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Inquiring Minds: This is your chance to know

Everyone knows how the noble King Christian of Denmark wore the yellow Star of David and saved the Jews of his country from the World War II holocaust.

Jens Lund heard the story over and over growing up in the 1950s as a rare Dane in a Jewish neighborhood in Connecticut.

He heard it so often he wondered if it were true.

Not really, the Olympia folklorist discovered in his long search for historic accuracy. The king never wore a yellow star except in the Swedish political cartoon that sparked the fable.

In real life, hundreds of people helped to rescue 4,000 Jews and they weren't all heroes. Some were Danish collaborators. Some were occupying Germans.

And unlike Holland where people did wear yellow stars, Denmark was a short boat ride away from the safe haven of neutral Sweden.

"I've never been comfortable with the idea of Danes as moral supermen," said Lund. "The rescue was one of the high points in moral history. But history is much more complicated than mythology."

Lund's ideas stir up people who want their history simple. But getting people to think is what the Inquiring Mind Series is all about.

The West Sound segment of the free statewide program will feature Lund and 15 other speakers during the next seven months. A three-person dramatization of aging through the words of famous authors will open the series Sunday in Bremerton. For series details, see the schedule at right.

Now in its 12th year, the Washington program is a national model, said coordinator Linda Capell. The National Endowment for the Humanities picks up the tab, which amounts to about $180,000 this year in Washington.

Every year, more places want more speakers, bringing the 1994-95 total to 300 talks in 80 communities across the state.

Most are in the boondocks, though Puget Sound neighborhoods have a sizeable share.

"There's a real hunger for the programs due to lack of resources in small communities," said Capell. In the Eastern Washington hamlets of Metaline Falls and Manson, the Inquiring Mind series is the only cultural game in town all year.

In West Sound, it's the only free ongoing lecture series in the area. Wherever they happen, the goal is to jumpstart thinking, not to dispense pellets of information.

"I came to listen and had to think," sums up the reaction that presenters hope to provoke. This comment was inspired by Robert Keller, who examined another historical myth  whether or not the famous 1855 speech by Chief Seattle really happened.

"It's a detective story how do we know what we know and how do we find out?" said Keller, history professor emeritus from Western Washington University.

Not everyone likes the historic answer to the Chief Seattle mystery, said Keller, who taught at Olympic College in the mid-1960s. Yet his discussion goes far beyond a single incident to the crux of history itself.

"It's important to know where you come from, whether it's walking through the woods or moving through time," he said. "And just looking at the present shortchanges our concepts of what's possible. It's walking around with blinders on."

The lectures are not a one-way street from podium to audience. And everyone likes it that way. The speakers love the interchange with people they would never have met off this lecture circuit. The audience enjoys the two-way exchange. And the organizers pick presenters who are good at it.

But that is just one talent required to get over the hurdles of the selection process.

"We expect people to be scholars or doing research, though they don't have to have formal credentials," said Capell, the series coordinator. "We choose people who can get their ideas across."

A written proposal is the first step. Then comes the cattle call auditions attended by community reps like Laura Boyle, longtime coordinator of the Kitsap Regional Library. The third and last stage is the formal dress rehearsal where the final picks present their acts to community reps looking for a few good talks.

"They have to be good presenters and the topic has to have appeal," said Boyle, noting that travel, music and theatrical presentations have been winners with West Sound audiences.

She loves to tell the story of the professor who talked about the esoteric subject of the Etruscan language.

"We had a sellout house," Boyle said with a chuckle. "He was a good speaker, but they didn't know it ahead of time. This stuff  you can't predict it."

Except to say, the brain cells are buzzing.
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