Surviving The Dust Bowl (American
Experience/WGBH)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C- Episode: B
Did greed
cause or exacerbate the catastrophic happenings in the 1920s in The Dust
Bowl? Science promised to make it
inhabitable and profitable, but when the population was settled in, the
Southern Plains had been far too tampered with by quick buck hacks. When the rains stopped for whatever reason,
giant dirt storms raged for a decade and many stayed behind out of ignorance or
nowhere else to go. Surviving The Dust Bowl tells their story.
The
states in question include Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New
Mexico. There may have still been
serious drought troubles without all that rain, but could irrigation of some
type helped if that was considered just in case? Should the federal government done more to
regulate and stop any abuses? Could it
happen again? Well, without Global
Warming, there are plenty of disasters to be had, but this show reminds us that
natural disasters have always been with us and his is one of the most ignored
because it happened to the poor. Cheers
to American Experience for such a
good job.
The 1.33
X 1 image shows the NTSC analog origins of the program, with limited detail and
color that has its limits, but the vintage footage is disturbing and
disturbingly in tact. The Dolby Digital
2.0 is simple stereo that holds up a bit better. The only extra is DVD-ROM printable
materials.
- Nicholas Sheffo
