“Devil winds, hill-hopping infernos, smoked mansions, torched trailers, barren freeways, and brilliant sunsets lingering in low-hanging canopies of burnt dreams.” That’s how Steve Lopez  describes all hell breaking loose in California.

Last year in october I wrote:”wildfires, burning out of control, are continuing to threaten thousands of homes in California. You can’t help but to have this incredible sense of the fragility of everything. As human beings we are wired to think that everything will stay the way it is, safe from sudden and intense changes…” My childhood home burnt down in 1970—my barbie collection got charred along with the rest of the house…

Palm trees help spread fire—I’ve never liked them much—to see an amazing photo essay click here.

It’s amazing how fire spares a house or two in the middle of a whole burnt neighborhood—my friend’s  house in Anaheim hills stayed intact when his neighbor’s got completely destroyed; his daughter, Kimiya, has sent me these pictures of their street:

and this one:

The chimneys are the only things standing in most burnt houses.

To watch a powerful clip from BBC, click here.

“Often it takes some calamity to make us live in the present.” Bill Watterson

I had fun with Sky Gilbar’s beautiful photos of Obama (above and below).

These are some of the pictures of Obama that I like best.

I teared up reading Nancy Gibbs’ article: “Some Princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. Barack Obama never talks about how people see him: I’m not the one making history, he said every chance he got. You are. Yet as he looked out Tuesday night through the bulletproof glass, in a park named for a Civil War general, he had to see the truth on people’s faces. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, he liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began.”

Writers say it so much better than us mere mortals; take a look at Judith Warner’s piece here and Frank Rich’s here. Come on people, don’t be lazy! These are exciting times—good and bad—and history doesn’t forgive apathy…

I took this picture of my TV while watching the biography of my favorite American President, John Adams who said: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Obama’s election made me forget my agreement with Plato’s view on Democracy…

Take a look at these pictures of the big smile here and read about it from Christiane Amanpour here.

A paradigm shift my friends, a paradigm shift of biblical proportions…Read Thomas Friedman’s excellent article here and Judith Warner’s amazing piece here.

“We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” Barack Obama

And my favorite Star Trek episode—Let that be your last battlefield—has been the precursor of a more tolerant America in 1966:

Obama will most likely be the next  U.S. President and not a minute too soon.

These are hard times and people can’t “go to the mall” anymore like their president suggested a few years back but Sarah Palin sure did with her shopping tag of $150,000—read Dowd’s interesting column here. Remember Obama’s tattered shoes?

Watch out  for the trick…People have been affected by the real estate massacre and there is blood on the streets everywhere— massive layoffs have not started yet. This cartoon of Ed Stein is funny and sad at the same time:

I don’t know about you but I prefer my autumn in its original colors of yellow/orange and the Halloween sweet and funny. If you miss my jack-o-lanterns click on my last year’s Halloween post.

I couldn’t resist including my picture of this classic Morgan—it has the perfect colors.

Exploration of the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty. I hope that the elections bring some degree of order and certitude; chaos scares the hell out of me.

I watched the debates in awe, witnessed the bickering over the financial bailout with disbelief and then Paul Newman died and I had the Paris Blues… Watch this magnificent trailer of Newman and Sidney Poitier in Paris of the 60’s.

Did anybody looked cooler than this guy? Beautiful man with a more beautiful heart. Smoking killed him.

Paris remains splendid in spite of all the bad news I have been getting from home—a walk through Place des Vosges at night washed away some of that.

The infernal crowds finally went home and left Isle Saint Louis in peace:

The best remedy— albeit temporary —for the blues is a visit to the Patisserie. Just looking at them can send you to the hospital…

I am not a chocolate or a strawberry person but I would kill for a Religieuse Café!

Window watching is a pleasure in this “walking city”,

Nobody has the money to buy any of these overpriced un-necessities anymore.

United States is trying to absolve itself from its sins and Europe will follow…

This one reminds me of the “poustines” we were wearing as kids back home:

Beautiful Mansard roofs are breathtaking:

but not enough to make me forget this:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. Einstein

Dogs are hot these days—many people prefer them to having children. They say when you get a dog you are buying yourself a tragedy…

Man’s best friend,

this image will give nightmares to mullahs: a dog on a persian rug!

I am not a cat person - I had to look hard in my archives to find these two pictures.

Funny background:

If I had a choice I would have loved to have a beagle like this one who will always be my favorite dog or a border collie. Maybe in another life…

“Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you later.” Mary Bly

I went to the Los Angeles Central Library looking for some books and I couldn’t resist taking these pictures and sharing them with you. This library burnt in 1986—something about burning books fills me up with utter sadness and an enormous sense of loss (remember Fahrenheit 451?)

To see the most beautiful libraries of the world visit this site. We need these in a world where “print” increasingly resembles an endangered species.

The books that were somewhat burnt yet still salvageable are so fragile that they have to be kept in special boxes. You can still see the black soot on them:

You can’t check out the more damaged ones because of their fragility like this one:

The good news is that there are thousands of wonderful and “healthy” books in this library and the reading rooms are very pleasant.

This is one book I have promised myself to read one day:

But who has the courage to even contemplate these ones:

André Kertész’s newly reissued photo essay “On Reading“,  features 66 images, taken between 1915 and 1970, of people enraptured by print.

“Kertész’s images celebrate the power and pleasure of this solitary activity and capture the deeply personal, yet universal moment of reading. This poetic book that has long been out of print is even more compelling today in a world where “print” increasingly resembles an endangered species.”

Even if Jeff Gomez argues that we are at a Gutenbergian moment, in which writers, publishers and readers must make the jump from paper to the more fluid territory of the screen, I can’t imagine being without the smell and the feel of paper.

I still print everything serious that I want to read because staring at my screen bothers my eyes.

“Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.” Alfred Whitney

Speaking of great photographers, I went to Melvin Sokolsky’s opening night last thursday at Fahey/Klein Gallery. I’ve had the privilege of  taking a “Master Class” at UCLA with him some years ago. His pictures have remained as fresh as the day he took them and unbruised by time.

Do I look stupid to you people? Do we, as women, look so clueless to you republicans that you imagine us all  voting for a woman only because of her gender? This is as valid as me voting for Ahmadinejad for the sole reason that he’s born persian!

Palin went through with her fifth pregnancy knowing that her child will have Down Syndrome. I have a nephew with this problem and I know how heartbreaking it is for the parents and the siblings…To insist in bringing a child like this to the world is selfish and insane.

Palin is an avid member of the NRA—Natonal Rifle Association—  which makes her the dream candidate for the republican ticket. She’s too damned young and inexperienced to be the vice president of this country. Read this article and this one to have some fun with this issue. Here are some interesting opinions about this whole affair.

Unless Obama (aka the Dark Knight) messes up really bad from here to November, I don’t see how he can lose…

“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.” Aldous Huxley

“A Paradigm Shift is  a change from one way of thinking to another. It’s a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change” according to Thomas Kuhn; he believes that Change is difficult and that human beings resist change— awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes. A Paradigm Shift is when a significant change happens—usually from one fundamental view to a different view. In most cases, some type of major discontinuity occurs as well. Khun thinks that “a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions cause one conceptual world view to be replaced by another view”.

My question for you boys and girls is that what makes one cling to the atrophied McCain—aka the off-line American—over the uber-eager Obama? I didn’t vote for Obama in the primaries but neither can I  imagine voting for mister “I want to relive vietnam ad nauseum”…

What are these posters from the good senator’s camp? Martin Luther King, the second coming? I frankly like my version better.

Another paradigm shift came this last week of the Olympics with the other Hussein or Usain:

What can I say? the man can run! Look at him here on cruise control going the 100 meters on 9.68 seconds; this guy with all his antics was a breath of fresh air.