Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
A two-part diary today, first a regular, unremarkable, homey record and then a recollection of our May, 2022 visit to Pacific Palisades and thoughts of how the places must be today.
As for the homey theme, the neighborhood is gradually recovering from Christmas. In places, decorations are still up, as they may remain for a few weeks yet. I understand the reluctance to put the season behind us.
Marianne has resumed her art lessons, after the holiday distractions. She and art-buddy Claudia are starting their fourth year of online painting classes with classroom sessions and plenty of homework. I enjoy visiting the art studio, with all the color and shapes and created work tools. Abstract art is way more complicated than it seems and I appreciate this complication now when I see it.
Of course no trotter.ws diary entry is complete without discussion of dining and travel. This week's story features a drive to Visalia, California and a hot dog stand. A few weeks back, a San Francisco food writer told the story of his three-hour drive from the City to the Central Valley community and Taylor Brothers' Hot Dogs. He claimed these were the best dogs he'd ever had, so we had to give it a try. Conclusion: dogs are dogs, but Visalia turned out to be a surprisingly cute city. The local tourism office recommended a couple other eating establishments and the Art Deco Darling Hotel for an overnight splurge. We'll do it sometime when the local fruit and nut trees are in blossom. Stay tuned.
The second half of this diary is also travel-related, past travel. A year-and-a-half ago, we drove south to visit friends, galleries, museums, and a car-design shop.
We started with a visit to Marianne's cousin Bonny in Sierra Madre, followed by a cross-LA drive to Tranquility AirBnB in Pacific Palisades. The place was conveniently close to the Getty Museum. (lower right corner of this Google view) The nearby village of Pacific Palisades had plenty of places to eat and shop. Notable was our breakfast at La Vida.
Fast forward to now. Bonny evacuated as the Eaton Fire threatened her Sierra Madre home of a half-century. As I write this, she's with her sister and OK. The fire is still raging, so all we can hope for is favorable winds and heroic firefighters.
Meanwhile, the almost 20,000-acre Pacific Palisades Fire has devastated the area around "Tranquility", although I do not know the fate of the exact AirBnB home. The places where we ate and shopped are gone. The neighborhoods we explored are largely wastelands. The mobile home park just around the corner is only ashes, as is the hillside just west of Tranquillo Street. Screenshots of the Village paint an unimaginable picture.
I received a Facebook notification from Mike, a college-era friend, saying he was OK. How many of these notifications have been required? And the sad reality is that I know nothing beyond that few-word assurance. Over 180,000 people were evacuated and many of them will not have homes to return to. Mike? Bonny?
In many ways, California is a paradise, until it is not. I think everyone in the state thinks about this from time to time, especially when reminded by fires or floods or earthquakes. (Even our inner city neighborhood is, in principle, threatened by nearby railroad traffic. What IS inside those tank cars?) It's time to make our go-bags and assemble our stay-in-place-for-three-days-without-support supplies.
Stay tuned.
John and Marianne