In a Snap 9.4.22
Seasonal Shifts of the Light, Shadows & Silliness
Holiday weekend greetings from newShrink, with the Labor Day version a bit more-visual-than-verbal.
It’s been a week with several days’ immersion in the numbers, finance and business-side stuff of my mom’s eldercare. After that processing new events or complex ideas is still a challenge!
Besides, an emphasis on sight and image seems fitting.
This time of year’s new angles of light and shadow, quite sudden and dramatic from dawn way past sunset, are ones much-prized by photographers, painters and other visual artists.
This year there’s even an additional celestial perspective. The unusual U.S. visibility of the aurora borealis, described in the August 21 newShrink “Here Comes the Sun,” now seems to be peaking during Labor Day weekend over many north- and even plains-midwestern areas of the United States.
#1. Your chances of seeing Northern Lights are better this Labor Day weekend. What to know
(From the National Park Service published in The Charlotte Observer. NPS photo by Kent Miller.)
The story’s informative and includes a cool and accessible map to areas for possible viewing. (Not likely in my native NC, unfortunately.)
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For me at least, arrival of that Labor Day weekend light also brings near-immediate change of tone, mood and felt-experience. It’s the bittersweet flavor of best-of-times-and-worst-of-times, both keenly alive and well in memory.
#2. “Take a sad song and make it better…”
(Top center column.)
The classic Beatles song Hey Jude has been a long-loved favorite, and its paradoxical poignant hopefulness brings it up naturally this time of year. More specifically and recently, it has been one of those earworm-scores from the psyche playing in the background from newShrink’s conception and pre-launch phases.
It’s a song I’ve also at times associated with Joe Biden, first in his candidly shared grappling with, and emergence — more than once — from deepest personal grief and tragedy, then with his re-entry into public life.
And this week even the title and message of the President’s pre-holiday address to the nation echo newShrink’s signature depth-psychology mission of tracking the soul of America, one news item at a time. In case you are a newer reader, here’s an excerpt about that from the newShrink website’s About/Welcome page:
Concern and conversation about the American psyche, our collective soul, are showing up everywhere, and this has been happening for a while now.
Both reflecting and inspiring this, U.S. President Joe Biden’s enduring theme of “Heal the Soul of America and Build Back Better” for over three years undergirded his uniquely waged, COVID-constrained campaign and continues to anchor his administration’s programs and governance.
My vision for newShrink addresses the question of what a healthy American psyche or soul might look like… what the different dimensions of the depth (unconscious/soul-focused) psychology profession contribute to that understanding… and how we individually and collectively might aim and work toward that health.
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It’s the final stretch of intense midterm campaign season, so understandably the thrust of attention to the President’s Thursday night speech by journalists, pundits, candidates and political operatives of both parties is on campaign strategies and the up-down horseraces involved.
🌀(Here I should probably remind/disclose that prior to 2020 I was cautious and at-best lukewarm to Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate. I had closely followed pros and cons of his career and accomplishments ever since the 1992 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings.)
However, a stabilizing fall 2022 perspective to keep in mind — whatever one’s party or candidate preferences — is that the Thursday speech was also an echo, unwavering affirmation, in a sense recommitment to an overarching, solemn vow Biden made to the American people. Lawyer-activist Robert Hubbell captures this well and includes a link to the full Biden speech transcript in “Soul of Our Nation,” his September 2 Today’s Edition newsletter (roberthubbell.substack.com):
“In tones reminiscent of John F. Kennedy, Biden asked Americans to join in common cause to defend democracy:
‘For a long time, we told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed.
But it’s not. We have to defend it, protect it, and stand up for it — each and every one of us. That’s why tonight I’m asking our nation to come together and unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy, regardless of your ideology.’”
#3. ”A battle for the soul of America” — Joe Biden, April 2019
“A battle for the soul of the nation” — President Joe Biden, September 2022.
(Photo in center column above by Doug Mills of The New York Times.)
To me here is a second way that Biden sought to take a sad song and make it better: In his democracy- and soul-focused return to public life in the wake of the Charlottesville Unite the Right tragedy — about this time of year, in August 2018. His campaign launch the following April to run for president against Donald Trump in 2020 was from the start a larger mission than one political campaign-horserace.
The two speeches, and stories, might be viewed in many ways as bookends.
Biden Launches 2020 Campaign As Rescue Mission For America's 'Soul'
(NPR, 4.25.19)
Biden Calls on Americans to Resist Threats to Democracy
(The New York Times, 9.1.2022.)
The president condemned Trump-led extremism and cast the midterm elections as a “battle for the soul of the nation.”
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The next images, pictured at bottom center above, illustrate some soul- and depth psychology aspects of the week and holiday that I have found compelling.
#4.”The darkest hour…” a touch of Labor Day synchronicity
(Bottom-center photo images.)
Some of you may recognize the framed pair of color photos depicting pre- and post-eclipse from one I shared in closing the 5.15.22 newShrink. It was with this story announcing that night’s total lunar eclipse – a supermoon eclipse – tonight, May 15-16, 2022.
From the May photo caption, here’s more about the framed piece pictured again above.
The matted, framed photo-pair was Fed Exed to me Labor Day 2007, during one of my life’s couple of very-darkest times. (That Labor Day was the start of a scary and serious health crisis, which fortunately had an eventual bright outcome that’s endured ever since.)
The piece had been sent spontansously from Massachusetts by photographer Peter Schlessinger, at the time a classmate in my Pacifica grad school cohort. (Several readers may recall or still be in contact with Peter). He was training to be a Jungian psychotherapist after a long successful career running a photography school. As with each of the institute’s all-adult cohorts, we were an intact class of students aged from 20s to 70s who studied and trained together throughout the immersion-weekend classrrom years of earning a masters degree. So the 25 or so of us were close as a group. Peter’s the guy in class who was lovingly counted on for much-needed comment, edgy and often-amusing questions from the sage to the curmudgeonly.
Individually Peter and I had been cordial pals, with his once visiting overnight here on the East Coast when en route from a gallery showing of his work in Asheville. But the immersion class weekend schedules were packed, and our individual paths didn’t cross much outside class. So this superbly timed, very generous gesture and gift 15 years ago were serendipitous and heartwarming in ways that continue to move me — especially around bittersweet Labor Day each year.
Today when I notice it still on the sun porch wall — as I did pondering this week’s newShrink holiday themes — it tends to evoke the 1967 song lyric from the Mamas and the Papas, …”the darkest hour is just before dawn.”
Since we graduated from the MA program in 2008, I have had no contact, correspondence, Facebook or other social media sightings or even indirect touches about Peter.
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All of which made it quite stunning this week, just as I contemplated Labor Day weekend newShrink themes, images and stories, that my email brought the remaining piece of the bottom-center images pictured above.
It’s an announcement/invitation to debut events for an upcoming September monthlong Massachusetts gallery exhibit of Peter’s fresh take on his early black-and-white photography. I can only surmise that my email address must remain on some gallery- or other Peter-related mailing list.
The timing of the event’s debut-reception and lecture? This Labor Day Weekend.
Well, of course it is!
From the depth-psychology perspective one might expect after years and decades of familiarity and study to be more inured if not nonchalant about such synchronicity’s effects that can range from startling to funny. One might expect… and in my experience one would be wrong! For me the jolt of surprise seems almost defining of synchronicity, as a momentary experience of material from the unconscious/soul that’s by nature numinous... something bigger and beyond the ordinary order of things. (Most simply defined, according to Jung synchronicity is not mere coincidence. It is coincidence that is uniquely meaningful when an unanticipated unsought outer event or experience occurs simultanousely with a significant interior thought, memory, image or idea — and the two are independent or acausal, neither causing the other.)
None of which quite captures the felt-experience. That’s more like swoooooosh…
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Now, to the holiday’s more public, historic and factual aspects, pictured at top left column above.
For those who, like me, can use a refresher on some of the history and details, here’s an excerpt from last year’s Labor Day newShrink 9.3.21.
#5. Soul at Work
“Labor Day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers and is traditionally observed on the first Monday in September, also marking the end of summer for many Americans. It was created by the labor movement in the late 19th Century and became a federal holiday in 1894. The annual celebration of workers’ achievements, it originated during one of American labor history’s most dismal chapters during the Industrial Revolution.”
The photo at top left is from history.com, which provides facts about both worker-conditions and such pivotal protest-movement events as this first Labor Day Parade in New York City in 1882, when 10,000-unpaid-workers marched to City Hall. Then in 1886 both workers and police officers were killed in the Chicago Haymarket Riot. [All of which led to establishment of the official federal holiday a few years later.]
🌀This idea of soul—even linking Eros, love, with work—in today’s world probably sounds strange, or worse, to many. But to me that classic, more commonly known idea from Freud—that an essence or ideal of life is being able (both) to love and to work—has always somehow resonated and stuck. One of the things Freud got right.
🌀I have wondered if this love-affair with work might be my fate as a “Saturday’s child,” born on Saturday and thereafter “works hard for a living,” according to the old rhyme!
The next two items and photos (at bottom left and top right, respectively) seemed to capture some of the compelling life-force in these examples’ kind of all-consuming labor, commitment, discipline and utter love and joy in the work and the mastery itself. I can’t look at such photos without wanting a bit of what they are having!
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#6.‘I’m a Davidson alum’
(The Charlotte Observer. Staff photos by Jeff Siner.)
NBA star Steph Curry returned to Davidson College on Wednesday to graduate, to have his jersey retired, and to be enshrined in the school’s hall of fame
The photos may not show it, but this feel-good story is actually a tribute to a unicorn: That elusive scholar-athlete, a figure so rare it seems mythical in today’s world of elite sports and academics.
The story lauds so many dimensions of Curry, and rightfully so. The lasting honors worth remembering also belong to firm allegiance to academic rigor on the part of his alma mater Davidson and his coach Bob McKillop. This nationally high-ranked liberal arts college in my home community seems to be another unicorn: A place where course-work isn’t dumbed-down or dialed-in for mega-stars, and where real degrees get earned.
From the story:
Curry finished the schoolwork for his academic degree during the 2021-22 NBA regular season, just before leading Golden State to another NBA title. He knocked out the final part of the academic work during a stretch where he was inactive due to injury from mid-March to mid-April.
“I didn’t think it would take 13 years,” Curry said of his degree, which he also worked on for a semester straight during the COVID pandemic. “I didn’t know how hard it would be to finish when I left.”
🌀(In this next paragraph, the story tends to give all of the laurels to Curry. I may be wrong, but in my understanding the other side of Curry’s promise to finish the degree is that neither the college nor McKillop would be adding him to its hall of fame or retiring his jersey without the fully earned degree. This is hugely to Davidson’s credit, given Curry’s enormous international fame as an alum and resulting fundraising and recruiting allure he brings. I’m not an insider, and maybe the writer knows something not reported here. But while perhaps the college could have “awarded Curry an honorary degree anytime he wanted,” it’s not certain based on what’s reported here that it “would” have.)
Certainly, Davidson would have awarded Curry an honorary degree just about whenever he wanted one. But he wanted to earn it instead. And when he left for the NBA a year early in 2009, he had promised Davidson coach Bob McKillop, his mother and his girlfriend (and now wife) Ayesha that he would finish.
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#7. “I’m just Serena.”
Watching in the stands or on television, Serena Williams has dazzled in the U.S. Open
(NPR)
For me Williams’ later third-round loss on Friday night enhances, in no way diminishes, the joy, impact and enduring legacy depicted here.
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And finally,
#8. About that silliness…
At top-center is my perennial favorite Labor Day cartoon.
Following it are real-Lab plump pups Jesse and Hazel, below in early 2016 and at left circa 2018.
Then at right they are that long, brown shadow cast in the angled light of today’s work-space — laboring, of course, in top performance mode… as writer-therapy dogs.
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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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