News with Nuance: Dec. 22, 2023

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

It’s our final News with Nuance of 2023! I thought this might be a lighter news week, due to the way the timing worked out as well as the upcoming holiday season - but as I sifted through the stories over the past week, I realized we still had a lot to discuss.

Earlier this week I participated in a webinar on a new study I helped research on Christian Nationalism. One of the researchers, eminent statistical whiz

Ryan Burge

included this in his initial comments (as I remember them/in my own phrasing):

You can’t have enough nuance when you’re talking about these topics.

Well, dear readers, I couldn’t have been prouder! I know it’s a lot to ponder and unpack, and one of the articles I’m sharing below about Israel and Gaza discusses that very topic - of how hard it is to process all the trauma that’s happening each and every day, especially in that case for Israeli writers. Still, that’s why this work is so very important. As Burge noted, if we take this time to put information into context - and place the human stories front and center - our brains can move from crisis and shock into empathy and ultimately action. That’s my goal here, and it’s why I’m so proud to do this work - which involves a heavy commitment to lots - and lots - and lots of reading.

Whenever you get to this newsletter, I do pray you’ve had a chance to catch your breath this December. I’m so glad you’re here. Be on the lookout for a couple of more newsletters to wrap up 2023: a Christmas Eve sermon video message coming 12/24, including lengthy quotations and insight from Bethlehem Pastor and theologian, the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, and then a final 2023 Substack with some fun background on many of the books I’ve been reading (mostly) for pleasure this year. I love sharing authors and writers who make me think, with you!

Blessings to you, in this season of darkness, anticipation, grief, and hope in the baby born in Bethlehem.

Let’s get to the news … with nuance …

The Headline: DOZENS OF ASSISTED-LIVING RESIDENTS DIED AFTER WANDERING AWAY UNNOTICED

Before I write about this article, I’ll share with you the editor’s note about the attached video from the Washington Post:

EDITOR’S NOTE

Viewers may find the following video disturbing. The Post reviewed and carefully selected footage with an eye toward balancing sensitivity to the viewer and accuracy in portraying the final hours of Hazel Place’s life. The Post concluded that allowing the public to witness these events firsthand provides a deeper understanding than words alone can convey.

A little over a year ago, on Dec. 17, 2022, one of my former parishioners, Alice, died. I had been visiting her and another parishioner, Della, for three years at the same assisted living facility in rural southwestern Minnesota. Della died a few months before Alice, also last year. I still remember their room numbers. And I remember conversations with staff members about how lucky I often felt that Alice and Della were parishioners of my church. They were both in their 90s (Alice died at age 99) and yet still sharp mentally. Many visits, I had to track Alice down because she was an avid game-player and puzzler. Della was a well-known fan of professional wrestling. Both of them were beloved, though they were also different and sometimes made me laugh with their wry and honest and no-holds-barred commentary.

As a Pastor, I always considered it a privilege to enter into assisted living homes and make visits. And at the same time, I sometimes had to “gear myself up” to go and do it. It is impossible to enter into senior living homes without facing the reality of human mortality, and the inevitable changes of aging, and the isolation that can sometimes result. I remember sometimes not wanting to face those realities. And then in the midst of my visits, every single time, the Holy Spirit showed me the presence of love and hope even in the midst of pain and even impending death, or the death of fellow residents and friends of the folks who I was visiting.

Neither Alice or Della lived with dementia, but I also had plenty of experience visiting folks who did. Dementia is a part of my family story, too; one of my grandmothers lived with Lewy body dementia for years. It is unspeakably cruel. A long goodbye. Heartbreaking and utterly sad.

Caring for people who have dementia isn’t easy. I remember walking with families in churches who sought care for their loved ones, and I remember the journey of my own family, too. It’s so hard to know the right thing to do.

This article shows the fraught and scary nature of elder care, especially for those who dementia. I share it today to remind us all of the treasure that are the elderly among us, and the need for better support for their caregivers.

If you are living and/or working in an assisted living facility this season, or if you are visiting loved ones there, my heart is with you. Those moments of connection are not always easy. But somehow they are always valuable beyond our comprehension.

The Quote:

The alarms went off at 9:34 p.m. inside Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing, an assisted-living facility near Des Moines catering to people with dementia. A resident had wandered through an exit door, a routine event in America’s growing senior assisted-living industry.

Automated texts pinged the iPads of the two caretakers working the night shift, and the phones of an on-call nurse and the facility’s director. The warnings repeated every few minutes.

Though local temperatures were plunging toward minus-11, no one responded. The on-call nurse told investigators she ignored the door alerts because she was with her family. The caretakers said they didn’t see them on their iPads. And they never followed through with hourly safety checks on memory-care residents.

At 6 a.m. — more than eight hours later — staff finally went looking for Lynne Stewart, a 77-year-old Alzheimer’s patient with a history of wandering. They found her collapsed on the frozen ground near the exit, ice covering her body. She soon died at a nearby hospital from prolonged exposure.

“The thing I grieve the most is I tried everything I could for her to be safe,” said Stewart’s granddaughter, Kaylynne Van Rooy. “That’s why she was there.”

Story by Christopher Rowland, Todd C. Frankel, Yeganeh Torbati, Julie Zauzmer Weil, Peter Whoriskey and Steven Rich; Washington Post

The Headline: Behind the New Iron Curtain

This article, translated from the original Italian by Elettra Pauletto, is one of the most illuminating pieces I’ve read in a long time. It’s beautifully written, too - an all-too-rare example of literary journalism by a master of the written word.

As a child who was just a few years old when the Soviet Union fell, I’ve long been