🎵"Don't stop...

(thinking about tomorrow...)

… you’ll see things in a different way.”🎵

In some indigenous and tribal traditions, every journey literal or metaphoric begins three days before, and ends three days after, the actual travel or experience.

Those cultures’ wisdom seems apparent with this week’s “first-time Election Day Poll-worker” edition of newShrink.

Since midweek it was as though the “inside-out,” felt-experience — phenomenology, in the language of depth psychology — had to express itself first. Hence the musical, verse and visual images with today’s title themes and the above illustration.

Working on-site with amazingly dedicated precinct team on prior-night-setup, through the mostly sequestered 13-hour day interacting with some 800 of my community’s voters, then after-hours on finishing procedures was:

Astonishingly rich, deeply inspiring, funny, challenging, heartwarming, frustrating, satisfying and a lot more. Most of all it’s a closeup, fully engaged microcosm — carried out in similar ways and spirit across every American community — of not only “what democracy looks like” (and is supposed to). But also community, things like human connection, disciplined focus on common aims bigger than self and longer than generations either past or future.

You know, all of the minor stuff!

Logistical note: It was Saturday before thinking on this in complete sentences or forming “outside-in” conclusions even began. On such a profoundly meaningful activity that I intend to keep doing, it matters a lot to capture some of what’s come up so far while the experience is fresh. So today’s perspective — lens — is “from inside-(the-precinct)-out.” More news- and issues-focused pieces will be later.

Important to note here, also, is how all of this, the very best of what is good about America, was occurring even as our government itself is literally broken, with impacts on everything from air travel and jobs to hunger and loss of health care for millions of people — hitting children and the most vulnerable hardest, as always. In the illustration above, the Mr. Magoo cartoon figures represent this surreal contrast of elected government officials to their voters’ process by dedicated, peaceful citizens throughout the land. More on Mr. Magoo below.

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Now title themes, first the song: Today’s title-song arrived unbidden Tuesday morning not long after the 6:30 poll-opening and people came through the procedural stations to vote. As musical ear-worms go, it was a mostly welcome song I like — a good thing as it’s popped back to mind repeatedly, usually not spurred by any obvious cue.

#1. Running toward: “Don’t 🎵 Stop”

The 1977 Fleetwood Mac classic was written by Christine McVie, sung by her and Lindsey Buckingham. On Election Night 1992 it became a victory-celebration anthem for both the Clinton-Gore presidential ticket and a progressive resurgence from Reagan-era conservatism.

The song opens:

If you wake up and don’t want to smile/If it takes just a little while/Open your eyes and look st the day/You’ll see things in a different way.

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow/Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here/It’ll be better than before/Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone…

A lure is the song’s hopeful, future-focused message, while not ignoring or distorting the past. Perhaps I’m not alone in finding almost any November 4th and 5th better, even worth celebrating a little, than a year ago and the months since.

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#2. “You’ll see things in a different way.🎵”

Seeing both public, and our own, psychological events, relationships and situations multi-focally — through multiple lenses — is a useful metaphor I like. (It seems a more basic, embodied, even foundational, link to that diversity “d-word” so unfortunately forbidden in our culture today.)

As etymology often teases-out, there is a literal lens connotation here. The word “perspective,” for example, shares Latin roots with several familiar words, among them spectacle, spectator, spectacular.

In Latin: specere, means “to look” and per — through.

The list of other related “look through” words incudes: respect, inspect, prospect, suspect conspicuous, introspect, retrospect, specimen, speculate,

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At right in the illustration above, pictured are the actor Jamie Foxx, Disney/Pixar poster film elements from the animated film Soul, and eyeglasses — including two of my three pairs. In the award-winning animated movie, Foxx and Tina Fey voiced the main cartoon characters, each of whom wore distinctive once-nerdy-glasses that have been mega-popular styles ever since.

Disney and Pixar partnered with Privé Rivaux to brand the film-themed eyeglass frames, labeled with fun titles on them — et. Born to Play and Half Note. On the round black ones, the inside of the arms is white with multi-colored musical notes.

It seems that even in newShrink, as the Mark Twain quote goes, “history may not repeat, but it sometimess rhymes.”

Longtime readers may recall this from earliest months of newShrink. This part is a rather tongue-in-cheek account of my eye doctor and optician visit, masked during Covid — and how, eyes still dilated, I managed to choose and order the only two pairs in the place bearing very large, half-dollar-sized Pixar movie Soul stickers.

#3. “those surprise Soul-spectacles”

(from newShrink, originally published Friday, August 27, 2021)

I think Foxx was in the square tortoise shell frames and Fey in the round black ones, or maybe vice-versa. I have both pairs, progressive multi-focal lenses, the round black ones with blue-light screen protection and the tortoise ones “Transitions” that darken as needed for sunglasses. (The progressive multi-focals are pricey even with insurance and oldster discounts, so for any Rx changes it would take a lot of fashion shift for me to add a change of frames to the mix.)

Think I wore the Jamie Foxx tortoise on Tuesday Election Day, maybe the Tina Fey black round for the primary. I tend to notice and recall more with these in case I need to change them or take a third pair. .

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Another nod to history — America’s and newShrink’s — is illustrated above with Ben Franklin, his inventions of the eyeglasses… the type of printing press shown… and his famed quote when asked whether the new American nation would be a monarchy or republic.

Several readers reached out with their own thoughts and comments about this one, which I’ve found surprisingly still relevant three years later.

#4. Imprints and Blindspots: A Bifocal Take on American ‘Wokeness’”

(from April 24, 2022 edition of newShrink )

(Quote from the post:)

Mr. Magoo Cartoon pictured at top left). The seriously nearsighted cartoon character was known for driving everywhere with abandon and stubborn refusal to wear glasses. In psychological terms I consider him a wonderful expression of the archetypal blind-spot [so prevalent in today’s headline news, as it was three years ago —and worse.

Mr. Magoo was created in 1949 by Millard Kaufman and John Hubley, voiced by Jim Backus.]

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With more time and remaining bandwidth I’d like to give more thorough and vivid, though still privacy-guarding, vignettes about some of these people and situations from Election Day. More may come in later pieces. Emphasis today is a sense of the range and variety.

#5. Human connection, human story

A big element becomes clear early to those of us checking voters in, matching their information to what’s in the official Board of Elections registration book: The range of ages, multiple generations of the same family — some voting together, others showing up later in the day (and often recalled.) Our very skill-savvy assistant precinct-judge periodically shuffles each of us among different work stations and welcome desk — for much of the day I had one of the two thickest, later-alphabet books of names.

With moms there were wee boys later in the day with names like the dad I’d checked in early — only the child had “the third” or “the fourth” name. One much older Charlotte man’s name I recalled while checking in the wife of the “third” with same name, and then she introduced the “fourth.” He was 4!

The sincere interest and enthusiasm about voting was engaging children of all ages who came with parents. The church preschoolers’ class came downstairs to be introduced, get snacks and stuff to share with their parents.

Several individual encounters were of interest or even jolting. One was when I was checking in an older middle-aged woman whose address was… mine! Or rather, mine back in the ‘80s, the house I had bought and done pretty extensive exterior renovations with job-money saved for full-time grad school. (Instead I’d started my long-desired first daily-newspaper job with The Charlotte News, later merged with The Observer.)

The current house-owner was very nice, gave me her contact info and suggested I come look inside and also at the “tiny house” she has added in the backyard. Surprisingly, for it had been my first purchased home as an adult and I had done so much of the work myself, this did not have an emotional charge for me beyond pleasantries. I don’t want to go inside; it would feel intrusive, long-since not “me” or “mine.” But an interesting chance-encounter amid a registry book of hundreds.

Then, in one of my long lines when I had the very thick “M-R” name book, there was a university philosophy professor who happened to mention discussing voting with his students… and for some reason he happened to mention to me(!) really liking Jung as a thinker, wanting to explore Jung’s The Red Book. He came back through after voting to give me contact info in hopes we could talk-Jungian!

Literally the final, or very close to last of the day’s nearly 800 voters — and heartwarming clincher for the day — were the quite elder couple. (On this one please note, these details are from his own public published writings, none from voter records and I have not checked him in.)

He’s a Charlotte native, retired writer who grew up a couple of years behind my late mother and her friend-peer group at Central High School who became my “aunts and uncles.” (This makes him about 93. Now near-totally blind, quite tall and with mobility issues requiring rolling walker, he’s also still alert and cognitively/conversationally sharp. During Primary voting, also there in person with his warm and lovely wife, he realized who I am within seconds and proceeded to tell me a hilarious story about my honorary uncle who’s also still living.)

My lasting, soul-feeding image from long Election Day was of the two of them, arriving cheerful and upbeat just a few minutes before polls closed. (She’s a bit younger but not dramatically so.)

Sometime back, after each had earlier divorces and widowhoods, the two of them found one another — as I recall reading somewhere, over dinner with neighborhood friends — and came together late in life. She’s shorter, effervescently upbeat and deftly helping him maneuver increasing difficulty getting around. In this process — which in many such “caregiver of partner” pairings is simply not the case — these two exude palpable grace, humor and infectious joy in and with each other. Twice I have seen them make their way in , bringing lively energy and passion about voting and most everything — when curbside or absentee voting are options.

What a fine, late and loving chapter of a well-lived life these two have crested and inhabit together. A delight and inspiration for us all!

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In closing today…

Below, Getty Photographer Kostas Pikolas captures the year’s largest Super Moon, nicknamed for providing needed light for Beavers’ dam-building season.

This may very well be the only natural light many of your Election Day poll-workers saw between sunset Monday and daybreak Wednesday. Many or most of them, like this newShrink poll-worker, savoring every minute of the work.

Also there was that moon...

#5. …aah!

And that is all I have. Talk to you soon!

🦋💙 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”

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