The Thomas Fire began about five miles from our home near Thomas Aquinas College near Santa Paula on the night of December 4, 2017, a date Upper Ojai will never forget. In a bad twist of fate documented in my story in the Santa Barbara Independent a couple of weeks later, an electric transformer atContinue reading “Thomas Fire (one year ago tonight)”
Category Archives: disaster
From a new record by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, paired with a “Silly Symphony” video by a fan (apparently). For a rainy day…
a poem from the late Paradise
Please Excuse the Smoke Awakenings [from a Paradise resident and poet named Krystalynn Martin] November 16, 2018 A poem I wrote the other night while grieving the loss of my hometown of Paradise: I’m sorry – Please excuse the smoke. It’s just the dreams and hopes of 27 thousand yesterdays. It’s just the minuscule evidence ofContinue reading “a poem from the late Paradise”
2018 headline: “Finland’s president denies telling Trump that his country rakes its forests”
This is an actual headline on the homepage of the Washington Post this evening. To explain the misleading: Prez Trump said that the President of Finland told him that Finland had many forests but no problem with forest fires. “He called it a forest nation,” Trump said, “and they spent a lot of time onContinue reading “2018 headline: “Finland’s president denies telling Trump that his country rakes its forests””
The fires this time, in Paradise and SoCal
A WSJ video look at the fire that destroyed Paradise a couple of days ago — destroying even big box stores, McDonalds, etc — and another fire that is is now moving through Thousand Oaks towards Malibu, destroying (reportedly) even fire stations. Scary stuff.
Puttering about in a Small Land (Philip K. Dick book review)
Ojai through the eyes of a great American writer Philip K. Dick, now widely considered the most brilliant of all science fiction writers, wrote hundreds of extraordinarily imaginative stories and forty-four novels, and — like an innovative artist who only becomes famous after his death — in recent years has had his work splashed acrossContinue reading “Puttering about in a Small Land (Philip K. Dick book review)”
A true (but legal) horror — family separation
This blog mostly focuses on questions of climate, wilderness, drama and literature. Inevitably politics sneaks into the discussion, but for the most part against my wishes — my attitude as a reporter is that my opinion is no better than yours, especially on topics with which I have no personal experience. So why talk aboutContinue reading “A true (but legal) horror — family separation”
speeding wildfires and their dark beauty
Forty-six years ago a young fire ecologist published a paper that for the first time found a math to usefully describe the behavior of wildfires in the west, as modified by slope and wind. It’s a remarkable achievement and was, according to Wildfire Today, a team effort led by a man named Dick Rothermel. Rothermel, Anderson,Continue reading “speeding wildfires and their dark beauty”
“The fire had me fully terrified” — T.C. Boyle on the Thomas Fire (and more)
For the Ojai Quarterly [pdf], yours truly had the opportunity to talk to T.C. Boyle about the Thomas fire, debris flows, climate change, and other scary realities of the 21st Century. The interview also motivated me to catch up on some past works of Boyle’s, and boy was that worth the reading. Check it out:Continue reading ““The fire had me fully terrified” — T.C. Boyle on the Thomas Fire (and more)”
Visiting winter in the Topa Topas after the fire
Though it’s been three months since the Thomas Fire, those of us in the burn zone can still see the blackness on the burned hillsides all around Ojai, all the way up to the ridge of our local mountains, the Topa Topas. Every winter for twenty-five years I have gone up to our mountains afterContinue reading “Visiting winter in the Topa Topas after the fire”
Kit Stolz 