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Two for a Penny – The Grapes of Wrath

An evening pause: To help start out a new year, a scene from the 1940 John Ford classic, The Grapes of Wrath, based on John Steinbeck’s novel. While the movie tended to make government a saintly hero, which bothered me from the first time I saw it, it also captured the heart and generosity of the American spirit, as certainly existed in the previous century. Even if you are poor and desperate, if you insist on paying your fair share and don’t ask for a hand out, Americans immediately rally around you, in a quiet unassuming way, without wishing credit or accolades.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

Note that I am in need of suggestions for evening pauses. If you have made suggestions before, you know where to send them. If you haven’t and want to, leave a comment here and I will email you. Don’t include the link to the pause, however, as I want to schedule it, and that will blow the punchline.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • Localfluff

    To me, your space related comments IS the treat. I don’t care much about old movies or any popular music. I prefer watching a lecture about something I understand half of, but that’s just me.

    Maybe you could give your blogging popular cultural interludes a space twist? There’s space science fiction and space item collectors and model builders and space historians and living space industry legends (who are not as legendary as they maybe should be, but will be in historic retrospect). And other people, space is a crazy business.

    This doesn’t qualify to your pause, but a model that someone built of how the planned Soviet Lunar space mission would transfer one cosmonaut via a space walk to the landing craft. And apparently moving over some payload via a cable.
    http://www.spaceistheplace.ca/page_6_2013.html#Soviet Lunar Landing LOK & LK

  • Localfluff

    The image of the model, if it doesn’t load above:
    https://i.stack.imgur.com/kx1FZ.jpg
    I think there might be a renaissance of physical models (and mechanics) as a recoil against the flat touch screen and virtual reality culture.

  • Michael Dean Miller

    .

    ….truck drivahz….

    .

  • ken anthony

    On occasion I’ve found things I thought would be perfect here, but can’t predict when. But I would like to contribute should I come across something.

  • wayne

    ken–
    I’d like to see some of your suggestions– go for it!

    (tangentially– if you ever come across any animation-shorts from Jean Marsh’s “International Festival of Animation,” (PBS 1977-1979) let me know!)

  • RobertJr

    Love the Evening Pauses. I have a suggestion for one if you’d like to consider it.

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