I missed two days of work in two weeks because of fires. Sat in hours of traffic.
Mind you, we were fortunate to not be directly affected. Yet freeway closures and being downwind of smoke, plus school closures and the officials urging everyone to stay home if possible, leave the roads to fire crews, all that kept me home.
I’m not complaining. We were mildly inconvenienced, while some people lost everything.
Every year, same story.
Correction, every year is getting worse.
I’ve lived in California for twenty-seven years, the last fifteen in the same valley, and don’t remember anything this big. Fire after fire after fire. Then more fires.
We can go on debating cause and remedy; but let’s face it, things are changing.
Can we agree to that without controversy? Things are changing, and not for the better.
As one social-media friend put it, our planet is sick and showing terrible symptoms.
I love my California.
The state took me in as one of its own twenty-seven years back. The mild weather, opportunities, diversity, and so on, agreed with me like ice cream on warm apple pie or tomato juice and vodka. Particularly after having lived in severely cold climate and near-zero opportunity zone.
My heart belongs here. Even when I visit family in Europe. Even after I fall back into European customs, like seeing old places, speaking the old language with friends and family. There is a disconnect in that once familiar activity.
I feel more Californian than anything else.
Any disaster, anywhere in the world, breaks my heart. Seeing it up close, on such a large scale, being in the middle of it, surrounded by it, suffocated by it … yeah, it’s challenging to say the least.
Which makes wanting to see the treating of symptoms my social-media friend mentioned all the more important.
It’s what we do for love, isn’t it? Want to see the ill get treatment. Get well. For them and for us.
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