San Jose

Sometimes there's no way to put new thinking to work.

Yesterday in San Jose, California, crews were sent in to clear out The Jungle, an encampment of 300 or so homeless people.

When asked where they would go, "I have no idea" was a common refrain.

John Steinbeck's novel, "In Dubious Battle," about dispossessed apple pickers going on strike in the 1930's, is set in San Jose and Tulare County, though John's changed the name of both places for the purpose of the fiction. It's an awkward, weirdly moving story of social and economic inequality and the impossibility of anything ever really changing no matter what's tried.