Cartoons Monday!
Plus, Richard Manuel helps you wake up after holiday weekend.
Greg Mitchell’s new award-winning film, with a focus on nuclear dangers today, will start streaming via PBS, and screening, on PBS stations, on July 12. Last week the companion e-book with the same title was published: “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero—and Nuclear Peril Today.” It includes previously unpublished images and provocative material from the film and much more. Read more here. Thanks. And subscribing to this newsletter still free:
Just a quick jolt here. “I had a heard time waking this morning….” Well, no wonder after a three-day weekend and high heat and fireworks. The Band originally recorded this for their first album but did not finish it, “Orange Juice Blues,” but when Dylan and Robbie and Columbia put together at last a “Basement Tapes” release in 1975, Robertson famously added overdubs to a few of the old Band outtakes and they were included. One was this song, which does exist on YouTube with Richard solo on the piano and singing. Here you get Robbie on guitar and Garth on sax. Enjoy either.
Meanwhile from Charlie Pierce:
Trump’s Everglades Prison Can’t Even Withstand a Routine Rainstorm. Ron DeSantis Wants to Open It Anyway.
They probably built the monstrosity in about eleven minutes. Small wonder it’s a sieve.
Saw a terrific small film yesterday in the cinema, “Familiar Touch,” starring the great Kathleen Chalfant. One of the best, and most subtle, observations of the slippage of memory for the elderly, and the struggle to maintain a sense of self and dignity, ever. First-time director, as well. Here is the trailer:
Since I’m (finally!) reading Steinbeck’s incredible “Grapes of Wrath,” here’s Bruce singing his “Ghost of Tom Joad” as he he accepted award from the Woody Guthrie Center. Of course, Woody recorded the original “Ballad of Tom Joad” and was offered a part in the movie but was working elsewhere.
From Tunes to Toons
By Cathy Hull, who first illustrated an article I wrote on Kurt Vonnegut in….1970.
I am glad you are ready “The Grapes of Wrath.” I read it as a young child at my father’s insistence. He had lived through the dust bowl days, and had told me many frightening stories about it. I have since reread it a few times, always finding a deeper meaning in it. The movie made from the book is well worth watching, also. It stars Henry Fonda, who brings the book to life as few other actors of that era could have.
They built the "Alligator Alcatraz" detention center for two reasons, one as a troll and the other to distract from Trumps moronic obsession with re-opening the real Alcatraz which was never going to happen. It's probably irrelevant if it doesn't work. They can always throw more money at it later if it seems to matter to their public image.