Postcards from the Field Friday 6.18.21
Features, Images & What's Coming Soon
on race & shadow: follow-up stories from last week’s Notebook topic
“Journalism is not stenography” This quote of the day from Nikole Hannah-Jones continues last week’s focus on the psychological shadow and race. The editorial on the future of journalism is by Charlotte Observer intern Paige Masten, former editorial page editor of the UNC Daily Tar Heel which has closely covered the Hannah-Jones tenure issue and The 1619 Project.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article251980503.htmlThis update with Virginia governor Ralph Northam is a study in personal growth and redemption in wake of a very public “initiation through the crucible” of a blackface racial scandal. Northam’s humbling process, reckoning with his own shadow, communicating about it and taking significant action here are prime examples of soul-nourishing shadow work as well as the psychological maturing called “individuating.”(I hope to look at his process and life-story more closely in a future Sunday shrink-wrap.)
This piece on Wilmington’s Lie by David Zuchino, and his 2021 general nonfiction Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the 1898 racial massacre by whites in Wilmington, NC, is a good one to read through lenses of race and shadow. This monumental story had hidden in plain sight, like much of the Jim Crow era.
This work is another reminder that some context, a shadow-awareness, is in order even as we celebrate the Congressional passage — by an unusually unanimous Senate and enormous majority vote of the House — of a bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday. (Juneteenth celebrates the 1866 first anniversary of African Americans in Texas finally learning of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery.)
Texas Republicans, like those in many other Republican-led statehouses, are working aggressively on legislation making it a crime to teach about systemic racism, the white supremacy that dominated the entire post-Reconstruction period through the mid-20th Century or critical race theory. These efforts would make it unlikely for your or my grandchildren to learn in school about things like the Wilmington massacre over 30 years after slavery ended — or why books and publications about events like this and the 1619 arrival of slaves in the American colonies 150 years earlier merit and win Pulitzer Prizes.
And on that cautionary note: NC shouldn’t legislate away our discomfort with racism
power of ritual in a soul-fueling life
Many kinds of ritual, especially the quirky and personal, can be an important element of soul-making on about any level. The super-extraverted Chicago guy in this story has by now hit day number 365 sometime this week for his daily pandemic-motivated plunges into Lake Michigan—to large celebrations across what became his massive following of thousands of strangers in response to his daily social media shares.
Here in temperate piedmont NC I can’t claim mastery of icy-winter Lake Michigan or social-media posts and followers. But for no discernible reason other than the need for ritual and “because I can and she can’t,” I set out to make my minimum 5k/3.1-mile runs daily, rain or shine, starting March 13, 2020 when my very senior mom was locked into post-ortho-surgery rehab confinement that has continued and only slowly evolved to improved conditions soon. I’m now on consecutive day #467, have new neighbor-friends who were strangers a year ago cheer me on and one even ordered me a celebratory tee shirt!
Do you have pandemic, or pandemic-ending, rituals that have been meaningful? Please email me or share them in Comments.
upcoming Features as news-volume and space allow. Please send your recommendations and stories on any of these:
Journalists & Scholars “doing the psych part well”: starting with Jack Lule of Lehigh University, religion and depth psychology journalist Pythia Peay, Charlotte psychotherapist, contributing editorial columnist and activist Justin Perry, and others.
Pet “psych peeves” in the news: starting with misuses of “fight/flight,” quotation marks and qualifying phrases such as “so-called,” and total cluelessness about alcohol abuse disorders (eg. correct definitions of symptoms such as “blackout drinking.”)
A developing feature called “Backstory” that highlights ways the unconscious psyche shows up in, around or even redirects a story, work or life situation.
Cartoons, video, comedy, quotes, memes, photos capturing some element of soul as you experience it.
next topic for psychological theme-focus
We’ll return soon to look at all we know from neuroscience about our unconscious human functioning. Here’s some advance reading.
And specifically for discussions of emotional arousal, reactivity and capacity to control cognitive judgment: Police pulled a NC woman from her vehicle and into a three-year legal battle over use of force.
and this week’s Postcards from the Notebook
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/us/lake-michigan-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=1
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/brain-mind-cognition.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article252051393.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/us/politics/ralph-northam-virginia.html?referringSource=articleShare
https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/2021/06/11/book-wilmington-nc-1898-coup-receives-pulitzer-prize-comparison-capitol-riot/7657933002/
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article252106028.html