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| where we stayed in Portsmouth |
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| Portsmouth harbor area |
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| the Bridge Tavern and the famous Spinnaker Tower to the right |
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| Portsmouth harbor area |
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| the HMS Warrior in Portsmouth Harbor |
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| Salisbury Cathedral |
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| Ryde Pier on the Isle of Wight |
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| scenic view on the Isle of Wight |
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| the Isle of Wight has its own white cliffs |
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| scenic view on the Isle of Wight |
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| scenic view on the Isle of Wight |
When I was together with my high school friends at the beginning of June, the talk inevitably turned to our high school years and some of the memories we have from those times. For my part, I would say that high school was quite okay but not much more than that. I'm thankful that my friendships with Janet, Judy and Laura were strengthened during those years; we remain friends to this day and make an effort to talk to and visit each other. I spent most of my high school years observing what went on around me, perhaps in preparation for my career as a scientist, which involves a lot of observation. I was book smart but not very street smart, perhaps natural for that age. But it seemed to me that so many of my fellow students were much more street smart. That came later for me, once I was in college and got to experience the urban environment of Fordham University.
Since I had the highest grades in my class, that led to my being the valedictorian. The privilege of being the valedictorian was that I got to deliver the valedictory--the farewell address to the graduating senior class. Suffice it to say that I did not look forward to holding this address at our graduation in front of hundreds of people--my classmates and their families. But I did it. One could say that I did it my way. I'm sure my speech irritated a number of parents who were politically conservative, since I chose to focus on Nixon and Watergate and the lack of ethics in politics. I said that I hoped that our graduating class would stand for ethical behavior in all we did in our future careers. I practiced that speech many times in front of my teachers, who were constructive in their criticism but who never told me that I couldn't say this or that. I'm glad that they allowed me to say what I wished to say, that I wasn't censored in any way. But still, I was reluctant to speak publicly--the reluctant valedictorian.
The dislike of public speaking followed me throughout my scientific career. I got better at it, and some of my lectures were downright inspired. I always remembered the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: 'you must do the thing you think you cannot do'. So I did. I faced my fear of public speaking, but I never grew comfortable with it and I never grew to like it. I don't like having all eyes on me. I do best in one-on-one conversations and small meetings. I don't know when I changed, because in grammar school and the first two years of high school, I had no problems with talking in class and being the center of attention. Somewhere along the line, it all changed and I don't know why. Ultimately, I came to prefer writing and sharing my writing, an avocation that I have pursued to this day. Writing is what I enjoy most. It's a way of putting myself out there that makes me feel comfortable. When I write, I'm not worrying about how vulnerable I am. I know that those who want to read what I write will do so; those who don't will go elsewhere. I'm comfortable with that.
After I visited Oregon, Judy and I flew to west Colorado to visit Janet, another high school friend (see my post from June 19th: A New Yorker in Oslo: I've been traveling (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com). We did some walking in the vicinity of her home, and also took a day trip to Ouray. Here are some photos from Colorado:
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| the creek behind my friend's house |
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| irises growing in abundance along the walking path |
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| facing east with the Rocky Mountains in the distance |
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| the charming town of Ouray |
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| Ouray |
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| Ouray |
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| the road leading away from Ouray |
It's been over three weeks since I visited my friends Judy and John in Oregon. I've had time to reflect on my trip and how wonderful it was to be together. A short two-day trip, but truly memorable. I realize that life offers us opportunities to be together that don't really come again, at least not in the same way. They visited us here in Oslo last June, and this June I was able to visit them where they live in west Oregon. We were gifted our time together and I am very grateful for the gift. Time moves us steadily onward; we get older and perhaps the chances to be together will be less in the coming years. I hope not, God willing, but no one really knows for sure. I know many people my age who can no longer travel due to health problems; there are no guarantees, so it's best to take advantage of the opportunities as they arise.
We used a day to travel by car from west to east Oregon, driving from Portland to Mount Hood (about a fifty-mile drive), with a stop in Hood River to visit Paloma, who is the graphic designer for my books. While we were in Hood River, we also stopped and watched the kite surfers being whipped about by the wind on the Columbia River. We then drove on to Mount Hood and ate dinner at the Timberline Lodge that is located on the southern flank of Mount Hood. The lodge is a National Historic Landmark, and well it should be, after having watched the video about its construction. It was built between 1936 and 1938 as a WPA project during the Great Depression. One of its claims to fame is that Stanley Kubrick used outside views of the lodge in the supernatural horror film The Shining (1980).
The following photos don't really do these places justice, but they give some glimpses of the beauty of Oregon. Enjoy!
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| the view from the backyard of my friends' house |
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| view from The Vista |
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| Rowena Crest area |
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| view from Rowena Crest area |
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| Mount Hood |
I've been traveling recently between several different time zones, and upon my return home, my body decided that it didn't know what time zone it was in, so it's been waking me up at 3 am to let me know that it's time to get up and start the day. The other night I had a long discussion with myself at 3 am about what electric bike I should buy, since I need a new one. Why my brain chose that time to ponder such a thing is beyond me. It got to the point where it suddenly felt extremely urgent that I make the decision right then and there. Of course when dawn arrived none of it seemed so urgent at all. I don't know why the middle of the night creates a sense of urgency out of nothing. It has happened many times before; I should make this or that plan, call this or that person, get done whatever needs to be done. The list is unbelievably long. There is something about the dark that inspires urgency. But when dawn arrives, and in the light of day, I'm more relaxed (thank God). I get what I need to get done, done. Just not at breakneck speed or with the feeling that I have a ton of weight on my shoulders.
But despite its effects on my body, I wouldn't give up traveling for all the money in the world. Because there are travel experiences that money will never be able to buy--time spent with good friends, scenery that will take your breath away, visits to historic places. No amount of wealth or material goods can replace those experiences. As the old saying goes, you can't take it with you. True, that. I like to travel light, in my daily wanderings and when I'm out in the world.
So where did I travel to this time? First, to Portland Oregon where my good friend Judy lives with her husband John and their sweet dog Coda. Portland is located in western Oregon; we drove into eastern Oregon one day, and the contrast between west and east is striking. Oregon is a beautiful state for sure, rich in forest tracts, mountains, valleys, rivers, gorges, and rolling hills, but also incredible desert plateaus. The Columbia River, known for its rough waters and high winds, runs through a gorge (canyon). Bounded on both sides by steep rocky walls, it creates its own weather. It's worth a trip there just to see the windsurfers and kite surfers (aka kiteboarders). The terminology may be confusing, but watching the surfers is pretty cool. Judy and I then traveled further on to Cedaredge Colorado where we visited with our friend Janet and her husband Richard. The original trip was planned as a reunion of four high school friends (the Fab Four as our English teacher used to call us), but one friend could not manage the trip, so the remaining three met and enjoyed our time together. We took a day trip to Ouray, which apparently is known as the 'Switzerland of America'. It is a charming, quaint, and historic mountain town bounded by canyons and mountains (the San Juan mountains). We ate lunch at the Goldbelt restaurant (very good food) and walked around the town, ending up at the Western Hotel (established in 1891) where we wandered around looking at the rooms, the dining room, and the saloon. It would have been lovely (and expensive) to stay there; perhaps on a future trip. In the 1870s, gold was found in the San Juan mountains, resulting in the establishment of small mining towns in the area. Ouray has the feel of a former mining town; it is now a tourist town that attracts visitors from all over the world.
I'd like to visit my friends again in a few years and explore more of Oregon and Colorado with them. The USA never ceases to amaze me; its fifty states offer vast differences in climate and topography. Each state has something beautiful to offer. America the beautiful, indeed. It is.
I'm all for giving away second-hand/used clothing to charitable organizations that distribute it to those in need. I do it myself a couple of times a year. For example, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross do a wonderful job with organizing this. Their numerous clothing bins are distributed around the city, and it doesn't really matter which organization you support when you deposit bags of clothing in the bins belonging to one of these organizations. The goal is to help others and to reuse clothing. But there reaches a point when enough is enough; when people are lazy and don't walk the extra distance to place clothing in a bin that's not completely full. The other thing they don't do is place the clothing they're giving away in a bag and seal it before they try to dump it in the bin. I walked by this bin the other day and became irritated. I thought, how can people be so lazy? I mean really, what does it cost them to walk a few blocks further to deposit their bags of clothing in another bin? But they won't do that, nor will they place the clothing in a bag before they deposit it. They'd rather that the bins end up looking like this--see photo below. I have to say that I just don't get it. No wonder sloth is one of the seven deadly sins. There is an awful lot of sloth in society, and by that I mean, an aversion to making active, conscious decisions to better oneself and society. Every time you litter or dump clothing willy-nilly wherever it suits you, every time you don't do what you should do for the good of all, you are being slothful. If you behave in this way, you cannot tell me that you love the people around you or your country. Quite the opposite. You are saying, 'I don't care about my neighborhood or my country'. You are saying 'I'm entitled to do as I please. Someone else can pick up after me'. And that is what happens most of the time. In my book, you are selfish and spoiled, in addition to being lazy. Because when I see these bins, I think of garbage bins. That's what you're essentially depositing in these bins--your garbage. It doesn't help these organizations one bit that they have to use their time cleaning up after you and sorting through what is useful and what is not. And it is not their fault that people are so incredibly shameless and lazy.
The arrival of spring means the return of birds to the garden, birds of all kinds. Sparrows, brown and black thrushes, crows, magpies, wagtails, robins (the European ones that are smaller than the American ones), ring-necked doves, and (Eurasian) blue tits. Sparrows are most prevalent and spend most of their time in one of two huge bushes in my garden, the kaiser bush and the red currant bush which are more or less opposite each other. When I am working in the garden I can hear them quarreling and chattering; they fly back and forth between both bushes, with stops at the birdbath to drink water and to take a communal bath. Watching them flap around together in the birdbath is a hoot. And when it's really been hot during past summers, they share the birdbath with the bees that line up on the rim to drink water.
This year there is a large crow that saunters around the garden like he (she) owns the place. My garden neighbor calls her Clara, so we assume it's a female bird. Clara struts and shows off for us; she is not afraid of very much. It is the neighborhood cats that are scared of her; she has chased them out of the garden on numerous occasions. This year she has discovered my neighbor's small stone birdbath that has been placed at ground level. Clara and several of the magpies enjoy drinking water and plucking insects from this birdbath. It's amusing to watch them. She sometimes walks around my garden as do the brown thrushes, looking for insects (mostly earthworms) to eat. The brown thrushes remind me of little dinosaurs; I call them the little raptors. They have a menacing look in their eyes that strikes me as primeval.
As I walk to and from the garden, I pass Kiellands plass with its large pluming fountains whose water descends via small successive waterfalls into at least six small pools lined with smooth medium-sized stones (NLA - Alexander Kiellands plass (landskapsarkitektur.no). Oslo's birds have discovered these pools, sharing them with small dogs and toddlers who like to wander down to the water's edge. Sometimes the dogs take a dip, but mostly the birds have the pools to themselves. They include mallard ducks, pigeons, and seagulls for the most part, but also thrushes and smaller birds. This morning on my way to the garden, a mother duck crossed the sidewalk in front of me followed by her five little ducklings. The UPS driver who was delivering a package nearby stopped to watch them as well, and we commented how sweet it was to see them. Here we are in the middle of a large city, and the ducks are raising their families here. Nature adapts to all sorts of situations and seems to do so readily; that is definitely the case for mallard ducks. There must be a reason that the ducks stay put; one of them must be that people feed them bread. But there are also droves of insects surrounding the water pools that you can see in the late afternoon summer sunlight, flitting about in the warmth. There are probably also a lot of earthworms and other ground insects. The ducks also eat seeds and the nearby plant matter (roots and tubers) that abound.
A less happy story is what happened to the magpie nest outside our bedroom window. The magpie couple spent a lot of time earlier this spring enlarging last year's nest of twigs and branches. The nest seemed to double in size and looked to be spread over two levels. This pair of birds comes back every year to raise their young. Alas, this year it was not to be. Last Wednesday, I heard a crack and took a look out the window; I had already guessed that it had something to do with the branch. The branch holding the nest had cracked off and fallen to the ground. My best guess is that the nest was too heavy and that the birds had built it too far out on the limb. This year's addition to the nest certainly did not help. I felt so bad for them; they don't always assess the situation correctly and this year they lost out. We don't know if there were eggs in the nest, but if there were, they were destroyed along with the nest. The birds disappeared for a few days, but yesterday morning I heard them chattering in the yard again. They'll be back next year, but there won't be any baby magpies this year unless they overtake an abandoned nest.
We are moving toward summer now--the season of sun, warmth, growth, new life, and easy days. I look forward to lounging in my garden and dozing off to the sound of bird chatter. It's a wonderful part of summer.
I rarely cancel social plans that I've made with friends. Throughout my life, friends have been and are important to me. In other words, they are a priority in my life. For me to cancel plans with them, I have to be either sick or unable to keep my obligations due to a crisis of some sort, neither of which happens very often. I have never used school or work projects as an excuse to cancel plans; if anything, I didn't make social plans if I knew I had an exam on the near horizon or a crucial work project to finish, because I didn't want to cancel. I think carefully about what I promise, but once I promise something, I fulfill that promise. I don't promise what I can't deliver.
I try to be available for get-togethers with friends and I look forward to them. But we live in a society now that worships work, and being busy at work is often used as an excuse for not getting together. I used to think it was purely an American trend--this obsession with work. But it's not. I recently tried to get together with some friends that I haven't seen since before Christmas--the end of November to be exact. We are a small group of women who meet and enjoy chatting for a couple of hours over dinner. My attempt to gather us together was rebuffed by one of them, who considers herself the busiest of us all. Granted, she has a demanding job, but I don't understand her priorities or her behavior. It wasn't that I was trying to plan a get-together for a week or two in the future; I was wondering if we could perhaps finalize a date at the end of June. Nail it down, so to speak. She wasn't having any of it; her excuse was that there might be upcoming work projects that would preclude her settling on a specific date for a get-together. Another woman in our group tried to get her to change her mind, but she ignored that attempt. What will happen is the following; at the end of June, the woman who won't meet us now will let us know that she is now available on such and such a day and would we like to get together. And usually we all fall in line to accommodate her schedule. Except that this time around I don't want to accommodate her. We've all done it for so long; she always calls the shots and it's always been that way. I'm not interested in continuing the pattern.
I also don't understand another type of peculiar behavior where friends are concerned. Plans are made and everyone seems to look forward to getting together. But as the date approaches, one person backs out, then another, so that by the time we actually do meet, the number of joiners has been halved. I don't get it. It goes back to the idea of obligation; if you've said that you'll meet someone, you are obligated to do so unless there is a really good reason for not being able to do so. I can remember inviting four friends/colleagues to dinner (over fifteen years ago); all said they would come, but suddenly on the night in question, two canceled without a good explanation. I dealt with it then and can deal with such situations now, but it's downright rude to treat people this way. Imagine you had planned a big dinner party, had invited fifty people and half of them canceled at the last minute. People have also been known to do this at weddings; they are invited to the reception dinner and cancel at the last minute or don't commit to attending until the last minute. Are they waiting for a better offer? It's rude and selfish behavior. Besides the costs involved for the host, it's a downer for the host as well. It tells the host(s) that they are not a priority. I imagine that the invitees who behave this way think it's perfectly ok to do so.
Then you have the people who never seem to be able to find a time to get together no matter what. But they stay in touch by texting and often say that they hope they'll see you again soon, or that we should get together soon. If you take them at their word, you quickly find out that they are not truly interested in meeting in person.
I'm not sure I can really call these type of people friends. Quasi friends is more like it. Perhaps many work friendships developed over the years, with socializing once or twice a year, fit this definition. Once you no longer work with people on a regular basis, the reason for being friends lessens. After all, many work friendships are based on complaining about work, and when one is no longer working, there is little to complain about.
One thing is for certain; as time goes on, these types of people will fade from my life, and I will be the better for it. Life is about letting go--of the past, of certain mindsets, and of people. One can let people fade from one's life, or one can make the choice to let go of them. I tend toward the latter. I give many chances and make any number of attempts to get together, but at some point I make the decision to let go. And once I do, there is no going backward. That's ok really, since some friendships are relative in the sense that they fit a particular place and time and are not meant to last forever. I'm thankful for my true-blue lifelong friends, the ones who are always there for me, and I for them. They know who they are, and I'm lucky to have them in my life.
I saw the movie The Holiday again recently, and one of the main characters had this song as his cell phone ringtone. I grew up with this mu...
