"Inherit the Wind"

 Lawdy, Lawdy, last night, I watched Inherit the Wind, starring Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott, and it was pure cinematic genius.

It was a made-for-television (1999) dramatized version of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925—my gosh, 100 years ago—when a high school teacher (Scopes) was arrested for violating the Butler Act by teaching evolution in a public school.  

Watching Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott, those two veteran actors, go at each other had me on the edge of my seat. I was afraid one of them would burst a blood vessel.

This version used fictitious names for the real attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, who were the attorneys in the actual 1925 Scopes trial.

When I was 21, I attended the play "Inherit the Wind," performed by the Thespians of Linfield College in Oregon. The actor who played Defense Attorney Clearance Darrel should have gone on to the New York stage. I came from a Protestant background, and when the Darrell character slammed the two books, the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species, together, stuck them under his arm, and walked off stage, I felt I had been hit by an anvil.

I went on to major in Biology in college, where evolution was considered a fact.  Hey, young Darwin was just a field researcher who went to the Galapagos Islands, observed the animals he found there, and took notes.  But when he published his findings, it stirred up a hornet's nest.

In school, if you wanted to debate the Creationists, they said to take it to the Theology department. Two professors did have a go at it, but they didn't have the skill of Lemmon or Scott.

Years later, I watched the 1960 version of the movie Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy and was unimpressed. (I still had the college play ringing in my ears and thought it couldn't be beat—until last night.)

Over the years, I didn't understand why the debate between Creationism and Evolution was such a big deal. I don't know how the Universe began or how life originated on Earth. It is an ongoing study. God is God; he doesn't need humans to defend him. Some people must think God doesn't know what a Quark is. Does He know how to smash an atom? Does He need constant admiration? Would you if you were God?

Some fundamentalists are so insulted they get blood in their eye if anyone says they came from animals. They should be so lucky. They are lucky to have life, no matter how it came about.

It's still a mystery.

This rendition of the play was apparently meant to be a parable against the McCarthy era, where beliefs were fanned to white hot intensity to believe there was a communist hiding under every rock. 

 I was encouraged last night at the end of Inherit the Wind to see that a great throng of people can champion a belief system; they can write laws to defend it. They can threaten opponents, and fight for their side. They can spread lies, propaganda, innuendos, and fear. Yet out of the morass will come an individual who will rise from the crowd and defend the right to think.

 

Inherit the Wind: 

"He who brings trouble on his house will inherit the wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise of heart."

Proverbs 11:29
 

This is The Work

 

 

“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”—Vincent  Van Gogh

 

 “Put your ass where your heart wants to be and don’t ask anything else of yourself.”—Steven Pressfield.

 

He says he doesn’t worry about how many words he will write, about punctuation, or anything. He knows that if he sits for his allotted time per day (his is about 3 hours), in six months, he will have a book. In a year, two books. 

 

Cool! It helps that he has some writing skills at his disposal. 

 

True, I could probably write a book in six months, but from my experience, then it will take 6 years of rewriting and editing, and proofreading. Then does anyone what to read it? (Diabolical laughter.)  

 

Maybe I need an attitude adjustment.

 

This morning, as I often do, I opened a book on writing as an oracle. I open the book to a random page, read a couple of paragraphs, and it sets me up for the day. Read an entire book on writing in one sitting, and your brain will go out to lunch, leaving you behind to starve. No, I take that back, read the entire book, then keep it around for a refresher.

 

This morning it was Steven King/On Writing:.

 

“Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill.” (Oh, goodie.) “One of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot.”

 

I don’t know what sensory experience. I want you guys to gain from reading this. It is non-fiction, which some successful writers say ought to be crafted as though it’s fiction. I’m simply talking. You are sitting in front of your computer. I am in front of mine. I use an external keyboard, for I simply cannot type on the computer’s keyboard--it drives me nuts. Maybe it’s because I learned to type on a typewriter. I like keys that pack a punch. And I have raised my screen to about eye level, as my Chiropractor suggested, so my back is straight. Whoops, I just straightened up. 

 

I sit in front of a window, my favorite spot for writing. I like to look up and see the green trees, the birdies flipping about, and if I raise up a bit, I can see my four chickens as they are in the backyard now. The area where they used to be behind the Wayback gave ample opportunity for the marauding raccoon to use them for snacks.

 

Safe house

 

The pink dogwood tree I see out my window is replacing flowers with leaves. I really praise that ancient tree for recovering from its extreme cut-back. See how we can recover even if we are ancient. Remember how in Hawaii, I sat at my desk by the window and watched the Morning Goddess slowly meticulously adjust the morning sunlight until it totally enlivened the acre of green between me and the Tiki room. Oh, maybe you weren’t reading me at that time—it’s been ten years. (Really? It seems like last week.) 

 

And now, I open Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, a book I read when?? In 1986?! I don’t know; that’s when her book came out. Since I left the book behind in California, I rebought it in Oregon. The following is from the 30th Anniversary Edition.

 

“If you capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don’t only listen to the person speaking to you across the table but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming through the windows.” (Color has a sound?) “The deeper you can listen, the better you will write the truth about the way things are… Jack Kerouac, in his list of prose essentials, said, ‘If you can capture the way things are, that’s all the poetry you will ever need.’”

 

I wonder how this meshes with my reading Joe Despensia’s book, Be Your Own Placebo, where I learned that the brain has “Plasticity, that is it re-invents itself according to what you experience and learn.

 

Isn’t that great? We aren’t “stuck” in anything.

 

My movie/book suggestions:

Watch the movie Operation Mincemeat, about a fantastic clandestine operation during WWII.

Book: David Michie’s The Dali Lama’s Cat; Awaken the Kitten Within.

 

“As kittens, all it takes is a windblown feather, an unexpected delicacy, or the alluring rush of water, and instantly we are caught up in it. Wonderment. Enchantment. Being fully absorbed in the here and now.”

 

Is it possible to recover the unaffected zest for life?