THE FOUR HORSEMEN CALLING: The phone rings. It’s still early in the morning. A major mover-n-shaker in downtown business circles is wondering whether I’ve read the Book of Revelations. “Do you think we’re in the End of Times?” he asks. I say no. How many times throughout human history, I ask him back, have we gone to hell in a handbasket? Yet somehow, I say, we always managed to make it back.
Only thing wrong with this. I have no clue what a handbasket is.
Couple weeks ago, we started our days waking up to an egg-yolk orange sun rising high in a Martian sky. Back then, the fires were just getting warmed up. Now, our days start out with a cool and drizzly faux fog so fat with smoke and ash we have to keep the streetlights lit until 8 in the morning. That’s what happens, I guess, when more than 5 million acres of forest go up in smoke all at the same time. Hurricanes of heat. Showers of lightning. Nuclear winter in the middle of a long hot summer. Even the street preacher by the San Andres Street gas station who screamed salvation through his exhausted amplifier has fled.