Ken Burns interview: The Dust Bowl, climate change and the power of drought
Ken Burns talks with Crosscut's publisher about his latest film and looking backward into the future.
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In the first episode of Dust Bowl, survivors recall the terror of the dust-storms and the resulting hunger and sickness. By the second episode, there is welcome relief. Families seek new lives in California and the government funds conservations efforts to break the drought. The soil is eventually stabilized and farms gradually rebuild.
And so, where does the best-known historical documentary filmmaker of our time turn his attention next? Burns said he is working on a film about "The Central Park 5," the story of five black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park. He plans to examine FDR and Eleanor, Jackie Robinson, the Vietnam War and country music.
In some ways, Burns says, his work is about "emotional archeology."
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Nov 19, 9:33 a.m. Inappropriate
One detail that the Burns documentary brought forward: the reason for planting in the Great Plains in the first place. It was the First World War, which deprived Americans of access to Russia's abundant crop of wheat. Plowing under great expanses of buffalo grass in favor of wheat turned out to be a colossal error.
We feel pretty smug these days, with diversified crops, flood control, long-range weather forecasting, and an awareness of climate change, but if you look out the window at this morning's rainstorm (Monday, November 19th), you realize pretty quickly that it's not our candy store.
Posted Tue, Nov 20, 8:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Maybe climate change is the modern day dust bowl.
Plowing the arid great plains seems foolhardy in retrospect. How will history regard shipping 1000 train cars of coal to China every day?
Posted Mon, Nov 19, 10 a.m. Inappropriate
"The Worst Hard Times" is an excellent read.
The second biggest contributor to people's misery was that with the bank failures, people's savings were also wiped out as there was no FDIC. Had folks had at least some savings they might have been able to move, or wait it out. As it was, some folks didn't even have the gas money to pack the truck and leave.
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