Remembrance of Things Past

When the rare summer sun comes out, so does everyone else!
I ate at the cafe seen on the right.

Flight over in business class was nice. Good food, plenty of space in my own little pod, could make the bed lie flat and turn on my side. Only about 90 minutes sleep, but still. Tight connection in Heathrow turned into five hours, boring but not unpleasant as plenty of places to sit and toilets and restaurants. Sadly, when I finally got to Norway I spent 90 minutes standing in line for immigration. I was never so happy to get to my hotel room and relax! 

 

This development behind me is known as “Barcode”.
 It’s very controversial architecturally, and
Even used as a punchline in the movie 
“The Worst Person in the World”
Which I watched as part of my trip prep

But I was in Norway and I had to go out. The weather was spectacular, and everyone was out. I walked for a bit, and then had fish soup and a beer at an outside cafe. I dipped my bread into the little container of a yellow substance I thought had butter, but it was mayonnaise. In a flash, I was back to being twelve years old and on my first trip to Norway with my family. On my plate next to my fish was served a heap of yellow stuff they told me was mayonnaise. I thought I hated mayonnaise, but my mother (in the voice all parents use) said “just try it”. It was fabulous - rich in a way I had never experienced. And here was the same fabulous, eggy, rich substance! So the bread got dipped in the mayo and then the fish soup and it was terrific! In a similar vein, in the 1990s my brother and I went to Provence together. I don’t remember the year, but I remember it was February. It was always sunny, but often a bit cold. We drove down to a small town on the Mediterranean coast and I ordered fish soup in an outdoor cafe along the harbor. It was served with little toasts, and a tub of something the menu said was “aioli”. I spread it on the toast, dipped it in the soup, and it was the best thing I had ever eaten in my life! The same rich, eggy, substance, but infused with garlic instead of the faint pickle-y vinegar of the Norwegian version. 

Impossible to capture, and fabulous weather!

I left Oslo the next day. I took a spectacular, five hour train trip up and over the mountains of Norway to Bergen. I was glued to the window the whole way, couldn’t tear my eyes away to read my book. Forewarned by online reviews, I stopped in the station before boarding and bought a sandwich for the trip. On impulse, driven by a tantalizing smell at the cash register, I suddenly dredged up my childish Norwegian vocabulary to order a “varme polser” for breakfast. (It’s a Norwegian hotdog-like sausage, ubiquitous.) I surprised myself, as I wished the server “tusand tak”. (Literally, thousand thanks). 

Ice cream!

Bergen also had fabulous weather when I arrived, so I had the afternoon to walk about, eat ice cream, and have incredibly good grilled fish kebabs at the outdoor fish market. So far on the this trip, I’ve pretty much only spoken to the service people. This afternoon my friends arrive and we’ll do a big dinner. My solo time is coming to an end. Tomorrow, we board the ship.

The Brygge 

We’re staying at a hotel chosen by the tour company, and it’s in the greatest location. There is a preserved old wharf along the harbor, dating to the 15th century. My mother’s family originates here in Bergen, so it’s always resonated with me. When I was very small, my mother painted a picture of this wharf, and it now hangs over my dining room table. I have many photos of family members standing here, so of course I did a selfie. But I’ll get a member of our group to take a better one, to become part of the series. 

Reading Science Fiction and Fantasy

 

I've been reading a lot. Possibly too much, but that's a post for another time. I have thoughts about science fiction and fantasy stereotypes and tropes. This post was prompted by a friend sharing an essay on similar topics, linked to here.

I discovered science fiction in eighth grade, starting in my school library with Robert Heinlein. He had a book, Podcayne of Mars,  which features a 15 (earth) year old girl. She had agency and wit, and it started me on the genre. Reading the wikipedia summary today, maybe she had a little less autonomy than I remember. I continued with SF throughout my high school years. I don't much remember any authors besides Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, though frankly Asimov wrote enough to keep any single mortal busy anyway!

I started in fantasy at about the same time, though I don't remember much except for Tolkein, and The Last Unicorn, considered one of the best all-time fantasy novels. One of the synonyms for "fantasy" novels has been "sword and sorcery". More on the sorcery aspect below.

When I was a freshman in college, I took a class in science fiction and fantasy literature. The required reading expanded my horizons significantly. That's when I read, for example, Dune. And a great deal of Kurt Vonnegut. I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect everything on the reading list would have been written by a man. Even "James Tiptree, Jr" was not publishing novels back then, and it wasn't until much later it was known she was a woman.

I remember having an argument in that class about women's roles in this literature. My point was that if you were inventing a world, there was absolutely no reason to perpetuate the sexist roles that exist in this one. Evil sexist people and societies might exist, but clearly their sexism was only an aspect of their evilness. Not everyone agreed with me - this was 1973, after all. 

It was only later that I found Vonda McIntyre, Mercedes Lackey, and Ursula LeGuin, as the first women of sci fi and fantasy. By imagining worlds free of our constraints, they expanded my own imagination into what would be possible in our world. Dreamsnake by McIntyre blew my mind. Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey captivated me and, as it the first of a considerable series, the author held my attention for quite a while. (According to Wikipedia she has published over 140 books! No wonder I haven’t read them all.) I sought out only books written by women for a while. Now, there are also works by men like John Scalzi. He has written some books where the main character, the narrator, is actually ungendered. Through the whole book, you don't know. I was chagrined to only realize this having read a whole novel like this. Throughout the book, my notion was the narrator was a man (after all, it was written by a man). But I read a blog post about it, and realized that it was never made explicit throughout the book.

I am sad to say that my awareness of racism in speculative fiction took much longer to awaken. There was no overt racism in any of the books I liked, but also there tended to not be any characters of color. That gradually changed, and frankly Star Trek was a leader in this area. But gradually, I have grown uncomfortable with the concept of whole races of non-human beings who are just plain evil, serving in some ways as a proxy for racism. Creatures like Orcs in the Lord of the Rings, non-human characters one can kill with a clear conscience. 

I've also grown impatient with the tropes of the semi-human magical race, and of the "chosen one" who alone can save the world (or the universe), due to some inherent quality born into him (it's almost always a boy). There is sometimes a theme of people with special abilities being persecuted and exploited, when they are clearly actually superior to ordinary humans. Huh. 

I remember reading an alternate-history book that took place with a Roman Empire that lasted through the 18th/19th century. There were excellent characters struggling with colonialism and identity, and a fun political setup. But then our main hero had to go off on a quest in the desert to find her magical heritage. The book was so interesting without that unnecessary bit, and I found it obscured the more interesting themes. Who even needs sorcery?

Lately I've been indulging myself in a series of (YA) fantasy novels, the Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan. One of the appealing things about this book is the (almost complete) absence of magic. There is an evil race of beings that appear in the first couple of books, but in the many books that follow, they aren't there. I think Flanagan may have realized how they didn't help his stories forward. There are definitely people who are very, very, even unnaturally, talented in certain areas, but they tend to also utilize hard work to make the most of their talents. It makes it a much more comfortable world to indulge my imagination in. I could picture myself there happily. And I think that is often the point of fantasy novels.

Lighthearted Fun

I spent my Friday night enjoying a lighthearted, fun, seemingly trivial, movie. But according to Tom and Lorenzo, it is also heavily significant, even historic.

Here is an intelligent and amusing romantic comedy, borrowing much of the story line of Pride and Prejudice.  So of course, you know how it will end. But set in idyllic Fire Island Pines, it shows a world close physically to where I grew up, one always known to me, but never before seen.

It's fun and charming. The novel setting allows for continued interest as we see how the familiar story plays out. You end with a smile on your face.

And afterwards, I listened to the fabulous and opinionated Tom & Lorenzo rave about how good, unique, and significant this seemingly trivial movie really is.

Pop Style Opinion Fest

Dear Marilyn and Claire

I finally got through what I think (hope!) is the last of the paper-filled boxes from my mother's apartment. I have had new boxes spread out on the bed in the guest room for close to a year, each labeled with family names. As I went through my mother's boxes, I sorted papers I wanted to keep, without reading them beyond the point of deciding if I was going to keep them. So I have a box labeled "Shellabargers" with items from that side of the family, one labeled "Olsens" for that side, and so on. (At some point in the future I may dive into the contents further, and perhaps digitize some of it, certainly actually read the stuff). I actually thought I was done with document boxes earlier, but as I went to clean out the guest room, I discovered one more box. 

It was a great find! Full of important documents such as death certificates, it also contained a treasure trove of correspondence. Back in the day, people wrote letters. ("The Day" seems to have died out with the turn of the century, when email became the thing, later supplanted with social media.) This particular pile of correspondence was letters sent to my parents, dating from the 1960s through to the last poignant one dated 2008. That final one was from an old friend from Bellport to my mother, writing from her assisted living facility, disclosing her early Alzheimer's diagnosis, and going on to describe her continuing serious commitment to her church, including serving every week as a lay reader, "as long as I can".

I sorted the letters by sender, without reading them, but if they were from family or significant friends that wrote a lot, I put them in the appropriate box for later. Many documents in this last box went directly into paper recycling (who needs the caterer's invoice from my sister's wedding?) but I set aside into a separate pile some handwritten correspondence from people I didn't know or only vaguely remembered. It didn't feel right to just toss these letters without looking at them first. 

So last night, I sat down and read this handful of items. Many of them were touching, and I thought to preserve some of the anecdotes or aspects about my parents they reveal. 

My father was a professor at the University of Michigan, and there were several letters from former graduate students, in the United States and abroad. I was very surprised to see sincere thank you notes from a few former students, expressing in the strongest terms their gratitude for "your very generous gift". I'm guessing from additional clues my parents assisted these folks financially, in more than just a token way. I had no idea! My parents were fortunate indeed to be in a position to do this, and it gives new resonance to the way they drilled into me that wealth is not a sign of virtue, but a fortunate happenstance that should be shared.

One especially amusing letter I read was from my mother's friend from the neighborhood in Ann Arbor. Having children the same age is one of the things that cements relationships, and this friendship withstood eventual physical separation. Ruth was still living in Ann Arbor when I went to college there, and so the letter discusses what they had seen of me ("I think she has made a great adjustment and is quite content here.") The letter has notes of her despair over her boys, pursuing arts and fun things, ignoring their engineer/physicist dad's pleas to be practical. And she notes with humor and some irritation her husband's interviewing for a presidential appointment to the Atomic Energy Commission. "He was recently interviewed in some office surrounded by pictures of the Nixon family...  Nixon's men really zeroed in on his political life... It has been strangely quiet here since Bill stated in answer to a question that he could not always support President Nixon's programs or views... Maybe their Watergate guys have figured out we voted for McGovern!" Ruth was cognizant of the honor to her husband of being considered, but was greatly relieved it didn't happen.

The church in Bellport was very important to both my parents, and I already noted the letter above from one of their close friends from there. Our family was roiled by tragedy when the minister of the church committed suicide in 1971, when my brother and I were in high school. At that age, in my mind the tragedy was all about my reaction to it. So my memories of that time are only of me and my friends. I knew my parents over time became close friends of the widow, who remained in Bellport. But I was surprised to read a long letter from the mother of the deceased minister. She lived in Paris, before and after the tragedy, but had of course gone to Bellport immediately the news of her son's suicide reached her. She was writing to my parents some months later from Paris, thanking them for their extraordinary support while she was there, and asking them to let her know if the widow and children were not coping, and if she (the mother) should return to New York. Think about the intimacy that implies, for people who had never met until brought together by tragedy!

On a related note, my parents became very close friends with the new minister and his family at the church, standing as godparents to their daughter. He went on to become a bishop in the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati, and there are a stack of letters from him and his wife to my parents. But I read some pleasant notes from another church lady friend of my parents who actually peppered her notes to my mother with some snark about that second minister, snubs and thoughtless moments. Huh. I never would have known from everyone's more public behavior.

Many of my parents' closest friends for life were from their time in graduate school at Indiana University right after World War II. It was a happening time and place for biological sciences, but it was also a time where folks in their twenties (and early thirties - after de-mobilization) were getting married, finding jobs, and having their first children, forming indelible bonds. One of their intimates was James Watson, famous as a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA (and later infamous for acknowledging having used data stolen without consent from a female researcher to make the discovery, and even more recently infamous for expressing repugnant sexist and racist ideas about the role of genetics in human society).  I grew up on anecdotes about how he was actually kind of a jerk, tossed into a lake once by his roommates at a summer institute for neglecting his personal hygiene. At the same time, my parents were careful to acknowledge their friendship and genuine liking for him. So it was interesting to read some notes exchanged between my mother and a female friend from grad school (like my mother, once a budding scientist in a world of sexism, later a wife and mother) giggling about the controversy surrounding the publication / withdrawal from publication / subsequent new publication of his book, The Double Helix. Also giggles about the 40-year-old Harvard professor Watson's contemporaneous marriage to a Radcliffe 19-old undergraduate. This woman wrote about her "very close relationship [with Watson] that most likely would have become permanent" back then except for the intervention of their major professor, "who viewed any emotional liaison of Jim's as being tantamount to his intellectual suicide". Celebrity gossip, Shellabarger style!

I regret the loss of this form of communication. Not enough to start writing letters to people, but maybe enough to consider preserving on paper some more important email notes. Those immediately following my sister's death, for example. I tried to make sure I preserved them, electronically, but I haven't looked for them for years. Yet another rainy day project.

Fat

I started this post several days ago, and abandoned it after a while. It had nothing new to say about what to do with the fact I am fat. If I don't want to be fat, I should eat less and move more. Specifically, I should have better portion control at meals, eat more vegetables, and fewer sweets, especially at night. And if I was an Intuitive Eating success story, all of the above would come naturally. But while of course I'm not happy with how I look and feel, I am not willing to make a stringent commitment to do something about it. So I'm muddling along, making changes at the margin some days, other days, not so much.

I was going to delete the partial post below, but I think the emotion expressed is true, and I want to capture it, for myself.

 

I am fat. I weigh more than I have in 25 years, and it isn't all muscle. I am fat. My clothes do not fit well. My stomach gets in the way of certain exercises or stretches. These are facts, not feelings.

I don't like the way my body looks and feels. I am ambivalent about what and how I have been eating. These are feelings, not facts.

Fuck you, intuitive eating! You have screwed up how I think and feel and act around food. Before I read the book, I would have said I only needed to modify two main things in my diet: better portion control at every meal but especially at night, and better control of night time sweets. Now, I think I'm in much more disordered eating, because IE advocates eating whatever you want whenever you want. The subtlety of IE comes in the word "want" - getting that right - but I'm not sure I'm ever going to get there. And I'm also not willing right now to go back to the more structured eating I was doing before. So I'm stuck, and not happy about it. But it's all within my control. I just want to let go and not have to be in control. Ugh.

California Living

The public library in the next block.

I’m spending almost a week out in Berkeley visiting my big boy. He’s a graduate student, spending just a semester here, so I jumped at the opportunity to see more of the exotic (to me) west coast and visit him at the same time. I’m staying in a converted garage behind an old Arts and Crafts house with an intensely planted urban farm in the backyard, complete with bee hives. There is a lemon tree, fruit bushes, four raised beds with happy looking vegetables well secured from whatever raiding varmints are around, and roses and geraniums and tall flowering sages as well.

Jellyfish are the photogenic stars of any aquarium

I spend my days (while he is at work) exploring Berkeley neighborhoods on foot. The architecture and gardens are exquisite! While maybe not sounding exciting, this is one of the things I most like to do when on vacation: settle down somewhere pleasant, and then explore nooks and crannies on foot. Serendipitously, there is a copy of  “Berkeley Walks” in my studio, so I’m not totally relying on luck to find the good places. There is a very nice little commercial district along the next block, so plenty of food choices available. I haven’t had a bad meal yet!

We had a grand day out Saturday, driving down to the coast south of San Francisco. We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, ate fish seated outside at a nearby perfectly adequate tourist trap restaurant, and strolled along Cannery Row, where we paid homage to John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, former residents and current local icons. (I’ve read the relevant Steinbeck novels, and his non-fiction account of a marine biological-focused voyage the two took to Baja California.) Then we drove along the coast down to Big Sur. It’s a dramatic drive, one I’ve read about and seen featured in movies - how exciting to be there for real. We stopped in a state park and took a hike through a redwood forest to a little waterfall. There was a lot of vertical travel in our otherwise easy hike - my fitbit said I did 49 floors worth of upward steps! I can go places, but my boy was surprised by how slow I was - though of course, perfectly considerate once he realized how it was going to be.

Lunch in Monterey

We’re going on a more local hike this afternoon, as the weather remains lovely - 60s and sunny. (My boy says it’s only rained four times in four months!) I’ve got another weekday to amuse myself during the day, dinner with his friends, and then home. So far so good!

Bixby Bridge near Big Sur

Stellar’s Jay - the bird of the day!

Guinea Pig

 I decided to dedicate my brain to science. Why wait until I’m dead?

Actually, I have applied several times to be included in various medical studies and trials. As the National Institutes of Health are nearby, there are bunches of trials around. I was turned down for an early Covid vaccine trial, due to my migraines. The migraines have knocked me out of several trials.

A year or more ago I applied for a study on the effect of exercise on memory being done at the University of Maryland. I was disqualified because I was already an active exerciser - they were looking for sedentary old people who would start an exercise program. They would be studied longitudinally, for at least six months. 

I was contacted again by the same folks this February, where they were conducting a related study, looking at short-term effects of exercise on memory. For this, they needed old people who had a basic fitness level, so we wouldn’t drop dead exercising for the experiment. I was excited to be included this time! There was no compensation for participating, but also no expense. Three visits to the nearby University of Maryland campus, at least two hours each. 

It was an interesting experience. I had to be cleared by my primary care physician for exercise, and by my dentist for the MRI machine - to verify I didn’t have any big metal things in my mouth. The first visit was to get a baseline of both my fitness and cognitive level. I was met at the door by a personable young man, Dan, who was in charge of this experiment for his doctoral research. I was led into the basement of the School of Public Health, into a bleak cinder block and linoleum room with just a Formica table and a couple of plastic chairs, where I signed a whole bunch of releases. I was run through a number of standard memory and cognitive tests: “remember these five words” and “draw a clock face and put the hands at ten minutes past eleven” and “name as many words starting with “F” as you can in two minutes”. I don’t have a great memory, but I’ve done these tests before. I knew it was just to establish a general baseline to qualify for the real test - make sure I wasn’t impaired - but of course I really put a lot into it, wanting to do well. Then, we went down the hall to an exercise lab. They strapped a mask on my face, a heart rate strap around my chest, and put me on an exercise bike. I had to pedal until my heart rate reached 85% of my predicted maximum, to get a “VO2 Max”, used as a proxy for overall fitness. Again, they were only interested in establishing a general category of “fit enough”, but of course I asked to see my numbers and figure out what they meant. (Dan told me I was “toward the top” of his test subjects, but I was then disappointed when I got home and did more research to realize the number put me in the “average” category for my age and sex. I want to be above average, of course!)

The next two visits were to involve a lot of time having my brain scanned in an MRI, while performing a cognitive task and also scanning before and after and the task, while simply lying there in the tube. The difference between the two visits was that one time I would first pedal on an exercise bike for 30 minutes, and the other time while sitting still for 30 minutes, before going into the tube. The MRI was in a different building on the edge of campus, adjacent to  a veterinary facility, betraying U of Md’s land grant college roots. The MRI is a scarce resource - Dan told me several times that it was costing nearly a thousand dollars an hour, so he was excited to have a grant big enough to handle 40 people with two scans each. But also, the scheduling had to be exact, with no wasted time. They have sorted through a lot of test subjects that can’t do the long MRIs, either because of metal in their body or inability to tolerate the confined and noisy space. So Dan was very pleased that I was able to do this. There were a long list of requirements for clothing - besides the obvious of no underwire bra, but apparently a lot of exercise leggings that are shiny have metal in them. So cotton sweats and tees are the preferred attire, unless you are willing to be put in scrubs or a hospital gown. Even some tattoos are problematic for MRIs. Who knew?

The first day, I found the test site, arriving early, just as Dan was also pulling up in his car so he could lead me in. MRI machines are often below ground, always shielded from outside interference, so of course there was no cell or internet reception there. The building seemed empty except for us - me, Dan, another grad student assistant, and the MRI operator. I was the second subject of the day, starting at 10 am. That first day, I sat and pedaled on an exercise bike, in an empty cinder block room with no music or entertainment and my seat got sore - I haven’t been biking in a couple of years. Every five minutes they took my heart rate and asked me for my relative exertion level. After my exercise, I went into the control room for the MRI, where I was stripped of my watch and glasses and shoes, and then the MRI operator wanded me down with a metal detector, like a TSA agent. I was insulated with ear plugs and pads, effectively rendering me deaf. We went into the room with the MRI itself, where I lay down on the pad and had my head caged in and a display fastened on top. I was handed a small keypad with three buttons to use with my right hand for the task, and a bulb to squeeze in case of emergency, and a finger tip heart rate monitor anchored my left hand. I was slid into the tube, and they communicated with me by typing messages that appeared on a display above me. After a moment, they started with the scans. Each was announced with a typed message, like "this first scan will be 20 seconds. Are you ready?"  It took me a beat to realize there was a microphone in there, so while I couldn't hear them, they could hear me if I talked, and they needed to hear me agree each time.

I recall some previous MRI scans as being mechanically noisy, with whirring and banging. These scans were all noisy, but in a more electronic way, beeping and booping and squealing. I couldn't really assess how time was passing, except by what they typed about how long each scan would be. There were some shortish scans, and then I did my "task". They showed me a series of pictures, and I had to push a button indicating whether the picture was new, a repeat of one previous, or similar to one previous. The "new" versus "similar" was nuanced and a bit difficult. I'm not sure how long each trial was - five or ten minutes? - and there were two different trials.Of course I worked really hard to get them right. And then after the trials more scans, some really lengthy, with at least four that were eight minutes a pop. During each scan I made an effort to be truly motionless, and in between I could flex my fingers and squeeze my muscles a bit, but all told it was 75 minutes in the tube. After my task was complete, I relaxed and just drifted while they continued to scan. And each scan had its own song, either high pitched or low, steady or syncopated rhythms, monotone or two or three notes. Finally, they told me we were done and slid me out, uncaged my head, and I got to sit up. I was stiff from staying still all that time.

The second day was just like the first, except instead of peddling on the bike, I sat on it for 30 minutes. My seat got sore again! And they took my heart rate and my perceived exertion every five minutes. They strove to make the session as similar to the first as possible, except for the actual exercise part.

The scan was long and tedious again, except for the tasks. I had been feeling sluggish all morning, and I know I didn't do as well on the tasks - I was conscious of mistakes right after I made them. I don't know if the difference was at all due to the exercise, but I'm sure they'll be able to see a difference. After my tasks, I was nearly able to fall asleep inside the machine, despite the beeps and boops, but I thought actually going to sleep would be a bad thing for what my brain looked like, so instead I mentally sorted through my mess of tools in the basement, trying to come up with a better way of storing things so I can find them again.

So I did my bit for science. I am on a list of potential test subjects for future tests as well - they are always looking for guinea pigs, and apparently I was a good one for them.