It was a different time but everything is still the same. The novel and the film made from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath have been almost sacred documents for me. I don’t remember the moment when I first saw the movie but it made an impression that I never got over. Maybe I was looking through the slats of my crib when I saw it, but who cares anyway? There is so much in it, so many lessons to learn. The acting is superb, the cinematography an excellent black and white.
Toward the end of the story there is a speech for the ages, and Henry Fonda does it full justice. Riveting.
And what parts of that speech, filmed in 1940, do not apply today? Hunger, violence against working people, homelessness, poverty, greedy politicians, police brutality … all set in a country beset by drought and near-famine.
We don’t have a Dust Bowl to point to, but we do have an overheated planet on our hands, and a loooong-lasting drought here in the West. We have the thugs of ICE sent out by our own President to beat us up, kidnap us, and kill us. We have bankers, politicians, and plutocrats to suck up the money that could save tens of thousands of lives. We have an epidemic of homelessness, one that is even more durable than that of the refugees in Steinbeck’s story.
A French man coined a phrase in 1849 that goes something like this (actually, it goes exactly like this): Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose . Translation: The more things change, the more they are the same.
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Here’s a few stills from the movie Grapes of Wrath. Just the act of selecting them gets me stirred up and means I’ll have to watch the movie again soon.
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In general, Americans are not a people who plan long-term. At least our political leaders don’t. It is rare for them to look beyond the next election cycle. While this is an understandable thing for selfish men and women of limited wit to do, it is not good for the big business that is the US. Because it means that we are forever using Band-aids to cover the leaks in the dike, rather than getting a good stonemason out there to effect a more durable fix. Whiplash, carom, ping-pong and ricochet are words that could describe our domestic policies and programs way too often.
I long to see grownups in office. I believe that there are more of them out there, but perhaps that is too much to ask. Perhaps talented adults look at the gigantic squalling daycare that is Congress and say “Not me, buddy, no way am I going in there. Spending (two, four, six) years getting nothing done but changing their diapers is not the life for me.”
Or … who knows? Using the celestial imagery that I grew up with, there are way too many days when it looks to me that Satan is in charge while God has tired of us and has pulled back for a well-deserved rest from our unceasing babble.
We’re on our own, folks, and I wonder if we’re up to it. But hey, it’s time for me to make a new sign and carry it down to the public square. There is always fun to be had in pissing off the yahoo contingent in town.
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This is a marvelous little tale about a ballet production in Turkey. The kind of accidental happening that warms the heart. Title of the Piece: In Its Tragic Finale, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Is Interrupted by a Cat. We can all use a good cat story once in a while, and this one fills that bill nicely.
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And now, in the slightly creepy department, a recounting of my latest adventure in AI.
In the early morning hours of Thursday I had posed a question to ChatGPT, and had received a helpful answer. The interesting thing is that at one point the text read: “there are many choices but what I would recommend in your situation is …”
Notice that pronoun? It said “I”.
I immediately shut down the computer. I have no idea who “I” is, and I was not in a mood to receive visitors. Then, as I stared at the empty screen I realized that I had no way of knowing whether the machine was still looking at and listening to me. My confidence in the On/Off switch has been shaken.
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Little Home In The Valley 