'Don't know what you've got till it's gone'

I have been a regular subscriber to the weekly news magazine, Time, for at least thirty years, before I moved to Norway and since I moved here. I’ve looked forward each week to Time's news summaries and articles, film, book, music and theater reviews, and interesting tidbits that they toss in from time to time. You might think that it would be a problem to experience regular weekly delivery of Time; I can tell you that it’s been a pleasure to be a subscriber. Not once, I repeat, not once, have I ever had a problem with a missed issue or late delivery. I haven’t had to contact customer service for any problem whatsoever, except to renew my subscription, and that is also a problem-free experience, unlike other magazine and newspaper subscriptions that I have had since I moved to Oslo. That by itself is a miracle in this day and age—a magazine that manages to be timely, punctual, and service-minded.

What bothers me lately is that I’ve noticed that with each issue I receive in the mail, especially during the past half year, the magazine is shrinking. Each issue is thinner than the previous week’s issue. Given the fact that its competitor, Newsweek, stopped publishing the paper edition of its magazine at the end of last year (I refer you to Wikipedia for a more-detailed update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek), I have begun to wonder if Time is moving in the same direction. I hope this is not the case, but I have a gut feeling that it is. The end of the paper editions of these magazines doesn’t mean their total demise; in the case of Newsweek, they decided to focus their energies on an all-digital format, meaning that the internet has claimed yet another victim, in one sense. I don’t have a problem with internet; if used well and if you can filter through the morass of information that is available at every turn, you can in fact obtain a lot of useful information in the blink of an eye. I need only think of Wikipedia as I write this—useful, informative, updated, with mostly correct information (and they are honest about the ‘holes’ in their summaries, about what is lacking, and that’s a good thing). But there is something about opening the print issue of a magazine like Time when I get it, sitting down on the couch with a cup of coffee and reading it from cover to cover. I enjoy that very much; it’s not the same sitting down with my Kindle for iPad and reading the issue that way, even though I read books that I’ve downloaded on my Kindle for iPad from time to time. It’s just that I don’t want to see the end of all print publications, be they books or magazines.

And that brings me to my final point; with fewer books and magazines printed, there will be more bookstores that will go belly-up. One of the major American book retailers, Barnes and Noble, is struggling and on the verge of collapse, according to a recent article from Slate (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/14/barnes_noble_collapsing.html), and that makes me sad to read. Very sad. I have fond memories of the many hours spent in their bookstores; starting when I worked part-time as a stocker for a company on West 13^th Street in lower Manhattan during my graduate school days, and would spend my lunch hours perusing the bookshelves of the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 122 Fifth Avenue between 17th and 18th streets. I bought many a Christmas present there as I remember. And then later on, during the mid-1980s, when I would drive up from the Bronx where I lived at that time, to their bookstore on Central Avenue in Yonkers and wander around there for a few hours on a summer evening, looking at photo books of Princess Diana (who was all the rage then), or skimming books on why women are afraid of success in the business world, how to make your relationship better, or the meaning of dreams, in the self-help section. Those were weekly trips that I looked forward to, and I always left the store with one or two new books that I couldn’t wait to dive into. In later years, when I have visited my sister in upstate New York during the summer, we have had some fun driving to the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Poughkeepsie, where we would start off our visit with cappuccinos in the little café at the back of the bookstore. We would sit and chat for a while, and then wander the aisles in search of a book that would catch our eye. It was always fun to compare our current literary interests, talk about the books we had read or were reading, check out the different games and puzzles for sale, and so on. Sometimes my husband would call me from Norway while we were wandering around the store; we would be laughing at some silly thing, and he would get a chance to join in on the fun. Simple stuff, but simple stuff is the stuff of memories. Bookstores generally, and Barnes and Noble specifically, have been and are a large part of my life. I cannot imagine life without them. As Joni Mitchell sings ‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. But sometimes even when you do know, things disappear anyway, replaced by newer things, but in some cases, more sterile things. I will never be attached to a computer the way I have been attached to my books. And that’s not likely to change in my lifetime. 

Things I’m never going to do

Read the news this morning and saw that there had been a meteor strike over central Russia early this morning, causing sonic booms and pressure waves that led to the implosion of glass windows in many buildings, injuring nearly one thousand people in the process. The social media age being what it is, it didn’t take long for the first videos of the event to appear on YouTube. Pretty incredible to watch and listen to what was happening in the sky above us. Tonight the asteroid 2012 DA14 is supposed to pass very close to the Earth (over 17,000 miles above us but it’s the closest asteroid pass that scientists have measured up to this point). It got me to thinking about life as we know it, and what would happen if an asteroid or meteor of great size crashed onto land or in the sea, and life as we know it changed forever. This is the stuff of sci-fi movies, but the interesting thing about sci-fi is that you never really know when or if what is depicted in books or movies will come to pass. And perhaps it’s better that we don’t know.

A lot of people think about what they would have done differently when they are faced with their own demise or the demise of loved ones. I’m of course no exception. We live our lives each day with a certain amount of conviction that our ‘tomorrow’ lives will be pretty much like our ‘today’ lives; we trust that tomorrow will come. And that has been the case up to now. If we have anything to fear, it is in the form of man-made threats such as nuclear weapons and the threat of biological warfare, that the crazies in the world will get their hands on these things and end life as we know it.

I thought about what I have accomplished in my life up to this point, and about what I still want to do, if given the chance. But I also thought about all the things I haven’t done, and they perhaps define me just as well as the things I have done and accomplished: I’m never going to climb Mt. Everest, or any mountain for that matter; I’m never going to fly a small plane or learn to pilot one; I’m never going to do tandem skydiving or bungee jumping; I’m never going to do deep-sea diving; I’m never going to sail in a small boat across a large ocean for days at a time; I’m never going to run a large corporation or lead hundreds of people; I’m never going to make a million dollars a year, despite what life coaches tell me (to dream big); I’m never going to own a large palace or an over-sized mansion, a yacht or a wildly-expensive new car; I’m never going to travel the entire world. These are things I'm never going to do, and I'm very ok about it. 

If I won a huge lottery, I’m fairly certain that not much on the above list would change—perhaps I would purchase a new home and a new car, and then share the money with people I care about. The things I do not want to do have little to do with money, or better stated, it’s not the lack of money that prevents me from doing them. I simply have no desire to do them. What I do want to do more of in the future is to spend time with the people I care about, doing the things we enjoy together—hanging out, talking, relaxing, eating out, going to movies or concerts, traveling a bit, shopping, and being on vacation. When I think about my life in this way, it makes me happy, because I already do so many of these things with the people I care about. If the end of the world came tomorrow, there's not much I would have changed about my life. And I hope I feel the same way in ten or twenty years, if we and the Earth are still around.   

The great divide

I notice more and more how purportedly classless (egalitarian) societies, like the one I live in, struggle with the reality that not all of its members enjoy materialistic equality. It becomes more apparent to me each day, especially as this country gets richer due to its oil money. All individuals living in this society have gotten richer during the past ten years, yes, but some individuals have achieved a higher level of wealth than others. Not all people make the same amounts of money nor do they own the same numbers and types of homes and cars. They are not equal in the materialistic sense, no matter how hard the government tries to make it so. And that will likely always be the case. A perfect utopian society on this earth seems unlikely (the notion has been around for many years)—a society where all members have exactly the same level of wealth, status, or material possessions. A society where all members have equal opportunities for public education and the same legal rights is achievable. But there is no guarantee that even if all children have the same opportunities from birth, that they will grow up to earn exactly the same amounts of money, or be similarly educated, ambitious, talented, hard-working, creative, innovative, or that they will behave in similar ways in any given situation. Society consists of unique individuals, and that uniqueness begins at birth. People will utilize their talents and gifts in different ways compared to all others around them, and that will inevitably lead to different career choices with the resultant income disparities. Not all types of work are rewarded with similar incomes; perhaps that reality lies in the future. Imagine a society with no salary differences whatsoever. That would change the way in which education is viewed, as well as how career progression is viewed.

But it is the definitions of rich and wealth in the materialistic sense that interest me. One hundred people gathered together in one room might not be able to come up with a working definition of ‘rich’ or ‘wealth’. Some people will define ‘rich’ or ‘wealth’ as owning one home and one car, whereas others consider themselves rich if they are able to rent an apartment and not own a car, but perhaps use their money to travel, while others require a home and a summer cottage, and several cars and maybe even a boat in order to feel as though they have achieved the requisite level of wealth. Some people will say that they are rich if they have freedom to do as they like and can come and go as they please; they may not be interested in owning many material possessions. So what then is the definition of ‘poor’? Individuals who rent an apartment and do not own a car, a vacation cottage or an expensive boat—are they to be considered poor if they are content with their economic situation? Can society force that definition upon them? To me these are difficult questions to ponder, let alone answer.

There seems to be a lot more envy now in society than I can remember from when I grew up. You need only look at a newspaper to understand that; if the rich open their mouths and tell the less rich how to live or what to do, or if they in any way go overboard in terms of flaunting their wealth, the less rich will tell them in no uncertain terms to shut up or try to take them down a few notches, again using the media to do so. But they do it in a way that smacks of envy.

Perhaps globalization and a relentless media have made us more aware of the haves and the have-nots. We again need only turn to the media for them to tell us how the rich live; all the gory details are there for our perusal. The danger is that constant immersion in the media-created focus on wealth fosters a false sense of reality--that all people can achieve wild levels of wealth, if only…….And who knows if this way of thinking has contributed to high levels of personal debt—in the craze to have as many material possessions as possible, even if it means personal ruin.

We've come a long way?

I like to think that the status of women in the world has evolved and gotten better since when I was a child. Certainly that seems to be the case when one looks at the number of women in the workforce at present compared to that number in my mother’s generation. 'We’ve come a long way, baby' as the old Virginia Slims cigarette TV ad used to tell us. We have much more independence and mobility than our mothers did; we are better educated, and many of us are financially secure and able to take care of ourselves. Marriage is no longer necessarily viewed as the best way for a woman to achieve financial security, and single women are no longer labeled as unsuccessful because they are not together with a man. However, old ideas die hard in some societies, so you will find men and women in modern societies who will defend the old ways of doing things—women should be married to men who are the breadwinners, and they should stay home and take care of the house and family. They should not be pursuing careers or earning more money than their husbands. Overall however, there has been progress since I was a child, and it makes me happy to see that; it gives me hope for the future.

But we are often lulled into a false sense of security concerning women’s rights and status; we assume that equality and balance have been achieved, when in fact they have not. Something happens to burst the bubble and forces us to face the fact that many women in this world suffer injustice every day of their lives, regardless of the society they live in—modern, aware, and flexible, or old-style and rigid. Psychological abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, rape, arranged marriage against their will, societal clamping down on the rights of women in the form of telling them how to act, speak or dress—all of these point toward a hatred of women that seems to be increasing in the world we live in. Recently, there have been several prominent displays of misogyny that have been well-covered by the media. I need only read about the recent rape, mutilation and murder of a young woman in New Delhi India, or about the young Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for daring to say that girls should be able to get an education, or about the fifteen year old girl whose parents sold her into marriage to a ninety year old man in Saudi Arabia. But it’s not just in these cultures where misogyny is rampant, even though these particular incidents are truly horrific. Take a look at our own ‘modern’ societies—women strangled by abusive husbands (as just recently happened in the town where I grew up); physical abuse of women (hitting, battering) at the hands of insecure men who do not want their wives or girlfriends to be better educated or more informed than they are; women married to abusive alcoholic men who destroy not only their lives but those of their children as well (in yet another tale of a young woman with a child who needs to leave her abuser but who ‘loves’ him and thinks he will change if only she loves him well enough). Psychological and verbal abuse in the form of mind games, emotional blackmail, sexual harassment, rude or threatening behavior, being frozen out, lack of praise or acknowledgment of any kind; this can go on in intimate personal relationships, but also in modern workplaces—I have witnessed such behavior during my thirty years in the workplace, and it is more frequent than you might think or want to believe. No matter how often I hear that women also abuse men, even if that is true, you need only take a look at statistics in order to find the truth—that far many more men abuse and kill women than vice versa. It is further proof that men retain the bulk of power in this world, that many of them do not want to relinquish that power, and that women have much work ahead of them before they have truly achieved equality and balance in personal and work relationships. I hope I see that day in my lifetime. It would make me incredibly happy to see that women become truly valued for who they are, not for their monetary worth as property to men or to their families. In the meantime, both men and women need to work together to create a world society that values women as much as it does men. Until that happens, the world will not be a safe place for women to live in. And a world that is not safe for women to live in, will ultimately become an unpleasant world for men to live in as well. We cannot rule out that perhaps one day, women will rise up en masse against their abusers, attackers, rapists and harassers. It will be interesting to see the outcome of such an uprising. I hope I see that in my lifetime as well.  

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

It takes two to tango

Sat down to breakfast this morning, and was flipping through the newspaper sections rather randomly. My husband was reading the front section of Aftenposten, so I settled on the Jobs section, where there are not only employment ads, but often articles about new trends in the workplace as well as advice from headhunters and work-life coaches. Wouldn’t you know, there was a photo of two couples dancing the tango in connection with a leadership course they’re taking. This particular course encourages its participants (leader personnel from the company Siemens Healthcare) to learn to dance the tango as part of learning how to team-build and be a better leader. In this particular case, since there were no women attending the course (which is telling in and of itself—not many female leaders out there, apparently), males were dancing with other males, and the photographer snapped a photo of two of these couples. There was talk about ‘stepping outside of your comfort zone’ and all that. I’m sure it’s a lot of fun and hard work to learn the tango, and I would be stepping out of my comfort zone as well to learn the tango and any kind of ballroom dancing. But I would do this in my free time, not during work time, so it wouldn’t matter that I was a slow learner. I’m not sure how learning the tango has anything to do with learning how to be a better leader. Does it have to do with learning to lead and have others follow, or vice versa? What happens if you are trying to follow the lead of someone who never learns the dance, as is often the case in the workplace? What happens if none of the trendy leadership courses results in better leadership? I don’t get it, so someone has to please explain to me why companies are spending money on such courses at a time when the global economy is in a downturn. These courses cost money, a lot of money.

I have yet to see the solid research/statistics that demonstrate the absolute benefit of leadership courses for leaders. How do you measure the effectiveness of these courses; how can you assess the results? Can you be sure that the methods work? I’m a scientist, so I want to see the research data. Please show me the reports so I can read them. I have no problems with an annual daylong seminar where leaders can meet together in their workplace and share common problems, brainstorm, or otherwise come up with new and creative ideas about how to lead. I just don’t understand the emphasis these days (the new trend) on traveling to out-of-the-way hotels and resorts for this purpose, for two or more days at a time. The idea I presume is that you cannot just ‘go home’ at the end of the course day; you’re stuck together with other leaders during the evenings where social skills play a large role as well. Networking and more networking. I know several leaders who shun these trips (or want to) as often as they can. A decade ago, private companies spent money on sending their employees out into the forests and mountains to learn how to work together as a team to survive and maneuver through the inevitable problems that cropped up. These team building courses seem to have paved the way for the new types of leadership and team-building courses. Is this because the old ones didn’t work, or are the new approaches the ideas that sprang up during the old team building and leadership courses? Did someone ten years ago think—it would be cool to have leaders learn to dance the tango together? Is that how it works at the top?

As children, we learned the Golden Rule—‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. In other words, treat people as you would like to be treated. I learned this rule early on and it stuck. And when I have broken it, my conscience tells me that I have wronged someone and to go and make amends. I live this way in my personal life and I have behaved accordingly in my work life. I can honestly say that I have tried to the best of my ability to treat those who have worked for me with respect and honesty, and have been as professional as possible when dealing with them. The awareness of your behavior and how it affects others in the workplace are the two most important things one must learn as a manager, and if you manage this you can be an effective manager or leader. I don’t think it is more complicated than that. Unfortunately, when you are lied to, exploited or pushed aside by company leaders, it makes it that much more difficult to treat leadership with respect. It takes two to tango. You cannot expect respect from employees if you do not treat them with respect. It’s that simple, and that complicated. We say that about children and adults as well; you cannot expect children to respect adults who abuse them or treat them badly or indifferently. It doesn’t matter if the adults are parents, teachers or other authority figures. I could already differentiate very clearly when I was in grammar school, who were the good teachers and who were the abusers. You remember both and you learn from both. Had I been surrounded only by abusive teachers, I would have learned how to evade them to the best of my ability--how to lie to them and how to be dishonest—how to play the game to see who would eventually win control. They would not have deserved better treatment. The same is true for abusive or exploitive company leadership.

My view of workplace leadership is more along the lines of the top-down approach. If you want respect from employees, start at the top and look down. Take a really good look at yourself, and then your employees. Companies should hire leaders who know what the Golden Rule is, who have ethics and morals, who abhor corruption and political game-playing, and who are not just interested in their cushy titles and salaries. They should hire leaders who understand that the buck stops with them. But companies have to value these types of leaders. This is the type of leadership that employees will respect. This is the type of leadership that employees will listen to, when new ideas, change, and challenges confront them in a world of global uncertainty and instability. Employees will look to leadership for guidance, but they will also pitch in and do their fair share and more if they know it will help the company survive. I have yet to meet one employee who was treated fairly by his or her company, who didn’t want to give back his or her fair share to that company. In other words, those employees who have been kicked around, exploited, lied to or treated poorly, and there are a number of them, are those who do not want to give back their fair share to their companies anymore. They have felt the injustice that pervades the system; they know that they are dancing alone. Where they once followed another’s lead, they now dance in place. Their leaders bailed out on them a long time ago. I would say that’s the biggest problem in workplaces these days; employees have to figure out everything on their own. There is no one to look up to, no one to mentor them, no one to take responsibility for them and their professional wellbeing. There are few good leaders who take their employees into consideration, who prioritize them. I know of one leader who was told that she was too concerned about her employees; that as a leader, she should be concerned with the company views and policies and with getting her employees to ‘accept’ a new policy that amounted to nothing more than a new way to exploit their competence and dedication (getting them to work twice as hard for the same amount of money). Suffice it to say that this company has a lot of problems and that the turnover rate for employees is high. Employees can ‘see through’ a lot of the new trends in the workplace, and leadership courses are one of those trends. Bad leaders will not become good leaders by learning to dance the tango; they will become good leaders by practicing the Golden Rule. I have yet to see a course that focuses on the ethics of leadership. I have to wonder if it would be well-attended.

Why I love the story of Jane Eyre

One of the best things I did last weekend was to watch the most recent film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre from 2011 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229822/) with Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre and Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester. I was completely emotional by the end of the film; I know how the story ends so there were no plot surprises, but the quality and intensity of the acting by Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender were just that overwhelming. Michael Fassbender was a wonderful surprise as Mr. Rochester; I have seen him in Prometheus and Fish Tank previously, and he is Mr. Rochester, David and Conor respectively, all completely different people, a testament to his acting abilities. He managed to impart a real humanity to Mr. Rochester, a humanity that I have not felt as strongly in other Mr. Rochesters. You feel sorry for him and for his predicament, even though you understand that he will suffer for his willfully deceiving Jane about his being married to a mad woman whom he is unable to divorce. By the time he tells her the truth, on her wedding day; you are hoping that Jane will forgive him because you know he is truly sorry for lying to her. But being the moral, proud and wise young woman that she is, she tells him that she will not live with him without being married and she leaves him and Thornfield Hall behind. As fate would have it, a tragedy occurs that ensures that she will finally be able to marry Mr. Rochester, but it was not the tragedy that made her return to Thornfield. It was her recognition of her own humanity and need for love; she gained the insight (inner sight) she needed to understand that she had found real love with Mr. Rochester and that she could not live in a passionless marriage with St John Rivers. She had to marry a man she loved. Her return to Mr. Rochester was actually an acknowledgment that she would live with him regardless of his marital situation as he had initially proposed once she found out he was already married. As it turns out; during her separation from Mr. Rochester, his wife burned down Thornfield Hall and committed suicide thereafter, but Jane is unaware of this when she returns to Thornfield. Mr. Rochester has lost his eyesight due to the fire and must depend upon those around him for help. When Jane returns to him, you understand that he has gained the ability to be grateful, and is no longer the proud and desperate man he once was. No matter how many times I’ve read the book or seen the different Jane Eyre films and TV series through the years, I am always moved by this story—it’s impossible not to love it. 

Thinking about the future, reflecting on the past

Thinking about the future, reflecting on the past, and trying to live in the moment--the unending challenge. I try to make sense of past events, to learn from them, and to use whatever little wisdom I gain to plan for the future. I suppose everyone does this. It’s probably part of getting older, because of course the older we get, the more ‘past’ there is behind us for us to reflect upon. I register that I have changed a lot, just within the past several years. Unsettling workplace events and family experiences impact on how one wants to live in the present and plan for the future. I have finally learned to let go of how I wanted things to be and to accept how they actually are. My work life was one of those things I thought I had a firm grasp on, but it changed shape as I held it and became difficult to hold in one place—like a squirming child. The work world has changed dramatically and for a while the difficulty was just to hang on to the speeding car as it careened forward. Now the car has either slowed or I have mastered running faster to keep up. I definitely know that I absorb information and adjust to change much faster now than I ever did before. And since that seems to be the goal of modern workplaces—to get employees to adjust to constant change--I guess the change is a positive one. But it is not my full-time job that has produced that change, despite the constant pressure to change; it is my consultant work for the UiO science library and for Liivmedia that have had the greatest effect upon me. If I have ‘broadened my horizons’ and changed my approach, it is because I reached out in a whole new direction when I decided to work for both of them, and found a whole new arena in which to enjoy science. Following the different scientific social media and internet sites, reading, digesting, absorbing and commenting on articles I read in all areas of science has been immensely freeing and exhilarating. I don’t want to just read about what goes on in the field of cancer research anymore; I find reading about astrophysics, the universe, global warming, nutrition, and bee colony collapse disorder just as interesting. I have concluded after much reflection on past decisions that I have no regrets that I pursued a career in science. But I have understood that I don’t have to be just a research scientist to enjoy science or even to work in science. There are many different careers that one can have that utilize a science background—science communication, science journalism, journal editor, patent law, social media, consultant. Even though I will likely end my work life as a research scientist, it heartens me to know that I have contributed successfully as a consultant as well. That’s what I would tell young people these days; don’t limit your options. Keep all doors open. It makes for a more dynamic career and an adventurous future.

Language and identity

After living in Oslo and speaking Norwegian daily for over twenty years, I have finally begun to speak English again. I try to do so as often as possible. Not that I haven’t spoken English at times or when I struggled to find the Norwegian words; I just didn’t use my mother tongue very much during these years. Now I do. Why is this important to me now after so many years? One of the reasons was that I felt I was losing my identity as an American, because English is my mother tongue and when I speak Norwegian, I no longer feel American. I don’t feel Norwegian either when I speak Norwegian; perhaps I just felt neutral, and for many years, that was quite alright. Feeling American, identifying myself as American—I was not conscious of these feelings when I first moved here. In fact, it was fine to think and speak in Norwegian, even desirable, because unless you learn the language of the country you live in, you can never fully participate in its social or work life. I am fluent in Norwegian; I even write poetry in Norwegian. In fact, I like to do that, because I feel like I am another persona when I write in Norwegian, and as a writer, that’s both exhilarating and adventurous. I’ve even written a poem about that aspect—about ‘hiding’ behind the safety of a language that is not your own. But the older I get and the longer I live here, the more I want to use my mother tongue; perhaps so I don’t forget it, but also because I feel that I can state my thoughts and opinions more clearly in English than I can in Norwegian. I felt the opposite to be true a decade ago. What changed? I am not sure. Perhaps the experience of sometimes being ignored or not taken seriously in work and social circles, despite my fluency in Norwegian, changed my mind about how to approach specific experiences. Perhaps I thought, if I cannot make myself clear or ‘known’ in Norwegian, there is no point in using this language as my main language to communicate in this country. I can just as well use English, and at present, I feel it is necessary to do so, to communicate who I am at this point in time. The use of English guarantees that people will listen to you and try to understand you.

I register that people have different reactions to my talking English. My husband speaks English back to me unless he needs to really express himself, and then he goes over to Norwegian. But we have mostly communicated through the years using a blend of Norwegian and English that I call Norglish. I find that most of my Norwegian colleagues, with one exception, will speak to or answer me in Norwegian. Among my friends, it varies. Norwegian friends will speak Norwegian with me; non-Norwegian friends will speak English with me, even though we normally communicate in Norwegian. I find that using English is freeing for me; there are parts of me that have been released. It is as though I am allowed to be myself again. I don’t mean that I have not been myself these past twenty years; just that English puts me in touch with the core part of myself, and as I get older, that core part of myself wants to make itself better known. It’s not just about being or feeling American; it’s mostly about reclaiming me and my identity as a woman in 2012, living abroad, an expat, working in science, with one foot in Europe and one in America. I’m guessing that it is the core part of me that is trying to come to terms with all of these experiences—how to piece them all together--and I’m guessing that it is the core part of me that will be having much more to say as the years move on. I’m happy about that.

Considering the pursuit of an academic career

A new school year is upon us. For some students, it means starting the last year of high school or college, with all of the decisions the last year entails—what will I do after high school, will I go on to college, or if finished with college, what will I do after that, will I go on to graduate school, medical school, law school, or will I try to find a job instead? None of these decisions is trivial; in fact, what you choose to do with your life in your late teens/twenties often determines the type of field you remain in for the rest of your work life. It’s not impossible to move out of that field in an attempt to change career path, and it’s entirely possible to shift to a new type of job within one field. I just want to point out that it’s worth considering what is available to you in terms of careers if you choose to, for example, pursue a doctorate in the natural or life sciences.

I have mentored a number of PhD students through the years, as both primary and secondary advisor; I can tell you that for each year that passes, it becomes harder for me to encourage college graduates to pursue doctoral studies. There are many reasons for this; none of them have to do with money. Stipends for PhD students are in fact quite good now, at least in Scandinavia, ditto for postdocs and scientists, in contrast to the meager salaries for all of these positions some fifteen to twenty years ago. The problems have more to do with why you might want to pursue a PhD, and where you see yourself with that PhD in ten years. It is a topic for serious consideration before you start a PhD program, not during or after you finish. You would think this would be the normal common-sense approach; I can tell you that the opposite is often true. Students start PhD studies without a real understanding of what they’re choosing or what it will lead to. They may have a friend who has started on his or her doctorate; they may see it as a way to ‘postpone’ having to think about what it is they want to do with their lives. The fact remains--it is much harder now to get a postdoctoral position after you finish your PhD than it was fifteen years ago; if you are lucky to get a postdoctoral position, it becomes that much harder to obtain grant funding to become a research scientist, and so on. With each step, the eye of the needle narrows. Academia is elitist; the higher up the ladder you come, the more elitist it gets. There is no guarantee that you will be able to have a research career in academia, if you define that as being an independent principal investigator with a small research group. You will find that the doors close once you finish the doctorate, doors that once were open to you. Where you were once encouraged, you are now discouraged. It can happen very directly, when you are told that you are not good enough to pursue a postdoc, or more commonly, you are simply denied the opportunity to go forward because you will not get funding to go forward. There is a long list of potential postdoc candidates each year that wait to hear if they have gotten funding or not. And then let’s say for argument’s sake that you get postdoctoral funding for some years; after you finish that work, you start the real work—of trying to become an independent principal investigator and scientist, one who has his or her own grant funding for specific projects, technical support, lab space, and other such necessities. You need these things, otherwise you get nowhere. So back to my own consideration at the beginning of this paragraph--how can I encourage college graduates to go down the PhD path when I know that doing so will most likely not lead to career opportunities for them within academia or even outside of academia? Many scientific and biotech companies consider job applicants with PhDs to be overqualified. They would prefer that their salespeople are well-educated, but not necessarily at the doctoral level.

So perhaps it makes sense to just focus on and encourage the very few top students at all academic levels. It would mean fewer PhD students overall, but perhaps that is best for all concerned. In this way, academia can remain elitist—for the very few who have made it through the eye of the needle. However, the focus nowadays in the academic circles I wander through is that ‘the more PhD students, the better’. This of course is from the standpoints of the mentors and group leaders, who eye potential students as means to their ends—more publications and thus more money, more hands for the inevitable and time-consuming lab work, and so on. Research groups with many PhD students are looked favorably upon. Those who manage to accumulate a number of such students are considered successful in academia, because a large group generates grant funding, whereas a small group does not. The trend nowadays is to merge small groups into larger ones; doing so increases the chances of getting funding and getting more students. This is all well and good for the large research group; I’m just not sure it’s in the best interests of the PhD students who are looking at a different sort of future when it comes to the job market. It may just be me, but it seems rather pointless to invest a large amount of time and energy in mentoring students who will not be staying in academia. Most of the PhD students I have had the privilege of knowing finished their degrees and left academia for jobs in industry; they are salespeople, application specialists, clinical research associates, and the like. These jobs are all very good jobs, but they do not necessarily require a PhD. Many of these men and women are glad they took their PhDs in terms of having fulfilled a personal goal; some are not. The latter are those who originally wanted (or thought they did) an academic career, and were tossed around in the system by mentors who did not really care about their professional advancement. Or they experienced the nightmare of being one of many doctoral students in a research group, all of whom required their own research projects, all of whom struggled with their group leader over how their projects were defined and who had the primary responsibility for these projects. These few students were exceptionally bright and talented, and in my estimation, were forced out by group leaders who made it impossible for them to stay, because their intelligence and directness challenged the group leader. Or because the group leader knew that there was nothing to offer them in the way of an actual career. So wouldn’t it have made more sense to have discouraged them at a much earlier time point?

Should you pursue a doctorate and an academic research career? No one can answer that question for you. Think long and hard about what you want out of life. If you choose the academic route, know that you have chosen a career where you will always have homework or the feeling of not having finished your homework, where you will work long hours in the lab or in the office analyzing data and writing articles. Unless you are extremely bright, talented and creative, you will not rise in the system. And even if you are all of these, there is no guarantee that you will rise in the system—due to other factors such as political jockeying, pissing contests, and the like. You’ve got to know and understand, really understand, what it is you are choosing. If you don’t, you can end up like many middle-aged and close-to-retirement academic researchers in the current system who find themselves with little funding and no students. The system changed and they were displaced. The small groups they ran are not interesting anymore. They hang on ‘in quiet desperation’. They are small-fish small-pond scientists who suddenly found themselves in larger ponds, at the mercy of the larger and more predatory fish. That is the current reality of many research academics. There are less stressful ways to make a living.  

Summer cottage at Nesoddtangen

We are currently vacationing for a week at a summer cottage on Nesoddtangen (the tip of the Nesodden peninsula). We have rented this particular cottage many times during the past twenty years that I have lived in Norway. The cottage was willed to the cancer hospital where my husband works, like several others available for summer rentals, by patients who felt that they had received good treatment there. At present, there are at least six (perhaps more) such cottages available for rental; through my hospital the number is about the same. Some are cottages in the mountains; others are cottages on the sea. Our cottage, situated on the Oslo fjord, is about a twenty-five minute ferry ride from Oslo. It is far enough away from the city to get the feeling that one is out in the countryside, yet near enough to it via the ferry if there is reason to make the trip. In the ‘old days’ (early 1990s), we would sometimes take the ferry or our own boat into the city, to the Aker Brygge shopping area, to do some necessary grocery shopping, fill up on supplies, eat lunch at one of its many restaurants, or just walk around and window-shop. With our boat we were able to take longer boat trips around the Nesodden peninsula or to Drøbak, a lovely little coastal town about an hour’s boat ride from Nesoddtangen. One year we rented the cabin in September, even though we no longer were on vacation; we lived there for the week and went into work each day by boat. We would make a thermos of coffee for the trip and drink it on the way into Oslo harbor, shivering in the chilly autumn air.

Cottage at Nesoddtangen

The other night, as I sat writing in the cottage’s large living room, I noticed that storm clouds were gathering and the wind was picking up. I could hear it blowing around the cabin. It was only 7pm, but storm clouds filled the sky, threatening rain later on. The weather has been so unstable this summer; torrential rains one day followed by a day with hail and snow (in some areas of Oslo). That was last week. Other days are warm and sunny, like today, a real summer day, when the blue skies seem to go on forever. But as far as the weather goes, one needs to be prepared for all eventualities. After twenty years here, I have learned to take the weather in stride. 

Fireplace at the cottage

The first evening of our arrival at the cabin, it was chilly, so my husband lit a fire in the large red-brick fireplace in the corner of the living room. The fire’s warmth, topped off by a cup of hot chocolate, made everything alright with the world, and it didn’t matter if it was chilly outside in the middle of summer. The following day, the temperatures were warmer, although the sky was still a bluish-gray, dominated by large storm clouds--rain was predicted. During late afternoon, the winds pick up and don’t die down until around 8pm. Sometimes you can hear the wind blowing almost mournfully through the trees during the night, a sound that takes some getting used to, because it is so continual. And this year, unlike previous years, the cottage grounds are literally infested with brown Iberia snails; it’s difficult not to step on them. They have become quite a problem in recent years for the eastern part of Norway.

Brown snail on road

My early memories of being in Norway are bound up in visits to this cottage during the summers, in large festive parties that we managed to throw on meager budgets in the early days, pleasant times with relatives, friends, and their children. We often sat out until late in the evening, talking and laughing. It would be light outside until 11pm. Sometimes there was someone who played guitar, and we sang along. During the day, the children played along the shore, looking for mussels to crack open so that they could be used as bait for crabs. The crabs were always tossed back into the water; too small to eat. I used to love photographing the jellyfish—two kinds-brennmanet (Lion's mane jellyfish, which is a stinging jellyfish with long tentacles) and glassmanet (generally non-stinging). The former look like fried eggs sunny side up; the latter are fragile-looking, glassy in appearance, and quite beautiful with their green and pink hues. I love watching how they move and swim. I don’t see many of them this year, unfortunately. 

Brennmanet or Lion's mane jellyfish

Sometimes at night we would go down to the wharf where our boat was moored and look at the small bioluminescent creatures in the water (phytoplankton). They were like little dots of light flickering in the dark water, which was filled with them. During lazy afternoons we would go berry-picking; there were raspberry bushes in front and off to the side of the cottage (there are still a few) and along the road leading down to the ferry. If we were lucky we found wild strawberry bushes.

Much has changed during the past twenty or so years, in regard to the cottage itself as well as its visitors. When we first used to come here, drinking water had to be drawn up from a well, and drawing it up was hard work. The cottage had no bathroom—no shower or toilet; rather an outhouse that I do not remember fondly. I remember hating outhouses already as a young child; one of our favorite family picnic areas in Pound Ridge, New York had outhouses instead of regular bathrooms-- the outhouses themselves were unpleasant places to enter—dark and filled with flies, and the smell was awful and pervasive. Over the years, the outhouse at the cottage was replaced by what was called an environmental toilet located in a ‘bathroom’ of sorts attached to the house, and this year, to our (happy) surprise, that room has now been converted into a regular bathroom with a full shower, sink and toilet. Most ‘cottages’ now in Norway are quite luxurious (and not really cabins at all)—arrayed with all the trimmings—radiant floor heat, state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms, exemplifying the accumulation of personal wealth in this country over the past twenty years. People want convenience and comfort now. When it comes to having a nice bathroom, I am in that group. But otherwise, I am content with the simple trappings of this cottage. Many of the couples with whom we socialized early on are no longer together. Some have new partners and new lives, and are no longer in our circle. Those couples who are still together now vacation in warmer places—where sun and warmth are guaranteed. I can honestly understand their wish for sunshine, warmth, and stable summer weather. Sometimes I miss the old days though. Some relatives are quite elderly now, too frail to make the journey to visit us at the cottage. We make the journey to visit them instead. The children who used to come here are grown up now and will soon be having children of their own. My husband and I are alone at the cottage this week, enjoying our time alone, reading, writing (me), sleeping, shopping for groceries, watching TV in the late evenings, and being generally lazy. Time passes slowly, but it passes and moves us onward. Next week I will be in New York for my annual visit. When I remember back to our time at the cottage, during the wintertime perhaps, I will wonder what it was we did each day at the cottage. But then I look at photos and remember; today my husband picked wildflowers, yesterday we were able to barbecue, today we took a long boat trip, and so on. I look at him, at our life, and wonder how it is that more than twenty years have passed since we first got together, since I first moved to Norway. Time for reflection will do that to you; nostalgia, memories, common sense, acceptance of life, of aging, of watching the next generation take over for ours; all of these things seem more intense to me when I have the time to reflect upon them. It does not make me sad; it’s more that I register my tiny place in the scheme of things, in the universe, and my small contributions to the life around me. I have to say that things feel right with the world when you know where and how you fit into the scheme of things. It’s good to get perspective.

Fjord view from the cottage, with our wooden boat (mid-picture)

Sunset at Nesoddtangen and the docked passenger ferry

Wildflowers that my husband picked

One year later: impressions and reflections

Oslo is quiet today; there is an unusual stillness. I went for a long bike ride earlier and I could just feel the stillness. As though there is just an implicit understanding that today is a day for stillness and reflection, for remembering and honoring those men and women whose lives were so tragically lost last year in the senseless killings on 7/22.

Last year there was a sea of flowers in front of the Domkirke. There is talk in the newspapers that perhaps this will happen again this year, as people seem to be drawn to the church. It makes sense—that perhaps we seek to be present in places that offer comfort and understanding, and some kind of sense in the midst of all that doesn’t make sense. There will be a memorial concert later on tonight. I am not planning on attending, but many thousands of people are expected to participate. Perhaps I will watch it on TV.

The priest at mass this morning spoke about the importance of taking time in our daily lives to sit in silence and to reflect—to travel into ourselves as he put it—in order to be challenged by the questions that silence and reflection offer us. It makes sense to me. We cannot reflect on the things that happen around us and in our own lives, cannot deal with them adequately, without that solitude and reflection. Many people are afraid of solitude and time for reflection; such a needless fear. We learn to know ourselves that way, and that can only be a good thing.

How sad that only a few days ago, that Colorado experienced yet again a horrific shooting rampage in a movie theater, which killed and injured many people. How is it that this type of weaponry ends up in the hands of those who are hell-bent on destruction? What do gun-shop owners think when a young man comes in with a request for these types of automatic weapons? I’m just wondering. I am tired of hearing the often-repeated expression when these types of tragedies occur, that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. It’s not true. Guns purchased legally by people who have a hate agenda, do kill people, and the automatic rifles that these murderers use kill many people in a very short time. I have a problem understanding that these types of guns could at all be used to hunt animals. God help the animals, is all I can say. And God help us all if we continue to permit these guns to be sold legally. I know the argument goes that if such gun sales are made illegal, that young men like Anders Behring Breivik and James Holmes will get a hold of them anyway. But you know what, maybe they wouldn’t have--maybe they would have encountered many more obstacles along the way, and maybe the tragedies could have been prevented. I’m just wondering. And hoping for change to the guns laws.

Monday morning in Oslo

Update on the weather—about the same as it’s been the past few days. Raining today; it rained yesterday (although it cleared up nicely last evening—long enough for me to get in a bike ride), and it rained a bit on Saturday as well. But we enjoyed two restaurant visits in spite of the weather, sitting indoors of course—on Friday evening at Mucho Mas for excellent Mexican food, and on Saturday evening we found our way to Jonoe at Ringnes Park for some excellent sushi. We’re on vacation now for the next four weeks, so it’s only to pray for some nice weather. I hope whoever created the Higgs boson is listening to our prayers!!

I saw an article today in Britain’s newspaper The Guardian, that the weather in England isn’t much better than here. Rain, and lots of it. And more to come. That’s what’s predicted for Oslo this week. So I guess I better tackle my indoor projects that are waiting for me. No time like the present! Still working on my photo and writing projects, so I guess I won’t complain (too much) about the weather. I’ve sorted through my recent photos and organized them. I’ve created a few photo blog posts and written a few posts for my other blogs. The house is in order, household tasks are mostly done, and now I can read and write to my heart’s content.

The USA is experiencing one of the worst heat waves on record, with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I can attest to that, as I grew up in New York, and I can only remember one or two summers in my growing up when the temperatures even approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 38 degrees Celsius) or went slightly over that temperature. New York summers were always warm and humid though, and it was nice to come inside to an air-conditioned home or office to cool down. Or perhaps we ran through someone’s sprinkler to cool down; I remember doing this often as a child. There were always some homeowners who were watering their lawns and who didn’t mind that we ran through their sprinklers. I remember some wicked New York thunderstorms, with intense thunder and a lot of lightning, followed by torrential rains. And then, the storm was over and the sun came out and life went back to summer normal. But when I talk to family and friends now about the weather in New York, many of them say it’s nothing like it was when we were young. So I have to conclude that either we all have collectively bad memories, or that weather patterns have definitely changed. Whether the changes are natural or the result of global warming, I cannot say. But I can also say that summers in Oslo are not like they were in the early 1990s when I first moved here, so I really do believe that weather patterns are changing. I can remember longer periods with sunshine in June and July in Oslo, where it was possible to go out on the boat without being drenched by a sudden rainstorm. It’s harder to trust that there will be stable weather now, anywhere.