By Harry Cummins
In 2005, when award-winning playwright Arthur Miller died at his home in Connecticut at the age of 89, we lost one of this country's great public thinkers.
Mr. Miller was of the opinion that the individual had a serious moral responsibility for his or her behavior, and for the behavior of society as a whole.
Writing in "The Crucible" Miller surmised "The longer I worked the more certain I felt that as improbable as it might seem, there were moments when an individual conscience was all that could keep a world from falling."
Flash forward to the world on Thanksgiving 2020. The very same lights on Broadway that dimmed the night Miller died, are now off indefinitely. We appear to be entering the darkest days of a year-long pandemic.
In his autobiography "Timebends", Miller quotes the physicist Hans Bethe on explaining his morning routine, "Well, I take up my pencil ...and I try to think.."
It's an impulse that seems to have lost favor in our society. Private and public thinking!
I am going to pledge to do more thinking myself, just maybe not this week. College basketball season finally starts tomorrow, Virgin River is back for another season Friday on Netflix, and Sunday night we all find out who killed Elena on the Undoing.
Monday morning, if the weekend hasn't bent my moral responsibility, I just may pick up a pencil.... and decide to do some serious thinking.
hcummins@aol.com
Yes, maybe not this week. Maybe next month. Have a very happy Thanksgiving!
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