Pink Stormy Cloud

Just a girl who loves books, philosophy, and the crushing weight of reality.

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This is so perfect. xD

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"The Western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunder storm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes, results not causes. The causes lie deep and simply--the causes are hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times."

Can you feel the nervousness of the owning class? I can. <3

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One of my favorite poems.

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"The gov'ment's got more interest in a dead man than a live one." -Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.

The bitter truth in so many ways.

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So sad to see her reduced to using AI. Really hope this gets sorted. xD

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'Grapes Of Wrath' And The Politics of Book Burning

The Steinbeck classic was banned and burned in a number of cities, including Kern County, Calif. — the endpoint of the Joad family's fiction

Reading about the reception of The Grapes of Wrath is interesting. It was a best seller at the time, but immediately people in power wanted to suppress it and managed to do so. Wartzman's book may be a fun supplementary read.

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Every July 4th, I read Frederick Douglass' "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?" I think it is a very good practice. It never gets old and remains accurate.

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Happy birthday Kafka! I'm sorry you existed before washi tape and the plethora of tiny but adorable stamps. <3

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Chapter 5 of The Grapes of Wrath really touches on so much and, yet, not enough. It is really interesting having read this back-to-back to Going Postal by Pratchett, because they are both about corruption and the cruelty of financial systems but both approach it in very different ways.

"Maybe the next year with be a good year. God knows how much cotton next year. And with all the wars--God knows what price cotton will bring. Don't they make explosive out of cotton? And uniforms? Get enough wars and cotton'll hit the ceiling. Next year, maybe. They looked up questioningly."

This understanding that America's financial success has heavily relied on war (wars it creates and wars it exploits) and that the working class/working poor were broadly aware of this even at the time, but needed war as hope, since Americans have been so insulated from the actual effects and loss of war is so good. The way it shows how working class/working poor folk are reliant on these systems of oppression as much as they are victims of it in one passage. Perfect.

"We can't depend on it. The bank--the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size."

A perpetual growth model has always been unsustainable. Corporate shareholders are not satisfied with stasis, they require growth. Some industries require up to 20% growth year-after-year.

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A bit of a romanticization of consumption, but still a lovely thought. <3

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"These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time." From Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. The way Steinbeck points out how "owner men" take refuge and escape responsibility for their own culpability in system of oppression by acting as slaves to the economic and bureaucratic systems that refuse to recognize people's humanity instead of autonomous beings, able to work against these system is just so subtle and poignant.

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"The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat bears to catch on a dog's coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse's fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten to a sheep's wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seen armed with an appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man's trouser cuff or the hem of a woman's skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement. " - Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath

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"When banks fail, it is seldom bankers who starve. Your actions have taken money from those who had little enough to begin with. In a myriad small ways you have hastened the deaths of many. You did not know them. You did not see them bleed. But you snatched bread from their mouths and tore clothes from their backs. For sport, Mr. Lipvig. For sport. For the joy of the game." - Pump 19 in Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

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The people who guard the rainbow don't like those who get in the way of the sun. - Terry Pratchett in Going Postal.

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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 successes. The fertile Earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of (hunger) 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 (if not sold at a profit). ... and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath