It is what it appears to be

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten ran an interesting article this morning that I read while eating breakfast, commenting on a few choice parts to my husband, who reacted to the story more or less as I did. Here is the short summary of the newspaper story--a female TV reporter named Live Nelvik decided to do a reality program called ‘Dama til’, which means ‘Girlfriend of’—the point of the program being that she would interview well-known men with different careers—politicians, artists, celebrities, etc. and get them to talk about their lives and careers with her as though she was their girlfriend. One of the men who said yes to being on her program was Vebjørn Sand, the well-known artist. According to the newspaper, he wanted his contribution to the program to be educational and part of that entailed visiting his father, who is also a well-known artist. His father’s interest in art had a big influence on his son, and they seem to have a very good relationship. The TV reporter was invited home to Vebjørn’s father’s house, who opened his home to her and her TV camera crew, served them food, and showed them his studio. The article goes on to report that Sand’s father showed her different art techniques and gave her a picture he had started on, that she could work on further. She then picked up a crayon and wrote over the entire image –"FUCK!" all the while filming was going on. She was very keen that Sand’s father get her message clearly, so she turned to him and said, "Look, I wrote 'fuck”. Nelvik by the way is 29 years old if anyone wondered; if I hadn't seen her age I would have thought this was the behavior of a bratty child trying to be the center of attention. Both father and son were very upset by her behavior, and the recording ended there and then.

I’m not writing this blog post in particular defense of Sand or his father; their reactions were appropriate and they obviously know how to defend themselves. I’m writing it because the entire story made me want to vomit. Why? Because this type of TV program is crap, stupid behavior is stupid, and rude behavior is rude. Can’t put a pretty face on crap, stupidity and rudeness. Nelvik was rude and crass and there is nothing else to say, and if this is the new trend—to be ‘in your face’, rude and idiotic to people in the name of TV entertainment, well, good luck to the future of cultured society. Sand and his father reacted rather civilly, I have to say. Nelvik risks getting verbally berated or worse in the future by a different kind of man if she continues in this vein, one who doesn’t take kindly to watching his elderly father or mother get mocked and personally attacked in the name of increased TV viewership, and one who doesn't care if the camera is filming his tirade (but of course this could be entertainment too--trying to provoke such episodes--so who knows. Actually, it's been done already--the Jerry Springer show--American crap TV). Because that's what this is all about--getting the ratings up at any cost. 'Se på meg' (look at me). I prefer Sand’s more civil reaction to the entire episode, but one of these days, Nelvik may mock the wrong person. And then it will be interesting to see if her TV crew continues filming during the aftermath of her crassness. Good luck to you. 

What John W. Gardner said

Who was John W. Gardner? An intelligent, wise and forward-thinking man, who served as the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson. I saw one of his quotes today posted on Twitter, and it struck me with its wisdom. This was the quote—‘We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems’. I thought about how this somehow sums up much of what is going on in society at present—if opportunities really become nothing more than impenetrable problems, then all the talk about changing the world for the better will be nothing more than hot air because we will be defeated by the rampant pessimism that is ever present in trying to bring about change in the world. If a society can say that its problems are insoluble, then the individuals living in that society don’t have to step up to the plate and take responsibility for changing things for the better. Fear of failure / fear of success? Interesting words from an interesting man.

·         True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.

·         Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

·         Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.

·         The cynic says, "One man can't do anything." I say, "Only one man can do anything."

·         Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

·         Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.

·         The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

·         America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.

·         The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.

·         The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

·         Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.

·         One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.

·         It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

·         Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

·         History never looks like history when you are living through it.

·         Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.

·         The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

America the Beautiful--lyrics

In honor of Thanksgiving, I'm posting the lyrics to this beautiful song that we've sung for many years and will continue to sing for many years to come.....

O beautiful for spacious skies, 

For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stem impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee! 

Words by Katharine Lee Bates,

Melody by Samuel Ward

Giving thanks

I have celebrated Thanksgiving each year since I moved to Norway, and each year I look forward to celebrating the holiday. I never really get tired of preparing food and inviting people to share it with us, although I must admit that at the end of Thanksgiving Day I’m pretty exhausted. This year was no exception. I normally invite family and/or friends to join us during the weekend after Thanksgiving, as we are at work on Thanksgiving Day. This year was different; I made Thanksgiving dinner today and invited family.

I am always nervous each year that something will go wrong; that feeling that I will suddenly become a completely inept hostess rears its head each year. But except for the first year I was here, things have mostly never gone wrong. That year was the year that the antique electric oven that my husband inherited from his parents didn’t tolerate being opened too often to baste the turkey (the temperature dropped dramatically each time the door was opened). Suffice it to say that it took about nine hours before the turkey was done. Our guests were patient though and they hung around, back in the days when people did hang around until 1 or 2 am (when we were younger and losing a good night’s sleep didn’t destroy the following five days in terms of sleep and lack of energy). We bought a new stove shortly after that. In the twenty-two years I’ve been here, the turkey has turned out dry on two occasions. This year the corn bread didn’t rise as high as it should have and I don’t know why, I couldn’t find cranberries in the supermarkets or in the small neighborhood markets to make sauce (I used tyttebær instead and that’s always a good substitute), and I almost couldn’t find a turkey. It seems as though eating turkey has caught on here at Christmastime, which means that turkeys will be available in mid-December. But as I explained to one supermarket manager—I’m American--I need a turkey now! But I finally did find one that was the right size after visits to a number of different supermarkets. It turned out to be a very good turkey, not dry at all.

Thanksgiving, for all its informality and joviality, is really a formal holiday, in the sense of giving thanks on a national scale. I can remember attending mass when we were children and singing ‘America the Beautiful’. The first stanza is particularly beautiful and memorable:

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

It’s good to be reminded that we ought to be grateful for all that is good in our lives. And maybe sometimes even for what may not be good in our lives at present—unhappiness, unfairness, losses, hurts. Because without the sadness that life deals out at times, we might not be able to appreciate the happiness when it appears. We need the contrast. 

From pimp my ride to pimp my research

I attended another interesting event sponsored by the UiO Science library this morning, a lecture about how to ‘pimp’ your research, followed by a really interesting discussion about pimping of research in general—should it be pimped, how it should be done, and who should be responsible for pimping. The scientist who held the lecture and who guided the discussion afterwards was Gro Amdam, whom I’ve mentioned before in a previous post. Professor Amdam is a Norwegian scientist who runs two research labs, one at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Aas Norway, the other at Arizona State University in the USA. She is a honeybee researcher and a top scientist, with many publications in top international journals; you can read more about her labs, work, publications and view her journal covers here: http://amdamlab.asu.edu/. Some of the scientists I talked to about this event when I was promoting it a few weeks ago were a bit skeptical; perhaps mostly skeptical to the terminology—pimping. They weren’t sure what was meant by pimping research, and instead of being curious enough to find out more about it, they didn’t attend. They should have, because they missed a really good and professional presentation about the subject and an interesting discussion afterwards. Pimping is defined as ‘giving something a smarter or more interesting appearance’; some excellent examples in my opinion are Amdam's journal covers—beautiful photos of bees and flowers that add an important visual aspect to the research work that was published inside the specific issue. She emphasized that it was pimping the (high-quality) work that was important; this was not a talk about how to pimp the scientist. But the scientist can become well-known because of the quality of the work via good pimping—and that’s a good thing. It helps get research grants, funding, and international recognition.

There was a good deal of discussion about the cultural differences and approaches to pimping between the USA and Norway. In the USA, research pimping is an accepted and encouraged activity at universities; the idea is relatively new in Norway. Most of the Norwegian attendees were very positive to the idea, some were skeptical. But that’s the point of a good discussion—to get the ideas out there and to get people started talking about them.

What struck me afterwards was that the Science library (Realfagsbiblioteket) has done a fair amount of pimping in its own right. The beautiful and professionally-done trailers about the invited scientists who come to the library to hold lectures and workshops are a good example of the library (KBH and AC) pimping the work and careers of these scientists; these trailers have been uploaded to SlideShare if you are interested in seeing them: http://www.slideshare.net/Realfagsbiblioteket/presentations. 

Bits and pieces

Some updates on what’s going on--NaNoWriMo is by far the largest project I’ve ever taken on, at least in so short a time period. I did write a doctoral thesis back in 1998, but I had three months to do so and it came out to about 110 pages. It is a real challenge to write about 1700 words a day for 30 days in the hope of having a completed (180-page) novel by the end of November. I don’t manage this each day, so what I do is wait for the weekends, like last weekend and this weekend, and write in marathon stretches. I’ve tried writing late at night after work; sometimes it works, other times it’s a bust. I find myself snoozing in front of my computer, then I wake up for a bit, write something that later on seems completely incoherent when I re-read it, and go from there. Will I make it to 50,000 words by November 30^th? By hook or by crook, I will. I want to see what will happen if I do. There's no money prize nor is there a book deal, but I am learning a lot and enjoying the journey, and at the end there will be a novel (of sorts). I’ll keep you posted.

Took a short break this afternoon and went through some of my CDs in order to find some good music to listen to. I settled on Joni Mitchell’s Dreamland: The Very Best of Joni Mitchell. Most of the tracks are vintage Joni, but I found myself mesmerized by her 2002 version of Both Sides Now. Why? Because it is an older woman singing the song, and an older one listening to it, compared to when she first sang it and to when I first heard it. It is a melancholy assessment of life and love from the vantage point of the present—when years have passed and time has made us older, and we look back on love and life, on what we have learned and on what we have lost. Regardless of whether one has regrets about one’s past, one can still be moved by the truths in this song. She sings that ‘it’s love’s (life’s) illusions I recall, I really don’t know love (life) at all’. It had me in tears by the end of it. I still can’t figure out how singers do it; I try singing along and I get all emotional and teary-eyed, and I wonder, how do they sing these songs without crying themselves? I guess maybe because they sing them so often, perhaps it lessens the intensity of the feelings? I don’t know. All I know is that is a beautiful song, as is Help Me. I’m including the lyrics to Both Sides Now here—pure poetry.

Both Sides Now      by Joni Mitchell

Bows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air.
And feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud’s illusions I recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; I've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. You leave 'em laughing when you go.
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.

I've looked at love from both sides now,
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall.
I really don't know love at all.

Tears and fears and feeling proud, to say "I love you" right out loud,
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds, I've looked at life that way.
But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say
I've changed.
Something's lost but something's gained in living every day.

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall.
I really don't know life at all.

Autumn colors

It cannot be said that this year's autumn foliage was disappointing. There were a lot of lovely reds and golds and the weather didn't completely disappoint us either--we had some really mild fall days. All in all, a good autumn--here are some photos I took on our weekend walks in the area where we live in Oslo. 

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and me

I may be writing fewer posts during the month of November, not because I am at all tired of blogging, but because I have decided to write a novel during the month of November, and have registered with National Novel Writing Month in order to help make this a reality.You can check out their website at http://www.nanowrimo.org/en

I've written over 8000 words so far, toward a final goal of 50,000 words. It sounds daunting and perhaps it will be. So far it's been fun; I've done a fair amount of research already to help me get started, but I already had the pictures in my head of where in the world it will take place and how it should look. I was pleasantly surprised to find a 3D representation of the area in the world I want to write about nicely presented by Google Earth, of all things. The world feels like a much smaller place when you can learn what you need to learn about another country online. And so far, what I've learned has actually given me the desire to travel to that country.

I would like to reveal what I am writing about, but have decided to wait with this until I am almost finished with the novel. I have to be finished by the end of November in order to be eligible to win. I'll keep you posted. I can say that it is my first foray into the world of sci-fi/horror, but for those of you who know me, this may not be surprising. I checked out my idea on internet, and surprisingly I have not found anyone who has written anything about this before, so who knows? Whatever happens, I'm excited about my new project and confident that I am capable of doing this. I have not had that much confidence before when it came to my writing, even though I have (self) published two books before. One of those books actually sells, and that is a nice surprise and bonus for me--an incentive to keep writing.

I don't want to follow the old rules anymore. I don't want anarchy, but I feel that the traditional ways of doing research and publishing move too slowly for me. The future belongs to those who use internet and social media sites. It is possible to learn a whole lot about marketing your books and creative work online, if you only take the time to do so. CreateSpace, Amazon, online press releases, a personal website, a Twitter account, are just a few of the things that can help you create and market your work online. And of course if you write e-books, you're already halfway there. People do download e-books just like they download Kindle books. The future is here, and there is a lot of reward (and fun) to be had in embracing it.

Ten Things I’m Concerned About (a la David Letterman)

10. Triple booking—the new trend among some ‘cool’ people. They say yes to three dinner or party invitations for the same evening, and then choose the one that’s ‘coolest’ (translated—populated by people just like them), without informing the other two that they’re not coming. Isn’t this just plain rude behavior? Can’t we call a spade a spade?

9. Do we need to text when we could call?

8. I feel like I am being stalked by disturbed people every time someone walking behind me is talking loudly on their cell phone and walking up to within inches of me. Are you talking to me? Whatever happened to truly private conversations?

7. The sad state of TV programming: the irony being that now we have HD-TVs that give us gorgeous details but there are only reality shows to watch. It’s like getting all dressed up with no place to go. How did reality trash TV get to where it’s gotten? Who watches it?

6. The media’s desperate and obsessive focus on updating us on trite celebrities and their banal lives: Lindsey Lohan, can you please go to jail already or wherever it is you’re supposed to be. And Kim Kardashian? Can anyone tell me why this woman is famous? Can anyone tell me why Snooki is famous?

5. Poorly-written newspaper articles, especially about science. If society is to understand what scientists do, journalists need to write better articles about them and what they do, especially in Europe. American science journalists can out-compete European science journalists any day. 

4. How come Wall Street determines the health of an economy? What do stock brokers do all day except buy and sell stock? Is this is a real job? Are they producing anything of worth? Why do they get to determine the fate of companies?

3. The political scene in the USA—where are the good candidates in the Republican Party? The ones that have appeared so far just plain scare me.

2. Obama, get moving and take a stand—you have some good ideas but you’re stuck. Tell it like it is.

1. Political correctness is killing us as a democratic society. We need to be able to say what we mean in a civilized way without fear of retribution, attack, or ridicule. We should be able to discuss and debate and shake hands afterwards. The real messages are not getting out.

Before and after pumpkin shots--Halloween in Oslo

Halloween was a distant memory for me for many years after I moved to Oslo. My first attempt to revive and celebrate the holiday was in 1997 when my stepdaughter Caroline decided she wanted to host a Halloween party for her friends, with bobbing for apples and costumes and all of the 'traditional' aspects. I made a cake in the shape of a pumpkin and frosted it with orange frosting and decorated it with black licorice. And of course I traipsed all over Oslo trying to find a pumpkin, and finally found one. But it was worth it because she and her friends enjoyed their party.

That was then. This is now. Now there is no problem finding a pumpkin; they come in all shapes and sizes. And Halloween is now celebrated here. And that makes the New Yorker in Oslo very happy. I have blinking skulls hanging in my kitchen window, and am crossing my fingers that we get some trick or treaters. While I know some Norwegians are not exactly thrilled with another 'American' cultural invasion, the majority of them seem to enjoy it, and if they have kids, they are busy shuttling them here and there to attend this or that party. Not so different than American parents. Me, I'm just a big kid when it comes to this kind of thing--I don't think I'll ever change. In that way, I'm like my mother. She looked forward to seeing the kids in their costumes every year, and to doling out candy to the trick or treaters. There's something about the holiday that is sufficiently pagan for me--despite the commercial aspects of it. I simply cannot get it out of my blood. So bring on the vampires, zombies, ghosts and witches! I'm looking forward to seeing them.

On Twitter: from Zombie Pandemics to the Northern Lights

I continue to do part-time consultant work for the university science library and enjoy it. It's pretty cool to get paid for a job that is actually a lot of fun--maintaining and updating their Facebook and Twitter pages and helping to promote their events (lectures and conferences). It's also pretty amazing what's out there on Twitter. Twitter is a world of its own, and very unlike Facebook, because if you want to keep a professional profile, you can. So I also have a personal Twitter profile now, but have decided to use it to promote scientific and health issues of interest to me. So besides updates from research journals, popular science journals and the like, I also follow the New York Times and a host of different health and charity organizations. And of course it's very interesting the type of people who end up following you, based on your word usage. Your Twitter comments are actually like 'tag bites'. I recently promoted an event for the library that will take place in mid-November--'Pimp your research'--a lecture by the world-renowned bee researcher Gro Amdam, followed by a discussion about how to and whether to make your research sexier. Wouldn't you know it, but the next day, I had three new women following me on Twitter, all of whom were working in the porn industry. It's easy to block these types of people, but it amuses me that your word usage has such an immediate effect. We are being profiled all the time as long as we're online and actively using internet, and anyone who believes otherwise, just doesn't get it or doesn't want to.

This week I have so far stumbled upon two interesting links on Twitter that I want to share with you. The first one is from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia--the city now known for The Walking Dead. The CDC has now published an interesting pamphlet in comic strip form just in time for Halloween, entitled "Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic". It's actually quite a clever way of educating people on how to prepare for any type of disaster. You can check it out here: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/documents/11_225700_A_Zombie_Final.pdf

The other interesting link had to do with the beautiful displays of the Northern Lights in the USA on Monday; folks in the Midwest and even in the Deep South were treated to spectacular light shows courtesy of Mother Nature. The point is that this type of happening is rare, and was due to an intense geomagnetic storm. National Geographic has made available some gorgeous shots of these Northern Lights, and you can see them here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/10/pictures/111025-northern-lights-aurora-borealis-united-states-south/?source=link_tw20111025news-aurora#/northern-lights-aurora-borealis-reach-south-united-states-michigan-trees_42517_600x450.jpg   All in all, pretty amazing, and I sure wish I had been there to see them!

Information at our fingertips, all the time if we want it. What a brave new world we live in, and it's mostly within the past ten years that the information highway has grown by leaps and bounds. I remember when I was preparing two lectures in connection with my doctoral defense in 1999; I had to physically walk into the medical library with a list of the articles I needed to be printed out, and the librarians found them for me, or requested them from other libraries, and then printed them out and mailed them to me. In some cases, this could take days or even a week if the journals were not on hand. Nowadays, I can find the articles myself online, print them out at work or at home, and if our library doesn't subscribe to the journal, I can order a copy through the library online and they will fax it to me within a day of my order. Overall, if I need fifty articles, I can find at least ninety-five percent of them myself without help. That's progress. The libraries have adapted to the changes, and now that I do consulting work for a university library, I see just how far they've come. They haven't stuck their heads in the sand and ignored the world around them; they are information providers for the digital age, and if you haven't stuck your head inside a library for a while, I suggest you take a trip to one and check out the changes for yourself. The books are still there, but so are PCs, Macs, iPads, Kindles, digital projectors, SmartBoards and more computers, all ready for use, all offering instant connection to the information highway, which, if used ethically and wisely, is a real time-saver and an endless source of knowledge, even knowledge you didn't set out to find originally.

The Westchester River Walk

When I was in New York this past August, I spent a hot and muggy Sunday afternoon with Jean wandering around the Lyndhurst estate, something we hadn’t done in years; we were the only ones there and had the place to ourselves. As we walked down the hill in the back of the huge main house toward the Hudson River and walked along the path on the way to what used to be the caretaker’s old house, we discovered a path along the river that we followed for a while. It wound its way along the river, to the south toward Irvington and to the north toward Tarrytown. I’ve written about this walking and biking path, called the River Walk, briefly in another post, but just thought I’d include more information about it in this post. You can get an idea of how long the River Walk is when you look at this map: http://planning.westchestergov.com/images/stories/RiverWalk/riverwalkmap11x17.pdf

And for more information on how it came to be and when it will be completely finished, you can go to the following link:  http://planning.westchestergov.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1187&Itemid=2128

I am so looking forward to biking the entire distance of the River Walk on a future trip to New York. Jean and I have briefly discussed it and agreed that it would be fun to take a picnic lunch with us and just be able to stop along the river when we wanted to. It’s funny, but perhaps not so odd, that now that I live outside of the USA, that I am learning more about both my country and New York where I grew up for each year that passes. Just as many things have changed in Norwegian society during the past twenty years, the same is also true of New York and Westchester County. I need only think of the subway system in Manhattan; how clean and spruced-up it is now compared to when I was a graduate student at New York University thirty years ago. I’m glad to see that things change for the better; the same is true for Times Square in Manhattan. I enjoy being a tourist in the state of my birth and look forward to more explorative trips in the years to come. 

School days and a lifetime of learning

The autumn season is always a nice reminder of my school and college years. I can honestly say that I looked forward to going back to school each year, even though I always enjoyed having the summers off. Autumn is the start of a new school season, with all the hype, expectations and focus that a new start entails. That feeling of starting a new school year has never left me, even though I am far removed from my school days; I always have a bit of it when I go back to work after a long summer vacation. But now that I do consulting work for the university, I feel that sense of ‘new school year’ excitement when I walk past groups of students gathered nervously together on campus—that sense of anticipation about new courses, new books, new teachers, new social experiences, and a lot of studying. I’m glad I’m finished with all that, but it’s interesting to be back on campus as an adult doing an adult job. I enjoy seeing the students and remembering back to my own college days at Fordham University. Those years were something special, and I knew that already at college age. I knew that such an opportunity to be able to focus and to study uninterruptedly for four years would never come again. And it’s true, it never did. But those four years were a wonderful immersion in biology, literature, Spanish, organic chemistry and history, on a lovely campus in the middle of the Bronx.

I went to work full-time right after college, halfway through my master’s degree in cell biology that I ended up finishing at night. I was offered the chance to do a PhD by professor Loren Day, my biophysicist boss at my first job, but I turned down the offer so that I could work for some years while I figured out in what field I wanted to do doctoral work. I knew it would not be biophysics (my first working lab experience—isolating and purifying bacteriophage DNA in order to study its helical structure). Although the technology we used at that time was fascinating, I was more fascinated by the use of computers in the lab—the early computers that let us feed DNA sequences into crude programs in order to get back protein sequences, for example. The computers that were programmed to tell us “Cool your jets, I’m adding up the sites” while we waited for the output. They were being funny with us, of course programmed to be so by the offbeat programmers who had offbeat senses of humor. I became friends with Roy, our resident computer programmer, who showed me how computer circuit boards were designed, and who was patient enough to explain the chemistry involved in their manufacture. He taught me the rudiments of the programming language UNIX, and got me interested in the first small personal computers. My interest in computers led to my taking a course in FORTRAN and in machine language at New York University, courses that I have never regretted taking. I hit the wall countless times, but I managed to pass both courses and I learned some really cool things in the process, like how to move 0’s and 1’s around in the data and address registers that make up the CPU. This binary language is the language needed to talk to the guts of the computer; the executable programs that are written in higher level languages like FORTRAN in the early days and in C++ nowadays are translated to executable machine (binary) code by a compiler and linker. So I waded carefully into the programming waters, but I was not clever enough to continue in this field even though it interested me tremendously. I don’t regret this decision, because biology was and still is the field of study that interests me the most, with literature a close second. The exposure to computers and to complex instrumentation in my first job laid the groundwork for my next job, which was to be the daily leader of a flow cytometry core facility at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Laser flow cytometers/sorters were used to analyze different cellular parameters and to physically sort different cell types from each other; most of them were coupled to computers that were programmed to run these instruments and to perform the complex analyses involved. When I look back to that time, the 1980s, I remember it as a phenomenal time in terms of learning. The use of flow cytometry in biological and cancer research was just taking off, and it was fun to be a part of it, attending courses in Boston (sponsored by Ortho Diagnostic Systems) to learn how to run these complicated instruments, as well as a course in Los Alamos, New Mexico at the government lab there to learn how high-speed flow sorters were being used to sort chromosomes and to make chromosome libraries, among other important things. We learned how to do some pretty novel stuff at that course, and got a chance to see a lot of New Mexico in the process. I joined the Society for Analytical Cytology (SAC) that later became the International Society for Analytical Cytometry (ISAC); I have attended countless conferences in different countries since 1985, but the conference that stands out is the one at Cambridge University in England in August 1987. It was here that I met Trond, the Norwegian man who became my husband. It was also my first trip to Europe alone; my lodging was a student dormitory room not far from the building where the conference was held. All conference attendees lived in this way for the week we were there. I loved the feeling of living in the dorm; it was a monastic room, simple, small, with very little furniture save the bed and a desk. But it gave me a real feeling of what it must have been like to study at Cambridge, and the city itself was attractive with its many bookstores and music stores. All I know is that one day I hope to really study there—to take a literature course of some sort during the summer months. It’s on my bucket list.  

Maybe it’s not so strange that I ended up in academia. I don’t teach, even though I have achieved the level of professor competence. I prefer to mentor students on a one-to-one basis or in small groups, and I still like being in the lab from time to time. I don’t like bureaucracy, power politics, or the ‘publish or perish’ mentality of academia. What I do like is the ability and privilege that we have to immerse ourselves in lifelong learning if we want to, and I try to take advantage of this as much as possible. Because life is short, but also because society is changing at a rapid rate, and has changed immensely within the last thirty years. Being able to keep up with the rapid change is important, and the only way we can do that is to remain open to learning for the rest of our lives. 

In the spirit of Halloween

During the weekend I happened to be up late and decided to see what was on television. I stumbled across the new horror series that has been racking up rave reviews in the USA—The Walking Dead. The first season is being shown late at night here in Norway on the cable station Fox Crime; I understand that six episodes comprise the first season, and that the second season premiered in the USA last night. I have only managed to see two episodes of the first season so far, but what I’ve seen is fairly convincing. This is a cut above your average horror series. The zombies are very realistic and the entire show has such a realistic feel to it that you could almost imagine such a thing happening—a virus wiping out huge segments of the population and then the dead coming back to life as flesh-eating zombies. The episode I watched last night was the final one of the first season—when the CDC in Atlanta self-destructs after the generators lose power due to lack of fuel, taking the one scientist who decides to stay and end his life there with it. But before it is destroyed, this scientist shows the group of survivors who travel together the 3-D brain scans of his wife before she died of the virus, and how the virus spread through her brain, killing her. It was interesting to see the ‘live’ brain scans—the neural circuits in the brain flashing and then the virus spreading through the brain, causing the circuits to stop firing. Then, after some hours, some light started to glow in his dead wife’s brain stem, but nowhere else in the brain, allowing her to rise again as a zombie, at which point he shot her through the brain. I have to ask myself—why at my age do I still enjoy being scared by this type of show? Why do I still watch this type of horror? I find myself being scared in the same way as I was when I was a teenager. I know none of it is real, that it probably could never happen quite in this way, although an apocalypse of some sort could of course occur. That was more than realistically portrayed in Corman McCarthy’s book The Road, which I found to be quite a harrowing read. For that reason, I did not watch the film based on the book and which starred Viggo Mortensen, mostly because it all seemed so hopeless and dark beyond words. Perhaps the difference between it and The Walking Dead is that there seems to be some hope in the latter, if only in that the survivors can in fact take out the zombies, who are slow-moving and easy to kill. But they are ugly and scary-looking and the show is definitely not for children or the faint-hearted. I found myself thinking of I Am Legend with Will Smith and The Omega Man with Charlton Heston as well, also films where viruses led to scenarios quite similar to those in The Walking Dead—survivors battling virus-infected monsters and vampires respectively. Both of these films are based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, which is excellent.

Zombie and vampire movies continue to fascinate us, as is evidenced by how well most of them do at the box office. They scare us—and we seem to like being scared. Monsters scare us, the monsters of our childhood, the ones hiding in the closet or under the bed. The dark scares us, and it seems to be an instinctive response—we cannot see in the dark and that by itself leads to fear, because we are vulnerable in the dark. I remember that feeling as a child. What lies behind the door? What is in the closet? What is under my bed if I look down or if my foot sticks out from under the covers? What will get me if I am not protected? What if I look out the window and a monster stares back at me from the darkness? That is why the scenes of the monsters overrunning New York City in I Am Legend were terrifying. They were strong, vicious predators and nothing seemed to stop them. They hid indoors by day and came out at night. Imagine a society where that was the case—howling screeching monsters running amok in the night. 28 Days Later was another such film that created the same feelings; especially the one scene in the tunnel where the car with uninfected survivors won’t start and you can hear the infected mob bearing down upon them. Will they escape, and what happens if they don’t? We know the answer but we watch anyway to make sure they get away. Because some of them have to escape the horrible fate that awaits them—some of them have to live. We have to know that it is possible to survive, otherwise what is the point of watching?  

Halloween is soon upon us. Each year the USA (and now many European countries ironically enough) celebrates this strange holiday—a combination of pagan and Christian influences. Halloween is not originally an American holiday. The idea of Halloween with masks and costumes is in fact quite ancient, originating with the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer (information culled from different websites). The Celts (who were spread out over much of Western Europe) believed that demons and ghosts of the dead returned to earth during harvest time (before the winter months) due to the fact that the gates between life and death were more ‘open’ at this time of year. These other-world visitors were dangerous because they could cause trouble with the harvest and food stores for the winter months, so it was necessary to appease them. The Celts thus wore costumes and masks during Samhain to ward off demons and ghosts, sacrificed animals and burned crops to their gods in bonfires built by their priests (the Druids) who could control the supernatural energy present at this time of year. We thus have Halloween in our blood, so to speak. Despite the Christian influences that eventually overtook Halloween, the original pagan celebration is a part of our heritage. The fear of the supernatural world, of demons, ghosts, vampires and monsters, is as old as time. Fire could protect, darkness was danger. We would prefer not to be visited by ghosts and demons; we would do what we could to prevent that. In our ‘civilized’ age, we don’t believe that ghosts, demons, vampires and monsters walk the earth, but the superstitious part of us is tenacious and not easy to get rid of no matter how ‘civilized’ we are. Perhaps that is one explanation for our fascination with the darkness, with the unknown, with monsters. As much as we like to pretend that we don’t get scared, the reality is something else again.

Sunrise, sunset and oh, the moon too

All in one day---today's sunrise, sunset and a moonlit night. The sunrises and sunsets recently have been gorgeous--such vivid colors. I've got to work on getting better night shots; this was the only moon picture I managed to get that was sort of decent. But I'm working on it. I'm loving my camera--a Canon EOS 500D. But I'm still using my Fuji FinePix at times--got some nice photos with that camera too. I wish I could say that I understood everything there was to understand about digital cameras these days, but I don't. I usually just point and shoot in auto mode. But eventually I'll get around to a deeper immersion into the world of digital photography, maybe even take a course or two. Right now, I'm just having fun.

Sunrise 

Sunrise a little later

Still sunrise

Moving towards sunset

Moving towards sunset

The sunset reflected in the windows of this apartment building makes it look like it's on fire from inside.

What a sky!