Experimenting in the public eye

I performed an experiment of sorts this past week, with interesting results. I wasn’t at the lab bench working with cells or with different methods to study them. I was standing in front of a roomful of people, all of whom were there to listen to a PhD candidate whom I was actively questioning about his thesis work. What no one knows is that I had decided to model the style of my ‘opposition’, as it’s called in Norway, after the style of a Swedish scientist whose recent opposition a few weeks ago had resulted in satisfied customers all around. What I had been most curious about was whether his style had been acceptable because he was male and non-Norwegian, or because it was genuinely a careful and thorough way of questioning a candidate without terrifying or intimidating him or her. During this man’s opposition, I sat in the audience and copied down all of his questions to the PhD candidate who happened to be a woman. I counted how many questions this man asked in the space of seventy-five minutes and calculated how much time the candidate used to answer him. I decided to ask questions of a similar nature when it was my turn to be an opponent for a male PhD candidate. I was curious as to whether this style of questioning on my part would be just as acceptable as it had been for the male opponent. I can happily report that it was. This style of questioning works and is gender-independent. It does not intimidate the PhD candidates, and it relaxes the opponents so that they don’t feel pressure to perform unnecessarily in public on a day that should belong to the PhD candidate and not to the opponent.

I have seen too many public PhD defenses where the opponents ‘shone’ like the sun, and the candidate was just caught in one of the rays. I have seen defenses where both the opponent and the candidate were completely mismatched, so that the entire defense was painful to watch and an exercise in pulling teeth getting the candidate to answer any questions whatsoever. I have seen good defenses also—where the candidate actually challenged the opponent and then a discussion was underway. I’ve seen so many different outcomes of PhD defenses. I recommend the type of questioning that I and the Swedish scientist used; it leads to a good outcome and the public (mostly consisting of colleagues, family members and friends) are far more likely to remember the day as a good day instead of a day where the candidate made a fool of himself or was unfairly criticized or was unduly nervous. I don’t know if I’ll be an opponent again, but I recommend the non-intimidating but engaging way of questioning as a way of producing the desired outcome—a grateful PhD candidate, satisfied supervisors, and a happy audience.

I wish Norway would get rid of the public PhD defense. It is rather outdated and I don’t think it is necessary anymore given the continual reduction in the requirements for fulfilling the PhD degree that have been taking place over the past few years. It is exceedingly difficult to find willing candidates to sit on a PhD committee, given the current requirements that the committee has to be gender-balanced. I hope the country goes the way of many other countries, where the PhD defense takes place behind closed doors with a committee (that can consist of a PhD candidate’s own faculty members) who ask the candidate questions for a few hours and then the whole thing is over. In this way, it could be ensured that the candidate is not overly nervous such that he or she doesn’t answer any questions at all. I’m hoping that day is coming, but as with all things in Norway, it will take an inordinate amount of time to come to the decision to change this way of doing things. I hope that this time I will be pleasantly surprised and that change will happen much faster than usual.  

Reality check

You’ve got to wonder why it was so important that Schwarzenegger decided that he had to tell his wife that he had an out-of-wedlock child with his mistress exactly now, in 2011, years after the fact. If anything interests me about this case, it is that. What’s the hurry? So my guess is something’s up. There’s a reason he felt pressured into coming clean. I don’t know what that is, but my guesses are as follows: there are more out-of-wedlock children than we know about, and they’ve grown up and are interested in whom dad is, and maybe they found out that dad is a high-profile person, and they’re not going to keep quiet about it. And really, why should they? They would have every right to have contact with their biological father. That’s only human. Secrets will ‘out’. That’s the nature of secrets. Sometimes they come out after a person dies, but other times they come out while a person is still alive to cause problems for that person. Another possibility is that Arnold wanted ‘out’—of his marriage and the secrecy surrounding his life. Maybe he needed to get away from what he viewed as a restrictive life. Maybe he is having a slightly delayed mid-life crisis. Or maybe he doesn’t really care anymore about much of anything, which would be most sad for his children, since they don’t deserve the fallout. Or maybe he calculated the whole thing—I mean, he’s been a governor but he can never be president since he wasn’t born in the USA. So he has nowhere else to go politically and then who would really care about his personal life and secrets? But I’m putting my money on a new woman in Arnold’s life. Given the egoist that he is, I’m betting that there is a woman we don’t know about yet waiting in the wings for him to ‘get free’ and then when he is there will be the requisite number of months mourning the ‘dead marriage’ and then it will suddenly be announced that he has found happiness again after a long period of remorse and self-incrimination. That he has forgiven himself and moved on. And of course the press and media will eat it up, since Americans like to forgive their movie ‘heroes’ after they’ve first nailed them to the cross and whipped them until they’re bloody and begging for sympathy. I don’t think Arnold will beg, but I think he has factored in a certain amount of unpleasantness ahead (how many days and months he has to suffer through) until he is ‘redeemed’ in the American public eye. His fate is not the fate of Jesse James who betrayed Sandra Bullock. Jesse James was and is a nobody who found some fame with Bullock; his ‘coming clean’ did nothing for him and just made him look more like the bottom feeder that he is. His fate won’t be that of Mel Gibson or Charlie Sheen either—both of whom self-imploded with their bizarre comments and dealings. Schwarzenegger has had a high-profile Hollywood career that he is now putting on hold to deal with his family problems. It’s the polite way of saying that he will resume his career once the furor has died down. He is an egoist, pure and simple. Arnold comes first and always has. The only thing I’m waiting for is to hear the name of the new woman in his life who loves the ‘real Arnie’, who knows the real Arnie and who accepts the real Arnie—so that we can watch him sail off into the sunset with the woman of his dreams. Sounds like a real Hollywood ending to me.

Sexcapades

This past week the news has been dominated by sex scandals—some of them of an (alleged) illegal criminal nature and some of them not. What they have in common is that the men involved in all cases risked their marriages, personal lives and reputations to live out their different sexual fantasies. Again, I have to ask the question, what were these men thinking? But I know I won’t get a satisfactory answer. Or I’ll get the standard wisecrack answer—they weren’t—it was their second brain that was doing the thinking.

This time it was Arnold Schwarzenegger who ‘took full responsibility’ and stepped up to the proverbial plate to inform us about his extramarital affair with one of his household staff members and the resulting love child. The news was apparently kept secret even from his wife Maria Schriver, who when she heard it from him apparently a few months ago, promptly moved out of the house. They are currently separated and will likely divorce. When I first heard the news I thought, yet another male politician who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Really, what is the world coming to, I ask you? One politician after another caught up in the arms of sleaze—affairs with household staff/servants (Schwarzenegger and a few of our country’s founding fathers), dabblings with prostitutes (Eliot Spitzer), oral sex with congressional pages and sex with nightclub singers (Bill Clinton), adultery with women sneaked into the White House (John F. Kennedy), adultery with an Argentinian girlfriend (Mark Sanford) and adultery with other (healthy younger) women while their wives struggled with cancer (Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, and a few other men I know of who are not politicians). The latter especially is distressing to read about if you own an iota of empathy, because you know that the news that your husband is fooling around or having children with another woman while you battle cancer cannot be anything other than immensely stressful precisely at the time when you need little to no added extra stress. And how sad to leave this life knowing that your husband was a ‘rotter’ as my mother would have called these types of men. What a thing to forgive, and can you really? What a betrayal—the ultimate betrayal. Even if you did live, could you trust a man again? Again I find it hard to believe that men can behave this way. Of course I know that there are two sides to every story. If I didn’t write that here I’d be reminded of it by some well-meaning person. And I agree, there are two sides to every story. But it’s hard to find equivalently awful stories about female politicians who behave in this way toward their husbands. I’d like to know about them, I really would.

I have been witness to some strange male (and female) relationship behavior during the past thirty years, so I know that bad behavior does happen. I know of married men who traveled under assumed names to meet their lovers so that their wives wouldn’t find out, I know of men who were on message boards and internet dating sites passing themselves off as single when in fact they were married, I know of men who were fooling around with their current wives while their soon-to-be ex-wives were succumbing to cancer, I know of men who strung women along for years telling them that they would marry them and then dropping them the minute they found the woman they ‘wanted to marry’. I know of swinging couples and wife-swappers; of men who lied to women about being ‘separated’ in order to get a woman to sleep with them. I know of men who travel on business who pick up prostitutes and call girls when they are in another city. I know of married men who offered to be sperm donors for single women and whose wives would probably not have appreciated the offers had they known about them.  I also know of women (married and single) who have contacted the wives of the men they have decided to seduce, to tell the wives that they and the husbands are very attracted to each other and that if the husband hadn’t been married they would be together. I know of women who pursue married men on social network sites, by email, and via text messages. I know of women who worked for men who told them at the outset that they’d like to be their mistresses, who ended up being so, and who ended up marrying them after causing hell for the wives involved. In Norway alone, infidelity in marriage occurs in one of two marriages according to what I hear from other people and from news reports; I have no way of knowing whether this is true, since most people would never talk about this honestly. In turn, I know of wives who fought back and told some of these women off and told their husbands off at the same time. I know of some women who divorced the louts they were living with. I know of some wives who really fought back—when their husbands went to live with the other women and the scorned wives made their lives a living hell. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. You bet. And maybe it’s good that it is that way at least in some cases. But sometimes I believe in divorce as the solution to painful hellish lives. I’ve seen a number of abusive and depressing marriages during my growing up—drunken men who hit women, eternal flirters and skirt-chasers who were never happy with the women they had at home, or men who always had to have the last word—who controlled their wives and families with an iron fist. And this took place/takes place in Westernized society. So every time people say to me that women have it so much better in our neck of the world, I remind them of this, and then we come down a few notches on the ‘everything is great for women in our society’ scale.

Which brings me to the men and women I know who are unsung heroes in my book. The men and women who have stayed married through thick and thin without cheating, without abuse, without carping. Who start each day with a smile and who never cease to amaze me with their cheerfulness and helpful spirits. Who are loyal and kind to their spouses and children. Who have probably been tempted to leave a few times in their lives, but didn’t, because they put the happiness and needs of their spouses and families ahead of their own. Who stuck by spouses in times of sickness—the true test of love. I’ve seen what sickness in one or the other partner can do to relationships, so I know it’s not easy. Loyalty is underrated in our society these days. But it is what makes marriages and friendships last. Without it, there can’t really be much trust. You have to be able to see into the future and ‘know’ with your gut that the person you share your life with will be there for you when you are sick, when you need help, and vice versa. No one said it would be easy. Maybe you’d like to run at the first sign of trouble. But maybe you didn’t; maybe you wrestled with your doubt and anxiety and temptation and stayed put. These are the people who impress me. You don’t need to climb Mt. Everest or practice extreme sports or any of those things to impress me. ‘That don’t impress me much’, as Shania Twain sang a few years ago. What does impress me is longevity and the ability to be positive and cheerful in a marriage. I’m not saying that all people should stay together for an entire lifetime; I’ve already argued for divorce as a solution to hellish relationships. But if after some years of being together, an otherwise decent marriage loses a bit of its luster and temptation comes one’s way, maybe one should take a closer look at what one has before tossing it away for a sexcapade. It is possible to stay faithful, and I know couples married for forty or more years who have been faithful to one another. They say so, they are still in love with their spouses, and they are my heroes. 

Sexual predators

Two stories about (alleged) sexual predators in the news this past week—one a very high-profile ‘money’ man (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) whose putative crash and burn story will preoccupy writers and psychologists for years to come; the other a rather odd story of a man who advertised for a live-in housekeeper over the internet (I believe it was through craigslist—an already questionable site), whose main intent was to find himself a sex slave that he could imprison and control. It’s strange that both stories appeared almost at the same time, and yet, knowing the vagaries of the universe, not so strange. I puzzle though over both these stories. What were these men thinking, to paraphrase Jay Leno’s question to Hugh Grant after he was literally caught with his pants down with a prostitute. I mean really, what were they thinking? That they would never get caught, just because they hadn’t been caught up to this point? Does that type of cockiness make you stupid? It doesn’t matter though what they thought ultimately, because I’m glad if two of the many sexual predators out there were taken off the streets. And high-profile sexual predators who believe that their power and clout will help them escape have some rude surprises in store for them. It seems as though the USA is fairly intent these days on punishing convicted rapists to the fullest extent of the law. It seems that way anyhow from what I read in the news. And that’s good, I say, because Europe, or at least Scandinavia where I live, does not punish rapists severely. Prison sentences for rape average three to four years from what I have seen from the outcome of rape cases that come to court. And from what I can see of the Third World where women have little to no status anyway, raping women seems to be something men can get away with a lot of the time, with all of the nasty repercussions for women that men never seem to suffer. Rape has been used as a weapon in the civil war in Congo, rape is apparently rampant in Haiti, and so on. And I need only think of the story about the CBS News correspondent Lara Logan who was brutally raped while covering the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. And then I think-- if there is a God, I want him/her/it to smite these men down. That’s the prayer I send out into the universe. “I hope God is coming, and I hope she is pissed”—in whatever form it needs to take. Just let women and the good men be protected from whatever comes.

We will always have men who need to control women, who view women as beneath them and who need to exercise physical and sexual power over them. I don’t understand the psychology of these men nor do I really care to. I just want the world to change. I want respect for women, justice for women, equal rights for women, fair play for women. Everywhere. Because it is only in a world where women are respected that we will find the peace that we are looking for as global citizens. I cannot believe in the prospect of world peace until women around the world enjoy the same rights as men in every country—the right to an education, to a job, to free choice as to whether they will marry and raise a family, free choice as to whom they wish to marry, free choice to divorce, to travel, to amass wealth, to have an opinion—in short, all the rights that men take for granted. And men take them for granted. The fact that they can take them for granted endows them with a self-confidence and a swagger that most women I know don’t have and will never have, because if they behaved in the same way they’d be told to can the behavior or to keep their mouths shut or to stop acting so high-and-mighty. When all societies raise their boys and girls to look forward to enjoying exactly the same rights, then I’ll say that we’ve evolved as human beings. Until that time comes, I will continue to respond to the rhetoric about how the world has changed and about how far women have come with my own individual free-choice adult thoughts and voice—so much hot air, so many empty promises. There is a time for smiting, and that time is coming. 

Another poem by Maya Angelou

Just a beautiful and piercing poem................


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind

and floats downstream till the current ends

and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage

can seldom see through his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hill

for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hill

for the caged bird sings of freedom.

A poem by Maya Angelou

I'm discovering some new poets and rediscovering some old ones. I'm in a poetry mood this week. A lot going on at work, and my brain needs to focus on deeper thoughts and rhymes and new ways of thinking. I will post another one by Maya Angelou today as well. 

Alone

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

A poem by J.R.R. Tolkien

All that is Gold does not Glitter

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king. 

A poem by Langston Hughes

Dreams Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

Collective egoism

In some recent conversations with a good friend, I coined the expression ’collective egoism’ to describe a particular mentality that has become prevalent in nouveau riche Norwegian culture, in our opinion at least. Before I describe how I would define the term, I will say that I googled the expression earlier today, and sure enough, it has been coined before and described extensively. No matter. I will define it in my way. We were talking about our workplace (as usual) and it struck us both that there is incredible pressure on all of us (as scientists) now to get grant money, fame and glory for ourselves for the greater glory of our workplace—to succeed, to be the best, to reach the top. When you try to remind certain workplace leaders that some people are in fact smarter, more creative or more talented than others (always have been, always will be) and that these people will always get more grant money, power and success, you get told that, no, if you only do so-and-so, you can be just as good as the others. You can of course catch up, match them, and achieve their worldly successes. You don’t really have to compete with them, because if you only knew their secrets, which are of course penetrable, well, you could be just like them. I don’t know if they really believe their own rhetoric. If they do, it is yet another example of the Scandinavian socialist mentality at work. I want to like this mentality, I really do, but I don’t. I resent any mentality that tells me that all people can be the same, that all people have the same opportunities, talents, and means to make it in this world. It is patently untrue. It does not matter if the same opportunities are presented to for example, twenty high school students. Each of those twenty students has different talents, smarts, and capabilities. None of them will respond similarly to the same challenge. And why should they, and how can they? It is the differences in people that make a society tick—make it varied and interesting and multi-cultural and all the things we want it to be. Do we really want a society where all people are equally-talented—whether they be musicians, scientists, writers, actors, or medical doctors? Do we really want to teach our children that if you show talent as a musician that could also be a writer even if you show no natural talent in this regard? This sounds quite delusional to me. It also presupposes that there is a script that one can follow to become successful. If you just conform and do this, follow that, take that course, work that shift, you too can achieve the same pinnacle of success in your chosen field, just like all your colleagues. I don’t know where these ideas came from, but they don’t work. The more pressure that is placed upon us to be similar, the more different we end up—because the differences between people are impossible to suppress and because human nature will want to reveal and express those differences.

But it is the huge pressure to achieve materialistic success that has gotten me thinking about collective egoism. There is tremendous pressure in this country to own your own home, to have the best possible interior design and architecture, to own a cottage by the sea, possibly a cottage in the mountains, two or more cars, several TVs, to be able to travel abroad several times a year, buy expensive clothes and shoes, go to the theater and the opera—the list goes on and on. Suffice it to say that the pressure is more subtle than overt, but for each year that passes, this society becomes richer and the pressure mounts. Is this what happens in a rich society? Again we are faced with the same mentality—collective egoism—the acquisition of money and material goods for ourselves, ultimately for the greater good of our society. We have become a nation of collective egoists. Equal opportunity greed. I see it in the commercials on TV for kitchen renovations. It seems as though everyone is renovating their kitchen (or being encouraged to do so) these days in order to have a state-of-the-art, modern kitchen, and this is pushed and supported by the media, such that those who do not have the means to obtain this kind of kitchen (younger couples for example) end up on the outside looking in. But not for long. Now there are commercials advertising how this or that company can provide you with the kitchen that the ‘others’ have for a fourth of the price. Not only are we presented with the suggestion that it should be so (that everyone should have the same type of kitchen), but we are also told what kind of kitchen qualifies to be the best. This may be all well and good, but does everyone need this kind of kitchen? And what happened to the idea of working toward the goal of acquiring a new kitchen in a few years, of saving money to make that dream happen if you are a young couple starting out? The one important aspect of collective egoism is the ‘I have to have it now’ aspect. It is boring to have to wait for anything that one wants. Ultimately, it is all about ‘show’—that you ‘get’ a particular look that is ‘cool’. The exterior matters more than the interior. In other words, even if you never really use your kitchen to cook, it still looks top-notch and that’s what is important. The same could apply to widescreen TVs or broadband. Each person in society shall have the same as everyone else in society—the same wealth, the same goods, the same access to those goods, etc. But again, this is a fallacy. There are rich people in socialist-democratic societies just like in other societies who have wealth that others could only dream about—it may be inherited or hard-earned. But it makes them different from the rest of us, and to spend one’s life in pursuit of this kind of wealth just to make it to the same level as these people seems quite pointless to me. I’d rather pursue my own talents and interests, as these are what make me happy and an individual. That is important to me.

Some wise words about mothers

·         A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.  ~Peter De Vries

·         The phrase "working mother" is redundant.  ~Jane Sellman

·         The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.  ~Rajneesh

·         I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.  They have clung to me all my life.  ~Abraham Lincoln

·         Sweater, n.:  garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.  ~Ambrose Bierce

·         Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness.  It's the men who are discriminated against.  They can't bear children.  And no one's likely to do anything about that.  ~Golda Meir

·         The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.  ~Honoré de Balzac

·         All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy.  No man does.  That's his.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

·         Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
~William Shakespeare

·         When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts.  A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.  ~Sophia Loren,Women and Beauty

·         Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.  ~John Lancaster Spalding

·         Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.  Everything gets reduced to essentials.  ~Meryl Streep

·         I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine - she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights.  ~Terri Guillemets

·         [A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.  ~Emily Dickinson

·         A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving

Mother's Day

Mother’s Day in the USA is this coming Sunday, May 8^th. Someone on Facebook has come up with the idea to post a picture of your mother as your profile picture until Monday May 9^th. Normally I don’t participate in very many Facebook ‘events’, but this one struck a chord and I posted a wedding picture of my mother. I think it’s a good idea and a nice way to honor our mothers on Mother’s Day.

My father passed away in 1985, and my mother in 2001. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of them both. My parents were quite strict when we were young, so it took some doing on my part to really get to know them as people and as friends, but I had managed to do that by the time I entered my twenties. I remember being afraid of my mother when I was a child; she had her rules and ways of doing things, and you did not want her to get angry at you if you broke the rules or ignored her wishes. But she was also the type of mother who had milk and cookies ready for us each day after school, and the door to our house was always open to our friends. She liked our friends. Several of my friends to this day will still comment on how kind my parents were to them when they were growing up, especially when there were problems or emergencies. That is always nice to hear, because I remember them that way too. And when we finished each school year, they would take us and our friends out for ice cream sodas at the local Howard Johnson restaurant. Those are nice memories.  

After my father died, my mother and I became close friends. It was a friendship that was defined in large part by her personality, likes and dislikes—she was a quiet person by nature, reserved rather than extroverted, friendly, curious but not nosy, kind, hospitable, not a big talker, and not a gossip. She was a doer and we enjoyed doing a lot of different things together--going out shopping, walking, exploring new towns, driving around just to drive around and take in the local sights, and going to the theater or ballet in Manhattan. She was born in Brooklyn but moved to Tarrytown when she married my father. She ended up loving Tarrytown and was a member of the Tarrytown Historical Society. One of the things I miss most about her is her incredible holiday spirit. It was infectious, the energy she had around the holidays, especially Christmas. She loved everything about Advent and Christmas and could not wait to start Christmas shopping. She pushed for getting the tree up and decorated each year. She loved buying gifts for others and was generous in that way to a fault. She thought very little about herself and I always remember worrying about that as I was growing up. It always seemed to me that she should pay more attention than she did to her own wishes and dreams. But she didn’t. When she got old, she had very few wishes; the few that she had were easy to fulfill—we would go shopping in White Plains and then eat lunch at the local diner. We always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a dill pickle and cole slaw on the side, followed by coffee or tea.  She was a real tea drinker—she loved her tea. Sometimes during the summer, she wanted to go to Friendly’s in Pleasantville to get an ice cream sundae, and that was always fun, getting in the car and driving around the Tarrytown Lakes and talking about the changes in the town and the area on our way to Pleasantville. When I visited her on my annual trips to New York from 1990 onward, I would stay with her and we would enjoy our movie nights—watching videos of some of the old films that she liked, like Adam’s Rib, Meet Me in St. Louis, Home Alone, White Christmas, and others. I find it both comforting and sad to watch those films now, because they always remind me of her. It is funny what we remember about our parents; my father was a great reader and I remember my talks with him about the books he/we had read, or about the business world and his work experiences, or about faith and the church. With my mother, our conversations were more oriented toward school, the teachers, the women in the neighborhood who were her friends, local events, and the like. She spoke very little about her youth, but as she got older, I tried to absorb the little information she did share, so that I could get some idea about her mother and father, both of whom died before she married and had her own children. She always spoke well of her father; he seemed to have really loved and respected her mother. I do know that her mother went blind when she got older and that my mother lived with her and took care of her; I understand now that my grandmother probably had glaucoma and that there was no treatment for it at that time, with resultant blindness. She was also close to her brother, but did not see much of him or her sister after she married. But that seemed to be more common in those days; women married and had families; husbands and children became their priorities. This was prior to the feminist movement. But my mother did not really have many tales to tell about her growing up, and we always wondered why she was so secretive about her youth. It always made us that much more curious, but she did not spill the beans no matter how much we questioned her about her childhood. With my father, it was quite different. He was quite willing to share his childhood and teenage experiences with us. I feel that I got to know my father in a way that I never quite managed with my mother.

A few years ago I took it upon myself to make a family album for myself and my sister and brother. When my mother died, my sister and I went through her belongings and found many old black and white photos and the corresponding negatives. I spent some years sorting through them all, arranging them chronologically. I scanned the good photos and made a digital photo book that came out surprisingly well, especially the photo reproduction of my parents’ wedding reception at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn. It is amazing to see all their family members and friends gathered in one place—a perfect photo in such regard. I have spent a lot of time poring over that one photo, trying to identify each person at the reception. This leads me back to the photo of my mother that I posted on Facebook; it is her wedding photo and she looks beautiful and happy. It is a reminder to me once again that my mother was a young woman with hopes and dreams of her own, and that she looked forward to her marriage and her future in the same way as every other bride. Not everything worked out as she would have liked, that I know. It never does. My father’s illnesses were something that neither of them could have predicted would assume such a large place in their lives. Yet my mother stayed energetic and positive until the end, something which also makes me admire her since I doubt that I would have had half her energy and positive outlook faced with similar situations. So on this Mother’s Day, I honor her memory by writing about her. She has influenced me in so many ways, and I am forever grateful for having had the time to spend with her as she got older. I only wish it had been more in the few years before she passed. But she never complained about my living in Norway, and I remember that she told me that she planned to come to stay with me in Oslo a few weeks before she died. I would have loved that. 

Everyone loves a wedding

Prince William married Kate Middleton this past Friday, April 29th, at Westminster Abbey in London. The event was viewed worldwide and it was estimated that one million Britons lined the streets from the church to Buckingham Palace so as to catch a glimpse of the royal couple as they made their way to Buckingham Palace where they shared not only one but two kisses. The bride looked beautiful; it was her day, her wedding dress was lovely, elegant and stylish (like she is) and Prince William looked handsome and proper. The bride’s sister also looked very pretty; her dress was lovely and she looked as though she was very happy for her sister. Prince Charles and Camilla, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and Prince Harry all played their roles well and all looked to be enjoying the day. But the day belonged to the married couple as well it should. They seem to love and respect each other. One can only hope that their marriage will not go the way of previous royal marriages in Britain—Diana and Charles, Andrew and Fergie, and so on. There are no guarantees in the fishbowl of public life that awaits them.

I am not going to review British history or the history of the monarchy. It doesn’t interest me all that much and frankly, I am not a monarchist. I can honestly say that at the same time that I enjoyed watching parts of this royal wedding as well as other royal weddings, for example, those that have taken place in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden in the past decade or so. Each of these countries has a monarchy, and during the past decade, the children of the reigning monarchs have gotten married and produced heirs. Some of them have also divorced and remarried. There have been scandals in Scandinavia just like there have been in England, albeit much less in-your-face than those in Britain. The difference is that in Scandinavia, there is much less pomp and propriety in the royalty compared to the English royalty, and that takes the pressure off the royals to a degree. Most official happenings are more ‘toned-down’ in Scandinavia generally. For example, the Norwegian prince Haakon married a commoner who for all intents and purposes was quite a lost soul before she fell in love with him. Her life had taken some odd twists and turns before she turned her life around by marrying him. Their wedding, and the reception that followed it, was televised. There were a number of poignant moments—in the church, at the reception—you saw and felt the bride’s gratitude and joy at having been given the chance to have a new life. The media were asked not to delve into or to publish anything about her previous life, save for the fact that she was a single mother of a young son. It would have been unimaginable to have tried to do the same in Britain. The British media would have had a field day dissecting her earlier life every which way which might have resulted in their not marrying. And so it goes. It was perhaps a bit shocking for the Norwegian people to first accept the idea of a single mother as the future queen. But they did and it is no longer referred to or talked about. In Denmark, one of the princes has gotten divorced and remarried; his ex-wife has also remarried. The reason for the split? His constant need to party and to frequent the local bars, flirting with any and all women in sight. He does not seem to be doing this to his second wife, but God only knows, really. We don’t hear about it all until it explodes, and that seems to be the way things are done in Scandinavia. All the bad behavior and improprieties are swept under the carpet until there is no more room and then there is no more possibility to hide or to pretend that everything is fine.

I remember watching parts of the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981; I was on vacation in Montreal (Canada) at the time and caught some of the wedding on the TV in the hotel where I was staying. Their wedding made a small impression on me, but what made a larger impression was the circus that came afterward—years of married life probed and dissected at all angles. Diana photographed at all angles, everywhere she went. She went from being a shy unassuming nineteen year-old to being a fashionista and superstar---a celebrity who outshined her more staid husband in every way. She was a beautiful young woman who radiated empathy and compassion and insecurity; she made you feel for her, whether it was sorry for her or just simply liking her for whom she was. She grew into her role as princess; no one seemed to help her or seemed to care that she was floundering. Least of all Charles, who took up his affair with his first love, Camilla, shortly after the births of his sons. Diana did not take kindly to the idea of his having a mistress, and was vocal about it. She did not accept her role as the suffering wife in silence. What always strikes me is that she was so completely naïve about the fact that many of the British royals had affairs, so that it is that much more touching that she actually believed in love and fidelity when she married. Charles may have loved her initially, but he had been denied his right to marry the woman (Camilla) he loved because she was not a virgin, so he did what was expected of him in the public eye but lived his life as he saw fit. We learned all this via the countless TV and newspaper stories that bombarded us at all turns. As Diana’s popularity grew, Charles’ diminished, and that could not have been good for their marriage. But one can imagine Diana’s sense of betrayal, her anger, her sadness, and her inability to accept her role as betrayed wife. She was probably told countless numbers of times to just ‘accept’ her fate, that men were like this, that there was nothing to do about it, to raise her children and to keep her mouth shut. Her inability to accept her fate as well as her desire to punish Charles led to the soap opera that their lives became. But it is exactly that soap opera that changed the British monarchy, to the point where William could marry Kate, a woman he had known for ten years and with whom he had already lived. If Diana’s death changed anything, it created possibilities where there were none before. I remember when Diana died in August 1997; I was glued to the TV along with the millions of other people who sat and watched what transpired in a kind of shock. It didn’t seem possible that someone so beautiful and kind could die so young. And yet she did. I was in Oxford England to attend a scientific conference in September that same year, and it was unbelievable to wander the streets and come to the town center and see the thousands of floral bouquets that people were still placing at public monuments in memory of her. It was incredibly moving to witness. What strikes me when I think of Diana is that she took the energy that she had once given to her marriage and transferred it to her charitable causes. She did not crawl into a cave and wither after her divorce. She remained the important public figure she was. So that somehow, you went from feeling sorry for her to feeling happy for her; she had transformed her life, from sadness to joy. She had her children who loved her and she them.  She was on the verge of starting her new life when she was cut down. It gave her legendary status.

So when I watched the wedding of William and Kate, I was reminded of all the earlier royal weddings to which we have been witness. Reminded of all the promises to love until ‘death do us part’, to love each other ‘in sickness and in health’. It is easy to say those words when you are young and in love, quite another thing to live them and to honor those vows when sickness and hard times hit. Few people are around to provide TV coverage, support, medals or applause for that. A wedding is not a marriage, and no matter how fairytale the wedding, there is no guarantee that the marriage will be likewise. I am glad that my country is not a monarchy; glad that we do not have to spend inordinate sums as taxpayers to help support an outdated system. While the monarchy is interesting from a historical perspective, it does not fascinate in the present. When I look at monarchies, all I see are fallible human beings, often trapped in lives that are conservative and emotionally-stifling. I don’t see the point of monarchies anymore. And if one looks briefly back into history, or if one reads British novels, it is not hard to see that the royalty and the wealthy lived incredibly privileged lives, whereas the poor and middle class, who were taxed to support them, did not. This aspect is also less extreme in Scandinavia; the royalty live well but the standard of living otherwise for the ‘commoners’ is quite high. The question then becomes—what role does the monarchy play these days? What is its function and why is it important to keep a monarchy? I know how I would answer, but I am the ‘rude’ American who is not steeped in centuries of history. It is one thing to watch the royal weddings and scandals on TV and to comment on wedding dresses, hats and the like, quite another to assess the impact of the monarchy on modern society. It has been said that they are good for tourism and charitable causes, and if so, that is a good thing. But still I believe a discussion of their true worth is warranted, especially in England. 

Little pearls of wisdom

I am recommending this article 'Don't get emotionally mugged' written by Martha Beck which showed up on Oprah.com on April 28th of this year. It had a lot of interesting things to say to me and I don't hesitate to recommend it! 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/04/28/stay.good.mood.o/index.html?iref=obinsite

I also recommend another article by the same writer: 'The Cure for self-consciousness' that also can be found on Oprah.com  http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Cure-for-Self-Consciousness/1 and which was originally published in Oprah magazine in July 2007.  

There are a lot of self-help books, magazines, articles, shows, and advice out there. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is a huge job, but well-worth it when you find some quality advice. These two articles ‘speak’ to me because the author seems to be genuinely interested in making life better for her readers, and because you get the feeling that she’s been there, done that and learned from it. And what she learned was valuable enough to share, and since she’s a good writer, she can communicate it well. And anything that can make our lives better or change our attitudes for the better is something I want to share with you.

Enjoy………..

“There are no answers, only choices”

I watched the sci-fi movie Solaris (from 2002) with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone for the third time the other night, and each time I watch the film I ‘discover’ something else about it that I didn’t remember from previous viewings. The film was directed by Steven Soderbergh and is a remake of the classic film (from 1972) of the same name directed by Andrey Tarkovskiy. I have not seen the 1972 film although it is on my ‘to watch’ list; nor have I read the novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem published in 1961. I’m guessing that the Tarkovskiy film would probably be as haunting a film as the Soderbergh film. Because that is the only word I can use to describe Soderbergh’s film—haunting. It gets under my skin in a way that no other sci-fi film/story can, with the possible exception of ‘I Am Legend’ (film(s) as well as the story by Richard Matheson). Everything about the film, the atmosphere, lighting, sets, music—combine to create a poignant and haunting film. In my view, the casting of Clooney and McElhone in the major roles as Chris Kelvin and Rheya (his wife) was a small stroke of genius. They are both wonderful to watch in their roles as partners in a sad marriage that ends with Rheya committing suicide.  McElhone manages to portray Rheya as an extremely interesting and attractive woman despite her psychological problems—beautiful, intelligent, classy, and sad. Rheya is a seeker, open to ideas of faith and belief in things one cannot see, and she is uncomfortable with aggressive, all-knowing people who bark out their opinions as though they were the only correct ones. But she is also a depressive personality, a woman who lives on the fringes of life and society, looking in and wanting to be a part of the life she sees around her, but knowing that she does not fit in. Chris is a psychologist and a pragmatist; he only believes in what he can see and know and dissect, and there are several points in the film where he almost gloatingly scoffs at Rheya’s faith in something other-worldly. He is right and she is not. You know by watching her eyes and body language in the film that his lack of faith and his pragmatism are helping to destroy her slowly, because she loves him but does not seem able to reach him. But he does not understand this nor does he intend to hurt her deliberately. Theirs is a marriage where you know that they love each other but their love is doomed to difficulties and problems from the start because they are such contrasting personalities. You know that the only way that things will change for them is through a tragic event. Chris just does not understand his wife, her vulnerability or her psychological problems, even though he is a psychologist and even though she has tried to be honest with him about them. She aborts their baby without telling Chris because she does not want to pass her depressive tendencies on to a child, and he explodes in anger at her when he finds this out and storms out of their apartment, whereupon she commits suicide thinking he has left her for good. After her death, Chris ends up out in space, a long way from earth, in orbit around the planet Solaris, after having been asked to investigate the crew on board who are acting strangely and reporting strange events onboard the ship. Solaris is a planet that seems to be able to read the minds/dreams of Chris and his colleagues on board the spaceship, and manages to ‘recreate’ the people they have lost to death back on earth, the ‘visitors’. Chris’ visitor is Rheya, and even though he knows that she is not really human, he becomes involved with her all over again and realizes that he wants to be with her for the rest of his life, with all of the implications surrounding that choice. He is warned by one of the team members named Dr. Gibarian to leave Solaris and to return to earth, because otherwise he will die there. Gibarian is also another of Chris’ ‘visitors’ who committed suicide shortly before Chris’ arrival; on earth he was his colleague and friend. When Gibarian ‘visits’ Chris, they have a conversation, where Chris asks him “What does Solaris want from us?” Gibarian replies: “Why do you think it has to want something? This is why you have to leave. If you keep thinking there's a solution, you'll die here.” Chris replies “I can't leave her. I'll figure it out”, whereupon Gibarian says to him “Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? There are no answers, only choices”.  And Chris makes his ‘choice’, and it is a choice that moves him from guilt to forgiveness to peace—his own spiritual evolution that allows him to move beyond his pragmatism and to take a leap of faith into the unknown. It is only by taking that leap of faith that he can know happiness, but he does not know that before he takes it. But he takes the risk.

It was the sentence —“There are no answers, only choices” that caught my attention this time while I watched the film.  I thought--how true that is. But I never ‘heard’ or truly internalized these words before, not the way I did the other night. Maybe because I have come to that point in my own life, where I have realized that there are no answers to certain situations, to certain problems—there are really only choices, and it is the fear of making the ‘wrong’ choice that can keep us stuck in one place. I seem to continue to want specific answers to specific problems though, and perhaps they will never be forthcoming. So if I learn to accept that there are no answers, then I turn to the choices to be made and ask myself, which is the right choice? But perhaps there are also no right or wrong choices, even though we want so much to make what we think is the ‘right’ choice—in love, in life, in work.  Perhaps we need to take more ‘leaps of faith’ into the unknown—because really, even when we make what we think is the right choice, we can never really know for sure what we are doing and whether it was the best choice. It simply is a choice that we made, that then led to a life. This is what is scary—should we take the leap of faith into the unknown of a new life, a new job, or a new relationship? And could we have escaped sadness and problems if we had chosen differently? Perhaps. But since we also do not have control over the lives and choices of others who impact on our lives because they are part of our lives, we cannot predict what will happen to us. It’s not easy to accept this sometimes, which makes it difficult to take the leap of faith into the unknown.

A lesson in employee satisfaction

”People are the most important resource we have at SKAGEN and it is therefore very gratifying that they are also very happy in their jobs. The workplace is demanding, but unique, and expertise and knowledge are important in all aspects of the organization”.

Mette Helgevold Årstad, SKAGEN Human Resources manager

Why you wonder, am I quoting a human resources manager and her views about the company she works for? It is because the company she works for is not just any company, it is a mutual funds company founded in 1993, and it was recently voted one of the top ten places to work in Norway by the Great Place to Work Institute. They surveyed 12,000 employees from 136 companies and SKAGEN FUNDS came in as #9 out of 68 companies with 50-250 employees. Impressive, if you ask me, but I’ve heard this before about the company. And it makes me wonder how they do it. How do they achieve employee satisfaction? Could it be the bonuses that they hand out at Christmas time to all employees, from high-level managers to secretaries? What is their secret? Whatever it is, I want to bottle it and share it with my (public sector) workplace, because at present it’s on the opposite end of the scale in terms of employee satisfaction, unfortunately. And I know a lot of the skeptics will tell me that SKAGEN is a private company and that things are done differently there. So what? Why can’t the public sector adopt other things from the private sector besides the goal of making money? Why can’t they learn from the private sector how to treat employees well?

Many people in this country have bought shares in mutual funds offered by SKAGEN; the company thus has a huge amount of money at its disposal for its national and global investments, and has done very well since its founding in 1993. They not only treat their employees well, they also treat their clients well. We recently attended the play ENRON courtesy of SKAGEN; they had a few hundred tickets that were made available on a first-come/first-served basis to attentive (answering an email ad) clients, and I just happened to be one of the lucky ones who got tickets when I saw the email advertising this. I like this idea of treating clients to a night out. The skeptics and the cynics I know were quick to add that the company can afford it and so on—that it’s just a drop in the financial bucket for them. I know this is true. But I ask--how many other companies are actually doing this for their clients? I appreciate the gesture. It’s not just the rich they’re courting; it’s the common man and woman. And I’m not naive; of course I know that they are looking for new clients. Again I say, so what—it’s their job and they do it well. They also offer seminars and courses, for example, on pensions and pension reform, saving for retirement, and so forth. I recently attended an evening seminar for women only which was very interesting, particularly the lecture about pensions, retirement, and early retirement. The seminar was free and during the break, the company provided tapas, dessert, fruit and wine. So again I say, if this is how they can treat their clients—by sharing a little of the wealth, then it’s not surprising that they also ‘share the wealth’ with their employees. Not too difficult to achieve employee satisfaction that way—by rewarding your employees for their hard work. But not only that, it seems to be an interesting place to work, even though it’s a high-pressure environment. SKAGEN seems to function well as a company and other companies could learn from them how to treat their employees. I’m not just talking about handing out bonuses at Christmas time; I’m talking about creating a work environment that appreciates and cares about its employees, at least from my vantage point. I’m talking about leadership that listens to and ‘sees’ its employees and likes them. There’s a lot right with this picture.