"Summer😎Time"

Sounds, Sealed, Delivered

Greetings, this mid-July when puns, pix and plays on song lyric are perhaps inevitable.

First the news of late was full of those gavels-and-bells, official stamps and signet-seals. (A giant airborne pair of them even landed in a July 3rd dawn fireworks-dream!)

And with balmy, peak-visitor lake season the rest of that main title-song “Summertime” might go something like “…and the livin’s about as busy as it is newsy.”

Content-wise today’s somewhat narrow focus is mostly on the news side, with continued deeper-wider pondering on the end-of-term U.S. Supreme Court decisions. On further reflection described below, I’ve found many of the interconnected concerns and issues encapsulated in the dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on one of the pivotal majority decisions. Here also, some in memoriam news arrived with painfully ironic timing alongside events that illustrate and underscore trends in the current state of our American press — at community and national levels alike.

# 1. sounds, seals

Starting at top left above, the opening/closing bell and official-action rubber stamp photo appeared as illustration for one of many recent news stories about public figures and official business, particularly that of state legislatures. It also brought to mind the embossing-type stamps used by notaries and others to signify things like sealing the deal, contractual agreement, oaths made and covenants kept. Then most simply there’s the authority and power of a signature… what’s in a name. (These ideas and the above photo-images at center left column are revisited more fully below in today’s closing sections.)

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#2. reverberations

Pictured at bottom left, here continues the July 2 newshrink “Raincheck on Justice” follow-up and impacts from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 end-of-term decisions. For many reasons I keep returning to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s 29-page dissent in the UNC/Harvard affirmative action decision. In clarity of thought and language, compelling and relatable narrative thread, as a piece of writing alone it’s simply exquisite.

The careful, methodical laying of historic factual precedent and groundwork — along with their relative impacts on two hypothetical UNC or Harvard applicants in 2023 — effectively connects and demonstrates in this dissent salient issues and real-world contexts of critical relevance in all of this Court’s recent decisions. Here, especially notable in the full audio version of the dissent, Justice Brown Jackson’s approach, thoroughness and writing tone resemble that of historian Dr. Heather Cox Richardson.

Rather than duplicate, the Justice’s historic reach expands and complements Richardson’s scope. Brown Jackson’s firm starting-points are nearly a century farther back in time, in colonial America and the nation’s founding. In this I’ve found Brown Jackson’s voice and content interweave naturally, extend and deepen Richardson’s superbly shared expertise on her academic speciality-focus from Civil War-and post-Reconstruction to the present.

Brown Jackson presents a couple of key points, then illustrates with multiple examples from case law and cultural trends over time. One is how from our nation’s beginning affirmative action was extremely and legally enacted and enforced at all levels of American government and society. It was enacted on behalf of preserving and advancing the power, authority and wealth of white men not only through enslavement of Blacks, but then and later by excluding then limiting freed Blacks and all people of color, women plus various targeted others.

A bit of personal-experience context may help illustrate Brown Jackson’s point, that systematic affirmative action for white men was the “originalist” state of things in this country. In this sense all actions toward greater inclusivity and equality have been toward correcting, untangling the long tentacles, of that.

A caveat: My shared personal experience regarding points of Brown Jackson’s argument in no way suggests conditions are, or ever were, analagous or parallel for privileged white women and Blacks of either gender in about any arena of American society.

My own UNC admission was soon after the school had begun to admit female freshmen. The policy over generations had long required females to transfer-in only as juniors from “women’s colleges.” Only those entering the school of nursing or dental hygiene had been admitted as freshmen. In contrast and competition with our fellow freshman male applicants, we females were admitted at a 7-1 ratio. Unlike the males, for consideration we’d been required to do in-person interviews, write essays long before those were standard for all applicants, present higher GPA and class rank levels, and meet minimum board-score requirements 300-400 points higher. Soo… exactly whose interests were being actively affirmed?!

Meanwhile, at the time Black admission, enrollment and even applications were notoriously minuscule. Is there any wonder why? That was over 30 years ago, and today despite improvements the admission data do not come close to representing and including the state’s population of well-qualified applicants.

Perhaps a pondering point for all of us: None of these conditions, effects or results occurs by accident or chance. Laws, systems, plans and precedents create and perpetuate them. That continues as long as it’s ignored, denied and not called-out.

Second, Brown Jackson illustrates with example after example the specific exclusion and redlining of Blacks and Black neighborhoods, businesses and schools from the federal government protections, financial windfalls, loan bailouts white Americans received during times of crisis, and government-funded educational incentives available at each juncture to white people of every socioeconomic level. This has been throughout our nation’s history, at the pivotal junctures where government programs, bailouts, tax and property laws systematically created and preserved educational advancement, home ownership, business support and even basic freedom of movement and association — for white people. All systematically and routinely denied to Black Americans.

Third, she hits on what for me is perhaps most appalling about this majority Court decision: The use of the 14th Amendment — the very law created, enacted and affirmed over 100-year precedent precisely as correction of race-specific damages and impacts on Black Americans — as rationale for eliminating protections and consideration of race as unconstitutional. (A year ago with abolishment of Roe this Court refused to consider 14th Amendment protections in a similarly head-spinning way to erase basic constitutional rights of women under the amendement.)

I ask and encourage your reading or hearing Brown Jackson’s entire take on all of this.

For those who prefer or find podcast and audio versions more engaging and thought-provoking, here is a well-done reading of the dissent:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Affirmative Action Dissent Read by Actress Alfre Woodard (The Beat with Ari Melber)

Listen on Apple Podcasts:

Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From An American July 8, 2023 tracks this majority decision’s problematic citing of the 14th Amendment and further connects many other key points here.

On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the U.S. Constitution for the fourteenth time, adapting our foundational document to construct a new nation without systematic Black enslavement… 

This refreshing point of view is from those most immediately and directly affected:

What the Supreme Court’s UNC ruling means to me, a student at Chapel Hill | Opinion by UNC Morehead/Cain scholar Julian Taylor.

And here’s a link to the full print version:

Jackson dissent in Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling (The Hill)

Shifting now to a couple of high-profile deaths that bring attention to themes of interest and the importance and state of the press in today’s America…

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#3. in memoriam

Pictured at center column above, unrelated other than in timing, these two bring poignant ironies when taken together with other stories and events of the week and the times.

Beginning with the latest, on Friday afternoon, and for me both profesional and personal (pictured at bottom center column): This first thoroughly reported and well-written piece is by two talented Charlotte Observer veterans who worked for years under Rolfe Neill’s leadership.

Though the contrasts with today’s newspaper and journalism environment are extreme and painful, I highly recommend this story for its capture and portrayal of what are accurately described as glory-days — both financially and journalistically — of The Observer. More generally on a national scale the then-major daily paper was part of then-mighty national-powerhouse Knight-Ridder chain alongside such stalwarts as The Miami Herald, Detroit Free Press, San Jose Mercury News and many others.

Here’s an obituary that offers a glimpse, and perhaps cautionary tale told too late, of a once-thriving journalism/business model now largely dominated by non-industry hedge funds.

Former Observer publisher Rolfe Neill, a force at the paper and in Charlotte, has died (The Charlotte Observer)

Former Charlotte Observer publisher Rolfe Neill, who helped shape the city, dies at age 90 (NPR affiliate WFAE in Charlotte)

On the personal side for me, I worked 7 years as a reporter at each of the Charlotte newspapers at 600 South Tryon Street under Rolfe’s leadership. I share here another personal example, as it speaks to themes from Justice Brown Jackson’s dissent that apply in application for employment as well as admission to colleges that are selective (which many are not.)

Incredible if not bizarre as I think of it today, it was a personal nudge from Publisher Rolfe Neill about me — a job applicant he hadn’t met and didn’t know — to hiring editors in both newsrooms that resulted in my first daily-newspaper job. (A UNC Journalism graduate, I’d earlier worked at a local weekly and also had UNC social work grad school and practice on my still-short resume.) A smart, respected community-active friend of Rolfe’s happened to also be one of my lifelong “honorary aunts” and a biggest supporter of all my endeavors, particularly in academic and journalism realms. Regarding my aspirations for next steps, she had at some point said and shared something with Rolfe (and I don’t recall her ever telling me that, or how, she was doing it.)

Here my fortunate job-opportunity, consideration and hire illustrate what Brown Jackson describes as a holistic matrix or mosaic. That describes the many ways the mix of both advantages and disadvantages-offset-or-overcome play into college admission — and I would add, to job decisions as well. My newspaper hiring was in the days when newsrooms still too-often hired male J-school grads to be reporters, while female ones did stints — sometimes permanent discouraging ones — as newsroom clerks. (In those days for jobs at dailies many rookies of both genders also were forced to first prove their worth, relocating to whatever small-town weeklies would have them.)

In these contexts, in addition to education and work-experience qualifications, for me of course both challenges of gender and advantages of community-family connection mattered. The same was — and is — true regarding race, and everything else about the life experience we bring to our education and workforce. My Black newsroom colleagues, friends and job applicants less often (almost never) just-happened to have an “aunt”-friend-of-the-publisher tipping the balance in their favor. According to this Supreme Court, these many years of struggle and a bit of progress later, that scale would have and ought to have been, and remain, unbalanced. At what enormous loss to American journalism, history and progress toward that more-perfect democratic union…

The legacy-like white-female advantage I had, just in this one context, is so obvious it would truly require constant effort to unsee it.

Maybe that is why making a case for so-called “color-blindness” as an ideal or real achieved state has to keep being repeated so noisily and often in every arena of American life.

By white people.

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The quote at top center and New Yorker illustration are in memory of the Czech activist-author.

Milan Kundera, who wrote 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being,' dies at 94 (NPR)

This lovely excerpt from Unbearable Lightness is from Classics in The New Yorker.

Kundera’s statement about his calling and humor came during a rare 1983 interview with the Paris Review. It had moved me when I heard it earlier, then more ironically with events developing later in the week.

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# 4. state of the press

The cartoon at top right for me captures both the essential power of cartoon and a general comment on the state of the press and what is brought to light via the press.

At bottom is The Charlotte Observer’s peerless veteran cartoonist Kevin Siers, at Columbia University accepting his 2014 Pulitzer Prize — one of 5 awarded to The Observer since its 1886 founding.

This week Siers has been laid-off with two weeks’ notice (as have the national chain’s other editorial cartoonists.) Other than an internal staff memo and posts on Facebook, Observer readers are getting the story from other local journalism outlets (thanks to a lot of top Observer-veteran talent now staffing them.)

I recommend the Charlotte Axios coverage for its factual thoroughness, attention to various issues involved for readers and appropriate respect for Siers (and for journalism.)

Good for Axios.

From The Observer, once the region’s proverbial newspaper/news-outlet of record? Crickets.

It’s not just a tough financial/business call, handled shoddily, as these things are sometimes. It’s bad (nonexistent) journalism — the one thing they’re supposedly still in business to provide.

The Observer lays off a Pulitzer-winning journalist (Axios Charlotte)

Observer cuts job of Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist (CharlotteLedger.substack.com)

A move away from editorial cartooning; 'difficult decision'

Kevin Siers’ sole comment has been a gracious post browsable on Facebook, which is cited in the Axios article.

Also at the end of the month, and thus far largely invisible to Observer readers and community beyond Facebook, is the retirement of veteran reporter and editor Michael Gordon. In more painful irony, the well-researched and -written obituary of former publisher Rolfe Neill was done jointly by Gordon and now-retired veteran talent, fortunately still a contributor, Dannye Romine Powell. Gordon has posted his retirement this week after some 30 years in various roles at The Observer.

As with so many, many of my dearest friends, long-time former colleagues (and several newShrink readers), these departures, shrinkages of all kinds keep occurring as they have for the past decade — largely in a stealth way.

By the time the last staffer turns out the lights on the way out, one wonders how long it will be before anyone notices.

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Before shifting to today’s perspectives from standpoint of psyche and symbol, one scheduling note:

Between peak-visiting season and other demands on time, attention and energy these next couple of weeks, it may be into August before you see much, if anything, posted from newShrink. Winding-up July combines a lot in Asheville. There’s Part 3 of Grand Miz E “summertime camp Tishie” type activity — this time in and around her home turf. Also slated is a long-overdue visit and stay with dear friends now relocated from the lake to Asheville. And third, my friend, author and former depth-psychology professor Dr. Elizabeth Nelson arrives here at Lake Norman, then we’ll both head for the international Jungian conference meeting this year in Asheville. Those reading newShrink awhile may recall discussion of Elizabeth and her valuable work from previous editions. (Elizabeth will be leading, speaking and engaged throughout the conference. This year I’m attending selected sessions under one-day registration. That’s still open to public for anyone interested — or curious! )

For available program events the live link is browsable at Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies, https://www.jungiansociety.org.

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(Returning now to the tableau-type photo images at center left in the lede illustration above…)

Pictured are: A colour-assortment of sealing wax; heavy brass initial “S,” reversed-out for ‘lost-wax’ seal-casting; set of other brass molds for casting decorative seals of flowers and plants; matches for lighting the wax. Perched on top of the set is my first gold, birth-initialed signet ring cherished and worn from circa 8th or 9th grade. I’m delighted to somehow still have it… amazed it still fits ring fingers so comfortably it gets worn a lot for everyday (non-fancy/non-matriarchal-occasion) life!

#5. identity, symbol, signet-ure

As background I should note that my intense passion for signet jewelry, belt buckles, indeed all things monogrammed predates — by decades — any word- or last-name-associations. A lot of it was likely generational. Today’s preteens, teens and all ages and stages of adults often mark initiatory milestones, symbolic identity shifts via tattoos… never mind all the social-media branding and influencing (which all generations find some ways to do.) Most personally and individually, they ink.

And we… monogrammed: Engraved rings, pins, earrings, watchbands, alligator belt buckles. Embroidered linen shift dresses, oxford shirt pockets and sleeve-cuffs, bath towels and sheets. Needlepoint basket-purse-fronts. Ink-printed, embossed and engraved stationery. Engraved multigenerational silverware. Etched glassware.

This quick-hit partial list is just stuff I’ve at some point personally saved babysitting- and later earnings to produce and have, asked-for or received as gifts.

All of which got me curious about archetypal, cross-cultural symbol and purposes being expressed here — as with ancient practices of tattooing.

In addition to psychological/individuation markers, both seals and signets have had practical origins through the ages — and across continents. Sealing-waxed documents were used for privacy and tamper-proofing important information, embedded with identifiers to indicate ownership, and vetted original rather than copied material. Original signet rings were large and heavy with letters reversed-out to allow wax casting of the legibly correct monogram.

With today’s signet rings and jewelry — as with silver tableware — I hadn’t really examined but assumed the more common, non-reversed-out engraving was likely just an aesthetic preference. Or maybe there’s still some status thing with engravable metals. Instead I’ve learned that, over long periods of human history the primary if not only durable forms of human wealth weren’t land, built real estate, bitcoin or bank and stock accounts. It was in most solid of precious metals, or the most durable stones. The latter being quite heavy and bulky when raiding enemies invaded, it was more often the precious metals that were stashed and carried as possible… with the rest buried for safekeeping with the chance and hope of later retrieval.

Suddenly that brings less apocryphal light to all of that legendary monogrammed silver buried around American colonies as “the Redcoats were coming”… or around the South a near-century later ahead of Union armies. Maybe that silver was all people had, buried with hope it could someday be found and dug back up.

And if and when that blessed day arrived, they’d need to know, show, maybe prove under duress the silver was theirs. And so perhaps for that…. they monogrammed?!!

Also interesting, the varying monograms on silver and other goods over different generations of a family formed a sort of geneology record/who-was-who. It’s a bit like such records noted in old-fashioned family Bibles of yore.

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Such was the state of my research and reflections, at last week’s whirlwind start of Part 2 in Grand Miz E summertime “camp” season here— this session multi-day, amphibious and ultimately including her mom and dad as well.

As illustrated below, last week became igniting moment and season for her latest water passion, tubing. Visible here are lot of the laughs, patience and confidence-buiding fun as her dad got her launched and able to do solo (though with dad is more fun). All was just in time for demo on mom’s arrival after work a little later for the weekend.

Then, looking land-ward toward the latest of her usual tableau…

#6. “she’s a rainbow”

Yes, those seals, signets & sealing wax again. By the end of the meal and evening she was all about “sealing the deal,” keeping “contracts” made to mom… even showing off a good handshake! The fun art stuff (involving flames!) was an easy sell, as was presenting a queen-style special dinner for mom who’d had to work longest and miss some fun.

But the convincing bribe was definitely her getting to dictate the seating chart with place cards, move favorite chairs to her liking and generally boss all of the grownups around.

Of course, my ulterior motive was somehow getting everyone “even on vacation!!”sitting down around a table at the same time, eating at least bites of the same menu… at a table appointed and set — by humans clearly not raised by wolves, so they know how to do it on occasion. (Miz E loves and is doing camps in cooking and baking. I’m hoping her artistic flair in presentation and expanded-palate will kick in too.)

Drill Sergeant-Tishie seems alive and well…

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Oh, and about that dawn fireworks dream of July 3rd (before any of the above sealing-wax and signets stuff…)

#7. … delivered!

I should probably note that unlike many, I enjoy fireworks as long as human crowds aren’t too huge and confining. As I may have noted previously, current-generation Labrador sisters Jesse and Hazel seem to be the only dogs on the planet unfazed by fireworks and even happy with the increased human interaction they can bring. (All a fortunate thing, for “fireworks-night” around a residential lake can extend 7-10 days beyond major holidays or the occasional celebrated sports win. It’s near torture for many dogs and sleep-challenged people.)

In the dream: Two enormous, incongruously airborne shiny brass things appear in midst of fireworks display before a modest-sized gathered community crowd. One thing I recognize as a huge sealing-stamp, mostly like those pictured and discussed here — only a bit more brass showing and more rounded in shape. The second thing, hovering aloft to the right nearby, is a giant brass anvil, the kind used to hammer and shape things. As fireworks continue, these two things descend from parallel heights slowly, as though ceremonially placed with deft care and precision, to avoid harm to anyone. With exaggerated cartoon-like gravitas, this profoundly positive, hopeful-feeling ceremonial landing is silent, but it is literally earth-shaking in the dreamscape…

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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”