December Postcards 12.12.21
Joint Endeavors, Shadows of a Season... and Morning Joy
🌀🔵🔷🦋💙
Weekend greetings, and happy Sunday from newShrink! Night is still falling too early, dark and long. But then also come those magic winter mornings…
As described last week, I’d anticipated this busy holiday month’s weekly posts to be more Postcard editions: Collected images, short-takes on selected stories and some news in quotes and headlines. Often captured somewhat randomly on the fly during a hectic time, these tend to be without a lot of connecting dots or themes (at least, none yet.)
But this week’s catch, both with news issues and items with psychological/soul dimensions, kept serving up seemingly unrelated pieces and visuals that don’t naturally fit together and bring different, even opposite takes, on issues or situations. I for some reason kept saving some of them together, in pairs or sometimes clusters, to look at and think about later side-by-side, um, jointly. (As if I had the time now!)
By writing time it turns out these had begun to arrange themselves into a bit of connecting theme after all: An illustration of depth psychology’s “holding the tension of opposites,” both shadow and light, conscious and unconscious aspects, in all of our human experience.
So those items offering a “this… and then, this?” — ie., a slightly different-lens view of the previous piece — are presented sequentially here in what is otherwise a list-form collection of self-contained stories and images from both news and soul/psychology perspectives. A caveat, this week there’s little-to-no reserve of time, energy or focus for me to develop or write much of my own commentary on these items (yet.)
🦋💙
First, an update on literal “joint” news from the domestic front:
Recovery process is under way following John’s Thursday shoulder-replacement surgery — “construction of the new robot-arm,” as granddaughter Miz E puts it. (Let’s please not tell her what a lame “substitute-right-hand” her Tishie is for the brand-new bionic one until it is fully up and running!) Surgery was remarkably fast, precise and successful by all indications so far. Just a few minutes out of the O.R. the whole recuperation regimen began with exercises, pain management and protective paraphernalia. Having stopped narcotics on arriving home, he’s managed significant pain and regained feeling more normal by alternating ibuprofen and Tylenol, using lots of ice and resting. P.T. begins next week, and meanwhile being past that looming hurdle is a big relief.
🔵
there’s this… and this? some joint endeavors
Links to these and related stories today are listed in order of appearance at the bottom of these Postcards. As always, anyone can also see all past and current newShrink posts on the website by clicking the couch in the newShrink logo above or directly from a browser at newshrink.substack.com.
this: the mom texted WHAT???
Close on the heels of recent weeks’ intensive newShrink discussion of the murder-case acquittal and subsequent celebrity-hero status of teen Kyle Rittenhouse across a wide swath of our cultural/political divide came a different, though similarly deadly, teen tragedy. It’s the school-shooting in Oxford, MI, that’s brought a different focus on responsibility and accountability of parents, all of us adults, our institutions and laws.
🔷 After Manhunt, Parents of Shooting Suspect Ethan Crumbley Are Arraigned (From the New York Times.)
James and Jennifer Crumbley were taken into custody early Saturday in Detroit, after the police received a tip. They pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter charges in the school shooting that took the lives of Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17.
“…Karen D. McDonald, the Oakland County prosecutor, said the Crumbleys were culpable in the year’s deadliest school shooting because they had allowed their son access to a handgun while ignoring glaring warnings that he was on the brink of violence.Ms. McDonald gave a detailed accounting of Ethan Crumbley’s alleged actions leading up to the shooting.
On the morning of Nov. 30, the day of the shooting, she said, the suspect’s parents were urgently called into the high school after one of his teachers found an alarming note he had drawn, scrawled with images of a gun, a person who had been shot and a laughing emoji, and the words, ‘Blood everywhere,’ and, ‘The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.’
The day before the shooting, a teacher had seen the suspect searching online for ammunition for the gun in class, which led to a meeting with school officials, the prosecutor said. After being informed by the school about their son’s behavior, Ms. McDonald said, Ms. Crumbley texted her son:
‘LOL, I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.’
In related coverage:
🔷Michigan school shooting suspect’s parents held on $500,000 bond each as judge expresses flight-risk concerns (From The Washington Post)
🔷Could others be charged, liable in Michigan school shooting? (Associated Press)
🔷A prosecutor continues to criticize the decision to keep a teenager in a Michigan school before a shooting that killed four students last week (WAPO)
🔷Michigan School District Could Have Stopped Shooting, Two Survivors’ Parents Allege in Lawsuit (WAPO)
🌀Yes, the mom apparently really did text her soon-to-be murderous son “LOL, I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.”
🌀Beyond that I am unable as yet to form or articulate a coherent thought to bring meaning, much less wisdom, here. More on this later, I’m sure.
meanwhile, this? different school, different state, same time period…
🔷School Safety Fears Spark More Parent Volunteers (From The Charlotte Observer)
“‘It’s not acceptable to be sitting at home and complaining,’ said Tramaine Smith a car salesman at Town and Country Ford and a dad who’s fed up with bellyachers on the sidelines. Smith, whose kids attend Hopewell High School, said, ‘I decided, I’m going to do something — to get the call and make a difference.’
Dozens of other parents in Huntersville — most with kids who attend Hopewell High — have stepped up and into the school, where in early November two guns were found after a fight on campus that resulted in police detaining five students.
Days before the incident, Hopewell High had already planned to launch Titan Dads and Moms on Mission, a volunteer program principal Tracey Pickard decided her staff and teachers needed to get the community involved in her school.
🌀Whew. Just have to cheer for the potent power of the unchained, un-vigilantes.
🔵
now this…a “list of 850 banned books”
Here’s a chilling story out of Texas that highlights why I will continue to be fuming, writing, and ranting, about this. The phrase “list of 850 banned books” is terrifying to me… also a potent incentive to read and talk about every one of them. In publicly renowned and personally loved Malaprops bookstore in Asheville, a favorite feature is a whole collection of books banned in various areas of the U.S. Irresistible!
Here are some highlights.
🔷In Texas, a Battle Over What Can Be Taught, and What Books Can Be Read (NYT)
A new state law constricts teachers when it comes to race and history. And a politician is questioning why 850 titles are on library shelves. The result: “A lot of our teachers are petrified.”
SAN ANTONIO — In late September, Carrie Damon, a middle school librarian, celebrated ‘Banned Books Week,’ an annual free-speech event, with her working-class Latino students by talking of literature’s beauty and subversive power.
A few weeks later, State Representative Matt Krause, a Republican, emailed a list of 850 books to superintendents, a mix of half-century-old novels — The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron — and works by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Margaret Atwood, as well as edgy young adult books touching on sexual identity. Are these works, he asked, on your library shelves?
Mr. Krause’s motive was unclear, but the next night, at a school board meeting in San Antonio, parents accused a librarian of poisoning young minds.
Days later, a secretary sidled up to Ms. Damon and asked if district libraries held pornography.
‘No, no, honey, we don’t buy porno,’ Ms. Damon replied…
… Texas is afire with fierce battles over education, race and gender. What began as a debate over social studies curriculum and critical race studies — an academic theory about how systemic racism enters the pores of society — has become something broader and more profound, not least an effort to curtail and even ban books, including classics of American literature.”
meanwhile — and please more, of this?
🔷Why it’s OK for Books to Make Students Uneasy (From retired veteran high school teacher Kay McSpadden who’s long written periodic columns for The Charlotte Observer.)
“In the more than 40 years that I taught high school English, only one parent complained about a book, Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Like most public school districts, mine has policies to address challenged materials, including a review committee that weighs the literary and educational merits with the age and maturity of students. This father, however, opted to meet with me first to make his case that Twain’s racial epithets are problematic.
I agreed they are. I added that the resolution of the book is problematic as well. After discovering runaway Jim’s humanity, Huck abdicates his own when Tom Sawyer enlists his help to imprison and torment Jim for fun.
Layered throughout the story, however, is a deep call to justice and mercy that deserves a look. I argued that my students were smart enough to make their own evaluations.
I didn’t change that father’s mind about the book, but I did change his mind about his daughter. Although I offered her an alternative assignment, her father decided to trust her. He told me he thought she would benefit more from reading the book and discussing it in my class after all…
… In a widely seen ad from the recent governor’s race in Virginia, a mother recounts the story of her then 17-year-old son upset when he read Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” The son found the book such hard going that he didn’t finish it. His mother complained to the school district.
“Beloved” is, in fact, disturbing. It’s supposed to be. Anyone who reads about the main character’s enslavement, abuse, violent choices, and lifelong guilt should feel empathy. Not just sympathy, but heart-shaking empathy that forces us to see someone else’s pain as real as our own.
I wish that instead of rushing to the school district to complain, that Virginia mother had taught her son the perseverance of finishing a difficult book instead of taking the easy way out. I wish she had reassured her son that his reaction to the book was proof he was learning to be kind and open and empathetic. I wish instead of rushing to protect his feelings, she had recognized them as a mark of his growing maturity, his foray into a world larger than himself.
Because that’s what books do, when we let them.”
🌀Now lest we get too carried away about the high-minded levels of our culture…
🔵
this…
A reader and good friend nudged my attention to this story at a recent small dinner gathering, as he’s well familiar with navigating various levels of communication and self-expression for the many of us who live or work amid extremists along our culture’s divides. In this piece that mostly avoids, though in places comes close to snarky smugness, a cultural critic for The New York Times does an interesting study of an intriguing trend since the 2016 Trump election. (Full disclosure, the second — obviously preferred — “believe” home-sign pictured here is at my house, posted at both street- and water-sides. I’m not sure the article captures how many of these signs are defensive statements, ways of saying “wait, not F—-Biden”… or anybody else here, please.)
🔷‘In This House’ Yard Signs, and Their Curious Power (NYT)
How a lawn sign inspired by mom décor became a liberal mantra — and a symbol of a political battle over white womanhood.
“There is a sign that has become ubiquitous on the lawns of Democrats who have lawns. “In This House, We Believe,” the sign begins, followed by a stack of progressive maxims listed in capital letters.
…The “In This House” sign has spawned many flattering imitations and absurdist parodies. There are versions for neoliberals, YIMBYs, conservatives, conspiracists, fans of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and people irked by the triteness of the original sign. In 2017, Garvey’s poster was acquired for the archives of the National Woman’s Party — an organization which had, a century earlier, led the most militant fringe of the American suffrage movement. It’s a remarkable outcome for an artifact born from such a humble tradition: mom-related décor.
And then this… is it what they mean by “Mom Décor”???
🌀Just, yikes...
And finally,
🔵
shadows of a festive season
A combination of alarming pandemic-driven surges in depression- and suicide-rates and awareness, especially among young people, and the shadow aspect of too-often-forced-and-frenzied joy of the holiday season brings news focus back to these concerns. (NewShrink explored this extensively in the “Darkness Visible” piece on 11.12.21, browsable on the website.) Here’s one of many such resource stories running nationwide in response to current statistics showing 64 percent of Americans who suffer from depression and complex mood disorders experience worse symptoms during the holiday season.
🔷In a mental health crisis? Here’s where to get help in Charlotte, NC and beyond. (From The Charlotte Observer.)
which brings me to
this: why I still read David Brooks…
Here is a post script to last week’s post, where on two different topics I demonstrated both how I often value and cite the NYT columnist’s work and ideas… and yet other times find his tone so annoying I could bop the pompous-ass side of him on the nose with one of those rolled-up newspapers of his.
This week’s NYT column, What Do You Say to the Sufferer?, more than anything I’ve read from him in awhile, illustrates vividly why I still, and most likely always will, read Brooks. The entire, short column is is well worth a full read for several reasons and has particular soul- and psychological dimensions:
(1) He absolutely nails the distinction between depth/soul psychologist and merely repairing a mental health “disorder” in his description of “getting down on the floor with” the suffering.
(2) Somewhat paradoxically, as a writer and thinker it’s when Brooks is writing from “down on the floor with” his readers and the culture he so clearly loves, rather than pontificating from above and afar, that his gifts are unsurpassed.
(3) Here, he illustrates what it is to operate from that soul-engaged “inside-out/eulogy” vs the “outside-in/resume” parts of ourselves.
(4) In depth psychology terms, here is a good reminder that both of these David Brookses, shadow and shining, are real, aspects of the authentic “him.”
🦋💙
This week I’ll leave you with the pervasive mental musical score. This time the ear-worm’s not lyrics, but instead all-instrumental soundtrack with George Winston’s 1982 album. His variations here on the classical with Bach, in Joy, and Pachelbel, in Kanon, are for me exquisite echo of shimmering winter mornings.
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙tish
… 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”
Post Notes
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/04/us/michigan-shooting-parents-arrested.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/04/oxford-shooting-parents-custody/-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/09/oxford-school-shooting-lawsuits/
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article256467316.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/opinion/sufferer-stranger-pain.html?referringSource=articleShare
Your school guns coverage reminded of CMS's recent purchase of 46,000 see-through backpacks for high school students -- which reminded me of an old friend's slide into Alzheimer's that was causing her to leave pots to burn up on the stove. Her daughter wasn't ready to admit mom belonged in memory care, so she came up with a different solution: pots with thicker bottoms!.... CMS's problem isn't opaque backpacks of course, but the omnipresence of guns -- a dementia in itself....
Amen that, Lew. Good to hear your voice!