A little update

As many of you know, I write poetry and have been doing so since I was a teenager way back when. I am always sending poems out to different magazines and journals as part of the conventional route to publishing one’s creative work in the hope that one of them might find an editor who likes them enough to publish them. Right now my poem Pardon is in the hands of The New Yorker poetry editor. I am expecting a ‘no’ but hoping for a ‘yes’. Come to think of it, the entire submission process and the involved waiting for a response remind me of academic science. We send our articles to different journals and most of the time they get rejected after a long evaluation period. But sometimes they get in on the first try. So I can hope for that too for my little poem. The New Yorker is like the journal Nature or Science for academic scientists—the best in its field, so that to have a poem published there would mean a lot. But I also have put together a small collection of my poems and called it Parables and Voices. I did this through CreateSpace, which I have written about before in this blog. It is a subsidiary of Amazon and does a great job of letting new authors get a foot in the door, so to speak. The resulting books can be made available for purchase on Amazon and that is pretty amazing. Your book can also be distributed to other sellers for a nominal fee that allows for increased distribution of your book to online sellers and other bookstores. Parables and Voices is available here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Parables-Voices-Collection-Poems-1973-2009/dp/1452838763/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298989255&sr=1-1

The front and back covers as well as the internal formatting are the work of http://fotoisphoto.com/. I have worked with this company before on my previous book and am very happy with their work. I recommend them.

I am following Malcolm Gladwell’s (the author of Outliers) recommendation—get your ten thousand hours under your belt in whatever field you want to achieve some measure of success. So for me, that means just keep on writing. I am hoping for a little success as a writer. I’ve had a little success as an academic scientist (published over eighty articles as first author/co-author). But I am realistic; I know how competitive it is out there. Just like academic science. Some days I hope for more feedback about my creative writing ventures, other days not. It depends on the kind of day, maybe even on the kind of week I’m having. Basically it boils down to this—can I take yet another rejection emotionally? Between academic science and creative writing, I understand that I will be living with rejection on a more standard basis. I’ve simply got to toughen my skin and keep on trucking. 

Overcoming the 'jantelov'

When I first moved to Norway, I often heard the expression ’du skal ikke tro at du er noe’ (you shall not believe that you are something). It was often mentioned in discussions about successful people or individuals who had achieved something great and how these same people could be ‘put down’ by others in society with this expression. Some of my Norwegian colleagues warned me about the ‘jantelov’, a mentality/behavior that punishes individual achievement or individuals who break away from the pack and achieve success on their own. I found it hard to understand this mentality until I understood that it has envy as its basis. The jantelov is basically envy in action. So that if someone says to you that you should not believe that you are somebody, you can rest assured that they are envious of you and of your achievements, and that you are in fact ‘somebody’. What you can also be sure of is that you have actually achieved something, if you were at all in doubt. And you could be very easily in doubt about your merits in Norway. It can be very confusing to figure out if you have achieved success in Norway because you will seldom hear someone say to you ‘great job’. You will hear that you did a ‘grei jobb’ (ok job), or you might hear that ‘den var god’ (it was good), but the kind of high-fiving, hand-slapping, enthusiastic ‘way to go’ or ‘yippee, great job’ or ‘terrific’ that you might have heard in the USA, you won’t hear here. Often you will not hear anything at all—in other words, no feedback, or you will hear that you could have done a better job or that you could have done it differently. The latter is the most common. The behavior is very confusing, especially when you know intuitively that you have done a terrific job. But the jantelov exists in other places as well, just under different names. There are some people I knew when I was growing up in the USA that would hesitate to praise you or your accomplishments for fear that the praise would go to your head. It seemed to be part of child-rearing for some adults and teachers. So this mentality also exists outside of Scandinavia. But it seems to have been honed to a sharp finish here. If you are the type of person who relies on positive feedback to progress in a job, you will be disappointed. You need to learn to trust your instincts about your successes and to ignore the negative or confusing comments. Not so easy, I can tell you.

What is envy, really? I looked it up in the dictionary and it is defined as a ‘feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, or possessions’. What then is jealousy? According to the dictionary, envy and jealousy are closely related. Envy has more to do with longing for the success or advantages that another person has, whereas jealousy has more to do with resenting that another person has that success or advantage instead of you. So I guess it’s human to feel envy and jealousy at times. Everyone has been envious or jealous at one point or another. The key is to not let them get the upper hand, because if they do, you end up living your life in ‘reaction’ to the person or people you envy or are jealous of. You will ignore your own individuality and focus entirely on another’s. You will ultimately diminish yourself and your own creativity because you will spend most of your time trying to imitate another person or badmouthing him or her if the former doesn’t work. It is said that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ (attributed to Charles Caleb Colton) and that ‘flattery will get you nowhere’ (proverb). The latter is the truth. There is no point in imitating another person out of envy or jealousy. If you imitate another person in an effort to learn from him or her at the start of a personal venture, this is harmless enough and may help you on your own path to success. But it hardly pays to do this constantly. For one thing, you will alienate the person you are imitating, and then you will ultimately understand that you lack the creativity and competence to continue down this path. It is a pity that more people don’t realize that they have their own individual talents that are just waiting to be explored, that they don’t have to imitate others to feel important. But sometimes out of fear, people will not explore them because it is safer not to. If you don’t explore them, you can live safely within the crowd, you can maintain your anonymity, you don’t have to stand out. But if you never step outside the crowd, you will diminish yourself routinely and experience more envy than a person who has at least ‘tried on’ his or her individuality, even if he or she has not accomplished great things by doing so. ‘Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all’ is a good motto. So perhaps the cure for the jantelov is to step outside of the crowd more, to be an individual, to let your light shine, to try--and not worry about failing. With all this activity, you won’t have time to be envious or jealous. And that is the key to a happy life, forgetting about what the others think or will think of you, and basking in the warmth of your efforts and small successes in love, work and daily life. 

Oslo winter scenes

Lamplight in snow

Snow patterns

Ice art

Small is better

Many years ago, my sister and my father read a book called Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher. Both of them recommended the book to me, but I did not read it at that time, and still haven’t done so. I could imagine doing so now. It’s taken me an entire work life to get to the point where I viscerally understand that bigger is not better, growth is not necessarily good, and productivity without humanity is soulless and demoralizing. I no longer see the point of huge corporations and conglomerates. I have to admit that when I was younger, I looked forward to joining a large company, to becoming loyal to it, to representing it, and to feeling safe within its walls. I looked forward to becoming part of a corporate family. I viewed small companies or self-driven businesses as risky places to work, because there was no guarantee of a stable income or even of a future. And maybe at the time I began my work career, large companies were stable and humanistic organizations for the most part, but thirty years later, it is clear to me that this is not the case. But considering the employment problems my father had working for large corporations during the 1960s and 70s, I’d have to say that I was just naïve thirty years ago, and thought perhaps that my traverse through the business world would be a much different experience than his was. To some extent that has been true. I have not suffered unemployment the way my father did. But I have experienced firsthand what it is like to be a number in a huge system that does not really care about its employees. I did not end up in the business world per se. Although I briefly considered a business career, science won out and I ended up as a scientist working in large hospitals, first in New York City and now in Oslo. The seven years I spent working for the research institute at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, a private hospital, were among the best work years I have ever had. I was proud to work there and I will always have those memories. I never felt like just a number in a system or like a nameless employee. I work now as a staff scientist in a medical department at a large hospital corporation in Oslo, which became a huge conglomerate following the merger of four separate city hospitals, all of which are public sector institutions at different locations. This was a political directive—of course the politicians know best. I don’t know if the private versus public sector aspect is the major difference between the two hospitals in terms of my experience of them. Both of them are large hospitals. All I can say is that working for a huge public hospital has become an exercise in dealing with an organization that is so huge that it no longer has any overview over individual employees nor does it really care about them. We are numbers in a huge system and we got lost in it a long time ago. The merger of four city hospitals was supposed to improve patient services and care, cut costs, centralize competence to specific areas, and reduce administration. It has not accomplished any of these things. Perhaps it is too soon to try to measure the success of the merger, I don’t really know. All I know is that hospital administration has grown by leaps and bounds. Costs have soared. Everything has gotten bigger. There has been growth. We measure productivity and effectiveness. We write progress reports. We will be required to participate in psychosocial evaluations of our workplace environment that will result in more reports that will be filed with the personnel department and perhaps studied by a doctoral student at some point. When we need to order an item for the lab, the actual ordering process requires the involvement of at least three to four people, whereas ten years ago we could pick up the phone and order it directly or send a fax to do the same (exactly one person was involved, the person doing the ordering). We receive monthly overviews of our budgets now that very few people actually understand. I don’t understand them. Negative values in one column mean that we have unused money and positive values in another column mean that we have spent money. But the reverse is true if we look at another section of the table. My budget deficit grows larger each month due to the fact that money appropriated for my salary has been coming from the wrong account. I have reported this mistake to my superiors at least three times, and each time they have tried to correct the mistake with the accounting department. But the mistake is still there each month. There is growth; my budget deficit gets larger. But I’m not doing anything to make it larger; it’s growing by itself. I’m not ordering anything because I don’t know how much money I actually have anymore. The other day I noticed another mistake, this time having to do with my job classification. I am a scientist with professor competence (since November 2007); this corresponds to competence class 9. I informed my superiors in 2007 that I had achieved professor competence. I should be in competence class 9. But no, I am in competence class 8, scientist with a PhD. This mistake was corrected in January 2011 and then uncorrected in February 2011. No one informed me why it was changed. No one cares enough to do so. I don’t know who to inform about it anymore, since I’m not sure that anyone even cares about a ‘miniscule’ little problem like this. The problem is that a lot of us have been placed in the wrong competence classes and this affects salary levels. No one seems to care. When I was a board member for my scientists’ union, these were the issues I was trying to correct and deal with, until the union leader for the hospital conglomerate decided to harass his board members to the point where half of the board quit, myself included. He worked against us instead of for us. And so I ask, with ‘friends’ like this, who needs enemies? It is yet another example of how the system is imploding.

Everything feels too big now, and all I feel is miniscule. I am insignificant to the system. It doesn’t care about me, and I no longer care about it. I don’t know what it stands for anymore, and I have no idea of its goal. If someone could tell me that I’d be glad. But it wouldn’t change my views. I want a smaller environment now, a more personal one. If I was going to work for another company, I’d want one boss to relate to, not three or four and I’d want to have one name or at most two names of people who could help me when I had a problem or a question. I wouldn’t want to be just a number in a soulless organization. The problem is that I’ve run out of steam. I don’t want to start over somewhere else, unless it was to start my own little company. And it would be a little company. At this point, I’d be happiest being my own boss, maybe working with one or two other people, happily being of service to whoever needed my help. I wouldn’t have to delude myself that my loyalty to a conglomerate would be rewarded, because my loyalty would be to myself and my little organization. Small is better. I’m convinced of that now. It’s better because then people matter. I would matter, the few people I worked with would matter, and that would be enough. Maybe this will happen, who knows. In the meantime, I try in the best possible way to be human in an inhuman system. I help those who need my help. I am honest when asked for advice. I don’t spout the politically-correct rhetoric. I support those who are lower than me in the system. But I wonder what will happen when the implosion is complete. I hope I’m somewhere else when it happens. Somewhere where those around me believe in small is beautiful, small is better. 

Builders of Empires

Men of science

Builders of empires

Politicians to rival

The great ones of past ages

Builders of teams

Basking in the sun of recognition

Built on the backs of peons

Currying favor with society’s princes

Centers of excellence abound

Politicians and communicators

Traversing the universe of universities

Moving out into the beyond

Status-seeking stars

In a universe of black holes

Waiting to pull them into

The vastness of nothingness

Oh men of science

Oh builders of empires

Oh star-seekers

Build your universes

Ensure your legacies

Paula M De Angelis

copyright 2011 

Scrap bag of ticket stubs

I save my ticket stubs from the different concerts, plays, ballets and films I attend during each year. I started doing that when my husband and I moved to San Francisco in 1993; there were so many interesting things to see and do and it became a way for me to remember all of the places we in fact visited during our year there. I would venture to say that I have a ‘scrapbook’ of ticket stubs. They are however not organized in a book, but rather are stored in a plastic baggie. Let’s call it a scrap bag. Believe it or not, I do dig into it from time to time. I recently got a question from two friends who could not remember if we had been to the cinema together during 2010 (in fact none of us could remember doing so, but we did remember talking about doing so, and then we got confused and wondered if we did in fact end up at the cinema). I consulted my scrap-bag to find out. I quickly found out that I have seen a number of films during the past year (but none of them with these two friends): Black Swan; Hereafter; Another Year; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—part 1; Red; You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger; The Ghost Writer; Alice in Wonderland; Shutter Island; It’s Complicated; Fantastic Mr. Fox; Where the Wild Things Are; Sherlock Holmes. This does not include the films I have seen on our cable TV channels—more recent films that I never got a chance to see when they were playing in the theaters.

I started keeping track of all the films I have seen when I was a teenager. I think the first film I ever saw (sneaked in to see) was Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy from 1972. I was hooked after that experience, and started to write down all the films I had seen. By the time I was twenty I think I had seen close to four hundred movies. I stopped writing them down after that, and I didn’t save ticket stubs either at that time. Going to the movies was just what you did when we were young—out with friends, on a date, and so on. There was no cable TV, no Netflix, or video/DVD rental stores to supply us with films on demand. So you went to the movies when they came out because that was your chance to see those films. I read Vincent Canby’s movie reviews in The New York Times religiously; he was a terrific and provocative movie reviewer. You just knew he loved the movie world. According to Wikipedia, he ‘became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there’. What a wonderful job that must have been, and what a job in and of itself. Think about it, at the time he started reviewing movies there was no Internet, no Google--no information at your fingertips. If he needed to check on any facts, he had to spend a lot of time searching for them or tracking them down. If I want to find information on an actor or a film or a TV show, I go to my favorite movie website—Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com. It is a mecca for movie lovers. I can surf there for hours. But the point is that I find what I’m looking for within a few minutes.

Charles Bronson was one of my favorite actors from that time in my life—the actor of Death Wish fame, but also of The Mechanic and Mr. Majestyk. And does anyone remember Jan Michael Vincent (The Mechanic, Buster and Billie, White Line Fever)? He was popular with us too. Richard Thomas of the Waltons fame has a horror film to his credit (e.g. You’ll Like My Mother). The actress Sian Barbara Allen was also popular (with me at least)—she starred with Richard Thomas in You’ll Like My Mother and ended up as his love interest on The Waltons; they apparently were romantically involved at that time. It was somehow thrilling to even come across that little tidbit of information in a teen fan magazine of one sort or another—some gossip from the movie world. Now it seems as though the world revels in every nano-particle of information they can get about celebrities. We’ve gone from a scarcity of information to information overload. But I’ll take the latter as long as I can sort through what is useful. I love the fact that any and all movie information is available at my fingertips these days. But I still need my ticket stubs to remind me that I was actually there in the theater watching the films. 

2 Sisters Designs

I'm plugging a new venture today--a joint venture between two sisters who live on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean--my sister and me. We have started an online inspirational greeting card and poster site and will be selling our cards and posters there. Please visit us at the following:
http://2sistersdesigns.wordpress.com/

Welcome to us, and hopefully you'll find something to your liking! We're open to all suggestions and feedback. Thank you for your interest.

An extraordinary sunrise on an ordinary Saturday

I woke up early this morning and when I glanced outside my kitchen window, I saw this sunrise—inspirational. I’ve never seen one quite like this before—a perfect cross effect. Since I always have my camera handy, I took a few photos. It was a peaceful way to start the day. It was otherwise an enjoyable ordinary Saturday spent doing almost nothing—just some shopping for food and house items at the Alnabru shopping center. We went there because there is a delicatessen that sells Spanish cold cuts; it also serves lunch (bocadillos with Spanish Manchego cheese or chorizo—heavenly) and we enjoy going there. Pleasant to be out shopping at Alnabru actually—the day had a touch of spring in it—the sun felt warm and a lot of people were out. I always enjoy watching others out having a good time especially when I know that I am doing so as well. It’s always nice to have reaffirmed that life’s little pleasantries often involve the little things, like eating lunch out or just wandering about window-shopping, as long as there is no stress involved. And there wasn’t today, maybe because the day started with an extraordinary sunrise that cast a spell of peace over the day.

The role of a lifetime

Yesterday I wrote a post about the definition of success, and then last night I went to see a movie that deals with the topic of success in a rather bizarre way--Black Swan, a film about what it takes to reach the top in the dance world. You might say that it is a film about what it takes to be the winner at all costs, but it is just as much about what happens to the losers in the competitive world of ballet. Mostly it is about the psychological disintegration of a talented but passionless young ballet dancer, Nina (played by Natalie Portman), who desperately wants the role of a lifetime—the coveted role of the White Swan/Black Swan in the new production of Swan Lake. She is a technically-perfect dancer who cannot seem to let go and give her role the passion it requires, whereas the woman whom she perceives as her rival, Lily (played by Mila Kunis), while not a technically-perfect dancer, is a passionate and free-spirited one. Lily is everything Nina is not; she is the ‘fantasy’ girl of teenage years, especially for the wall-flower types--cool, a party-girl, a flirt, and a seductress. She is unafraid of authority and of her peers. Nina is attracted to her and fantasizes about being with her. Nina on the other hand is virginal, repressed, afraid of her feelings, introverted, cowed, and immature, and of course she admires Lily’s free-spiritedness at the same time that she realizes that Lily is after ‘her’ role. The overwhelming pressure to succeed, as well as the perceived extreme competition coupled with Erica’s (Nina’s mother, played by Barbara Hershey) overbearing and controlling behavior toward her daughter, is too much for her and she ‘cracks’. The film’s portrayal of her mental disintegration borders on the grotesque—the obsession with her body, her scratching that leads to bloody wounds on her back, fingernails that need to be cut so that she doesn’t scratch herself, toenails that are cracked and bloody, and so on. When the former White Swan, Beth (played by Winona Ryder) is pushed out of her role due to her age, she deliberately walks out into the street and gets hit by a car. She ends up in the hospital with injured legs. Nina visits her, and while Beth is sleeping, Nina takes a look at the damage to her legs and recoils in horror. The film does a good job at showing just how dependent ballet dancers are on a functioning body—legs, arms, feet, hands, toes, etc. Without any one of them, a dancer cannot perform well. So the obsession with the body is understandable. But the film also has Nina pursued by a kind of evil ‘double’, which is a jolting experience at times when she appears (shades of The Grudge—also in the scene where Nina’s bones start to crack and she ends up deformed-looking). Again, I won’t spoil the film for you by giving away the different events or the ending. I will say that it is a good film, albeit a demanding one to watch. But I did not think it was a great film, and I am surprised that so many critics thought it was. It could have been a great film, but it was too disjointed in parts and it could not make up its mind whether it wanted to be a horror/thriller film or a dramatic film. It opted to be a bit of both and for me it didn’t quite do both well. I would have liked more focus on the relationship between ‘stage’ mother Erica (who was a former dancer who gave up dancing when she had her daughter) and Nina, because that to me was one of the most interesting relationships in the film. It was clear from the way Erica behaved that she was unsure about whether she wanted Nina to achieve success. It seemed as though she would have preferred that her daughter ‘failed’ like she had done. I would have liked a bit more insight into Beth’s life. How was it possible that a top dancer in a top dance company was so unaware that her years at the top were limited? How could she not have prepared for that eventuality? That seemed unrealistic to me. Both Erica and Beth were portrayed as the losers, and I would have liked to have known more about them. I also did not think that the lesbian scene between Nina and Lily added much to the film. I didn’t find it offensive; I just thought it was unnecessary. The scene of the two of them kissing in the taxi would have been enough to give us the general idea that this is what Nina wanted, what woke her passion. I would have preferred a more realistic and dramatic exploration of this aspect of Nina’s personality. Overall, I would perhaps have liked the film better if it had been a more realistic story of a ballet dancer’s life instead of a horror film about a repressed ballet dancer’s life. I was reminded of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion because it also dealt with a sexually-repressed young woman who goes insane. I think Repulsion is a better film than Black Swan. Watching the completely-repressed and frigid Catherine Deneuve’s breakdown was disturbing, but at least we understood that her actions were real—she really did kill the men who came into the apartment, and her condition led her to imagine all sorts of bizarre things, like the sequence where she walks down the apartment hallway and sees hands coming out of the walls to touch and grab her. Repulsion was a genuinely scary film in the same way that Psycho was—they were horror films. I would have liked to have understood the ending of Black Swan—in order to have some kind of closure. It would also have defined the film better for me. But there are some beautiful moments in the film—when Nina and Lily dance or just listening to the incredible music of Tchaikovsky. These make the film worth seeing. And Natalie Portman will probably win a well-deserved Oscar. But I don’t know if the film itself will win for Best Film. 

The definition of success

I’ve been thinking about the definition of success lately. It’s a subject that has always interested me, and then a friend loaned me the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. He is the author of the earlier books The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. I am nearly finished with the book and I have to say it’s one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. The author has a way of drawing you into his world; he is a good storyteller, and that makes him a good author. He is also a best-selling author, in other words, a successful author, and I have to wonder as he wrote this book, if he wasn’t wondering a bit about what made him so successful. His books fill a void—call it the void of interesting heretofore unknown facts that become wildly-interesting stories—possibly because he weaves those facts into a coherent story. He sees synergies and connections in those facts that others don’t see. I’d call him a true researcher because of his intelligence, curiosity and enthusiasm for the subjects he studies and writes about. His books are often placed in the genre ‘psychology’. I guess that’s as good a genre as any, but this book is not a self-help book. It is an exploratory philosophical book about what makes successful people successful; there are no 10 steps to follow on the path to success, no guarantees for success.

He defines outliers as people ‘who do things that are out of the ordinary’. In statistics, outliers are usually the data points that are outside other values in a set of data—values that are often far away from the others, and statisticians often don’t like outliers. They would in fact prefer that they were not there, because their existence can mess up an otherwise perfectly good data set. So statisticians have ways of dealing with outliers. Gladwell has decided to focus on them, because they are the people who lie outside the norm. I won’t spoil the book for you, but his premise is that no successful person is ‘self-made’. We hang on to that myth though as though our life depended on it. If I could sum up his view, it would be that successful people achieved their success due to a combination of factors: intelligence; circumstances (family history and social standing); opportunities that were seized, not ignored; happenstance (being in the right place at the right time--also in a historical perspective); and of course hard work (the ten thousand hour rule). We like to think that successful people were ‘discovered’ and that on the basis of one song or one story that they became successful. But that’s not the case, and he demolishes that view very elegantly.

I’ve thought a lot about success during the past year with all the tumult at my workplace. Westernized society’s standard definition of success is clear—top jobs, large salaries, and power— often involving rags-to-riches stories or self-made man/woman stories. But when I look at my own workplace, one thing is completely clear. None of the people who made it to the top and who are successful in the standard sense made it without help. They had support networks, people rooting for them, mentors, call it what you will. They had political connections--they did not make it alone. And those who think that they did are living in a fantasy world. This does not negate the fact that they are intelligent, worthy of their success, have worked hard, and have a lot to offer. It simply says that they also had crucial help at a point when the opportunities for them to move up presented themselves (their personal windows of opportunity). If they were not aware of the opportunities, they had mentors who showed them that they were there. Mentors are important. I would venture to say that mentors are important at all ages. It is not just the young who need them, although they need them perhaps the most. But older people in the workplace need them too. They need impartial, unbiased, objective people with whom to discuss their careers and workplace situations. If you have never had them, you don’t know what you’ve missed until you hit the glass ceiling or find that your career path is moving laterally, not upward. You don’t know that you’ve made critical mistakes until it’s too late. Mentors might have been able to redirect your thoughts or plans. But of course this presupposes that you buy into the standard definition of success—that you are successful if you have a top job, earn a lot of money, or have a lot of power. It’s easy to see why most people want this type of success. It makes living in our society much easier. If you are wealthy, you command respect that poorer people don’t get. And if you think this is not true, think about the last time poor people were really ‘listened’ to, anywhere on the planet. For every Mother Teresa in the world, there are millions of poor people who command no respect.

There is nothing wrong with the standard definition of success. It’s nice to be able to have enough money to do the things you want, to live your life comfortably, to have some ‘say’ in what goes on at your workplace. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is only when you have achieved some measure of standard success that you are in a position to help others—as a mentor or as a benefactor. But still, I wonder if successful people are happy. I’m guessing that many of them are—because they have reached the top in their chosen field, and that by itself must give them a sense of satisfaction or completion. It’s like a sports star who has won his or her competition—that feeling of winning. But of course once at the top, you can never really rest. You must keep going. There are always others waiting in the wings to replace you. There are also unhappy successful people, and they interest me, perhaps more than the happy ones. I wonder why they are unhappy if they’ve achieved everything they wanted to achieve in their work life. The answer has to be that work life alone is not the be-all and the end-all of life. If you don’t have a good personal life—family and friends who see you through the good and the bad times, you don’t have much. I’ve watched successful men in my workplace get old, retire, and lose their status and power. Some of them tackled it well; others did not. I wonder if those who tackled it well were those with a good family life. Because if workplace success is the only way you define your life, you are bound to be unhappy. And there are the other scenarios that lead to unhappiness that are out of your control. There are unfortunately just as many unhappy twists of fates in the workplace as there are happy ones; I have seen bad things happen to good people who were successful in the standard sense. They were at the top one day and at the bottom the next. Not literally of course, but it seems that way. What did they do wrong? Did they do anything wrong? Is this just how workplace life is? Do you need to learn to roll with the punches as a successful person? Are successful people good at doing this? These are all interesting questions. In any case, the vagaries and mystery of success will keep researchers and writers preoccupied for years to come. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

A love poem by Ezra Pound in honor of Valentine's Day

THE RIVER-MERCHANT'S WIFE: A LETTER

by: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever, and forever.

Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden,

They hurt me.

I grow older,

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you,

As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Some really good Norwegian bands and musicians (and some Swedish too)

These are some of the rock/pop Norwegian bands and musicians that I have listened to during the past twenty years and really like. Junipher Greene and Ruphus are from the 1960-70s, but I have heard some of their music and really like it. It reminds me of Mountain and some of the heavier American rock bands from around the same time. a-ha are internationally-known. I remember watching the MTV video for ‘Take on me’ in the 1980s when I was still living in New Jersey. The DumDum Boys and the RagaRockers are the first rock bands that my husband introduced me to—he bought me their LPs as gifts when he first came to visit me in NJ. I spent hours trying to translate some of their songs, and didn’t do such a bad job as I remember. Briskeby was an amazing band—with a terrific female lead singer, Lise Karlsnes. It’s too bad the band is no longer recording. Royksopp is into electronic music and they have done some really terrific songs. You will find most of the groups on YouTube—well-worth checking out and listening to. I’ve seen a-ha, Dance with a Stranger, DeLillos, and Hellbillies in concert in Oslo.

·         a-ha

·         Briskeby

·         Bjørn Eidsvåg

·         Dance with a Stranger

·         DeLillos

·         DumDum Boys

·         Hellbillies

·         Junipher Greene

·         Kurt Nilsen

·         Madcon

·         Madrugada

·         Morten Abel

·         Paperboys

·         Raga Rockers

·         Royksopp

·         Ruphus

·         Sivert Høyem

As far as Swedish musicians go, ABBA is known to just about everyone on the planet, especially after the movie Mama Mia. We grew up in New York listening to ABBA songs. Bo Kaspers Orkester is a jazz-pop band that sings in Swedish; I wish they sang in English—their lyrics are just so good, like poetry. The Swedish list is a short one, but nevertheless worth checking out. I saw The Cardigans in concert in 1999 at the Quart Festival in Kristiansand, Norway. That was a great festival—with The Cardigans, Garbage, Skunk Anansie, Everlast, and Marilyn Manson. I think it’s pretty amazing that they got all those great bands to perform at one festival.

·         ABBA

·         Bo Kaspers Orkester

·         Kent

·         The Cardigans

Favorite Scandinavian films and TV shows

After writing yesterday’s post about my favorite films and TV shows (mostly American), I thought about the Scandinavian films and TV shows that I have seen and liked in the twenty years I have lived here in Oslo. Here are some of my favorites……..

Favorite films

·         Deilig er fjorden (The fjord is wonderful)--Norwegian

·         Hodet over vannet (Head above water)—Norwegian

·         Insomnia--Norwegian

·         Mannen som ikke kunne le (The Man who could not laugh)—Norwegian

·         Max Manus—Norwegian

·         Misery Harbor—Norwegian

·         Veiviseren (Pathfinder)—Norwegian

·         Flammen & Citronen (Flame & Citron)--Danish

·         Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror)—Danish

·         Smilla’s Sense of Snow—Danish

·         Den Gode Viljen (The Best Intentions)—Swedish

·         Fanny och Alexander—Swedish

·         Pensjonat Oskar—Swedish

·         Scener ur ett äktenskap (Scenes from a Marriage)--Swedish

·         Brúðguminn (White Night Wedding)--Icelandic

Favorite horror/fantasy/thriller

·         De dødes tjern (Lake of the Dead)--Norwegian

·         Fritt Vilt (Cold Prey)-- Norwegian

·         Skjult (Hidden)—Norwegian

·         Villmark (Wilderness)—Norwegian

·         Besökarna (The Visitors)--Swedish

·         Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In)—Swedish

·         Nattevagten (Nightwatch)--Danish

·         Sauna--Finnish

Favorite TV shows/series

·         Beck--Swedish

·         Wallander--Swedish

·         Forbrydelsen (The Crime)--Danish

·         Strisser på Samsø (A Cop on Samsø)--Danish

·         Ørnen (The Eagle)—Danish

Favorite movies and TV shows

(I'm updating this post as of 21 April 2013) to include Prometheus, Pitch Black and Oblivion under favorite sci-fi/horror films, and The Walking Dead under favorite TV shows)

One of my friends recently called me a film fanatic, and I have to say that she’s probably right. I’m not much of a TV watcher anymore (I used to be, but I hate reality TV and that’s all there is on TV these days), but you’ll never get me to stop going to the movies. I can’t think of a more pleasant way to spend a few hours than sitting in a dark theater with some candy and a box of popcorn, watching a movie. Movie theaters have changed—seats are very comfortable now (and they recline a bit), and each seat has its own plastic holder for water or soda bottles. Progress has been made for sure. The sound is exceptionally good, and the acoustics in the theater are too. You can now order tickets online and choose the seats you want. But that’s not why I go to the movies. I go because it’s a way to transport myself into another world for a few hours. I love being entertained; I love the fantasy, the magic, the escapism of movies. Always have and always will…….The following are some of my favorite movies, and while we’re at it, some of my favorite TV shows as well. If I listed all of the movies I’ve liked since I started going to the movies, the list would fill several pages for sure.

Favorite sci-fi/horror/fantasy films

·         2001 A Space Odyssey

·         2010

·         28 Days Later

·         Alien (all four films in the series)

·         Blade Runner

·         Bram Stoker’s Dracula

·         Burnt Offerings

·         District 9

·         Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (TV movie)

·         Don’t Look Now

·         Harry Potter (all the films)

·         House of Dark Shadows

·         I Am Legend

·         Invasion of the Body Snatchers

·         Lord of the Rings film trilogy

·         Men in Black

·         Minority Report

·         Night of Dark Shadows

·         Pan’s Labyrinth

·         Psycho

·         Stardust

·         The Birds

·         The Exorcist

·         The Last Wave

·         The Man Who Fell to Earth

·         The New Daughter

·         The Omega Man

·         The Sentinel

·         The Shining

·         The Sixth Sense

·         Twelve Monkeys

·         What Dreams May Come

·         What Lies Beneath

Favorite films

·         40 Carats

·         All That Heaven Allows

·         All The Fine Young Cannibals

·         A Perfect Spy (TV mini-series)

·         Basic Instinct

·         Body Heat

·         Brigadoon

·         BUtterfield 8

·         French Kiss

·         Hair

·         Hold That Ghost

·         It’s Complicated

·         Jane Eyre (TV mini-series)

·         Jerry McGuire

·         Julie and Julia

·         Klute

·         Light Sleeper

·         Love Story

·         Marnie

·         Night Sins (TV movie)

·         Out of Africa

·         Romancing the Stone

·         Romeo is Bleeding

·         Saturday Night Fever

·         Some Came Running

·         Something Wild

·         Strangers on a Train

·         Sunday in New York

·         The Accidental Tourist

·         The Age of Innocence

·         The Apartment

·         The Fabulous Baker Boys

·         The Grifters

·         The Hours

·         The Last Seduction

·         The Long Kiss Goodnight

·         The Mechanic

·         The Moon-Spinners

·         The Pursuit of Happyness

·         The Sandpiper

·         The Shawshank Redemption

·         The Thorn Birds (TV mini-series)

·         The Witches of Eastwick

·         When Harry Met Sally

·         Witness

·         Zee and Co.

Favorite animated films/TV shows

·         Bernard Bear

·         Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes cartoons

·         Coraline

·         Courage the Cowardly Dog

·         Fantasia

·         Ratatouille

·         Scooby Doo

·         The Flintstones

·         The Pink Panther

Favorite TV shows

·         Alfred Hitchcock Presents

·         Bewitched

·         Bonanza

·         Cheers

·         CSI Miami

·         Dark Shadows

·         Days of Our Lives (soap opera)

·         Dick Van Dyke Show

·         Disneyland

·         Frasier

·         I Love Lucy

·         I Spy

·         Kojak

·         Leave it to Beaver

·         Mary Tyler Moore Show

·         M*A*S*H

·         Maya

·         Night Gallery

·         Remington Steele

·         Six Feet Under

·         Star Trek

·         That Girl

·         The Avengers

·         The Brady Bunch

·         The Donna Reed Show

·         The Night Stalker

·         The Prisoner

·         The Rockford Files

·         The Sopranos

·         The Twilight Zone

·         The Waltons

·         The X-files