First, to the OP: you have our sympathies, no matter what our politics may be. We all hope you, and your fellow Oregonians, make it through this terrible year alive and intact.
I live on the Central Coast of California, on a mountaintop in a grove of huge, old oaks. If a firestorm blew through here and set the trees aflame, wetting the yard and roof would be pathetically ineffectual.
And we're currently surrounded by fires; the air rains ash, smells of smoke, and has done so for weeks now. We've had two hot spells with temps reaching 120! This, in a gentle climate with Sept temps averaging in the 80s. But I'm safe...at the moment. Twice before in my life in California--once in the south, once in the north--I've been evacuated because of fires. They're not a new phenomenon. But this intensity is new. 120 degrees blows away all previous records.
As for the political rants.... I'll just say this. I lived through the "break-up" (an utterly inadequate expression here) of the former Yugoslavia, with Croats and Serbs murdering one another. Any reader of history knows these things happen repeatedly among human beings. Each eruption has its particular villains and victims. What's maybe worth pointing out is what brings out such inclinations to violence. The occasion in this thread was the tragic report of a common threat: fire. The occasion in our culture at the moment is a complex of common threats: a pandemic that kills more people every week than died on 9/11; raw race relations that have roots in slavery, Jim Crow--and, yes, the experience of crime in poverty-blighted urban environments. Oh, yes: and fires! And floods, too. One half expects locusts to be next (although there's the "murder hornets" to worry about, and I read only yesterday about swarms of killer mosquitoes).
Crises bring out the best and the worst in people. It's a commonplace to say that you don't know if you'll be a hero or a coward until you're tested--which is why reading about historical repetitions of crisis isn't the same as living through one. We're now living through several crises at the same time. Let's try to rise to the occasion: to help each other, not fear each other. Guns are useless against fires, plagues, floods. They're only useful against other people with guns. And then only until the other guy shoots first.
Let's try a constructive, positive response. Put your guns down and help your neighbor load his car for evacuation. Wear the mask--not for your own sake, but just in case you may be infected and not know it, so you don't spread disease. And please, as the Brits said in WWII: try to stay calm and carry on.
I live on the Central Coast of California, on a mountaintop in a grove of huge, old oaks. If a firestorm blew through here and set the trees aflame, wetting the yard and roof would be pathetically ineffectual.
And we're currently surrounded by fires; the air rains ash, smells of smoke, and has done so for weeks now. We've had two hot spells with temps reaching 120! This, in a gentle climate with Sept temps averaging in the 80s. But I'm safe...at the moment. Twice before in my life in California--once in the south, once in the north--I've been evacuated because of fires. They're not a new phenomenon. But this intensity is new. 120 degrees blows away all previous records.
As for the political rants.... I'll just say this. I lived through the "break-up" (an utterly inadequate expression here) of the former Yugoslavia, with Croats and Serbs murdering one another. Any reader of history knows these things happen repeatedly among human beings. Each eruption has its particular villains and victims. What's maybe worth pointing out is what brings out such inclinations to violence. The occasion in this thread was the tragic report of a common threat: fire. The occasion in our culture at the moment is a complex of common threats: a pandemic that kills more people every week than died on 9/11; raw race relations that have roots in slavery, Jim Crow--and, yes, the experience of crime in poverty-blighted urban environments. Oh, yes: and fires! And floods, too. One half expects locusts to be next (although there's the "murder hornets" to worry about, and I read only yesterday about swarms of killer mosquitoes).
Crises bring out the best and the worst in people. It's a commonplace to say that you don't know if you'll be a hero or a coward until you're tested--which is why reading about historical repetitions of crisis isn't the same as living through one. We're now living through several crises at the same time. Let's try to rise to the occasion: to help each other, not fear each other. Guns are useless against fires, plagues, floods. They're only useful against other people with guns. And then only until the other guy shoots first.
Let's try a constructive, positive response. Put your guns down and help your neighbor load his car for evacuation. Wear the mask--not for your own sake, but just in case you may be infected and not know it, so you don't spread disease. And please, as the Brits said in WWII: try to stay calm and carry on.