Reflections at Easter time

Each year around Easter time, there is a feeling of spring in the air. I remember that feeling growing up; the sun feels a little warmer, the birds are singing, the trees are showing small little buds, and whatever snow is still on the ground is melting, forming small rivulets that wander off to nowhere in particular. The puddles reflect the blue skies and the few white clouds that dot the sky. I enjoy taking a long walk at this time; life is returning, after a long, dark, cold winter. The older I get, the less I enjoy winter. It wouldn’t matter if I was a skier (I’m not); I prefer the warmth of spring and summer, and even autumn, especially in New York where it can sometimes still be mild in early November. I understand why older people prefer warmer climates; it’s not just about the warmth, although that’s a big part of it. It’s about the sunshine, the light, the feeling of renewal, the ease of life. Summer’s warmth is a reminder that life doesn’t have to be so hard, that you’re allowed to take it easy. Winter is the opposite—a constant reminder that life is hard, harsh and unsympathetic, that you have to struggle to accomplish each little thing in front of you. Just having to wear layers of clothing to protect against the cold is already too much for me. I remember disliking that even as a child, having to put on and take off snowsuits and sweaters underneath. I suppose weather forms a person; if so, I much prefer the person I am in summer. The winter person is merely waiting to be reborn as a summer person. I suppose that all the seasons have their charms; I grew up in an area of the world that experiences four seasons. Oslo is the same, except that winter is a longer season here than in New York. As I get older, I wish winter was shorter.

One of the memories that always comes back to me when I think of Easter is when I lived in the Bronx in my early twenties, and was to spend Easter Sunday with my parents, who lived in Tarrytown and who had invited family for dinner. I didn’t have a car at that time, so I took the subway into Manhattan and then took the train from Grand Central to Tarrytown. I remember the feeling in the city on Easter Sunday; it was a gorgeous sunny day, flowers were in bloom, people were dressed in their Easter finery and everyone seemed just a little happier than usual. Grand Central Station was teeming with people on their way to different places. It’s a memory that warms me when I think of it; I don’t know why it has stayed with me all these years, but it has.

I am not working this week, the week before Easter. It is wonderful to have those free days—no stress, no deadlines, no duties, no having to be somewhere at a certain time. Being able to go outside for a walk when I want, or waking early, lying in bed and listening to the birds sing or squawk outside our bedroom window. Or tackling the myriad of small house projects for which I suddenly have the time and energy. The word resurrection comes to mind; this time of year is about that too in the spiritual sense, and it is nice to be reminded of that in the church services on Easter Sunday.

A poem by Maya Angelou

(I love this poem by Maya Angelou)

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me. 

Quotes about bullying and bullies

Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.
― Theodore Roosevelt

I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.
― Abraham Lincoln

Bullying is not okay. Period. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.
― Jim C. Hines

One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.
― Michael J. Fox

If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song about it, and you won't like it. That's how I operate.
― Taylor Swift

When people hurt you over and over, think of them like sandpaper. They may scratch and hurt you a bit, but in the end, you end up polished and they end up useless.
― Anonymous

The common mistake that bullies make is assuming that because someone is nice that he or she is weak. Those traits have nothing to do with each other. In fact, it takes considerable strength and character to be a good person.

– Mary Elizabeth Williams

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

 – Judy Garland

It is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

 – J.K Rowling

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

 – Winston Churchill

Bullying consists of the least competent most aggressive employee projecting their incompetence on to the least aggressive most competent employee and winning.

 – Tim Field

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.

 – Tim Fields

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

 – Eleanor Roosevelt

I do not at all have the mind of a bully... in my mind bullies are intolerant of contrary opinion, domineering and rather cowardly. I would hope that none of those terms could be fairly used in describing me.

--Conrad Black

It's the bullies who are afraid, are the ones that do all the fighting. It's not the secure kids that get out there and fight. It's the insecure kids.

--Chuck Norris

My former bullies pay extra to come backstage and meet me after shows, and I pretend not to know them in front of their friends. It is the most divine pleasure to exact the revenge of the brutalized child that resides within.

--Margaret Cho

Bullies are just ignorant.

--Josh Hutcherson

Workplace bullying

You might think that workplace bullying is on the decrease, but it’s not. I witness it, if not daily, at least weekly, in one form or another, as do others I know. Wikipedia’s presentation of workplace bullying (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_bullying) lists categories of specific behaviors that describe this phenomenon quite well:

• Threat to professional status – including belittling opinions, public professional humiliation, accusations regarding lack of effort, intimidating use of discipline or competence procedures
• Threat to personal standing – including undermining personal integrity, destructive innuendo and sarcasm, making inappropriate jokes about target, persistent teasing, name calling, insults, intimidation
• Isolation – including preventing access to opportunities, physical or social isolation, withholding necessary information, keeping the target out of the loop, ignoring or excluding
• Overwork – including undue pressure, impossible deadlines, unnecessary disruptions
• Destabilisation – including failure to acknowledge good work, allocation of meaningless tasks, removal of responsibility, repeated reminders of blunders, setting target up to fail, shifting goal posts without telling the target  

The behaviors I have been witness to mostly fall under the categories—Threat to personal standing and Isolation. I’m interested in discussing Threat to personal standing in this post today. The bullies use humor, sarcasm, and inappropriate jokes to belittle employees, mostly during meetings where other professionals are present. The intent is to diminish the personal and professional standing of the target in the eyes of those who are present at the meeting; there is absolutely no doubt about that. They may do this in a way that gets the people who are present at the meeting to laugh at the expense of the target, but it leaves a bad taste in their mouths afterward. Why is that? Because those who were present and who witnessed this bad behavior know that they have been privy to a power play—bully denigrating target. The target, usually an employee who works for the bully, is often clueless and cannot defend himself or herself. And even if the target is not clueless, he or she is reluctant to fight back in a meeting setting, mostly because these types of people are often civilized and professional, in contrast to the bully. But fighting back and causing a scene would probably be the best thing for all involved. In this way the bully would be exposed for the creep he or she really is, and the target at least is able to verbalize that he or she has been abused. The target risks of course being told that he or she is ‘too sensitive, takes things too personally, to get over it, suck it up’ and so on. But that is when he or she must stand strong and not buckle under the pressure applied by the bully to admit that the bully may be right. Because the bully is not right. The bully must not be allowed to create confusion in the minds of the target or the others present at a meeting.

What the targets have to understand is that they are true threats to the bully. The bullies envy them. They have something that the bully does not have and will never have—a professional approach to their work and a decency and civilized comportment that is sorely lacking in the bullies. Most bullies are stupid and crude people; I mean that quite seriously. Their crudeness may not be overtly manifest, but it’s there. They don’t like most people either because they are certain that they are better than most other people. They have ridden on the coattails of their (often smarter) employees for years, basking in the success that belongs (or should belong) to these other more competent individuals. They are often unhappy people in their personal lives; and we all know the old saying—that misery loves company. But these bullies take it one step further; they want to destroy the mental well-being of the people they envy. Their behavior should be blocked in a workplace setting; unfortunately that is often not the case. They are free to proceed with their belittling behavior because they sit in positions of power, or simply because they are obnoxious and difficult people who dominate the environments they find themselves in, where their peers (those of equal status and equal power level) merely smile in a bemused way at their behavior. In this way, they are free to continue to behave badly as long as no one stands up to them and says ‘stop’. More people should overcome their civilized natures and stand up to bullies. It won’t lead to politically correct meetings, nor should it. That’s the point. We need to abolish political correctness where it protects the bullies at the expense of their targets.  

Where does the buck stop?

I don’t know that I was ever very good at working in a team setting where all members of the team had equal input and worked together on one project or sub-project. I did not enjoy this when I was younger, and I don’t really enjoy it now. I am not comfortable with ‘shared leadership’ or having to report to multiple ‘leaders’. I come from a generation that feels more comfortable with one leader who plans and delegates individual projects/sub-projects to the different group members, each of whom will then be responsible for his or her specific task. But it is the group leader who has the ultimate responsibility for the outcome of a project or new venture, because it is that person who planned it and delegated it. In other words, it is important to me that each person in a group understands his or her function and role in the group, and can proceed accordingly with the tasks in front of them. I think that each member of a group should have responsibility for a project or a sub-project, and that the success of that project or sub-project is dependent primarily on individual input, not on teamwork. Your contribution to the team is your piece of work. A bit daunting perhaps, but the feelings of responsibility and happiness from a successful project outcome are worth their weight in gold. You progress intellectually from such experiences, and that in my opinion should be a goal in the workplace. I have been a group member who was given responsibility for specific projects, and I have been a group leader who has done the same with the people who worked for me. From the feedback I received from them at that time, I know that each person was satisfied with his or her individual projects. There was no overlap between projects, so there was no danger of one person feeling as if his or her project was merely a regurgitation of someone else’s project, or worse still, ‘busy work’ that was of little to no interest to anyone. That is the worst feeling of all—that what you are asked to do is just busy work and not really important overall. If someone hit a roadblock, I discussed the problems in detail with the person involved, not with all members of the group. I did not feel that it was up to the other members of the group to solve whatever problems arose for one of the group members; that was my job as leader. I still feel that way. Group members may talk among themselves, suggest different ways of tackling a situation or problem, but in the end, the decision about what to do was mine to make after discussing the problem or setback with the person involved. This is my approach and I am relatively unapologetic about it.

I chose to write about this today because I saw a poster ad for a new TV show the other day that essentially says the following: ‘when you are faced with one of life’s most important decisions, thirty heads are better than one’. There is a picture of a young woman standing in front of a group of about thirty individuals, to emphasize the fact that no important decisions should be made alone or in a vacuum. This does not resonate with me at all; I think it’s quite ok to ask others for advice, but asking thirty people for such advice seems a bit much to me. To then require that they help me make a crucial decision that affects my life seems untenable; it would never cross my mind to behave like this. An important decision that affects my life is mine to make, and mine alone. Of course this means that I alone bear the responsibility for a bad decision, but that’s the way life works. One head or thirty heads cannot ensure the perfect outcome to a decision, because we don’t live in a perfect world. There is no such thing as a perfect decision or a perfect outcome. You take a risk each time you make a decision; you also take a risk in the sense of knowing that you must live with the ramifications of your decision. It is possible to learn from mistakes or bad decisions, although as I get older, I don’t look at my bad decisions as mistakes; they were simply bad decisions that in many cases were rectifiable. You are allowed in this life to make another decision to counteract a bad one. Nothing is set in stone. We are flexible individuals who change and grow with the years. If we stay fluid, we don’t trap ourselves in outmoded ways of thinking and behaving.

I guess what bothers me about this particular ad is the emphasis on group thinking. It makes me nervous, because it seems to me that we are giving away our personal responsibility for our decisions to others; we are in essence diluting out our personal responsibility. We can always blame ‘the group’ if things go wrong. In this way, we don’t have to feel bad about the outcome of ‘our’ decision. But is this a good thing in the long run? If we extend this type of thinking to the workplace, what are the long-term effects? Who has the ultimate responsibility? Should there be one person who sits with that responsibility? President Harry Truman had a plaque on his desk that said ‘the buck stops here’. I have more respect for that type of thinking than for a plaque that would say ‘the buck stops here, but also in the next office, and in the office down the hall, and in the office after that’.

There are ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’ in modern workplaces. That may reflect to a large degree the complexity involved in running modern workplaces in today’s world, most of which are too large. But it’s gotten confusing—confusing to try to figure out who you should talk to when there is a question or a problem. If I want to or attempt to solve a problem myself, I am discouraged from doing so. We are informed that there are others we should talk to—this or that office or department that deals with this or that. So yes, I attempt to contact them, in accordance with company policies. I speak to one person, who then refers me further on in the ‘chain of command’. It’s often difficult to get an answer or a solution to a problem, such that the problem or question is then put on my ‘to do’ list (which is essentially my ‘must wait indefinitely’ list). In this way, problems ‘go away’; there are no problems when you cannot get the answers. It’s a type of contradictory logic that leads to an obstructional workplace. I’m sure there are many such workplaces these days, characterized by multiple levels of leadership, ‘team leadership’, group thinking, dilution of responsibility, confusion as to who’s in charge, too much bureaucracy, and systemic obstruction. Ultimately, these organizations will come to a standstill after a while in terms of innovation and efficiency. If the problems arise from the fact that most companies are too large, then I am all in favor of returning to smaller and better-run companies, where it is clear to all who work there who the leader is and where the buck stops. And I am all in favor of working at a job that is clearly-defined and not to be shared with others; not diluted out to the point that there is little point left in doing that job. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’, as the old saying goes. It’s true.

Reading about and remembering the Hudson River valley

Whenever I think about the state and town where I grew up—New York State and Tarrytown respectively, I feel blessed. Blessed to have grown up there, blessed to have the memories I have of growing up there. It’s perhaps hard to understand for those who have never moved from the place where they were born, but as I’ve gotten older, it is the positive recollections about the place of my birth that override the negative memories. I am beginning to forget the reasons why I wanted to move from it in the first place, especially when I visit Tarrytown in the summertime on my annual visits and walk along familiar streets in the baking heat, savoring my time there. Much of the town has changed since I was a child; in most cases for the better. It’s a prettier town than when I lived there. That seems to be generally true for many towns and cities, including Oslo. Oslo is a much prettier and nicer city now than when I moved here over twenty years ago. That is because there is more attention paid to urban planning and design—to how buildings, parks, and recreation areas look. The esthetic component attached to urban/suburban development and progress has become more important, and that’s positive.

When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get out into the world at large and to explore it. And I’ve done so. I especially wanted to travel around Europe, and have visited many Western European countries during the past twenty years that I’ve lived in Norway. That wasn’t the reason I moved abroad, but it strikes me now that I was not at all averse to moving abroad when the opportunity to do so arose. I am perhaps a bit nostalgic these days for all things familiar from my youth, including my hometown, and that does not strike me as unusual after more than twenty years abroad. But what strikes me as most true is that the area where I grew up in New York State is beautiful; I am not remembering it wrong or seeing it through rose-colored glasses. The Hudson River Valley is lovely; likewise many of the small towns that have grown up along it and that are an indelible part of its landscape. I have traveled along most of the Hudson River by train, from Grand Central Station in Manhattan as far north as Poughkeepsie. It’s a beautiful relaxing ride, especially when you get out of the city area and into the suburbs; if you want to read more about it, here is a good link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Line_(Metro-North).

So it won’t be surprising that I am recommending two books that I have so enjoyed perusing and that have stolen my heart with their beauty and warmth. Both of them are about the Hudson River and/or the towns along it—one is a book of photography, the other is a warm and lovely tribute to a small pub in the town of Garrison (across the river from the West Point military academy)—Guinan’s--and its owner Jim Guinan (who passed away in 2009). The first book is a book of photography published in 2006 that I recommend to many people who ask me about New York State and the area where I grew up; it is entitled The Hudson River: From Tear of the Clouds to Manhattan by Jake Rajs; you can find it on Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/ckb5f35 and on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/cjeeb8p. So much of the photography in this book is stunning; it is a collection of photos that portrays the Hudson River and the river towns and landscapes as they really are, in all seasons. The second book, published in 2006, is entitled Little Chapel on the River by Gwendolyn Bounds; it too can be found at Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/cqclprc and on Amazon:  http://tinyurl.com/cl7xdyh. It was recommended to me by my friend Stef who read it and loved it; I share her sentiments. The author writes in a heartfelt style about her meeting with Jim Guinan, his family, and the patrons of the pub, all of whom have their individual stories to tell, and all of whom become her friends over time. If you’d like to see photos of Guinan’s pub, you can find them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwendolynbounds/2050518523/in/photostream/. I never thought reading about a bar could be so interesting, or that it would make me want to visit it the next time I am in New York. Unfortunately, it closed its doors in 2008 and its owner passed away in 2009. I can relate to the author’s way of writing and to her attention to detail; but mostly I was glad to read about a place that connects me in some way to my first home—a Hudson River town in the state of New York. It brings me back to a time and a place that are close to my heart. Guinan’s pub was in Garrison, but it could have been in any of the small towns on the Hudson River, where the locals gather to drink a few beers after work in the evening and to shoot the breeze. As they used to say in the TV series Cheers—a ‘place where everyone knows your name’. That’s what this book manages to impart—the message that what counts in life is the connections we have to other people and how we deal with the people who grace our daily lives.

Quotes about kindness

A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.

--John Ruskin

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

--Aesop

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

--Albert Schweitzer

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

--Dalai Lama

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

--Lao Tzu

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.

--William Arthur Ward

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.

--Nathaniel Branden

That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.

--William Wordsworth

Treat everyone with respect and kindness. Period. No exceptions.

--Kiana Tom

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

--Graham Greene

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.

--Theodore Isaac Rubin

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

--Samuel Johnson

Too busy to be kind and courteous

It has been commented on before, but I will comment on it yet again. We live in an information technology world, where because it is possible to communicate via so many different devices and platforms, there should be no problems informing others as to what one is thinking or about what is going on. Yet, time and again, communication fails, or if it does not directly fail, it is poor at best. I am not the only one to notice this; I have colleagues and friends who say the same thing. Emails pile up in my work inbox, and I start off my workday trying to make sense of them. Most are replies to previous emails, not necessarily sent by me, but sent by others to multiple recipients including me. Most of them are non-informative unless you read the entire email threads, which no one has the time to do. You might as well just tell me to ‘see below’ instead of sending me an email that says ‘yepp’ or ‘ok’ or some such thing. The level of rudeness in work emails has reached an all-time high; it is very rare that you get addressed by name. I do address others by name; on the rare occasion when I don’t, it’s to emphasize a point—that the person I am responding to has been rude and doesn’t deserve a courteous response. Most of the emails just state in one or two sentences what the email writer wants, or what he or she wants to inform you about. I have a problem with this lack of professional courtesy. Text messages can be even worse. They are often the preferred form of communication for many busy souls these days. And that’s ok, except when they resemble emails in the form of responses like ‘yepp’ and ‘ok’, with no reference to what has transpired previously. Again, I am not a mind reader and have no plans on becoming one. So if you want me to understand what you’re thinking about, if you really want to communicate with me, take the time to talk to me. Come by my office and stop in for a chat. I promise to listen.

I know that this problem has mostly to do with that everyone is so busy at work, that no one has the time anymore to really communicate, to have a conversation, to listen to others, or to try to understand others. Some of the ‘multiple recipient’ emails expect you to be a mind-reader; you’re expected to just understand what has been going on with very little explanation. I ignore these emails for the most part; if you cannot take the time to explain what’s going on, it cannot be that important for me to comment on it. So I don’t. In this way, I reduce the level of responsibility I feel for certain work situations. And that suits me just fine. The same goes for cryptic text messages. If you cannot take the time to write a coherent text message, I will ignore it.

I keep coming back to kindness and courtesy. We are losing these virtues in our busy world. They have been sacrificed on the altars of efficiency, productivity, and saving time. I’m tired of it. If you cannot be kind, if you cannot be courteous and professional, if you cannot behave in a civilized manner, I don’t want to deal with you, via any mode of communication. It’s that simple. And I don’t feel bad about saying that. 

Leaving unkindness and tyranny

I was up late last night, so I sat and watched two old films on TCM—BUtterfield 8 from 1960 with Elizabeth Taylor as a part-time model/part-time call girl (I’ve seen it several times before but never tire of it), and The Barretts of Wimpole Street from 1957 with Jennifer Jones as the poetess Elizabeth Barrett who married Robert Browning. Whenever I watch the old films, I’m always struck by the depth of the character portrayals, by the richness of the stories they tell, and by the feelings I’m left with after they’re over. The old films make you think: about your life, others’ lives, different situations, different times, how you might have handled those situations, and so on. In Butterfield 8, Elizabeth Taylor’s character Gloria is looking to change her life and to find real love, and thinks she has found the way to do so in her relationship with Weston Liggett, played by Laurence Harvey, who is married, albeit unhappily. This being the film world of the late 1950s/early 1960s, we know that their story cannot end like that of Pretty Girl. Weston is a borderline alcoholic with an explosive temper also looking to change his life. While they enjoy some happy moments together, Gloria makes a mistake early on in their relationship that ultimately dooms it, and Weston’s behavior toward her in a restaurant in reaction to this ‘mistake’ is appalling—he is verbally and physically abusive to her in a harrowing scene. He treats her like dirt in a public setting, calls her a whore to her face in a loud voice, and provokes the wrath of other men around them, who step in to their argument to try to protect Gloria. Weston ends up getting punched in the face for his abusive behavior and quickly leaves the restaurant. His subsequent attempts to reconcile with Gloria, to apologize for his crude and caveman behavior, fail; she flees from him in her car, and he follows her. Their story ends tragically, with her dying in a car crash. It struck me that her attempts to change her life, to leave her past behind, to become a new woman, to find self-respect, were punished in this film. She was not allowed to find happiness, with or without a man. But what struck me most of all was the lack of kindness and understanding toward those attempts. With the exception of one person, her childhood friend Steve, played by Eddie Fisher, there were few others who understood her need to change her life; everyone else seemed bound by the conventions of society at that time—marriage, duty, respectability. Why she had chosen the life she chose comes to light when she reveals her secret (early sexual abuse by a father figure) to Steve. But by then we know it is too late. It seems rather horrible to me that she should pay for others’ sins as dearly as she paid in this film, but that says more about the time when the film was made. But it is the lack of kindness toward her that sticks with you after the film is over.

In The Barretts of Wimpole Street, we meet Elizabeth Barrett, her sisters and brothers, and their tyrant of a father, a widower (played by John Gielgud) who refuses to let any of them marry and who vows to disinherit them if they do. Suffice it to say that the household atmosphere is stifling and life-killing, with the father determining how they live, what they eat, who they see, and so forth. It is implied that the father treated his wife in much the same way as he treats his children; she may have loved him early on but came to fear him as his children do. He has absolute control over them, is unkind in word and action, and prefers having his children fear rather than love him. Elizabeth is an invalid with what seems to be some sort of heart problem; in truth, her illness is probably a reaction to her father’s psychological abuse. She is bedridden and her brothers and sisters try to keep her in good spirits; it is her dog Flush who seems to do the best job at giving her some sort of happiness, and he plays a major role in the film. The film is really the story of how Elizabeth comes to life and gets well after meeting the poet Robert Browning, who has fallen in love with her through her poetry and who wants to marry her. It doesn’t take Robert long to figure out that her father is a major cause of her illness and unhappiness. They carry on their romance in secret, as does Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta with her Captain. But we know that Elizabeth’s father will eventually find out, and he does. So the question then becomes, how will they escape their tyrant of a father? He is truly a scary man; he dominates any room he walks into with his dourness and life-killing behavior. You could say about him that a flower would wither in his presence. In a rather sickening scene toward the end of the film, he tells Elizabeth that he is moving the family out of London to the country to get away from the bad influences (visits from friends and suitors), and that he hopes that she will come to love him and not fear him. He then makes the mistake of professing his feelings for her, which border on incestuous. Elizabeth understands that he will ultimately destroy her, and that she needs to get away from him immediately, which she manages with the help of their housemaid Wilson. The scene where she, with her dog Flush in her arms (she could not leave him behind) and Wilson are sneaking out of the house while the rest of the family is sitting down to dinner, is actually terrifying. I kept waiting for her father to appear, to crush whatever little courage and spirit was left in her. Had he appeared while she was escaping, he would have won. And had she left Flush behind, it would have been awful; her father, when he discovers that Elizabeth and Wilson have gone, orders the dog destroyed. But of course Elizabeth knew that this would be his fate, and since she loves her dog, he goes with her. I have never rooted for a character to escape her tyrant the way I did with Elizabeth; when they paused on the staircase, just a few feet from the front door, I found myself saying ‘go, leave, get out now’. It would have been awful had she been stopped. But she does escape, does marry Robert, and Flush stays with them. It's a true story with a happy ending, in other words, and thank God for that.

Both films deal with women who want to change their lives and leave unhappiness and abuse behind. Both women decide to leave their abusers—men who mete out nothing but unkindness, misery and unhappiness, men who confuse love and control, men who dominate and bark out orders, men who can say and do things that they would never tolerate from the women in their lives. It made me appreciate the courage and the energy these women showed in the face of abuse; they knew they had to leave their situations and they did. In one case it ended tragically, in the other, it ended happily. So it goes in life; it’s not always easy to leave an unhappy situation. But the courage involved in trying to leave is what stays with you long after the films are over. 

Watching Skyfall

I finally got around to watching the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, with Daniel Craig as Bond. I’ve wanted to see it since it opened at the end of October, but unfortunately there were other more pressing issues that got in the way until now. Skyfall is the best of the Bond films, in my opinion. It is a near-perfect film and a near-perfect film experience, for so many reasons. I’ve watched it twice already, back-to-back viewings, and the second time I found myself trying to find flaws in the plot, in the characters, in the acting, in the cinematography, in the villain, in the Bond women, in Bond himself. I came up short every time. It is the first Bond film where I could follow the plot without question, the first Bond film where I could understand the villain’s motives, the first Bond film that depicts the complexity and the shadowiness of the espionage world. I found myself thinking of John Le Carre’s book (one of my favorites) A Perfect Spy; mostly because both delve into the realm of the psyches of their spies. In A Perfect Spy, we learn why the protagonist Magnus Pym (who works for the British MI6 as a spy and has lived a lie for his entire life) was the perfect spy, and about the role his con-man father played in his life, in his moral development (or lack thereof), and in his ultimate downfall. In Skyfall, we come to understand that the death of Bond’s parents at an early age made him a good recruit for the world of espionage. As M (played by Judi Dench) says to him, ‘orphans make the best recruits’. One set of authority figures are replaced by another set in the form of MI6. The latter are more ruthless, demanding, amoral and untrustworthy than the first. Bond is really a pawn on a chess board; he is moved around at will and accepts his role and his fate (‘hire me or fire me’). Answering the call of duty plays an all-consuming role in how he sees the world. It’s all he knows. He belongs to the old world of loyalty to one’s country, less to oneself. One’s body is merely a tool in the service of one’s country. In that sense, it is completely understandable that the women he meets are tools as well. That message was also quite clear in A Perfect Spy, and made having a normal functioning relationship/marriage with a woman impossible. And yet, Bond did marry once for love, in an earlier film, but his wife was shot and killed. He remains alone, a loner, needing no one, perhaps because the death of his wife affected him permanently. That makes it possible for him to be an instrument in the service of his country. It also explains why he needs to take out the villain in this film, whose sole aim is to kill M because she has betrayed him; M provides Bond with his only stable relationship, albeit a superficial one. M and Bond know what they need to know about each other; the trick is to not become sentimental with and about each other. Deep down however, they are fond of one another, as this film touchingly depicts.

‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways—relying on one’s instinct, intelligence and skill, not on a computer or other technology to solve the problem at hand. Bond’s age and physical limitations in relation to his ability to change and grow and to meet future challenges are in question here. That is one message in the movie. But when Eve says to him ‘old dog, new tricks’, we know that the old dog can learn new tricks, can resurrect himself (his hobby—resurrection), can be fit for fight, and can seduce the ‘new’ women (Eve included). But I also thought about how filmmaking and production have changed during the past half century since the first Bond film. It’s an industry that is constantly reinventing itself, thanks to new camera and digital techniques and effects—new tricks in an old trade. The effects are stylish, eye-catching, and atmospheric. The film works on so many levels; it is seamlessly put together. It is a film you just slip into, almost as though you found an opening in one dimension that allows you to step into that world. It glides along on a noiseless track, and you are pulled onto the monorail that takes you into the world of James Bond. The use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) certainly helps to create that atmosphere, that world, almost one of virtual reality; there must have been a lot of CGI in this film. The intricate and nuanced use of colors and digital effects also creates the different moods that hold one captive—eerie, bold, violent, beautiful, and suggestive. I don’t know what the use of colors and digital effects does to the brain (are they subliminal effects in some way?), but I am sure that a psychologist or psychiatrist could tell me. I would guess that there is a fair amount of research being done in the field of marketing to find just the ‘right’ digital effects that will make us want more, enjoy more, buy more. I find these types of digital effects to be almost addictive; I find myself mesmerized by the use of streaming and gliding colors and shapes, the dim blue lighting, the use of light and shadows, glass buildings, color tones, and so forth. The shots of the digital ads, e.g., the writhing jellyfish, climbing the Shanghai skyscrapers in the darkness are beautiful and confusing; they create a chaos of shapes and colors, so that it’s almost impossible to distinguish a real figure from a shadow. But it all comes together so seamlessly, falling into place in the brain. The choreography of the fight scene on the edge of the room high in the clouds; the figures are dark and move like dancers—a beautiful scene. There are so many of these types of scenes—beautiful, haunting (the long-distance view of the Skyfall estate house), the landscapes of Scotland—wild and stark, almost like a painting, interspersed with the views of Shanghai, Istanbul and London. Skyfall is a typical Bond film in that respect—multiple locations, lunatic villains, over-the-top stunts, but in terms of its visual effects, it’s so much more. 

Slipping and sliding away

Each year in Oslo, come winter, the same problems crop up. There are snowstorms, sometimes there is a fair amount of accumulation, and then the snow plows come out to clean the streets and to spread salt to keep the streets free of ice and snow. The end result is that cars and buses usually have no problem getting around the city streets during the winter. It’s a seldom occurrence that the streets are so icy or snowy that cars and buses have problems maneuvering their way along them. Not so with the sidewalks. Sidewalks are another matter; it’s as though sidewalks in Oslo belong to another universe. And in that universe, chaos and uncertainty reign. No one knows for sure which sidewalks will be cleared and which won’t. The street Ullevålsveien, for example, has completely clear sidewalks, making it a simple matter to visit the different stores and cafes on that street, whereas most of the sidewalks in Grünerløkka (one of the areas of the city quite near where we live) are a disaster. They are in fact disasters waiting to happen, in the form of broken bones of some sort. They are so slippery and dangerous to walk on that most people choose to walk in the streets instead. That way there is no risk of falling. Ditto for the area where we live; icy sidewalks with some gravel thrown down to help you get a grip, but it doesn’t help if they haven’t been shoveled first. I have begun to walk in the streets myself, after having fallen once already. Luckily I did not end up with any broken bones or sprained wrists. In the morning on the way to the bus stop near where we live, I join the many others who are walking in the streets rather than on the sidewalks. It strikes me as rather silly to see all these people in the streets, but who am I to judge? We all just want to be safe and to get where we’re going on time. Walking on the icy sidewalks makes me feel as though I’m eighty years old; having to walk slowly, inch by inch, looking ahead to determine whether the patch of white ground ahead of you is ice or not, and then following the path of no ice until it becomes ice again. And so on. I feel sorry for elderly people in this city; I wonder if many of them even dare to venture out, even if they are in general good health. One fall, and they’re out of commission for quite a while.

The randomness of sidewalk shoveling strikes me as rather absurd in a country where winter can extend from mid-October until early April. The newspapers have written about it the problem, droves of people complain about it, but every year, nothing changes. I don’t get it. The last newspaper article I read about this problem discussed whose responsibility it was to shovel the sidewalks; in some cases it’s the city’s responsibility, in other cases, the owners of the buildings. I can personally attest to the fact that most apartment building owners seem to do little or nothing to keep the sidewalks in front of their buildings clear; perhaps they figure that these are city sidewalks so the city should take care of them. The city fines the owners for not clearing the sidewalks, and so it goes. In the meantime, people are slipping and sliding on their way to wherever they’re going.

Shop and restaurant owners in the downtown area of the city complain that they are losing business to the large shopping malls that ring the city. There may be multiple reasons for this, but one thing is clear to me. If shop or restaurant owners in the downtown area don’t care enough to get out and shovel a path to their doors, if they can’t clear snow from the sidewalks in front of their stores, don’t expect my business. I don’t want to hear your complaints that malls are taking all your business. I like to shop in the downtown area of Oslo, but I can tell you that the icy sidewalks discourage me from doing so during the winter. But again, this is a random affair. Some shop owners do shovel snow, others don’t. Why is that? Why do some shop owners care more about their customers than others? I think they all need to get on the same page—prioritize your customers. We potential customers don’t care whose responsibility it is to shovel the sidewalks, so stop arguing about it. Just get out there and do it, like the Nike commercial says.  

Quotes about drinking and alcohol

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

― Ernest Hemingway

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

― P. J. O'Rourke

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

― Carl Jung

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.

― Edgar Allan Poe

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.

― Charles Bukowski

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.

― Charles Bukowski

Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.

― Marguerite Duras

Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

― Christopher Hitchens

Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

― F. Scott Fitzgerald

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so?

There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.

― Drew Carey

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Are you there vodka? It's me, Chelsea. Please get me out of jail and I promise I will never drink again. Drink and drive. I will never drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but I'll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like to Drink and Stay Home.

― Chelsea Handler

For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I’d squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I’m now told that this is not called “going to sleep” but rather “passing out,” a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment.

― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

As women slowly gain power, their values and priorities are reshaping the agenda. A multitude of studies show that when women control the family funds, they generally spend more on health, nutrition, and education - and less on alcohol and cigarettes.

― Dee Dee Myers

Street art by Kuro

Found this on the Street Art in Germany Facebook page yesterday, and wanted to share it with you. The artist's name is Kuro, and the picture first appeared in ZEIT magazine. Personally, I think it's just fantastic! Brilliant, as one of my Facebook friends commented. I so agree; it's worth sharing and spreading. There is just so much of a message in this picture and in the few words that accompany it. I can relate as I'm sure so many others can. The heart takes its beatings, but keeps on trying anyway, whereas the brain keeps aiming for reason and logic, trying to get the heart to see reason.The eternal conflict, depicted in a perfect way. Sometimes art achieves perfection.......Thank you for sharing this, Kuro.

'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