Dawn is being treated as threat by the TV media which is really gross. man. It has always been my favorite moment. The "logic" is that the winds will pick up as the sun comes up, of course, and thus re-ignite embers and calmer fires. Right now the stotus is as quo, the winds are down and the fires are in manageable state. The air stinks like a fireplace and eyeballs itch as if you had just spent the day in LA.   The TV stations are forced to resort to replays of the traumas and fears of yesterday. The reporters were very brave all night long.

Everyone here is fine. (I mean our place in the western University City neighborhood, not the county.) Out to the east and north, hundreds of houses have been taken out by flames, and a reported 13 lives have been lost, two of them in a gruesome race through the flames which the driver thought he could win but could not. No count on the losses of horses, other pets, livestock. Thousands have been burned, injured or exhasuted thorugh the fight which is still going on, but looks much more hopeful.

If we stay lucky our undermanned, underpaid and under-equipped heros will pull off a win out of the ashes of the last two days. .

Those ashes are everywhere in the county -- cars are painted with them and lawns are tinted with gray from them. The stink of the fire is the odor of the moment, and it permeates the whole region, bringing back memories of every fire ever visited upon you. I expect the smell will be around for weeks.

A