SoCal's burning

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Map from San Diego County Fires - KPBS Online, who are also providing twitter updates¹.

Several news articles I've read recently have referred to the recent SoCal wildfires as a Hurrican Katrina-like event. Very fortunately for the residents of SoCal, lessons were learnt from the failure of State and Federal bodies. Also very fortunately for SoCal, California is a wealthy state, with a GDP greater than the whole UK (>$1.5 trillion as of a couple of years ago).

While all the early reports were rather silly pieces about actors' homes being "at risk" in Malibu, the real horror developed elsewhere in San Diego County and San Bernadino County. As of today, the estimated cost of rebuilding in San Diego County is over $1 billion, with over half a million people evacuated.

While it's a truly awful situation, the events of 2005 in New Orleans puts current events into perspective. Those 500,000 people managed to get evacuated relatively safely (so far, only one death has been reported). I hope they can see this silver lining when they return to their charred homes and businesses. And I keeo my fingers crossed for them.

¹ While trying to find out what KPBS was about, I read that they went off the air when they lost power to their transmitter due to the Harris fire. But a kindly public-spirited neighbour, KBZT-FM, came to their rescue and will be broadcasting their news programming on FM 94.9. Don't you love hearing stories like this? Gives you hope that we may yet survive the apocalypse. Or at least have radio while it's happening.
² Incidentally, while reading KBZT's page on the fires, that warm feeling of hope for survival of our species came in handy when I read about potential disaster scams and price gouging. Damn humans.

Lights out

Los Angeles is one city that one rarely associates with any greenitude. Eco warriors are rare here. Humvees and other low-MPG SUVs or trucks rule the roads. Suggest to an Angeleno that he/she *could* take the bus, and get a nasty look in return. There's a certain disdain of choosing not to drive. I sometimes wonder if it's an issue of pride: one who chooses the bus is too poor to own a deluxe car.

So it's a rare and important occasion that lightsoutla.org exists at all. No, I exaggerate. There are many concerned for the environment in LA; their voices just get lost under the sound of roaring traffic.

I wish it success, but I can't help but wonder if the message has been received by all. In my neighbourhood alone (in eco-conscious Santa Monca), there are apartments, houses and buildings that leave a security light on all night. Some offices also leave all their interior lights on (actually, there are only a few offending businesses that do so, and I suspect it's for the janitors to do their work). So, this evening, I'll be walking my dog between 8 and 9pm to prevent myself from being tempted to go online (it's a heavy energy user after all). And I'll bring my little camera out to photography any naughty offices that have not made the effort on a Saturday night (when few work in this media-heavy neighbourhood).

Apologies for any typos. I've tried to touch-type by the light of my monitor. One hour's not enough. I'll be attempting 7pm to midnight, apart from maybe having the gas oven on for 20-30 min to cook dinner (lack of planning here; could have had a salad if only I hadn't been defrosting some stuff all day). I know it's not nearly enough, but perhaps I could repeat this.

Update: As expected, during our walk around the neighbourhood, the dog and I found things were the same as usual. All the small businesses had their lights off, and all the large ones had some lights on apart from Sony BMG. Which means Lights Out LA had little to no impact in my part of Santa Monica. I hope it was more successful elsewhere.

Contrapunctal Contraband

Looking forward to an evening of contrapunctal Bach, depressing Strauss and heart-thumping Beethoven, we braved the 10 freeway on a Saturday evening. No doubt the Lakers or Kings would be playing at Staples Center and thus clog up the 10-110 junction¹. No thanks to all you basketball or hockey fans, we missed the bulk of the pre-concert talk². No matter. Still early enough to have a small plastic of Merlot³. And early enough to get in our usual seats and find out if we'll have new neighbours this season. All well and good so far. Usual complaints, but usual happiness at being able to have an evening out that doesn't not require complicated conversation.

Thinking all's going well, I whip out my little very old camera⁴ to get a pre-concert shot of the rather shiny organ (that we've yet to hear in a dedicated concert). Bearing in mind that I use this little camera in public places, the flash is set permanently off. Nobody likes an unexpected flash going off in the face, so it's always off by default. But it turns out that this is does not please some people. A young usher runs through to say: "We heard that someone was using a camera from here. You must know this is not allowed. If it happens again, we will take you downstairs to investigate." Or something along those lines.

I know I was the last one to use a camera. But before I took mine out, two other cameras had taken photos from my section. And another had flashed off in the expensive seats downstairs. None of these had elicited any comments or hoohah. Just mine. And all for this mediocre shot:

Apologies to my poor neighbours. That nasty comment just before the concert started preyed on my mind for a few minutes of the Bach piece. I barely heard much of it. But I hope it didn't affect your enjoyment too much.

Incidentally, another photo was taken during the intermission from our section. With the flash. Miss Usher ran through again. And, according to P, looked right at me. Not guilty, m'lud. If she's our usher for the 2007-2008 season, we may have to change our seats. I know we must look cheap to you, Miss Usher. Me in my pathetically unpolished black boots and cheap dress. And being in the terrace seats and all. But your assumption that those of us in the $66 seats are just low-life who don't know not to use flash photography during a classical music concert is somewhat misplaced.

No doubt there are official reasons photography is not allowed in the WDCH. For one, disruption of performers' concentration. And maybe other audience members' enjoyment. But to be quite so nasty is not necessary. Having been an usher before, I can almost guess at the reason behind the narky comment: they must be holding a competition behind the scenes of whose section behaves the best during the season. To them, we're just cows that need herding. If the little toe rag had said this about, say, an elderly matron, I'd have narked her right back with something about being polite to her elders. But she addressed her displeasure to me - classless bitch that I am. Throwdown...

¹ If you have to ask, you're not an Angeleno (apparently).

² Only an LA orchestra would have a special name for it: Upbeat Live.

³ $9! For that, could we not at least get a glass? It's not like we're football hooligans or anything.

⁴ A very early, 6-year old cheap digital. See sidebar photo.