Copious Notes

Charles Compton and I had our second on air chat during Morning Edition today on WEKU-FM 88.9. It was paired with Stu Johnson’s sonically rich report on new Lexington Philharmonic music director Scott Terrell and his debut concert tonight.

Here’s the link to both segments.

OK, it doesn’t have quite the ring of “I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati,” but we started a little audio arts reporting partnership between the Herald-Leader’s online A&E outpost, LexGo.com, and WEKU-88.9 FM in Richmond. Weekly, I’ll be chatting on Friday mornings during Morning Edition — the beat broadcast news show, period — with one of WEKU’s hosts about what’s coming up for the weekend. In addition, I will be contributing some reporting to the station’s already excellent arts coverage by Julie Schindall — who plays a mean marimba, by the way — and the rest of the staff.

Click here to hear this morning’s segment with Charles Compton, and stay tuned.

Also, check out Julie’s story on the Lexington Ballet’s new pro company.

Allyson Smith as Ma and Zach Moseley as Tom Joad in the University of Kentucky and Bluegrass Community and Technical College theater programs' production of "The Grapes of Wrath." Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Friday morning, NPR’s Morning Edition featured a report about how migrant workers in the United States who had moved up from working in the fields to coveted construction jobs are now having to head back to agricultural work because the building boom has gone bust.

The report ended saying, “But for now, older so-called domestic farm workers and former construction workers will take the jobs — unless things get so bad that U.S. citizens are willing to move across the country for five months’ work in these lettuce fields at $350 a week.”

Friday night, I settled into a seat at the Guignol Theatre to watch a play about U.S. citizens willingly traveling across the country to work the fields for much, much less.

This week, the University of Kentucky and Bluegrass Community and Technical College theater programs opened a joint production of the Depression epic The Grapes of Wrath, which runs through March 1, and no one can accuse them of presenting escapist entertainment.

The Grapes of Wrath is tough to watch or read at any time. A big part of the story’s greatness is how John Steinbeck chronicled some of the worst elements of the Great Depression in aching detail: a family of 12 traveling cross country in an barely road-worthy truck, losing people along the way to death and despair. In the promised land of California, they find thousands more like themselves all at the mercy of bully farm owners and policemen.

You think, “There but for the grace . . . ” and then remember that for the past several months the unemployment rolls have grown in the high-hundreds of thousands monthly, the stock market keeps finding new lows and we keep hearing we’re in the worst economic crisis since — ugh — the Great Depression.

UK and BCTC of course did not plan to be this timely. They aimed to stage an ambitious production with a cast of more than two dozen, some impressive set pieces, and cool video elements. And they planned it when $4 gas was draining our wallets, but we were still months away from the banking collapses of the fall.

Now, Frank Galati’s stage adaptation of Grapes is almost too timely as a vivid portrait of a time we keep hearing about when we turn on the news.

Maybe we need to see this. But maybe what we need most are these words from Ma (played by Allyson Smith), late in the second act: “Don’t you go frettin’. A different time’s coming.”