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Standing on the line.

LA is a city that works. LA is a city that dreams. The people there—friends and family and so so many strangers—are ready to work, are ready to look out for each other, are ready to dream in a way that only LA can dream and build something better from the ashes.

Every sunset ends in darkness. But it sets up the sunrise of a new day.

What is there to say? I am safe and gratefully unaffected, physically, but I’m at a bit of a loss for words after the horrific fire events in the city this month.

I appreciate the way Dan Sinker finishes his piece. Most cities are places built on dreams, but that is maybe more true in LA than anywhere else in the world. It’s the city where its own industry brings those dreams to life. It’s a city where the winter sun slants in just the right way to cast a dreamlike quality on the most mundane task, making it beautiful. It’s a city that can’t really decide what it is architecturally or in layout and in that way is a city that makes space for everyone.

The last few weeks were indeed a darkness.

I’m breaking my self-imposed conceit for 3 Things this week because I needed more LA missives and you might too.

From Mike Davidson’s very personal “47 Years Later, the Palisades Disappeared Overnight” –

When my dad explained what he was doing, he would point northeast to the hills behind us and tell us that if the winds didn’t die down, the fire miles in the distance would come towards our tiny little house and there would be trouble. As a small child, I don’t actually remember being scared about any of this. Every year there was a fire, the smoke was always so far away and so barely visible that it just seemed like anything else in life at the time. And besides, dads are superheroes to their children, so of course there was no danger.

And Snap CEO/Founder, Evan Spiegel, on the company’s official blog (Snap, née Snapchat, is headquarterd in Santa Monica), “Dear Los Angeles, I Love You” –

We are not the first community to face a megafire. We will not be the last. But we will use our strength, our ingenuity, and our love to create again and anew. Our city of great artists will add a new layer of paint to this beautiful canvas we call home.

Watch

Adam Conover: Debunking L.A. Wildfire Myths with Climate Scientist Dr. Daniel Swain

Iykyk. Daniel Swain is one of the most clear-headed and easy-to-understand weather experts out there. If you’re having trouble grokking 1) how a fire event like this could happen in the first place and 2) why it is “different” as compared to the previously-known pattern of events in fire-prone Southern California, this is worth your time.

It’s also available as a podcast, but I would really recommend watching for some of the footage Swain references.

Interact

Watch Duty

From the Hollywood Reporter’s article, “How Watch Duty Became an Essential Resource for Angelenos During Wildfires”:

“I don’t want to sell this. To who? No one should own this. The fact that I have to do this with my team is not OK. Part of this is out of spite. I’m angry that I’m here having to do this, and the government hasn’t spent the money to do this themselves,” Mills says. “So, no, it’s not for sale. No, I’m not open to change all of a sudden, and I just don’t give a shit.”

There used to be a couple places you could reliably find good information on an unfolding natural disaster—namely Twitter and Facebook. But for reasons… [gestures broadly], this is no longer the case.

I had not heard about Watch Duty before this disaster, but if you live in the Western U.S.—and let’s face it, even in a neighborhood you think is safe from a wildfire event—this app should probably be on your phone.

Also, “I’m angry that I’m here having to do this, and the government hasn’t spent the money to do this themselves,” could probably sum up so much of modern life right now, sadly.