10:00 a.m. This morning I had to explain to the dog why we couldn’t go running, that there was way too much smoke in the air. (Yes, I do talk in a conversational manner to the dog, what of it?) I did not mention terms like “particulate matter.”
10:30 a.m. Pierce College shut down classes for unhealthy air quality, thereby validating my earlier dog-related chat.
Yesterday, there was the worry that the Sesnen/Porter Ranch fire, which has burned nearly 10,000 acres thus far, might run through Calabasas to the sea during the night. But, it did not. The winds, while problematic, cooperated—in that the worst did not come to pass.
But then in the very early morning the winds began to kick up again.
However, instead of blowing the flames into Calabasas, the fire began moving through the hills behind homes in Granada Hills.
At first the winds blew east. But then around 11 a.m., they began blowing due south, and residents in the neighborhoods west of the Knollwood golf course had to pack up and run for it.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is on site today, and to his credit, during wildfire season, the governor strikes exactly the right tone in terms of leadership. At his 10-ish a.m. news conference he said, We have budget problems in this state, he said. “But I want you to know, we spare not one single dollar when it comes to fighting fire. We’ll find the money somewhere. We make public safety, protecting people’s lives and people’s property, our number one priority.”
UPDATE:
1:30 p.m. My friend, poet, writer, professor Kate Gale, who is also the editor and founder of Red Hen Press, just sent me a message saying that her husband, Mark Hull, Red Hen’s publisher, was just told to evacuate their Granada Hills home/office. Not a happy thought at all.
UPDATE 2: I spoke to Mark and he said he was locating valuables, packing changes of clothes, the laptops, the crucial papers, his three-quarters finished novel, and so on, but for the moment, not going anywhere. (They sent the staff home to stay last night.)
Since Mark and Kate are writers—book people–I asked him what books he was packing. He listed them right away:
He was packing the Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar for Kate, which she has read, of course, but want to reread. (I told him that I wasn’t sure it made for the cheeriest evacuation reading.)
For himself, he packed Heat Wave by Jill Marie Landis. (A cheeky choice, he acknowledged, but also a good book.)
He was also packing Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus for both of them.
I figure if I had to pack up, I’d bring the books I’m reading right now, which are George Orwell’s essays (Recently I’ve been on an Orwell kick. Given the ongoing national news, Orwell is strangely soothing. Go figure.), and Tom Bissell’s Chasing the Sea. (I love Bissell’s work and he’s a friend, so the book makes a reassuring companion on all counts.) I have Eric Larson’s The Devil in the White City and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America on my iPod. And my iPod goes everywhere with me anyway. (Although Mr. Roth’s tale of America turning fascist is already causing me to be a tad tense, so maybe it’s less than ideal.)
But if my house was really in danger of burning, I’d also want a nice, murder mystery—like maybe the new Michael Connelly book, The Brass Verdict. (During dicey moments, intelligently-written murder mysteries calm me down. For one thing, no matter what happens, I know the author won’t kill of the protagonist, which is helpful when all about you seems uncertain.)
What books would you pack?
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NOTE: For LA County Fire updates go here.
KNBC has lots of video streaming on the fire under their “News Raw” section:
Had to drive down I-5 Monday. Crossed over the grapevine and into north SF valley around 11 am. Things were getting crazy. The Santa Ana winds were incredible. Saw the planes trying to do water drops. They kinda looked like sea gulls hovering.
Got to office in Calabasas right before noon. Seemed like it was dusk. Had to have a good healthy cigarette just to clear my lungs.
Book? Moby Dick, of course.
For purely sentimental reasons, I’d grab my old copies of Ken Kesey’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72,” Michael Herr’s “Dispatches,” and a Henry Beard-autographed copy of “Bored of the Rings.”
When we evacuated (twice now) – I took all the poetry and only some of the fiction/nonfiction – though the last two genres clearly dominate our home. Maybe I didn’t want to have to choose.
Ross MacDonald’s The Underground Man: a great book with great SoCal ambiance.
Hope it all works out okay for all, but especially for you, Celeste.
Infinite Jest and my signed copy of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
A book on Jean-Luc Godard that my wife brought back for me from Paris
My beat-up copies of Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut–I bought them a long time ago at Acres of Books, and they have a lot of sentimental value to me.
G-Dog and the Homeboys, but it would have to be autographed by the author.
Thanks, Woody, for the very kind sentiment. And thanks for the good wishes, Randy. We’re fine. I was worried about Kate and Mark but things seem to have calmed down.
We just get very nervous in Topanga during Santa Ana weather, even when the fire is very unlikely to get to us, as so often copy cats emerge during those creepy days.
Evan, if you have a signed book of David Foster Wallace’s work, I’d sure snatch that too.
I have some of that nature, which are to me irreplaceable. One is a copy of Sir Alfred Russell Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago, the 1885, version with all Wallace’s original drawings. It’s something to which, for a variety of complicated reasons, I have a personal attachment. I also have a 1911 Globe edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare that was my grandfather’s. Both those, I packed in the 1993 Topanga Malibu fire when it was the real thing. And there are the books I love and would not want to be without, but all those I could get again.
But I would definitely bring several books of poetry.