Remembering summer

Out on the Oslo fjord at sunset--a lazy day this past September when it was still warm.

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. 

'Quiet desperation'

I wanted to really really like the movie Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh. After seeing it last night, I ended up somewhat liking it. Loving it? No. In fact, I ended up a bit irritated—I’m not sure at what. Myself for sitting through it? The theme? The passivity in the film? The depressing aspects in the film? The real-life aspects? The ending? There are so many things I could find fault with. I wonder if I expected something different. The acting was superb. But I guess I wanted something more than I got. I felt a bit cheated at the end, because we’re asked to care about characters about whom we’ve learned very little.

To paraphrase Pink Floyd, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” from their song Time may actually be the clue to my feelings of irritation. The film is decidedly British from start to finish, and that is usually fine with me, as I am a real anglophile when it comes to most British film and TV dramas—such as the Jane Austen, Charlotte (and Emily) Bronte, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy tales made into films and series. It’s just that in this particular case, I felt like screaming a few times during the film and at the end—“do something”. I wanted some life to be injected into an otherwise rather dreary daily existence (non-life) for many of the characters. They mostly did nothing—lived life in the same way as they had done for years, passively waiting for life to change instead of trying to change it actively. This may be how some British people (and other people in other lands) live, but I am not sure it is how all of them live. I have read so many reviews of the film that talk about how blissfully-married Gerri and Tom are, and to be sure, their relationship is nice. They respect each other and are kind to each other after many years of marriage, but I found their relationship to be somewhat superficial. Perhaps that is what happens after so many years of marriage, but I never got the feeling that they were passionate about anything. They did what they needed to do but there was no real excess of feeling, either toward each other or toward their friends. There were a couple of instances when Gerri offers silent comfort to one or two friends, but otherwise I felt that Gerri and Tom kept their emotional distance. Emotional distance, or a kind of remoteness from the world around them, or efficient emotionality (just enough but no more) seemed to be the secret to their happiness. If this is true, it’s rather interesting, but nothing was made of this or of much else. As it was, so much in the film was understated, and that may be the British way. The presentation of the lives of their single friends was an exercise in slow torture. Mary and Ken (who was interested in Mary who rebuffed him) are single middle-agers who seem to have found no meaning in life whatsoever. Mary has a crush on Joe, Gerri and Tom’s son, who ends up with a girlfriend (Katie) by the time autumn comes and this sends Mary into a downward spiral. While the actors did an excellent job at portraying such lives on film, it was the most depressing depiction of single life I have seen up to now. Nothing in Mary or Ken’s lives seemed to work. They were unhappy, miserable, emotional vampires (especially Mary) who sucked the life out of most of the people with whom they came into contact. Perhaps there was some hope for Ken, I thought, since he seemed to be more jovial, but no, he was apparently close to being suicidal. If I was a single person and saw these types of portrayals, I’d be pissed as hell. I’d wonder, my God, is this how the world sees single middle-aged people—as a sorry lot of folk who are just desperate for happiness and meaning? Is that the only thing that gives their lives meaning—desperation for love and acceptance? What about their jobs? What about participating in charity work? There was nothing. While I know that some single people suffer from loneliness after many years of living alone, I know others who have made a lot of their lives. It is so unfair to peg singles in this way. I would have liked to have seen a middle-aged single person in this film that was happy, or if not happy, at least content with life. They do exist. It would have balanced out the misery. Tom’s brother Ronnie, newly-bereaved, was another silent stone-like personality. He didn’t seem to like his deceased wife very much, and he had no relationship whatsoever with his son Carl. Yet this is presented as though there is something very much wrong with Carl (who is a quite angry individual), when in fact this is the first time in the movie that there is any real life at all. I was interested to know why Carl was angry. How had he grown up? Did he have a good relationship with his mother? Why was his relationship with his father so awful? But none of these questions gets answered, and they are the interesting questions. It’s as though Mike Leigh is saying that in order to survive in this life and be happy, you have to dampen your feelings and your passion and live totally on an even keel. That would be impossible for most people I know. And if you do all this, you achieve balance and harmony, yes, but do you really know the people around you, the people with whom you are living? No wonder Carl was angry. There didn’t seem to be much honesty. And perhaps that is what I was looking for. Why couldn’t Gerri have said to Mary that she was hurt by her behavior toward Katie and Joe? Why did she save it all up for months at a time? Real friends would have talked it over. As it was, they were not real friends. So these are the things that stick in my mind. I guess you could say the film made an impression on me, but I think I would have been fine not having seen it. It did not really add any new insights to my life. And that is what I am looking for when I go to films like these. 

Learning empathy

I was thinking the other day about some of the children’s stories that helped shape my view of the world and my outlook on helping others and having empathy for others. Empathy (understanding, sympathy, compassion) is in rather short supply in the world today. I can’t help but think that if there was more empathy there would be less hatred and fewer problems, because if you can step into another person’s shoes and see how he or she lives life with all of the attendant problems, then you have opened your mind and heart to that person and it won’t be possible to ignore his or her sufferings. Empathy means putting yourself in someone else’s place. It’s not easy because it may mean suffering along with another person, shedding tears with them, grieving with them, and just being there for them without having your own agenda. The latter is hard at times because we all have our own agendas and we would like them to come first, especially if we have often put our own wishes and goals on the back burner. But sometimes the needs of others must come first.

The Lame Squirrel's Thanksgiving by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey is one of those children’s books that had a huge emotional impact on me as a child and that I remember all these years later. It tells the story of a little squirrel that got his foot caught in a trap which led to him limping about and being unable to gather nuts for the winter quickly enough compared to the other squirrels. So when autumn arrives he doesn’t have enough food saved for the winter. Thanksgiving comes and he starts to cry because he is alone and hungry. Mrs. Striped Chipmunk thinks about the little squirrel and wonders how he is doing. She puts together a basket of food for him and goes to visit him with her gift. As she is walking to his house, she meets the other animals in the neighborhood—the woodchuck, the rabbit, two field mice--who ask her what she is doing. When she tells them they all contribute some food item to the basket, so that it becomes so heavy that she needs help to carry it. The field mice step up to the plate to help her carry it. The little squirrel is overjoyed and grateful as Mrs. Striped Chipmunk sets the table for his dinner and the field mice help him to the table so he can eat. There is enough food in the basket to last him the whole winter. This little story is all about empathy—thinking about the plight of others, stepping in to help, finding help along the way from others who also want to help, and making someone happy. It may be a sentimental story that tugs at your heartstrings, but perhaps we need more of these kinds of stories in the world, as adults and as children. Parents and teachers didn’t need to pester us about the importance of empathy when this type of story presented the value of empathy so simply and so beautifully. I also remember my mother telling us about her own mother and some of the women in her mother’s neighborhood in Brooklyn—that they would feed the vagabonds who knocked on their doors asking for food. There was apparently some kind of innate civility and respect on both sides. The vagabonds did not steal from these women and the women did not appear to be afraid of them. It is such a different world today—one would almost never think of doing this out of fear of being robbed. The codes of conduct have changed. Yet there are still people who help the poor and the hungry in the ways that they can, apart from the official charitable organizations that are set up to do this type of work. The churches I attended in New York and New Jersey sponsored soup lines and food baskets and gift trees at Christmas-time—I remember all those attempts at helping others. They made an impression too and it felt good to be a part of them.

There are other children’s stories that made an impression on me as well. One of them—In the Great Walled Country by Raymond MacDonald Alden--had to do with a far-off land of children where there was a forest of Christmas trees that were covered with gifts at Christmas time, and the children could go to the forest and seek gifts for others from the trees. It was never the case that they picked gifts just for themselves. But one year a ‘well-meaning’ stranger to the kingdom convinces the king to issue a proclamation stating that each person could pick his or her own gift in an attempt to make the whole process more effective. There was a little boy named Inge who did not like this new arrangement since his sister was crippled and could not go into the forest to get her own presents. So he ignores the proclamation and picks gifts for his sister, filling his bag full with presents. As he leaves the forest he meets many other children who wonder where he got all the gifts, because when they entered the forest they didn’t ‘see’ any gifts on the trees. He tells them that he had no problems finding gifts, and they stand there, puzzled and unhappy. They go to visit Grandfather Christmas to ask why he left no gifts on the trees this year. He answers them “The presents were there, but they were never intended for children who were looking only for themselves”. The moral of this story is crystal clear. A steady diet of such stories and you end up learning that it is a good thing to think of others, to put others first. And you learn empathy—putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. And that’s a good thing.

  

  

"Sometimes Your Voice is not Enough"--from the song Silver Rider by Low (version by Robert Plant and the Band of Joy)

As those of you who know me know, I enjoy writing and reading poetry and am always on the lookout for poems and song lyrics that touch my soul. This song Silver Rider, by the band Low, is one such instance, and the version of the song by Robert Plant and his Band of Joy (2010) is simply one of those songs you have to listen to. I want to know who or what Low wrote it about. Who is the Silver Rider? The song is almost like an elegy. And yes, 'sometimes your voice is not enough' in life--it rings true to me. The song will stay with you long after you hear it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxPrwol5lJE). 

Silver Rider  (by Low)


At times I see you, you silver rider
Sometimes your voice is not enough
Your face in windows, outside forever
Nobody dreamed you'd save the world
Nobody dreamed you'd save the world

Your march is over, the great destroyer
She passes through you like a knife
Oh take me with you, you silver rider
Sometimes your voice is not enough
Sometimes your voice is not enough

A beautiful poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What If You Slept?


What if you slept ? 
And what if, 
In your sleep
You dreamed ? 

And what if,
In your dream,
You went to heaven
And there plucked
A strange and
Beautiful flower ?

And what if,
When you awoke,
You had the flower in your hand ?

....Ah, what then?

Watershed years

I was writing to a friend the other day and used the term ’watershed year’ to describe the effect that 2010 has had on me. 2010 was a watershed year for me. It simply means that it was a turning point in my life. So many things happened that were out of my control, and the more I tried to control the chaos, the worse it got. So I let go. There are years like that, and for me, the years 1985, 2001 and 2010 have been those types of years. 1985 was a year that was filled with loss— people I thought I could trust betrayed me, and my father and my cat passed away. It was also a wake-up call to pay attention to my life, to ‘not cast my pearls before swine’ as the New Testament so aptly puts it. 2001 was another watershed year. I woke up to the fact that there really are people in the world who hate the USA and who hate Americans so intensely that they will do whatever it takes to destroy them. I watched the Towers come down on September 11 and a part of me died that day. My belief in the goodness of the world died that day. Watching so many people die in that manner was horrific, and it was made all the more horrific by the fact that I experienced it from Europe and could not be in my country at that time to help or to serve. I cannot watch video footage of that day without reliving the horror. So now I understand in a small way how it must be for war veterans, who actually fought the battles and dealt with the daily horrors, and who try to forget them and go on with their lives. How can you ever really truly forget? My experience is miniscule by comparison, a drop in the bucket of suffering. I learned what empathy means in a whole new way. And I also learned that people could suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome years after the fact, and that it is a real condition that causes continuous suffering to good people. 2001 was the year I became an American for real, to my core. I never knew what that meant before. It was also the year I lost my mother, another intense blow.

2010 was not like these years; it was the year I truly woke up to the treachery of the work world and to what it meant to worship at the altar of a false god. I finally understood what that means after many years of hearing that expression. And I did not lose my job as did others I know who have been treated like cast-offs by their workplaces. Michael Moore hit the nail on the head in ‘Capitalism, A Love Story’ when he accuses Wall Street firms of crimes against the people. He has mega-guts. And he tells it like it is. I had already begun to suspect that the work world wasn’t all it was cracked up to be a few years ago when I wrote a book about passive-aggressive bosses and their negative impact on workers and workplaces. But even after writing my book I still had the ‘belief’ (or hope?) that it could all work out given the right set of circumstances. Now I know, just like I know that it is right that some relationships should end because they are hazardous for a person to continue to be in, that it is also right that some beliefs should wither and die, because to hang onto them serves no one. But like letting go of a bad personal relationship, letting go of a bad work relationship involves a grieving process. It means dealing with the loss of your belief in what you have devoted yourself to for years on end. It means changing your focus and giving up loyalty to your workplace and giving up caring about and nurturing your workplace goal. It means redefining yourself, and as one of my unemployed friends in the USA said to me recently, “if I hear from one more person that you should just ‘redefine yourself’ once more, I’m going to vomit”. Why? Because it’s not easy to ‘just’ redefine yourself. It’s not a magic process whereby you snap your fingers and whoosh, you’re a new and improved person, like Samantha could do in ‘Bewitched’. How cool would that be, to be able to do that? No, for us mortals, it involves tears, sorrow, bitching, more tears, more bitching, ranting, and raving. And those who can do all these things, who can get their feelings out, are the lucky ones, ultimately. What about the people who keep it all bottled up inside? How do they deal with it? If one is lucky, over the course of some months or even years, acceptance begins to rear its head. Resignation also enters the picture. A pragmatic view of personal expectations versus how realistic the outcome of those expectations will be in your workplace emerges. You realize that some people win and others lose. That’s how it works. We cannot all be winners. But you also learn that looking at the world in terms of who wins and who loses is a pointless effort. Who cares ultimately? It reminds me of grammar school all over again; those who got the A’s were the winners. But all these years later, who really remembers that or cares? It’s what you’ve done in the meantime with your life that counts. And even if your workplace deems you to be a person it no longer needs or cares about, it cannot take from you your accomplishments, successes, contributions or service to that workplace. In short, it cannot destroy what you meant for them, and if it tries, it should be destroyed in turn. No workplace should be allowed to re-write its history in a vacuum. It cannot just wipe the slate and start over after getting rid of those it no longer wants or needs. It should also be forced to ‘deal’ with loss, to grieve over those losses, and to learn from them, just like the employees who worked for them have had to do.

So what have I learned from all that happened in 2010? What have I learned from all my conversations with others in my position or from those who have lost their jobs? To start with, learn to develop a thick skin. Try not to take it all personally, even though it may feel like a personal attack. But learn to wean yourself off the ‘loyalty’ addiction. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. Be very careful to whom you give your loyalty, your focus, your devotion, your time, and your energy. If this is good advice on the personal relationship front, it’s good advice on the workplace front. Like some people, some workplaces are simply not worth your efforts. And that’s worth finding out, even if you find out the hard way.

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!

Liars

Shades of the past that disappeared

And then came back

In different form.

You are not who you pretend to be.

You are an unknown.

You live your life accordingly.

No one gets close

But one got close enough

And she is whom you chose.

How long ago is long enough

You play at love and being tough

But in the end how high the cost.

You did not hold tightly to

What you had, did not hold dear

The love at hand, you lost.  

She knew what you thought

She would never know.

You fooled no one, you let her go.

You lied and you became

The cheat you thought you’d never be.

You behaved so arrogantly.

Those who think they are immune

From temptation risk only doom

Pride goes before a fall.

There will be those who wish you well

The cowards and like company.

And there will be those who lie

And hope that you will end in hell

While to your face they smile. 

copyright 2011  Paula M. De Angelis

Winterscapes at Lysebu

 

I took a few shots of the winter landscape around me at Lysebu, a conference center located in the hills of Oslo overlooking the city. A little winter wonderland of its own....

Niceness and weakness

Jennifer Granholm wrote ”Don’t mistake niceness for weakness”. I heard this quote for the first time many years ago and thought it made sense then without reflecting too much upon it, but was reminded of it today in conversation. It really is not uncommon for people to mistake niceness for weakness in today’s world, such that niceness becomes something to avoid or to squelch. Which leads me to wanting to define niceness in today’s world. Being nice doesn’t seem to be emphasized as much today as it was when I was growing up. When I was young child, we were always told to be nice to people and especially to older people. In those days, being ‘nice’ meant being well-mannered, quiet, polite, respectful, kind, tactful, generous and helpful. Rebellious, assertive, or demanding behavior was not nice behavior and was not encouraged in young women. Weakness was rarely discussed, and if it was, it was discussed in terms of physical attributes-- it was assumed that women were the physically weaker sex compared to men. I think the definition of being ‘nice’ from when we were children is still relevant for today. There is nothing wrong with wanting to encourage people to be all those things, but it's also quite ok to tell women especially that there is nothing wrong with being either honest or assertive--in other words, nothing wrong with opening your mouth and having an opinion. 

I don’t have any problem with being nice as long as others don’t have any problem understanding that my being nice does not mean that I am weak. I’ve gotten into conflicts with people who think that, or who think that they can take advantage of me because they mistake my niceness not only for weakness but for stupidity as well. They find out that I can defend myself pretty well if they push me too far, but that I don’t have to retaliate in kind. I think that being nice to others is a sign of integrity and strength—strength of character. It is much easier to be rude, ill-mannered, unkind, selfish and unhelpful because it is the base part of ourselves that would like to rise up and rule sometimes by taking the path of least resistance. To be nice means to exert effort in our dealings with others. It may mean listening politely to others when maybe you’d rather do something else; it means sometimes being of service to others instead of demanding service from others. It means sometimes letting someone else be the center of attention or giving someone else a turn. It means understanding that you have had your time in the limelight and that now it may be another person’s turn to shine. It means holding your tongue when maybe you’d like to lash out or criticize another person. It means not retaliating when maybe you’d like to do just that to someone who hurt you. It’s not always easy to be nice in my book, even though Dag Hammarskjold said that "It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy - from lack of character." I try to understand what he means by this, and what I come up with is that he interprets niceness generally as dishonesty.

The world doesn’t applaud niceness at the same time that it really could use more of it. We hear that ‘Nice guys finish last’. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said that "Well behaved women rarely make history." I don’t really agree with these quotes, but I understand how they might have come about. But Addison Walker said that “It's not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game even starts”.  And Wilson Mizner said "Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down.” Because there is nothing quite so (secretly) enjoyable as to watch a person who has treated others like crap on his or her way to the top, get his or her comeuppance on the way down. It is not nice to admit this, but it’s easy to admit it because it’s human to feel this way.

Lyrics to a classic song by Pink Floyd---'Breathe'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qsxpXqq1pA 


Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don't be afraid to care.
Leave but don't leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.

Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.

Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave. 

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


I never tire of hearing this song, or of listening to the album 'Dark Side of the Moon'. It made such an impression on me when I was a teenager. I don't think there is another album that even comes close to it. 'Breathe' is such a good song and one that got me interested in listening to song lyrics because in this song they really are pure poetry. My father did not like the lyrics--he found them depressing and he meant we should spend our time listening to happier music. But even if he was right, it never stopped us from listening to this song and the album from which it came. There is something about the combination of the music and lyrics that made Dark Side of the Moon a perfect album. 

The New Science and Math Library at the University of Oslo

The University of Oslo will be building a new, modern Science and Math library in the Vilhelm Bjerknes' building. Renovations and construction will begin in the Vilhelm Bjerknes' building at the end of February / beginning of March. When the new library is completed in 2012, it will be actively used for debate and discussion about science and the importance of science to society. 

You can find the Library's Facebook page here--https://www.facebook.com/realfagsbiblioteket. 

There were some wonderfully interesting Arrangements at the Library during 2010--Bill Bryson, Marcus du Sautoy, Karen Lunsford, and Drew Endy held exciting lectures that had their audiences enthralled. There was a really interesting lecture by Ellen Henriksen followed by a panel debate about young women and why they don't choose careers in math and science. There were two important, exciting, and well-attended conferences--the BioConference 2010 with its Biodiversity theme, and the Bioinformatics Conference. There will be more Arrangements in 2011.  Follow the Facebook page during 2011 to stay up-to-date on all of the new and exciting Arrangements that the Library is planning! Stay tuned......


For those of you who cannot read Norwegian, you can become fans of the Facebook page anyway! Google Translate is a wonderful tool that I use a lot now to go back and forth between English and several languages. It will help you translate the site to English. The translations may be a little weird at times, but you'll get the gist of what is going on at the Library. It is a dynamic, forward-thinking, and future-focused library headed by women who are all these things and more. 

Christmas crèche in St.Olav's church

The Christmas season lingers, as was evident at the evening mass tonight at St. Olav’s Catholic Church. Even though the church year has moved on to the baptism of Jesus, the nativity scene, or crèche (see photo) as it’s called, is still on display to the right of the altar, and there were still a number of people after mass who lined up to walk by it and to touch the feet of baby Jesus. There are a lot of church parishioners who originally came from the Philippines; they seem to practice this particular custom. Perhaps other nationalities do as well. I lit two candles and said a prayer in front of the crèche. Seeing the life-size crèche always brings back memories of the crèche at Transfiguration Church in Tarrytown. It was a beautiful crèche with lovely life-size statues of Mary, Joseph, Jesus and the shepherds, and they were made even more beautiful after my sister and her friend scraped, sanded and repainted them. I was the documenter for the occasion, the picture-taker, with my trusty Kodak Instamatic camera. I got some nice photos of their handiwork.

The crèche is a peaceful display, a pastoral scene that is reminiscent of all the best things about childhood and Christmastime that I can remember—a stable, a starry sky, shepherds tending their sheep, angels on high, choirs of angels, and the placing of the child in a manger. Advent (from the Latin word adventus that means ‘coming’) is an important time in the church calendar, since it is a time of preparation for the birth of Christ. There is a lot of symbolism and ritual in the Church. We really prepared for Christmas in Catholic grade school (grades 1-8), starting already at the end of November. In art class we made a Judah tree, which is really the family tree of Jesus, but I don’t remember all the particulars, just that Mrs. Downey, our art teacher, had us use construction paper to design, cut out, and build a tree on which we placed the different ancestors of Jesus. We hung the tree in the classroom. An interesting way to learn biblical history, but I don’t remember much of it all these years later if that was the intent. We also spent time analyzing some of the famous paintings of the Annunciation (when Mary learned from the angel Gabriel that she was to be the mother of Jesus). We learned about the meaning of the Christmas tree; usually an evergreen tree, it is the symbol of the everlasting Christ. All of what we learned was related to the nativity. My parents also set up a small table-top crèche each year, and I continue that tradition. 

There is a bookstore in Akersgata in Oslo called Bok og Media, which is one of the oldest bookstores in Oslo and also a bookstore that has a large amount of Christian literature and media (http://bokogmedia.no/bm/main/bm9001/document/document11/Bok+%26+Media+Oslo.html). It has a special exhibition on the lower floor that they open to the public at Christmastime. You enter a long passageway, and as you enter, you are welcomed by the history of the Old Testament written on the wall leading up to the birth of Christ, as well as a map of the entire biblical area showing Galilee, Nazareth and Bethlehem, among others. As you proceed along the passageway, you will see that it is lined with crèches from countries all over the world. The last room before you exit is a room that is actually a life-size stable with a life-size crèche display. There are benches in front of it so that you can sit and reflect on the scene in front of you, while peaceful Christmas music plays softly in the background. When you emerge from the exhibition, you come out into an area of the bookstore that sells crèches and crèche figures, as well as Christmas music and books and other Christmas items. It is well-worth a trip to experience this exhibition. I have been there twice, and will definitely go back again. It is one of the many ‘hidden’ treasures of Oslo that someone needs to tell you about, otherwise you will never know they are there. The hidden treasures are some of the things I want to tell you, my readers, about in this blog. 

Winter scenes in Oslo

Akerselva river 

Deserted in winter--St. Hanshaugen park cafe

Benches in St. Hanshaugen park