Cartoons Monday!

Plus: John Oliver on the gerrymandered midterms and music from Rhiannon Giddens and Natalie Merchant, and Woody's guitar..

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad” is now streaming everywhere via PBS.

John Oliver last night on the important issue of horrid gerrymandering and the upcoming midterms.

I’m back home after my travels to L.A. and Tulsa for premieres of my new PBS film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad,” narrated by Rosanne Cash, so I will return to my nearly daily posting after slacking off just a bit (did anyone notice?). For now I’ll just leave you with the link to watch the film NOW and for the new web site for the film which includes many of the swell early reactions and some background. The film will also be airing at PBS stations on different days starting July 1 and I will post listings later. Entrance to the Guthrie Center:

Paul Krugman:

It’s kind of hard to believe, but the original Borat movie was 20 years ago. It’s time for a second sequel. And I already have the title. It would be Corruption for Make Benefit Glorious Family of Trump.

I hope that some of my listeners are young enough to not remember the original Borat movie. The reason I think about it is that today’s New York Times has a piece that reports, investigative reporting, on an immense mining deal in Kazakhstan, which, what do you know, turns out to be a big profit center for the Trump sons and also the sons of Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary.

Foreign Policy magazine: “Average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit — from arrival at a training ground to death in a combat zone — lies somewhere between 10 days and three weeks. Once sent onto the battlefield, they survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

The administration appears eager to keep what’s happening in the national parks out of sight. Early this year, the Department of the Interior instructed its employees that they could not share information about serious injuries or deaths on public lands, instead redirecting all such information through the Department of the Interior’s Office of Communications.

As Jake Spring reported in the Washington Post, more than 300 million people visit America’s national parks each year, and about 350 of them die (not always from accidents). In the past, park service employees could identify deaths or injuries from unsafe conditions, warning others from the area. Now the communications team from the Interior Department controls that information and does not always release it.

It did not release the information that a 72-year-old man died of extreme heat on a popular trail in the Grand Canyon on June 12 of this year. NPS employees wanted to warn other visitors, but the Interior Department did not release the information. Four days later a couple aged 67 and 68 also died of extreme heat on the same trail.

The profligate use of our tax dollars for whatever Trump and his cronies want while the American people suffer is at least as representative of Trump’s reign as is the peeling, algae-filled, militarily guarded Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

This president and administration are turning the extraordinary resources of the American people—the things we the people have created over decades with our effort and our tax dollars—to their own ends. We are paying for their theft with a significantly diminished country, and even with our lives.

Music Picks

Rhiannon Giddens has a new album coming in September, here is the first fine cut just released.

We posted a couple of songs with Natalie Merchant on Saturday from the great Wilco/Billy Bragg “Mermaid Avenue” Woody Guthrie reunion the night before, but next day she also showed up for a little solo pop up show therem where she did her old hit “Wonder.”

From the reunion she performed just with Billy “Birds and Ships,” lyrics by Woody.

From Tunes to Toons

Bennett:

Bramhall:

Winters:

Anderson;

Photo Finish

Woody’s 1930s guitar now at the Huntington for special “This Land Is…” exhibit, with purportedly the first time he posted or scratched “This Machine Kills Fascists” on it.