Lilacs and the Gamle Aker Church

Lilacs are my favorite flowers, followed closely by lilies of the valley. Lilacs grow in abundance in Oslo right now; their purple flowers and wonderful fragrance are too colorful and too strong to be ignored. They are late bloomers this year because spring was late in arriving this year. If you walk up along the Akerselva river you will come upon many lilac bushes with flowers that are all different shades of purple. I would like to have cut some of the flowers to have taken home with me, but people don’t do that here even though the flowers grow wild. I respect that but I would have liked to take a sprig or two just the same. There are also many lilac bushes that grow in the vicinity of the oldest church in Oslo, the Old Aker Church (Gamle Aker kirke--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Aker_Church). The church dates from around the year 1100 A.D. and is one of the most beautiful churches in the city. It is also the oldest building in Oslo. It is surrounded by a church graveyard with many trees and a lovely view out over the city. The church grounds are very peaceful to walk around in on a warm spring or summer day.

The church itself is very peaceful to walk around in, and we have been there a few times to hear different choirs sing carols before Christmas. I have also been there to attend Good Friday services which are very solemn and moving. I have been there several times even though the services are Protestant and I am Catholic. The church was originally a Catholic (Christian) church, and still has the feel of a Catholic church. It feels ancient, but that feeling is a good feeling and one that inspires awe, much in the same way as Westminster Abbey does, and the baptistery of the cathedral in Frejus in France which dates from the fifth century A.D. Just to stand in those buildings and to try to imagine what it was like to be in those places at those earlier times is daunting. I remember standing in Westminster Abbey upon the graves of people (mostly monks) who had died of bubonic plague in the 1340s, and it was an indescribable feeling to stand there and know that they were there before you. It is that feeling of the linearity of time that comes over you, when you know that sometime in the future there will be people who will look back on us and our lives and wonder how we were and what we did.

Below the Gamle Aker church is a parselhage, which means garden colony. Oslo’s inhabitants can apply for a parcel of land that they can use as their own garden. The waiting lists for these parcels of land are long. We are on one such list, and there are one hundred individuals ahead of us. The likelihood of obtaining one of them in our lifetime is thus slim to none. So that may be one reason to buy a house with a small yard, so that we can grow flowers and tomatoes and some few vegetables. Time will tell. Houses are expensive in Oslo and also in the nearby suburbs. It is not unusual for prices for average-sized homes to approach a million US dollars (or more). The parselhage in the area of the Gamle Aker church is on a street called Telthusbakken, which is famous for its very old traditional wooden homes. They are lovely old homes that have undergone many renovations, surrounded by beautiful gardens. Their owners take good care of them, but unfortunately when they burn, they burn to the ground, as happened a few years ago with one of the houses. The married couple who owned the house perished in the fire. Also in the vicinity of the parselhage is a restaurant called Akersberget (http://www.akersberget.com/Bilder.html), which was renovated and restored a few years ago after standing as a decrepit old building for nearly as long as I have lived in Oslo.

Greed

I’ve been thinking about money lately. The old saying is that ‘money is the root of all evil’. I understand what that means, but I don’t agree. Money doesn’t have to be the root of all evil if it is used well. It can be the source of much material happiness for many people if used well. Life can be stressful without enough money to pay the bills and other necessary things. Extra money adds some fun to life-- tickets to the opera or to the ballet, or paying off the last of the credit card debt, or taking a trip somewhere—all of these are something to look forward to and to enjoy. And money makes it possible.

The real problem is greed. Greed is the root of all evil. And it does not just have to be greediness for more money. A person can be greedy for power, prestige, success and many other things in addition to money, and that greed can destroy his or her life because he or she lives life as an envious person, always looking at others and wanting what they have, always scrambling, always plotting, always strategizing about the next big thing that will get them what the others have which is what they want. If this type of greed doesn’t lead to evil, I don’t know what will. I know people who will never be happy because they never really ‘see’ their achievements, so that they keep on racing to ‘make it’ until they reach their graves. And they make everyone else around them unhappy. Their greediness for power, prestige and success is the only thing that motivates them. It makes no sense to me and I imagine that it is mostly unpleasant to live with people like this on a daily basis. It certainly is unpleasant to work with people like this each day. These are the people who can never be happy for the successes of others, who can never say to another person—‘Good job’ or ‘Well-done’ or ‘Congratulations’, because to do so would mean that they are somehow diminished. If another person is exalted, they are suddenly worth very little. So they say nothing at all. They are misers in the sense that they withhold praise, compliments, and feedback. Their type of greed leads to stinginess. I think of all the wonderful people I know who have never been stingy with praise, with feedback or with compliments. It is those people who make the world worth living in. They counterbalance the evil of greed.

I read the other day that Art Linkletter, the well-known American radio and TV personality, had died. Shortly before he died he had granted an interview about his life where he had been asked what he considered his greatest achievement. His answer was family. It struck me as quite unusual (and quite nice) that a man as wealthy and powerful as he would answer in this way, but it was a good answer. He and his wife were married for nearly seventy-five years. That by itself is a phenomenal achievement. But what mostly struck me about his answer was how generous it was. It was an inclusive answer. His family shared his life, his successes and his failures. By saying that, he validated them and that is generous. That type of generosity is something you remember throughout your whole life—it is the candle that lights the way when darkness enters our lives.

On the path

Sometimes the puzzle pieces just fall into place, and you ask yourself why you have walked around for months, even years, trying to figure the puzzle out when an answer, the answer, was really just waiting right in front of you. What I do know is that my answer is crystal clear to me right now, and it is just to continue along the path I have begun to walk on. It feels right and deep inside me I know that it is right for me. I feel like skipping along the path. Like Dorothy on her way to meet the wizard of Oz, I will need wisdom, courage, and heart to accompany me. Dorothy wanted to return home to Kansas. I want to find a road into an earlier self that has become a more vocal self. I want to meet her again.

Random events

It was a pleasant evening tonight spent with three good friends—ladies’ night out. Such evenings are always too short, too infrequent, and too interesting. They always leave you wanting more so I guess that is a good thing. I can never get enough of good conversation and interesting discussions.

I walked home from downtown Oslo after dinner. It is usually a pleasant walk that takes about 25 to 30 minutes. It was still light out even though it was around 9:30 pm. About ten minutes from home I saw a young man a short distance ahead of me acting rather strangely. He was standing on a street corner judo kicking and boxing and generally acting agitated. As I passed him he turned and moved towards me, and I heard him say the following in Norwegian—“Alle er falske. Jeg hater dere alle. Skjønner du?” Translated this means—”Everyone is false (fake). I hate you all. Do you understand?” As I walked past him I stepped to the side to avoid being kicked by him, all the while trying to keep my cool, when mostly I just want to start running out of fear. I realized in that moment that he could very well have punched me or kicked me and that the randomness of these sorts of things is what makes life so unpredictable. He wasn’t drunk, but could have been on some type of drug or could have been pumped full of steroids.

All such behavior scares me. I try to avoid it as much as possible—the screaming agitated drunks and drug addicts that hang around the downtown train station, angry sports crowds, aggressive drivers, and people filled with hate whose life-goal is to spew out as much bile as possible. I would like to say I feel sorry for them, because their lives must be miserable, but I don’t. I feel sorry for their victims, the innocent bystanders of their random behavior and random violence, or their families that put up with them. I don’t have much understanding for this type of bad behavior. I never really did and it has intensified over the years. I know that some of my near-panic reactions are based on two earlier incidents in my life that occurred in the Bronx, where I lived for some years and where I went to college. I was nearly attacked in a bathroom of the college chemistry building early in the morning by an unknown man and also late at night in the Grand Concourse subway station. In both cases God was with me and I was ‘saved’ from God knows what by the intervention of other unknown persons who chased the potential attackers away. Those incidents marked me for life. I cannot forget them.

I wish it was possible to know what pushes people over the edge—when they reach the point of no return and turn violent. Then maybe we could try to prevent it from happening. But I will not be one of those people volunteering to help figure out why. I will instead be turning the key in the lock of my house door and shutting and locking the door behind me and thanking God that I can do that—that I can shut out the nonsense and the bad behavior in favor of the peace and quiet of home.

A Fairytale for Modern Times

Once upon a time there was a King, and he had a castle and a large kingdom to lord over. He enjoyed his power but was always looking for ways to increase it. The people working for him did the best jobs they could, whether they were soldiers, blacksmiths, farmers, merchants, medics or clerics. They did their work and were proud of their small contributions to keeping the kingdom and the castle running. The King’s court also had a court jester, a shrewd man who enjoyed his accessibility to the King and the fact that the King liked to be entertained. The King had his advisors who tried to be honest and forthright with the King, but he enjoyed the advice and the sycophancy that the court jester gave him, and rewarded him heartily with riches and advantages that the other workers in the kingdom did not enjoy. But the workers did not complain because the King was not unkind to them. However, the King’s advisors saw that it was best to become like the court jester and soon enough the King was surrounded with many sycophants.

There were several other smaller, well-functioning kingdoms in the surrounding area, and the court jester, knowing the King’s appetite for power, decided to encourage him to try to take power over these smaller kingdoms as well. The advisors agreed. These kingdoms also had their respective kings, but none of these kings were as powerful as the King. They were second-level kings. The court jester and advisors suggested to the King that he take over the other kingdoms not by attacking them but by forming alliances with them where all of them would discuss who would have the power positions after the King had become the lead King over the new and bigger alliance of the different dominions. He would be the lead King because he had the most wealth and the biggest army. The tricky part would be how to convince the other dominions to ally themselves with the King. The court jester suggested that the King emphasize that bigger was better and that there was strength and protection in numbers and that the second-level kings could decide who among them would have the most power as long as the lead King retained his privileges and his wealth. The advisors all nodded their heads in agreement and congratulated the jester and themselves on hatching a brilliant plan. Amazingly enough, the King managed to persuade the other dominions of the advantages of allying themselves with him, and they set about redesigning the new and improved dominion. The workers in each of these dominions wondered a bit about what would happen to them but were told to go about their business and not to worry about the future. So they did just that.

The redesign of the new and improved dominion proceeded over several years. The workers would get periodic updates on how wonderful it all would be when it was finished. The advisors decided that it wasn’t necessary to have duplicate jobs in all the different dominions, so some of the blacksmiths were informed that their services were no longer needed. The same went for farmers and soldiers and merchants and medics and clerics. The displaced workers had nowhere to turn, so many of them became advisors to the advisors and in this way the number of advisors increased to dramatic levels in the space of a few years. But there were fewer soldiers to defend the realm, fewer blacksmiths to shoe the horses, fewer farmers to produce the crops, fewer merchants to sell the goods, and fewer medics and clerics to tend to the sick and dying. The remaining workers began to wonder what would happen to them. They were still told not to worry, but the reassuring messages became fewer and eventually ceased. Productivity and worker morale began to decrease and the King began to worry but the advisors reassured him that everything would be fine if they just continued on the same course. After a few years there were mostly only advisors in the new and improved kingdom and they began to fight for power among themselves over the few remaining blacksmiths, farmers, merchants, clerics and medics. In the meantime the King was warned by a shaman to prepare for an invasion but the King was too preoccupied with his worries to really pay attention. The day the invasion came, the new and improved realm was unprepared, the moat bridges in the respective castles stayed down because no one knew how to raise them anymore, there were no soldiers at their posts because there were no more soldiers or shoed horses to ride out into battle with, there were no medics to help the injured and the dying, and little food to sustain the survivors. The many advisors surrounded the King and begged for his help but the King could not help them, and the advisors could not defend themselves and were slaughtered in great numbers. And so the life of the new and improved realm crashed and burned and it was as though it had never existed.

What Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland, Said

In her commencement address to the 2010 graduates of Fordham University, Dr. McAleese said:
“You exit into a chaotic world. I know that. But I know that it needs leaders. It needs people like you, men and women of integrity, who are determined to do their best to make things better, and at the very least not to make things worse. Ask yourself, as you exit from this famous quadrangle, among whose names do you want to be counted—the givers or the takers? The carers or the careless? The courageous or the cowed? It is, after all, simply a matter of choice. Your choice.”

What Winston Churchill Said

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.


I am easily satisfied with the very best.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

If you are going through hell, keep going.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
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I think we need more people like Winston Churchill in the world. I have a feeling he would have been able to see that 'the emperor was not wearing any clothes' and would have said so.

Change

Another holiday weekend—this time it’s Pentecost. We have off from work tomorrow in honor of Pentecost. I’m not always sure why we celebrate the religious holidays since this is an amazingly secular country, but I’m not complaining—I will take all the free time away from work that I can get these days.

Change is coming. I can feel it. I just need to relax and let it happen instead of trying to control it. I want a change where work is concerned. I have used the past few years preparing for it, sending my wish for change out into the universe as a prayer and hoping for an answer. I believe that I have my answer now, but it will not be easy to make a clean break from the way I have looked at my work for so long. It scares me in one way and exhilarates me in another way. It IS possible to change one’s life even in middle-age.

There are many reasons to stay put in life and to resist change. But I am not sure that one can stop change from happening anyway. We cannot really control ALL aspects of our own lives. I think this is the greatest illusion that has been sold to us during the past twenty or thirty years, that if we do this or that and live this or that way, that we will be able to determine the outcome of such and such a situation. Maybe it does work that way sometimes, but more often than not, luck and timing have played big roles in what happens to us. I am glad that they do.

My mother used to say, when one door closes, another opens. She is right. I am looking towards the new door with great expectations. The door behind me has closed and I cannot go back. I don’t want to go back either.

Ode to childhood

Those days of summers past
When once we traipsed the forest floors
To find the gold the sun had cast
Upon the slumbering yellow flowers.

Oh days of summers past
Flocks of birds so loudly crying,
The ominousness of summer storms,
The thunder loud, the sunlight dying.

Precious days of summers past
Lying on our backs in fields unscathed
Playing along the gurgling brook
That traveled its constant stone worn path.

Remembrances of summers past
Of relatives and friends we had
Spread out before us as repast
In time, to help us on our path.

Those days of summers past
Staring out upon the river
Watching the sun create a path
Of light that seemed to stretch forever.

Such days of summers past
Retrieved in the mind’s eye
Memories that bless and last
A lifetime that age cannot belie.

So many summers come and gone
The linearity of time bears witness
To the bittersweet melody of the song
That life sings--Move on. …..



PM De Angelis
May 2010

Bye Bye Work Ethic

I’m always trying to make sense of my incredibly passive-aggressive workplace, a national hospital (which is a recent huge conglomerate of four Oslo hospitals) that has continually stated for the past several years that it wants to be the primo research hospital, but somehow never quite manages to get to that exalted position because it can never settle on one good philosophy for getting there. Trying to decipher the philosophies behind the decisions made over the past few years has preoccupied me for quite some time. The current philosophy is that in addition to being scientists, we should be accountants, bookkeepers, secretaries, technicians, group leaders, lecturers, teachers, inventors, patent holders and administrative geniuses. This should all be accomplished during the work day which consists of reading and answering a lot of useless emails describing the latest change or new regulation. Ok, before I hear the collective moan from my American friends who tell me how awful the job situation is in America right now, and I know it is, let me just say that the USA may be going through an economic crisis, but the ‘land of the oil money’ is also going through some kind of economic crisis as well. They are also going through a true existential crisis. I really don’t think the politicians know what they want anymore. And it really is no better here in social-democratic Norway than in the good ol’ USA, despite the NY Times articles that are always presenting Norway as such a wonderful country—the land of milk and honey. The milk and honey wells are drying up. There is major downsizing afoot here in the public sector, New Public Management (NPM) is taking over (even though there is ample data showing that this business philosophy does not work), and the emphasis is on efficiency, productivity and on marketing your work and yourself as a product. It’s all about the patents, baby—the more the better. It’s about competition and flying high over the radar. NPM is supposed to increase efficiency but as far as I can see the only thing that has increased is the number of bureaucrats needed to direct the few remaining workers who truly want to work, who still have their work ethic.

A good example of the new complexity associated with NPM is the division of leadership into administrative and professional leadership. A worker now reports to an administrative leader and a professional leader (in essence your real boss because this is the person who has the professional competence to function as a mentor for you). If one is lucky there are just two leaders to report to these days. Some workers now have four administrative bosses (who again all report up-over in the system to each other) whereas one year ago it was sufficient with one leader who tackled the administrative and professional tasks. The logistical problems associated with this are huge and the practical consequences are just confusing. Here’s a good example—a researcher talks to one administrative leader about his or her future and is advised to proceed in one way, however the other administrative leaders each have their takes on the situation and have not talked to the others, so the result is a huge mess. You can get told that you should not seek a research group leader position by one leader, whereas the other one comes into your office asking you if you want to be a group leader. And yet another one is advising you to build up your group this month but half a year ago the same person was telling you to wait a few years to do so and to rather focus on collaboration and teamwork with your current group leader. Is this crazy-making behavior? Yes, it is. Are these leaders aware of their inconsistent behaviors? I don’t think that they are. That’s the tragedy.

Thus, the goals are always moving targets. A few years ago, it was easier to take aim and to hit the target than it is now. My question now is more along the lines of—what are the goals really? At least a few years ago it seemed as though the goals were still to work hard and to produce good research work. Now I don’t know anymore.

I think reality TV thinking has invaded the mindsets of the public sector. Everyone is expected to be a star and to perform on cue. The problem of course is that this way of thinking IS the problem. There can only be a few stars, and the rest of us simply have to make do with the meager talents we have. Unfortunately, the biggest proponents of NPM are researchers who were never very good at research but who got promoted to cushy administrative positions, learning economy and management along the way in their endless leadership courses, and directing the productive researchers on how research should be done, all the while cutting the number of research positions available. The problem is one of envy if you ask me—the non-productive researchers who are now the administrators are envious of the researchers who actually DO the job they were hired to do—research, guiding students, writing articles, and publishing. I have a small problem believing that you can be a research hospital without doing research. What’s next—research outsourcing? That’s going to cost the country a pretty penny.

Jimmy Carter once used the word malaise to describe the feeling in America at the time he was president, if I remember correctly. That is what is happening to many researchers I know here—they are experiencing a malaise that is leading to a lethargy that will eventually be impossible to reverse. The desire to work hard and to do your best is disintegrating at a rapid rate. I understand why.

All things Scandinavian

Our connection to Scandinavia as children was limited to my uncle Hans who came from Denmark (he was married to my father’s sister and they settled in Maryland) and to Hans Christian Andersen, the children’s story writer from Denmark. My uncle used to make us pancakes for breakfast when we visited our cousins. I don’t remember exactly how they were made or even if they were really Danish, but he sprinkled them with sugar when they came out of the frying pan instead of serving them with maple syrup and that made them different—not American. They were excellent.

We read a lot of Andersen’s fairy tales as children. ‘The Little Match Girl’ comes to mind—you would have to search very hard to find a sadder story than that one. ‘The Little Mermaid’ story also stands out. When I finally saw the Little Mermaid sculpture on the waterfront in Copenhagen, I thought it was lovely but actually quite small, not at all as I had imagined. I guess I thought it would be larger than life.

I don’t remember anything particular that stood out about Norway, Finland or Iceland when I was a child. I don’t think I had heard much about Norway before I moved here. I paid more attention to small news items about Norway once I met my husband-to-be, but before that Norway could have been Denmark or vice versa for all I really knew about it. I do remember that Continental Airlines and SAS formed an international partnership in 1988 and that meant that SAS would fly into and out of Newark airport in NJ. The prime minister of Norway at that time, Gro Harlem Brundtland (a woman), was pictured in the NJ Star Ledger newspaper visiting Newark airport for the celebration ceremony, if memory serves me correctly. I do remember Sweden being held up as a very secular and liberal country in the USA, especially when it came to filmmaking. The Swedes stretched all the censorship rules. Vincent Canby reviewed movies for The New York Times for many years, and I can remember that he wrote about the controversies connected with some of the Swedish movies that made it to America when I was a pre-teenager and teenager. But I don’t remember the names of the films. And of course there was the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, but I never saw any of his films until I was an adult, and most of them I have seen while living here in Norway. I remember hearing about the Vikings, but they never really interested me that much. What I now know is that the Vikings were from Denmark, Sweden and Norway (and even Greenland), not just from one country.

In 1985 I saw the film ‘Out of Africa’ and became fascinated by the Danish writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and her life. Visiting her house in Rungsted in Denmark was one of the first things I wanted to do when we first visited the country. I also read her biography by Judith Thurman (‘Isak Dinesen—The Life of a Storyteller’) which I can recommend. We combined that visit with a trip to Roskilde (in 1991) to attend one of the biggest annual European four-day rock concerts. That trip was a mixture of good and bad happenings—the concert started out well, we had pitched our tent and were enjoying ourselves. Then about two days into the concert, all hell broke loose. A major storm with high winds and pelting rain hit that area of Denmark. My last semi-comfortable memory before the storm really hit was listening to Billy Idol at midnight sing ‘White Wedding’ under one of the big tents. The following days saw us sinking into mud up to our knees and watching our parked car sink down about as far as that as well. But seeing Karen Blixen’s home did save the trip from being a complete washout.

My father, who was a great reader, was a fan of the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. I have not yet really explored her writing, but I know that she converted to Catholicism during her adult life, and that fascinated my father. I have read the works of other Norwegian writers and poets—the novelists Knut Hamsun and Sigurd Hoel and the poet Rolf Jacobsen. They are definitely worth reading.

Norwegian Independence Day

May 17th is Norway’s Independence Day (Constitution Day), and the Norwegians celebrate it in style. It is an interesting day to observe and be a part of, especially if you are a tourist, because it is one of those days in Norway when nearly everyone you meet is happy and in a party frame of mind. There are huge crowds in the streets, with people turning out to watch the parade of schools and other organizations that march past the Royal Castle at the top of Karl Johan Street, where the King and Queen stand on the balcony with other family members and wave to the crowds and to the marchers. The high school students (‘russ’) usually round out the parade, dressed in their red or blue outfits and hats (the color is determined by the type of studies they pursue, e.g. blue means they have studied business). The parade is usually finished by midday/early afternoon. Later in the day, people gather for barbecues and parties and when the weather is nice you can hear the music from the different parties blaring out over the city because all the windows are open. We ate lunch out today at Martin’s Kro--der maten er go'-- (Martin’s inn/pub--where the food is good) in a town called Gjelleråsen after driving around the suburbs of Oslo for a while. The restaurant was packed with people.

Women and men alike dress in traditional costumes (bunads). Interest in buying and wearing them has resurged during the past ten years. My husband’s family gave me a bunad when I first moved here. It had belonged to my husband’s mother who passed on many years ago. I wore it at our marriage in 1991 and have used it since at formal parties, dinners and weddings. It is worth quite a lot of money together with the silver jewelry that accompanies it. I don’t use it as much now as I did earlier—no specific reason, just that perhaps the feeling of novelty has diminished somewhat with the passing years. I will wear it again, that is certain—there will be future occasions for that.

Fireworks are not really part of the Norwegian Independence Day celebrations, in contrast to America’s Independence Day celebrations. They have mostly always been a part of New Year’s Eve celebrations for as long as I have been here and before that. Fireworks displays aren’t organized by individual towns and cities. It is rather individual people who buy them and set them off. I used to love ushering in the New Year standing outdoors with a glass of champagne in one hand and a sparkler in the other, while my husband and his friends set off different fireworks. My stepdaughter had to have fireworks when she was younger and that was always fun. We don’t buy them anymore now that she is grown up, but we still like to go out and watch them fill the skies each New Year’s eve. But as is the case with so many other things, the numbers of accidents resulting from their use have increased and thus the laws are changing to forbid the purchase and use of personal fireworks.

The American Women’s Club in Oslo arranges a July 4th Independence Day celebration every year in Frogner Park. I went there one year with my husband and my American friend and her daughter. It was interesting but it did not compare to the celebrations and fireworks that I grew up with in Tarrytown NY. I am not sure what I expected really, but probably nothing could have lived up to my expectations or to my memories of childhood celebrations. Perhaps it felt artificial in some way—not the real thing. In any case, we have not celebrated it that way since.

I never thought much about what it meant to be an American until I lived abroad. I think most Americans, if they get the chance, should live abroad for a while. It opens your eyes to so many things and is a great learning experience. It also opens your eyes to how the USA is perceived in other parts of the world and believe me, that has not always been a pleasant experience. I will write more about that in future posts.

An Ocean Apart

There is a vast ocean separating Norway from the country of my birth. I am fascinated by the globe in my living room that shows me the continents and the oceans--Europe where I live now and America where I was born. In my mind’s eye I see the ocean and then Greenland as some kind of marker point. When I fly from Oslo to NY, I always know that when we are over Greenland, we are close to America. The marvels of air travel that get you from one point to another in a short amount of time. An eight-hour plane flight pales in comparison to a one-week boat trip and I am forever thankful that I live in the age of jet travel.

I have been flying back to NY once a year for the past twenty years. I could not imagine my life without those annual trips. I call them my ‘doses of America or doses of NY’. I usually travel during the summer months, mostly because that is when everyone I know has vacation, but also because the weather is usually warm and that is something I can count on. By the time the summer rolls around in Norway, I am usually more than ready for my annual dose of America. I am now a tourist in the country of my birth, and now when I travel there it seems to me that everyone is friendly, service-minded, and easy to deal with. My good friends gently remind me of all the screaming sessions I had when I lived in NY with non-service-minded people and with car drivers who simply did not understand that civility made road life much easier. I know that my friends are right, but I really don’t want them to burst my bubble. My sister and brother will tell you what an aggressive driver I used to be many years ago. I remember it more as defending my little turf—competing for road space with the taxi drivers in Manhattan was no piece of cake. I guess it’s true what people say, bad memories fade with age and all you remember really are the good things. Not completely true of course but I know it has happened to me when it comes to remembering my life in America. I see the good things about America now that I no longer live there. The irony is not lost on me. I was an avid critic of my country when I lived there, just as I am of Norway now that I live here.

I cannot imagine how it must have been for my ancestors who left their countries to immigrate to America, who knew that the likelihood of ever seeing their families again was minimal. They were truly courageous souls-- all of them. My grandparents on my father’s side emigrated from Italy; my grandfather from Barano on the island of Ischia (off the coast of Naples) and my grandmother from Caserta, a town not far from Naples. Neither of them ever returned to Italy. I have been to both Barano and to Caserta, and I do understand, after having seen them, why they both left. Ischia is a beautiful island for rich European tourists, and Caserta was one of the poorest places I have ever seen in recent years. Of course it was different at the beginning of the 1900s when they both emigrated. I imagine that Caserta was even poorer then than it is now. I know that my grandfather left Ischia because there was nothing to do job-wise except to become a fisherman. He wanted to see the world, so he became a sailor, and after that he studied pharmacy in Brooklyn and opened his own drug store in lower Tarrytown. My grandmother came from a land-owning family, so she was not poor. I believe that she moved to NY to marry, but I am not sure it was my grandfather for whom she moved. My mother’s parents were born in the USA, but her grandparents came from Ireland (Counties Kildare, Adare, and Clare) and Aberdeen, Scotland. I have not yet been to Ireland, but I am looking forward to doing so within the next year or two.


FOR MY GRANDMOTHER

Was I not a pilgrim?
Charting a rough course
To a new world?
Those days when I was young
And my heart leapt on hearing your voice.
Your words gave it life.
I forged a new path, a harder one--
Road to my soul.
Would I gain entrance to the castle
And its many rooms? The goal--
To seek, to know, to love.

What is my story, what can I tell you?
I was a pilgrim soul
To him who set me on the path of seeking.
I followed after him, left my home for his.
Wounded young.
I loved deeply, without measure.
There was no war, it simply went the way
Of all things, we parted.
But he is the one I remember, he was the first
To touch my soul, to light the flame,
To blow it out.

An ordinary Friday in an ordinary life

I am writing this post today at home (a day off from work) and listening to the birds sing outside my window. It is spring in the middle of May but the temperature is no more than about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s like that over most of Europe and my husband told me that it wasn’t much warmer in NY. I always envy my friends in NY when I hear that the temperatures are in the 80s there while we sit here and feel the chill of a never-ending winter. Some people may like winter, the snow, the cold, and the feel of skis on their feet. They look forward to it. Not me. I look forward to lazy summer days, humidity, slowing down because the outside temperature is so hot that it forces you to, barbecues, hanging out with friends, being out on the boat and just relaxing in the sun. Winter is not a relaxing season. Too many pieces of clothing and accessories that need to be donned. Summer is relaxing—less clothing, sandals or bare feet, the feeling of being unfettered by excess clothing. We need summer in order to get the warmth into our bones, in order to slow down and to prepare ourselves for a new winter. I know I am this way and I am sure that there are others like me. My mother never used to complain about the weather. She used to go out walking in all kinds of weather, and was known as a great walker in the town she lived in (Tarrytown NY). I remember feeling irritated sometimes as children when she told us not to let the weather bother us. She was right, of course, but I find that I cannot just ignore the weather. I get irritated if the day is cloudy when it was predicted sunny, and cold if warm was predicted. I feel cheated out of something, I’m just not sure of what!

I have become like most Norwegians and Oslo-ites. At the first hint of a warm spring sun, they’re outside in droves. They leave work early and find their way outside to cafes and outdoor restaurants and activities. I do the same now, because I know that I cannot take the sun and warmth for granted. It may be just a one-day happening and then you need to take advantage of that immediately. Tanning salons are popular here in the winter. I have never been to one, but I am starting to understand why people use them. Thank God for the electrically-heated floors in our bathrooms—it is so nice to step out of the shower and onto a warm floor. The bathrooms are always warm. It feels great on a cold day.

But back to the birds. They carry on their business, unaffected by the temperature, the lack of fully-budded leaves on the trees, the chill in the air. They have a goal, to raise a family and by God, they are doing it, rain or shine, cold or warm. Something to learn from them, perhaps. On gray and chilly days like these, when I know that it is SUPPOSED to be warm and spring-like, I just want to go back to bed, sleep and wake up when the temperatures are behaving as they should and when spring has finally decided to appear for good.

But is this cold weather the result of global warming? Or the result of the volcanic eruptions and resulting ash clouds from Iceland? No one can really say for sure. Certainly not the weather scientists. If ever there was a pseudo-science, meteorology must be it. Critics of psychology say it is a pseudo-science, but how is meteorology any better? Just follow the weather reports for a month and you will see how wrong the meteorologists often are. You could play the stock market and win money about as often as their predictions are correct.

May is not a merry month in academia

The merry month of May? Not if you work in academia and have to write research grants in order to run your laboratory. I don’t know what it’s like to write grants in America these days--it’s been over twenty years since I worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and watched my bosses scramble to get their grants finished before the deadline. I hear from some of my American friends and colleagues that the situation has become more difficult there. I DO know what it is like to write research grants in Norway; it has definitely become more difficult here. I have been writing them for the past ten years and sending them out to the Norwegian Cancer Society, the Norwegian Research Council and the Health Organization South-East each year. It’s no fun. It’s not just that it’s hard work; it’s often pointless work, because the grants either don’t get funded or they receive just enough of a good score so that you get some money to buy consumables to run your lab frugally for one year. But you don’t get support for students and without students you cannot build a research group. It’s a catch-22 situation—without students you cannot build a research group, and without a well-funded research group you cannot attract students because the students end up being recruited by the larger research groups which have the money to support the students.

The granting system here has changed dramatically since the 1990s, in part due to the major mergers between several hospitals that resulted in a huge increase in the amount of administrative personnel needed to run these conglomerates. That is the major trend these days here in the “country of oil money”—make all organizations bigger, increase the number of administrators, decrease the number of scientists who get funding, get rid of all technical positions, focus on Centers of Excellence, discourage private research donations, and look to the federal government for all forms of support. The focus is on supporting only the best scientists, which is not a bad philosophy generally. The only problem with it is that there are not many other options for those scientists who don’t quite make the grade. Norway is fast becoming a nation of scientific ‘advisors’ and ‘senior advisors’. In other words, if you cannot do research, you can advise the government on how research should be done. You can design research policies. You can strategize and attend meetings about strategizing. It all looks great on paper. Or if you don’t want to be an advisor, you can work for drug companies doing sales and marketing, because most of the drug companies do not invest in R&D, in other words, there are no research facilities on-site and thus no positions for bench scientists.

Why is this approach now a problem? Because Norway is turning out PhD students at a tremendous rate. There are very few academic and/or research jobs for all these highly-educated students. But that doesn’t seem to bother the politicians or even the university leaders, who are simply interested in pushing through a lot of students because that translates into more money for the university.

So back to the merry month of May. Not. May is always a reminder of how academic life is a crap shoot. You can write your grant, submit it and hope for the best. Nine times out of ten your grant won’t be funded. So next year you write another one and get the same response. Some people would call that banging your head against a wall. I have to say that after nearly ten years of writing grants to fund myself and to pay for some few laboratory consumables, I now agree.