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Monday, June 30, 2025

"Problems Need Energy to Live."

 


"Problems need energy to live."

– Tony Robbins.

 

Are you a blogger?

A writer, maybe?

Definitely, you are a reader—because you are here. And I am grateful you found me and are sticking with me.

With the plethora of words, podcasts, websites, Instagram, Facebook, Substacks, journals, and various publications available, it is a privilege that you take the time to read me.

I fluctuate between falling into a hole with brain-eating alligators with Jia Tolentino, who, on May 3, 2025, wrote in The New Yorker:

"My Brain Finally Broke."

"Much of what we see now is fake," she wrote, "and the reality we face is full of horrors. More and more of the world is slipping beyond my comprehension."

Yep, been there, done that.

I don't have to tell you things are bad, so I won't.

It is so easy to complain, to worry, to rail at injustices, and to be afraid most of the time. What if we stopped feeding the fears?

An old Native American saying goes like this: Two elders were watching two dogs fighting. One asked the other. "Which dog will win?"

Said the smarter of the two: "The one we feed."

 

As a writer, I often wonder what I am doing here.

 Am I boring you while I indulge myself?

This is a question every writer faces. What am I doing? And for whom? Does it matter?

Why do I feel compelled to write out my thoughts and put them out there?

(The Muse has us by the throat, imploring us to do the work, but she leaves the skill and practice to us.)

That's the journey.

 

Yet, if we don't share our thoughts and feelings, we are in deep do-do.

Our voices matter. You matter. Our government matters. Saving the animals matter. Saving the people from demagoguery matters.

If the light doesn't shine, the dark side wins. The little boy who spoke up when everyone else saw a naked Emperor and dared say: "The Emperor has no clothes," stood for truth.

Heavens, some are plenty happy to spew out filth, anger, hatred, bigotry, anti-this this, and anti-that. –See how loudly those voices are raging in our awareness, our consciousness, and probably burrowing into our subconsciousness.

So, speak up. We're tired as hell and not going to take it anymore. We're the people, for God's sake. We don't bow to tyrants.

If anyone ever blames you for being selfish or self-indulgent, blow them a raspberry and get on with it.

Where does the advancement of the species come from?

From those willing to put in the time face the repercussions, lay their hearts on the line, and thus change a civilization.

 "You're just a simple bricklayer," commented an adversary to a mason sitting beside an immense pile of brinks.

To which the mason replied, "I am building a Cathedral."

Saturday, June 28, 2025

"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
 

Thursday, June 26, 2025

On Movies, Writing, and Titles, Oh My

Help, It's the Dark Side

 

Blog June 24, 25

Well, last night, I made it halfway through the Star Wars Movie Prequel III: The Revenge of the Sith. The Supreme Chancellor Palpatine reminded me too much of our present Political administration; I didn't want to see Anakin Skywalker seduced to the dark side—I didn't want to see him turned into Darth Vader; I didn't want to watch Padme' die.

Did I give away too much? I don't think so; I believe you already know the plot. 

 We have too much darkness going on right now; I don't need to watch more, no matter how much angst a plot needs. I went to my office while the rest of my family finished the movie. (My Grandson had never seen the Star Wars series until the beginning of last month, so now he is going through them with his mother and us—when I choose to participate—and his mother has the evening off.) 

 

Once back in my office, I turned to the second item on Barbara Kingsolver's list of advice for writers.

Number one is "Give Yourself permission to write a bad book.

Done.

Number two is "Revise it until it's not a bad book."

Working on it.

I have written a novel: MADDIE, ALEX, AND GABE, Love, from the Cottage in the Vineyard.

Will that title stick? I don't know.

Madeline, 72, a widow, calls her daughter Alexandria in New York from California to tell her she is moving to Florence, Italy, for one year. (A retirement visa isn't easy to obtain, but one can get it for a year.) Her daughter has a fit for a 72-year-old woman to go traipsing off alone and to be out of the country; what if something happens to her?

Madeline decides it's time to put aside the emotional barb that has plagued her for the past twenty years, and Italy is the place to do it.

Toward the end of the book, Madeline decides to blog and has this to say:

"I am writing backward, I know. However, I will begin at the beginning in a minute. Right now. I have a pregnant daughter, aged 40, who is unmarried. The boisterous Bernardi family, owners of our cottage and hosts of our wedding, have adopted us. Ninety-year-old Signora Francesca Bernardi has been my friend, confidant, and mentor. Their handyman wooed me; I rescued an injured pup, named him Little Bear, and he has become my forever dog. Beautiful Gabriel Brandon rescued me and has become my forever love.

"I thought I had come to Italy to take stock of my life and to lay to rest a carryover from my marriage. In the process, I found love.

"I love our cottage and our new house next to it. I love that I will be a grandmother. Gabe is so puffed up at being a grandfather that a flight crew couldn't deflate him. But what if Alexandria decides to go alone and be a single mother? Her love-sick suitor, son of the Bernardi’s, and whom we have grown to love, will be left with a broken heart."—Madeline Brandon.

Did I give away too much? Probably.

Charge ahead, dear writers. And readers, don't be afraid to read fiction or write a bad book; remember that the best writing often comes from rewriting. The fun is thinking it up in the first place.

Lucus must have been fried after writing Star Wars.