Cycles and Rhyme 10.9.22

Sampler on our State of Things

Greetings from newShrink, this Hunter’s-Moon Sunday.

There’s a lot of content for news-sampler update, from headlines to cultural topics and events of recent interest for travel and study. From a news perspective the week’s headlines across world, national and regional stages highlighted:

🔷 The statutory first Monday in October opening and case arguments of the U.S. Supreme Court term — the tradition following last Friday’s historic investiture of the Court’s first Black female, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson;

🔷 Hurricane aftermath, search-and-rescue, and beginning recovery efforts (the President’s visits and aid-actions focused on both most immediately hit Florida, from Ian, as well as still-strugggling Puerto Rico, from Fiona);

🔷 Various levels of governing debate and action underway amid campaign politics of midterm elections a month from now; and

🔷 The deadly volatile war-and-peace dynamics of Putin’s Russia in Ukraine.

Then a quirk of timing also drew attention and further reflection on the week’s historic-revisiting, cultural/archetypal and depth/soul psychological dimensions. The “first-10-days-of-October” is the traditional period of separate annual historic announcements from Oslo, Norway: The Nobel Prizes honoring excellence in various disciplines from science and geopolitics to literature and the other arts.

For newShrink process the late-week Nobel awards for literature Thursday and Friday’s prestigious Peace Prize became a kind of background Greek-chorus offering commentary on news of the week! (In this the Nobels joined voices still echoing from historian Ken Burns’ stunning latest documentary, recent travel, plus some enjoyable fiction and lighter fare.)

So this week winds up looking at news of our actions, aftermaths, atonements, adjustments, anniversaries… while also holding questions about how, whether, and what we award or remember.

Beyond that broad perspective this is a sampler of otherwise mostly-unrelated, separate stories and issues.

Today the numbered items and topics depicted above are in clockwise order. They begin with #1 at top center column, continue to the right, down, then left and up to end on the “clock-face” with the moon at top-left. (Along with that moon, today’s title themes are covered below in this final item #7.)

Considering first the scales of justice…

#1. State of the Vote, State of the Court

This initial piece from NBC News puts arguments in the Voting Rights Act case in broader context of Justice Jackson’s historic arrival on the now-very right-leaning 6-3 conservative Court. (Bold highlights within block quoted text are mine.)

Justice Jackson makes waves in first Supreme Court arguments (NBC News. Photo in doorway with Chief Justice Roberts by Saul Loeb, AFP Getty. )

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the court, has been a frequent questioner in her first week on the bench.

WASHINGTON — As the Supreme Court on Tuesday weighed a conservative attempt to weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965 to protect minority voters, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court delivered a history lesson on the divisive issue of race in the United States.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in just her second day on the bench, spoke about the enactment of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, stressing how its aim was to redress historic harms to Black people in the aftermath of the Civil War and the end of slavery. It was a symbolic moment in a courtroom in which only three Black justices have ever sat.

Exploring the history that lurks in the background of the dispute over Alabama's congressional districts map, Jackson said that "the entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves." As a result, she wondered, how could the state be barred from considering race when deciding whether more majority Black districts should be drawn?

Given my grave concerns about the pre-Jackson current Court’s recent decisions and statements regarding so-called “originalism” — and critical importance of the 13th, 14th, 15th as well as the even later 19th amendment equal protections — I particularly welcome the vigor of Jackson’s first-week “master class” further detailed in this interview with veteran Harvard constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe:

“She used the opportunity of the oral arguments to conduct what is really a master class in the original meaning of the 14th Amendment… addressing the conservatives on the courts. You want originalism? She read them the original history. The 14th Amendment was not passed in order to make the Constitution color blind, but to provide a basis for legislative action that would take race into account in order to undo the lingering affects of slavery and racism.”

Based on this logic, I for one would assume and hope the same fiercely defended rationale applies to the 19th Amendment establishing female Americans as citizens with full voting rights — though “originally” not ratified until 1920.

A more real-time practical tone and take on the case hearing came from NPR’s veteran Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg, a longtime close friend (and recent biographer) of the late progressive stalwart Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg:

Supreme Court conservatives may strike another blow to landmark Voting Rights Act (NPR. Justice Jackson solo stairway photo by Anna Shoemaker/Getty.)

The New Yorker’s view is similarly less than hopeful.

The Supreme Court Considers What May Be the Final Blow to the Voting Rights Act (The New Yorker. Stairway photo with Chief Justice Roberts by J. Scott Applewhite/AP.)

Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor warn of what’s really at stake in Merrill v. Milligan.

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And here is a different call for caution regarding the state of our vote, to anyone, including those I respect and some I love: If you feel, recall with even slight nostalgia for some halcyon days with “good/sane” Republicans among family, friends, and your sense of community and nation… If you yearn or think to vote for some you consider “sane/good” Republicans at any level on the ballot — maybe thinking to ensure or restore an ideal “real two-party government” …

Please, please take a closer look at what gets voted-in when you do.

A majority of GOP nominees — 299 in all — deny the 2020 election results (The Washington Post)

Among 569 GOP candidates who advanced to the general election in key races for statewide and federal office, 53 percent have denied the 2020 election result.

A dear reader-friend this week shared a post of this story, on which a couple of others and I commented and responded. Here’s an excerpted summary from my part of that conversation:

As I keep reading and rereading these stats & reflecting on this clear phenomenon, I can’t decide which is more likely — and which is worse:

1) that this many candidates filing as “Republican” (whatever that means now) really believe election-denial lies and will continue to act and govern accordingly;

OR

2) this many candidates who know the denial lies are lies are continuing to identify themselves as “Republican” in order to have and keep wealth and governing power going forward — and they give a tacit or passive nod to the deniers just in order to keep getting their votes. 

Neither bodes well for democracy (much less any semblance of character.)

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Moving now to stories depicted above at top-right…

#2. Aftermaths, Atonements, Adjustments

Also directly related to racial equity and the courts is President Biden’s fulfilling the campaign commitment to begin correcting gross racial and socioeconomic disparities in the criminal justice system.

Biden Pardons Thousands of People Convicted of Marijuana Possession Under Federal Law (NYT. Photo by Jose Luis Magana/AP)

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In aftermath of both hurricanes, in addition to immediate relief funding and outreach the President and First Lady traveled first and spent time on the ground in Puerto Rico, followed by longer visits, tours, meetings and appearances in Ian-devastated Florida.

Here’s an overview of events, official actions and a sampling of some of the underlying issues.

During Florida Visit, Biden and DeSantis Put Politics (Largely) on Hold (The New York Times. NYT Photo by Doug Mills.)

The president and the governor of Florida pledged to work together on Hurricane Ian recovery efforts, but there were subtle signs that their rivalry is alive and well.

President Biden is in Florida meeting with people hit hard by Hurricane Ian (NPR)

After Hurricane Ian, floods leave a deep insurance gap (Christian Science Monitor)

With great risk comes great responsibility. Florida is facing a reckoning over rising insurance costs, shifting storm patterns, and who pays to put the state’s homeowners back on their feet.

Florida Leaders Rejected Major Climate Laws. Now They’re Seeking Storm Aid. (NYT)

Senior Republican politicians in the state have opposed federal action against global warming, which is making storms like Hurricane Ian more destructive.

This story describes Florida Senators’ and Representatives’ voting against funding for significant infrastructure improvements and measures in response to massive storm surge and flooding rains that have become the most deadly and costly effects of intensified storms. As part of these aftermath discussions and policy debates I would like to hear and read more public exploration of the infrastructure, environmental and population impacts of Florida’s no-state-tax status. It seems logical that the many carefully timed part-time “Floridians” each year stress that state’s infrastructures while effectively using it as a free tax shelter, also avoiding community coffer needs in their other “home” states (like mine in NC!)

All of which pulled attention and focus to what can be learned and creative solutions achieved?

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#3. Learning from History, Future, Hope

Early in the week this NPR interview by All Things Considered’s Ailsa Chang brought thoughtful perspective from University of CA Irving civil engineer Brett Sanders. He framed his discussion within our human psychological resistance to moving away from fragile and threatened/threatening environments while they are still habitable, structures still standing. He also detailed why and how catastrophic flooding conditions are increasing at an escalating rate with each season’s storms.

What cities can do better to protect themselves from hurricanes and other floods (NPR)

SANDERS: So far, we haven't been successful in the U.S. building structures that are ready to tolerate the floods of this next century.

CHANG: OK, so when it comes to building more flood-tolerant infrastructure, what are the first things that local governments should do to address that?

SANDERS: The first thing that they need to do is map out the areas most at risk, understand areas where there should be no more building. Those are areas where we needed to seriously consider stepping back, getting out of harm's way, leaving room for nature. Secondly, in the areas where we can tolerate some flooding, we need to make sure that the structures we put there are going to hold up against the storm. And we can do that with new building codes, land use at the local level and so on. And lastly, across urban areas, we need to make more room for water to move. We need channels and flow ways and greenspaces that can create space for these big rainfall events to drain.

CHANG: Right.

SANDERS: And at the same time, it's a huge opportunity because these greenspaces create a more livable city.

At the regional level involving fragile Carolinas coasts came a notably similar message in an interview by NPR affiliate WFAE’s climate change reporter David Boraks with Coastal geologist Rob Young. Young runs the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University.

Coastal scientist says storm damage is an opportunity to rethink how we rebuild

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These early Ian-brainstorm planning ideas brought to mind a program and exhibit from very recent touring of the New York City elevated High Line park — itself a creative, engaging urban solution to blighted abandoned elevated rail lines. Pictured at bottom right above, the interactive Designing for Democracy on The Practice of Democracy takes a similar multi-faceted approach. It’s aimed at alleviating problems of gentrification and the crisis in affordable working- and middle-class housing in the most prosperous American cities. Described as “ecological democracy” such future-focused, creative planning efforts integrate and involve multiple disciplines from politics, enginering, economics and finance to private industry, social psychology and community engagement.

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These integrative approaches — plus probably all of those charts and Power Point decks! — had me thinking of former vice president and climate activist/expert Al Gore. This was even before this week’s Nobel Prize awards in the aftermath of climate catastrophe Hurricane Ian.

For a memory refresher here’s a historic NYT clip — from October 2007:

Gore Shares Peace Prize for Climate Change Work

OSLO, Oct. 12, 2007 — Former Vice President Al Gore, who emerged from his loss in the muddled 2000 presidential election to devote himself to his passion as an environmental crusader, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised both “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change.”

(For full disclosure, I tend to remember Al Gore’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize announcement, for it came the same day I received best possible good-health news, its outcomes sustained ever since. Just this week I learned of another shared happy-anniversary of a different kind: Today the Late Show’s Stephen Colbert celebrates his 29-year marriage with apparently adored and delightfully fun wife Evie — who happens to share a nickname with beloved granddaughter Miz E.)

For me most sobering about the 2007 Al Gore shared Nobel Peace Prize — for all-important and complex work with the crisis of climate change — is that it came 15 years ago… (and, since then?)

One can only hope that other such awards bring more lasting results, and faster.

#4. Nobel endeavors

Nobel Peace Prize Is Awarded to Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Activists (NYT. Photo from embedded video).

The three laureates are Memorial, a rights group in Russia; the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine; and Ales Bialiatski, an activist jailed in Belarus.

The Nobel Peace Prize announcement comes as war rages in Europe.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to human rights advocates in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus who have become symbols of resistance and accountability during the largest ground war in Europe since World War II, set off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The laureates — Memorial, a Russian organization; the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine; and Ales Bialiatski, a jailed Belarusian activist — have emerged as some of the starkest challengers to the widespread misinformation and harmful myths disseminated by authoritarian leaders.

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Even as the Peace Prize is awarded during fiercest war, I’m both intrigued and concerned by the timing of the award for literature. With so many extreme rightward shifts, reduced rights and freedoms of women even in so-called liberal western democracies the Nobel honors such a courageously unfiltered, intimate and personal body of work by a woman. Welcome as the honor is, it seems at best ironic that the more women’s most authentic voices and longings are silenced in the public sphere and privately enforced societal norms, the more — or maybe the only — way they are honored, or even heard, is via literature, theater, art.

#5. Bookish

Nobel Prize in Literature Is Awarded to Annie Ernaux (NYT. Times Photo by Isabelle Eshraghi.)

The Swedish Academy, which decides the prize, lauded “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”

In commenting here I should note that I’ve as yet only read several reviews and longer excerpts from a cross-section sampling of Ernaux’ most noted works. The writing voice here is particularly compelling to me from a psychologist standpoint. Somehow reading Ernaux evokes in my mind’s ear the authentic voice in the intimate containment of the psychotherapy room… the voice perhaps we come to use and recognize as our own, in the self-talk inside our heads, if we are lucky and wise!

Without yet reading her further I’ll add here only that I celebrate this recognition of Ernaux’ work as it demonstrates both the growing literary (and, I would argue, psychological) development of memoir as an important genre. Related, she captures the critical importance of writing as a psychological process — specifically an “inside-out” depth/soul psychological process of increasing connection with the authentic Self. The excerpt in this review touches on this:

A Memoirist Who Mistrusts Her Own Memories (The New Yorker)

In the course of twenty books, Annie Ernaux has devoted herself to the excavation of her own life.

Ernaux is an unusual memoirist: she distrusts her memory… At times, it seems as though she were looking at herself in an old photograph or a scene in a movie. She tells us when she is getting lost in the story, and where her memory goes blank. Ernaux does not so much reveal the past—she does not pretend to have any authoritative access to it—as unpack it. “What is the point of writing,” she says, “if not to unearth things?”

By way of bookish transition, the Edith Wharton Age of Innocence, 1921 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, pictured just above Ernaux and her work, happens to be my book club’s classic selection this month. This first-in-decades revisit with Wharton’s spot-on wit and grasp of the gap between societal norms and felt-experience — especially regarding gender-defined roles and relations — is delightful. What put the book on this week’s post is the novel’s setting in 1880s post-Reconstruction New York society, around the time of Statue of Liberty’s construction and the opening of Ellis Island’s peak years. The book edition even using some of same vintage images, it eerily meshes with recent weeks’ newShrink focus on New York in this period. It also includes opening images and context for the Ken Burns documentary, The US and the Holocaust.

#6. Ken Burns’ Holocaust

Having now completed watching the full six-hour series still streamable on PBS I find I must both urge a deep-read take on it and taking and processing the three, two-hour parts in slow separate times rather than in continuing sequence. (The Burns Vietnam documentary was like this for me too. Because of its profound associations and implications for our present-day American crises, to me the Holocaust one is both more devastatingly intense and more critically important.)

I have read, studied, absorbed many decades worth of first-hand, literary, dramatic, psychological and historic material on the Holocaust. This one had several, wrenching surprises. Among worst examples was the documented specificity of the roles that America’s post Reconstruction white supremacist Jim Crow laws, the enormously surging Ku Klux Klan of the mid-1920s, and eugenics pseudo-science played in directly influencing Nazi atrocities.

For time, space and my own continued processing of this master work by Burns, for now I’m re-posting and recommend reading at least these linked pieces for their thorough sense of what the film is — and what Burns is seeking to get across with it.

I will surely be returning to it, for it leaves me with the overwhelming — although daunting — sense of dire need for a more comprehensive collective psychological understanding, awareness and perspective regarding events, politics, public figures and news around us.

I wish I could express belief or hope that we today are more, rather than less, equipped to discern and navigate our individual and collective unconscious dynamics and capacity for atrocities. I can’t.

Ken Burns Explores America’s Inaction During the Holocaust (NYT)

“The U.S. and the Holocaust,” streamable through PBS, examines the reasons behind the country’s inadequate response to Germany’s persecution of Jews.

The U.S. and the Holocaust, A film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick & Sarah Botstein (KPBS)

Ken Burns interview: Holocaust series on PBS speaks to today's America (Axios)

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Closing with a (literal) brighter shift…

#7. On title themes: A seasonal note

Despite the week’s batch of mostly unrelated items, the gathered photo images were firmly consistent in arranging themseves only in circular clockwise order. Some familiar newShrink concepts like past is prologue from Shakespeare and journalism as the first rough-draft of history came to mind, but faded as not quite apt.

As for the season, some of you may recall the antsy response I have to dusk this time of year. I begin to notice and want to squeeze every day’s diminishing minutes of outdoor daylight before too-early, too-long and too-fast-arriving dark nights just ahead.

A saving grace for another couple of weeks are my daily runs lit by stunning sunset — which now also happens to coincide with some equally glorious moonrise.

Soon after the Friday moon caught my attention, dominating the rest of the run came the first-, perhaps corniest-ever, musical earworm from the psyche: The song “Cycles,” from Frank Sinatra. (Maybe that included lunar ones, though the chairman of the board doesn’t actually mention the moon…)

Close behind Sinatra came to mind a pithy, apt quote that many, including historian Ken Burns, widely attribute to Mark Twain. Many scholars have searched and failed to find where Twain or anyone originally said it. In my view someone should have, and Burns is expert enough: “History doesn’t repeat itself… but it sometimes rhymes.”

With these origins lunar, corny and possibly apocryphal, this week’s connecting title themes are these recurring cycles — associations of memory and history — that do not repeat, duplicate or even echo so much as they loop-back, gently point-to. Or rhyme.

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All of which, from Friday evening’s near-full moon, led me to look up and discover this month’s full “Hunter’s Moon” — and that it’s today!

According to the Almanac it’s brightest at 4:55 PM EDT — still-daylight afternoon — today/Sunday 10.9.22. (So best viewing will be after sunset.) Known for appearing much larger and more orange than it is and appearing full over several nights, Hunter’s Moon is the second full moon after Autumnal Equinox. (Harvest Moon is the first). The Almanac link has more about it from Native American lore and astronomy.

Happy Hunting — As they say, may the odds be ever in your favor…

And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.

🦋💙 tish

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… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”

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