Welcome to California

Take a minute to look at the lovely tranquil scene… people camping in a green field late in the golden sunlight of late afternoon. Peaceful, no?

Tents in a meadow.

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For no reason other than literary promotion, I’ve decided to share with you some excerpts from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Or wait, maybe I did have a reason. In any case, if you want to read the whole chapter the following excerpts are from, click on this link (warning – it’s a PDF file.)

The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vats is poisoning the air…

Let’s zoom out a bit on that earlier scene, shall we? Same golden afternoon. I decided to take advantage of the fact that, because of the time change, it’s now still light out when I get home from work, so I set out to watch the sun set over the Sacramento skyline (and hopefully take a lovely sunset picture.)

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This is a tent camp three blocks from my house, located off of the Sacramento Northern Bikeway near the American River and downtown Sacramento. That's the Blue Diamond Almond Factory in the background.

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This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner.

This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil. They will last for years.

More tents on the left.

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The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hands over the State like a great sorrow. The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up…

Click on this one for the larger version. I was just up on this hill a few months ago and this wasn't here.

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A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene spayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

More tents.

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There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

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Here’s a link to a photo gallery of a 1936 tent city in the EXACT SAME PLACE.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

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In case you’re curious, here are a bunch more links, including an MSNBC photo essay on this exact tent city.

- MSNBC photo essay
- Blog post
- Oprah talks about them
- UK Telegraph article
- UK Daily Mirror article
- Calculating unemployment stats accurately
- California’s surging unemployment
- Local news article
- Another blog post
- Still another blog post
- One last blog post

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