News Notebook 6.4.21

Memorials, Commencements... and Prince

Greetings, this first Friday of June.

First-up for me is to note with sadness the sudden, double losses just eight days apart of two beloved and talented veteran Charlotte Observer journalists, sports reporter Rick Bonnell and photographer David T. Foster III. Here are thoroughly reported and moving tributes by their colleagues, Scott Fowler and Théoden Janes, respectively.

week in review

Among stories and themes this Memorial Day holiday week full of commencements and other ceremonies, here are some that called my attention to psychological overtones and to journalists and journalism spotlighted. Some of you suggested these as well:

• Former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron, delivering the commencement speech for Suffolk University, issued the soul-healing message to graduates to repair and save our institutions as part of dedication to something larger than themselves:

“In journalism I found purpose in giving citizens of a democracy the information they need and deserve to know . . . found purpose in journalism that was honest, honorable, rigorous and unflinching . . . found purpose in holding power to account as our founders intended when they crafted the First Amendment. Working in those newsrooms was, for me, not merely a job. It was a calling. And I was grateful for how those institutions gave form to my professional growth and entrusted me with their reputations.”

• In New York Times columnist David Brooks’ speech , “The Great Unmasking” for Boston College, this especially resonated for me:

“Many are gripped by the conviction that if they are working and their children’s schooling returns to normal, they do not want to go back to their old lifestyles. No more frenetic overscheduling and pointless travel. No more shallow social whirl.

This is the moment to step back, be intentional and ask: What’s really important, and how should I focus on what matters? It’s a matter of ranking your loves and then making sure your schedule matches your rankings. ‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,’ Annie Dillard once wrote.”

• Here Brooks touches on some of my own observations and reflection on what some of the “shadow/opposite” — ie. positive — psychological impacts of the long pandemic-enforced times of introspection, quiet and unstructured time might be on adults as well as on our children. In recent decades we have lived in a culture that so privileges near-manic extraversion that APA panels updating the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders seriously considered categorizing introversion as mental disorder. (That idea failed, thank goodness.) But the enormous balancing effects of COVID-seclusion on all of that busy noise are worth pondering. A different look at this “great unmasking” is a theme of my post about Home.

• In the President’s Memorial Day speech at Arlington Biden made clear that in his view the battle for the soul of America is a battle to save democracy itself, both here and abroad. Biden also directly linked this battle to the need to protect voting rights:

“Democracy thrives when the infrastructure of democracy is strong. When people have the right to vote, freely and fairly and conveniently.”

• President Biden emphasized continued self-scrutiny on the part of white America and the need for more racial equity-improving measures the following day at the 100th anniversary of Tulsa Race Massacre :

We should know the good, the bad, everything. That’s what great nations do. They come to terms with their dark sides.

(The same with individuals.)

how news notebook will work

Going forward after a bit of set-up today, as an overall format:

• The News Notebook will usually open by highlighting one or more “tracking tools” or themes for spotting psychological elements — both clinical/mental health and depth aspects — in news stories. (I only tend to use about 5-7 of these, so they should become familiar shorthand.)

• I’ll list (in shorter bullets than the ones above) a broad range of news stories catching my attention that week, without a lot of detail.

• Then, many weeks I will zero-in on one, usually more complex and ongoing “hard news” story or issue — the many dimensions of the race-equity issue and the political, policy and legal aftermath and follow-up to the January 6 Capitol riots, to name two top-of-mind ones. Numbered points will detail psychological elements that can be relevant to voting and other decisions we are making.

• Some weeks, this deeper-dive section will spotlight some cultural trend, instead.

Each week — especially with your ideas and input — I’d like to draw from several feature items described below. (Like this favorite cartoon…)

feature stuff

My thanks to several of you (on both coasts and in between!) who have already sent me material and ideas for newShrink. This is so cool I’m putting a call out for some feature things I’d love for you be on the lookout for and send me to share and comment on:

• Cartoons (some of you are super-good at curating these.) These needn’t be all about shrinks, psychologists, therapy. Just please note the “psych and soul” twist you are seeing if not obvious.

• Journalists, news organizations, others in print, teaching or on air who are “doing the psychology” piece(s) well and accurately — and why you think so. (I have several I will post here and aim to have a growing list of these.)

• “Psych peeves” in news coverage (again, either regarding clinical/mental health angles of stories or the soul/psychodynamic. With these, I will not cite journalists/other writers by name, because these are so systemic, the language norms and blind spots so pervasive it’s not about individuals. I’ll share some of mine too.

• Video clips, photos, comedy, poems, quotes, music/lyrics — all elements of the imaginal ways that the unconscious bypasses our critical-thinking logical brains and makes itself known. I think of these as akin to the proverbial gun on the set in Act I of the play that is sure to go off by Act III… the piece of courtroom evidence that’s all over the police reports and news coverage, but the prosecutors keep leaving it out of their case… or my favorite, the back-beat in the music.

  Be aware that this newShrink group (including myself) not surprisingly tends to skew very, very thinking-logical-reading-writing types. So the imaginal pieces in our lives and days can be powerful as they often pop out of our blind spots with a lot of animating creative energy!

• Ongoing news issues you think merit closer attention to psychological elements.

  And finally, a quirky feature I’ll call:

• Shrink THIS?!! — where you just send me a whack-job story or situation and see what can be made of it in psych terms. (Feel free to mess with me on this one, it’s supposed to be fun.)

Articles and books that capture your attention are always welcome, too. If you email me stuff, please say if you want me to mention you by name for that item (especially if what you send is your published or other creative work). And you can also go into Comments to share your stuff directly with newShrink readers.

(Assuming I figure out how to do it) in the Comments I’m adding a “thought/discussion thread question” that I will put in each newsletter post, too. Anyone interested can answer either in the group Comments or in individual email to me.) Or just consider it food for thought.

• Today’s thought/discussion question is:

  What journalists, news outlets and/or story coverage do you think effectively cover and bring in the psychological dimensions — either the clinical/mental health, the depth/psychodynamic, or both — in their work? What makes you think so?

Now a heads-up…

your eyes, ears & input especially welcome just now… for the BEST of reasons!

Over the next few weeks my reading and news-gathering are more fragmented than usual: Just learned on Memorial Day that, against all odds and hopes even a few months ago, my 93-year-old widowed Mom’s improved care needs, and greater COVID flexibility with the vaccine, are allowing a move for her out of skilled-nursing care 40 minutes away to a just-right, less “medical-feeling,” care-environment she needs that is very near me. (As many of you know, a fall, fractures and surgery in March 2020 have put my mother mostly isolated and in and out of hospital, rehab, serious near-terminal medical reversals and various long-term care throughout the pandemic.)

This move by the end of June means I’m once again to furnish her living space — after more than one prior “downsize only to re-upsize,” but a happy surprise-task to have!

So, just as the newShrink focus on “life-story” begins, hers seems to be opening on a new and unanticipated chapter.

🦋💙

This closing caution about the state of the American soul, sent over from a dear friend and reader in the CA Bay Area, is by the late musician Prince from way back in 1999…. (Were Prince still with us I would have to respond that my fear on behalf of our collective soul is far less aimed at the Internet than in the direction of us utterly unconscious humans… who don’t-know-what-we-don’t-know, and don’t seem to care or want to!)

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

🦋💙 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”