The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — So I just sent an email message to The New York Times deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle, Melissa Kirsch, author of the book “The Girl’s Guide” — not exactly a literary powerhouse.

Charged with providing something interesting to read on the soft news side of things in the national newspaper of record, she wrote a piece for Saturday with the provocative question: What Will Be the Theme of Summer?

“The last episode of season eight of ‘Seinfeld’ begins with George learning that the Yankees have given him a three-month severance package,” she writes. “He declares that he’s going to live the next three months to the fullest. He’ll read a book ‘from beginning to end. In that order.’ He’ll play Frisbee golf. ‘This is gonna be my time,’ he declares. ‘Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: the Summer of George!’”

“Setting intentions for summer is the low-stress, seasonal version of a New Year’s resolution,” she says. “Summer is, or so we imagine, a blank canvas for aspiration.”

There may be some truth to that for young, rich or at least well off people in this post-Covid world. But what about us old farts who have seen better days, are past our prime and stuck living on fixed retirement incomes — worried to death about whether Congress will pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling and keep the Social Security payments coming?

Economic Crisis Averted: Congress Passes Bipartisan Debt Limit Bill

But I wanted to be fair and give her idea some thought, and the fact is, I’ve been in an introspective thought pattern of late anyway. I’ve been thinking about coming totally clean with absolute transparency about my life. No more pretense, which is what national editors love. So I told her my theme for this summer is going to be “Brutal Honesty.”

“There will be a few honest stories about my experiences with The New York Times in the series,” I wrote. “Some of this is not going to be pretty.”

The Science of Birds

Even before I saw her headline and looked at her piece, I had already decided to volunteer to become involved in a project with The New York Times this summer in conjunction with Cornell University’s eBird Guide. They wanted me to tell them when and why I got interested in birding, so I made this comment, which they published.

“I got interested in birding in the early days of digital photography while taking care of my elderly mother, who liked birds and collected bird houses and had bird feeders and baths in her backyard,” I wrote about the time in 2004-05 when I had made the excruciating decision to potentially put my own career on hold and move back from D.C. to Birmingham, Alabama — because my mother needed me to.

“One day while sitting on our screened-in porch, we watched a red-shouldered hawk get in a fight with a grey squirrel on a tree limb in the backyard. That’s when I knew I needed a better camera. Ended up with a Nikon D-50 and started photographing the birds there and doing the backyard bird counts for Cornell. Over the years I got bigger lenses and better cameras.

“Last year I was camping in Catoctin Mountain Park near Camp David and downloaded the Merlin app,” I continued. “The dominant song in summer was the wood thrush. Now when I hear a bird sound I don’t recognize, I use Merlin to ID it. My first report here involves an Eastern Wood Pewee. You can hear the recording uploaded to eBird. I added the hashtag #NYT” as they asked.
– Glynn Wilson | Washington, D.C.

It’s all true, but of course there is more to the story. The truth is I had first moved back to Birmingham from New Orleans at Christmas in 2003 on assignment for a New York magazine to produce a story about what George W. Bush was actually doing in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1972, when some claimed he went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard.

George W. Bush’s Lost Year in 1972 Alabama

Not long after that story came out, I moved to Alexandria, Virginia and began free-lancing in the Washington, D.C. area. The plan was working, although it all got sidetracked by a job offer that did not come through in Atlanta and then my mom got sick in Birmingham. But when a lawyer-friend pointed out that Kitty Kelly had totally plagiarized my story in her book on the Bush family, I found a lawyer to sue, and the Times not only wrote about the case for the Book Review section. They sent a photographer to my house to photograph me. Unfortunately, the picture is not up in the digital edition.

A Writer Is Suing the Author of a Hit Book on the Bushes

Even though the lawsuit didn’t exactly work out for reasons beyond the scope of this column, the Times continued to rely on me as a free-lance reporter and writer for a little while longer. The last assignment came for the Business and Health sections in combined coverage of the trial of Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth. One clip: Ex-HealthSouth Officer Testifies About Meeting Boss on Lake

After that they pretty much ghosted me, and I went independent on the web. There are some untold stories from that time I’m thinking about telling this summer.

Suffering Depression

But for today, in the interest of being brutally honest, I want to report that in recent months, I suffered a bought of anxiety about my present circumstances and some depression about the prospects for the future.

So for the first time in my life, after seeing story after story about the national mental health crisis, I admitted to myself that I might actually sometimes suffer from depression. Now with Medicare health care coverage in Maryland, which I found out would pay for counseling, I went through the screening process and was assigned a therapist.

The joke I told myself and only a close friend or two is that this completes my move to the Washington metro area, where it seems like everybody has a therapist. Life is so stressful up here that you can’t make it without one.

The old joke is that if you want a friend in Washington, “get a dog.”

I had a dog, but he died on Christmas Day 2019 near Pensacola, Florida before Covid hit.

So here I am, all alone, living the RV camper van semi-retirement life just 10 miles north of the Washington Monument. But now I have a therapist. Watch out.

Background

Back in February, as stories were being written about the rise of Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT and the death of more newspapers and news sites, when even the sensational clickbait traffic hog Buzzfeed went out of business, monthly traffic in the New American Journal dropped below a half a million hits for the first time in years. Part of the reason was that I tried out a new advertising company, and their ads blocked our content on mobile devices, so traffic dropped — and the b-b-bastaads didn’t pay me a fucking cent — and didn’t even bother to apologize for being greedy little hackers!

As someone said when reporting on the death of Buzzfeed, the idea that traffic was key to the future economy of news turned out to be wrong. What they didn’t report is the reason it turned out to be wrong: Google’s greed and corruption. The search engine company that also owns YouTube wants all the money, along with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. They don’t care about news or the future of democracy and the planet. They only care about capitalism and their own wealth.

And now we learn that Google has made the idiotic decision NOT to take down any more YouTube videos that contain false election fraud claims about the 2020 election. Is anyone ready to #Boycott YouTube yet?

I was so depressed I was about to give up. But finally spring weather arrived, and some news started happening that I felt like covering, and the traffic went back up to more than a million hits in the month of May.

But I had asked my therapist this week: Is it possible that I’ve suffered periodic bouts of depression my entire life, which at times caused me to do things to sabotage my own careers?

He stopped and thought about it, and said that was something we could explore in future sessions.

Some people tell alcoholics everything is all their fault. They are responsible for their choices and actions so must repent and go straight.

Yet we tell rape victims and those who suffer from sexual assault — even from within a church — that it is not their fault.

There are assholes in the world. And sometimes in the competitive marketplace of big time journalism and high level academics, the political divide does raise its ugly head. It was already true 20 years ago.

Switch to Netflix

Meanwhile I was watching a couple of series on Netflix of late when the use of Tarot cards came up. No, I do not engage in “magical thinking,” being a long-time person of science. But just for the hell of it, I downloaded a Tarot card app and did an initial card reading. These are the three cards I drew.

Of course this may all be wishful thinking. But why should I be depressed about the decisions I’ve made, even the decision nine years ago to come back to Washington in a camper van and cover what was going on here, in addition to doing some camping and traveling and seeing more of the country?

If you think about it, in a way I am riding around in a Chariot, and don’t overlook two important words: “Triumph. Vengeance.” Something I’ve been spending some time contemplating of late, not so unlike the Count of Monte Cristo.

And in a way I do possess the endless power of a Magician, Master of the four elements of fire, earth, air and water.

And look, no bad omen here. I drew the Five of Pentacles, which portends new possibilities.

Stay tuned. More to come. Never give up on your dreams.