Updates on my writing

Those of you who follow this blog know that I am constantly trying to find time to write, whilst employed full-time as a scientist, and after that, busy with running a home. Like most people, I try to find free time in the midst of all the other things that just have to get done. There’s always been something more important than my writing through the years, especially when I was younger, so that I often ended up pushing it aside in order to do something else that seemed more important at the time. During the past four years I’ve written blog posts about prioritizing your soul’s dreams, visions, inner goals, secret goals. I had to carve out time in the evenings, several times a week, to write. Time for my blog, or to create a poem or short story. I’m happy to say that finally, after several years of working and writing in this way, I’ve put together a new collection of poems, called Remnants of the Spirit World, that I sent off today to my colleague and friend Paloma who will work on formatting the book and designing the cover. When her creative work is done, I will be sending it off for publication. I am nearly finished with my collection of short stories, called Survivable Losses; these stories have been tough for me to write, because I’ve had to face up to some of the pain involved in writing them. They are not autobiographical, but some of the themes are, in the sense that I’ve experienced, like many others, betrayal and loss of love, as well as resignation to the things that just happen in life that we are unable to change. Writing about them rips the scabs off the wounds again; but I am glad for the experience of being able to feel pain in order to write about it. And finally, I am nearly finished with my novella, called In the Halls of the Kings, a mini-thriller about a female academic scientist who teams up with another female academic to expose the dealings of a ruthless and potentially fraudulent scientist. This too will hopefully find its way to publication before the end of the year.

I’ve been an avid observer for most of my life, starting when I was about ten years old, when I began to pay attention to what went on in my home and in the homes of relatives and family friends. I became keenly aware of all that was not said, of body language, of what people’s eyes said, and of superficial conversations that masked what was really going on inside. I observed the nice and not-so-nice characters that peopled my life and the life of my family. Recently, I read a quote that appealed to me ‘Be nice to those around you; they may write about you’. Strangely enough, there’s a lot of truth in this one. I don’t write directly about specific people in my life; my works are fiction, but my characters can be modeled on the traits or characteristics of some people I’ve met. I have fewer qualms about using the traits and personalities of the not-so-nice people I know, because their motives and desires are often so crystal clear—power, domination of others, prestige, and greed—often all in one unsavory package.

Here are some quotes to help you when you get stuck on the path of reaching your own goals. Maybe being stuck takes the form of a creative mental block, or procrastination, or lack of self confidence/belief in oneself. I know these quotes have helped me. They’re hanging as magnets on my refrigerator—a gift from Sonja, the niece of one of my closest friends, who visited us in Oslo five years ago. I met Sonja for the first time then, and was immediately taken with her spirit, energy and exuberant personality. She is a go-getter, an adventurer, a life-tackler, and has already achieved much in her thirty odd years here on this earth. In short, she is an inspiration.

• ‘Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing’. –Georgia O’Keefe
• ‘Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress’. –Paul Gauguin
• ‘The artist goes through states of fullness and emptiness, and that is all there is to the mystery of art’. –Pablo Picasso

Getting into autumn

Autumn has arrived, according to the calendar. It’s shaping up to be a very nice season here in Oslo, just as summer was. I realized the other day that it’s the transition from summer to fall that can sometimes get me down, those two or so weeks around the end of September where suddenly we’re wearing jackets, when just last week we didn’t need them. My body protests against the sudden chill in the air. But once we’re firmly planted in the next season, I adjust. It’s been easier this year because the weather has gradually moved from warm to chilly. So that means warm blue-sky sunny days (still) and chilly evenings (nice for walking). Quite ok with me. The weather reports don’t really do the weather justice at all. Yesterday for example, was a gorgeous blue-sky warm day in Oslo (some clouds), whereas the weather report said ‘partly cloudy’ and that was that. We took our bikes and cycled through the city, ending up biking along Enebakkveien down to where the footpath along the Alna River more or less starts, and then we made our way up along the river, a roller coast ride if ever there was one—up one hill and down and then up again, until we got to Bryn. Good training for those who like their hills. At Bryn, we checked out the old railway station from 1854—one of those great old buildings that are no longer in fashion architecturally--before we turned around and cycled back to Grunerlokka to the Farmer’s Market. About nine miles of biking round-trip. There were a lot of people milling about the Farmer's Market, eating elk burgers and chatting with the sellers. We bought nine liters of freshly-pressed apple juice; one of my husband’s friends and his wife have a lot of land that they have converted to apple orchards, so this is the season for harvesting and pressing to make juice. It’s so good. And the other day I took a nice walk from Aker Hospital down to Sinsenkrysset, then walked along Ring 3 to Storo, and then home, a distance of about three miles. A cloudy autumn day with a slight breeze, perfect for walking. Love being outdoors. I can see myself doing so much more of it when I am no longer working full-time. Something to look forward to…….

Reflections on communication

Much is written these days about the importance of communication and of being able to communicate regularly, properly and well. We live in a society that prioritizes communication in all its forms: regular mail, emails, text messages, telephone calls, instant messaging, multi-media sharing, TV, radio, newspapers, books, movies, internet, etc. There are so many ways to communicate as well as a huge emphasis on doing so. One need only walk down a city street or order a coffee in a local café to register that we as a society are connected to others on a nearly-constant basis. One is constantly bombarded with individuals talking into mouthpieces that one cannot see; I have wrongly assumed several times that I am being followed by a crazy person talking to himself or herself, until I realize that no, he or she is talking to another person on an otherwise hidden phone with an invisible headset. We have a plethora of ways to communicate and a plethora of devices with which to communicate, and yet, relationships between people on personal as well as global levels have not noticeably improved, evolved, or reached perfection during the past decade. The latter is an impossible goal anyway, although advertising would have you believe that as long as you are connected to everyone around you at any given time, you can achieve communication nirvana. I cannot understand that there is so much to say to anyone that one must be connected at all times to another person, be that person a spouse, a child, a friend, a colleague, or a parent.

I don’t know when silence and reflection became de-prioritized in our society. I only know that I prioritize them more than ever before, in a society that cannot be quiet. It does not even attempt to be silent at times, except during very rare moments of global silence in response to a death or a historical event. I go to work and am told I must network and communicate more with my colleagues. I thought that is what I have been doing, when necessary, all these years. I don’t need to be told to do more of it. I don’t wish to burden my co-workers with every single thought that emanates from my brain. Because what happens is that words become devoid of meaning, messages become empty, and people become weary of the ennui associated with ‘communication’. Besides self-promotion, I detect a note of desperation in the constant cry for attention on the part of administrators and other well-meaning souls who simply cannot accept that not everything they say is worth listening to in a work context. I don’t need to be told repeatedly, in the form of well-meaning emails, seminars, leadership courses, lectures and whatnot, how to do my job or how to communicate with my colleagues. I try to apply the golden rule in my dealings with others: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think that’s a good rule, and I wish it was practiced more. Respect for others, for their thoughts and words and for what they value, is at a premium in my workplace. The tough cookies who run the show run roughshod over the poor souls who sit in the meetings where they are expected to participate, yet when they do, they are told that what they say is not relevant or important; or when they talk, they are constantly interrupted by those who wish to take over the show. If this is communication, spare me.

There are ways of communicating with others that work, and ways of communicating that guarantee a failure to connect with those one wishes to communicate with. The ‘emperor’s new clothes’ philosophy does not work for me. I don’t want ‘same shit, new wrapping’ foisted upon me in a communication context. I want to choose how, when and where I wish to communicate. I am not available 24/7 to anyone, not even to my spouse, and certainly not to my job. My home life is valuable to my development as a kind and good human being. My home is my haven, my port in a storm, a place where I find peace and quiet. I don’t want it invaded by constant chatter in any form—empty gossip, superficial conversation, TV blabbing, mindless radio chatter, and all the rest that passes for communication. Because now we come to the crux of the matter, at least for me. What is communication? Wikipedia defines it thusly: communication ‘(from Latin commūnicāre, meaning "to share" ) is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior. It is the meaningful exchange of information between two or a group of living creatures’. For me, the emphasis is on meaningful. There is far too much meaningless communication in our world. And if we fill our heads with too much of it, there is no room for reflection, peace, quiet, or creativity. And if those disappear, real communication dies. 

My mother and her generation of women

Today, September 22nd, is my mother’s birthday. Had she still been alive, she would have been 93 years old today. I wish she had made it to that age. Sadly, she passed away in March 2001. There is not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and miss her. She lived her life her way and did things her way (like Frank Sinatra whom she liked a lot) and while that could be amazingly frustrating at times, I think it’s what kept her going through the hard times in her life. And there were a number of them, as in the lives of most people. She was not an aggressive or self-seeking person, nor a particularly talkative one. You had to pull personal information out of her about her formative years, her childhood, and even young adulthood. What I did learn from her is that her mother (my grandmother) went blind, probably in her late sixties/early seventies. My best guess is that her mother had glaucoma that was either too far gone when it was discovered, or that there were not very good treatments for glaucoma at that time (1940s). I actually searched online for an answer to the latter and found it here: http://www.brightfocus.org/questions-answers/what-was-the-primary.html. I never had the chance to meet my grandmother since she died before I was born. My mother put her own life on hold for a number of years to take care of her mother, including postponing her ambition to go to college. She had to work and she did so, probably supporting the two of them on her salary as an assistant librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library. It was there that she met my father in the early 1950s, and they were married in 1955, a year after her mother died. Whenever my mother talked about her own mother, it was always in a kind way. I never heard my mother utter one unkind word about her mother or about having to take care of her. She did express regret at not being able to finish college; she started but then had to quit. Once married, she had three children and raising them became her life. And when my father became ill with cardiovascular disease, she took care of him too, without complaining about her lot in life. She just did it.

Her birthday today reminds me of all of the older women in my mother’s generation whom I’ve had the privilege and honor of knowing, and they are not few. Most of them are dead now (had they lived, most of them would be over 85 years old): the women in my childhood neighborhood; the mothers of my close friends; my aunts; some really wonderful teachers in grade school and high school; the women I got to know in the different jobs I’ve had through the years. They inspired me with their values, sense of responsibility, commitment, loyalty, and charitable behavior. They were women of faith, many of them. They credited their faith with getting them through the hard times. They also believed in the value of family. They had their imperfections and faults, but they tried to live up to their ideals. That’s all I could really ask of role models when I needed them. I only hope that I can be half as good as they were when it’s my turn to be a role model for young women starting out. I certainly don’t feel as though I’ve got it all together. But I do look to my faith to help me through the hard times. And I remember the supportive natures of most of the older women I’ve known. If I can hang onto my faith and be supportive of others when they need my support, I guess I’ll be alright. Plus I know I’ve got my mother in my corner, rooting for me.  

Reaping what you sow

When we were children, we were taught that we could not expect much justice or reward in this life if we counted ourselves among the good people who followed the rules and behaved well, rather that we would find praise and reward for being good in the next world, after we were dead. This was provided you believed in an afterlife, which was a given on the part of the religious instructors we had as children in Catholic grammar school. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve wondered about a lot of things, and this is one of them. I’ve never really liked the philosophy that good people have to suffer at the hands of bad people, or that they have to accept that suffering without standing up for themselves or fighting back. And I loathe the idea that bad people get to do what they want at the expense of good people, without ever having to account for their behavior or without getting caught or stopped. What do I mean by bad people? Psychopaths, sociopaths, true narcissists, the holier-than-thous, those who believe the rules don’t apply to them because they are too smart, too good-looking, or too rich. Those who mess with others’ heads to achieve their own egotistical aims, those who miss no opportunity to badmouth those around them, those who aggressively cross others’ personal boundaries over which they have no business going, those who actively seek to destroy their co-workers in the quest to get to the top. How do you do the latter? By doing the first three things.  Why do I bring this up today? Because I have been witness to a few comeuppances recently, and I must say that I am glad I didn’t have to wait until I was dead to experience them. And because I have experienced a small amount of joy in watching these people get their just deserts, my conscience has bothered me. But these people have reaped trouble--lost top leadership positions, experienced being badmouthed and attacked themselves, got told to back off or get out of people’s lives--because they sowed trouble.  They deserved what they got, and the reason I felt glad about any of it was because it happened in this life and not the next. The people around them are now spared their nasty slimy behavior.  

I believe that good people should stand up for themselves and should fight back, insofar as that is humanly possible. I’m not sure what Christ really meant by turning the other cheek, but I don’t think he meant that good people should let themselves be attacked and/or killed, or that they shouldn’t try to dissuade bad people from behaving badly. I think he meant that they should set an example—good behavior—not that they should let the nasty people ride roughshod over them. Good people have the right to defend themselves if they are physically, verbally or psychologically attacked. I include spiritually as well, because some people cross all sorts of boundaries in their dealings with you, and expect you to simply accept their transgressions because that is who they are. But if good people are exposed to enough bad, unethical, nasty, slimy, evil behavior, they risk being contaminated themselves, if they never fight back. They risk being inundated by so much crap that they slip under the surface of slime. They risk becoming like those who are not worth emulating. Sometimes, they even end up ‘casting their pearls before swine’, a very favorite expression of mine. They throw away their values in order to live among the bad people. It can happen gradually, one pearl at a time, and suddenly, they’ve given their souls away, to be trampled upon. It’s worth thinking about. 

A teensy weensy second in a universe of seconds

I was witness to an older woman’s attempt at conversation in the hospital cafeteria the other day. She was trying to talk to the younger man at the checkout counter while she was paying for her meal, whereas he was just in a hurry to get done with her. There were no long lines of people waiting behind her to pay, so he could have taken the very short amount of time she seemed to need, to listen and perhaps to say a few kind words. Acknowledge her, in other words. She seemed like a nice older woman who perhaps had family members that were sick, or perhaps she herself was sick. It was hard to tell. What was clear to me was that she needed some warmth from others. It would have been a kind gesture to have tried to give some warmth. My heart goes out to people like that. She ended up apologizing for taking up his time, which then softened his attitude toward her a bit. Of course, there are always multiple ways to look at a situation. So I will try to reinterpret the above situation in several other ways:

• Perhaps the young man at the checkout counter was having a bad day and did not have the extra energy to extend himself.
• Perhaps he had been told by his superiors not to waste too much time talking to customers as it would hold up the line of people waiting to pay. This was a problem in one other hospital cafeteria and was solved by removing the person who talked too much to the customers.
• Perhaps the older woman had been a bit pushy with him before I got in line behind her. But I have to admit by looking at her, that she didn’t seem the type. She rather seemed worried, weary and a bit defeated, like life had worn her down.

Whatever the explanation, I wonder if it isn’t simpler to just opt for extending oneself for one teensy weensy second out of a universe of seconds. To expand one’s heart ‘three sizes’, as what happened to the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and to err on the side of compassion and friendliness. To light one candle in the darkness of someone else’s life. God knows we may need the same one day—and how nice it would be if someone’s kindness was the light we needed to get through yet another tough day.

Let’s talk about me (me, me, me)

It strikes me more and more how society is becoming increasingly self-preoccupied. There have been countless articles written about this, so I won’t launch another tome on the subject. But I’ve begun to experiment a bit in conversation (if you can call it that these days) with colleagues, acquaintances and even strangers. I’ve reflected on it, and come to the conclusion that I ask questions of others—how was your day, how was your summer vacation, where are you from, do you like it here, what was this or that like, what are your interests, what books do you like—out of genuine interest and curiosity, not merely politeness, but that the interest is seldom reciprocal. This is not true of my conversations with good friends and family, so I know that it should not irritate me as much as it does. But it does irritate me, because it is symptomatic of much of what is wrong with our society. Showing interest in others' lives and in what others have to say is not nosy or intrusive; in fact it’s quite the opposite, it’s a kind and civilized gesture that makes people feel included. Asking others how they are or about their lives is a friendly gesture, and I am appreciative of that gesture when people ask me how I am or how my summer was, and really listen to my response. What I have experienced, just in the space of the few weeks I have been back at work, is the following:

• The ignorers--those colleagues who never or barely (grudgingly) acknowledge their co-workers in the hallway—no smile, no greeting, complete disinterest. But if you stop them and ask how they are, they will hold an extensive speech on how things are going with them. This makes me wonder if academia is a uniquely self-preoccupied profession. Well, I guess I know the answer—it is.
• The interrupters--people who ask you how you are or how your summer was, only to give you exactly thirty seconds to reply before they launch into their own stories about their own lives. Or the ones who interrupt nearly every sentence you utter with some comment that diverts the conversation back to them. I would find it amusing if I didn’t find it so irritating. They’re like children clamoring for attention from their parents. Me, me, me…….
• The self-promoters—those who use any and all conversational attempts as an excuse to tell you how wonderful and great they are. Similar to the interrupters except that you rarely even get the chance to say a word. It’s as though they’re on promotional tours to tell you about a new book, and of course that ‘book’ is their life. My world and welcome to it……
• The besserwissers--people who don’t really listen to what you are telling them, and who are just waiting for an opening to jump in and insert their own comments about your situation. They’re champing at the bit. These are the aggressive people who always know better than you. In fact, they know it all, or they know best. Who can always tell you how you should have done something or how they did it and how you too can achieve or experience the same as they did, if only you do so-and-so.

The experience of actually being listened to, or of listening to others, is transforming. If you’ve ever wondered how to make someone’s day, try putting yourself aside and really listening to what another person has to say. Acknowledging others is important in conversation, and I don’t see much of this anymore. It can be as simple as a nod of the head, eye contact, or a smile from the person who asked you a question and is now listening to your answer.

‘Fake it until you make it’ (then what?)

I subscribe to a number of email publications having to do with the business world and its ever-fascinating opinions, buzzwords, mantras and current trends. Nothing too complicated; most articles debate the following types of issues: qualities of good leaders, how to break through the glass ceiling, is there a glass ceiling for women, have we achieved gender equality, how women should act in a male-dominated profession, and so on. The new mantra for women on the way up is apparently ‘Fake it until you make it’; this is proffered as a way for women to feel ok about the fact that there are a number of men in top-level positions who are not qualified for them, but since they act as though they are (they fake their competence and/or readiness), they get promoted whereas women don’t. So if men do it, it’s ok for women to do it too. This expression makes me cringe whenever I hear it uttered, at least in the way it’s currently used. It conflicts with nearly every moral principle I was taught since I was a young child. We were taught to be honest, forthright and not to lie. We were certainly not taught to ‘fake’ anything. Fakers were frowned upon; if you look up the word ‘faker’, some of the synonyms are liar, pretender, fraud, phony, pretender, and impostor. Sorry, but these are not the type of personality descriptions you want attached to you, not in the business world, and definitely not in the academic research world. We were taught to work hard at whatever course of study we chose to pursue, and in that way, we would achieve success in our chosen profession. And if our eventual goals were to be the boss or leader of a department, for example, we accepted that we had to earn that position; that it would not be handed to us in our twenties or early thirties without having earned it. And by earning it, I mean, working your way up from being a project and/or team leader with responsibility for one or two people, to a larger project with responsibility for a few more people, and so on. Slow but steady progress up over. In this way, you gained the necessary emotional intelligence as well as the professional qualifications necessary to assume a leadership position. So that perhaps after ten or fifteen years in the workforce (closer to thirty-five or forty years old), you could be considered qualified to lead a large team of people or even a department. At this point, there would be no doubt that you were qualified for the leadership position; there would be no need to ‘fake’ anything.

Nothing is worse than ‘feeling/knowing’ that you don’t measure up or don’t fit the criteria necessary to do a good job; I have felt that way once in my life, when I was elected student council president in my senior year of high school. I was totally unprepared for the job, naive, not a spontaneous idea-maker, and not particularly social. But I was the smartest student in my class, and that was enough to get me nominated. Enough people had faith in my abilities such that they voted for me. But I lacked faith in myself and my abilities, and I could not fake my way through that year. I cannot say that I failed at the job, but I did not succeed at it either. I walked around with a constant knot in my stomach, worrying about how lousy a job I was doing, about my lack of spontaneous creativity and ability to pull a team together with inspiring words. I do not remember that time as enjoyable; it was a stress I could have done without. I should have said no to the nomination, but I did not, and I don’t know why. Part of saying yes was out of a sense of duty. Many years later, I understand that this type of position was simply not a good fit for me; I did it, but found no joy in the job. Nothing is worse than feeling that the eyes of those you lead or those who look up to you are constantly upon you, waiting for you to slip up so they can say ‘I told you that you weren't good enough, smart enough, confident enough, etc.’ This is how you feel; the reality may be quite another story. Most people probably wish you well and don’t think much more about it. They’re certainly not overly-preoccupied with whether you succeed or fail; they have enough to do in their own lives. Nevertheless, the fact remains that I was not qualified for the job. Several years later, I experienced the opposite. I got a summer job that I mastered with ease; I was hired to ease the backlog of returned orders of pens and pencils whose logos were misspelled or wrong.  We were a group of about ten women, working in the returned-goods department; our jobs were to tackle the returns, figure out the mistakes, and send the orders on for re-processing. I loved this summer job. I got to work mostly alone (my preference in most jobs) on the tasks at hand—dealing with the processing of returned orders and the requisite associated paperwork. Once I learned the rudiments of the job (which forms to file and where they should get sent), it was clear sailing from thereon. It was a simple job, but one that instilled confidence because you knew what to do and when to do it, and you got the necessary feedback (good work, or work harder). The department head took notice of me when I managed to clear my desk of the hundreds of returns assigned to me within a few weeks as well as to motivate the ladies in my department to plow through the backlog and get it done. We hung up posters with the numbers of ‘how many returns down and how many to go’; that sort of thing. We made it and helped the company out of a real tight spot. At the end of the summer, I was offered a full-time job as leader of that department; I was nineteen years old. I would have reported to the man who noticed my work, and would have replaced the woman (in her mid-thirties) who had the position (they would have fired her and instated me). The job would have been a springboard to a career in business. But I did not feel that I was at all ready to lead a department at nineteen years of age; I had no real people skills in the sense of knowing how to deal with different personalities in the workplace. I was ‘book-smart’ but not ‘people-smart’. I am fairly sure that I would have been an unprepared and nervous leader, in short, not a good leader at that time. I chose rather to fulfill my degree in science, and ultimately chose research science as a profession. I did not feel like an impostor in my little summer job, but I might have felt like one had I said yes to taking on department leadership at that age. I don’t feel like an impostor in research either. My view is that you have to like the work involved, but also feel that you can master it. Additionally, you have to have bosses/leaders who give feedback and constructive advice, and who are honest with you about your chances of succeeding in that profession. You have to be able to trust their motives where your future is concerned. These types of people seem to be at a premium these days.

I know that this phrase arose as a way for employees, mostly women, to deal with and overcome feeling like impostors in their positions. The impostor syndrome seems to be widespread among highly-educated intelligent women from what I read; something that strikes me as quite irrational. But does faking feeling successful make you feel better about yourself when you feel like an impostor? Does it make you do a better job? And just because a number of men do this, do women need to do it? What I guess I am saying is that if you feel like an impostor in your job 100% of the time, perhaps your brain and heart are telling you something important that you should listen to—that maybe you’re in the wrong job or wrong profession. Nevertheless, I think we need to reevaluate this expression and stop using it to falsely bolster confidence, especially where women are concerned. Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be: ‘Visualize mastering what you work so hard at. Visualize succeeding at it. Visualize yourself doing it in your mind’s eye. Visualize your impact on those around you’. And if your mind’s eye cannot ‘see’ you doing it with a fairly high degree of confidence, rethink your goals. If you feel only dread and fear about being at the top or doing what it is you think is expected of you, is it worth it? There’s nothing worse than ‘arriving’, only to wonder, ‘what do I do now that I've arrived?’ ‘Making it’ is not a goal in and of itself, no matter how much ‘faking’ is involved; there has to be more substance to the goal. What do you want to do with the top position, and why? Do you want to help your company and your employees, or just promote yourself and your career? I think those questions are worth exploring and answering, and will go a long way toward making you feel like you have the right to be where you are, that you've earned that right, and that you go forward with confidence and the smarts necessary to do a good job. Because there are too many men in top positions who have no business being there; who are miserable leaders and who do not know how to listen or to communicate with their employees. These men have risen to the level of their incompetence, which in some cases is quite high within an organization. I don’t think we need more bad leaders in the form of women who are just like these men. I’m looking for real leadership, inspiring and competent leadership; I’ll take a truly-qualified, honest, humble man or woman over a faker any day.

A walk down memory lane

I am A New Yorker in England at present, in Cambridge to be specific. My husband and I are on vacation, and this year, we decided to return to the place where we first met twenty-six years ago. We met at a scientific (flow cytometry) conference that was held at Cambridge University (scroll down to end photo). The majority of the lectures and parallel sessions were held at Trinity College. It was my first time in Europe, and my first opportunity to attend an international conference. I arrived alone in London a few days before the conference, and made my way to the Belgravia section of London where I had booked a room at a small boarding house run by an immigrant Italian couple. I spent those days touring London, Bath, and Stonehenge on my own before heading north to Cambridge by train from King’s Cross station. It was an exciting time—making my way around London and taking day trips from London by bus at a time when internet, cell phones and social media were non-existent. 

The first time I was in Cambridge, I became completely captivated by the city and the university. I soaked in the university atmosphere. What made the experience complete was being able to live in a dorm room for the week of the conference. The room was austere, fit for a monk, containing a bed and a desk and chair, and not much else. The bathroom was down the hall, to be shared by the inhabitants of the dorm rooms on that floor. The dorm building was a stone’s throw from Trinity College, so it was a pleasure to wake up and to walk across the street to get breakfast in one of the main dining rooms with long tables (think Harry Potter at Hogwarts where he and his friends sat at those long tables, and you’ll get the idea). This is where we ate breakfasts and dinners—formal affairs where the food was served from the head of the table and passed along down to each diner. I remember some really good dinners—roast beef and roast lamb with different sauces. The organizers of the conference made sure that we experienced real university life. I spent some time wandering around the city’s many bookstores; the end result was that my luggage became much heavier, and I ended up having to ship the many books I bought back to New York as I could not haul them around for the rest of my stay in England. After the conference was over, a colleague and I took the overnight train from London to Edinburgh and toured Scotland for several days, before returning to London for the trip back to New York. I met my husband a few days before we left Cambridge, and we managed to spend some time together wandering around the city and getting to know each other before we returned to our respective countries. The rest, as they say, is history.

Yesterday, we wandered down the same streets as we did when we first met. We discovered that some of our memories of what transpired many years ago were faulty, whereas the walk through the city brought back other memories that had been buried. We stood on one bridge overlooking the river Cam and watched the amateur punters trying to steer their boats in the right direction in order to avoid crashing into other boats. It brought back memories of punting with my colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering; my former boss was the designated punter, and he did his level best to keep from falling into the water and ruining his leather jacket and shoes. He managed that amidst our laughter and teasing. My colleagues also joined me for a traditional English tea with scones and clotted cream at a tea house in the city center; my two wishes upon landing in England, both of which were fulfilled, were to experience a traditional English teatime and to eat fish and chips. We also enjoyed a beer together at the Eagle pub that Watson and Crick (of DNA fame) frequented.

Today, we met an old friend, Judith, whom we both know from the time when she did her doctorate in Norway; she and Charlie kindly made the trip from London to Cambridge, and we met at the Fort St. George pub/restaurant on the Midsummer Common for lunch. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and three hours passed in pleasant conversation. On parting, we made plans to keep in touch and hopefully they will visit us in Norway at some future point.

One of my ‘bucket list’ wishes is to take a summer literature course at Cambridge University. I have already found some online information about the different courses available. It would be a real privilege to study at Cambridge, even if only for a few weeks, and I hope it comes to pass.

These photos of Cambridge University are from 1987, and were taken from the tower of Great St. Mary's Church, which provided me with wonderful views of the university buildings and city. The photos of the Bridge of Sighs were taken during our punting trip on the river Cam. 

notice the beautiful lawns 

King's College

Bridge of Sighs, St. John's College

Bridge of Sighs

In praise of fathers

I am reminded of my father at different moments in my life; I can be reading a good book or watching a movie, and suddenly I’ll think of him and want to talk to him about the book or the movie I know he would have liked. I remember our long walks on hot summer evenings when I was a teenager, just him and me, ambling slowly along Broadway in Tarrytown, down as far as the Sunnyside estate and then back. We always had something to talk about. Or I’ll remember him toward the end of his life, when illness had weakened him and he had become a fragile man. Those are the ‘memories that bless and burn’, as my mother used to say. I am reminded of him and of all of the elderly fathers in his generation who are still alive, today on Father’s Day. Some of them (like my friend Jean’s father whom I look forward to seeing each year on my annual trip to NY) are sick and struggling to get well; I send my best wishes for a good recovery from across the ocean. They are always in my thoughts and prayers, but especially today. They are a part of a generation that is fast fading away; many of them served valiantly in WWII and that experience shaped the rest of their lives. They might have married and had families, but they also shared camaraderie with their fellow soldiers, the depth of which none of us will ever really understand. Most of them were sparse with details concerning their wartime experiences. My father was no exception; we knew he was stationed in England and that he helped load bombs onto planes (the reason for his chronic back problems), but that was the extent of it. There are some photos to that effect. What he mostly imparted to us was his feelings about England--how much he loved the country and the British people. That’s what he talked about, and that’s what stayed with him many years after the war. He kept in touch with an older married couple he met there, and they would write him long letters telling him about what was going on in their little neck of England. Sometimes they sent pictures of their son and his friends. I remember the letters he received; they were always on blue airmail paper (still available at Amazon, of course: http://www.amazon.com/Kikkerland-Mailblok-Airmail-Paper-Block/dp/B004VNAOT4). I remember that paper, having written a number of airmail letters, and I can remember the excitement I felt about receiving an airmail letter in the post.

The thing that strikes me about my father now, when I think of him, was how willing he was to share his life with us. He was not a selfish man when it came to his feelings and thoughts. That is what I remember about him today, on Father’s Day, how his willingness to share his feelings and thoughts helped to create a family life that I remember to this day. Because the latter is not possible if its participants shut down, close themselves off, make themselves remote to those around them. It is not possible to be fully private and to be an active family member. I think my father found a good balance; he was a reserved man in many ways, but he was also a social one who looked forward to gathering the family at the dinner table in the evenings when we were growing up, to good conversation, and to holidays when his brother and sister would come to visit. Ours was not a perfect family; there were the requisite family dramas and squabbles as in most families. My parents didn’t always tackle them as well as they should have. But that’s not what I remember all these years later. What I remember is my father coming home from work and us children rushing to greet him at the door. Or his taking us to the Westchester County stamp fairs so that we could get interested in stamp collecting (his hobby that eventually spurred the rest of us to start our own collections). Or his taking us to the Sunday afternoon classical music concerts at the Washington Irving junior high school—classical music was another love of his. Or his willingness to discuss nearly any book you might want to discuss with him; if he hadn’t read it, he would read it so as to form an opinion about it. He left this world far too early, but what he shared with his family remains with me forever. Happy Father's Day to him and to all the fathers I know who take the chance and are willing to share their thoughts, feelings, and pastimes with their families.   

Loving movies

I’ve been a movie-goer for what seems like forever. I can remember the wonderful feelings associated with going to see films as a child; the anticipation, excitement, the experience of sitting in the theater waiting for the film to start—all of those feelings are still with me now whenever I enter the movie theater, many years later. I love sitting in the dark watching the big screen, waiting for the magic to start; no matter how many possibilities exist for watching films in other formats, nothing will ever replace the wonder of the big screen for me. The first two films I can remember seeing as a young child were Snow White, a Disney animated classic, and That Darn Cat starring Hayley Mills, whom we all wanted to be at that time—cute and adventurous. My mother took us to see both films at The Music Hall in Tarrytown. I can remember the long line to buy tickets that stretched around the corner onto Broadway—parents with their children. Hayley Mills also starred in a film called The Moon-Spinners, another favorite of ours from 1964, but one that we saw as a two-part television series several years later on ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’ that ran on NBC if I remember correctly, at least at the time when we were children. As a family, we went to see Oliver! (1968) and The Twelve Chairs (1970); my parents wanted to see these films and I remember struggling to understand the latter film, an early Mel Brooks comedy about the search for jewels hidden in one of twelve dining chairs. But understanding Oliver Twist’s life situation was not so difficult—you could relate to his misery as a fellow child or at least imagine how it must feel to be orphaned and alone in the world. Understanding the brutality of the relationship between Nancy and Bill Sikes was more problematic; not surprising since violence between lovers was not something we knew much about or had seen as children. I wanted to see Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, which came out in 1968, but my parents would not take us to see it, probably because it had to do with young love (and sex) and my parents did not want us getting ideas in our heads about such things. So I didn’t get a chance to see it until I was in my early 20s. Getting a chance to see a film that you had waited to see for a long time wasn’t like today where you could just rent a film from Netflix or download it from iTunes. If you knew that a film was going to be shown for a limited amount of time, either in the theater or on TV, you made plans to see it, because you never knew when you would be able to catch it again.

I am one of those people who enjoy doing post-mortems on films I’ve seen—dissecting the plot, the symbolism, the movie’s philosophy, what it all meant, the characters, the acting—all of it. Very few people I know enjoy doing this to the degree I do; you come out of the theater and ask, ‘What did you think of the film?’, and people will respond, ‘I liked it’ or ‘It was very good’, or some such comment. But it’s hard to get most folks involved in a long discussion about the movie. And that has to suffice, because not everyone likes doing movie analyses like I do. I’ve tried, and there are few takers. My father was one of those people who enjoyed discussing movies in detail; he was my conversational partner when it came to the arts—literature, movies, plays, music. Movies are entertainment for most people; they are for me as well, but I like being jolted out of my comfort zone by a movie, and I like finding out why. I want to know why some films provoke me, why others intrigue me or make me sad, how symbolism in one movie reminds me of another movie or of a book I’ve read or a song I’ve heard. I like how film music can trigger nostalgic feelings that remind me of people from my past or a book from long ago. I like the interconnectedness of different art forms, and the fact that I can make the connections if I want to. I want to connect the dots—it seems important to me to do so.  

Figuring out the Norwegian workplace

The job section of this past Sunday’s Aftenposten had an interesting article about Norwegian workplace culture entitled ‘How does the Norwegian boss think’? Foreigners who work in Norway often find themselves at a loss when it comes to figuring out how their bosses think and how to interpret what they say to you—what do they really mean by their comments and remarks, and have you understood the context of what was said? The importance of understanding your workplace and the signals given you by your bosses and colleagues cannot be overemphasized, especially where career advancement and salary are concerned. The article interviewed three Norwegian company directors/leaders who are Norwegian and who had worked internationally; they were asked to comment on what makes Norwegian workplaces different from workplaces in the rest of the world, since Norway’s workplace culture is quite unique (of course, why is this not surprising to me). Here are their thoughts:

• Leader #1 meant that Norwegian workplaces are ‘process-oriented’, not ‘solution-oriented’, and that a problem or an issue could be discussed ad nauseum before a decision is made
• Leader #2 had a similar opinion to leader #1, stating that many foreigners are simply not used to having the entire organization get involved before a decision can be made about a particular issue
• Leader #3 meant that Norwegian workplaces are relatively ‘flat structures’ where each individual employee has a high degree of authority to make his or her own decisions without having to consult a boss

Whenever I read such articles, they trigger some interesting feelings and thoughts, so that I ‘feel a blog post coming on’. I can relate to the first two leader comments; specific issues are discussed over and over in multiple meetings over many months, perhaps years, before decisions are reached. Frustrating? Yes. My question is why this has to be the norm. However, and this is the crux of the matter, someone ultimately has to make the final decision. Whether it is a committee at the top of an organization, or one person, someone has to take the ultimate responsibility. An organization of several hundred individuals is not responsible for a final decision; some of them may come with input and advice toward a decision, but the responsibility lies ultimately with company leaders. Who makes the ultimate decision can often be a mystery, and whether or not employees are informed about a final decision rests with those who are responsible for communicating it. Information flow downwards can be a true exercise in frustration. There is no transparency at the top of huge public sector workplaces, in any case. And I disagree entirely with the third leader; it has not been my experience in my public sector workplace that each individual employee has a say concerning a decision to be made that will affect them. Simply not true. The third leader has simply not visited my workplace recently; the six or more levels of (administrative) leadership between the individual employee and the top echelons ensure that you as an individual employee have little to no authority to make decisions that affect your daily work life. You can individually be the most ‘solution-oriented’ employee in the world; it won’t matter. You are forced to deal with the top-heavy administrative levels above you. Take ordering a lab reagent or small piece of equipment, for example; before a necessary item can be ordered, at least six to eight people need to be involved in the process of ordering—the person who needs the product and who informs the relevant department person who then registers the order and passes it along in the system to the person (or persons) who actually order the product on the computer. But we’re not done yet. They may order or they may pass the order along to yet another office that will do the ordering. It all depends, on what I’m not sure. Project funds have to be checked to make sure there is enough money to order the product; that can involve the accounting department. And if the item is actually ordered, it is shipped to a central receiving department that then delivers the item to the person who registered the order, not to the person who needed the item. This means that the secretarial consultants who register the orders receive on average ten packages a day. They must check their files to find out who needed the product ordered and then chase down the relevant person who requested the item. The actual invoice goes to an unknown place; no one is really sure where it ends up or how it gets paid. If this was truly my call (if I had any real authority), I'd call, fax, or email the company myself with my order, cutting out the multiple middlemen, and have the item delivered directly to me. The current ordering process reminds me of the excellent film Brazil, about the tentacles of bureaucracy and how when they find you, they can destroy your life and peace of mind. My question is—why do we need all these people involved? This was not my decision, to make it so complicated. And perhaps more importantly—is there any one person who understands the system well enough to explain it to others? No one seems to have thought of that. 

My conclusion is that these three leaders espouse a politically-correct rhetoric. It makes employees feel good to read that they have some autonomy and can influence the decision process; in truth they have little autonomy and little influence, at least in the public sector. We may have had more of both back in the 1990s, but no more. 

According to the article, a number of companies have started to offer courses about understanding Norwegian workplace culture, to employees who come from other countries/cultures with a different way of doing things. Such courses, along with formal career guidance, were non-existent when I arrived in Norway. I don’t know if they would have helped or not, since I work in the public, not the private sector, and most of these newspaper job articles seem to deal with the private sector. But one thing is certain; communication with bosses in the public or private sector can be muddled, messages from them unclear, ditto for job tasks and definitions. How can you know for sure if your recent efforts on a particular project are praiseworthy or not? Are you being considered for advancement in your organization? Should you actively seek out career advancement, mentors and advocates? Will you be considered too aggressive if you do, or will it be considered appropriately professional to do so? No one really tells you what to do or how to behave, at least not directly to your face. You have to figure out most of these kinds of things on your own, because communication is often very indirect, and suggestions to employees as to how to go about doing things may be presented in a rather offhand informal manner. This is the art of thinking like a Norwegian in your workplace—figuring it all out for yourself, except that if you are Norwegian, you have understood this from the get-go. As a foreigner, you will miss the signals that tell you that what you’ve just been told is important, you will make a fair amount of mistakes before you understand how to respond or react, how to deal with your bosses, and how to understand their dealings and communication with you, and you will waste a fair amount of time trying to understand a system that cannot be understood (my impression). In that sense, I miss the directness and assertiveness of American workplaces; communication between boss and employee is often much clearer and easier to understand, perhaps more formal and professional, yes, but I prefer that to ambiguity and vague promises and suggestions.  

Practice what you preach

Last night I attended a meeting of Christian women (of all religious denominations) as a guest of one of my friends. She and I have often attended such meetings once or twice a year when I first moved to Norway, but our attendance has been more infrequent during the past decade. The format of the meeting is simple—a few inspirational lectures, a light dinner, some songs, and a main lecture usually given by a person who has a specific message to share. Last night that message was the importance of love in the arena of relationships; how reaching out with love dispels the fear in ourselves and perhaps in those to whom we reach out. It was a very good talk and it brought to mind the message of Mother Theresa, who always talked about the importance of love and starting with those around you—loving your family and those closest to you before trying to make a difference in the world.

What struck me however last night, was the experience we had on the way into the hotel ballroom where the meeting was held. My friend, who is a retiree and a woman who works tirelessly helping the downtrodden and less fortunate in our society, had made reservations for the two of us several weeks ago. She had sent a text message as instructed by the newspaper announcement for the meeting; she had the text message on her phone as proof. When we got to the entrance door, the receptionist did not find her name on the list of registered attendees; she told us that she had to ‘speak to a leader’ about whether we could be allowed to enter or not. I found this behavior rather odd, but said nothing, until 'the leader' came over to us, a small woman with a bloated sense of her own importance, who reiterated not once, but at least five times, the necessity of having received a reply text message as confirmation for registering for the meeting. The confirmation text message apparently allowed you to enter. I could feel my annoyance starting to rear its head; my friend is not a person who will defend or assert herself unnecessarily. She patiently showed the text message she had sent, to the leader, but she had not received a confirmation text message. The leader obviously did not like this at all, but rather begrudgingly allowed us to pay for and gain entrance to the meeting. The explanation for her hesitation was that there might not be enough food to go around for all the attendees. I’ll come back to that. We found two places to sit at a table with several other women and sat down. Wouldn’t you know, but the little leader appeared yet again to inform us yet again of the necessity of having received a text message as confirmation for our registration. At which point, I essentially told her to back off. Told her that we had now heard her say this close to ten times, and that if we were not welcome, we could get our money back and leave. It wasn’t that important for us to be there. At which point she backed off, and extended a welcome greeting to us. But that was only because I got mad and spoke up.

Why do I bring this up today? It struck me last night that there was very little Christian spirit in this little leader’s behavior. She was stuck on the ‘rules’, on following them to the letter, and she obviously needed to appear important to us. No confirmation text message, no entrance. She was worried about there not being enough food; you would have thought she was talking about a full dinner plate per person, which I might have had more understanding for. Not the case. When dinner time came, it was a simple buffet table—egg salads, bread, cold cuts, some fruit and a few cakes—nothing fancy and certainly enough to go around. As it was, there was more than enough food to go around; there were in fact enough leftovers that could have been given to the homeless and the poor who sat right outside the door of the hotel last night, in one of the richest countries in the world. I wonder what happened to the leftovers.

Here’s how the scenario should have played out. This is a Christian organization whose membership decreases for each year that passes, since it mostly consists of middle-aged and elderly women. They are not attracting younger women into the organization. They should be welcoming attendees with open arms, not pushing them away. They should have said immediately at the door, when they saw my friend's text message to them, 'Welcome'. And if there had not been enough food, they should just have said, ‘we’ll manage’, or ‘we can share’. Christ would have done that; he wouldn’t denied people entrance for lack of food. But what struck me the most was the utter lack of hospitality in this little leader; a less hospitable person I have yet to meet. It was disappointing, and it reminds me of how many times I have been disappointed when I have met people who call themselves Christians, yet who do not behave like Christ at all. I don’t care how many times you stand up and talk about the importance of loving others, of being kind to others. If you don’t practice what you preach, your message is not worth a dime in my book. Luckily, the rest of the evening turned out to be enjoyable and more in the spirit of Christianity, so that made up for their little pharisee of a leader. And that was a good thing, because I was moving toward a non-forgiving state of mind after our encounter with her. That’s certainly not the goal of attending such a meeting. 

What cats have taught me

I have been a cat owner for most of my adult life, and have learned a lot from them by watching their behavior in different situations. Unlike dogs, they are quite independent and somewhat antisocial. Or rather, they choose when they want to be social. All of my cats had different personalities. The first two were a mother-daughter pair that came into my life in 1980. The mother, Smoky, was a feisty loner type; her daughter, Mushy (so named because she was so affectionate), was the opposite. She loved being around people, she loved being picked up and hugged, and she didn’t mind at all when the children I babysat for occasionally put doll shoes on all four paws. My husband used to call her a 'non-cat'. She never hissed at or nipped anyone. I don’t think I ever saw her get angry, except at her mother, when they both competed for my attention and affection when I was sitting on the couch relaxing in the evenings. She was an extraordinarily well-rounded cat, and I’ve never had another cat quite like her since. Being social came easy for Mushy, even with other cats, but not with her mother. She tolerated her mother, but not much more. I often wonder if it was because she knew that her mother didn’t really want any involvement at all with other cats or with people generally. She liked to be left alone, and I’m sure that annoyed Mushy at times. I remember when a little kitten joined us a few years later; I named her Minou. Mushy immediately became her ‘mother’, washing her, playing with her, and following her around the house as Minou explored it. Watching her do this endeared her to me completely. Smoky wanted nothing to do with either one of them; she mostly wanted to be left alone, and if Minou bothered her, she hissed at her. Minou quickly learned, and avoided Smoky as much as possible. Unfortunately, she did not live long, succumbing to a feline viral infection, which broke my heart. I am convinced that Mushy had empathy; she was intuitive, she understood in her way if someone was sick or if another animal needed help. She understood that Minou was sick and I think she understood that Minou wasn’t coming home from the veterinary hospital. Smoky remained unaffected by it all. Mushy also understood if I was sick or depressed, and was good company at those times. I loved them both, but it is Mushy’s way of being that I remember all these years later, because I think she was on to something. I remember when I moved in with my friend Cindy several months before I moved to Norway; she had a male cat, Burgoo, who did not take kindly to having his territory invaded. The house that we shared was quite large, but Burgoo made sure that Mushy and Smoky had limited access to most of it. Smoky and Burgoo fought so intensely that we had to physically keep them apart; Smoky ended up living in the basement while Burgoo had the first floor along with Mushy. What surprised me is that Mushy did not engage with Burgoo at all; she understood that he did not want her there, and her body language told him that she accepted that. When she passed him, her head and tail were down in a submissive posture, and she slunk along the floor. He never attacked her or went after her. When she saw me, she was her old self—affectionate and loving. Mushy was mostly adaptable and tolerated change, even though I know it made her anxious at times. As long as she saw me during anxious times, it calmed her. Smoky did not adapt and did not tolerate change. I loved the both of them to pieces, but could not take them with me to Norway, as they would have sat in quarantine for six months or more before being allowed into the country, and I didn’t have the heart to do that to them. Another friend of mine, Judy, was kind enough to take them both; she could tell me some time later that it didn't take Mushy long to become a part of her family, which included a husband, several children, a dog and two other cats. That made me happy; unfortunately, Smoky did not seem to adjust to her new family, disappeared, and did not return, which upset me a lot when I heard about it.

I was thinking about Mushy and Smoky today, because I realize that I have a little bit of both of them in me in response to dealing with major life changes and with a workplace that prizes networking and being socially and politically adaptable. Work environments often reflect societal trends; the emphasis in most workplaces these days is on networking, collaboration, communication, being a team player, and being creative and spontaneous in a group setting, all things that were not emphasized as much in my generation of scientists. We were rather encouraged to be loner types, independent and assertive thinkers, quietly creative, able to defend our ideas, able to work alone and to enjoy being alone. Being an astute assessor of the political landscape around us was not deemed very important. The current emphasis is on interacting and working together with other employees, listening to others, adapting to group dynamics, understanding workplace politics, sharing ideas, taming your individual will, being patient and not being a loner type. Those who succeed in the current workplace are good at these things. I used to think that Mushy would have benefited from learning to take on a challenge and to fight like her mother Smoky, but these days I’ve come to see the value in avoiding or not provoking conflict, maintaining some semblance of peace, trying to adapt to change as best one can, and flying under the radar in difficult times. But it's good to have people in your life (a spouse and/or friend) that you know will be there for you--constants in a life filled with uncertainties--especially during difficult times. 

Little evening bird

Little evening bird

Night sings outside my window

Unafraid of dark

Melancholy sound

Strangely comforting transport

To the past and now

World will ever need

Your constancy and peaceful

River of bird songs

You sing of summer

Arrival of warmth and peace

Bids a soul’s release

copyright Paula M. De Angelis

April 2013

Reflections at Easter time

Each year around Easter time, there is a feeling of spring in the air. I remember that feeling growing up; the sun feels a little warmer, the birds are singing, the trees are showing small little buds, and whatever snow is still on the ground is melting, forming small rivulets that wander off to nowhere in particular. The puddles reflect the blue skies and the few white clouds that dot the sky. I enjoy taking a long walk at this time; life is returning, after a long, dark, cold winter. The older I get, the less I enjoy winter. It wouldn’t matter if I was a skier (I’m not); I prefer the warmth of spring and summer, and even autumn, especially in New York where it can sometimes still be mild in early November. I understand why older people prefer warmer climates; it’s not just about the warmth, although that’s a big part of it. It’s about the sunshine, the light, the feeling of renewal, the ease of life. Summer’s warmth is a reminder that life doesn’t have to be so hard, that you’re allowed to take it easy. Winter is the opposite—a constant reminder that life is hard, harsh and unsympathetic, that you have to struggle to accomplish each little thing in front of you. Just having to wear layers of clothing to protect against the cold is already too much for me. I remember disliking that even as a child, having to put on and take off snowsuits and sweaters underneath. I suppose weather forms a person; if so, I much prefer the person I am in summer. The winter person is merely waiting to be reborn as a summer person. I suppose that all the seasons have their charms; I grew up in an area of the world that experiences four seasons. Oslo is the same, except that winter is a longer season here than in New York. As I get older, I wish winter was shorter.

One of the memories that always comes back to me when I think of Easter is when I lived in the Bronx in my early twenties, and was to spend Easter Sunday with my parents, who lived in Tarrytown and who had invited family for dinner. I didn’t have a car at that time, so I took the subway into Manhattan and then took the train from Grand Central to Tarrytown. I remember the feeling in the city on Easter Sunday; it was a gorgeous sunny day, flowers were in bloom, people were dressed in their Easter finery and everyone seemed just a little happier than usual. Grand Central Station was teeming with people on their way to different places. It’s a memory that warms me when I think of it; I don’t know why it has stayed with me all these years, but it has.

I am not working this week, the week before Easter. It is wonderful to have those free days—no stress, no deadlines, no duties, no having to be somewhere at a certain time. Being able to go outside for a walk when I want, or waking early, lying in bed and listening to the birds sing or squawk outside our bedroom window. Or tackling the myriad of small house projects for which I suddenly have the time and energy. The word resurrection comes to mind; this time of year is about that too in the spiritual sense, and it is nice to be reminded of that in the church services on Easter Sunday.

Where does the buck stop?

I don’t know that I was ever very good at working in a team setting where all members of the team had equal input and worked together on one project or sub-project. I did not enjoy this when I was younger, and I don’t really enjoy it now. I am not comfortable with ‘shared leadership’ or having to report to multiple ‘leaders’. I come from a generation that feels more comfortable with one leader who plans and delegates individual projects/sub-projects to the different group members, each of whom will then be responsible for his or her specific task. But it is the group leader who has the ultimate responsibility for the outcome of a project or new venture, because it is that person who planned it and delegated it. In other words, it is important to me that each person in a group understands his or her function and role in the group, and can proceed accordingly with the tasks in front of them. I think that each member of a group should have responsibility for a project or a sub-project, and that the success of that project or sub-project is dependent primarily on individual input, not on teamwork. Your contribution to the team is your piece of work. A bit daunting perhaps, but the feelings of responsibility and happiness from a successful project outcome are worth their weight in gold. You progress intellectually from such experiences, and that in my opinion should be a goal in the workplace. I have been a group member who was given responsibility for specific projects, and I have been a group leader who has done the same with the people who worked for me. From the feedback I received from them at that time, I know that each person was satisfied with his or her individual projects. There was no overlap between projects, so there was no danger of one person feeling as if his or her project was merely a regurgitation of someone else’s project, or worse still, ‘busy work’ that was of little to no interest to anyone. That is the worst feeling of all—that what you are asked to do is just busy work and not really important overall. If someone hit a roadblock, I discussed the problems in detail with the person involved, not with all members of the group. I did not feel that it was up to the other members of the group to solve whatever problems arose for one of the group members; that was my job as leader. I still feel that way. Group members may talk among themselves, suggest different ways of tackling a situation or problem, but in the end, the decision about what to do was mine to make after discussing the problem or setback with the person involved. This is my approach and I am relatively unapologetic about it.

I chose to write about this today because I saw a poster ad for a new TV show the other day that essentially says the following: ‘when you are faced with one of life’s most important decisions, thirty heads are better than one’. There is a picture of a young woman standing in front of a group of about thirty individuals, to emphasize the fact that no important decisions should be made alone or in a vacuum. This does not resonate with me at all; I think it’s quite ok to ask others for advice, but asking thirty people for such advice seems a bit much to me. To then require that they help me make a crucial decision that affects my life seems untenable; it would never cross my mind to behave like this. An important decision that affects my life is mine to make, and mine alone. Of course this means that I alone bear the responsibility for a bad decision, but that’s the way life works. One head or thirty heads cannot ensure the perfect outcome to a decision, because we don’t live in a perfect world. There is no such thing as a perfect decision or a perfect outcome. You take a risk each time you make a decision; you also take a risk in the sense of knowing that you must live with the ramifications of your decision. It is possible to learn from mistakes or bad decisions, although as I get older, I don’t look at my bad decisions as mistakes; they were simply bad decisions that in many cases were rectifiable. You are allowed in this life to make another decision to counteract a bad one. Nothing is set in stone. We are flexible individuals who change and grow with the years. If we stay fluid, we don’t trap ourselves in outmoded ways of thinking and behaving.

I guess what bothers me about this particular ad is the emphasis on group thinking. It makes me nervous, because it seems to me that we are giving away our personal responsibility for our decisions to others; we are in essence diluting out our personal responsibility. We can always blame ‘the group’ if things go wrong. In this way, we don’t have to feel bad about the outcome of ‘our’ decision. But is this a good thing in the long run? If we extend this type of thinking to the workplace, what are the long-term effects? Who has the ultimate responsibility? Should there be one person who sits with that responsibility? President Harry Truman had a plaque on his desk that said ‘the buck stops here’. I have more respect for that type of thinking than for a plaque that would say ‘the buck stops here, but also in the next office, and in the office down the hall, and in the office after that’.

There are ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’ in modern workplaces. That may reflect to a large degree the complexity involved in running modern workplaces in today’s world, most of which are too large. But it’s gotten confusing—confusing to try to figure out who you should talk to when there is a question or a problem. If I want to or attempt to solve a problem myself, I am discouraged from doing so. We are informed that there are others we should talk to—this or that office or department that deals with this or that. So yes, I attempt to contact them, in accordance with company policies. I speak to one person, who then refers me further on in the ‘chain of command’. It’s often difficult to get an answer or a solution to a problem, such that the problem or question is then put on my ‘to do’ list (which is essentially my ‘must wait indefinitely’ list). In this way, problems ‘go away’; there are no problems when you cannot get the answers. It’s a type of contradictory logic that leads to an obstructional workplace. I’m sure there are many such workplaces these days, characterized by multiple levels of leadership, ‘team leadership’, group thinking, dilution of responsibility, confusion as to who’s in charge, too much bureaucracy, and systemic obstruction. Ultimately, these organizations will come to a standstill after a while in terms of innovation and efficiency. If the problems arise from the fact that most companies are too large, then I am all in favor of returning to smaller and better-run companies, where it is clear to all who work there who the leader is and where the buck stops. And I am all in favor of working at a job that is clearly-defined and not to be shared with others; not diluted out to the point that there is little point left in doing that job. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’, as the old saying goes. It’s true.

Reading about and remembering the Hudson River valley

Whenever I think about the state and town where I grew up—New York State and Tarrytown respectively, I feel blessed. Blessed to have grown up there, blessed to have the memories I have of growing up there. It’s perhaps hard to understand for those who have never moved from the place where they were born, but as I’ve gotten older, it is the positive recollections about the place of my birth that override the negative memories. I am beginning to forget the reasons why I wanted to move from it in the first place, especially when I visit Tarrytown in the summertime on my annual visits and walk along familiar streets in the baking heat, savoring my time there. Much of the town has changed since I was a child; in most cases for the better. It’s a prettier town than when I lived there. That seems to be generally true for many towns and cities, including Oslo. Oslo is a much prettier and nicer city now than when I moved here over twenty years ago. That is because there is more attention paid to urban planning and design—to how buildings, parks, and recreation areas look. The esthetic component attached to urban/suburban development and progress has become more important, and that’s positive.

When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get out into the world at large and to explore it. And I’ve done so. I especially wanted to travel around Europe, and have visited many Western European countries during the past twenty years that I’ve lived in Norway. That wasn’t the reason I moved abroad, but it strikes me now that I was not at all averse to moving abroad when the opportunity to do so arose. I am perhaps a bit nostalgic these days for all things familiar from my youth, including my hometown, and that does not strike me as unusual after more than twenty years abroad. But what strikes me as most true is that the area where I grew up in New York State is beautiful; I am not remembering it wrong or seeing it through rose-colored glasses. The Hudson River Valley is lovely; likewise many of the small towns that have grown up along it and that are an indelible part of its landscape. I have traveled along most of the Hudson River by train, from Grand Central Station in Manhattan as far north as Poughkeepsie. It’s a beautiful relaxing ride, especially when you get out of the city area and into the suburbs; if you want to read more about it, here is a good link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Line_(Metro-North).

So it won’t be surprising that I am recommending two books that I have so enjoyed perusing and that have stolen my heart with their beauty and warmth. Both of them are about the Hudson River and/or the towns along it—one is a book of photography, the other is a warm and lovely tribute to a small pub in the town of Garrison (across the river from the West Point military academy)—Guinan’s--and its owner Jim Guinan (who passed away in 2009). The first book is a book of photography published in 2006 that I recommend to many people who ask me about New York State and the area where I grew up; it is entitled The Hudson River: From Tear of the Clouds to Manhattan by Jake Rajs; you can find it on Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/ckb5f35 and on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/cjeeb8p. So much of the photography in this book is stunning; it is a collection of photos that portrays the Hudson River and the river towns and landscapes as they really are, in all seasons. The second book, published in 2006, is entitled Little Chapel on the River by Gwendolyn Bounds; it too can be found at Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/cqclprc and on Amazon:  http://tinyurl.com/cl7xdyh. It was recommended to me by my friend Stef who read it and loved it; I share her sentiments. The author writes in a heartfelt style about her meeting with Jim Guinan, his family, and the patrons of the pub, all of whom have their individual stories to tell, and all of whom become her friends over time. If you’d like to see photos of Guinan’s pub, you can find them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwendolynbounds/2050518523/in/photostream/. I never thought reading about a bar could be so interesting, or that it would make me want to visit it the next time I am in New York. Unfortunately, it closed its doors in 2008 and its owner passed away in 2009. I can relate to the author’s way of writing and to her attention to detail; but mostly I was glad to read about a place that connects me in some way to my first home—a Hudson River town in the state of New York. It brings me back to a time and a place that are close to my heart. Guinan’s pub was in Garrison, but it could have been in any of the small towns on the Hudson River, where the locals gather to drink a few beers after work in the evening and to shoot the breeze. As they used to say in the TV series Cheers—a ‘place where everyone knows your name’. That’s what this book manages to impart—the message that what counts in life is the connections we have to other people and how we deal with the people who grace our daily lives.

Too busy to be kind and courteous

It has been commented on before, but I will comment on it yet again. We live in an information technology world, where because it is possible to communicate via so many different devices and platforms, there should be no problems informing others as to what one is thinking or about what is going on. Yet, time and again, communication fails, or if it does not directly fail, it is poor at best. I am not the only one to notice this; I have colleagues and friends who say the same thing. Emails pile up in my work inbox, and I start off my workday trying to make sense of them. Most are replies to previous emails, not necessarily sent by me, but sent by others to multiple recipients including me. Most of them are non-informative unless you read the entire email threads, which no one has the time to do. You might as well just tell me to ‘see below’ instead of sending me an email that says ‘yepp’ or ‘ok’ or some such thing. The level of rudeness in work emails has reached an all-time high; it is very rare that you get addressed by name. I do address others by name; on the rare occasion when I don’t, it’s to emphasize a point—that the person I am responding to has been rude and doesn’t deserve a courteous response. Most of the emails just state in one or two sentences what the email writer wants, or what he or she wants to inform you about. I have a problem with this lack of professional courtesy. Text messages can be even worse. They are often the preferred form of communication for many busy souls these days. And that’s ok, except when they resemble emails in the form of responses like ‘yepp’ and ‘ok’, with no reference to what has transpired previously. Again, I am not a mind reader and have no plans on becoming one. So if you want me to understand what you’re thinking about, if you really want to communicate with me, take the time to talk to me. Come by my office and stop in for a chat. I promise to listen.

I know that this problem has mostly to do with that everyone is so busy at work, that no one has the time anymore to really communicate, to have a conversation, to listen to others, or to try to understand others. Some of the ‘multiple recipient’ emails expect you to be a mind-reader; you’re expected to just understand what has been going on with very little explanation. I ignore these emails for the most part; if you cannot take the time to explain what’s going on, it cannot be that important for me to comment on it. So I don’t. In this way, I reduce the level of responsibility I feel for certain work situations. And that suits me just fine. The same goes for cryptic text messages. If you cannot take the time to write a coherent text message, I will ignore it.

I keep coming back to kindness and courtesy. We are losing these virtues in our busy world. They have been sacrificed on the altars of efficiency, productivity, and saving time. I’m tired of it. If you cannot be kind, if you cannot be courteous and professional, if you cannot behave in a civilized manner, I don’t want to deal with you, via any mode of communication. It’s that simple. And I don’t feel bad about saying that. 

Slipping and sliding away

Each year in Oslo, come winter, the same problems crop up. There are snowstorms, sometimes there is a fair amount of accumulation, and then the snow plows come out to clean the streets and to spread salt to keep the streets free of ice and snow. The end result is that cars and buses usually have no problem getting around the city streets during the winter. It’s a seldom occurrence that the streets are so icy or snowy that cars and buses have problems maneuvering their way along them. Not so with the sidewalks. Sidewalks are another matter; it’s as though sidewalks in Oslo belong to another universe. And in that universe, chaos and uncertainty reign. No one knows for sure which sidewalks will be cleared and which won’t. The street Ullevålsveien, for example, has completely clear sidewalks, making it a simple matter to visit the different stores and cafes on that street, whereas most of the sidewalks in Grünerløkka (one of the areas of the city quite near where we live) are a disaster. They are in fact disasters waiting to happen, in the form of broken bones of some sort. They are so slippery and dangerous to walk on that most people choose to walk in the streets instead. That way there is no risk of falling. Ditto for the area where we live; icy sidewalks with some gravel thrown down to help you get a grip, but it doesn’t help if they haven’t been shoveled first. I have begun to walk in the streets myself, after having fallen once already. Luckily I did not end up with any broken bones or sprained wrists. In the morning on the way to the bus stop near where we live, I join the many others who are walking in the streets rather than on the sidewalks. It strikes me as rather silly to see all these people in the streets, but who am I to judge? We all just want to be safe and to get where we’re going on time. Walking on the icy sidewalks makes me feel as though I’m eighty years old; having to walk slowly, inch by inch, looking ahead to determine whether the patch of white ground ahead of you is ice or not, and then following the path of no ice until it becomes ice again. And so on. I feel sorry for elderly people in this city; I wonder if many of them even dare to venture out, even if they are in general good health. One fall, and they’re out of commission for quite a while.

The randomness of sidewalk shoveling strikes me as rather absurd in a country where winter can extend from mid-October until early April. The newspapers have written about it the problem, droves of people complain about it, but every year, nothing changes. I don’t get it. The last newspaper article I read about this problem discussed whose responsibility it was to shovel the sidewalks; in some cases it’s the city’s responsibility, in other cases, the owners of the buildings. I can personally attest to the fact that most apartment building owners seem to do little or nothing to keep the sidewalks in front of their buildings clear; perhaps they figure that these are city sidewalks so the city should take care of them. The city fines the owners for not clearing the sidewalks, and so it goes. In the meantime, people are slipping and sliding on their way to wherever they’re going.

Shop and restaurant owners in the downtown area of the city complain that they are losing business to the large shopping malls that ring the city. There may be multiple reasons for this, but one thing is clear to me. If shop or restaurant owners in the downtown area don’t care enough to get out and shovel a path to their doors, if they can’t clear snow from the sidewalks in front of their stores, don’t expect my business. I don’t want to hear your complaints that malls are taking all your business. I like to shop in the downtown area of Oslo, but I can tell you that the icy sidewalks discourage me from doing so during the winter. But again, this is a random affair. Some shop owners do shovel snow, others don’t. Why is that? Why do some shop owners care more about their customers than others? I think they all need to get on the same page—prioritize your customers. We potential customers don’t care whose responsibility it is to shovel the sidewalks, so stop arguing about it. Just get out there and do it, like the Nike commercial says.