Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert, but it's another wild and windy night, and these first strange days and nights of our new year.

Because of everything happening, everything happening to our west, the power has been off for days up here,

everybody hoping to avoid wildfires and these strong winds.

I know that many of you are in and around Los Angeles,

in and around places I know and love where I have friends and family

too.

And this disaster is reaching a lot of them.

This has been a generational disaster, and it will be a long time before the smoke clears too long for those

who lost their homes but the smoke will clear at least some of the villains will be punished

maybe some of the convoluted and corrupt systems will be made better.

And we will add the Eaton fire and the Palisades fire to that long list of historical disasters that have been unleashed across California.

Desert Oracle Radio.

From the great San Francisco earthquake,

to the collapse of the St. Francis Dam, the Wants riots,

to the Rodney King riots, Loma Prieta and Northridge, the Cedar Fire and the Campfire.

There was a time now going on 20 years ago when many of my friends were settling down in the charming land of Altadena pressed hard against the San Gabriel Mountains and Forest.

For a little while, if my kids still babies had considered the same, by then I'd had had enough

a full-time city living

and headed back to the desert,

apparently for good.

Most of the people I know up there

...