‘You can’t
teach an old dog new tricks’. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways—relying on one’s instinct, intelligence and
skill, not on a computer or other technology to solve the problem at hand.
Bond’s age and physical limitations in relation to his ability to change and
grow and to meet future challenges are in question here. That is one message in
the movie. But when Eve says to him ‘old dog, new tricks’, we know that the old
dog can learn new tricks, can resurrect himself (his hobby—resurrection), can
be fit for fight, and can seduce the ‘new’ women (Eve included). But I also
thought about how filmmaking and production have changed during the past half
century since the first Bond film. It’s an industry that is constantly
reinventing itself, thanks to new camera and digital techniques and effects—new
tricks in an old trade. The effects are stylish, eye-catching, and atmospheric.
The film works on so many levels; it is seamlessly put together. It is a film
you just slip into, almost as though you found an opening in one dimension that
allows you to step into that world. It glides along on a noiseless track, and
you are pulled onto the monorail that takes you into the world of James Bond.
The use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) certainly helps to create that atmosphere,
that world, almost one of virtual reality; there must have been a lot of CGI in
this film. The intricate and nuanced use of colors and digital effects also
creates the different moods that hold one captive—eerie, bold, violent, beautiful,
and suggestive. I don’t know what the use of colors and digital effects does to
the brain (are they subliminal effects in some way?), but I am sure that a
psychologist or psychiatrist could tell me. I would guess that there is a fair
amount of research being done in the field of marketing to find just the ‘right’
digital effects that will make us want more, enjoy more, buy more. I find these
types of digital effects to be almost addictive; I find myself mesmerized by
the use of streaming and gliding colors and shapes, the dim blue lighting, the
use of light and shadows, glass buildings, color tones, and so forth. The shots
of the digital ads, e.g., the writhing jellyfish, climbing the Shanghai skyscrapers
in the darkness are beautiful and confusing; they create a chaos of shapes and
colors, so that it’s almost impossible to distinguish a real figure from a
shadow. But it all comes together so seamlessly, falling into place in the
brain. The choreography of the fight scene on the edge of the room high in the
clouds; the figures are dark and move like dancers—a beautiful scene. There are
so many of these types of scenes—beautiful, haunting (the long-distance view of
the Skyfall estate house), the landscapes of Scotland—wild and stark, almost
like a painting, interspersed with the views of Shanghai, Istanbul and London. Skyfall is a typical Bond film in that
respect—multiple locations, lunatic villains, over-the-top stunts, but in terms
of its visual effects, it’s so much more.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Watching Skyfall
I finally
got around to watching the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, with Daniel Craig as Bond. I’ve wanted to see it since it
opened at the end of October, but unfortunately there were other more pressing issues
that got in the way until now. Skyfall
is the best of the Bond films, in my opinion. It is a near-perfect film and a
near-perfect film experience, for so many reasons. I’ve watched it twice
already, back-to-back viewings, and the second time I found myself trying to
find flaws in the plot, in the characters, in the acting, in the
cinematography, in the villain, in the Bond women, in Bond himself. I came up
short every time. It is the first Bond film where I could follow the plot
without question, the first Bond film where I could understand the villain’s
motives, the first Bond film that depicts the complexity and the shadowiness of
the espionage world. I found myself thinking of John Le Carre’s book (one of my favorites) A Perfect Spy; mostly because both
delve into the realm of the psyches of their spies. In A Perfect Spy, we learn why the
protagonist Magnus Pym (who works for the British MI6 as a spy and has lived a
lie for his entire life) was the perfect spy, and about the role his con-man father
played in his life, in his moral development (or lack thereof), and in his ultimate
downfall. In Skyfall, we come to
understand that the death of Bond’s parents at an early age made him a good
recruit for the world of espionage. As M (played by Judi Dench) says to him,
‘orphans make the best recruits’. One set of authority figures are replaced by
another set in the form of MI6. The latter are more ruthless, demanding,
amoral and untrustworthy than the first. Bond is really a pawn on a chess
board; he is moved around at will and accepts his role and his fate (‘hire me
or fire me’). Answering the call of duty plays an all-consuming role in how he
sees the world. It’s all he knows. He belongs to the old world of loyalty to
one’s country, less to oneself. One’s body is merely a tool in the service of
one’s country. In that sense, it is completely understandable that the women he
meets are tools as well. That message was also quite clear in A Perfect Spy, and made having a normal
functioning relationship/marriage with a woman impossible. And yet, Bond did
marry once for love, in an earlier film, but his wife was shot and killed. He
remains alone, a loner, needing no one, perhaps because the death of his wife affected
him permanently. That makes it possible for him to be an instrument in the
service of his country. It also explains why he needs to take out the villain
in this film, whose sole aim is to kill M because she has betrayed him; M
provides Bond with his only stable relationship, albeit a superficial one. M
and Bond know what they need to know about each other; the trick is to not
become sentimental with and about each other. Deep down however, they are fond
of one another, as this film touchingly depicts.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Slipping and sliding away
Each year
in Oslo, come winter, the same problems crop up. There are snowstorms, sometimes
there is a fair amount of accumulation, and then the snow plows come out to
clean the streets and to spread salt to keep the streets free of ice and snow.
The end result is that cars and buses usually have no problem getting around
the city streets during the winter. It’s a seldom occurrence that the streets
are so icy or snowy that cars and buses have problems maneuvering their way
along them. Not so with the sidewalks. Sidewalks are another matter; it’s as
though sidewalks in Oslo belong to another universe. And in that universe, chaos and uncertainty reign. No one knows for sure which sidewalks
will be cleared and which won’t. The street Ullevålsveien, for example, has
completely clear sidewalks, making it a simple matter to visit the different
stores and cafes on that street, whereas most of the sidewalks in Grünerløkka
(one of the areas of the city quite near where we live) are a disaster. They
are in fact disasters waiting to happen, in the form of broken bones of some
sort. They are so slippery and dangerous to walk on that most people choose to
walk in the streets instead. That way there is no risk of falling. Ditto for
the area where we live; icy sidewalks with some gravel thrown down to help you
get a grip, but it doesn’t help if they haven’t been shoveled first. I have
begun to walk in the streets myself, after having fallen once already. Luckily
I did not end up with any broken bones or sprained wrists. In the morning on
the way to the bus stop near where we live, I join the many others who are
walking in the streets rather than on the sidewalks. It strikes me as rather
silly to see all these people in the streets, but who am I to judge? We all
just want to be safe and to get where we’re going on time. Walking on the icy
sidewalks makes me feel as though I’m eighty years old; having to walk slowly,
inch by inch, looking ahead to determine whether the patch of white ground ahead
of you is ice or not, and then following the path of no ice until it becomes
ice again. And so on. I feel sorry for elderly people in this city; I wonder if
many of them even dare to venture out, even if they are in general good health.
One fall, and they’re out of commission for quite a while.
The
randomness of sidewalk shoveling strikes me as rather absurd in a country where
winter can extend from mid-October until early April. The newspapers have written
about it the problem, droves of people complain about it, but every year,
nothing changes. I don’t get it. The last newspaper article I read about this
problem discussed whose responsibility it was to shovel the sidewalks; in some
cases it’s the city’s responsibility, in other cases, the owners of the
buildings. I can personally attest to the fact that most apartment building
owners seem to do little or nothing to keep the sidewalks in front of their buildings
clear; perhaps they figure that these are city sidewalks so the city should
take care of them. The city fines the owners for not clearing the sidewalks,
and so it goes. In the meantime, people are slipping and sliding on their way
to wherever they’re going.
Shop and restaurant
owners in the downtown area of the city complain that they are losing business to
the large shopping malls that ring the city. There may be multiple reasons for
this, but one thing is clear to me. If shop or restaurant owners in the
downtown area don’t care enough to get out and shovel a path to their doors, if
they can’t clear snow from the sidewalks in front of their stores, don’t expect
my business. I don’t want to hear your
complaints that malls are taking all your business. I like to shop in the downtown
area of Oslo, but I can tell you that the icy sidewalks discourage me from
doing so during the winter. But again, this is a random affair. Some shop
owners do shovel snow, others don’t. Why is that? Why do some shop owners care
more about their customers than others? I think they all need to get on the same
page—prioritize your customers. We potential customers don’t care whose
responsibility it is to shovel the sidewalks, so stop arguing about it. Just
get out there and do it, like the Nike commercial says.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Quotes about drinking and alcohol
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut.
As women slowly gain power, their values and priorities are reshaping the agenda. A multitude of studies show that when women control the family funds, they generally spend more on health, nutrition, and education - and less on alcohol and cigarettes.
― Ernest Hemingway
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental
ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't
test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and
love of power.
― P. J. O'Rourke
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the
narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
― Carl Jung
I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which
I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I
have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt
to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and
a dread of some strange impending doom.
― Edgar Allan Poe
Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the
standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you
out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the
feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to
life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then
you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.
― Charles Bukowski
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all
I could do was to get drunk again.
― Charles Bukowski
Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's
psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man.
On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the
supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.
― Marguerite Duras
Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go
sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I
did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use
alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.
― Christopher Hitchens
Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
First you take a
drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking
people.
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so?
There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY,
and they meet at the bar.
― Drew Carey
Drink because you
are happy, but never because you are miserable.
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Are you there vodka? It's me, Chelsea. Please get me out
of jail and I promise I will never drink again. Drink and drive. I will never
drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD,
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but I'll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like
to Drink and Stay Home.
― Chelsea Handler
For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to
sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up.
Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a
few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple
of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep just sort
of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I’d squat down to
pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly
good excuse to change my clothes. I’m now told that this is not called “going
to sleep” but rather “passing out,” a phrase that carries a distinct hint of
judgment.
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
As women slowly gain power, their values and priorities are reshaping the agenda. A multitude of studies show that when women control the family funds, they generally spend more on health, nutrition, and education - and less on alcohol and cigarettes.
― Dee Dee Myers
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Street art by Kuro
Found this on the Street Art in Germany Facebook page yesterday, and wanted to share it with you. The artist's name is Kuro, and the picture first appeared in ZEIT magazine. Personally, I think it's just fantastic! Brilliant, as one of my Facebook friends commented. I so agree; it's worth sharing and spreading. There is just so much of a message in this picture and in the few words that accompany it. I can relate as I'm sure so many others can. The heart takes its beatings, but keeps on trying anyway, whereas the brain keeps aiming for reason and logic, trying to get the heart to see reason.The eternal conflict, depicted in a perfect way. Sometimes art achieves perfection.......Thank you for sharing this, Kuro.
Monday, February 18, 2013
'Don't know what you've got till it's gone'
I have been a regular subscriber to the weekly news
magazine, Time, for at least thirty years, before I moved to
Norway and since I moved here. I’ve looked forward each week to Time's news
summaries and articles, film, book, music and theater reviews, and interesting
tidbits that they toss in from time to time. You might think that it would be a
problem to experience regular weekly delivery of Time; I can tell
you that it’s been a pleasure to be a subscriber. Not once, I repeat, not once,
have I ever had a problem with a missed issue or late delivery. I haven’t had
to contact customer service for any problem whatsoever, except to renew my
subscription, and that is also a problem-free experience, unlike other magazine
and newspaper subscriptions that I have had since I moved to Oslo. That by
itself is a miracle in this day and age—a magazine that manages to be timely,
punctual, and service-minded.
What bothers me lately is that I’ve noticed that with each
issue I receive in the mail, especially during the past half year, the magazine
is shrinking. Each issue is thinner than the previous week’s issue. Given the
fact that its competitor, Newsweek, stopped publishing the paper
edition of its magazine at the end of last year (I refer you to Wikipedia
for a more-detailed update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek),
I have begun to wonder if Time is moving in the same
direction. I hope this is not the case, but I have a gut
feeling that it is. The end of the paper editions of these magazines doesn’t
mean their total demise; in the case of Newsweek, they decided to
focus their energies on an all-digital format, meaning that the internet has
claimed yet another victim, in one sense. I don’t have a problem with internet;
if used well and if you can filter through the morass of information that is
available at every turn, you can in fact obtain a lot of useful information in
the blink of an eye. I need only think of Wikipedia as I write this—useful,
informative, updated, with mostly correct information (and they are honest
about the ‘holes’ in their summaries, about what is lacking, and that’s a good
thing). But there is something about opening the print issue of a magazine like Time when
I get it, sitting down on the couch with a cup of coffee and reading it from
cover to cover. I enjoy that very much; it’s not the same sitting down with my
Kindle for iPad and reading the issue that way, even though I read books that
I’ve downloaded on my Kindle for iPad from time to time. It’s just that I don’t
want to see the end of all print publications, be they books or magazines.
And that brings me to my final point; with fewer books and
magazines printed, there will be more bookstores that will go belly-up. One of
the major American book retailers, Barnes and Noble, is struggling and on the
verge of collapse, according to a recent article from Slate (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/14/barnes_noble_collapsing.html),
and that makes me sad to read. Very sad. I have fond memories of the many hours
spent in their bookstores; starting when I worked part-time as a stocker for a
company on West 13th Street in lower Manhattan during my
graduate school days, and would spend my lunch hours perusing the bookshelves
of the Barnes and Noble bookstore at 122 Fifth Avenue between 17th and 18th
streets. I bought many a Christmas present there as I remember. And then later
on, during the mid-1980s, when I would drive up from the Bronx where I lived at
that time, to their bookstore on Central Avenue in Yonkers and wander around
there for a few hours on a summer evening, looking at photo books of Princess
Diana (who was all the rage then), or skimming books on why women are afraid of
success in the business world, how to make your relationship better, or the
meaning of dreams, in the self-help section. Those were weekly trips that I
looked forward to, and I always left the store with one or two new books that I
couldn’t wait to dive into. In later years, when I have visited my sister in
upstate New York during the summer, we have had some fun driving to the Barnes
and Noble bookstore in Poughkeepsie, where we would start off our visit with
cappuccinos in the little café at the back of the bookstore. We would sit and
chat for a while, and then wander the aisles in search of a book that would
catch our eye. It was always fun to compare our current literary interests,
talk about the books we had read or were reading, check out the different games
and puzzles for sale, and so on. Sometimes my husband would call me from Norway
while we were wandering around the store; we would be laughing at some silly
thing, and he would get a chance to join in on the fun. Simple stuff, but
simple stuff is the stuff of memories. Bookstores generally, and Barnes and
Noble specifically, have been and are a large part of my life. I cannot imagine
life without them. As Joni Mitchell sings ‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you
don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. But sometimes even when you do
know, things disappear anyway, replaced by newer things, but in some cases,
more sterile things. I will never be attached to a computer the way I have been
attached to my books. And that’s not likely to change in my lifetime.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Some good quotes about work
There are
few, if any, jobs in which ability alone is sufficient. Needed, also, are
loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm and team play. --William B. Given, Jr.
When people
go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home. --Betty Bender
One of the
symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is
terribly important. --Bertrand
Russell
Being busy
does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or
accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system,
planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing. --Thomas A. Edison
The world
is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. --Robert Frost
People
might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for
all they get. --Frederick Douglass
In order
that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They
must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense
of success in it. --John Ruskin
So much of
what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. --Peter Drucker
Nothing is
really work unless you would rather be doing something else. --James M. Barrie
Real
success is finding your lifework in the work that you love. --David McCullough
The more I
want to get something done, the less I call it work. --Richard Bach
The
important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect
men. --George Eliot
I'm a great
believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. --Thomas Jefferson
You've
achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is
work or play. --Warren Beatty
The secret
of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do
something well is to enjoy it. --Pearl
Buck
Success in
business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not
frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they
ever were. --David Rockefeller
One machine
can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one
extraordinary man. --Elbert
Hubbard
Opportunity
is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. --Thomas A. Edison
Far and
away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth
doing. --Theodore Roosevelt
Friday, February 15, 2013
Things I’m never going to do
Read the news
this morning and saw that there had been a meteor strike over central Russia early
this morning, causing sonic booms and pressure waves that led to the implosion
of glass windows in many buildings, injuring nearly one thousand people in the
process. The social media age being what it is, it didn’t take long for the
first videos of the event to appear on YouTube. Pretty incredible to watch and
listen to what was happening in the sky above us. Tonight the asteroid 2012
DA14 is supposed to pass very close to the Earth (over 17,000 miles above us
but it’s the closest asteroid pass that scientists have measured up to this
point). It got me to thinking about life as we know it, and what would happen
if an asteroid or meteor of great size crashed onto land or in the sea, and
life as we know it changed forever. This is the stuff of sci-fi movies, but the
interesting thing about sci-fi is that you never really know when or if what is
depicted in books or movies will come to pass. And perhaps it’s better that we
don’t know.
A lot of
people think about what they would have done differently when they are faced
with their own demise or the demise of loved ones. I’m of course no exception.
We live our lives each day with a certain amount of conviction that our ‘tomorrow’
lives will be pretty much like our ‘today’ lives; we trust that tomorrow will
come. And that has been the case up to now. If we have anything to fear, it is
in the form of man-made threats such as nuclear weapons and the threat of
biological warfare, that the crazies in the world will get their hands on these
things and end life as we know it.
I thought
about what I have accomplished in my life up to this point, and about what I
still want to do, if given the chance. But I also thought about all the things
I haven’t done, and they perhaps define me just as well as the
things I have done and accomplished: I’m never going to climb Mt. Everest, or
any mountain for that matter; I’m never going to fly a small plane or learn to
pilot one; I’m never going to do tandem skydiving or bungee jumping; I’m never
going to do deep-sea diving; I’m never going to sail in a small boat across a
large ocean for days at a time; I’m never going to run a large corporation or
lead hundreds of people; I’m never going to make a million dollars a year,
despite what life coaches tell me (to
dream big); I’m never going to own a large
palace or an over-sized mansion, a yacht or a wildly-expensive new car; I’m
never going to travel the entire world. These are things I'm never going to do, and I'm very ok about it.
If I won a
huge lottery, I’m fairly certain that not much on the above list would change—perhaps
I would purchase a new home and a new car, and
then share the money with people I care about. The things I do not want to do
have little to do with money, or better stated, it’s not the lack of money that
prevents me from doing them. I simply have no desire to do them. What
I do want to do more of in the future
is to spend time with the people I care about, doing the things we enjoy
together—hanging out, talking, relaxing, eating out, going to movies or
concerts, traveling a bit, shopping, and being on vacation. When I think about
my life in this way, it makes me happy, because I already do so many of these
things with the people I care about. If the end of the world came tomorrow, there's not much I would have changed about my life. And I hope I feel the same way in ten or twenty years, if we and the Earth are still around.
Some really good child actors
I’ve been
on a quest to watch some of the movies I’ve missed out on during the past five
years or so, and the deep dark winter months are the perfect times to catch up
on my film watching. Sometimes the reason I haven’t seen the films is because I
haven’t been able to get to the theater to watch them when they’ve opened;
other times I’m quite sure they haven’t opened in Norway at all, even though
IMDB states that they opened in Norway on this or that date. They may have gone
directly to DVD, if that can qualify as an opening in Norway. In any case, I’ve
been pleasantly surprised by three films that have caught my attention, made me
cry, made me think, and ultimately made me happy that I saw them. They are Genova (2008), Creation (2009), and Hugo (2011). What they all have in
common are wonderfully good child actors; especially in Genova, but closely followed by
Creation and Hugo.
If you
haven’t seen any of the films, I can briefly summarize them here. Genova is the story of a Joe, a husband
and father whose wife has died in a car accident that may have been caused by
their youngest daughter who was sitting in the backseat of the car together with her older
sister, playing a game. The husband decides to move his daughters and himself
to Genova, Italy for a short while; the film relates their daily lives in a new
and strange city, and the adventures each of them embark upon. Colin Firth as Joe,
and Willa Holland as Kelly (the eldest sister) are very good, but it is the
youngest daughter Mary, played by Perla Haney-Jardine, who shone in this film. Her
acting is superb; there were times when you just wanted to reach out and hug
her, she was so good, especially when her awkwardness and loneliness shone
through. In real life, she is about sixteen years old now; when the film came
out, she was about eleven. She had a remarkable self-possession at that young
age that was riveting. Composed, observant, guarded, smart as a whip, but full
of feelings and thoughts that she did not really understand or know how to
express at that age; the scene where she talks to a female friend of her father’s
and tells her that she feels guilty and responsible for her mother’s death is
heartbreaking. Her wonderful self-possession reminded me of my niece when she
was that age; she had (and still has) many of those same qualities.
Creation is the story of Charles Darwin and his family,
at the time before he wrote the book that would make him famous, The Origin of Species. The film details
his struggle to acknowledge the scientific truths about evolution that he has discovered
which put him into conflict with his Christian faith and with his wife, who is
very religious. Charles Darwin and his wife Emma are played by Paul Bettany and
Jennifer Connelly, who are married in real-life; they are terrific together.
Darwin’s life was complicated by poor health and much unhappiness; he lost his
eldest and beloved daughter Annie, played so convincingly and movingly in the
film by Martha West, most probably to tuberculosis. Their relationship was
close on many levels, and she was clearly his favorite child, likely because
she was so interested in his work and in the natural world. Had she lived, she
could have become a scientist like her father. The film depicts the conflicts
in the Darwin marriage as well as the events surrounding the death of Annie,
and is based on the book Annie’s Box:
Charles Darwin, His Daughter, and Human
Evolution, by Randal Keynes. So much of the film revolves around Annie and
the impact her death had on Charles Darwin; Martha West did a wonderful job as
Annie. It was impossible not to be moved to tears by her performance. The same
can be said for Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly.
Hugo is the third film where a child figures
prominently in the story; it reminded me a bit of the film Oliver! (1968). The
young boy Hugo Cabret, played by Asa Butterfield, has a wistful look to him,
much like Mark Lester’s Oliver in that earlier film, and his performance is
very nuanced and very good. Both of them play young boys who are orphans;
Oliver lives in an orphanage, whereas Hugo lives in the walls of a Paris train
station where he fixes and maintains the station’s clocks, a job he learned
from his drunken uncle who disappeared months ago and who is discovered drowned
in the Seine river. The film is the story of how Hugo slowly befriends an older
man who knows that Hugo steals from him, a shopkeeper by the name of Georges
Méliès', played by Ben Kingsley. Georges works in the train station selling and
repairing trinkets and small toys; Hugo steals parts from him sporadically in
order to repair the ‘automaton’ he and his father were working on before his
father’s tragic death. But Georges was once a promising filmmaker, before WWI
destroyed those plans and ambitions, turning him into an unhappy and bitter man.
As fate would have it, this automaton was actually designed by Georges Méliès' when
he was a young man. It was a pleasant surprise to find out that the film is based
on the real-life story of Georges Méliès', a French filmmaker who was way ahead
of his time in terms of special effects and surreal sets and props, and a magician
as well. He is known especially for two films, A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The
Impossible Voyage (1904).
It is not
possible to predict what the future will hold for Perla Haney-Jardine, Martha
West, or Asa Butterfield in terms of their future film successes, as child actors
often have a hard time repeating the successes of their youth. But they
certainly deserve many more chances to express their tremendous talents and to shine
as brightly as they did respectively in each of these films.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Stopping by a bridge on a snowy morning
To
paraphrase Robert Frost—‘Stopping by woods on a snowy evening’. Last week we
had a snowfall that led to some accumulation of snow, and it was just exhilarating
to be out in the early morning, taking pictures of the snowy trees and this
bridge covered in snow, before too many other wanderers discovered the same places. It brought to mind my
childhood days during wintertime, when I would find a secret place under one of
the tall evergreen trees outside our house window; its many branches were often
heavily weighed down with snow, almost touching the ground. The heavy branches
created a little nest for me to crawl into and hide from the others, at least
for a little while. I loved that feeling of aloneness, of having a secret
hiding place. I would sit there and enjoy the silence and the whiteness of the
snow and the sun glittering on the tree branches. Sometimes we would play
hide-and-seek, and no one ever found me if I hid there.
It’s funny
how poetry and photos can remind you of what once was. I think it’s incredible that the memories lie
there, buried under years of living, and then a photo, a word, or even a smell,
can take us back to earlier times in our lives. The memories don’t
disappear; they just wait to be re-discovered.
A winter poem by Robert Frost
I loved this poem immediately when we learned it as children in school. And my parents recited it to us when we were young. It's a beautiful poem with lovely images that captures a moment in the life of the observer, who knows he is too busy living his life to 'explore' the woods. He ends by saying he has 'miles to go before I sleep', which is a metaphor for his eventual death. So I interpret the poem to mean that he can stop and reflect on his life at different points in his life, and that perhaps nature serves as a means for him to do this, but that he wishes to keep going, to keep living, to honor his promises, before he rests forever.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The art of boating: Out on the ocean
When I started writing this blog in 2010, I was happy to include some posts written by others--guest bloggers. Today's post is written by my husband, Trond Stokke, who has been sailing up and down the Oslo fjord for many years now.
In my last post on this subject (http://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2010/08/art-of-boating-attempts-at-definition.html),
I tried to define the different aspects of “the art of boating”. However, I
barely managed to leave the harbor in that post, so I will in this post discuss
the things that matter when you’ve finally left the harbor and are headed off
on a trip. A lot of important things must be done before you leave, in addition to the routine maintenance. The
engine must be checked thoroughly, as an engine failure on the open sea can be
disastrous. When this happens in a car, you may simply leave it at the
roadside, grab your cell phone and call the towing company. Not so out on the
open ocean. The check includes oil, cooling water, exhaust tubes, through-hull
tubes, and a number of small details varying from boat to boat. Also, one needs
to fill gas and fresh water and bring food for at least a few days. Plan beforehand
where you will refill gas on the way, which requires that you have an overview
of where gas stations can be found along the way. A supply of fresh water is
very important, as salt water is neither good for you nor your engine (if
needed). Also, you need to bring batteries for flashlights and a GPS (global
positioning system). Although I use the GPS frequently, I also have a set of maps
with me, and we have a working compass in the boat. I do not fully trust modern
electronics. If you’re alone, consider how you will tackle “trivial” tasks like
going to the toilet, fetching food and drinks etc, before you leave. When your
wife or some good mates are joining you, there will always be someone who may
take over the helm.
A happy author at the start of a boat trip |
So you’re off, and you get this great
feeling of freedom that I never
experience on land. So now you’re on your way to
somewhere specific, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the feeling of being
at sea and getting adjusted to the movements of the boat in the waves-- as
though you’re directly connected to nature. After a few hours you automatically compensate for the tilting and wobbling, to such a degree that
when I get back on land, it’s as though the firm ground keeps moving under my feet. It takes about 2-3 hours of sailing to get out of the inner Oslo
fjord. The “outer” Oslo fjord starts when you’ve passed Filtvedt lighthouse
outside of the city of Drøbak; at this point the course is set according to
whether you want to go south (S) towards Østfold or Sweden, SSW towards
Denmark, or SW along the Norwegian coast. The destinations of our trips have
included Fredrikstad, Halden or Strømstad/Koster southward, and Tønsberg,
Risør, or Langesundsfjorden along the west coast. Langesundsfjorden is
mentioned because from here one may proceed up the Telemark canal via an
extensive lock system to Dalen, or alternatively to Notodden, if you enjoy the blues
festival that occurs there each summer.
At this point you also determine whether
you would like to travel along the shoreline and opt for visual maneuvering with
the help of the map, or whether you would like to sail entirely away from the shoreline
aided by compass and GPS. A good piece of advice right from the start: if you
choose the first one, don’t sail too close to land. It’s always good to keep a safe distance from land
in case something happens, e.g. if the engine stops in spite of all precautions
taken. Also, the worse the weather is, the more important it is to stay well
clear of land, i.e. the grounds. This is counter-intuitive; most landlubbers
tend to be drawn towards firm ground. A good
example of this is the route around Rakkebåene (see map):
Map of Rakkebåene, outside of Larvik and Stavern |
You should not follow
the red- and green-labeled routes along land with a larger boat (>30
feet), even though some locals may tell you it’s a walk in the park. Follow the
blue-labeled course south of the light buoy located to the SE on the map, go
westward and south of the Tvistein lighthouse. The Rakkebåene are strange; they get
shallower there well outside of the grounds visible on the map. The waves slow
down the shallower it gets, but since
the energy remains constant, the amplitude, i.e. wave height, increases. Additionally,
outside Rakke, there are currents moving in the SW direction. When it’s blowing
from SW, and old swell from the North Sea also comes in this direction, heavy
and unpredictable wave patterns are often created. A friend of mine used the
word “messy” to describe them. Thus, even if you follow the blue route, this
will not ensure a smooth trip. If the weather is bad, I choose to go further
out. It’s exhausting when the boat bottom hits the water with a “bang” after
each wave. However, old sailors say that it’s not the boat breaking down in
rough seas, but rather the helmsman and the rest of the crew. There is at least
one more reason to stay away from land and regions with grounds when there is
heavy weather and swell: water is blown off the wave crests so the sea looks
white all over. It is exactly this kind of breaking of the water that
you look for to avoid grounds. The latter are thus difficult to identify if all
you see is a sea that looks white all over.
Visual maneuvering is obviously more
difficult in the evening and at night. Here’s where the lighthouses and light
buoys come in handy. The 360 degrees around lighthouses are typically divided into sectors, such that they shine white light in one direction, green in another, and red in others again (can be seen on the map). The coloring is such that you should be in the white sector, while green or red means unclear waters. Along the coast of southern Norway lighthouses
are spread such that you’ll always see the previous and the next one. Often you
see a third one too, and triangulation is possible in such cases. Light buoys
give position, and exposed grounds in fairways may also be equipped with
lights. It’s not difficult to set the course based on the position of lighthouses,
but you need to have a good map. I have also noticed that distances can be misjudged
at night. Also consider that the most difficult part at night may be to sail into
the harbor, especially if you don’t know the surroundings well. I remember the first
time we came into Helgeroa, just outside of the upper left part of the map. It got
dark very quickly, and we had to pay attention to local grounds and islands
that were barely visible. The next morning, when we left in daylight, this was not
a problem at all.
If you’re crossing open stretches of
ocean without sight of land, e.g. over to Denmark, you need to know where you
are. Only 25 years ago this was tricky business, although we had some idea from
the compass course and the speed of the boat. At that time I took my first trip
around Rakkebåene together with a good friend of mine in his sailing boat. We had
only the lighthouses to tell us where we were since it was the middle of the
night (luckily it wasn’t foggy!) Nowadays, the GPS gives you the actual
coordinates. Our GPS does not have built-in maps, since I prefer having an
actual physical map with me on our trips. With or without electronic maps, you’re now all set
for a memorable boat journey.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Saying goodbye to loyalty in the workplace
A colleague
and friend retired this past week after a long work life (forty years). As is
often the case with employees who retire from my workplace, she will come in to
work from time to time as a consultant to help with specific projects that
require her expertise. At her retirement party, there were several speakers who
commented on her expertise and her dedication to her work. But one speaker in
particular commented on her loyalty
to her workplace, her willingness to speak up when there were problems, and her
desire to help make it a better workplace by speaking up, even if it put her in
an unpopular position with management. He commented on the fact that the
workplace doesn’t need and won’t function at all with only yes-men and yes-women, but rather with employees who are willing to speak up
and to say no when necessary. In other words, such employees are willing to
stick out their necks, to rise above the radar, to create discussion and debate
when warranted and to take responsibility for their choices. They are willing
to risk disagreements with management and to risk unpopularity with fellow colleagues
who would rather they kept their mouths shut rather than create discord. You would
think the workplace would encourage these sorts of behavior and would want to
hire such people—people who open their mouths, tell the truth, and are honest,
trustworthy and loyal. These are the people who are the backbone of an
organization, who know it in and out, who know the history of a workplace (for
better and for worse), and who can
tell you how the system and infrastructure function. In other words, these
types of employees are worth their weight in gold, in my opinion.
The opposite
is true these days, that workplaces seem to only want yes-employees around them. It’s fairly simple to figure out--it
makes life easier for everyone, especially management. But it may not be a
smart management philosophy in the long run. There are several reasons for that,
which the speaker above touched upon. He meant that it was necessary for
employees to speak up in order to prevent a workplace from disintegrating, to
prevent it from self-destruction. When I think about it what he said, it makes
perfect sense. Unfortunately, there is too much of the opposite—employees who
simply agree with the boss when asked their opinions about a specific issue. If
you are asked your opinion, and the only thing that preoccupies you is figuring
out what management’s stance would be so that you can parrot management’s ideas
back to your boss, who will be pleased that you are in agreement with them,
then you are a good employee, at
least these days. To voice the dissenting opinion, to talk against a specific
management philosophy or dictate, to relate the problems associated with the aforementioned,
are death knells for your career advancement. If you are direct,
honest, willing to debate and discuss, have a sense of an organization’s
history, bring up problems, or otherwise ‘bother’ management, you are not
valued, or not valued as highly as those who nod and agree with the boss. And
of course from a boss’s perspective, the path of least resistance is to promote
the employee who agrees with you and your business philosophies and strategies.
I get it. I just don’t agree with it. And I cannot see how this makes for a
healthy workplace. But I’m of the old school, and grew up during a time when
honesty, directness and loyalty were valued.
Some types
of managers will tell you the following when you bring up a problem that exists
in a workplace: that you are too focused on how things were done in the past
(when you bring up historical references for how that problem may have been
dealt with previously), that you need to forget the past and focus on the here-and-now,
or that you are too direct, or that what you bring up is really not a problem
(even though it really is), to name a few responses. They like to talk a blue
streak about conflict resolution and the
rampant belief that all problems can be resolved; my answer to this is that not
all problems can be resolved, just as not all people can truly get along, and
in fact to believe so is remarkably naïve and possibly dangerous. Of course, if
all employees simply nod their heads and ‘agree’ to a particular resolution,
regardless of whether they agree with it or not, then ‘conflict resolution’ has been achieved. But it’s not honest
resolution. In the long-run, this type of agreement is not healthy for an
organization. Because the result is that dissension rather grows in the
corridors. Employees talk about and against management’s philosophies and
strategies instead of talking directly to management. There are a lot of rumors
and gossip. Management for its part thinks that all employees are happy with
the status quo, and so on, and are free to proceed with their plans. But there is
a reason for why employees play the yes-men role: they are afraid for their jobs.
If you are not in a protected position (where you cannot get fired, e.g. civil service jobs), you can
find yourself without a job when the first round of budget cuts comes along. Because
the name of the game now is to save as much money as possible—that is the
current management strategy—and you put yourself first on the cut list if you are a
‘dissenter’.
It seems to me that loyalty is a dying virtue in the workplace in any case. There is no objectively good reason to be
loyal to a workplace anymore, because that workplace will not be loyal to you in return, not in the age of budget cuts and streamlined efficiency.
There is no contract between an
employee and his or her workplace anymore, the way there seemed to be in my
parents’ generation. The workplace has changed enormously during the past
thirty years. It would be unrealistic to assume that it would not. The changes may be for the good in some ways; I am in a wait and see mode. There are
certainly long-term employees who have abused their positions, just as there are companies that have abused their long-term employees. But at
present, there does not seem to be much point in sticking around in one workplace
for years anymore; in fact, it may be a liability to do so, unless you find a workplace
that values loyalty. Younger people coming into the workplace at present know
that their prospects of landing a permanent job (cannot be fired) in an
organization are few to none. Companies will not offer such positions now; young
people know this and know that they will be out of a job after four or five
years, after they have fulfilled training courses or reached the limit in terms of how far they can progress in one
position. There is thus no real point in getting too attached, too involved,
too dedicated or too interested in what goes on in your workplace; you won’t be
there for more than four or five years. You know you will be moving on. The
workplaces of the future seem to be places where mutual utilization of each other will define how things are done.
Loyalty will be reserved for the personal arena—loyalty to family and to
friends. Perhaps this is the way it should be. But a part of me still feels that
it should not be necessary to comment on an employee’s loyalty at the end of a
long work life—that this type of loyalty should be more the rule than the exception. My guess
is that the workplaces of the future will be defined by short-term employees working
on short-term projects that are led by short-term managers; employees and bosses will be project-dedicated but not necessarily workplace-dedicated or workplace-loyal.
They know they are dispensable, that they can be fired, replaced at will, or rehired, but
also that they can move easily from one workplace to another, without the
feeling of attachment that long-term workers often feel after many years in
their workplaces. The white collar workplaces of the future will be more like factories—producing
what they produce without much attention paid to those who are doing the producing. But in return, the employees will receive training and a good income, but no more.
Expectations of career advancement within one company will taper off,
especially if an employee reaches an income level that is non-sustainable for the company. It will be cheaper to hire younger workers without much experience. In this way, loyalty will be discouraged and eventually obliterated. A
glum scenario, perhaps, or perhaps not. Time will tell.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
January sunrise and rising smoke
A few days ago, I witnessed an exceptionally colorful and fiery sunrise. I snapped some photos as I often do, and right before I was to leave for work, the rising smoke contrasted against the sky looked as though it had caught fire. I got some photos of this as well. Thought you might like to see them!
Moments in time
This
morning as we drove to work, we heard David Bowie’s new song, Where Are We Now?, on the radio. It
caught my attention with its melancholy tone, and I commented to my husband
that I would have loved the song immediately when I was a teenager, as I seemed
to be drawn to all things sad at that time. Truth is, I loved the song
immediately now too, so that tells me that I still am drawn to sadness, but in
a more realistic way now than when I was younger. When I got to work, I found
the recently-released video of the song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9XsTnyN26Y&feature=share&list=FL4rKLincZWuFolZVFChzj5g.
It is one of the most poignant, emotional and raw songs I have heard in a long
time, and affected me in the way that such songs usually do. Got me to thinking
about what he is singing about, which is his getting older and his reflections on his past. ‘A man lost in time’. But he is
singing too about a moment in life
and in time—‘the moment you know you know you know’--those fleeting moments
when you are keenly aware of your own mortality, of time passing, when you know
there is nothing you can do about it or about getting older, when you are aware
of the paradoxes contained in life and thankful for them. They are moments when
you are almost outside of yourself looking in—experiencing that moment when you
know that you suddenly understand
that you in fact understand where it’s all leading to. But he is also telling
us that even though he is aware of moving toward life’s exit, he is also
thankful for the sun and rain and fire—those things that tether us to daily
life and which tell us that we are in fact still alive. There is hope as long
as those things still exist for us. The song ends with him singing that ‘as
long as there’s me, as long as there’s you’, that it will be alright, or at
least as alright as it can be in the context of knowing that one day we will
exit this earth. He is reminding himself that he can draw comfort from those
thoughts and find the energy to go on, and hearing him sing that reminds me of
the same, of the importance of love and of the support it can give us in dark
times. A reasonably hopeful ending to a sad song. Art in all its many forms never
ceases to amaze me, in that it shows us a way to live, a way to get through the
bittersweet and dark moments that are part of life.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Living a balanced life
Apropos my last post--Finding Balance, the Adventure Center now has a blog, and one of their recent posts has to do with balance and living a balanced life. I encourage you to read the post--it's insightful and offers some ideas for how the future of our society could be shaped, starting with its children. If you'd like to read the post, you'll find it here: http://www.adventurecenterjourneysofwonder.org/1/post/2013/01/a-wish-as-we-enter-2013.html
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The Spinners--It's a Shame
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...