oranger county than usual
Oct. 27th, 2003 01:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbI should perhaps mention that I have been staying for the last few days with my aunt and uncle in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. If you've been consuming American news, you may know that L.A. is surrounded by wildfires on every side that doesn't have an ocean.
We're not really in the fire zone here, but there are indirect effects that make everything a little surreal. The back yard in the daytime has a sepia glow. The sky is a dingy burnt orange, with a dull pink sun--"like another planet," said my uncle, and my friend Emily in a separate conversation identified that planet as "Ray Bradbury's Mars". This feeling of displacement is strengthened by the fact that many of our routes to the outside world are now blocked by freeway closures and the fires themselves. And around here, ash is gently drifting down like the very beginning of a snowfall, but a snowfall in 90-degree heat.
But life goes on as usual--or as usual as it can, in the middle of simultaneous supermarket and transit strikes. The unstruck supermarkets are overwhelmed by union-friendly shoppers and are running out of food, a problem which has to be exacerbated now by people stocking up on emergency supplies. But we still hang out making small talk in bagel shops, with only occasional and casual reference to the fact that our whole landscape has been transplanted to another world. This just makes the whole experience weirder.
Driving into Los Angeles today, I listened to KABC, the talk radio station that carries Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity here. They'd preempted their usual programming to bring us continuous updates on the fires, the traffic (many freeways are closed), and eyewitness accounts from callers. (The usual Sunday afternoon show is about managing your money, and the guest host kept noting for those who had just tuned in that he was "the last person you'd ever want to turn to for money advice".)
The hosts are trying to focus on the brass tacks of the situation, what's burning where and what listeners should and shouldn't do. But because of KABC's demographics, the conversation periodically returned to politics. Most callers blame Gray Davis for letting the fire get out of control.
We're not really in the fire zone here, but there are indirect effects that make everything a little surreal. The back yard in the daytime has a sepia glow. The sky is a dingy burnt orange, with a dull pink sun--"like another planet," said my uncle, and my friend Emily in a separate conversation identified that planet as "Ray Bradbury's Mars". This feeling of displacement is strengthened by the fact that many of our routes to the outside world are now blocked by freeway closures and the fires themselves. And around here, ash is gently drifting down like the very beginning of a snowfall, but a snowfall in 90-degree heat.
But life goes on as usual--or as usual as it can, in the middle of simultaneous supermarket and transit strikes. The unstruck supermarkets are overwhelmed by union-friendly shoppers and are running out of food, a problem which has to be exacerbated now by people stocking up on emergency supplies. But we still hang out making small talk in bagel shops, with only occasional and casual reference to the fact that our whole landscape has been transplanted to another world. This just makes the whole experience weirder.
Driving into Los Angeles today, I listened to KABC, the talk radio station that carries Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity here. They'd preempted their usual programming to bring us continuous updates on the fires, the traffic (many freeways are closed), and eyewitness accounts from callers. (The usual Sunday afternoon show is about managing your money, and the guest host kept noting for those who had just tuned in that he was "the last person you'd ever want to turn to for money advice".)
The hosts are trying to focus on the brass tacks of the situation, what's burning where and what listeners should and shouldn't do. But because of KABC's demographics, the conversation periodically returned to politics. Most callers blame Gray Davis for letting the fire get out of control.
