Sunday Postcards 3.6.22
Snapshots, News Notes and... Echoes
Sunday newShrink greetings, and happy March!
This week on both news and personal fronts I am reminded, thinking further — even have multiple song ear-worms showing up! — along a couple of tracks:
🔷 The profound ways we experience and come to know the psyche, the soul, through our sense and connection with place — and places; and
🔷 Also through the wisdom and soul-engagement of the body’s five senses , what Jung called the subtle body.
There are some favorite thinkers I want to introduce and share on these themes. That involves more thinking and writing on these psychological dimensions over the next week or so, when I have had more time and bandwidth. This Postcard edition highlights key news stories, images and voices of memory and history — some of which may be among those we revisit more closely from a psychological and soul standpoint next week. The stories and topics are outlined visually above and numbered below.
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news-notes and snapshots…
1. “The State of the Union: Together, if Only for a Few Minutes”
(CNN image, stories from The New York Times)
“State of the Union Highlights: Biden Gets Tough on Russia and Promotes Plan for Economy”
Mr. Biden said Vladimir Putin would “pay a price” for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Of his economic plans, he said, “I have another way to fight inflation: Lower your costs, not your wages.”
“5 takeaways from the State of the Union address.”
WASHINGTON — President Biden used his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night to condemn President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, rally global support for the besieged country of Ukraine and convince Americans that his administration has made progress toward a Covid-free time of economic and social prosperity.
The hourlong address, delivered to a mostly maskless audience of lawmakers and others in the House chamber, was in some ways two separate speeches: The first half focused on the war unfolding in Europe, followed by a second half aimed at reviving his stalled domestic policy agenda in Washington.
“Biden’s approval rating rises after State of the Union speech”
(from NPR)
After what's been a bleak several months politically for President Biden, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey finds he is seeing a significant boost in his approval ratings across the board following his State of the Union address and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"This is an unusual bounce," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. "It gets him back to where he was pre-Afghanistan."
Here's a look at some of the numbers:
Overall approval rating jumped to 47%, up 8 points from the NPR poll last month. Presidents don't generally see much, if any bounce, out of a State of the Union address. Since 1978, there had only been six times when a president saw an approval rating improve 4 points or more following State of the Union addresses, according to the pollsters. Three of those bounces were for former President Bill Clinton.
Ukraine handling is up 18 points to 52%.
Coronavirus pandemic handling is now 55%, up 8 points.
Economic handling up 8 points to 45%.
🔵
2. A Shift in COVID Policy: President and Attendees Unmasked in Senate Chamber at 2022 State of the Union
(New York Times photo by Sarabeth Many)
‘We will stay on guard’ regarding Covid. (NYT)
In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Biden sought to walk a careful line, telling Americans that the country is “moving forward safely, back to more normal routines.”
White House officials are eager for the pandemic to be over, saying publicly that Covid exhaustion has weighed heavily on Mr. Biden’s approval ratings. But the president avoided saying that there was nothing more to worry about.
“We will continue to combat the virus as we do other diseases,” the president said. “And because this is a virus that mutates and spreads, we will stay on guard.”
He said a new program will distribute anti-viral Covid pills to people who test positive at pharmacies. But he mostly urged patience from members of the public.
“I cannot promise a new variant won’t come,” he said. “But I can promise you we’ll do everything within our power to be ready if it does.”
“Biden unveils ‘Test to Treat’ plan for COVID-19” (Charlotte Observer)
In the new “Test to Treat” initiative, “people can get tested at a pharmacy, and if they’re positive, receive antiviral pills on the spot at no cost,” Biden said.
More than a million doses of Pfizer’s antiviral pills, Paxlovid, will be available, and more than double that amount will be available in April.
In additional COVID-19 developments, the combination of the omicron variant’s vastly higher rate of contagion than other variants and the numbers of Americans who have been vaccinated, had booster shots and/or had cases of COVID-19 adds up to a hopeful total: 73% of us have at least some immune system recognition of multiple strains of the virus.
“Estimated 73% of US now immune to omicron: Is that enough? “(Associated Press)
🔵
Meanwhile, not surprisingly the Russia invasion of Ukraine remains center-stage in news and captures the urgent concern of our western allies and some surprising others around the globe.
“How the West Marshaled a Stunning Show of Unity Against Russia” (NYT)
Leadership in this effort is clearly a large, although not the only, factor in the President’s improved approval ratings that point to his foreign-policy experience and engagement with allied nations. Domestically we are also seeing some recalibration of partisan and bipartisan responses.
Next week newShrink’s closer look at the psychological dimensions will address ways this kind of collective shift, however temporary, toward unity against a larger common enemy is a perversely positive projection and expression of the collective shadow. (As with those “strange valentines” and “unforced errors” discussed in previous recent editions, this is an unconscious, not intentional, outcome and therefore an unpredictable and unstable one.)
Here is one of those apparent pivots by our NC Republican Senator, who seems once again to be attempting to thread a political needle between support for the former President and his more moderate constituents. This strikes me as a belated “unexpected valentine” from Tillis, who can afford to broaden his appeal since he doesn’t face re-election again until 2026. I’m curious about how long he holds this position before either backpedaling or making one of his whiplash-producing reversals:
3. “Don’t compliment ‘mass murderer’ Vladimir Putin, NC’s Senator Thom Tillis says“
(news story from The News and Observer of Raleigh)
And a Charlotte Observer editorial applauds the stand by Tillis, an apparent effort to encourage him to stay firm.
“Thom Tillis shows Republicans the right way to criticize Russia and Putin”
🔵
Moving to the center column of photo-images,
4. “See moment that made Clarissa Ward stop reporting and help.”
(From CNN)
This is one of many stories from Ukraine that have underscored for me how much the psychological and soul impacts of such crises as war and the Russian invasion and siege are experienced as physically embodied and connected to our sense of attachment to place. I plan to return to these themes with deeper dives in next week’s edition.
Here, Ward is reporting live at the scene of a laborious evacuation of Ukrainian citizens from their homes into the center-city of Kyiv, where many will head for the train station in uncertain hopes of evacuating. Many of them are elderly, some who have trouble walking, and families with children with only the belongings and pets they can carry. The setting is a collapsed bridge that Ukrainian forces destroyed to prevent Russians from using it to enter the city. The point where Ward stops to help is several minutes into a fairly long segment. She stops reporting back to the anchor to help an elderly woman carry her belongings, talking with her apparently in the woman’s native language.
This interview with Ward, a wife and mother of young children, offers a bit of a closeup in Marie Claire magazine:
“Clarissa Ward on What It's Really Like to Report Live From Ukraine Right Now”
5. Ukrainian Flag and Sunflowers, Watercolor by artist Mona Shafer Edwards
6. “CNN at site of destruction near Kyiv as Russians close in”
This photo-image depicts the scene of the citizens fleeing as described above.
In addition to coverage by political historian Heather Cox Richardson (heathercoxrichardson.substack.com) and The Washington Post I highly recommend The New York Times with its Live Updates.
🔵
Reader-friend Jack Lule — veteran journalist and longtime professor in Lehigh University’s school of journalism and communications — added global and historic emphasis in response to last week’s discussion of the Russia invasion and depth psychologist James Hillman’s A Terrible Love of War. From Lule:
“Oddly, for a former journalist, I try to give myself a little time and distance, either before events or after events, to consider those events. I am finding it fortuitous that I just had students read parts of [Freud’s powerful take on human aggression] ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’ for a seminar on journalism and democracy. I feel like U.S. journalism today is too often presentist — focused on Trump and polls and policies. What’s missed is a global perspective — trends here can be seen globally and so Trump's role must be seen in that light — and an historical perspective — man, throughout history, has been a wolf to man.”
(Special thanks, and congratulations, to Jack for taking time to respond to this last week. He and family were busy welcoming his first grandchild, a boy!)
🔵
And here’s a treat from another talented reader, friend and former NC newspaper colleague Bill Roberts. A two-decade veteran newspaper and magazine editor, Bill’s focus in recent years is photography and his home base, beautiful Central Coast, CA.
Bill described this one as “color through the trees this evening (east only)” on Friday, 3.4.22. I’m seeing and liking its bit of ambiguity: either or both sunrise/sunset… east/west…future/past. A nice, natural opening for this next section:
echoes…
I will be revisiting this first story below, and several others, with a deeper look at psychological and soul dimensions of our human connection and attachment to place(s). It also calls up important ways that the psyche or soul is embodied, connected with and expressed through our physical senses. Of particular relevance is another of my favorites I’ll want to share with you, the late Marion Woodman.
Meanwhile, both the places and the soul through the body elements are resonating with me, both in the news from Ukraine and elsewhere and also closer to home and personally.
7. “The ‘ghost buildings’ of Charlotte: 12 iconic sites lost to demolition over the years”
(The Charlotte Observer)
The four-story Masonic Temple was “one of the most dramatic buildings in downtown Charlotte,” the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission wrote in a 1980 report. The temple, seen in the center of this 1950s photo with its two iconic Egyptian columns topped by spheres, was the last example of Egyptian Revival architecture in North Carolina, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library. It was torn down in 1987 to make way for a park. (Observer file photo)
8. For a bit of comparison, Charlotte’s uptown skyline today.
(photo from globalflare.com)
9. The Event Logo for the Saturday Charlotte YMCA-Truist Corporate Cup 5k (and Half Marathon)
Here is where echoes of that visceral-physical sense of place, history and maybe a few ghosts become a bit noisy! (As early as last weekend, during news stories of Ukrainian evacuations and my runs I began getting in my head the repeated line, there are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed… from the Beatles song “In My Life.”) Which isn’t bad, as ear-worms go…
🌀Picking up the race packet materials a day earlier had been over in Dilworth (the early streetcar-”suburb” where my mother and aunt lived as children). Pickup was at the beautifully updated original home branch of the Y, where I swam or worked-out every day for years, sometimes even after having a branch built in my corporate office building. All of the new building-design’s natural light, and even the smells, were a sensory delight.
🌀As mentioned previously, the course for the 5k race Saturday was over what for me is historic ground. But the route took an unanticipated turn to wind up more along the path of my own history and memory — not some detached ancestral nostalgia!
🌀Parking for the race was in the bank garage where I parked every day for some 17 years — including the morning of the 9-11 attacks. (A great thing I miss about working in a city is, once a car is parked — if you even have to use one — it tends to stay put and you walk everywhere. For me that’s just a different and deeper way to know a place.)
🌀 After the race start (near the site of what had been my grandfather’s pre-Depression business), the route took us up to Tryon Street — then headed south. This happened to be the location of that north-facing “ghost buildings” photo above, in the story I had saved and filed a week or two ago for some future reference.
🌀That “four-story Masonic Temple building, ‘one of the most dramatic buildings in downtown Charlotte’ in the photo caption was where I went as a high schooler with my friends to meetings of Rainbow Girls (granddaughters/daughters of Master Masons). Only service group stuff was allowed in my household on a week night, so between that and secret handshake-stuff we loved it.
🌀 The park that the temple “was torn down to make room for in 1987” was First Union Plaza (now Wells Fargo). After joining the bank in corporate communications in late 1986, one of my first projects was announcing and managing media interest and questions about the Masonic Temple and the entire development of the Plaza, Atrium complex and construction of what would be the College Street headquarters skyscraper (followed later by a third Tryon Street one.)
🌀Continuing the Saturday road race down Tryon Street, there’s what once was the seemingly monolithic Charlotte Observer and Charlotte News building — now another bank’s shiny building and skyscraper site.
🌀The rest of the loop down into South End and back was interesting to see and compare with the past — but not in the visceral ways that places are that we regularly walk, eat, visit with friends, work intensely etc.
🌀 With the stories and news from Ukraine — and particularly what must be the literal bombardment of psychological and soul themes of place and body-awareness so top-of-mind there — I keep being struck by both the similarities and the vast contrasts with this fun, beautiful pre-spring hometown morning-run that I was able to do.
🌀 Then finally: There are these oh-so-familiar, Ukranian-type sunflowers in the Atrium on the way back to the parking garage. (They are familiar to me, because this same collage-mural has been on this wall for well over 20 years — through multiple design and even corporate brand-color revisions, maybe all the way back to that first giant 1987 renovation! ) On Saturday I was happy to see them as nod to Ukraine.
Oh, and as for those song lyric ear-worms? From race-start on, the psyche had drowned-out loudly amplified “Eye of the Tiger.” By sunflower-mural time here, I have long since been silently singing along with both Beatle songs, “In My Life,” and “Here, There and Everywhere.” As a medley. (Which they aren’t.)
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10. Coach K readies for final bow at Cameron Indoor: 'Mine for 42 years, but it's Duke's forever'
The final photo-image above, of course, depicts legendary Duke basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s much-anticipated, emotional final home game… against arch-rival UNC-Chapel Hill.
🌀Another along that “memory echoes” theme this week, headlines like this one are noisy: It appears Coach K must have started his job at Duke a year after I started my daily newspaper one… at The Charlotte News! Egad.
🌀In the spirit of full disclosure I’ll remind that UNC is my alma mater and a three-generation family tradition. (Around 1999 or so I did break ranks to attend a 9-month seminar at the Divinity School that required me to have a Duke parking sticker on my car — for which I gamely withstood the rants of many family members and friends.)
🌀I do have enormous respect for Coach K’s calm, smart approach and his legacy. While I don’t advertise it, I have many times cheered for Duke basketball when Tar Heel wins weren’t an option… and teams even more disgusting were playing.
🌀So, I am really not gloating or celebrating UNC’s 94-81 upset victory Saturday night over favored and highly ranked Duke
… much.
🔵
Now I’ll leave you on a note of unity…
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”