"The Wrath of Grapes"

In yesterday's New York Times story about how people are moving to cities like Oklahoma City because the housing prices are cheaper, there's a particularly interesting passage:

     “A large percentage of Americans had to read ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ” 
     said Mayor Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City, referring to the John Steinbeck 
     novel that chronicled the flight of Oklahomans to California in search of 
     a better life during the Depression. Now the grandchildren and great-
     grandchildren of those migrants are returning for the same reason. 
     “It’s ‘The Wrath of Grapes,’ ” he said.

What Shaila Dewan (the author of this piece) - and maybe the mayor of Oklahoma City, too - doesn't seem to take into account is that in the novel, this "flight," this move "in search of a better life," is compelled - unless you wanted to live like Muley, a character as stubborn as the animal he shares a name with, you fled because the bank made you. Sure, there were aspirations of plentiful work, delicious fruit to harvest and eat, and houses with white fences in the promised land of California, but the dream of those aspirations was necessitated because of real distress, actual limited material conditions. After all, without a tractor plowing into your house, you wouldn't have to fantasize about a new one.

Similar echoes are heard in Dewan's interviews with people who have moved to Oklahoma: a woman who left Portland, OR, because "the beach isn't going to pay my rent"; a man who "had given up on the idea of home ownership in Seattle." It may not be as dire as the Dust Bowl, but it's not as innocuous as a simple "search" for a better life, either.

I don't mean to pounce on the wording in this piece; I know that the article's point is not to discuss The Grapes of Wrath. But how we distill stories matters and the NYT knows this from, to cite just one example, covering one school's teaching of The Great Gatsby and the reactions that followed. And I do think that beyond a mayor's perhaps playful dissing and boosterism, there's a fuller story to be told about the characters who left Oklahoma in the '30s and the ones who head there today.

The logic of "the only way"

It was page 38 in The Grapes of Wrath before I snapped to attention. Here's what's happening right before this scene: the bank is telling Oklahoma tenant farmers that it's taking their land away, land they've lived and worked on sometimes for generations. The man hired by the bank drives up on a tractor and begins to plow. On his lunch break, the farmer recognizes him:

75 years later, I could feel the anger, desperation, and personal, divergent logic of both men's calculations: three dollars, fifteen or twenty families, five thousand acres. With the words "got to think of my own kids," I thought about how, as old as our country's sense of public duty is, the ideology of "my family first" is not brand new, either. And there are reasons for this that can go beyond the solipsism created by a consumer-focused society, as this passage reminded me: economics and fear continue to drive people to focus on the needs of their immediate families instead of the larger world or even their neighbors. And the face of the powerful institution is often still a worker trying to get by where their ability to do so is dependent on an inability to be moved to act by another person's math.

Reliable Transportation = Discrimination?

I have two part time jobs currently, but I still keep my eye out for work. Lately I've been encountering more job descriptions that sound good until I get to the Minimum Requirements section: "must have access to reliable transportation"; "must have access to a reliable vehicle"; or the blunt "must have a car."

I ride the Metro and have ever since I moved to Seattle in 2001. Is it reliable? Well, most of the time it actually is. There are delays, breakdowns, inclement weather, belligerent riders and all the other myriad reasons why it might not get you where you hoped to be when you planned to be there. But any form of transportation will include some degree of uncertainty.

Part of my beef is semantic: If these ads said "must have FAST transportation" instead of "reliable," I would not only be more understanding, I might even be amused. I often have to budget an hour for a bus trip across town - a distance that a car will usually be able to traverse in, oh, 15 to 30 minutes.

But my biggest problem is money-related. Like I said in an earlier post, a lot of people, including me, ride Metro because it's less expensive than driving. Through one of my jobs, I pay just $55 every three months for an Orca card. Collectively, these reliable transportation caveats feel like an additional societal kick in the shin during a recession that's already hurting already vulnerable people. Don't have a job? Can't afford a car? Well too bad!

Do some jobs require cars? Yes. For example, for some of the nanny and babysitting jobs posted in The Daily, the University of Washington's paper, this "must have a car" language makes sense - families who want multiple children to be picked up after school and driven multiple places in the span of two hours, for instance.

But a message to the other families: your kids can ride the bus too.

It Makes All the Difference (With Apologies to Al Gore)

Metro, the Seattle city bus service, started running a series of ads last summer that are deceptively simple. They each feature one person, smiling out at the world, with the words, "I do make a difference by riding the bus," printed in large type. At the bottom of the rectangular ads, posted on the outside of buses, are the words, "Travel Green. Get On Board."

Simple, right? Appeal to people's desire to help the environment AND feel good about themselves...at the same time!

But do environmental concerns lead to greater ridership, and can they account for the motivations of current riders?

In Transit, the newsletter for King County Metro Transit employees, did not address these questions in its July/August 2008 article about the new ads. "We all benefit from cleaner air and healthier living conditions when people choose to use Metro services," the unattributed article states. (In Transit is edited by Anna Clemenger). True. But, ideally, riders can also save on car expenses, Metro can bring in more revenue, and transit operators can have greater job security when people choose Metro.

I want a name for focusing on one motivation for a decision to the exclusion of a far likelier motivation. Why doesn't Metro run a series of ads with smiling people proclaiming, "I do make a difference by riding the bus - I save money"?