Music Monday: The Ghost of Tom Joad

"The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad."~Bruce Springsteen

This past weekend, Roxiticus DH wrote a very timely post about how members of her on-line community are working together to stop the potential closure of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

It is not ironic that Bruce Springsteen is also involved in the campaign to save the FoodBank. Springsteen has always been a working class troubadour (in my eyes, anyway) despite his clear affluence, he has worked to turn this personal wealth into influence.

More ironically, back in 1995, Springsteen recorded The Ghost of Tom Joad, a song in which (I think) he raises John Steinbeck's literary "hero" of the Great Depression as a way of giving insight to some of the financial problems the working (as well as unemployed) men and women have always faced. Of course, as a quick look at the news will tell you, folks face these challenges now in greater numbers than (almost) ever before. (The link above is to a version recorded in 2008 with Tom Morello, formerly of Rage Against the Machine.)

Feel free to either follow the links through Roxie's to help out New Jersey, or if possible, lend a lend (or a buck or two) to the needy in your community...