Get the Best Out of People •Facing Responsibility • How Everyone Can Take Part in Politics • Learning to Be a Public Servant.

The first thing that struck me was that her wisdom and advice are every bit as good as, if not better than, most of the advice proffered by self-help books authored by psychologists or psychiatrists with years in their respective fields. Why? Because she not only talks about the fears and lack of self-confidence that she had to overcome in order to become a public person, she says flat-out that we must do that which we think we cannot do. We must face our fears if we are to grow and evolve as human beings, if we are to live an honest life. She also talks about the importance of being useful and embracing politics and public life. She stresses that we must take an interest in politics as the citizens of a democratic nation; that is our responsibility as free people. We must not stoop to cynicism and negativity when we talk about politics and politicians; they are important for the future of a free country.  She is a wonderful role model for a successful and honest life, for both women and men. Her advice is relevant for both genders. But I would absolutely encourage young women to read her book, especially in this age that defines a person’s worth mostly by whether they are good-looking or not. Eleanor Roosevelt said about herself that she knew that she was not the most attractive woman in her family already when she was a child; it never stopped her. Young women especially need to hear this, because there is too much emphasis in today’s world on having the perfect face and figure, often at the expense of cultivating one’s intelligence, wit, and talents.    

Eleanor Roosevelt was an honest, intelligent, introspective, persevering, patient and empathetic woman, who made a real success of her life in spite of the many difficulties she faced. I found her advice quite straightforward, no-nonsense, honest and helpful. She really did 'learn by living', and that is the message her book imparts. It's possible to grow and change with experience, if you tackle the challenges that life tosses you rather than evade them. She was way ahead of her time in terms of how she lived her life and how she looked at her life as a woman. I recommend this book if you want wisdom that will actually help you as you make your way in this life.

USA advances in the World Cup

Loved this tweet from Razzle on Twitter with the accompanying photo of Bill Cosby! It pretty much sums up exactly my own understanding (or lack thereof) of the World Cup rules, but hey--the USA team advanced tonight despite their loss to Germany. So they 'won' even though they lost. Go figure. They're a good team so it's fun to cheer them on.

I think I finally understand why I don't watch sports very often or follow my favorite teams--it's way too stressful. I end up screaming at the TV like my father and brother did years ago when they watched football, and like my husband sometimes does when he watches soccer (with him however it's mostly running commentary). The screaming at the TV is not good for the blood pressure!
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This is me still trying to understand the FIFA rules. #USAvsGermany pic.twitter.com/2xb472yf8h

— Razzle (@MyNameisRazzle2) June 26, 2014

Travels through Italy

I've been thinking about the different countries I've traveled to since I moved to Norway in 1989. After so many years living in Europe, the countries add up; besides traveling around Norway, I've been to Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Czech Republic, Hungary, Netherlands, Belgium, England, Scotland, and Ireland--in some cases several times to a few countries (France, Italy, Denmark, England). Hopefully I'll get to Spain and Portugal in a few years; I especially want to visit Spain because I took six years of Spanish (high school and college) and I'd like to have the chance to use this beautiful language after all these years. Australia and New Zealand are also on my bucket list, as well as a few countries in South America. I also want to do a cross-country trip across the United States, most likely in a few years.

In 2005, my husband and I decided to visit Italy. My paternal grandparents were born in southern Italy--Caserta and Ischia to be exact--and our plans were to meet my sister and her husband on Ischia and to explore the island and experience the land of our ancestors. Our first stop was Venice, where we stayed at a Victorian-style bed and breakfast establishment on the Lido for one night. I don't remember the name of place, but it was beautiful. We took the canal boat along the Grand Canal, and I took a lot of photos from the boat, many of which came out quite well. We walked a lot around the city, and it struck me how easy it was to lose your sense of direction while walking around. The city was also a bit eerie in the evening; I was reminded of the film with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, called 'Don't Look Now'--a brilliant yet creepy film in many respects, especially the scenes where Donald Sutherland wanders around Venice in the evening following someone he thinks is his (dead) daughter. We enjoyed a good dinner at one of the many restaurants that line the side streets, and then listened to some really good jazz at one of the outdoor restaurants on St. Mark's Square. The following day, we drove further to Perugia to visit Loretta, a colleague and friend who works at the University there; we spent several days with her and her family. We managed a trip to Assisi together and a visit to the Papal Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. We then made our way further south and west to Caserta, where my grandmother was born and where we stayed for two nights. We visited the Reggia--the Royal Palace of Caserta that was built during the 18th century. It was a lovely place with gardens that seemed to stretch for miles; we walked the length of them and I took some nice photos of the statues and waterfall. The luxury of the Reggia and its gardens stood in stark contrast to the rest of Caserta, which I would not describe as luxurious. Its inhabitants were friendly and hospitable and I was glad to have seen it, to have seen where my grandmother grew up before she left her country behind for the United States. We took the car ferry from Naples to Ischia, and drove to the Hotel Pithaecusa in Casamicciola Terme (northern part of the island) where we stayed for several nights. My sister and her husband arrived the day after we did, and we met up with them at their hotel on the southern part of the island, close to Barano, the town where my grandfather was born. We spent two days exploring the island, eating very good meals, swimming in the warm ocean, and drinking wine in the evenings. We did not have the time to delve into our family history or to track down family records. It was enough to have seen where our grandparents came from; it made me understand why they left Italy in the early 1900s for a new (and presumably better, at least financially) life in the States. There were not many opportunities for them at that time--my grandfather could have become a fisherman or a sailor. He did become a sailor, but studied to become a pharmacist once he arrived in the States, and that is what he worked as for the rest of his life until he lost his drug store in the Great Depression.

Time moves on; it's been nine years since we visited Italy for the first time. We were back in Italy in 2008, this time in Rome, and that was also a pleasant visit. However that trip was somewhat marred by the theft of my computer, camera, wallet and passport on the train that took us from Budapest Hungary (where we had been to a scientific conference) to Rome. So I have no photos from that trip to Rome, unfortunately. We stayed at a hotel outside of Rome, on the beach, and commuted into and out of Rome during our stay there. We visited the Vatican, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, and the Trevi Fountain and ate some wonderful meals. I would like to visit Rome again, this time without the stress of having to rush to the American Embassy to obtain a temporary passport, and without the horrible feeling of knowing that my personal possessions were in the hands of thieves. I do not want to visit Budapest or Hungary again; while I harbor no resentment toward the thieves, that experience made me feel vulnerable and less safe, and took away my desire to travel there.

Here are some photos from Venice, Caserta and Ischia:

Venice 

beautiful building on the Grand Canal

a canal in Venice

another canal in Venice

our hotel on the Lido in Venice

The Royal Palace of Caserta--the Reggia

Trond in the Reggia gardens

waterfall at end of Reggia gardens

sculptures in the Reggia gardens

Ischia

hills of Ischia

Parrot eating a grape outside a shop in Casamicciola Terme

Reflections on and some quotes about cynicism

It might be my imagination, but it seems that there is a lot more cynicism in society now than ever before. How is cynicism defined? The online dictionary defines it as ‘an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others’. Another definition is ‘the beliefs of a cynic, a person who believes all people are motivated by selfishness or whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative’. It manifests itself in the snappy retorts I often get when I comment (infrequently) about some good thing that a politician or a large company has said or done—for example, comments like 'so-and-so is an idiot and a jerk', or 'that company is corrupt and worthless'. For example, in today’s news, it was reported that Starbucks will pay for its employees to get an online college degree at Arizona State University. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/15/starbucks-online-college-arizona-state_n_5497622.html). There are no strings attached—employees can work at Starbucks, study whatever they like, and are free to leave the company when they have achieved their goal. If you ask me, this is a positive gesture on the part of a large corporation that has a lot of money, one that looks ahead and has understood that the middle class is having a difficult time paying for college education and making ends meet. They are trying to meet the needs of the future. I read the newspaper article about this and then the reader comments that accompanied it. At least half of the comments were blatantly cynical. It struck me that it is nearly impossible to be taken seriously these days, whether you are an individual or a large company interested in trying to do the right thing. You will meet the cynics, the negative people, and the attackers—no matter what good thing you do or try to do. I say, do it anyway and let the cynics and all the other negative people wallow in the mud of their negativity. It will not do any of us any good to become like them. Each time we respond cynically to a particular event, we undo ourselves; we dismantle our own belief systems. We essentially say that there is no reason to believe in anyone or to believe that anything good ever happens in the world, that there is no altruism, and that all people have ulterior motives and are ultimately selfish. In other words, there is no such thing as a good deed.

I’m not advocating naivete, ignorance or stupidity about what goes on in the world. There are enough societal problems to solve that will keep us busy for many years to come. But I am an advocate of accepting the goodness in others when they do a good deed and of taking things at face value if someone does you a good turn. I’m an advocate of kindness, civility, and respect toward oneself and others. If we respond cynically to everything around us, we disrespect and destroy ourselves and others, we disrespect and destroy our relationships, and ultimately we disrespect and destroy the societies we live in. Cynicism negates gratitude; in a cynic’s world, there is no need for gratitude, because there is nothing to really be grateful for. Living in a world full of cynics is about the closest thing to hell on earth that I can imagine.

Here are some quotes about cynicism:

• A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. ― Oscar Wilde
• Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist. ― George Carlin
• Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.― Stephen Colbert
• Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness. ― Leon Trotsky, Trotsky's Diary in Exile, 1935
• Cynicism was a one-way path, and once taken the way back was lost forever. ― Chris Wooding, Poison
• Cynicism is when a small mind and a hurt heart reject the hope, love, and truth of a big and caring God.― Jayce O'Neal
• I fight cynicism. It`s too easy. It`s really boring. It`s much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren`t as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented. ― Ewan McGregor
• To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being "in the know," cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to a creeping bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit...A praying life is just the opposite. …..Prayer is feisty. Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques. It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged in. It is without hope. ― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

On Father’s Day, remembering my father and my mother

There was little in the way of material wealth in the family in which I grew up. My parents were not rich nor were they particularly preoccupied with accumulating wealth in their lifetimes. Sometimes I wish they had been better at financial planning or at saving for retirement, but they weren’t. We had the things we needed, but no more. When times were financially difficult in our family, we felt it. My parents made mistakes in that regard in terms of saving money for uncertain times, and my father would have been the first one to admit that. But by the time he understood that, his health was poor and there was little he could have done to reverse the course of things. We managed, but there was never really enough left over to secure a comfortable future for them when they got older. As fate would have it, my father passed away in his late 60s, leaving my mother alone for what should have been their retirement years spent doing enjoyable things together. But that was not to be.

My parents were preoccupied with other things than money and career—books mostly, during their lives. They loved to read, and they shared their thoughts about what they read with us. My father especially was an avid reader, and he and I would often walk together on summer evenings when I was a teenager and discuss books and life in general. He and my mother also enjoyed classical music and shared that with us as well. They read newspapers and we discussed politics and current events at the dinner table. We did not get together often with extended family, but our friends were always welcome, and in that regard, the door to our house was always open. It never seemed as though we lacked for much, and I did not compare what we had to what our friends had. I was never particularly interested in doing that. It always seemed to me that some people had more money and material things, and some people didn’t. That was just the way life was; I rarely pondered it when I was a child or teenager. But the difficult times in our family, e.g., when my father was unemployed for nearly two years and his subsequent gradual decline in health, taught me to be independent and to not rely on other to support me financially. So the hard times did have an influence on my adult career choices, and I do feel that I made the right decisions when it came to pursuing a career. 

On Father’s Day, I cannot remember my father without remembering my mother, who passed away sixteen years after he did. During her life, my mother did what she needed to do for herself and for my father; she did it without much fuss or talk. She was a doer, not a talker. She took good care of my father and of us, but his cardiovascular disease had its roots already in his late teens as a result of a ruptured appendix that nearly killed him. His illness manifested itself in his early 50s, with his first heart attack at the age of 52. In response to this, my mother prepared low-fat meals which we all ate. We mostly ate lean baked chicken, lean cuts of beef, and fish. Sometimes she would make pork chops or tuna casserole. There were never heavy cream sauces or gravies to accompany the meats or fish. We rarely ate mayonnaise, ice cream or drank whole milk. My parents would drive to the local farm stands during the summer to stock up on fruits and vegetables; that was an important part of summer meals. My mother ate very little in the way of dessert and rarely snacked on junk food and there was not much of either one in our house. She did buy cookies and cupcakes for us to eat as snacks after school when we were children, but they were regulated—we were allowed one or two and that was all. We were not allowed to raid the refrigerator at will; the refrigerator was off limits once we had eaten our snacks. In that way, she controlled the amount of food we put into ourselves. Dessert after dinner on weeknights might be Jell-o with fruit, or a few cookies. On Sundays, we usually had a lemon sponge cake from the local bakery for dessert; she also made a great lemon cake drizzled with lemon juice. When I think back to the way she ate, I realize that she ate a bit of everything, but she did so in moderation. She never overate; she never overdid anything when it came to food. She was more the type to make sure that others were full before she was. But that could also have been her way of ensuring that she did not overeat. She drank a lot of water, loved her black tea, and drank a couple of cups of coffee per day. Breakfast for her was toast and tea. When she and I would go out to eat (when she was in her 70s), we usually found the local diner and ordered ourselves grilled cheese sandwiches with cole slaw on the side and a cup of tea. That was enough for the both of us.

My mother was a great walker for most of her life. She didn’t learn to drive until she was around 65 years old, and even then, when she got her license, she drove for a couple of years around town, and then gave up driving and sold her car. We often wondered why she did that; I think it was because she missed walking around town. She understood that she was onto something by walking. She didn’t turn down the offer of a ride if she had a lot of groceries to shop for, especially as she got older. But she looked forward to getting outside to walk, in all types of weather. Rain never bothered her, ditto for snow. She was in good shape for most of her life, rarely sick, not overweight (she was slender)—and she didn’t look her age. She was proud of that. When I look back at what mattered to her in the way of her personal health, I know now that my mother was interested in taking care of herself long before it became trendy to do so. She never announced it with fanfare; she was not an ardent missionary for the cause nor did she nag others to ‘see it her way’. She just did it. She would just say she was going to the supermarket to pick up a few items, and that was one of her several walks for the day. Sometimes we joined her, sometimes not. It didn’t matter to her if she walked alone; she enjoyed it. All these years later, I realize she was on the right track when it came to eating and taking care of herself. My mother was a quiet instigator of change. I appreciate her simple wisdom and ways of doing things, more and more as I get older. Her legacy lives on in the way I approach my life and in my approach to getting older. I wish my parents had lived longer. I got to know each of them first together, as my parents, and then separately as I spent time with each of them individually. I am grateful for the time I was able to spend with each of them.

Summer's light

I love the summer's light--the way the sun shines into our apartment during mid-afternoon. Peaceful. There is a haziness to the colors of the tree and building outside--the sun is strong. There is so much light around; everything indoors and out is bathed in light. This is just one of the things I love about summer--the light that goes on and on. It can be light here in Oslo until well after midnight, not as strong as at midday, of course. As we move toward summer solstice, it will continue to get even lighter, at which point we will have the longest (and brightest) day of the year, and then the days will (very) gradually start to get shorter. 

Come summer with your gentle breeze

This is my new poem--Come summer with your gentle breeze--part of a new collection that I am working on and that I hope to publish later this year or early next year.

Come season of life-giving balm

Warmth and peacefulness

Come summer with your gentle breeze

Whispering through the trees

Children playing out of doors

Windows open to streets below

Harkens back to childhood days

Of barefoot romps and non-stop play

Come blessed season of few needs

Save sunshine and easy days

A good life without many things

To clutter peace that summer brings

A stroll along a flowing river

A pleasant walk, a cycle trip

Such are summer’s many pleasures

Such are summer’s many treasures

Copyright 2014

Paula M. De Angelis 

The Birds of Oslo

It is not my imagination; there are a multitude of birds in the city of Oslo now. This must reflect the abundance of trees and bushes—plantings that have been prioritized during the past decade’s period of urban renewal that Oslo has undergone. Sparrows, starlings, magpies, blackbirds, pigeons, doves, thrushes, crows, swallows, seagulls, mallard ducks and Canada geese—to name just a few. Not only is the city lovelier after extensive urban renewal, it is livelier in the natural sense. I can lie in bed with my eyes closed, and for a few seconds, imagine that I am not living in a city at all—because we awake to the sound of parent and baby magpies calling to each other in the tree outside our bedroom window. Sometimes when it is quiet in the evenings, you can hear the gulls and the doves calling and chirping to one another, each with their own distinctive sounds. Or when I walk along Kirkeveien road to the tram station at Ullevål Hospital in the morning, I watch the birds forage for insects and worms in the newly-mown grass of the fields that surround the hospital. They’re plucky creatures and they have a lot to teach us, if we only pay attention. The seagulls have discovered the Akerselva River, and they can be seen flying in and around the apartment developments along the river as well as hanging out on the islands of the inner Oslo fjord. Sometimes they’ve landed on the balcony outside our kitchen window, and the noise they make can be deafening. The other day we saw three of them in the road near where we live; someone had tossed a bag of half-eaten chicken onto the road. They were greedily scavenging what remained; my husband commented on the fact that they eat the remains of other birds. In one sense, we can be thankful for their scavenging traits, because they clean up the sea and now even the land. Mallards and geese live along the water, whether it is the Akerselva or the fjord. A pigeon flew into our dining room last week; the weather has been so warm and nice that all the windows in our house are open most of the time. It didn’t seem to be too scared; it flew to the top of the hutch and then out again. It was one of the ‘tagged’ pigeons—those with a small metal band around one leg. I read online that this tagging may be part of an initiative by the Norwegian Bird Association to track the movements of pigeons around the city and the Oslo area in general.

I don’t know much about the different kinds of birds, but am beginning to be inspired to learn more about them. I’d also like to get better at photographing them, but that’s going to be quite tricky. I’m on the internet a lot to search for photos of thrushes and thrashers and other birds that I know really so little about. I found this website for those of you who might be interested in learning about what birds there are to be found in Oslo; there are quite a few, which was pleasant and interesting news to me: http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=noos&list=clements

Hanging out

My cactus plants, one of which I call 'cactus man'. Kind of cute, with his head slightly tilted and his lopsided arms hanging out on the edge of the pot. Interesting to watch them grow and sprout arms. Three of the four plants in this pot are clones from one plant. They do well in the warmth of the summer sunshine, like we all do.

My new poem---Beyond this world there lies another

Beyond this world there lies another

Beyond this world there lies another

Peopled by shades that walk among the trees

Elysian Fields the beckoning meadows

The gathering dark the gentle breeze

Stand as in a trance, entranced

On the shore Charon awaits

With his humble ferryboat

Lights upon the water dance

The trip across the river Styx

Who waits upon the shore afar?

For those aboard to disembark

Stumbling blindly in the dark

Who guards the gates of Hades

Cerberus with his three heads

A devilish trinity of sorts

To gather in the souls that dread

Once the ferry crosses over

To the shore of no return

Once the gates behind souls close

Open others at key’s turn

Entry to the netherworld

Place of light, hole of dark

Fate of souls whose lives unraveled

Eternal rest the disembarked

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copyright 2014

Paula M. De Angelis

Quotes about Life

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like there's nobody listening, and live like it's heaven on earth.   

― William W. Purkey

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

― Oscar Wilde

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

― Albert Einstein

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

― Albert Einstein

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

― Allen Saunders

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

― George Bernard Shaw

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

― Mark Twain

If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there.

― George Harrison

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

― Virginia Woolf

Get busy living or get busy dying.

― Stephen King, Different Seasons

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

― Søren Kierkegaard

It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Moments of peace

Everyone has their own idea of what heaven might be like. Mine is a sunny warm summer day, with all the windows in my home open, a soft breeze blowing, and sunlight streaming in from all angles. I’m standing in the kitchen, my favorite room in the house, puttering about, as I love to do. No cares, no worries, completely relaxed. I love that state of mind. Maybe working on a recipe, or re-potting a few of my plants. Or leaning on the sill of an open window, looking out onto the world below and about me. Listening to the birds, talking to the pigeons on the balcony, or watching the yellow jackets as they fly in for a visit and then out again. If our cat was still alive, she would have hopped up onto the sill and joined me, and we would have been looking out at the world together. A little slice of heaven—a world of sunshine and peace, a natural world, peopled by animals, birds, nature, living things. It’s what my heart seeks return to when I’ve managed to move myself far away from it, or when I’ve let the many negative distractions in the world move me away from it. 

The priest at mass tonight talked about the necessity of moving ourselves ‘up’ and away from the dark cellar of depressing or sensational news stories that the media bombards us with, because it is the only way to find inner stillness and peace, both of which are needed for prayer. It’s hard to pray when your mind is full of anxiety and uneasiness, when your mind is stuck in the dark cellar. To leave the cellar means getting up and turning off the TV, or not starting the day by sitting down to breakfast with a newspaper full of depressing news stories. I don’t want to shut out the world, nor do I want to ignore social injustices and moral outrages. I simply want to choose how to let them into my heart and soul and how I want to deal with them. I don’t want to be lectured to or informed by the media that this is what I should be paying attention to, or else. I have realized that I cannot tackle all the injustices in the world; I’ve got to start small and accept that I will make a small difference. Mother Teresa also said something similar to that. You need to start at home or with the situations around you. Otherwise you will end up feeling depressed and defeated because you are not able to make the world into a better place. And that defeated feeling helps no one. So I am thankful for the little moments of heaven that are allowed me in this life. They restore my faith in my ability to make a difference in this world, however small it is.