Saying goodbye to a colleague and friend

A colleague and friend passed away early this morning after a seven-year battle with breast cancer. Her death was peaceful. We visited her yesterday afternoon, having had some idea of what might happen this week. We got a chance to say goodbye since she recognized us even though she could not talk. Her life the past five years has been a roller coaster ride that is almost impossible to describe. We who witnessed her fight know how much she went through, how many rounds of chemo she endured, the different drugs that wore her down, made her lose her hair, affected the nerve endings in her hands and feet, changed the taste of food, and so many other things. Cancer is a horrible illness and she was the first to admit that. She bemoaned how it altered her physically. Mentally was another story. It seemed to motivate her in a way that I found surprising. She was a fighter to the end. She focused on living and not on dying; she kept on working as much as she was able to, almost right up until the end. It kept her going and she was honest about that; she did not have much immediate family around so the social environment at work was also uplifting. She and I often commented on the irony of her situation—she had metastatic cancer that showed tendencies toward becoming resistant to the different drugs she was taking, and she was working on projects at work that had to do with how cancer becomes resistant to chemotherapy. She was very interested in all the new studies and data showing that this or that drug might help improve prognosis. She was an active participant in her treatment programs and was not afraid to discuss her illness or to challenge her doctors with new knowledge that she had found on the internet. She was stubborn and it was that trait that kept her going and instructed those around her about how she wanted to be treated. Except for one or two occasions when she told me that her cancer had again spread and we shared a good cry together, she did not want pity nor did she want anyone to feel sorry for her.  

I knew her for many years, since I moved to Norway. She was an American who married a Norwegian and moved to Norway in the 1970s. Both of her children were fluent in Norwegian and English from a very early age. She saw to that. She did not travel each year back to the USA as I have done since I moved to Norway. It did not seem as important to her as it is to me to do that. But she had weekly contact with her father (a widower) via email, and as he got older, daily contact. When he developed lung cancer, she went to stay with him as his nurse and companion for a few months until his death. She told me that her mother had also had cancer and had died shortly after she moved to Norway. She was proud of the fact that her mother had briefly been a movie star in Hollywood; she had starred in a movie together with Ronald Reagan, but her career was a brief one and when she married she left acting.

She loved to read and her interests were in historical biographies and modern fiction. She and I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter series together and going to the Harry Potter movies with work colleagues. She wasn’t as avid a moviegoer as I am but she would occasionally join me for trips to the movies. Her family and my family managed a trip to the local concert stadium to see Riverdance in 1999. She loved Riverdance. We also shared a Thanksgiving together at another American friend’s house and that was an enjoyable time. When my stepdaughter was young, she and I and my friend and her daughter went strawberry picking together. That was a lot of fun; both girls ate more strawberries than they picked. It is one of my most vibrant memories of being together with her. Her husband’s job took them to Africa when her children were small, and that was an experience she never forgot. She loved being in Africa and we always used to wonder why she didn’t join her husband there in later years when he began to work there more often and was away for months at a time. But she didn’t. She would visit him there during vacation and talk about moving there if she decided to quit working. But she never did.

My memories of her are of a person who was kind, hard-working, patient, selfless, nurturing and supportive. She rarely complained. She made you see the other side of impossible situations even though you didn’t want to. She did not have many goals or ambitions for herself, and I for one wish she had. She expressed a desire once to pursue a Master’s degree but it never became more than that even though there were several opportunities that came her way. She was smart and interested in science and could have managed it without problems. She worked on my research projects for the past nine years, and was a great support to me. Her work was consistent, reproducible and high-quality. She also supported her children in all ways, listened to them, gave advice, helped them financially, and was always available for them. I was glad to see that they were there for her when she needed them, especially the past few months. Her daughter is pregnant and will give birth next June; it is very sad that she did not live to see the birth of her first grandchild. She would have enjoyed being a grandmother. We watched how she was with the son of another friend and work colleague. She really enjoyed him and being around him.

I realized yesterday after having visited her for the last time in the hospital, that it was good that we had said all we needed to say to each other before yesterday. As colleagues, I had already thanked her for her help and support at work so many times, and she had thanked me for giving her the chance to do some of her own research on projects that she was interested in. As friends, we spent countless hours over lunch talking about life and relationships and women’s rights and injustice in the world. I was probably pretty confrontational at times when it came to women’s rights. She was less so when I first met her but became more so during the past few years. I think she understood that it was important that her daughter have the same opportunities as a man would have in the work world. I am nine years younger than she was and I think she thought sometimes that I still had a lot to learn. She was probably right. There were things we did not talk about, and during the past few years there were more things that remained unspoken. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was her illness that crystallized the meaning of life to her, or perhaps we both realized that we could complain about the state of the world but we still had to live in it. In any case, we knew how to agree to disagree when we did not share the same views about the world or specific situations. I am glad that her passage out of this life was peaceful. She deserved that after her long battle. I will miss her. We will miss her.

My favorite Christmas films

Getting ready for Christmas…..I just thought I’d make a list of my favorite Christmas films. They are the films I try to watch each year because they remind me of some nice times together with my family when I was a child, and because they really do get me into the Christmas spirit. Some of them are poignant reminders of a simpler time, some are funny takes on tried-and-true Christmas themes, but all of them are gentle reminders in their own way of what Christmas really is about—love from above and here on earth, and gratitude for the many blessings in our lives.

1.       It’s A Wonderful Life (from 1946, a wonderful story about the true meaning of life and how our lives impact on others, with the wonderful pairing of James Stewart and Donna Reed) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/

2.       Miracle on 34^th Street (the original from 1947—a warm and wonderful classic movie about Santa Claus and if he exists, with a great performance by Natalie Wood, a child at the time) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039628/

3.       White Christmas (from 1954, one of my mother’s favorite Christmas movies, and one of mine too)  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047673/

4.       Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (from 1964 with the beautiful song ‘Silver and Gold’ sung by Burl Ives. Rudolph saves Christmas) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058536/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMlqn_Hjyi8

5.       A Charlie Brown Christmas (from 1965 with the great jazz music by the late Vince Guaraldi—so many wonderful songs. Charlie Brown’s attempt to de-commercialize Christmas) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059026/

6.       How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original from 1966; the Grinch tries to prevent Christmas from coming, and he fails. His little dog steals the film) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060345/

7.       Scrooge (from 1970, a musical with Albert Finney, based on the book ‘A Christmas Carol’, with the song ‘Happiness’ that will make you cry) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066344/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k5wsEHVy-4

8.       The Snowman (from 1982, a very nice British classic about a little boy and a snowman that comes to life) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084701/ with the lovely song 'Walking in the Air' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubeVUnGQOIk

9.       National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (from 1989 with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo; some priceless funny scenes) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097958/

10.   Home Alone (from 1990, another modern little classic that gets to you. Could never understand how the family could leave their little boy behind—but that’s the fun!) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099785/

11.   The Nightmare Before Christmas (a modern little classic from 1993 with some poignant songs; Jack Skellington in Halloween Town decides to ‘do’ Christmas because he is bored with Halloween, with some highly unusual results to say the least) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/

Christmas time is here

(These are the lyrics to the song 'Christmas time is here' from 'A Charlie Brown Christmas', the film that first aired on TV in 1965. It is a lovely song, and you can hear it on YouTube. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPG3zSgm_Qo)


Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of the year

Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share

Sleigh bells in the air
Beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there

Christmas time is here
We'll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year...

Bacteria bubble lamps, iGEM, and future visions

This past Tuesday the New Science and Math library at the University of Oslo (in collaboration with The Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board) welcomed Drew Endy from Stanford University and a team of students from Cambridge University. They were there to talk about synthetic biology—Drew Endy defined what it is and how he envisions its future uses. He also talked about its impact on society and the potential ethical and moral issues involved in its use. The students were there to present their iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine competition) project for 2010—an E.coli bubble lamp—essentially E.coli bacteria that have been genetically-modified to become a living bioluminescent ‘lamp’. You can see their ‘product’ here in this YouTube video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=tUFscEVK5Ks. There were four students and all of them wore T-shirts with the words ‘E. glowli’ written on them. They had their presentation before Drew’s lecture, and they held their audience captive for over thirty minutes with what they had to say. They envisioned a future where London was lit by such ‘living lamps’. But what struck me most of all about them was the (high) levels of enthusiasm and interest they had in science and in what they were doing. They believed in what they were doing. They were not fanatical; they just loved their work. You could tell they weren’t just doing it for the fame and glory, even though they have achieved some of that. Mostly they were just enjoying what they were doing and they weren’t afraid to impart that message. And as an audience, you could not help but be inspired by them. You couldn’t help but smile. These students are not jaded, cynical bureaucrats; they are already budding scientists and who knows what lies in store for them? Who knows how far they can go before a bureaucratic daily life confronts them and tries to slow them down? The danger is not that they get completely or immediately discouraged. The danger is that they get slowly discouraged—a gradual, slow, insidious process that leads to a loss of morale and enthusiasm over time. I don’t know what I have to do to prevent that from happening, but whatever it is I will do it. I will be a cheerleader for the other side—the side that says let students do science and let scientists do science. Science students deserve a chance to love science. They deserve a chance to come up with new ideas, test them out, compete with others, and to learn by trial and error. We had that chance in our generation. I still love science. I just don’t love the administrative infrastructure that has built itself up around the practice of science, which has led to scientific daily life being over-administrated by budgets and accountants and unnecessary amounts of paperwork.

All of the conferences and lectures I have been to at the New Science and Math library this autumn (and helped promote on their Facebook and Twitter pages—my consulting job this autumn) have helped to restore my love of and enthusiasm about science. You’ll find the New Science and Math library Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/realfagsbiblioteket. This autumn has rejuvenated my love for science in so many forms—synthetic, ecological, marine, and polar biology, math, physics; try and explain them to me in concrete, interesting and enthusiastic ways and you’ll find a willing listener and an enthusiastic supporter. And it was clear from the public attendance at these lectures that there were many others who felt the same way. But please don’t talk to us just about impact factors, making money, patents, innovations, which research group is the best and which group is the worst. Deliver us from small-minded, petty and envious principal investigators. Give me instead the principal investigators who think big even if they have small research groups (I know a few), who have visions, enthusiasm, and ideas about the future and who like their students and encourage them rather than being threatened by their intelligence. Drew Endy did not appear to be threatened by the iGEM students from Cambridge. He was proud of them. There was a good rapport between them. There is some really good science being done at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian University of Life Science at Aas and at other research and educational institutions in Norway. But its promotion has to come from the scientists themselves (not from bureaucrats), or from scientists who don’t want to do bench work anymore but who are willing to promote the cause of science in order to inspire future generations of science students, or from science librarians, or from a combination of all three groups. The combination idea seems to be gaining support, which is wonderful—real teamwork! Hopefully, science-interested parties at the University of Oslo will set the wheels in motion to build up a UiO iGEM team after having heard about how well the lecture and iGEM presentation went on Tuesday afternoon at the New Science and Math library. All I can say is—go for it! 

Mantra for 2011

I’ve been feeling somewhat anxious lately, perhaps not so surprising given the uneven and rather tumultuous work year I’ve had. I read an article today about inoculating yourself against anxiety, panic and shock, and the author suggested paying close attention to the inputs and images you let into your mind each day. How right she is. The bombardment of negative images and inputs starts already early in the morning, simply enough. You open the front door and take in the newspaper. And immediately—Aftenposten has a new ax to grind—lately it’s been problems with the city hospitals following the big merger (and there are problems for sure) and the effects of the merger on doctors, nurses, patients, budgets, scientists, research, society, and the list goes on ad nauseum. There are always problems, but never solutions. Journalists love to point out the problems, but they never come up with any solutions. They seem to enjoy provoking others. It’s just irritating. Is this their role in society? The news stories are never presented objectively anymore. The headlines are tabloid-like and extremely provocative. They get your irritation sensors going and then you’re off to the races. By the time you start your workday an hour or two later you’ve already experienced enough provocation for the morning at least. And then the bureaucratic workday does the rest, so that by the time you come home you just want to shut it all out.

So I’ve stopped reading the newspaper for the past week or so. I don’t listen to the radio as a rule, so there’s no negative imagery contribution there. And I’ve cut out most of my TV-watching, so I don’t get bombarded with too much negativity there either. So what is causing my anxiety? Conversations about everything that is wrong with everything--complaints about the state of everything. The fact of the matter is that a lot of things are wrong or problematic right now. The complaints are valid. There is also a lot of sadness in our lives at work now because we know colleagues who are sick with cancer.  We worry about them. We try to deal with sorrow. It’s not easy watching people slip away from you. And then we obsess over other things, like how much better our workdays were ten years ago when we knew what the goals were and why we were doing the work we were doing. We aren’t dealing well with change or uncertainty. We don’t like them very much. We can be like dogs with a bone. We can worry it to death. We chew on our worries until we’ve chewed them to pieces. They’re still there afterwards, unfortunately. Sometimes it feels like we are drowning. This autumn was the last anxiety-inducing straw for me. Problems with my union leader triggered unpleasant memories from my past, and those memories somehow got a foothold and took root. So the other night I felt like I was suffocating. My heart was racing and wouldn’t stop. That went on for about thirty minutes. I was afraid and the fear perpetuated the anxiety--a vicious circle. The fear is vague. That night I feared everything. It all seemed overwhelming. Having experienced a few anxiety attacks in my mid-twenties, I know at least what I’m dealing with (if it was indeed a panic attack) and what I need to do to get my mind focused on positive things. Writing about it helps. If it was a panic attack, it was a memorable one. If it wasn’t then I need to visit a cardiologist. Either way, stress and negative inputs have to go. Anything that can help me learn to relax is welcome at present.It’s time to shut the door on people who want to wear me down in one way or another, who want to control me, own me, deride me, or use me. I’ve shut the door now on one person and I can do it to others if I need to. I did it before when I was younger. I don’t want to or have to deal with everyone, especially people who are not fundamentally nice people. I don’t have to dialog with everyone or negotiate conflicts with everyone. I get to choose. I’ve got to re-learn to block such people and let their negative inputs go. Let them go, let them go, let them go. And with them, blow my worries to the wind. Just that mental imagery is peaceful and relaxing. I feel lighter already. Let them go, let them go, let them go. That’s my mantra for 2011.

Liberty and justice for all

Of all of the topics that preoccupy me in this life, fairness and justice for women are at the top of the list. No matter how I twist and turn the topic, I am always left with the crystal-clear knowledge that a world that permits or allows injustice toward women to occur or to continue is only half a world or not a world at all. It is not a world worth preserving if half of its citizens are denied their rights, trodden into submission (either physically or verbally or both), ignored or diminished in any way. It does not matter to me if this occurs in the presumably civilized parts of the world or in less civilized parts of the world. It does not matter to me if it is a religion or an ideology or a movement or an institution that stands behind the injustice. What matters to me is ridding the world of any of these that cause women of any age pain and suffering. You can of course do it through education but you can also do it through law-giving, in any culture. It is a matter of doing it and not just talking about it. We should be more preoccupied with this as a society.

I don’t understand how men, who practice any form of injustice toward women, don’t see that a world where women do not have the freedoms they enjoy is not a good world to live in. But of course I am thinking in a utopian way. I have faith that if educated enough, these men will understand this and make the necessary changes so that women can enjoy a good life with liberty and justice. But my faith is often tested because sometimes I see that even educated and intelligent men who ought to know better, don’t. They are unjust toward the women in their lives. They dismiss their opinions and feelings, they deride their ambitions and dreams, they demand full attention at all times so that these women don’t ever have the opportunities to realize themselves and they misuse them. This can manifest itself in many ways—men who never take responsibility at home, never learn to cook or clean or take care of the children, men who have to suddenly travel for business for months at a time when their wives want to pursue higher education, men who leave all the nurturing and care-giving to the women in their lives so that they (men) can pursue their careers, men who say they’re going to help and never do, men who fool around but still want to be married, and men who require that women look like life-size plastic dolls (I knew one man who actually insisted that his wife undergo painful plastic surgery in her 30s in order to please him). Some women give in and give up at a very early point in life. Others give in and give up later in life. I’d like to say that in 2010 that we’ve come very far in terms of women’s rights and freedoms. But we haven’t come as far as we think or as far as the media would like us to think we’ve come. And all I have to do is turn on the TV to realize that women are still being exploited and still letting themselves be exploited—the show Jersey Shore, Big Brother, most of the MTV videos, any of the Real Housewives shows, the Kardashian Sisters—and the list goes on; mindless and mind-numbing TV that just perpetuates the image of women as brainless no-ambition empty heads. There are still women in my generation who think that because they gave up themselves and their dreams and ambitions for a man that this means he will love them and take care of them forever, because he will surely recognize their sacrifices and loyalty. But he doesn't. There are even young women in the present who think this way. Where does this type of thinking come from? Are they told at the dinner table that if you just blindly serve a man for the rest of your life that he will be there forever for you? What do their mothers tell them? Are their mothers feminist and the daughters anti-feminist as a backlash? Any relationship, be it a marriage, a friendship, parent-child, or boss-employee, can become unbalanced over time if both people in that relationship are not always working to uphold the balance. It means actively participating as an equal partner and working on a daily basis for fairness and equal rights. Cleaning the kitchen once or making a meal once or twice a year does not qualify as balanced to me, especially if both partners in a marriage work full-time. It means stepping up to the plate without always being asked to do so. It means taking your share of the responsibility for the life you share with another person.

Relationship partners have to allow for change, otherwise the relationship will slowly die. This is true as much for friendships as it is for marriages. Partners have to find new and common interests in order for the relationships to be viable. The aim is not to prevent change, but rather to navigate through the inevitable changes that come with age and life and loss. Parents die, children grow up, jobs end, interests change, and all of it is inevitable. What are we going to do with it all if the goal is to prevent relationships from changing? Perhaps one partner wants to travel and the other does not. Who has the right to prevent either one from doing what each would like to do? The best would be to compromise—travel to please another person and stay home to please another person, but those have to be choices that are not forced upon another person. I know several older women whose husbands would never have considered traveling, even when they retired. They required rather that their wives were there each evening to serve them their dinners. I thought this was unfair even when I was a child. Why would these men not consider sharing their wives’ interests after their wives had taken care of the home all the years their husbands worked? I don’t get it. I watched the movie Shirley Valentine recently on cable (I saw it for the first time when it came out in 1989) and that was exactly the theme of the movie. Shirley left for a short vacation in Greece after trying very hard over a period of time to persuade her husband to join her. He ignored her and made fun of her, as did her daughter; she decided to go anyway, and it changed her life. I didn’t get what was so threatening to her husband—why he couldn’t have joined her from the start. But it took him the length of the movie to get his ass in gear and to fly to Greece, but only when he realized she wasn’t coming back to her old life in England. I applaud her guts. Not many women would have done that, and that was the point. She had courage, she had changed, she wanted to share that with her husband, he didn’t want her to change and ignored her, but he was forced to deal with it anyway. And that is the point--we are forced anyway to deal with change. It smacks us in the face. Why not welcome it together, embrace it, and navigate through it together, for better or for worse? Then there is liberty and justice for all. 

Musings on a birthday weekend

Tonight we went bowling, which is something we haven’t done in years. I won’t even tell you how many years ago, just that the last time I was in a bowling alley scores were kept manually by writing them on a score pad. I don’t know when computers entered the picture but they certainly made scoring a breeze tonight, since neither Trond nor I remembered how to keep score. We bowled two games and I have to say it was a lot of fun and that I want to do it more often. I actually managed two strikes and two spares, and started to remember how important it was to have the right bowling ball (weight and fit). We went to Solli bowling at Solli plass in Oslo to bowl and then ate pizza afterwards at Peppe’s pizza which is located right upstairs from the bowling alley. The restaurant was playing a lot of American Christmas music and for some reason that rounded out the evening. The entrance to the restaurant had a Christmas tree with gifts underneath it in the lobby. All of it started to get me in the mood for Christmas. A simple fun evening that was actually a perfect evening—a date night. We enjoyed ourselves. I realized that the fun times in life have nothing to do with how much money one spends. I knew this from before but it’s always nice to have it re-confirmed. Fun comes from just letting go of the cares and worries of life and work. It’s nice to relax that way. We need to do more of it. I realized too that I am blessed with good family and friends. I have mentally survived the difficulties of the past year because of them. I am truly grateful for them and I couldn’t imagine life without them.

Christmas is coming—the city is preparing for its arrival. There is the commercial aspect and then there are all the other small things that make Christmas special, such as the Christmas tree stands in different parts of the city. When we were driving to the bowling alley tonight we saw one of the stands being set up, and some trees were already standing upright waiting to be bought and welcomed into different homes. This makes Christmas special to me. Hearing Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra sing American Christmas carols and songs makes it special to me. Bing Crosby sang ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’. It struck me that it must have been a poignant WWII song. When we got home, I googled the song to learn about its history and sure enough, it was the most requested song at Christmas U.S.O. shows in both Europe and the Pacific during that era. I didn’t know this before because somehow it never seemed important before. Frank Sinatra also recorded this song. I always think of my mother when I hear either one of them sing. My mother loved the movie ‘White Christmas’ and that film starred Bing Crosby. I have since become quite a fan of many of their movies, especially some of the comedies that Frank Sinatra starred in. For the first time, I realized that we are now a long ways from WWII and that the generation of people who lived through it are very old now and many of them have passed on. It made me feel a sense of nostalgia but also an odd sense of myself in exactly this time--because I know that the progression of time moves us now toward 2041, one hundred years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. When I was a child in 1960, one hundred years previous was 1860 and somehow that seemed so long ago to me then. Now I wonder sometimes what the next twenty years will bring in terms of new inventions and technologies. It’s hard to imagine what they could be. Perhaps that is how people in 1911 felt about their future—how could they possibly have foreseen computers, automation, TVs, cell phones, and so many other things. It’s amazing what has happened. And when I see how my mind works—hopping from thinking about bowling when we were young to bowling now to Christmas songs and musings about the past and WWII, it surprises me that all of it is somehow interconnected in a very natural way. It feels like a patchwork life quilt of past, present and future, with all of the people and occurrences that make up that quilt. We are all part of the history happening around us. There is some comfort in that thought. 

Being of service to others

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."    

(Buddha)

"It’s been said that you cannot give away what you do not have. One of the most spiritual important insights or secrets in life is that you already have, and always have had, what you need to give away! If you impart the message that ’I am not worthy’ the universe will send it straight back in many shapes, forms and circumstances. When we say ’give me’ we are imparting this message. We are saying we think we need to get something to complete ourselves or prove our worth. Most of us are taught to live a life of gimmie gimmie gimmie - always striving, desiring, wanting, struggling. We do so only because we think that when we get what we want we will be fulfilled and esteemed by others. But it’s an illusion. We are all already complete and worthy but we cannot know it and experience it, until we give it away! Only giving allows us to know what we are and what we have within. Ask the question - how can I serve? The intention to serve will point you towards what you need to give. If the intention is real it also generates the will. The most successful people in life are not go getters, but go givers!"    

(Innerspace)

These are two small gifts that I want to share on my birthday which is today. I came upon them randomly but I know by now that nothing comes my way without a reason. I wondered about the connection between the two quotes and why both struck me as relevant right now in my life. And then I realized that perhaps one can feel anger when one is not doing what one should be doing, which is being of service to others. This is something I want to think more about. 

School of hard knocks

For those of you who have been following this blog since May, I just want to say that many of the recent posts have had a lot to do with my work situation. My focus these past few months has been on trying to understand what the hell happened this year at work, to me and to those around me and to the work environment. I apologize for my work focus but I am finding it so hard to believe (and to accept) that the merger of four hospitals could have the impact it has had on us, but it has. The only word that comes to mind these days is implosion—I just feel that everything around us is imploding, despite everyone’s best efforts (presumably) to prevent it. Or is it just a gut feeling that doesn’t have to come true? Am I just glooming and dooming? I hope so. All I know is that whatever happens to ‘little me’ has got to be happening to others—accounting mishaps and gross errors, an ordering system that defies logic, a leadership structure that also defies logic (no one knows who their real boss is and even the bosses are not sure who they are responsible for—I report to three people but I try to limit it to one person to keep my sanity). We are expected to inform the chain of command about most things, so I do, in order not to cause problems. There has been a large loss of ‘freedom’, which bothers me because I have never abused any of the freedoms I have had before as a scientist. We have office managers who force us to deal with problems that we are not trained for or equipped to handle, e.g., complicated accounting practices that we as scientists have no chance in hell of understanding. We are expected to be administrators and to like it. I don’t mind office work but it wasn’t exactly what I signed on for when I decided I was going to do science. But I’m moving in the direction of more office work. It’s easier to give in so as not to make waves.

This year I was offered the same leadership position twice and twice it was retracted. The reason given was that I could not officially report to my husband, which would have been the case had I become leader. Ok, I can accept that. What I cannot understand is why the whole idea of offering it to me was ok at the beginning of January but not by the end of April. So I let go of wanting that to happen. I was told that my staff scientist job had to be ‘defended’ to the clinic leaders so it was obviously in danger of being phased out. Luckily it wasn’t. I got my PhD student through this past year and was told that I could not receive any money for this (as is usually the case) because I was not a professor at the university. This seems strange to me. I am professor competent but that was apparently not good enough. I have eighty-four peer-reviewed scientific publications, I review grants for external international institutes, and I am a peer reviewer for over eight journals. My boss told me that I should be happy with the articles that my student and I have published together—that this was reward enough. That’s fine except that if the same happened to him he would be pretty pissed off about it. But it will never happen to him. I was told that my job was to be re-defined back in May, but as of this date it has not been. So I wait. Inertia rules.

I shifted my focus toward doing some secretarial work for my union board and helping them with salary negotiations during this autumn. And so began other problems. My union leader, a man with very little respect for professional women, began to cause problems for the board. Then he began to cause problems for me. I am still dealing with the repercussions of his unprofessional and idiotic behavior. I decided I had to blow the whistle on some of his behavior and I did. It is not easy to do this and I know now why people would rather avoid sticking their head up or their neck out. You don’t know what you’re in for before it happens. And then it takes on a life of its own. Inertia rules.

The final straw for this year was finding out that my salary has been coming from the wrong account and that this account has incurred a deficit of over 120,000 USD since I was hired as a permanent full-time employee by my hospital in January 2008. Another boss refers to this money as Excel money because the accountants just shift money around like they were playing Monopoly, but whatever the case, this makes me nervous. I reported the situation to this boss almost two years ago and he reported it further to the accounting department and nothing has happened, just that the deficit grows larger since they don’t seem to understand the problem. I find it hard to believe that this can go on and that this can bode well for the future of an enterprise. People around me tell me not to take it personally (I don’t) but the level of incompetence I see around me bothers me. For every person who is trying to make sense of his or her job, there are five administrators who are just complicating everything exponentially.

So this is the school of hard knocks. I haven’t taken any courses at any university this year but I have learned an incredible amount about incompetence, unprofessional behavior, lack of a work ethic, avoidance of responsibility, shifting the blame onto others as often as possible, not doing anything about a problem or a conflict, not leaving a paper trail (no emails), not showing up at important meetings and covering your ass in case it’s necessary to do so. I have learned that passive-aggressive behavior in workplace leaders is fairly commonplace. At present I am fairly black and blue from all the pummeling that has been going on. But I have learned that I need to get better at punching back. I need to learn to become a better fighter. 2011 will be an interesting year in such regard.  

Last day in November

The last day in November—here we are less than four weeks from Christmas and on the verge of a new year. I wonder what the New Year will bring. I certainly had no inklings whatsoever that 2010 would turn out to be one of the more difficult years in my recent past. But it was and I know I need to learn from it, if only to preserve my peace of mind. If I listed up all of the things that have gone awry this year, you might not believe me. So I won’t. I’ll leave them be and let them go. I want to enjoy the Christmas season and I cannot do that in a state of constant anxiety and uncertainty.

I am looking forward to Christmas this year and to all the preparations for it—putting up the tree, decorating, making gingerbread cookies as well as other cookies and cakes, going to some Christmas choir concerts, attending the Nutcracker (our annual tradition), and paying attention to the true meaning of Advent and of Christmas. It’s the gifts of peace, joy, stillness, and kindness that mean the most to me. Just to receive and give kindness are treasured gifts for the soul. There is so little real kindness and the world needs more of it. 

A positive outlook

"If you focus on the possible when you experience difficult situations, YOU CAN positively change your outlook, reduce your stress, and concentrate on achieving things that otherwise may not have been possible."


Catherine Pulsifer

The lowly pawns

I played two games of chess with my computer last week and I actually won one game, surprisingly enough. It was my pawns that gave me the advantage, and it got me thinking about life and how it can surprise you at times. Pawns have the lowest value compared to the other chess pieces, and it was somehow fitting that it was the pawns that helped me win. I couldn’t help but find some symbolism in this little achievement. The pawns can advance only one square at a time and they can be used to capture your opponent’s pieces on the diagonal. If you are so lucky as to have your pawns reach the farthest rank of the board, they can be exchanged for your captured pieces. So a pawn can become your queen that was captured, and so on. Slow and steady wins the race, at least sometimes.

I used to play chess with my father a lot when I was a teenager. I think it was he who taught me the game. It must be said that he was not a good loser. But that didn’t stop us from playing chess together. I learned so much from chess, and my rediscovery of how interesting the game really is made me think about why I like it. It is very cool to be able to ‘see’ ahead in terms of planning your moves. There is a cold hard logic involved that I like. And that has absolute relevance to life too. It is essential to be able to see the repercussions of a decision one makes, or to evaluate several options and to wander down the mental roads that each option could lead to. There is certainty and lack of certainty contained within each option, and that is the feeling I feel when I play chess. You can plan your moves and anticipate how your opponent may move, but you may overlook something and your opponent may surprise you. Thus the excitement and the anxiety of the game—it feels like high stakes are involved—even if you are a lowly amateur to the game.

There are so many plays for power and control around me these days, especially at work. The words of a former colleague ring in my ears at times—'your work environment is mostly characterized by ruthless power struggles'. Naïve as I am, I don’t think I ever really totally internalized this fact. Or perhaps I thought I was outside the realm of power so that it would never affect me. Little me—who would have thought I would be a threat to anyone? But apparently I am, just because I have opinions and because I open my mouth and state them. You shouldn’t do that these days—you should keep your mouth shut and your head down and do as you’re told.

The word ‘checkmate’ has been popping into my head here and there the past few weeks. Not surprising perhaps, because during the past two weeks I have been witness to some of the most ruthless power struggles in my work life thus far and for some reason that has triggered the chess symbolism. Because some of those power struggles involve me indirectly (roundabout efforts to keep me from gaining any power whatsoever), I feel like a pawn that keeps advancing slowly, one step at a time. Most of the time the pawns get pushed out of the way, but every now and then one of them can make it possible for the other pieces to corner the king. Checkmate. It’s about seeing the moves your opponents may make and acting accordingly. I realize that I have been pushed out of the way for a while now. I haven’t understood the game until now. I’m keeping my cool and planning my moves, one step at a time, and who knows how it will turn out. 

Musings on a Sunday night

We celebrated Thanksgiving tonight—with turkey, gravy, bread stuffing, corn bread, mashed white and sweet potatoes, tyttebær sauce instead of cranberry sauce (tyttebær are similar to cranberries), broccoli, and pumpkin pie. Caroline and Marius were together with us and it was a very enjoyable evening. I used the entire day and part of last night to prepare the meal, and it’s always worth it. I love doing it and as long as I do I’ll continue to do it each year. Thanksgiving is my holiday as an American abroad, and for each year that passes that I am not in America, it means more to me. I am always reminded of my mother and father when the holidays arrive. My mother spent most of Thanksgiving Day in the kitchen—we had to force her to sit down and eat with the rest of us, as she was always busy serving us. My parents would make some pies together at Christmas time. My father would sit and roll out dough that my mother used to make the latticework on her Italian ricotta cheese pie (which I can promise you is out of this world—delicious).

It has been snowing the whole day, but there hasn’t been much accumulation. It wasn’t heavy snow. It is bitter cold and windy, so when I have opened the windows to air out the kitchen, the arctic air permeates the room immediately. Winter is definitely here and has made its annual entrance with a vengeance.

Earlier today, I heard bells ringing from, of all things, an ice cream truck that usually drives around the city during the summertime. When I looked out the window, sure enough, there it was--the blue ice cream truck. I had to laugh—somehow the incongruity of its being there was almost sweet. Here we are, in the midst of a freezing cold winter, and I wondered who would buy freezing cold ice cream. I also wondered if he had any takers. I almost felt sorry for the driver and considered going down to buy some ice cream, but of course common sense took over. We don’t need ice cream since both of us cannot really eat it anymore due to health reasons, but mainly, what would we do with it on a freezing winter day? Or during a freezing winter generally?

Today is also the first Sunday in Advent. I set up my Advent candle holder with four purple candles. I always like to decorate the house in preparation for Christmas. I do it gradually, so that the house slowly begins to look Christmas-y. I look forward to putting the tree up and decorating it. Trond and I usually go down to the local Christmas tree store—a temporary affair that they set up in a vacant field each year—and pick out a tree. I always want a taller one than Trond wants, and we always end up compromising. Each year the tree is always just perfect. I have a hard time picking just the right tree, because I usually want to take home the ones that don’t make it to #1, like Charlie Brown. I feel sorry for the trees that are left behind. I would be impossible in an animal rescue shelter—I’d want to take all the animals home. I’d probably be the same in an orphanage. I cannot even imagine how one could choose just one child and leave the rest behind.

It makes me wish I had so much money that I could own a big piece of land where I could build as many houses as were needed to take in stray people and stray animals. Of course there would be enough money to hire kind people to help take care of them. I wish it could be so.

I wish there was more kindness in the world. Just plain kindness. More listening, more caring, less arrogance, less unfriendliness, less rudeness. That’s my wish for Christmas and for the New Year. I’ll do my part to help make it happen, I promise.

What Eleanor Roosevelt said

·         No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

·         You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

·         Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

·         The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.

·         When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

·         It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

·         What is to give light must endure the burning.

·         Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

·         When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

·         Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

·         It was a wife's duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books, or a particular dish for dinner.

·         Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.

·         The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

To thine own self be true

This year will go down in my personal history book as one of the most disappointing but probably one of the most challenging as well. I guess the major challenge has been to learn how to deal with disappointments because they are definitely a part of (my) life and definitely here to stay. Most of them have to do with my workplace and I have to say, hand across my heart, that I never thought I would be in this position. I never thought I would come to the point where the disappointments of work life would be so crushing that sometimes it felt too overwhelming to rise up again. But I always do. And it seems as though I have a guardian angel, because something always happens to make my life better or richer. Out of the major disappointments in my regular job during the first part of this year came the consulting job at the library and meeting a group of women who believe in something besides budgets, accounting sheets, power and ego trips, and who have a vision and a burning desire to achieve it.

I also witnessed something today that showed me that sometimes ‘nice people do finish first’. A scientist (a woman) at another hospital won a prize for her research—a considerable sum of money—and she deserved to win. She’s done a great job under some difficult circumstances the past few years and she made the best of it. So that was encouraging to see.

Otherwise, I made a good decision for myself last week that I’ve been mulling over for some weeks now. I rarely regret my decisions, and this one will be no exception. It means not having to be around a person who became intolerable to me, who triggered in me feelings of fear and of anger that I have not had in over thirty years. So it was good to be rid of him. A lot of people will tell you to hang in there, don’t let him get to you, don’t let him win. But in truth, he won a long time ago—the rest of the people who work with him just don’t see it. They will spend a lot of time mopping up his messes and his ill treatment of others (and of themselves). I don’t want to be treated like crap anymore, not by anyone. So I rather think I won—because I said goodbye to him and his idiocy. I will not miss him. He will crash and burn one day, and perhaps I will be happy if he does. If that makes me a bad person or a vindictive one, then it does.

I think I’ve changed considerably in the past two years. I guess change is inevitable. But I’m glad for it. Things are much more crystal clear for me now than ever before. I cannot lie to myself anymore and I certainly don’t want to waste time lying to others. Life is short. Some people I know are slowly leaving this life due to illness. It puts my own life in perspective. We don’t have forever to waste on things and people that give us nothing in return. It does not matter that other people tell us to be patient and hang in there. It is my experience that the few times I have cut the cord and left (bad relationships, friendships, jobs, etc.) that my life has moved in a much better direction and that I have experienced happiness because I was true to myself and not to the falsities around me. To thine own self be true—Shakespeare said it best. It is what we are asked to do on this earth. It is the biggest challenge we face—to remain true to ourselves.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!”

(William Shakespeare)