News with Nuance March 3, 2023

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

Welcome back to News with Nuance, and Happy March! February was rough this year, and it’s over. Throughout the past couple of weeks I kept reminding myself of the wisdom of a couple of friends of mine, who talk about the collective mania of late winter in the Upper Midwest, and the consequent collective desire to change everything about your life in the second month of the year.

“Don’t trust your thoughts in February,” they tell each other.

Maybe it’s good advice.

Here in Minneapolis, the snow is melting (for now) and the kids were back in school (at least until tomorrow, when we have a prescheduled day off). Spring is coming.

For this week’s News with Nuance, I want to share with you two stories from two disparate parts of the country, which both communicate a familiar message to this newsletter: lifting up and refusing to ignore the human stories and lives beneath the headlines.

One of these stories has been national news for awhile, but frankly I haven’t seen enough pieces about East Palestine from folks who actually call the Rust Belt home (long before we started referring to this region as the Rust Belt). The other story comes from San Francisco, and one of my favorite columnists, the L.A. Times’ Anita Chabria uses the story of a synagogue for Russian emigrés to attempt to undo our collective desensitization to gun violence, especially among groups who are at the highest risk. The path of the Schneerson Jewish Center offers an alternative way forward.

Finally, look to the Christian Nationalism corner for information on a library lecture I’m giving next week - through the Ramsey (MN) library system, but available virtually. More to come about why libraries are the absolute best. And also why Ash Wednesday and Lent are one of Christianity’s best defenses against the onslaught of Christian Nationalism.

The Headline: East Palestine Isn’t Suffering From One Disaster. It’s Suffering From Many

The story of the train derailment and resulting chemical spill outside East Palestine, Ohio, is one of those unfortunate American stories that is covered incessantly and breathlessly, and yet it’s still possible to read article upon article about the crisis and still know next to nothing about what actually happened or the people who live in the affected area, outside of their voting record, that is.

That’s why I wanted to lift up this piece from a writer friend of mine,

Sarah Stankorb

(who has a book coming out soon on the courageous women who’ve uncovered sexual abuse in American Evangelicalism: keep an eye out for Disobedient Women, available now for preorder and releasing in August).

I want to share a quick background about this article, because it’s the kind of backstory that demystifies publishing decisions but also gives me hope for the future of journalism.