The Broad View

Follow us to The Followspot

by EDN

Faithful readers:

We, your humble correspondents, have decided to put away politics — at least as a main focus — for now. We've been at it for a lifetime (or so it seems) and it is time to make room in our writing lives for reflection on the other adventures of mind, body and spirit that engage us, each and both.

As I write this we are but twelve hours from the inauguration of Barack Obama — and what we hope will be a new era of enlightenment for the country and for its bushwacked citizens. We are grateful to leave the deep thinking and keen analysis of political events to the likes of Digby, RJ Eskow and others in the liberal blogosphere whom we so admire.

Our new blog, The Followspot, is a work in progress — we intend a gallimaufry of observations about books, shorebirds, the kitchen, movies, mortality and...well, you get the idea.

We hope you will join us on our journey of exploration.

— Ellen and Chiaroscuro

Smile, everyone — it's 2009!

by EDN

Happy New Year! And not a moment too soon.

Raising Kaine will call it a day

by EDN

It will be a significant loss to the blogosphere: our esteemed honorary broad, Lowell Feld, and his co-bloggers at Raising Kaine are going to close up shop on December 31, 2008.

Read Lowell's announcement and explanation here. And if you haven't already, read Lowell's greatly admired book about the influence of the Internet on political campaigns, Netroots Rising.

Lowell, old friend: the new administration will be even better if you are somewhere in the mix, adding your expertise to a sane and progressive energy policy.

All hail!!

Obama won't have 100 days

by EDN

I've been one of the most prudent people around, with no mortgage, no car loan (I drive a small 15-year-old Ford, very fuel efficient) — and credit card debt that was, until now, a very very small percentage of my net worth. Like most middle-class people, I'm a shareholder. (For reasons I fail to understand, "shareholders" are always lumped together with malignant management when politicians are eager to throw somebody under the bus as a conciliatory gesture to the almighty "taxpayer." What about when we're one in the same?) 

I'm 69, and one of those millions of retirees whose investments are meant to see one through the later part of life. I don't manage my investments — it's not my expertise — so I let a professional do it, someone whose prudence matches my own. But the markets are in free-fall, sucking into the vortex the assets of the imprudent and prudent alike. My "safety net," along with so many others', is in shreds.

January 20 can't come soon enough. And when it does, Obama won't have 100 days in which to begin instilling fresh confidence in the markets. He'll be lucky if he has 100 hours. He'll have to do something almost the moment he sits for the first time behind the desk in the Oval Office, something bold — something to lift the hopes of the nation and, indeed, the world — something to stop the terrible slide.

---

[Update, Saturday Nov. 22] First Geithner, now this. It's a good beginning.

Follow the Minnesota recount

by EDN

Here.

Startling photo from downtown Santa Barbara

by EDN

I just came across this photo at CBS.com, taken from the plaza that fronts City Hall. It chillingly shows how close the "Tea" fire was, on Thursday night, to downtown Santa Barbara.

And that hillside, by the way, is quite densely populated.

The "Tea" fire: Saturday update

by EDN

The "Tea" fire in Santa Barbara has been knocked off the front pages by the horrendous new fires now burning in the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods of Los Angeles. An entire mobile home park in Sylmar, some 600 units, has been destroyed. Vast numbers of people are being evacuated. Major highways are closed. There are rolling blackouts. And the winds continue to be vicious.

Here in Santa Barbara, the mid-day winds are calm, and officials tell us that the Tea fire is 40% contained. As long as the sundowners don't kick up again this evening the news will continue to be good. 

Our thoughts today are with those who have lost their homes, and for many, their security and their dreams.

The "Tea" fire: Friday update

by EDN

Fire Status •2,000 – 2,500 acres burned •Approximately 100 homes damaged or destroyed •5,446 homes evacuated •More than 500 firefighters •10 injuries from smoke inhalation •3 burn injuries

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It would be easy, perhaps, to discount the destruction here because the fire has burned principally in what news outlets are terming "ritzy" or "tony" Montecito, and insist on describing the neighborhood by citing Oprah, Rob Lowe and Michael Douglas among other famous residents. Yes, it's true that $15 million homes have burned to the ground, and I can hear some of you thinking "Well, so what? They're rich. They can rebuild. It's not like New Orleans."

I can't think about it that way. To lose a home is devastating. A home isn't just a house, a shell. If you've lived well, you've invested yourself in every nook and cranny of your home. A home is made of memories. It holds the deepest part of you. It holds things you care about that, when they are gone, are gone forever. Of course it's true that people are more important than things. Things, they say, can be replaced. But not always.

Our house in Quoque, New York burned twelve years ago. The original house was a gem, lovingly built in the mid-60s. Robert and I had been involved in every detail with the architects and contractor. The rebuilding did not engage in the same way. The "new" house never quite came to life. How could it? The "old" house had known thirty years of family living. That could not be reproduced.

Losing a home can cause deep psychological, as well as physical, dislocation. This is true for people who've lost their home through fire, flood, a freakish tornado touchdown on the open plain — or foreclosure. It is, for people who go through it, something like a death.

So please, if you read that some of the houses destroyed in Montecito were pricey, don't be dismissive. People here today are suffering. The people who lived in those homes are real people, and their feelings are as real as yours or mine.

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Helicopter pilots dropping water on the fire today are saying that the estimate of "100 structures damaged or destroyed" is way too conservative.

Another big fire here — scary!

by EDN

See KEYT

Not too far from where we used to live...Adam was over there a little while ago to pick up a prescription at our old pharmacy and called to tell me about it. He just got home and said it was getting bigger by the minute.

The winds in the hills are gusting at 60-70 mph. This is a very dangerous event.

Update: Millions of dollars' worth of property gone. Evacuees clogging the roads. The winds won't die down until tomorrow morning. It's very dramatic — and terribly sad, as these catastrophes always are.

The fire has spread to more than 300 acres in a scant two hours. We're not as close as we were the last time, but that doesn't make the fact of this terrible fire any less appalling — or threatening.

The local newscasters are very brave. They're in the thick of it. They report hearing "explosions," which are probably eucalyptus trees going up. Eucalyptus trees are a great feature of our landscape, but they are oil-soaked and thus terribly dangerous in these circumstances. 

Update: This fire, now named the "Tea," is a very different sort of fire from the "Gap" fire of last July. That one burned primarily in the wilderness high in the hills, and very few structures were involved. This one is in an area closer to town, and far more thickly populated. Local TV has been showing many houses engulfed in flame. There are lovely lovely houses in that part of town, and many mansions. 

Here's an annotated map. (You may have to click on "Madison" as well as "T Fire" in the left sidebar to see the annotations.) If you scroll over and look at the lefthand side, you'll see a marker for my house. The polygon is an approximation of the current mandatory evacuation area. It's just been extended down toward town. We have a number of friends who live within the perimeter. But cell phone communication is spotty, and there are power outages, so we don't have news. We may have to wait for morning.

There are fire crews from all over Southern California pouring in to help...from Glendale, Pasadena, Santa Monica, all the communities around Los Angeles. "Hotshot" crews from Vandenberg AFB. Ventura County strike teams. Staging them is sometimes difficult, because many roads are winding and narrow. How valiant they all are, and uncompromising in their commitment to duty.

I'm going to try to go to sleep now, but will be hard.

We're updating our blogroll, sort of

by EDN

For some time now I've wanted to re-organize our blogroll and today was the day to get started. However, Blogrolling is still undergoing its transition to ver. 2, so there's no editing available there.

This means I'm doing the lists item by item, in TypePad templates. (And to think — I could be cleaning out the garage or raking the lawn instead.)

Frankly, the point of this exercise is to make it easier for me to plow through the sites and sources I prefer, from one surface rather than via long lists of bookmarks. I hope you, too, will find the result a handy tool.

Let's teach Americans their names

by EDN

The AP has issued new guidelines for identifying heads of state. This can only be a good thing, since perhaps people will get better at knowing the names of international figures. Well, those people who read newspapers, anyway. (But will there be any papers left to read?)

There goes the neighborhood

by EDN

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/1108/Baker_named_WSJs_deputy_editorinchief.html?showall