Displaced On Dec. 6 2024, I left on my much needed post-election regrouping trip to Dunedin, NZ.  I had been putting in a lot of time finishing up loose ends on P2024 and rallying up missing pieces for the Campaign Literature Archive.  Additionally, I had finished backing up my complete photo record going back decades on three 14TB hard drives, which were safely on the counter.  I had done what I could; it was time for a break. I caught the number 9 bus to Santa Monica and then the number 3 bus to the airport.  It was late afternoon, and I hadn't counted on rush hour traffic, but I made it to the airport on time.  For the next month I focused on being in Dunedin.  In the first week of January I wrapped up my trip.  It would be nice to get home and get back to work.  I was on the InterCity bus in the middle of Otago, heading to Queenstown for my flight home the next day, when I started getting text messages. As the bus continued to wind its way toward Queenstown, I saw some alarming images and news reports on my iPhone.  Still, I always thought our house, on the other side of Sunset Boulevard from the Santa Monica Mountains, and with concrete block walls and concrete tile roof construction, would be safe.  Plus, I was on on the other side of the planet, over 7,000 miles away, and it all seemed very distant and not exactly real on the small screen.     On advice, I delayed my return home for a week as the whole Palisades area was shut down, and anyhow I wouldn't have a place to go to.  I diverted to Wanaka, but my mind was on the home front.  On Jan. 8, for example, I received a link to a hazy video from a man who had somehow managed to get into the area and was driving through the neighborhood; the images were not definitive about the state of the house but not encouraging.  Our neighbor wrote me that, "With the exception of two homes (further down the street), everyone's homes are destroyed on Radcliffe."

A few days later our neighbor sent three photos, showing our house was quite destroyed.  Still I was far away from it all, and hopeful that the concrete construction would have protected things.  On January 17, I finally returned to the United States.  First stop was SFO and an unbelievably long customs line, then on to Oregon where I stayed temporarily with brother Alex and his wife Duva at their farm in Roseburg.  All that I had left was what was in my duffel bag and small backpack. During these first weeks after the fire, a WhatsApp group started earlier by a neighbor as a neighborhood watch effort proved to be a key source of information.  Additionally, we kept checking the Watch Duty app as we naturally wanted to get in to the area and see if anything could be salvaged.  Media, officials, and workmen were able to get in, but the Unified Command had shut access to residents down due to safety concerns, and it was very frustrating.  The Unified Command had divided the burned area into zones, which were gradually opened, but our zone did not open for residents until late January.     Although the fire is now largely out of the news except locally, being displaced continues.  The loss of home was not just a loss of stuff—it was the loss of my work, of mom's garden, of many treasured art works (such as the Fera Webber Shear painting of an epiphyllum above), of routine, such as being able to go for a morning swim at the nearby pool.  It has meant countless hours dealing with insurance.  It means trying to figure out what to do and where?  Optimistic scenarios for rebuilding are three years, and the Palisades will be a vast construction zone for many years.

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