Day 6: Wrath, with grapes and bananas

I'm told that people who quit smoking have dreams of smoking and wake up and wonder if they're real. On Saturday night I dreamed I was eating pork chops and I felt sick when I woke up. And then last night dreams of smoking and drinking. I woke up wondering if I was drunk.

I've switched from pie to bananas and trail mix.

I'm really into this Fringe Festival, I'm sorry I haven't gone before. Friday night was intertesting when I went to a one-man show and 10 minutes in the actor got up and left. But all the plays are different and entertaining. Better than going to a movie.

Speaking of movies, last night I watched "The Grapes of Wrath" again. This is my favourite book but the movie let me down. There is lines in the book where you think "How could anyone write that well?!?!?!" which doesn't translate well into the movie.

Much like "Why the caged bird sings" I thought I'd explain the title of the Grapes of Wrath.

Starting in the great depression with the dustbowl, farmers had poor crops for a number of years. The people who owned these fields had originally let the fields out in exchange for a portion of the profits and now wanted to break the deal. The landowner could get a tractor and have one man do the work of 10 sharecroppers so he kicked all the farmers off their land. These people had lived and died there for 100 years and one day they were told to leave.

These people had nothing. NOTHING. Less than the slaves. NOTHING. People in California advertised jobs picking fruit for good pay so the farmers sold what little they had for pennies on the dollar to get enough money to go south to California. And when they got there 5,000 fruit pickers showed up for 400 jobs. So they undercut each other as they were starving and had nothing and soon everyone was willing to work for food. Not even money, just enough food for their wife and kids and still there was too many pickers.

And the farmers had learned the law of supply and demand so if it was a good year for grapes they couldn't pick them all or the price on the market would fall. So they picked what they needed to and burned the rest. They hired guards to watch their fields and would shoot people trying to steal food, because people who got food for free wouldn't pay for it. So people were starving to death from hunger as the men who owned the farms burned the produce. The Grapes of Wrath burned.....