The Los Angeles wildfires — social, urban, environmental catastrophes — mark a bitter, ash-tinged end of the Western imaginary. In the Pacific Palisades and in Altadena, the American dream of a domestic pastoral has gone up in smoke, a burnt offering to the gods of 20th-century real estate development.
Its acrid stench reached me on January 7, a Tuesday night whipped by howling winds. Earlier in the day, while driving the 134 Freeway from Pasadena to Silver Lake, I had seen a plume rising over the Westside: the Palisades Fire. I found it concerning, but distant, like a black and white photograph of an atomic bomb. By evening, Altadena was aflame. The community tucked into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains is just a few...
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The post Letter from Pasadena: Mimi Zeiger on the Los Angeles Wildfires appeared first on Azure Magazine.