On this Valentine’s Day, my heart goes out to that beautiful place and its beautiful people. They are only just now beginning to find pieces of their lives again, to put them back together after a devastating fire. I thought I would re-post an old blog post to help us remember what they lost, and to send some virtual love. I am sure nothing in the following photos has escaped wildfire.
In 2022, I drove through Altadena, California for the first time and decided that if I ever had to live in the Los Angeles area, I would choose Altadena. It was an older community, with modest houses that looked like they had been filled with generations of families. The businesses were friendly and small. The people were kind, though I was a stranger.
It was also a very beautiful place, with shady tree-lined streets, palm trees towering here and there, rocks walls and curvy roads hugging the side of the mountains. I got to chatting with a bartender, who asked what trails I had hiked and she knew each one by heart and told me her favourite. This post was from the day before:
Conscious Engagement 
I think Peggy and I looked down on the same scene the night we flew out of LA for Sacramento and Hawaii, Crystal. The extent of the tragedy was clear as the fire still roared and vast spaces had obvious been burned over. I join you in sharing your empathy for the people who lost so much.
Ugh. That sounds so astonishingly bad. And I have to keep reminding myself that it is WINTER. They were devastated by a winter wildfire. That means for southern California at least, there is no longer such thing as wildfire season. So imagine the chaos in emergency management organizations. Thank goodness we’ve got a government who is there to back them up….oh, wait…
I think you are talking about the government that is threatening to eliminate disaster aid to California because it doesn’t like the state’s politics. I wonder if California’s Republican delegation would go along with it.
I was referring to Trump’s plans to abolish FEMA.
Right, not just eliminating aid to California, eliminating it everywhere.
It’s so hard to see that kind of devastation anywhere. When the world is coming apart at the seams, it helps to be able to go home and rest the weary soul; but if there is no home, then what? Hope you are both doing ok still. It’s been crazy.
We are both ok, but really stressed out. At the moment, the White House has withdrawn its orders to defund medical research, so Pedro gets to keep his job. At the moment, Musk’s occupation of OPM (the source of both my veterans benefits and my federal pension), has not specifically turned their attention to taking away my income. So, at the moment, we are fine.
Nothing Trump or Elon does is logical, or for the best of the country, or predictable. So “at the moment” doesn’t feel very good. Most of my friends are current or former federal employees, and many are losing jobs, threatened with losing their job, or being asked to quit, or being told that at the moment, their jobs are safe. Stress stress stress everywhere.
I’m feeling your anxiety as well. I’m on pins and needles as well. I refuse to live with my kids so that would leave the Burnside Bridge. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. They don’t make sense. They also have no empathy or emotional intelligence. They are about filling their pockets, nothing else matters. We will survive this.
We will. Human progress seems to be the average of a zig-zaggy graph. We are not always going in the right direction, but the overall average is good. It’s so uncomfortable to be living in one of those little backwards slides though. Ugh.