Newsletter: The destruction of L.A. towns is inspiring some beautiful writing about them

Good morning. It is Saturday, Jan. 18. We are two days away from Inauguration Day, which happens to fall this year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Here’s what’s happening in Opinion.

Horrible as they’ve been, the fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena (note to out-of-town commentators: Karen Bass is mayor in only one of those places, yet hydrants in both areas ran dry) have inspired beautiful writing, some of which has appeared on The Times’ opinion pages. Those pieces have continued the American tradition of writing wistfully, in both verse and prose, about community peculiarities in the mold of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

That’s also the name of a folk song released three decades ago by Iris DeMent, in which she set her life in a declining town, where she “can see the sun’s settin’ fast, and just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.” In his song “Paradise,” John Prine laments the economic exploitation that left the eponymous small Kentucky town a wasteland because “Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.” That element of environmental destruction seems apt in this era of fossil-fuel-driven climate destruction.

I thought of both songs while editing this moving letter by Times reader Lisa Boyle, a Pacific Palisades resident who emailed me a photo of her burned-down home along with her submission. Her closing paragraph nearly moved me to tears: “I send love to all my fellow Palisadians, those displaced by the other fires around us, and to the spirits of all the lives, including the wildlife and pets, lost to the fires. RIP to our town, one of the best, Pacific Palisades.”

Another reader paid tribute to her former hometown of Altadena, which lies north of Pasadena. As far as I know, this letter from former state legislator Susan Bonilla was the first mention in The Times of the unincorporated community’s rich history of racial integration amid housing discrimination. There, she wrote, the homes destroyed by fire “represent the determination to achieve family security, to defy the odds and to build a community where equity was realized.” Bonilla asks political leaders to “prioritize this community in light of its historical significance to California.”

In an op-ed article, journalist and Pasadena resident Sonali Kolhatkar summed up Altadena about as best as any writer could in a single sentence: “a vibrant community attracting vegans and coffee connoisseurs, artists and thrifters, pot smokers and hikers, Black homeowners and Mexican restaurateurs, young white gentrifiers and old white hippies, immigrants and sundry others.” She rattles off the names of victims she knows who had homes “filled with dreams, even generational wealth, and now have little more than the clothes on their backs.”

It’s a shame we get to read so much about the richness of L.A.’s patchwork of semi-discrete communities only when their people suffer.

Wildfires come with the wildness that draws us to Los Angeles. What other big city has mountain lions roaming its streets at night? The proximity to nature, with mountains and beaches equally accessible to millions of people, comes with a catch: fires, and lots of them. Editorial writer Carla Hall implores L.A. City Hall to follow through on its promise to cut red tape so we can rebuild: “To make a life in this wilderness, we need all the help we can get.”

California’s inmate firefighters deserve more than a raise. Make them employees. You might have known that hundreds of the people battling L.A.’s fires are incarcerated; what you might not have known is that these firefighters receive no protections or benefits if they are injured or even killed on the job. That’s because legally, they’re not “on the job.” Journalist Chandra Bozelko says these working firefighters deserve not only a raise, but also the dignity and protections that come with being classified as employees.

The flames erased lives, homes and the still-to-be-told stories of Los Angeles. In backyards downwind from the fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Angelenos found something besides ash: burned pages from books and letters, belying the popular conception of this as a city of primarily cinematic rather than literary culture. Rubén Martínez worries that stories yet to be told about this city were destroyed along with homes in these fires.

Where does resilience come from? This is something Lucy Jones knows something about: The Caltech seismologist has long been the first voice Angelenos listen for after an earthquake. Now, with fires having wiped out entire communities, she says whether those places come back depends on social capital — in other words, people’s relationships with others. “Our social bonds do more than just motivate and sustain us in the long process of recovery,” Jones writes. “They give us purpose during this difficult time of response.”

More from opinion

From our columnists

• Jackie Calmes: The case of the missing Hegseth investigation
• Robin Abcarian: California’s cycle of fiery destruction and reconstruction is older than you might think
• Jonah Goldberg: The U.S. should acquire Greenland (peacefully). But Trump saying so makes it harder

From guest contributors

• Conservatives like me fear Trump will break through guardrails that restrained him last time
• Saturn’s moon looked like a snowy Utah landscape in my mind. The reality is just as compelling
• After the surgeon general’s warning on alcohol, people of faith should rethink sacramental wine

Letters to the editor

• Is it fair to blame L.A.’s fire catastrophe on Mayor Karen Bass?
• Gov. Gavin Newsom pushes pointless gestures on cutting regulations to rebuild
• The Palisades fire destroyed the school where I was principal. I still have hope