Fire
Support victims of the L.A. wildfires
The Los Angeles fires have been raging for over a week now, and the destruction to humans, homes and businesses, creatures and plants continues. For an appropriately angry and grief-stricken response from one of our best climate scientists and activists, my dear friend
, read his editorial about the fires that the New York Times published last week. Peter will be beginning his own publication here on Substack soon, so keep your eyes out for that as well.
If you’re looking for ways to support the victims of the fires from a distance, here is a list of places to donate, including the families of a number of poets, writers, and artists who have lost their homes. The specific families here are those who’ve reached out to people in my networks and/or are friends of friends/poetry community members. Please give as you’re able and spread the word, and if you have additional resources or calls for support to share, feel free to add them in the comments.
Grief and Hope (gofundme for LA Artists and Art Workers)
Sarah Cole and family
Elline Lipkin and family
Phil and Michelle Bitting and family
Mary Trunk and family
I believe strongly that this is a time for softening, rather than hardening, ourselves to the realities of this time we’re living in: its unfathomable losses and cruelties, and the greatness of heart that is required of us to meet it. Let’s keep our hearts open, friends, and take care of ourselves and each other so that we have the strength to do what is required and be ready to support those who are most vulnerable.
I will leave you with words from Naomi Shihab Nye. May kindness go with you everywhere.
KINDNESS Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.