the sky is burnt today
When big fire —
Hits Southern California the whole sky fills with smoke and turns an odd burnt haze of air and the phrase that goes through my head when I look at it is “it is the end of the world as you know it.” I do not know where I first heard the phrase but it always hits me when the world takes on a hellish hue around me and the sky loses its blue and the air smells of brimstone. Small glimpses of the apocalypse. Visited every year on us by the fires that always come to California in the fall on the heels of Santa Ana’s hell hound winds.
ps : this was probably really not the day to watch “countdown to doomsday”
0 Responses to the sky is burnt today
That sounds scary, Max. Are you in a safe area?
I am. When fires are this big though it is like a volcano went off the smoke covers miles and everything smells like the fire.
You beat me to it Kitty, I was just going to ask the same thing. As far as where that phrase comes from, you probably heard it while listening to music. REM has a song entitled “End Of the World.”
I’m glad you are safe, Max.
Yeah, that is an REM song.
Stay safe, Max…and keep a lookout for four guys on horseback. A clue: they ain’t cowboys.
The smoke can get pretty nasty. Stay inside as much as possible and we’ll think “RAIN.”
Clearly a sign of the impending apocalypse now that Comrade Obama is in office.
;-)
Ahh, the Santa Ana winds. Capable of flaking your entire face off in just a few hours. No one understands rubbing a blistex chapstick from chin-to-nose quite like a native Southern Californian.
I remember the fires too. Sometimes it made for pretty sunsets at least. And while I’d say that fire sometimes smells good, I grew up in front of a dairy farm where the methane would sometimes burn for ages. And that did not smell good.
The dear governor of Schwarzafornia said on Face the Nation on Sunday, “It’s a whole new world” with the economic crisis, and “with global warming it’s fire season all year ’round now,” and fighting fires is expensive. So you’re going to have to raise taxes, George Stephanopolopolous asks. Yes, Governor Schwarzenneger replied, “even though I hate taxes, I hate the word taxes, I hate the idea of taxes.”
Excuse me? I think it’s taxes (and a little luck) that keep Cali from burning to the ground and/or falling into the ocean.
Max – I know that sky and that REM song oh so well. Last year it was my corner of SoCal that burned – to the point where we had to evacuate though the fire only came within 5 miles – but the sky? I have pictures from last year and also 3 years before that when the sky was orange and the ash covered the ground like a layer of snow. It even seeped into my house. Santa Ana winds make me very very nervous now. Even though I am a native it was not until recently that the fires became so devastating or so close. Oh yeah, it’s the end of the world as we know it.
Found some pics:
http://treesflowersbirds.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=459
That post, and the 5 after it detail the San Diego fire last year. When I see the videos this weekend of this year’s fires, it all looks too damn familiar.
Fires are not new here. I remember going to sleep at night as a kid with my pillow on the window sill watching red blaze crawl across the mountain crests while adults talked about evacuation. And watching the helicopters carrying huge swings of water overhead all day every day for the fires. If the governor wants to pretend this is new he can but it is not.
My co-blogger at TeenyManolo had to evacuate both this year and last because of the fires. Now I know why people there love their pools; I’d have a bloody MOAT!