'Don't know what you've got till it's gone'

I have been a regular subscriber to the weekly news magazine, Time, for at least thirty years, before I moved to Norway and since I moved here. I’ve looked forward each week to Time's news summaries and articles, film, book, music and theater reviews, and interesting tidbits that they toss in from time to time. You might think that it would be a problem to experience regular weekly delivery of Time; I can tell you that it’s been a pleasure to be a subscriber. Not once, I repeat, not once, have I ever had a problem with a missed issue or late delivery. I haven’t had to contact customer service for any problem whatsoever, except to renew my subscription, and that is also a problem-free experience, unlike other magazine and newspaper subscriptions that I have had since I moved to Oslo. That by itself is a miracle in this day and age—a magazine that manages to be timely, punctual, and service-minded.

What bothers me lately is that I’ve noticed that with each issue I receive in the mail, especially during the past half year, the magazine is shrinking. Each issue is thinner than the previous week’s issue. Given the fact that its competitor, Newsweek, stopped publishing the paper edition of its magazine at the end of last year (I refer you to Wikipedia for a more-detailed update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek), I have begun to wonder if Time is moving in the same direction. I hope this is not the case, but I have a gut feeling that it is. The end of the paper editions of these magazines doesn’t mean their total demise; in the case of Newsweek, they decided to focus their energies on an all-digital format, meaning that the internet has claimed yet another victim, in one sense. I don’t have a problem with internet; if used well and if you can filter through the morass of information that is available at every turn, you can in fact obtain a lot of useful information in the blink of an eye. I need only think of Wikipedia as I write this—useful, informative, updated, with mostly correct information (and they are honest about the ‘holes’ in their summaries, about what is lacking, and that’s a good thing). But there is something about opening the print issue of a magazine like Time when I get it, sitting down on the couch with a cup of coffee and reading it from cover to cover. I enjoy that very much; it’s not the same sitting down with my Kindle for iPad and reading the issue that way, even though I read books that I’ve downloaded on my Kindle for iPad from time to time. It’s just that I don’t want to see the end of all print publications, be they books or magazines.

And that brings me to my final point; with fewer books and magazines printed, there will be more bookstores that will go belly-up. One of the major American book retailers, Barnes and Noble, is struggling and on the verge of collapse, according to a recent article from Slate (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/14/barnes_noble_collapsing.html), and that makes me sad to read. Very sad. I have fond memories of the many hours spent in their bookstores; starting when I worked part-time as a stocker for a company on West 13^th Street in lower Manhattan during my graduate school days, and would spend my lunch hours perusing the bookshelves of the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 122 Fifth Avenue between 17th and 18th streets. I bought many a Christmas present there as I remember. And then later on, during the mid-1980s, when I would drive up from the Bronx where I lived at that time, to their bookstore on Central Avenue in Yonkers and wander around there for a few hours on a summer evening, looking at photo books of Princess Diana (who was all the rage then), or skimming books on why women are afraid of success in the business world, how to make your relationship better, or the meaning of dreams, in the self-help section. Those were weekly trips that I looked forward to, and I always left the store with one or two new books that I couldn’t wait to dive into. In later years, when I have visited my sister in upstate New York during the summer, we have had some fun driving to the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Poughkeepsie, where we would start off our visit with cappuccinos in the little café at the back of the bookstore. We would sit and chat for a while, and then wander the aisles in search of a book that would catch our eye. It was always fun to compare our current literary interests, talk about the books we had read or were reading, check out the different games and puzzles for sale, and so on. Sometimes my husband would call me from Norway while we were wandering around the store; we would be laughing at some silly thing, and he would get a chance to join in on the fun. Simple stuff, but simple stuff is the stuff of memories. Bookstores generally, and Barnes and Noble specifically, have been and are a large part of my life. I cannot imagine life without them. As Joni Mitchell sings ‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. But sometimes even when you do know, things disappear anyway, replaced by newer things, but in some cases, more sterile things. I will never be attached to a computer the way I have been attached to my books. And that’s not likely to change in my lifetime. 

Some good quotes about work

There are few, if any, jobs in which ability alone is sufficient. Needed, also, are loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm and team play. --William B. Given, Jr.

When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home. --Betty Bender

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. --Bertrand Russell

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing. --Thomas A. Edison

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. --Robert Frost

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. --Frederick Douglass

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it. --John Ruskin

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. --Peter Drucker

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. --James M. Barrie

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love. --David McCullough

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. --Richard Bach

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men. --George Eliot

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. --Thomas Jefferson

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play. --Warren Beatty

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. --Pearl Buck

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. --David Rockefeller

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. --Elbert Hubbard

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. --Thomas A. Edison

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. --Theodore Roosevelt

Things I’m never going to do

Read the news this morning and saw that there had been a meteor strike over central Russia early this morning, causing sonic booms and pressure waves that led to the implosion of glass windows in many buildings, injuring nearly one thousand people in the process. The social media age being what it is, it didn’t take long for the first videos of the event to appear on YouTube. Pretty incredible to watch and listen to what was happening in the sky above us. Tonight the asteroid 2012 DA14 is supposed to pass very close to the Earth (over 17,000 miles above us but it’s the closest asteroid pass that scientists have measured up to this point). It got me to thinking about life as we know it, and what would happen if an asteroid or meteor of great size crashed onto land or in the sea, and life as we know it changed forever. This is the stuff of sci-fi movies, but the interesting thing about sci-fi is that you never really know when or if what is depicted in books or movies will come to pass. And perhaps it’s better that we don’t know.

A lot of people think about what they would have done differently when they are faced with their own demise or the demise of loved ones. I’m of course no exception. We live our lives each day with a certain amount of conviction that our ‘tomorrow’ lives will be pretty much like our ‘today’ lives; we trust that tomorrow will come. And that has been the case up to now. If we have anything to fear, it is in the form of man-made threats such as nuclear weapons and the threat of biological warfare, that the crazies in the world will get their hands on these things and end life as we know it.

I thought about what I have accomplished in my life up to this point, and about what I still want to do, if given the chance. But I also thought about all the things I haven’t done, and they perhaps define me just as well as the things I have done and accomplished: I’m never going to climb Mt. Everest, or any mountain for that matter; I’m never going to fly a small plane or learn to pilot one; I’m never going to do tandem skydiving or bungee jumping; I’m never going to do deep-sea diving; I’m never going to sail in a small boat across a large ocean for days at a time; I’m never going to run a large corporation or lead hundreds of people; I’m never going to make a million dollars a year, despite what life coaches tell me (to dream big); I’m never going to own a large palace or an over-sized mansion, a yacht or a wildly-expensive new car; I’m never going to travel the entire world. These are things I'm never going to do, and I'm very ok about it. 

If I won a huge lottery, I’m fairly certain that not much on the above list would change—perhaps I would purchase a new home and a new car, and then share the money with people I care about. The things I do not want to do have little to do with money, or better stated, it’s not the lack of money that prevents me from doing them. I simply have no desire to do them. What I do want to do more of in the future is to spend time with the people I care about, doing the things we enjoy together—hanging out, talking, relaxing, eating out, going to movies or concerts, traveling a bit, shopping, and being on vacation. When I think about my life in this way, it makes me happy, because I already do so many of these things with the people I care about. If the end of the world came tomorrow, there's not much I would have changed about my life. And I hope I feel the same way in ten or twenty years, if we and the Earth are still around.   

Some really good child actors

I’ve been on a quest to watch some of the movies I’ve missed out on during the past five years or so, and the deep dark winter months are the perfect times to catch up on my film watching. Sometimes the reason I haven’t seen the films is because I haven’t been able to get to the theater to watch them when they’ve opened; other times I’m quite sure they haven’t opened in Norway at all, even though IMDB states that they opened in Norway on this or that date. They may have gone directly to DVD, if that can qualify as an opening in Norway. In any case, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by three films that have caught my attention, made me cry, made me think, and ultimately made me happy that I saw them. They are Genova (2008), Creation (2009), and Hugo (2011). What they all have in common are wonderfully good child actors; especially in Genova, but closely followed by Creation and Hugo.

If you haven’t seen any of the films, I can briefly summarize them here. Genova is the story of a Joe, a husband and father whose wife has died in a car accident that may have been caused by their youngest daughter who was sitting in the backseat of the car together with her older sister, playing a game. The husband decides to move his daughters and himself to Genova, Italy for a short while; the film relates their daily lives in a new and strange city, and the adventures each of them embark upon. Colin Firth as Joe, and Willa Holland as Kelly (the eldest sister) are very good, but it is the youngest daughter Mary, played by Perla Haney-Jardine, who shone in this film. Her acting is superb; there were times when you just wanted to reach out and hug her, she was so good, especially when her awkwardness and loneliness shone through. In real life, she is about sixteen years old now; when the film came out, she was about eleven. She had a remarkable self-possession at that young age that was riveting. Composed, observant, guarded, smart as a whip, but full of feelings and thoughts that she did not really understand or know how to express at that age; the scene where she talks to a female friend of her father’s and tells her that she feels guilty and responsible for her mother’s death is heartbreaking. Her wonderful self-possession reminded me of my niece when she was that age; she had (and still has) many of those same qualities.

Creation is the story of Charles Darwin and his family, at the time before he wrote the book that would make him famous, The Origin of Species. The film details his struggle to acknowledge the scientific truths about evolution that he has discovered which put him into conflict with his Christian faith and with his wife, who is very religious. Charles Darwin and his wife Emma are played by Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, who are married in real-life; they are terrific together. Darwin’s life was complicated by poor health and much unhappiness; he lost his eldest and beloved daughter Annie, played so convincingly and movingly in the film by Martha West, most probably to tuberculosis. Their relationship was close on many levels, and she was clearly his favorite child, likely because she was so interested in his work and in the natural world. Had she lived, she could have become a scientist like her father. The film depicts the conflicts in the Darwin marriage as well as the events surrounding the death of Annie, and is based on the book Annie’s Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution, by Randal Keynes. So much of the film revolves around Annie and the impact her death had on Charles Darwin; Martha West did a wonderful job as Annie. It was impossible not to be moved to tears by her performance. The same can be said for Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly.

Hugo is the third film where a child figures prominently in the story; it reminded me a bit of the film Oliver! (1968). The young boy Hugo Cabret, played by Asa Butterfield, has a wistful look to him, much like Mark Lester’s Oliver in that earlier film, and his performance is very nuanced and very good. Both of them play young boys who are orphans; Oliver lives in an orphanage, whereas Hugo lives in the walls of a Paris train station where he fixes and maintains the station’s clocks, a job he learned from his drunken uncle who disappeared months ago and who is discovered drowned in the Seine river. The film is the story of how Hugo slowly befriends an older man who knows that Hugo steals from him, a shopkeeper by the name of Georges Méliès', played by Ben Kingsley. Georges works in the train station selling and repairing trinkets and small toys; Hugo steals parts from him sporadically in order to repair the ‘automaton’ he and his father were working on before his father’s tragic death. But Georges was once a promising filmmaker, before WWI destroyed those plans and ambitions, turning him into an unhappy and bitter man. As fate would have it, this automaton was actually designed by Georges Méliès' when he was a young man. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that the film is based on the real-life story of Georges Méliès', a French filmmaker who was way ahead of his time in terms of special effects and surreal sets and props, and a magician as well. He is known especially for two films, A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).

It is not possible to predict what the future will hold for Perla Haney-Jardine, Martha West, or Asa Butterfield in terms of their future film successes, as child actors often have a hard time repeating the successes of their youth. But they certainly deserve many more chances to express their tremendous talents and to shine as brightly as they did respectively in each of these films.

Stopping by a bridge on a snowy morning

To paraphrase Robert Frost—‘Stopping by woods on a snowy evening’. Last week we had a snowfall that led to some accumulation of snow, and it was just exhilarating to be out in the early morning, taking pictures of the snowy trees and this bridge covered in snow, before too many other wanderers discovered the same places. It brought to mind my childhood days during wintertime, when I would find a secret place under one of the tall evergreen trees outside our house window; its many branches were often heavily weighed down with snow, almost touching the ground. The heavy branches created a little nest for me to crawl into and hide from the others, at least for a little while. I loved that feeling of aloneness, of having a secret hiding place. I would sit there and enjoy the silence and the whiteness of the snow and the sun glittering on the tree branches. Sometimes we would play hide-and-seek, and no one ever found me if I hid there.

It’s funny how poetry and photos can remind you of what once was. I think it’s incredible that the memories lie there, buried under years of living, and then a photo, a word, or even a smell, can take us back to earlier times in our lives. The memories don’t disappear; they just wait to be re-discovered. 

A winter poem by Robert Frost

I loved this poem immediately when we learned it as children in school. And my parents recited it to us when we were young. It's a beautiful poem with lovely images that captures a moment in the life of the observer, who knows he is too busy living his life to 'explore' the woods. He ends by saying he has 'miles to go before I sleep', which is a metaphor for his eventual death. So I interpret the poem to mean that he can stop and reflect on his life at different points in his life, and that perhaps nature serves as a means for him to do this, but that he wishes to keep going, to keep living, to honor his promises, before he rests forever.


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

The art of boating: Out on the ocean

When I started writing this blog in 2010, I was happy to include some posts written by others--guest bloggers. Today's post is written by my husband, Trond Stokke, who has been sailing up and down the Oslo fjord for many years now. 

In my last post on this subject (http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2010/08/art-of-boating-attempts-at-definition.html), I tried to define the different aspects of “the art of boating”. However, I barely managed to leave the harbor in that post, so I will in this post discuss the things that matter when you’ve finally left the harbor and are headed off on a trip. A lot of important things must be done before you leave, in addition to the routine maintenance. The engine must be checked thoroughly, as an engine failure on the open sea can be disastrous. When this happens in a car, you may simply leave it at the roadside, grab your cell phone and call the towing company. Not so out on the open ocean. The check includes oil, cooling water, exhaust tubes, through-hull tubes, and a number of small details varying from boat to boat. Also, one needs to fill gas and fresh water and bring food for at least a few days. Plan beforehand where you will refill gas on the way, which requires that you have an overview of where gas stations can be found along the way. A supply of fresh water is very important, as salt water is neither good for you nor your engine (if needed). Also, you need to bring batteries for flashlights and a GPS (global positioning system). Although I use the GPS frequently, I also have a set of maps with me, and we have a working compass in the boat. I do not fully trust modern electronics. If you’re alone, consider how you will tackle “trivial” tasks like going to the toilet, fetching food and drinks etc, before you leave. When your wife or some good mates are joining you, there will always be someone who may take over the helm.

A happy author at the start of a boat trip

So you’re off, and you get this great feeling of freedom that I never experience on land. So now you’re on your way to somewhere specific, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the feeling of being at sea and getting adjusted to the movements of the boat in the waves-- as though you’re directly connected to nature. After a few hours you automatically compensate for the tilting and wobbling, to such a degree that when I get back on land, it’s as though the firm ground keeps moving under my feet. It takes about 2-3 hours of sailing to get out of the inner Oslo fjord. The “outer” Oslo fjord starts when you’ve passed Filtvedt lighthouse outside of the city of Drøbak; at this point the course is set according to whether you want to go south (S) towards Østfold or Sweden, SSW towards Denmark, or SW along the Norwegian coast. The destinations of our trips have included Fredrikstad, Halden or Strømstad/Koster southward, and Tønsberg, Risør, or Langesundsfjorden along the west coast. Langesundsfjorden is mentioned because from here one may proceed up the Telemark canal via an extensive lock system to Dalen, or alternatively to Notodden, if you enjoy the blues festival that occurs there each summer.

At this point you also determine whether you would like to travel along the shoreline and opt for visual maneuvering with the help of the map, or whether you would like to sail entirely away from the shoreline aided by compass and GPS. A good piece of advice right from the start: if you choose the first one, don’t sail too close to land. It’s always good to keep a safe distance from land in case something happens, e.g. if the engine stops in spite of all precautions taken. Also, the worse the weather is, the more important it is to stay well clear of land, i.e. the grounds. This is counter-intuitive; most landlubbers tend to be drawn towards firm ground. A good example of this is the route around Rakkebåene (see map): 

Map of Rakkebåene, outside of Larvik and Stavern

You should not follow the red- and green-labeled routes along land with a larger boat (>30 feet), even though some locals may tell you it’s a walk in the park. Follow the blue-labeled course south of the light buoy located to the SE on the map, go westward and south of the Tvistein lighthouse. The Rakkebåene are strange; they get shallower there well outside of the grounds visible on the map. The waves slow down  the shallower it gets, but since the energy remains constant, the amplitude, i.e. wave height, increases. Additionally, outside Rakke, there are currents moving in the SW direction. When it’s blowing from SW, and old swell from the North Sea also comes in this direction, heavy and unpredictable wave patterns are often created. A friend of mine used the word “messy” to describe them. Thus, even if you follow the blue route, this will not ensure a smooth trip. If the weather is bad, I choose to go further out. It’s exhausting when the boat bottom hits the water with a “bang” after each wave. However, old sailors say that it’s not the boat breaking down in rough seas, but rather the helmsman and the rest of the crew. There is at least one more reason to stay away from land and regions with grounds when there is heavy weather and swell: water is blown off the wave crests so the sea looks white all over. It is exactly this kind of breaking of the water that you look for to avoid grounds. The latter are thus difficult to identify if all you see is a sea that looks white all over.

Visual maneuvering is obviously more difficult in the evening and at night. Here’s where the lighthouses and light buoys come in handy. The 360 degrees around lighthouses are typically divided into sectors, such that they shine white light in one direction, green in another, and red in others again (can be seen on the map). The coloring is such that you should be in the white sector, while green or red means unclear waters. Along the coast of southern Norway lighthouses are spread such that you’ll always see the previous and the next one. Often you see a third one too, and triangulation is possible in such cases. Light buoys give position, and exposed grounds in fairways may also be equipped with lights. It’s not difficult to set the course based on the position of lighthouses, but you need to have a good map. I have also noticed that distances can be misjudged at night. Also consider that the most difficult part at night may be to sail into the harbor, especially if you don’t know the surroundings well. I remember the first time we came into Helgeroa, just outside of the upper left part of the map. It got dark very quickly, and we had to pay attention to local grounds and islands that were barely visible. The next morning, when we left in daylight, this was not a problem at all.

If you’re crossing open stretches of ocean without sight of land, e.g. over to Denmark, you need to know where you are. Only 25 years ago this was tricky business, although we had some idea from the compass course and the speed of the boat. At that time I took my first trip around Rakkebåene together with a good friend of mine in his sailing boat. We had only the lighthouses to tell us where we were since it was the middle of the night (luckily it wasn’t foggy!) Nowadays, the GPS gives you the actual coordinates. Our GPS does not have built-in maps, since I prefer having an actual physical map with me on our trips. With or without electronic maps, you’re now all set for a memorable boat journey.

Saying goodbye to loyalty in the workplace

A colleague and friend retired this past week after a long work life (forty years). As is often the case with employees who retire from my workplace, she will come in to work from time to time as a consultant to help with specific projects that require her expertise. At her retirement party, there were several speakers who commented on her expertise and her dedication to her work. But one speaker in particular commented on her loyalty to her workplace, her willingness to speak up when there were problems, and her desire to help make it a better workplace by speaking up, even if it put her in an unpopular position with management. He commented on the fact that the workplace doesn’t need and won’t function at all with only yes-men and yes-women, but rather with employees who are willing to speak up and to say no when necessary. In other words, such employees are willing to stick out their necks, to rise above the radar, to create discussion and debate when warranted and to take responsibility for their choices. They are willing to risk disagreements with management and to risk unpopularity with fellow colleagues who would rather they kept their mouths shut rather than create discord. You would think the workplace would encourage these sorts of behavior and would want to hire such people—people who open their mouths, tell the truth, and are honest, trustworthy and loyal. These are the people who are the backbone of an organization, who know it in and out, who know the history of a workplace (for better and for worse), and who can tell you how the system and infrastructure function. In other words, these types of employees are worth their weight in gold, in my opinion.

The opposite is true these days, that workplaces seem to only want yes-employees around them. It’s fairly simple to figure out--it makes life easier for everyone, especially management. But it may not be a smart management philosophy in the long run. There are several reasons for that, which the speaker above touched upon. He meant that it was necessary for employees to speak up in order to prevent a workplace from disintegrating, to prevent it from self-destruction. When I think about it what he said, it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, there is too much of the opposite—employees who simply agree with the boss when asked their opinions about a specific issue. If you are asked your opinion, and the only thing that preoccupies you is figuring out what management’s stance would be so that you can parrot management’s ideas back to your boss, who will be pleased that you are in agreement with them, then you are a good employee, at least these days. To voice the dissenting opinion, to talk against a specific management philosophy or dictate, to relate the problems associated with the aforementioned, are death knells for your career advancement. If you are direct, honest, willing to debate and discuss, have a sense of an organization’s history, bring up problems, or otherwise ‘bother’ management, you are not valued, or not valued as highly as those who nod and agree with the boss. And of course from a boss’s perspective, the path of least resistance is to promote the employee who agrees with you and your business philosophies and strategies. I get it. I just don’t agree with it. And I cannot see how this makes for a healthy workplace. But I’m of the old school, and grew up during a time when honesty, directness and loyalty were valued.

Some types of managers will tell you the following when you bring up a problem that exists in a workplace: that you are too focused on how things were done in the past (when you bring up historical references for how that problem may have been dealt with previously), that you need to forget the past and focus on the here-and-now, or that you are too direct, or that what you bring up is really not a problem (even though it really is), to name a few responses. They like to talk a blue streak about conflict resolution and the rampant belief that all problems can be resolved; my answer to this is that not all problems can be resolved, just as not all people can truly get along, and in fact to believe so is remarkably naïve and possibly dangerous. Of course, if all employees simply nod their heads and ‘agree’ to a particular resolution, regardless of whether they agree with it or not, then ‘conflict resolution’ has been achieved. But it’s not honest resolution. In the long-run, this type of agreement is not healthy for an organization. Because the result is that dissension rather grows in the corridors. Employees talk about and against management’s philosophies and strategies instead of talking directly to management. There are a lot of rumors and gossip. Management for its part thinks that all employees are happy with the status quo, and so on, and are free to proceed with their plans. But there is a reason for why employees play the yes-men role: they are afraid for their jobs. If you are not in a protected position (where you cannot get fired, e.g. civil service jobs), you can find yourself without a job when the first round of budget cuts comes along. Because the name of the game now is to save as much money as possible—that is the current management strategy—and you put yourself first on the cut list if you are a ‘dissenter’.

It seems to me that loyalty is a dying virtue in the workplace in any case. There is no objectively good reason to be loyal to a workplace anymore, because that workplace will not be loyal to you in return, not in the age of budget cuts and streamlined efficiency. There is no contract between an employee and his or her workplace anymore, the way there seemed to be in my parents’ generation. The workplace has changed enormously during the past thirty years. It would be unrealistic to assume that it would not. The changes may be for the good in some ways; I am in a wait and see mode. There are certainly long-term employees who have abused their positions, just as there are companies that have abused their long-term employees. But at present, there does not seem to be much point in sticking around in one workplace for years anymore; in fact, it may be a liability to do so, unless you find a workplace that values loyalty. Younger people coming into the workplace at present know that their prospects of landing a permanent job (cannot be fired) in an organization are few to none. Companies will not offer such positions now; young people know this and know that they will be out of a job after four or five years, after they have fulfilled training courses or reached the limit in terms of how far they can progress in one position. There is thus no real point in getting too attached, too involved, too dedicated or too interested in what goes on in your workplace; you won’t be there for more than four or five years. You know you will be moving on. The workplaces of the future seem to be places where mutual utilization of each other will define how things are done. Loyalty will be reserved for the personal arena—loyalty to family and to friends. Perhaps this is the way it should be. But a part of me still feels that it should not be necessary to comment on an employee’s loyalty at the end of a long work life—that this type of loyalty should be more the rule than the exception. My guess is that the workplaces of the future will be defined by short-term employees working on short-term projects that are led by short-term managers; employees and bosses will be project-dedicated but not necessarily workplace-dedicated or workplace-loyal. They know they are dispensable, that they can be fired, replaced at will, or rehired, but also that they can move easily from one workplace to another, without the feeling of attachment that long-term workers often feel after many years in their workplaces. The white collar workplaces of the future will be more like factories—producing what they produce without much attention paid to those who are doing the producing. But in return, the employees will receive training and a good income, but no more. Expectations of career advancement within one company will taper off, especially if an employee reaches an income level that is non-sustainable for the company. It will be cheaper to hire younger workers without much experience. In this way, loyalty will be discouraged and eventually obliterated. A glum scenario, perhaps, or perhaps not. Time will tell.  

January sunrise and rising smoke

A few days ago, I witnessed an exceptionally colorful and fiery sunrise. I snapped some photos as I often do, and right before I was to leave for work, the rising smoke contrasted against the sky looked as though it had caught fire. I got some photos of this as well. Thought you might like to see them!

Moments in time

This morning as we drove to work, we heard David Bowie’s new song, Where Are We Now?, on the radio. It caught my attention with its melancholy tone, and I commented to my husband that I would have loved the song immediately when I was a teenager, as I seemed to be drawn to all things sad at that time. Truth is, I loved the song immediately now too, so that tells me that I still am drawn to sadness, but in a more realistic way now than when I was younger. When I got to work, I found the recently-released video of the song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9XsTnyN26Y&feature=share&list=FL4rKLincZWuFolZVFChzj5g. It is one of the most poignant, emotional and raw songs I have heard in a long time, and affected me in the way that such songs usually do. Got me to thinking about what he is singing about, which is his getting older and his reflections on his past. ‘A man lost in time’. But he is singing too about a moment in life and in time—‘the moment you know you know you know’--those fleeting moments when you are keenly aware of your own mortality, of time passing, when you know there is nothing you can do about it or about getting older, when you are aware of the paradoxes contained in life and thankful for them. They are moments when you are almost outside of yourself looking in—experiencing that moment when you know that you suddenly understand that you in fact understand where it’s all leading to. But he is also telling us that even though he is aware of moving toward life’s exit, he is also thankful for the sun and rain and fire—those things that tether us to daily life and which tell us that we are in fact still alive. There is hope as long as those things still exist for us. The song ends with him singing that ‘as long as there’s me, as long as there’s you’, that it will be alright, or at least as alright as it can be in the context of knowing that one day we will exit this earth. He is reminding himself that he can draw comfort from those thoughts and find the energy to go on, and hearing him sing that reminds me of the same, of the importance of love and of the support it can give us in dark times. A reasonably hopeful ending to a sad song. Art in all its many forms never ceases to amaze me, in that it shows us a way to live, a way to get through the bittersweet and dark moments that are part of life.

Living a balanced life

Apropos my last post--Finding Balance, the Adventure Center now has a blog, and one of their recent posts has to do with balance and living a balanced life. I encourage you to read the post--it's insightful and offers some ideas for how the future of our society could be shaped, starting with its children. If you'd like to read the post, you'll find it here: http://www.adventurecenterjourneysofwonder.org/1/post/2013/01/a-wish-as-we-enter-2013.html

Finding balance

It seems to me that the lines between our personal and work lives are becoming more and more blurred. They may not even exist for some people. I think much of it has to do with the prevalence of technology and social media and how easy these make connecting to others at all hours; we can be connected 24/7 to family and friends, so why not to colleagues and bosses as well? I know employees who can never let go of work, or vice versa--their bosses and workplaces can never let go of them. These employees leave their workplaces, go home, eat dinner, and work some more, sometimes right up until they go to sleep. Or they accept phone calls and answer text messages from bosses, colleagues and/or clients the entire evening. They never shut their phones off; they check their work emails constantly. They are on when they should be off; they are available to their workplaces when they should be doing other things. Those other things include having a personal life, a family life, a social life, a hobby or two, or doing volunteer work, or maybe just time out for meditation, relaxation, reading a good book or watching a film. The odd thing is that these people travel to an actual workplace each day; they do not work at home. Somehow they have a harder time physically and mentally separating themselves from their workplace than many of those I know who work at home or who work several days a week at home. I am not sure why that is; it would certainly be worth studying. It seems as though working at home forces those who do it to make rules for when they are available and when they are not, and they have learned to enforce those rules.

If a workplace expects the majority of its employees to be available at all hours or to finish work at home, I call that tyranny. Possible exceptions include high-level leaders in times of crisis. If employees cannot let go of their workplaces and must be connected to them and their work at all times, I call that idolatry, especially if there is a certain amount of arrogance attached to the worship of work. These are the people who could choose not to idolize their jobs, but they choose otherwise. Not being able to let go of work can also be a form of addiction. The latter can sneak up on employees after several months of taking work home because they are interested in finishing up an interesting project or because they want the answer to the question now. And taking work home every now and then, by choice, is much different than being forced to do so by your workplace. But over time, the results can be the same. Employees become slaves to their work and to their workplaces. They cannot put their work aside; it preoccupies them to the point of nervousness and anxiety, which is not healthy in the long run. This happened to me a number of times during the past twenty years, I would take work home and stay up to all hours in order to complete it. But what happened was that one project would get finished, and then two more would take its place, and so on. My point is that we will never be finished with our work. It will always be there waiting for us the next day. It is absolutely fine, totally ok, to pick up the next day where we left off the day before, after an evening of rest, relaxation and a good night’s sleep. It is important to have balance in our lives. More to the point, it is important to maintain balance in our lives, because it is so easily lost to or disturbed by workplace tyranny, idolatry, or addiction. And that means shutting off the phone, not looking at work emails, not 'checking in', and not being available; no matter how much it plagues us (or tyrannical workplaces) in the beginning. It means cutting the cord and not worshipping on the altar of work. The rewards are that we find ourselves again in the process of deprogramming ourselves, and we find balance in our lives. It does not mean that we no longer enjoy our work, rather that we enjoy it within the context of a balanced life. 

The future of scientific publishing

Open Access (OA) is in the wind these days, especially if you work in academia and publish articles as part of your research work. If you work at a university or are a student there, you will come across the term Open Access. What is Open Access? Wikipedia provides a very good definition; I urge you to read their page about Open Access—it will give you a good background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access. Open Access is ‘the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles’. Simply put, it means that if you as a potential reader (whether you work at a university or not) find a scientific or medical article of interest online that you’d like to read, that you can click on the link to that article and read it online or download it for future reading from the website of the journal that published it. You may think this is common practice and not problematic; neither are true. You may not have considered what underlies your being allowed to access an article online if you are a student or researcher at a university. Your access to those articles is not necessarily ‘open’, or traditionally has not been open. That is because most published articles are closed access publications in non-OA subscription-based journals; they have been published in a specific journal, and that journal restricts access to a published article by making individual readers pay for the privilege of accessing it, if you are not working at a university. Or they make university libraries pay exorbitant subscription fees in order to provide online access to those articles and/or print copies containing those articles to students and academics at all levels.

Many people know little to nothing about OA, or if they’ve heard about it, it’s not something to which they’ve paid much attention. That’s understandable, since unless you have a career in academic research science where your research work can be published in a journal of some sort, you’re not likely to care too much about the scientific publishing process or about how much it costs to publish an article these days or about how much it can cost to access that published article afterwards. There are even academics who know very little about it, taking for granted that their published articles are accessible to all who are interested, or that they will have access to published articles that they are interested in. What some of them haven’t understood is that the university libraries have ensured that they have had access to innumerable journals in their fields of interest—chemistry, biology, physics, medicine, geology, etc. up to this point. This is because the libraries have paid costly subscription fees to gain online access and/or to receive print copies of the journals. These subscriptions are part of their annual budgets. This system has been in place for many years.

As a scientist, I am interested in promoting Open Access publishing, for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, I believe it is the future of scientific publishing, and I’d like the future to be here now. (I also believe that self-publishing is the future if you want to publish your own books; it allows you to bypass traditional publishing houses that mostly reject first-time authors. I wrote a post about that in 2010: http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2010/08/publish-your-book-using-createspace.html). We academics already do most of the prep work before we submit our scientific articles, prep work that was previously done by the journals; we format the text and prepare figures and tables according to guidelines provided by the journal, we upload those formatted files to the journal website, and we edit the compiled version of the article that the journal provides to us after receiving the uploaded files. In other words, we now do much of the work that the journals used to do for us before; they are not doing us any favors. If you’ve ever submitted an article online for publication, you will know what I’m talking about; the process is not for sissies. In addition, we often pay just to submit our articles to a journal, even to a journal that the university library already subscribes to (e.g. Cancer Research) although not all journals have this requirement. We also must pay page charges if we want color figures, or if our article goes over the page limit. We must pay to get reprints of an article or pay to receive a pdf version of our article created by the journal that represents the final published version. If you choose to receive a pdf file of the published article, you are not allowed by the journal to distribute free copies of your published article to those who might want to read it. For that privilege, you are expected to pay for journal reprints. It’s a costly business for many scientists, whose budgets continue to dwindle with each year that passes.  

I chose to publish one of my scientific articles in the OA journal Molecular Cancer already back in 2004; that’s how strongly I believed in the future of OA publishing then, and still do now. Gold OA journals provide immediate access to your published article on their websites; Molecular Cancer is one of the journals offered by BioMed Central, which is the first OA science publisher (started up in 2000) and one of the largest in the world. You as a potential reader do not have to pay them to access my article; I do not have to pay them for permission to distribute my article freely to whomever I choose. In fact, I am including the link to my 2004 article here, if you’d like to read it: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1476-4598-3-11.pdf.

I chose to publish in Molecular Cancer again in 2006 because I had had such a good experience with them in 2004; here is the link to that article: http://www.molecular-cancer.com/content/pdf/1476-4598-5-20.pdf. This article, by the way, is a highly-accessed article (yes, you get to know the statistics for your article—how many times it’s been accessed/downloaded, and when—quite useful). That makes me feel pretty good, because I know that the work is solid and that the data are quite interesting.

I use the word ‘chose’; the fact is that my articles went through rigorous peer review before they were accepted for publication. There is NO guarantee that your article will automatically be accepted for publication in an OA journal; there is still editorial and peer review to go through. I have had a total of three articles to date published in OA journals (the third one a collaborative effort with Italian colleagues in 2009: http://www.molecular-cancer.com/content/pdf/1476-4598-8-55.pdf). But I have also had two articles that were not accepted for publication in this journal. That has not discouraged me. It merely reinforces my opinion that the OA system works just as well as traditional non-OA publishing; it is not ‘easier’ to get published in OA journals than in non-OA journals. There are good OA journals and poor quality OA journals, just as there are good and bad non-OA journals. The impact factor for Molecular Cancer is 3.99, pretty good—around the middle of the scale. But I don’t worry too much about impact factor, even though most of my peers do and even though we are encouraged to do so by our workplaces; I am more concerned with reaching potential readers and making my work accessible to a larger public. Because of course the potential reach is global. I probably should care more about impact factor, because it gets your research ‘noticed’ and funded by granting agencies—the more publications you have in high impact-factor non-OA subscription-based journals (like Nature and Science), the better your chances of getting your research projects funded. These are the ‘eye of the needle’ journals—only an elite few ever get to publish here. And the reasons for that could fill another blog post. To give an example of how non-OA journals make it difficult to get access to articles, check out this article in Science magazine; if you want to access and/or to download it, you have to pay for that privilege: 
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6117/303, unless you work or study at a university that subscribes to this journal. As far as I'm concerned, this is an incredibly old-fashioned and elitist way of doing things. 

Is OA publishing free for authors? Not necessarily, but it can be if the university or institution you work for is a member institution. I refer you to the ‘article-processing charges FAQ’ page on the BioMed Central website; it explains this aspect better than I can: http://www.molecular-cancer.com/about/apcfaq. The major and most important point for pushing for open access journals is that once research articles are published in them, they are immediately and freely-accessible to anyone in the world who wants to access them. That is not the case for non-OA subscription-based journals.  

If you would like to read more about Open Access, I recommend the following websites:

·         Open Access http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

·         Directory of Open Access journals http://www.doaj.org/

·         Open Access Directory http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page

·         The Development of Open Access Journal Publishing from 1993 to 2009

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020961

·         Video describing Open Access http://www.phdcomics.com/tv/#015

Favorite songs from the 1980s

Rambling down music memory lane today. This time in the form of my favorite music from the 1980s. I have to admit that the 1980s was an odd time music-wise—disco, urban, pop, rock, jazz—each genre got airplay on the New York radio stations, if memory serves me right. So many great songs…..

Anyway, here are some favorites from that time; check out the many videos on YouTube if you want to hear them. I’ve tried posting video links before but they disappear pretty fast from YouTube and end up as dead links on my posts. I’ll be updating the list from time to time as I remember more songs, listen to them once again, and am thrown back to that time--where I was, what I was doing, and who I was with when those songs made such a lasting impression on me.

·         Street Life -- The Crusaders (released in 1979 but got a lot of airplay in 1980)

·         Off the Wall – Michael Jackson (1980)

·         Don’t Stand So Close To Me, Driven to Tears, When the World is Running Down You Make the Best  of What’s Still Around – The Police (1980)

·         Give Me The Night – George Benson (1980)

·         Are You Going With Me, The Bat – Pat Metheny (1981)

·         More Than This, Avalon -- Roxy Music (1982)

·         Stepping Out -- Joe Jackson (1982)

·         Thriller, Beat It, Human Nature, Want To Be Starting Something – Michael Jackson (1982)

·         Physical Attraction – Madonna (1983)

·         Burning Down the House – Talking Heads (1983)

·         One Thing Leads to Another, Saved by Zero – The Fixx (1983)

·         White Lines (Don't Don't Do It) – Grandmaster Melle Mel (1983)

·         Heartbeat City, Magic, Drive, Why Can’t I Have You -- The Cars (1984)

·         When Doves Cry, Let’s Go Crazy – Prince (1984)

·         Dance Hall Days, Don’t Let Go – Wang Chung (1984)

·         West End Girls – Pet Shop Boys (1984)

·         Jump – Van Halen (1984)

·         Vidro e Corte (Glass and Cut) – Milton Nascimento & Pat Metheny (1985)

·         In My House – Mary Jane Girls (1985)

·         Don’t You Forget About Me – Simple Minds (1985)

·         Live To Tell – Madonna (1986)

·         Everybody Have Fun Tonight – Wang Chung (1986)

·         Dancing on the Ceiling – Lionel Richie (1986)

·         Word Up, Candy – Cameo (1986)

·         Tunnel of Love – Bruce Springsteen (1987)

·         Last Train Home – Pat Metheny (1987)

·         Chicago Song – David Sanborne (1987)

·         So Emotional – Whitney Houston (1987)

·         Sign o’ the Times – Prince (1987)

·         In God’s Country, Where the Streets Have No Name – U2 (1987)

·         What I Am – Edie Brickell and New Bohemians (1988)

·         Buffalo Stance – Ninah Cherry (1988)

·         Free Fallin’ – Tom Petty (1989)

·         Back to Life (However Do You Want Me), Keep on Moving -- Soul II Soul (1989)

The great divide

I notice more and more how purportedly classless (egalitarian) societies, like the one I live in, struggle with the reality that not all of its members enjoy materialistic equality. It becomes more apparent to me each day, especially as this country gets richer due to its oil money. All individuals living in this society have gotten richer during the past ten years, yes, but some individuals have achieved a higher level of wealth than others. Not all people make the same amounts of money nor do they own the same numbers and types of homes and cars. They are not equal in the materialistic sense, no matter how hard the government tries to make it so. And that will likely always be the case. A perfect utopian society on this earth seems unlikely (the notion has been around for many years)—a society where all members have exactly the same level of wealth, status, or material possessions. A society where all members have equal opportunities for public education and the same legal rights is achievable. But there is no guarantee that even if all children have the same opportunities from birth, that they will grow up to earn exactly the same amounts of money, or be similarly educated, ambitious, talented, hard-working, creative, innovative, or that they will behave in similar ways in any given situation. Society consists of unique individuals, and that uniqueness begins at birth. People will utilize their talents and gifts in different ways compared to all others around them, and that will inevitably lead to different career choices with the resultant income disparities. Not all types of work are rewarded with similar incomes; perhaps that reality lies in the future. Imagine a society with no salary differences whatsoever. That would change the way in which education is viewed, as well as how career progression is viewed.

But it is the definitions of rich and wealth in the materialistic sense that interest me. One hundred people gathered together in one room might not be able to come up with a working definition of ‘rich’ or ‘wealth’. Some people will define ‘rich’ or ‘wealth’ as owning one home and one car, whereas others consider themselves rich if they are able to rent an apartment and not own a car, but perhaps use their money to travel, while others require a home and a summer cottage, and several cars and maybe even a boat in order to feel as though they have achieved the requisite level of wealth. Some people will say that they are rich if they have freedom to do as they like and can come and go as they please; they may not be interested in owning many material possessions. So what then is the definition of ‘poor’? Individuals who rent an apartment and do not own a car, a vacation cottage or an expensive boat—are they to be considered poor if they are content with their economic situation? Can society force that definition upon them? To me these are difficult questions to ponder, let alone answer.

There seems to be a lot more envy now in society than I can remember from when I grew up. You need only look at a newspaper to understand that; if the rich open their mouths and tell the less rich how to live or what to do, or if they in any way go overboard in terms of flaunting their wealth, the less rich will tell them in no uncertain terms to shut up or try to take them down a few notches, again using the media to do so. But they do it in a way that smacks of envy.

Perhaps globalization and a relentless media have made us more aware of the haves and the have-nots. We again need only turn to the media for them to tell us how the rich live; all the gory details are there for our perusal. The danger is that constant immersion in the media-created focus on wealth fosters a false sense of reality--that all people can achieve wild levels of wealth, if only…….And who knows if this way of thinking has contributed to high levels of personal debt—in the craze to have as many material possessions as possible, even if it means personal ruin.