Summer 🩳 Shorts
Headlines, History, and the Timeless Value of a Second Skin
Greetings, with the season’s final update on current news, issues and features.
Pumpkin spice is trending already, everywhere.
As with implicit no white shoes after Labor Day in my part of the world, this is last-chance use of summer title and image until next year!
Today’s edition is planned as largely headlines and limited commentary — plus a few pictures that kept speaking louder than text.
As for the rest of today’s title, a nod to newShrink’s depth-psychology dimensions showed up around Tuesday morning and lingered…
A “second skin”
It was the start of this news focus and review when the phrase caught my attention. I was reflecting on (recovering from!) last week’s man-in-the-movie psychological plunge with Oppenheimer.
So that big theme of interiority was still up: Our universal human capacity, and essential need for, nourishing inner life, “inside-out” felt experience, in inner space. This put a glaring spotlight on its utter absence in so many arenas of our similarly fraught and fragile current era.
The lack was apparent with the most cursory glance across today’s news events, near-catastrophic crises, people and issues (illustrated above and below).
Often after immersive time with a topic, some thinking and writing process happens during sleep or liminal early wakening. That’s how the phrase “second skin” showed up, insistently — as somehow relevant to all of the content, and even specifically as a title. (Of course such things don’t come with details on how or why!)
By coffee time, a bit of a search on this beckoned. Beyond second skin’s suggested symbolic, “archetypal-sounding” allure, I had no conscious recall or concrete concept of the term.
As I quickly discovered, had I known to ask, any of my inked- and body art-savvy friends — all of widely varied ages, situations and motivating factors — might gladly have provided a clue… The search immediately turned up, in this order:
A second skin shields your tattoo from the outside world, so that while this layer is present your personal art is protected to enable your body to heal the wound underneath. (This somehow seemed similar to the way an old bone fracture is sometimes carefully re-broken, re-set then held in protective cast so it can heal to grow and thrive in its natural healthy direction… from the inside-out.) As metaphors both can help illustrate how deep psychological change, healing and relationship work.
SecondSkin™ (also a brand name) is also a medical-grade, transparent, self-adhesive protective cover developed originally and still used in healing of burns, surgery and other body wounds in addition to its wide use now for new tattoos.
And still more from the vantage-point of the psyche, in day-to-day and street-slang terms:
Second skin as interior felt-experience refers to those with whom we have most intimate and best-fitting of psychological relationships. (The experience is so universal, even archetypal, that it’s readily recognized as applicable to everybody’s favorite clothing.)
This was about the point in the search that I looked up, just in time to catch the following mention on silenced TV news screen, and tracked down a full story:
One-third of Americans are tattooed, large Pew Research study finds
(ABC News affiliate WGN Chicago)
Of the total, widely diverse, nearly 8,500 adults surveyed, 32% have at least one tattoo, the majority of those having more than one. Across all ages of women, 38%, and men, 26%, have ink. Averaged across all ages of racial/ethnic groups, ink is in the low- to high 30% range in white, Hispanic and Black population with Asian levels much lower in the teens. (The story details the study’s wide range of breakdowns, many dispersed surprisingly evenly, and includes a link to the well-designed full Pew study.)
Beyond the striking individual synchronicities leading me to it are the study’s findings from a soul/psychological standpoint. Most significant is what Jung described as our universal human search for meaning — with robust living rituals such as tattoos as an expression of it — across all segments of today’s ultra-fissured America:
The survey also found there were no major differences in likelihood to have a tattoo between political affiliations; between veterans and non-veterans; and whether someone lived in an urban, suburban, or rural community.
As for why so many Americans have tattoos? The most commonly cited reason (at 69%) was to honor a relationship with someone or to commemorate a person or event.
The findings offer quirky and interesting context for a one-of-a-kind news week like this one, especially with those near-surreal photo ops and spreads.
And so… I say OK: Let’s take second skin and all of the above! That is, as themes or lenses to hold and consider when looking at today’s harvest of news and the people in it.
As for tattoos, today’s closing section looks some at their archetypal, psyche-and-symbol aspects plus a bit from my own view (despite the obvious newShrink lures, still needless-needle-averse and ink-less. So far?!)
Now news…
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Headlines & highlights
Starting with photo at bottom center above, the Atomic-era Whirl image drew my attention with the Oppenheimer story and launch of the continuing nuclear age. The design is simple yet suggests multi-dimensionality — aptly so for quantum physics as both matter and energy, at most basic levels and as building blocks for all of nature.
Before and during Oppenheimer’s time the image also points to important historic links between depth psychology and quantum physics and thought. As revealed through his 26-year correspondence and collaboration with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung’s was and is very much a quantum psychology.
# 1. Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958
Particularly with their joint discovery and work with synchronicity, mutual influences on the Jung side of the collaboration with Pauli also show up with Jung’s ideas and work with the archetypal realm and collective unconscious.
For some historical context and timing with the Oppenheimer movie fresh, Sigmund Freud died at 83 in 1939 at the start of World War II. Over the 20th Century before that, Freud founded and pioneered all we now know as modern psychology with his clinical work and discoveries involving both conscious and (depth) unconscious psyche. Freud and the 20-years-younger Jung had an intensely productive mutual correspondence and collaboration from 1906-1913, with Jung a favorite protegeé and Freud’s chosen successor to carry forward Freud’s psychoanalytic work. Insurmountable conflict ensued as Jung’s own deepening work and ideas in the field extended beyond, some effectively replacing, Freud’s strictly defined vision and limited parameters. Their 1913 rift proved irreparable, by all accounts deeply emotional if not traumatic to them both. And for the profession, the ensuing century-old chasm between their two depth (unconscious)-oriented psychodynamic faction brought further splintering into the (conscious), solely ego psychologies most widely known and popularly practiced today. In many ways the dismissal and disregard for the unconscious dimension has been a tossing of the proverbial baby-with-the-bathwater.
I mention this now, for the lasting reverberations from the Jung-Freud split came to mind throughout the Oppenheimer movie with its many psychological (and psychopathological) elements. They often do as well, when contemplating today’s psychological mind-scape. The resulting fragmentation and loss of a coherent through-line in psychological thought, clinical practice and societal influence around depth psychology is immeasurable. Quantum-world problems need quantum psychology, science, religion, and philosophy/human thought big enough to hold them.
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Moving to top-left column above, having seen and thoroughly explored Oppenheimer prompted the illustrated revisit with “Barbieheimer” (newShrink August 6, 2023 “There is a Crack in Everything”) My view is still that the two films are very different kinds of excellent, serious-commentary companion pieces for this time, in this country in all the ways discussed previously.
My most striking new perceptions involve chronology in light of the way the American psyche, philosophical outlooks, politics, economy, entertainment, education, housing and every other aspect of our culture changed radically and fast. This happened from World War II and the bombs directly to the Cold War/Ozzie and Harriett ‘50s. Among a host of other factors, the post-war booms in domestic applications for wartime-developed materials such as plastics — and the idealized back-home-to-stay mom a mainstay of enormous consumer economy — became a perfect birthplace for Barbie by the late ‘50s.
I still recommend seeing and thinking about the movies together or soon after one another. But now the logical order seems Barbie after, not before, Oppenheimer (and not just because it’s a fun and funny break from the heavier film. If you were a fan of AMC’s Mad Men, you might recognize a lot of our most gnarly cultural problems and psychological concerns today in the shadows of that saccharine-sunny period.)
Now in relation to today’s second skin title themes, I am considering all of that Barbie and Ken non-skin plastic. Presumably Tattoo Barbie would have no need for wound-healing second skin, since she doesn’t have the first kind. (Or wounds.)
About this I quote and recommend a full read of this well-illustrated and deeply disturbing piece. It does make such political circus as this week’s first presidential election debate, minus any serious regard or solutions involving climate crisis, even harder to watch.
The same is true regarding continuing disaster recovery and tragedy on tragedy in Maui (story below.)
#2. Opinion ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ tell the same terrifying story
(The Washington Post)
…As an unabashed enthusiast of all things lowbrow, I’ve delighted in the campy, mindless confection of Mattel-meets-mushroom-cloud content that this nuclear meet-cute has produced. As an environmental studies professor who has spent a lot of time studying the history of science and technology, however, I’ve found “Barbenheimer” strikes a darker chord.
The underlying premise of all the jokes — that these films come out on the same day but are about hilariously different subjects and have wildly different tones — is misguided. The two movies actually have a fundamental, and disturbing, common ground. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man behind our nuclear age, and Barbie — a toy that takes more than three cups of oil to produce before it lingers in landfills around the world — both tell the story of the dawn of our imperiled era…[the geologic era whose currently proposed name is anthropocene, for the time in which humans have had substantial impact on our planet]…
Latest About the Maui Wildfires: Hundreds Remain Missing (NYT)
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So about that debate… (above photos in right column)
# 3. The First G.O.P. DebateRepublicans Couldn’t Avoid Trump, but Tussled Over the Issues
(Complete New York Times linked stories and commentary.)
The candidates struggled to stand out while taking shots at one another in Milwaukee.
And this (for discussion in the next state of the press edition)
Fox News Threatens To Sue Rivals Over Primary Debate
Fox News has been called out for apparently threatening legal action against non Fox-affiliated media outlets that reuse more than three minutes of excerpts from an upcoming GOP debate in the seven days following its broadcast.
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Finally, pictured at center right column, the elephant not in the (debate) room…
# 4. Trump Surrenders at Atlanta Jail in Election Interference Case (NYT)
The former president arrived in a motorcade and entered a rear entrance of the Fulton County Jail to be booked on racketeering charges. He left after 20 minutes. He later returned to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, and posted his mug shot
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and to the rest of the gallery…
From my browsing this is the best quick-reference and bullet summary of basic factual charges on each, in pretty much the order above. From MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace (middle of the road moderate, former staffer of the former George W. Bush White House and John McCain’s 2008 Republican presidential campaign) it provides the most across-the-waterfront picture of the full story. The fact that so many, some in multiple ways, as lawyers are career officers of the court… former elected legislators… former elected mayors… along with trusted county precinct officials (one who has an alias!) Those add up to a systematic assault on executive, judiciary and legislative — all three branches of our democratic government that are supposed to be sacrosanct.
It is jaw-dropping just to read through the summarized factual list, even once:
The other mug shots and defendant information in the Georgia felony election racketeering case
.Along with NYT, WAPO, and other print outlets NBC News has broader video and detailed stories here.
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Meanwhile, following up with updates on a couple of other ongoing cases from this summer’s editions. For time and space reasons these are largely limited to headline links.
At left column:
# 5. Case Against Hunter Biden Could Go to Trial
(The New York Times)
The Justice Department elevated the U.S. attorney in charge of the case, David Weiss, to special prosecutor. Mr. Weiss said in court papers the case “will not resolve short of a trial.”
Opinions | Hunter Biden shouldn’t get special treatment (The Washington Post)
The appointment of a special counsel may help guard against a double standard in his tax and gun case.
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Pictured at right column is 5-term N. C. House Speaker Tim Moore operating in his usual form across multiple arenas of state government. Stories here provide an update on his dispatch and resolution of that pesky lawsuit explored 6.25.23 in newShrink “So What’s News?” As an overarching general comment, the lawsuit was dropped with no further details made public, which of course points to some form of settlement and NDA. Moore has a longtime M.O. with everyone from pay-inflated state employee girlfriends to legislative and state-job wannabes. Based on that my bet is this “resolution” involved not a cent of cash but rather we’ll be seeing Scott Lassiter elected with ease to a district newly gerrymandered in his favor, or in some other of the Republican political jobs he so openly covets. And it seems doubtful a formal NDA was necessary: Those Moore-installed surveillance cameras alleged in the lawsuit, 6 months after the Lassiters’ were definitely separated, were clearly gathering useful oppo. on Lassiter with which to negotiate.
Both the guy’s continued powerful influence and his MO permeate these stories.
# 6. Attorney says lawsuit accusing Tim Moore of tryst with state employee has been ‘resolved’
(The Charlotte Observer)
(now the affair to dating relationship to very off-and-on thing is down to a “tryst”… You know, kind of like a sneeze.)
(the following reportedly long-planned, known and part of his longer term strategy for seeking higher office nationally.)
Tim Moore won’t seek reelection as NC House speaker (Observer)
Here was rather an unwinnable waste-of-time though factually relevant effort. Jamie Lassiter is just the latest of Moore’s girlfriends or fiancees scrutinized publicly over his role in dramatic inflation of their state-job salaries — with no consequences or anybody much interested. He was at this kind of stuff back at his law office in Kings Mountain too. His voters there and in this gerrymandered state don’t care.
Lawmaker wants criminal investigation of NC House Speaker Moore. Why the DA says no. (News and Observer of Raleigh.)
Also pictured,more stomach-churning “influencing” under way up the road at my Chapel Hill alma mater…
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To wind up this news segment on an upbeat note of hope, pictured at center, sometimes voting still counts!
#7. Abortion Drives Ohio Election on Amending the State Constitution (
NYT)
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About those tats… (and second skin)
In the abstract and symbolically, tattoos intrigue and lure me.
I had long valued, and probably have written here about, their original archetypal and symbolic-initiation-ritual purpose and significance across indigenous cultures over millennia. Traditionally tattoo art, like war paint, has been used to demonstrate strength and honor our healed wounds as sacred (the word sharing a common root with scar.) This is in the spirit of Hemingway’s “stronger in our broken places”… or Nietzsche (and Taylor Swift) with “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger [warriors}.” These can be energizing or healing metaphors in therapy, relationship with significant others and our own inner work toward wholeness.
I have found, and even once considered myself, the idea and ritual of meaningful tattoo to honor the healing of an actual physical wound or surgical site. But as with tattoos in general, for me the medically unnecessary needles rather skew the pros v cons equation.
With this week’s second skin theme and discoveries I’ve learned there’s another dimension with tattoos that I had not known or thought about: That the process of creating the tattoo is itself a sort of ritual and conscious (and lesser) wounding. I’m moved by that idea of “re-breaking, resetting and providing protective inner space for healing and growth.” I think it goes to a way of our being that kind of second skin in relations with one another.
In any case, on tats as with other things I aim not to say never. Maybe someday there’s even meant-to-be some second-skinned tattoo, in honored place of that cherished monogrammed jewelry described awhile back!
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Now I’ll leave you with a lunar-image companion to the one in today’s lede illustration. If weather cooperates, a look skyward at the-real-deal due Wednesday night will likely far surpass both.
The blue moon, a super-double one, is visible in my area and time zone at 9:36 p.m. Wednesday 8.30.23.
(Now, if only there were a way to run at pre-sunset’s golden hour without noticing the 1-minute-a-day earlier sunset… or wake up with the sun without noticing it’s a minute later every day now. The waning daylight this otherwise beautiful time of the year is awful, but alas, it’s too early to count days until Solstice.)
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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”