Back to the grind

And so it’s back to the grind after five weeks of summer vacation. Back to work after the wonderful freedom of not working. When I was a child in grammar school, I couldn’t wait for summer vacation to be over so that I could go back to school. It’s not that I didn’t like having the time off, it’s just that at some point it felt good to think about preparing for school again. When we were children, our job was to go to school and that was fine with me. I never experienced school as prison, like many of my fellow students. I felt pretty much the same way about high school and college; I enjoyed school and learning and felt privileged to be able to go to school. By the time I got to graduate school however, I was tired of rote education and felt the need to get out and work, to apply what I’d learned. I’ve been in the workforce for nearly forty years now, and most of those years have been interesting, motivating and productive. Motivation has dwindled however in the last five years or so, not because I lost interest in my research work, but because the research system changed into something I no longer recognized, with its emphasis on selling yourself, hyping your ideas, hiring and promoting extroverts, and networking ad nauseam. Since I am not an extrovert, and since I don’t feel comfortable around braggarts or bragging about my own work, I’ve pulled back and become an observer of what goes on around me. It’s been interesting to observe the rise and fall of the show-boaters. I suppose the pendulum will eventually swing back toward the middle, where it will be ok again to do your research work quietly, efficiently and well. I long for those days to return, but I doubt that they will before I retire. And that’s quite ok too. I’ve had a good run and it’s time for the younger scientists to take over. I have accepted this, but it’s actually interesting and somewhat humorous to see that others haven’t accepted this—I am still mentoring students, still running into the lab to answer questions, find something in the refrigerator, check out a lab procedure, and so forth. I no longer have funding for lab consumables, so I make do by utilizing antibodies and tissue sections that were bought and prepared several years ago. Who knew that I would be able to see into the future then and prepare for the drought? I was smart enough to prepare and it has paid off somewhat in the sense that I am not completely bereft of lab consumables. I just cannot purchase new ones, and the likelihood of getting funded at this point in time is slim. But as people say to me, ‘never say never’, even though deep down I hold out little hope of further funding.

So I look forward to retiring and only wish I could do so now instead of having to wait another three years. Three more years of grant application rejections, three more years of research article rejections, three more years of remaining patient in the face of a stupid uncaring system. Three more years of futile salary discussions in a system that has no budget to give its employees a lift (because most of the money is being used to pay the exorbitant salaries of the leaders who abound about us like rabbits). They multiply three-fold each year. We’re up to six levels of leadership now and I don’t have a clue as to what any of them do each day. Three more years of braggarts, of researchers with huge amounts of funding who don’t have a clue as to how the other half lives. I tell people the truth—I have no funding, zero, zip, nada. That’s how it goes, and I’m fine with it. I only wish I could exit stage left now.  

Making memories--two weeks in the States

This year I was lucky enough to have two whole weeks of summer vacation in my country. I planned it that way so that I could visit my two cousins, one of whom (Cathy) lives in Virginia; the other (Karen) who lives in the suburbs of Washington DC. I landed at Newark airport in early August and made my way to Washington DC by Amtrak train, where my cousin’s husband picked me up and drove me to their home in Virginia. I spent two very nice days with them; the first day we toured Monticello (in Charlottesville), the home of America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a complex man, a scholar who strongly believed in public education, and a would-be scientist, as well as a military man and politician. As a landowner, he was very interested in different farming techniques and in improving crop production. He also tried his hand at making wine and beer. These are all activities that were carried out at Monticello. He is best-known as the author of the Declaration of Independence, but he also founded the University of Virginia. He was a slave-owner until his final days, although he talked about the evils of slavery and about abolishing it during his lifetime. After his wife died, he formed a relationship with the slave Sally Heming and fathered several of her children as confirmed by recent DNA testing. He is buried at Monticello in the family cemetery; on his gravestone is written the following, according to his wishes "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia."

I traveled from Charlottesville to Washington DC by Amtrak train, and visited my other cousin, and then traveled to New York City by Amtrak train. My experience with Amtrak on all three trips was very good; good service and functioning air-conditioning, the latter which was necessary given that most of the time I was in the USA, the temperatures were well over 95 degrees Fahrenheit, at least where I visited. The trains were packed, so talk of the demise of railroad travel in the USA seems rather premature, in my opinion. I find it very pleasant to travel by train.

I was together with friends from different periods in my past life on this trip: I spent an evening with two friends that I worked together with over thirty years ago at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; another evening with some women friends from high school; a day and evening with a close friend from the neighborhood where I grew up, and then some days with my close friend who lives further upstate. She and I made a list of all the things we wanted to do together on this visit, and we did them all. We have already decided to make a list next year as well. One of the things we did this year was to drive to Hyde Park New York (home to Marist College and the Culinary Institute of America) to visit Springwood, the home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is well-worth visiting Springwood both for its beauty and its history. The library on the premises has a very moving exhibit called Day of Infamy (https://fdrlibrary.org/pearl-harbor-exhibit), about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Roosevelt’s response to the attack; the exhibit is open to the public until the end of December. Roosevelt loved to be at Springwood, just as Jefferson loved to be at Monticello. It is not hard to understand why in either case.

Both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were impressive individuals, singly and together. They are role models for how to behave in the public eye. Visiting Springwood made that even more apparent. When I think about this summer from a purely historical perspective, I realize that I have experienced a lot of American history this year: from Normandy and the D-Day landing beaches to Monticello to Springwood. As I get older, I find myself becoming more and more interested in American history. Perhaps not so strange, now that I no longer reside in my country. No matter how many problems and turmoil the USA undergoes (and how crazy the political processes are when election time comes around), I find myself more enamored of my country and its rich history for each year that passes. But mostly, I love being together with good friends and the little family I have left, especially knowing that time marches on and we are all getting older. There are no guarantees in life, so the most important thing is spending time with people who are close to your heart. Much of the rest is just filler--jobs, material things, money--that make the spending time with loved ones that much nicer.

Visit to Normandy

Our trip to France this year took us to the northwest part of France—to Normandy. I’ve been wanting to visit this historical region for several years; it played a huge part during World War II. To quote from Wikipedia, ‘the Normandy landings (codenamed Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front’. On June 6, 1944, the Allied troops (American, British and Canadian) stormed a handful of beaches along the coast of Normandy in order to fight the Germans and ended up turning the tides of World War II. But it did not happen without a lot of bloodshed. The Allied troops landed on five beaches—designated Omaha and Utah (American troops), Juno (Canadian troops), Gold (British troops) and Sword (Canadian and British troops). We chose to visit Omaha Beach, which saw the most casualties. From a distance, the sands look almost reddish-brown, a poignant reminder of the blood shed on this beach. It runs for a length of 8 kilometers (5 miles); at present, it’s a public beach, open for all, and lined with several small restaurants and cafes. There are also some lovely houses along the road that parallels the beach. There are signs detailing the history of the beach and a couple of memorials. We walked along it for about two miles, and then stopped for some iced tea at one of the cafes along the beach.

I found it very moving to stand on Omaha beach, looking out over the ocean, knowing that many of the American soldiers that landed here never made it home. They never had the chance to fall in love, marry, raise a family, have a career—all those things that we take for granted. Think about that, about how privileged we are, never to have known a major world war in our lifetimes (thus far). Being there made me understand why my father, who was stationed for three years in England during WWII, never wanted to talk about the war in any great depth. His job was to load bombs onto planes, which ruined his back for the rest of his life. I think he was just glad to get home to America and to move on from that experience. Sometimes he told us stories about his time in the army, but they mostly had to do with the discipline and routines that the soldiers had to follow, and were usually to illustrate a point or to help enforce the rules he and my mother set for us children.

I had a similar emotional reaction when we visited the Normandy American Cemetery afterward. This cemetery, in Colleville-sur-Mer, is situated on the cliffs above Omaha Beach and looks down onto the beach itself. It is the burial site of 9,387 American soldiers, the majority of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and subsequent operations. There are also Walls of the Missing, on which are inscribed 1,557 names of those who ended up missing or unidentifiable.

the reddish-brown sands of Omaha Beach

view of Omaha Beach from the American Cemetery

Our hotel was in Caen, an old and very historic city (of William the Conqueror fame). Our trip to Omaha Beach from Caen took about an hour each way, and our trip to the island of Le Mont Saint Michel took about ninety minutes each way. Caen itself was a lovely small city, easy to drive around in and to get to know. We visited the Memorial de Caen, a memorial and war museum dedicated to peace, and one of, if not the best, war history museums I’ve ever encountered. As my husband said, everyone should visit this museum because you will learn so much about WWII and the economic and social conditions in Europe that led up to it, about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the Jewish ghettos, the Russia front, and the Normandy invasions. It is an amazing history lesson and I highly recommend visiting it.

Le Mont Saint Michel, which is on the list of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, is a wonder to behold from a distance and up close. The island draws its name from the monastery at the topmost part of the island; below the monastery, there are stores and housing—nowadays those stores are tourist gift shops and restaurants. It is a steep climb to the top of the island, and a climb that one makes together with hundreds of other visitors; about three million people visit the island each year. What makes this place special are the tidal waters that both cut off and connect the island to the mainland. According to Wikipedia, ‘the tides can vary greatly, at roughly 14 metres (46 ft) between high and low water marks’. When the tide goes out, it can go out as far as 25 km, and when it comes back in, it comes rushing back in. So even though there is now a bridge that connects the island to the mainland, it can still be perilous to walk on the beaches surrounding the island because of the tide rushing in and because some of the areas on the beaches are like quicksand. It is recommended that you walk around on the beaches with an experienced guide. The Tour de France bicycle race started here this year, and it couldn’t have been a more beautiful place to start.

Mont Saint Michel from a distance showing the bridge out to the island

seagull modeling for photographers

the beaches surrounding the island 

tide coming back in 

flags at entrance to the Memorial Museum in Caen 

Realizations

When you’re on vacation, you have a real chance to take a good long look at your life and the world around you, to assess the strengths and weaknesses of choices you’ve made, and the advantages and disadvantages of living and working in a certain way. My recent vacation in New York State made me realize that I have reached a point in my life where I prefer small to large—small towns, small companies, and small groups of people I care about. The preference for small towns instead of big cities will surprise some people who know me, I’m sure. The largeness of city life no longer appeals to me the way it did when I was starting out in my career; city life energized me then, and that is perhaps as it should be. When you’re starting out, ‘the world is your oyster’, as the saying goes. I don’t know the origin of that quote, but it most likely has to do with opening an oyster and finding a pearl inside, or opening many oysters in the search for pearls. In any case, the world of a large city is amazing and attractive for its energy and excitement. New York City is a perfect example; at one time in my life I worked there and loved that time in my life. But I would not want to have that work experience again. I grew up in a small town--Tarrytown, and every time I return to it on my annual trips, I realize how lovely it is. Part of that has to do with its smallness; it is manageable and familiar to me, even though it is no longer the same town in which I grew up. I don’t require that at all. Nothing stays the same, so it would be a waste of time and energy to try to keep things from changing. In fact, I like the changes that my hometown has made; I like what it has become. It is a lovelier town, and I feel comfortable there, with the people, the atmosphere and the landscapes. As one of my friends said, it is a mixture of people from all walks of life. I like that—a microcosm of the world. In the same way, I have come to appreciate small companies and ventures. If I could, I would work for a small company rather than for a huge bureaucratic organization where you are just an employee number at best. That’s not to say that large companies don’t function well or that they don’t treat employees well, they can and they often do, but the work experience is impersonal and it’s tough to find people who care enough about your career for it to really make an intellectual and emotional difference in your life. That’s been my experience, in any case. Bigger is not better, for many reasons that I won’t go into here.

I alternate between wanting to take new risks/start on new adventures (residual impulses from my past that continue to exert a small pull on me), and wanting to play it safer in order to focus on the people and activities that matter most to me. I am past the point where I need to take risks to prove anything as far as my career is concerned. I’ve achieved the personal career goals I aimed for and I now have other ideas about how I want to use my time, e.g. writing, as I’ve often talked about in this blog. I am already well-underway in that venture; I am currently writing two books, one a new poetry collection, the other a book about the town where I grew up. Writing feels right, even though it feels scary at times to feel that way. Am I really writer-material? Can I do it full-time instead of in my free time? I don’t do it full-time as a way of making a living, at least not now; it would not pay the bills. And that’s what’s needed right now—a job that pays the bills. I work to live, rather than live to work as I did when I was younger. That feels right too. If I don’t have to worry about the bills, I am free to write. That’s how I look at it. And if I focus small, i.e., don’t worry about the big literary world out there, full of would-be authors and budding writers, I’m fine. I can write in peace and believe in what I’m writing, without worrying about how it will be received generally. What drives me now is the desire to share my thoughts and feelings that make up the stories, poems, and novels that I am creating. The desire to create is what satisfies me now, followed by the desire to share what I’ve created. Quite a new thing for me. 

Mostly, I’m happy with my life at present. I am letting go of older ways of thinking and doing things, and that feels right. I’m preparing for new life phases, and am grateful for the time to think about those phases and to prepare for them. Not everyone gets that chance, for different reasons. I am grateful for the peace and harmony that vacation has imparted to me. I am also grateful for all those who are dear to me, whom I care about and who care about me. Not everyone has those kinds of people in their life, for different reasons. I’ve realized too that letting go leads to peace and to the understanding that living life is not about controlling it or its outcome. It’s about living life and being present in your life.

Oslo-Arendal-Stavanger-Bergen-Hardanger-Oslo

This summer, we decided to take a week’s vacation and travel around Norway; our plans were to drive from Oslo to Bergen with stops in Arendal and Stavanger, and then to return to Oslo via Hardangervidda. We’ve been to Arendal and Bergen before, but never Stavanger. The trip was about 780 miles (1255 kilometers) long. We followed the E18 highway south out of Oslo to Arendal, and then as we made our way to Stavanger and Bergen, we followed the E39 highway. On the way back to Oslo, we followed RV 7 instead of E134 that would have taken us through the Telemark region of Norway. I’ve mapped out the route we took on the map above.

We had booked hotels for one night in Arendal, two nights in Stavanger and two nights in Bergen. In this way, we didn’t have to drive too much each day, and it gave us a chance to experience each of the cities at a leisurely pace. Arendal is a small charming seaside town that is a summer destination for many Norwegians who have cottages there. However this year, the town was rather empty, strangely enough, since July is the month when most Norwegians take vacation. South Norway, in the area around Mandal (the southernmost town of Norway), is one of the most beautiful areas of the country in my opinion. I really enjoyed being in Stavanger; the city has a very open feel to it, as well as being quite pretty. Its city park is beautiful, as is its waterfront. We drove out to Sola Strand (beach) one day, a long sandy beach with dunes and beach flowers. It can be quite windy there, so it is popular with those who like to fly kites. We took a long walk along the beach, commenting on the large number of dead jellyfish that were half-buried in the sand. There is a resort hotel not far from the beach where we ate lunch--the Sola Strand Hotel (http://en.sola-strandhotel.no/?_ga=1.143502581.1544536728.1406195460); it would be a great place to stay, perhaps on a future trip to Stavanger. We also walked around Gamle Stavanger (the old part of the city) on the last evening we were there. This part of the city has lovely old white homes with picket fences and beautiful flower gardens; they are immaculately maintained for the most part.

The following day, we drove on to Bergen, which is a beautiful coastal city, but not one for timid or impatient drivers. If you want to become completely flustered, try driving in Bergen. We had problems not only localizing our hotel, but physically getting to it. Fortunately, we managed. We had a great seafood dinner one night at Bryggeloftet & Stuene located on Bryggen (the pier), and also spent time visiting the Bergen aquarium as well as an old friend who lives on the island of Sotra that is located west of Bergen. It was pleasant to walk around the city, packed with tourists, boaters, and classic car enthusiasts, quite a different atmosphere compared to Arendal. We also spent some time listening to the street musician Gee Gee Kettel and his daughter Soluna Somay.

And then it was time for our return trip over Hardangervidda. The last time we drove over this huge plateau in Hardanger was in 1991 when we attended the International Society for Analytical Cytology conference that was held in Bergen. According to Wikipedia, Hardangervidda is the largest eroded plain in Europe. I remember being fascinated by the landscape then—both hilly and flat (plateau-like), rocky terrain, stones here and there, dotted with small lakes and streams and patches of snow, and mostly treeless. I had never seen anything quite like it. At that time, I made my husband stop so I could get out of the car and walk to one of the small pools to touch the water to see how cold it was (it was cold). Hardangervidda’s somewhat forbidding landscape was used as the ice planet in the Star Wars film "The Empire Strikes Back". After having driven over the moors in northeast England last year, I realize that Hardangervidda resembles the moors in many ways. It stretches for miles, and is often closed to traffic during the winter months due to the large amounts of snow that pile up on the road. Sheep wander about, often coming up to the road or crossing it, exactly as was the case on the moors last summer when we drove over them. When we reached Geilo in Hol, we enjoyed an afternoon visit with more friends who have a cottage there. And then it was a few more hours of driving before we reached home. In my next post, I'll include some photos from our trip. 

What I did before my summer vacation (one hectic month in the life of an academic researcher)

Academia is an unpredictable profession at best; for the most part, one never knows from year to year how much funding one will have to design and implement research projects, how many students one will have responsibility for, how many grant proposals one will write, or even how many papers one will write and send for publication. The unpredictability of the profession stems from the unpredictability associated with grant funding: is a researcher’s proposal good enough; will it get into the top ten percent; will it get funded, and if so, how much will the researcher get; will he or she get support for students and lab consumables or just consumables; and what happens if he or she doesn’t get funding. The list of worries is potentially a long one.

December and June are always busy and hectic months in academia, mostly because researchers rush to finish experiments and to send out their articles before the Christmas holidays and summer vacation, respectively. They are stressful months that have to be confronted and tackled before one can take vacation in good conscience. The odd thing is that the pace of academia is so erratic; during the other months, there are often lulls when one wishes one was busier. Personally, I would prefer if the pace was more even and thus less stressful during the entire academic year, such that the amount of work was spread out more evenly.

So what did I do from mid-May until now, before my summer vacation? I am co-adviser for a PhD student who has to deliver her thesis by the end of July, plus send her last article for publication so that she can write in her thesis that it has been submitted for publication. I am senior author on that paper, so I have read through and edited the paper several times during the month of June. Additionally, I have read through and edited her thesis for both scientific and grammatical accuracy several times. Most Norwegian students write their theses in English. I believe it is now a requirement, whereas their defense can be in Norwegian, although many choose to defend in English. Most Norwegians speak English well, especially the younger ones who have grown up watching American TV programs and movies, surfing the internet/social media, and listening to music. So it is not a major problem to edit a thesis for correct English usage; it just takes time. But this is what a senior scientist does—it’s part of the job. 

I also wrote a grant proposal that I submitted to the Cancer Society in early June. I spent more than a month reading background articles and writing the proposal, which had to do with treating gastrointestinal cancers with drugs that drive them into a senescent (non-proliferating) state. I was a peer reviewer for an article about treating colorectal cancer with a combination of natural compounds that led to effective tumor kill without killing normal cells, a win-win situation for patients. I was also an external grant reviewer for another country; this is often done—that granting agencies send out grant proposals for external review outside their own country. In this case, I learned a lot about treatment of colorectal cancer with adoptive cell transfer using tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. This is a field I knew only a bit about, but about which I know quite a lot more at this point after having read the proposal and a number of review articles that helped me to understand it so that I could review it properly. I also read and edited an article written by two of my colleagues who asked me to check their review article for correct English usage and grammar. I also read some background articles about ionizing radiation and how it is used in cancer treatment; this was information I found on the American Cancer Society website. I am impressed with the information that is available there to patients and their families, and impressed with the writers who create these articles and brochures. Finally, I printed out a number of review articles about mass spectrometry imaging of tissue samples; this is a cutting-edge technology that has a bright future not only in cancer research, but in pathology generally, as well as in disease treatment, pharmacology and toxicology. I need to learn as much about it as possible in case I travel to visit a medical center in the States that uses this technology successfully in their research projects.

It occurred to me today that I could work as an editor of a scientific journal, as a senior adviser for any number of scientific/political organizations, and as a scientific writer. I do all these things in my job as an academic research scientist, in addition to planning research projects and figuring out how to implement them. One must also figure out how to do all these things on a limited budget if such is the case. Academia is really a creative profession, in more ways than one. 

A New Yorker in Germany

This week I am A New Yorker in Germany. After many years of driving through Germany on the way to visit and vacation in other European countries, I decided it was time to explore Germany. As luck would have it, the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) CYTO 2012 conference (http://cytoconference.org/CYTO/pages/default.aspx) took place in Leipzig, Germany this past week, and my husband and I were in attendance, along with some of our Norwegian colleagues. What is always nice for me about these particular international conferences is that I end up meeting American colleagues from the different places where I have previously worked—Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the University of California at San Francisco. This time around was no exception—it was a pleasure to catch up with earlier colleagues like Zbigniew, Bill, and Claudia. The ISAC conferences are special for me, because it was at one of them, in Cambridge, England, that I met my husband for the first time, and for the second time when the annual conference was held in Breckenridge, Colorado. After that, we became a couple and have since attended many other such conferences together. The society has evolved through the years to meet the changing needs of its members, but remains at its core a flow cytometry society, although it now embraces image cytometry and mass spectroscopy as it moves into the future.  

As a pre-teen and teenager, I had a pen pal in New Zealand, by the name of Lillian. We wrote to each other from the time we were twelve years old until we were about sixteen, at which point the letters stopped. But I had learned a lot about New Zealand and her about the USA during that time. When I last heard from her, she had decided to take a job working on the New Zealand railroad. I still treasure the small gifts I received from her—volcanic sand and a hei-tiki necklace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hei-tiki). I was reminded of her this past week because I had the pleasure of talking to a new conference attendee from New Zealand by the name of Kylie—it was a pleasure to meet her. Meeting her reminded me of what these conferences are really all about—encountering new people and forming new networks and connections. But it was our conversation about New Zealand films and also about how the New Zealand government has worked hard to integrate the Māori people, that I remember most. I want to find some of the films she mentioned, and to read a bit more about New Zealand society generally.

It is true what the Dalai Lama says— ‘Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before’. Because you never know who you’re going to meet, or what kind of experiences you’ll walk away with. This by itself—the excitement of unwrapping the unknown—is worth the time it takes to travel to new places. It doesn’t matter if the purpose of the trip is business or vacation. It is about staying open to the world around us. I’ll be writing more about Germany in coming posts. I’m happy we finally decided to spend some time here. From what I’ve seen so far, it is a fascinating country of contrasts.   

Some insights

We need to get away from the routines of daily life, not only to help us appreciate what we have so as not to take it for granted, but also to help us experience the periods of insight that we simply may not experience otherwise because a life of routines will often hinder that. The pause from work that vacation represents is important for body and soul, and the longer the pause, the better. Insights begin to surface when one gets away from routines that dull the mind and soul. A week’s pause may help, but better still if it can be two or three weeks, because to disrupt routines, one needs a longer time away from them. It is only then that we can begin to understand that if the house is not in perfect order, if the refrigerator is a bit on the empty side, or if the laundry piles up a bit, that these are not crucially important to the quality of our lives. No one is going to pass judgment on us; we are often our own worst critics. It is better to spend time together with family and friends rather than worry about whether our houses are clean enough to entertain guests or whether there is enough food in the refrigerator to serve a three-course dinner to guests.  It is often enough if a good conversation is accompanied by a cup of coffee; we don’t need to serve a gourmet dinner. I am not saying that we shouldn’t make the effort required to serve a nice dinner to those we love if we have the chance, just that not being able to do so should not be the determining factor for whether we choose to be together with them.  Routines may be comforting because if we don’t want to ponder the meaning of our lives, we can use our routines as a way of not doing so. I know I enjoy many of my routines; I like the lack of personal involvement in connection with performing them. It takes strength to reflect on the meaning of our lives amidst the routines of our daily lives. It comes down to choosing to want to do that, to deciding what we will prioritize or focus on. I come back to this theme often, because I see that the choice can be as simple as a walk outdoors or a bicycle ride versus the mind-numbing viewing of yet another reality TV show that leads to the creation of a passive state inside of us. But it’s not always easy or practical to choose this, especially when we are tired.

Some of my own insights from this summer’s wonderfully relaxing vacation: I have been given many blessings, among them, the good fortune to have been born in a part of the world where women have the right to speak, to think for themselves, to work, to travel, and to decide for themselves how they want to live their lives. I know I am loved, and I know that I love. I have wonderful friends, who are there for me no matter what; just knowing that gives me joy and a peace that I cannot adequately describe. I know that absence can make the heart grow fonder; that we can appreciate our spouses even more when we are not always together with them. I can travel, and am always humbled by the unique beauty of each new place I visit. I always think that someplace else couldn’t possibly be more beautiful than the place I am visiting, but I am always proved wrong. I want to travel more in the coming years. I am looking forward to that. I have discovered that upstate New York is one of the most beautiful places I know of, especially during the hot summer months—lush, green, and if global warming continues—semi-tropical; perhaps I always knew this, but it’s cool to rediscover it. The Hudson River is a big, long, beautiful and winding river that beckons you to explore it; the best I can do is to photograph it and even then I could not capture its beauty accurately. I marvel at the miracle of plane flight; being on a plane can make me nervous (especially if there is turbulence), but mostly I cannot believe that I am experiencing something that my grandparents never had the opportunity to experience. Who was it that thought the first thought that made aviation possible? Or for that matter, who was it that thought to create the huge ferries (almost like cruise ships) that manage to sail round-trip from Oslo to Germany with cars and trucks on board and us sleeping in cabins on the floors above them? These forms of travel are safe for the most part; despite the global financial problems and cutbacks, maintenance of planes and ships is still prioritized, thank God. I appreciate the fact that I chose to work in science after choosing to study it in college; I continue to marvel at the natural world, at the odd plants that are found in far-reaching places like the Amazon (we can see them courtesy of the different botanical gardens around the world), as well as at the pigeons that sit outside my kitchen window each morning waiting for a handout, or at the squirrels who rob the bird feeder at my friend Jean’s house. I continue to be amazed at the foresight of some of the rich families in New York who contributed money toward the city parks and botanical gardens that enrich our lives. I am grateful for their philanthropy. I have discovered that the media in the form of newspapers and TV have lowered their standards in many countries, not just in my own; so that it is surprising when they actually step up to the plate and report a story responsibly. I remain appalled by how low TV programming has sunk in the space of a decade. And as far as understanding the meaning of my own life; I am beginning to see the contours and perspectives of my life in ways that I never did before. A certain amount of years on this earth will probably do that --give you those perspectives and allow you to see your ‘place’ in the scheme of things, in the course of history. I don’t know yet how I have contributed toward making the world a better place. Sometimes people tell you that your kindness or thoughtfulness meant something to them in a time of need. It’s good to hear that, because I know that the reverse is true—that I have been the recipient of the same in times of need. In the end, it comes down to love and faith, and strangely enough, for all the mystery surrounding both of them, if we have them, they make life easier despite the difficulties that arise in this life.

Back in New York State

I’m in my home state of New York this week, on vacation visiting family and friends. It’s been a wonderfully relaxing visit so far, even though I’ve traveled here and there on planes, trains, in cabs and in a rental car. Some of my friends wonder how I deal with the stress of traveling. I deal with it, probably because I am not working and living in the New York City area anymore and don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis. I was in New York City yesterday and met a good friend for lunch. When I left her apartment at around 3:30 pm, it took me almost 45 minutes to get from the upper west side (88^th street) to Grand Central train station on 42^nd street because the streets were so congested with traffic. I had forgotten that it could take that long. Could I do that now each day—deal with this kind of traffic? No, not anymore. But I did at one point in my life—commuted into and out of Manhattan from my home in Somerset New Jersey. Two-hour commutes each way. I got a lot of reading done on the commuter buses; in fact, I don’t think I ever got so much reading done as in the space of the four years I commuted into and out of the city. But I had no social life to speak of in New Jersey—I got home too late each night, and on weekends, I was often back in Manhattan again with friends, going to discos, to the theater, or out to eat.

One of the reasons I love coming back to New York in the summertime is because of the heat. It’s hot here! The week before I landed at Newark, the temperatures were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. My brother told me that it was so hot last week that many cars just couldn’t tackle the heat. In fact, his car’s air conditioning system collapsed. It’s not that hot this week (temperatures in the high 80s, low 90s), but it’s warm enough so that you don’t need a jacket when you go outside. That’s summer to me. Or sitting for a few hours on a white sandy beach like I did with another good friend out in Long Beach, Long Island, digging my toes into the warm sand and watching the waves roll in and crash onto the shore.  I’m sunburned and I don’t care; I so rarely lie in the sun that it can’t matter too much one way or the other in terms of all of the potential health risks. We ate paninis on the beach and fed some of the sandwich bread to the many seagulls that stalk the beachgoers. Sly little birds, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce on a piece of bread. I love them too. I love them in Oslo as well when we’re out on the boat, even though they poop on the boat to the great irritation of my husband. My friend reminded me that they poop on people too; this I know. It’s happened to me twice in my life; you wash it off and go on. I cannot imagine a world without them, or any bird for that matter. Incredible little creatures.

I was in upstate New York again too, this time in Highland Falls visiting my sister and her husband. We ended up at West Point and took some gorgeous shots of the Hudson River at that vantage point. The day we were there was also a scorcher; there were a lot of boats out on the river, and it was just a lovely sight. Such a beautiful river, the Hudson River. I know that I could photograph it at all angles and from all vantage points and it still wouldn’t do it justice. Its essence cannot be captured; you just have to ‘feel’ how beautiful it is. I will be posting some shots from my New York trip shortly; as always, I am taking many photos and enjoying snapping away.

It doesn’t take much to be happy in this life. A long vacation away from work stresses will do wonders. But it’s more than that too. You can start vacation feeling overloaded from work, and that feeling can just pervade and ruin an entire vacation. I feel free this year, entirely free, from all the negativity and confusion that has defined my work life and environment for the past two years. I don’t miss work. I know it’s there when I get home, but there’s no rush to get back to work. How I have changed. And I wonder how that was possible—me, the career woman for many years. But no longer. I still love science, the wonder of learning, I am still curious about so much in nature, but I am no longer interested in an academic career. I’ll leave that to those who are. I’ll do my level best to do a good job now, but within the confines of a forty-hour work week, and no more. My free time is my own. That is what has given me this newfound freedom; the knowledge that I changed my way of working and living. I work to live now, not live to work. Again the word grateful springs to mind; I am grateful these days for the changes, for the work difficulties of the past two years, for the learning processes, for the ‘divine choreography’ that is ever present in our lives as my friend Bernadette puts it. God is ever present and working in our lives, and sometimes we are granted an open window into ourselves or out into the world. We can look in or look out, or maybe even both. The window is our connection with the divine and when it is there, true happiness is there too.

Keeping up and catching up

I’ve been doing a lot of catch-up reading since I started vacation—a pile of magazines waiting to be read that have been sitting on my living room table waiting to be read for the past two months, maybe more. I am finally making a dent in the pile. Most of them are Time magazines, and what I’ve rediscovered is the pleasure of reading really good writing. Surprisingly, I’m hooked on the column of their economy writer--Rana Foroohar, the assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business who writes The Curious Capitalist column, and Fareed Zakaria, the editor-at-large who writes some really interesting essays about world politics and economics. They manage to make the American and global economic messes not only interesting from a historical standpoint, but understandable. God knows we need more writers like them, writers with a historical perspective. I also bought a recent Scientific American, which I haven’t read for years. It too was surprisingly interesting with its cover story about quantum mechanics—‘Living in a Quantum World’. Did I understand what I read? Yes, I actually did, even though I couldn’t really parrot it back to you in an intelligible fashion. But when I read the article, I had my ‘a-ha’ moments and then I know I’m in the presence of a good writer and an articulate teacher. When I actually begin to understand the meaning of the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment, that is a little miracle, considering that the derivation of some of the equations underlying this experiment was one of three final exam questions in my college inorganic chemistry class. Most of the class failed the exam, including yours truly. This is the paradoxical thought experiment that asks the question--is the cat is alive or dead (quantum states)—in other words, when is the cat alive and when is it dead and when are these separate quantum states? The answer may depend on an earlier random event. Could I have written a similar article? No, and luckily I don’t have to. But I consider myself lucky just to be able to understand it a little bit now, after years of working in science.

I used to have more magazine and newspaper subscriptions than I do currently, to The New Yorker and to the Financial Times among others.  I had to give them both up; I just couldn’t keep up with the weekly and daily issues, respectively, even though I really did love The New Yorker stories and poems and cultural updates. Hope springs eternal, as the saying goes. I always thought I would have more time than I actually had to keep up with the weekly issues. I found out that you cannot prioritize everything and that for me to fit in all the things I want to do, writing, reading, working, reading for work, consultant work, time for family, a social life, etc. that I couldn’t do it all and I couldn’t read it all. I couldn’t keep up and in the end I couldn’t catch up either. The sad thing was that both The New Yorker and the Financial Times were delivered punctually. I never had to complain about late deliveries or no delivery.

The biggest myth that has been foisted upon us these past two decades is that we can do it all and have it all—pack it all into eighteen waking hours of each day. We can’t. We have to choose, we must choose, we must prioritize. We don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. No wonder we complain about high stress levels. If we don’t end up learning to (grudgingly) prioritize, we risk running ourselves ragged in an effort to keep up. And then all we end up doing is playing catch up. I’m giving up my membership to my health club for much the same reason. I am never there and I am paying a fee each month for the privilege of possibly attending the gym. Another myth shattered—that I will carve time out of my busy schedule to train. The thing I like best these days is to not be stuck indoors in a gym in order to train. I want to be outside breathing fresh air, running, biking or walking and taking in the scenery at the same time. I want to feel free, the freedom that comes from being outside in nature. I want that more and more these days. But when I am actually indoors, I want to be reading something good, something interesting, not wasting time watching TV. That aspect of my life I’ve actually changed. I have given up most of my TV watching. Do I miss it? No. So that’s progress. The rest of it will come with time. I am learning to prefer silence to mindless chatter. Good silence, the kind that makes you reflect on your life—both the practical and spiritual—and gives you the time to get to know yourself and to figure out what you really want from this life. I was told yesterday by an elderly woman I know and respect how much I’ve changed just this past six months. She hadn’t seen me since January, and meant that I no longer derived my identity via my work. She’s right. I don’t. I am happy because I have given up that heavy burden. I am ‘just me’ now, for all that’s worth.

So this is what vacation is good for too, not just for recharging the batteries, but for giving us the time to reflect on our lives and on what we want from our lives. Free time makes me appreciate silence, reflection, peace and quiet, relaxation, the art of ‘just being’, and the virtue of gratitude. We are lucky to have the time to reflect on our lives and lucky to be able to take some vacation. I’m focusing on ‘thank you’ these days. It’s a good way to start each day.  As Meister Eckhart said “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

Just being

It’s not taking me too much time to get used to the idea of having a month off from work. Years ago, I would never have taken such a long vacation from work. The idea did not appeal to me at all. Now, having large blocks of time off from work is what appeals to me the most. How we change as we get older. Or is it the circumstances of work that change us? Is it that we realize that there is no real point in giving up most of our waking lives to workplaces that do not really notice our loyalty or dedication? You could be there for sixty hours a week or for forty hours a week and the workplace won’t notice or reward you. Or it will reward you regardless—meaning that you and all the other members of your union will be rewarded equally, with a three percent pay raise, and you might get an extra percentage point if your bosses think you did a good job. But unless you’re completely hopeless, everyone will get the extra percentage point, so it doesn’t really ‘count’. These days, it’s all fine with me. After a pretty disappointing and sad work year, I’ve accepted what I thought I never could accept—my limitations—and I’m fine with that. I’ve let go of my unrealistic expectations concerning my career future without resigning myself to the fact that it had to be this way. I chose this path I’m on now; no one chose it for me. I’ve accepted my limitations and I’m happy. I’m not a top scientist, I’m not a union leader or even a board member, I’m not a group leader, and I’m not really marketable to the work world at large anymore. I am a good person, a kind person, and I am a good boss. The people who’ve worked for me tell me that. It’s finally getting through to me. I was a good leader to those I had responsibility for mentoring a few years ago. I did the best job I knew how to do. I was available for my team and I worked hard with them and for them. I wanted them to succeed. And they have, just not in my sphere anymore. They’re on their own, making their own way, as it should be. And me, I’ve let go of my desires to want to keep them around me, to keep my team intact, to ‘grow’ a group. It was hard, it was sad, sometimes it felt like it was impossible to let go. But I did. Want to know something? I’m happy. I’m happy just being me. I like who I am. Kindness and compassion are at a premium in my profession; I'm glad I have both. 

Just being. It’s a nice expression. Peaceful, soothing, like listening to water gurgling in a running brook or listening to birds chirping and talking to each other. I find that I so look forward to the sounds of nature now—be it the birds, or cats, or dogs, or even insects. They are ‘just being’—just being themselves, chirping, meowing, barking or buzzing. They do what they do to the best of their ability, yet they are unconscious of their ‘being’. We are conscious of it, and we can choose to ‘just be’. We can choose to slow our minds down, to empty them, to fill them with peace and happiness, to shut out unhappiness and negativity (foisted upon us by others who want to dump on us, possibly because they want others to be miserable like they are). The media are great at the latter. Not a day goes by without them reporting a story that is bound to irritate, provoke or otherwise depress us. Whenever I see a ‘nice’ story, I gravitate toward it now. They are so few and far between. Sometimes I forget that the world is actually an ok place—that there are not murderers around every street corner, or terrorists at every airport, or robbers waiting to mug me at every turn. Does it mean I should not be careful? No. It just means that I can be careful and still have a smile on my face when I greet the world at large.

I look forward to ‘just being’ during my vacation. By that I mean, having no work expectations, no pressure, no stress, no grant or article deadlines, no phone calls, and no work emails. My free time will be spent reading, writing, taking pictures, walking, biking, cooking, boating, traveling, and visiting family and friends. Not a bad way to spend four weeks. We have a lot planned, but it’s all fun and it’s all good. And my attitude toward vacation and free time tells me that I won’t have a problem retiring early when that time comes. I will ‘let go’ of more and more with each passing year. I have a tendency to be that way—to see things coming and to try and be a bit preemptive, so that I know that I am ‘choosing’ my path. From here on in, that’s my path—to choose my path. And I am choosing to ‘just be’ in this world, in my world, in my life.

Vacation time

Here it is July already. Vacation time. Plans and things to look forward to. I will be in Dublin Ireland for the next few days—A New Yorker in Dublin. I hope that the hotel has wi-fi so that I can connect to the net and write when the mood strikes me. I hope I get inspired to write by the country itself—Ireland, the home of WB Yeats, my favorite poet. I won’t get a chance to visit County Sligo, where he lived for most of his adult life, at least not on this trip. But he was born and educated in Dublin, and there is a Yeats exhibition this coming week, so I will at least get a chance to see that. I will be traveling with my friend Gisele, and we usually manage to pack a lot of sightseeing into a few days, merely by walking around the cities we visit. We’ve walked a fair amount around Paris and have really gotten to know the city. Amsterdam is another city I will be visiting this summer together with my husband. We’ve both been there before but only for a couple of days. This time we’ll spend a few more days there. We were hoping to visit the famous Keukenhof tulip park, but apparently it is closed after the spring exhibition. I’ve been there once before in April 1998 and it was just an amazing place to see, with all of the different tulip arrangements. A pity that we won’t be able to see it now when we’re there. Next time…….

And then in August I will be A New Yorker in New York for a week or so—my annual trip to NY to visit friends and family. Lots of events planned, as always, get-togethers, shopping, sightseeing, etc. My schedule is usually packed and I like it that way. Summer vacation here we come. 

A New Yorker in Oslo on vacation reading The New Yorker

Just for fun......from a few summers ago. 

Thoughts about New York city in summer

It’s never too early to start planning summer vacation. In fact, it’s smart to start around now because if you want to get together with people you need to check in with them now because they may not be around when you want to visit. Each year I plan a trip back to New York and usually I’ve been lucky—my good friends and family are around and we usually get together. I always look forward to going back to New York each year. I land at Newark airport and suddenly I feel at home. I know how to maneuver the NJ Turnpike, how to get into the city, what the quickest route is to get to Westchester—all those things. I have driven around the NYC metropolitan area for years. When I lived in NJ during the 1980s, I was always on the road, and was a pretty aggressive driver (just ask my family and friends). I have calmed down a lot, but that is mostly due to the fact that I don’t use my car here as often as I used it in NJ. It makes sense that the more you drive, the more stressful it is to drive. And in the NYC area it’s stressful to drive. There’s always a traffic jam of some sort to deal with. The worst road for traffic jams is the Long Island Expressway. I remember it used to be called the Long Island parking lot. There was never a reasonable explanation for why there was a traffic jam at any given time. The worst experience I can remember was driving a friend of mine to Kennedy airport so that she could get a flight to Germany. We made it with half an hour to spare. It was pre-9/11 so there were no real security delays. Nonetheless, it was not a pleasant experience. It took us four hours to get from midtown Manhattan to Kennedy, there was that much traffic. But somehow you deal with it and you even end up repeating the experience of driving out to the airport and hoping against hope that there will not be traffic. Hope springs eternal.

I usually fly direct from Oslo to Newark on Continental or SAS. Newark is a great airport, with its monorail that takes you from one terminal to another or to the car rental offices. It’s very efficiently set up and it makes dealing with the hassle of traveling a little easier. I take the monorail all the way to the end—to the Newark train station where I get a train into Manhattan if I don’t end up renting a car (I haven’t always done so the past few years). Every time I do this I think about how NYC functions. I mean, think about it. Over four million workers commute into and out of Manhattan each work day. That’s impressive. That is almost the entire population of Norway. It works, despite the traffic jams, crowds, delays, and aggression. Somehow it works. And when it doesn’t, it’s irritating but not chaotic. There is usually another way to get into NYC if the train doesn’t run. There is the bus, or a taxi, or a rental car, or a ferry. And when I am finally standing in midtown Manhattan, near the Grand Central train station, I take a look around me and soak in the NYC atmosphere, the NYC life. I love being in NYC in the summer time. It’s hot, noisy, and smelly; lots of people walk about, but there’s life around you. Life is always going on. It’s warm and humid. People pass you on the sidewalk, talking and laughing and having a good time—office workers on their lunch break. It’s nice to see them. It reminds me of when my brother worked in the World Trade Center; I would meet him for lunch and he would take me to a local restaurant where we would sit for an hour or two, then go to the river park and walk along the water. That was before 9/11. I haven’t been back to that area since except once, and that was to see Ground Zero, which was quite an emotional experience for me. My brother no longer works in that area, so there is not much reason to go there anymore. But it is a lovely area of the city and worth visiting if you have the chance. He and I visited Trinity Church once, which is in the Wall Street area. It is located at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in downtown Manhattan. It is a lovely church and one of the oldest in NYC—the first church was built in 1698.

NYC is not an unfriendly place. No matter how often I’ve heard that or seen it portrayed as such on TV or in films, I’m here to tell you that it’s not like that. You will discover that people actually smile at you if you keep looking straight ahead and not down. I smile back. Sometimes I am the one who smiles first. I don’t feel lonely in NYC. I never did when I worked there. I feel free. There was always life, no matter the time of day. I remember taking the bus back to NJ (where I lived during the 1980s) at 2am and even though it felt a bit weird to be out walking on the streets at that time, there were still plenty of people out. That’s one of the reasons I love cities generally. NYC doesn’t ever really sleep. It is the city that never sleeps. I for one think that’s a good thing. You can always find an open restaurant or deli to get a coffee. I love going into Grand Central station and getting a train to Tarrytown where I grew up. How many times have I taken that train ride? Countless times. I love sitting near the train window, looking out at the Hudson River on my way to Tarrytown. I’ve written about this before. But it bears repeating. It’s a beautiful ride and a beautiful river.

So I am sitting here and starting to plan my summer trip and other trips as well. There may be some friends visiting Oslo this year, another friend and I are planning a trip in Europe, and my husband and I are also planning a trip in Europe. But there will also be time spent in Oslo, like last summer, and that’s always nice as well, because Oslo is another city that I enjoy spending time in during the summer months. 

Dreams of travel in northern Norway

I live in Oslo and have not traveled farther north in Norway than to Trondheim, which is about 552 km (342 miles) north of Oslo, so there is still a lot of Norway further north of Trondheim to be explored. Northern Norway is often referred to as the land of the midnight sun, because during the summertime the sun does not really set. Northern Norway starts with the county of Nordland followed by Troms and Finnmark, and some of the larger cities in these counties are Bodø, Narvik, Rana, Tromsø, Vadsø, Hammerfest, and Alta, among others, according to Wikipedia. The distance from Trondheim to Alta is about 1755 km (1097 miles), and this plus the distance from Oslo to Trondheim gives you an idea of how long Norway is from south to north, and that’s just if you start from Oslo, which is not the most southernmost city in Norway. The map you see in this post gives you a good idea of how long Norway stretches from north to south.

After watching the BBC program from 2008 the other night on NRK1 (Norwegian TV channel), I thought that now it’s absolutely time, after twenty years of living here, to visit north Norway and see the land of the midnight sun as well as the land of the Northern Lights. Because that is what the BBC program was about—Joanna Lumley was the hostess and she took us on her personal search for the Northern Lights (the program was called 'Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights'). Why did she want to see them? Because it was a lifelong dream of hers from the time she was a child and had read the children’s book Ponny the Penguin by Veronica Basser from 1948; the book is unfortunately out of print or I would have purchased it on Amazon. In the book there is a black ink-drawn picture of a penguin with the Northern Lights as his backdrop. The Northern Lights look like hanging curtains with folds in them in the picture. I am including a link to the amazing video from this BBC program http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ8xd6xnZ9U –with her wonderful and moving commentary. About 5 minutes into this video (which is part 5 of her journey) you will see some fantastic footage of the Northern lights that danced for her that one evening in Tromsø. Her search for them was not in vain, and as she said in the video, it was as though they knew she was waiting for them. It is an amazing and moving experience, even just watching it on video. So I know already it will be an extraordinary experience in person. I was also curious to know if there exist Southern Lights in Antarctica, and lo and behold, they do exist, and according to what I read on internet, the Northern and Southern Lights ‘occur simultaneously and are almost mirror images of each other’ http://www.tgo.uit.no/articl/nord_eng.html.

So many other things in her documentary were interesting as well—among them her visit with the Sami people in Finnmark and her overnight stay in the Ice Hotel in Alta, which is rebuilt every year as it melts each year in the spring http://www.ice-lodge.com/Ice-Hotel-Norway.aspx. I have not been to any of these places, but I want to see them. How we are going to get to these places (train, boat, or car or combinations thereof) and when we are going to travel (time of year is important for seeing the Northern lights—preferably between September and April) will be topics for discussion in the very near future. But I have no worries about this becoming a reality, because once an idea is planted in my mind, well, then I’m on my way!

Vacations at Strømtangen

In keeping with my apparent desire to not let go of summer, not just yet, I was remembering the two times we vacationed on the island of Strømtangen off the coast of Fredrikstad. The first time was for two weeks in the summer of 2003; the second time for one week in the summer of 2006. We rented the old house that used to belong to the lighthouse keeper. The working lighthouse on the island these days is automatic and is physically separated from the keeper’s house, unlike the old round red-brown lighthouse that was attached to the keeper’s house (that is now used as a dining area). A full-time lighthouse keeper is no longer needed to take care of the lighthouse. Thus the keeper’s house is now rented out to interested parties during the summer months. We rented the house the first time together with two friends and their little baby and except for a few enjoyable visits from family and friends, we had the house and the island to ourselves. We had our boat with us as that was our transportation to the mainland and back. We used it to sail into Fredrikstad where we would do our grocery shopping, eat out at different restaurants, or use the showers at the visitors’ dock. Sometimes we also went out in the boat to do some fishing but did not really catch much.

The house on Strømtangen, with the working automatic lighthouse to the left

The keeper’s house itself is white, big, old and drafty, and sits up on the rocks that lead down to the sea. The windows rattle in a storm or when it is windy and the stairs leading to the second floor creak. The kitchen, living room, and dining room are on the first floor, and the bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor. The bathroom was useful only because it had a sink with running water—the shower did not work--and that was true for both times we stayed there. We have since heard that the organization that rents out the house was thinking of fixing the shower, but I have no idea whether that has happened. There was no toilet—there was instead an outhouse. Running water was drawn up from a well but we were told not to drink it, so we purchased bottled water instead. Despite these slight drawbacks, the experience of living on an island in a drafty old house away from civilization was interesting, challenging and fun. The kitchen was large and cozy, and we made good use of it. The weather in 2003 was hot and sunny—perfect beach weather. We were also able to use the grill quite often to prepare food and to eat outside. I can only remember one thunder and lightning storm during the two weeks we were there. That was an intense storm during the night, with high winds and waves that crashed against the rocks. It seemed like it went on forever. It was literally nature at its wildest—a bit scary but exciting at the same time. The house and the adjoining supply house and everything associated with them had more or less blended into the nature of the island—there were large fields of tall cattails growing in the marshy areas around the house, and otherwise worn footpaths leading to and from the house.

The island is an amazing place--stark, wind-filled, and beautiful. I wandered around it, taking pictures here and there. There is a more sheltered part of the island where the butterflies live, hundreds of them, beautiful to see, fluttering among the flowers that manage to grow in the sparse soil on and around the rocks. If you stood here you could look out over the vastness of the ocean for miles. On the side of the island where the boat was docked, which was a more protected part of the island where the water was calm, there was a small pebbly beach that led out into shallow water, and we spent some time there as well. One of the nicest memories I have is of waking up in the morning and seeing the swallows perched on the top of the bedroom window that opened outwards. They just sat there quietly watching us while we slept, not intimidated at all by our presence. It was as though this was something they always did—sit on the windows in this way, and we were merely curiosities for them to peer at. Most likely they lived in the eaves of the main house or of the adjoining supply house. After we left the island they got their house to themselves again and the life on the island went on as before.