Great Depression? Or Grape Depression?

"Mr. G, you totally need to do some fireside chats. You know, get a YouTube channel, teach history in a more effective manner; one that your students could pause or fast-forward or whatever. But more importantly, you need a teaching style with badly translated subtitles."

Think how much more enjoyable the lesson would be were it to be in, say, Spanish.

"La lección de hoy a ser de instruir a todos en los asuntos de la gran depresión, el presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt, y el acuerdo de la novedad. Ahora, es de interés con señalar que en Nueva York, FDR era gobernador, después de muchos años después en los pasos de su pariente ilegítima, la de Theodore Roosevelt. Ser dice que es uno de los más grandes del presidente, a pesar de su deterioro general de la región por ser de las piernas por el factor de la poliomielitis, Roosevelt, el menor no era el mejor de los presidentes, a pesar de que dio a la América que el acuerdo de la novedad."

The Fireside Chats, unfortunately, were not what I originally thought they'd be. I pictured FDR in a comfy chair by the fireplace. Maybe a pipe in his mouth and a dog at his feet. In fact, the president's chats were specifically a series of 30 radio addresses (transcripts of which can be found here), though he did appear a number of times on television discussing similar issues of national interest. (After FDR started giving regular updates to the people, it became the fashionable thing for successive presidents to do.)

Classes this week focused on FDR, the New Deal, and other fun aspects of the Great Depression. But why have somebody who went to college give the lesson? Why not get TEENAGERS to do it?

"Everybody gets a topic and everybody must give a 3-7 minute presentation! But guess what? You get to record SOUND! And make your very own DOCUMENTARIES! You get to use a fancy program that would be marginally better than PowerPoint. What's that? Why did I stress the would be? Because most of the air traffic controller headphones I got from Newegg don't work with the library computers." Too bad for about half the class.

Not that I made the greatest attempt in the world ever to put the (eventually PowerPoint) "Grapes of Wrath" presentation together. However, my partner did. Most of the time we were in the library I was talking to myself and anyone within earshot about how much I hate computers when you need to get things done because they sense it and have an automatic fail switch inside that makes them stop working right when you need them most and I used to have some headphones like these but mine weren't as comfortable and hey how much were those Skullcandy headphones and why not noise-cancelling headphones but seriously did you know that Theodore Roosevelt was the Governor of New York and then FDR was later the Governor of New York and it's totally a conspiracy and they were actually related and were probably masons too -

"Hey, Curran?"
"Yeah?"
"We're not gonna get this finished to-day. I can stay and work on it if you want."

And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow...

Until the very last moment when we had a slide show and presented the narration live. And we all know what happens when that happens.

Here's the script I read with Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin" playing in the background:



Umm, yeah... I missed a few important parts, like what the Dust Bowl was and why it was important to the story.

Fun Facts: Theodore Roosevelt had a Square Deal and FDR had a New Deal; the title "The Grapes of Wrath" is a reference to the second line of the song "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Julia Ward Howe" (which is a reference to Revelation 14:19); and John Steinbeck looked just like Ian McKellen.



Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Fire-less Fireside Chat About the Economic Recovery Plan (1933)



~Curran O'Donoghue