The Short Form:
Snapshots in seasonal countdown
Greetings, just 14 days before Daylight Saving Time and 22 until Spring!
Among items from the week and season pictured here:
🔷 President Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine at the one-year anniversary of Russia’s attack on the country and continued brutal war there;
🔷 Celestial alignment of the crescent moon at midweek with prominently visible planets Venus and Jupiter (the photo captured in our NC area and shared by reader and friend Mary Beck); and
🔷 In keeping with today’s themes, a Saturday photo of my weeping yoshino cherry tree in bloom.
This is an abbreviated edition for three reasons. As for the title, the first is most pressing and tedious:
tax-prep time.
Speaking of seasons, for both my elder-mom’s tax year and mine, CPA deadlines are near for gathering, sorting and sending materials and worksheets. They’ll then apply their incredible patience and thorough expertise for filing. If any of you are lucky enough to live with CPAs, please feed, gift, hug and thank them lots this time of year!
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In other seasonal developments, this week began the 40 days of Lent for those who observe it. As I reflected on last year, there there can be meaningful psychological benefits from making constructive changes through practicing the ritual of Lent. (Preludes, Next Drafts... and A Terrible Love of War 2.27.22, Item #13 about Mardi Gras.)
the give(up) - or - take(on) of Lent
While Lenten ritual of sacrifice — making a sacred or holy offering — is generally assumed to be “giving something up,” often the more fruitful discipline can be to add or begin new positive practices.
Some examples are gratitude lists, adding disciplines involving meditation practice, acts of generosity, dance or other movement, and prayer.
Neurological and behavioral-change research, about addiction for example, indicates that anything (healthy or un- ) that we do intentionally for at least 40 days can be foundational for lasting new habits.
For me that brings attention to things that it’s my more natural default-pattern to overlook or neglect. For example, given lifelong tendency to “live inside my head,” as therapists might say, being intentional about physical and sensate things is always a to-do-list item. (You may have noticed how this plays out with things like exercise, movement, ways the psyche and memory show up visually, in music, voice, scent.)
This season I’m trying to add intentional daily attention to physical surroundings —particularly outdoors, also the “perhaps too-long-familiar-to-be-much-noticed.” Having, um, matured over the 28 years along with these woods, shrub-&-flower gardens, a bit of lawn and beach of sandy red-clay mud, my relationship and energy with them have changed as well.
Over many, long and multiple different phases of planning, designing, planting, redoing, this was an ongoing consuming creative project and passion. A lot of work, too! It was wonderful offset to career, school and other pursuits all leaning heavily indoors and “heady.”
But for several years now at maintenance stage, this is no longer the case. It’s felt… finished. I remain surprised to be totally fine with that, no urge to create the more or the new here.
So this season’s “add” is just to be intentional about noticing/appreciating surroundings, while in them now and as they were earlier. Here are a few photos from different past phases, part of my browsings between now and Easter.
At left column are: Woodland walkway toward front arbor and lawn (2009) and a small terrace-garden as memorial tribute to my late dad (early 2000s).
At center: Current Lab sisters Jesse and Hazel as pups (spring 2016) and other backyard wildlife (2015).
At right: (2012) view across front lawn, with previous Lab sisters Nelle and Grace — the latter not obese, as odd shadow in this photo suggests when zoomed! Below it is a 2009 backyard shot (hard to believe the trees were so scrawny. From edge of what was then a front field back to water, this was all woods so thick the lake wasn’t visible in 1995.) As hoped, it was a great place for Nick as a growing youngster.
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Now for the third consumer of this week’s newShrink attention and time, just mentioned here to be covered in future court-watching features (likely many of them) starting soon:
The Trials of Alex Murdaugh
I had long delayed much beyond perfunctory attention to the current murder trial and other legal proceedings involving the disgraced SC lawyer’s myth-level family story that is still unfolding. With its deep and broadly varied dimensions, from journalistic to psychological and much more besides, this one can’t, won’t and shouldn’t be a quick or superficial newShrink take. (There’s more than plenty of that underway about this man, his story as well as his state and its systems.)
For the old journalist in me, being able to watch and hear the defendant’s late-week direct testimony via gavel-to-gavel live-streaming was an enormously valuable opportunity — perspective far greater than the best summary account or sound bites. I did feel keenly the gap from lacking ability to see and feel the jury’s responses in the room. (Yet having to read and gauge this instead by watching what both sides’ lawyers did — and didn’t — do, I found the utterly solid steadiness from the defense table, especially that of attorney Jim Griffin, impressive amid such visceral, emotionally explosive content.)
In case you haven’t followed at all and would like some basics, here are three pieces. With a verdict expected this week in the current murder case, there will be many more resources to come, including popular podcasts and TV docudramas, along with my thoughts from various newShrink perspectives.
The defendant testifies…
Alex Murdaugh Admits Lying and Stealing, but Denies Murders (The New York Times)
The cross-examination…
On the stand, Alex Murdaugh denies the murders as prosecutors press him on his lies (NPR)
And from The New Yorker for the bigger and deeper picture, if you can access it:This to me is so far the best of the deeper-dive pieces that also retain journalistic standards rather than take on an advocacy voice and stance. ThIs and gossipy tone are so unfortunately prevalent in otherwise well-reported podcasts (even by journalists who know better.)
The corrupt world behind the murdaugh murders (The New Yorker)
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After much if any time immersed in this particular area of SC Low Country, a lot of us can use a lift.
I’ll leave you today on a musical note, with these guys and the opener to a new Apple TV+ show. This one makes it hard (impossible!) to wait until all new weekly episodes have dropped in order to binge, er, enjoy more than one at a time.
The opener’s animated graphics are an apt entry and nod to the show’s creative roots shared with Ted Lasso. The show’s a combo of heart, wit and astutely savvy writing from a psychological perspective. Harrison Ford is in rare comic form.
The Frightening Fishes title-song refrain has become a favorite earworm:
I want to hear myself think again… I want to hear myself think again.
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And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week, with a regular edition of newShrink.
🦋💙 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”
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