EMPS: Great Balls of Fire!

It's taken me all week to do my entry for Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #93: Fire, but not for lack of effort. See, the thing is, it's nearly summer in Tucson, and my car thermometer has already recorded temperatures as high as 112 degrees F. Hardly anybody around here lights fires in this weather, even for cooking, with the exception of a gas-top stove. And where's the fun in that? So I began to look for alternatives, anything with a fire theme. I even asked about photographing the brick oven at my favorite barbeque restaurant, but apparently the owner believes that would amount to giving away trade secrets.

There's a fire station right up Wilmot from my house, but no good way to photograph it from Wilmot Road. Besides, it's been shut tight all week, with no fire engines outside at all. The side of that building didn't exactly offer exciting photographic possibilities.

Finally, one sunset a few days ago, I thought, "What about the fires of the sun?" Here are two different edits of the same sunset. One is saturated and darkened, and the other is exactly as it came out of the camera:





That was going to be my entry for today, along with a few more shots taken at the same time. Then finally, on my way to pick up Kevin for church this morning, I saw a fire truck:



Well, I was getting closer! Literally. I thought that would be the best I could do for this theme, but late this afternoon I thought I'd give the fire station one more try. Success! Well, sort of:









So, no actual flames for you this week, unless you count the ones 93 million miles away; but I hope you enjoyed my fire-related photos!

Karen

Out of Gas

Well, yesterday was a day.

It barely qualifies as a separate day, really, because I was up all night in reaction to the event that started it all. As best as I can piece together, sometime around 2 or 3 AM, a fire started in a discarded couch or other furniture, stupidly piled on top of a Southwest Gas meter in the alley between Calle Mumble and the street behind it. The gas main went up, and it took a couple hours to put out the fire. The photo above was taken many hours later, after much activity on the part of Southwest Gas crews and equipment, but you can see that half of my neighbor's fence has burned down.

Around 4:30 AM the Southwest Gas inspectors were out and about, checking for gas leaks. One showed up at our front door, asking to check our gas range and so on. The range was fine, but they found a leak in the back yard. We now have to pay to replace the (probably decades-old) gas line.

Two options: have Southwest Gas move the meter up to the house, where it can be read remotely, or hire a plumber to replace the gas line, and then have Southwest Gas turn it on. The plumber option involves a city permit and bringing stuff up to code, which adds to the cost; plus there's the uncertainty of whether the company we hire is reliable. I interviewed a Southwest Gas engineer and then three plumbers throughout the day. We're going with the Southwest gas option. Meanwhile we have no gas for the stove, and when it's all done there won't be gas going to the ancient pool heater, fireplace or outlet for a barbecue we never had. No loss there. We never used any of that stuff.

I now need to rush off with the contract down to Southwest Gas, I work at church in a little over an hour, and I'm expecting a return call from my other potential employer. So I'd better sign off for now.

Karen

Update: I got the contract dropped off at Southwest Gas on Palo Verde near I-10, just around the corner from whether I worked for Beaudry RV for eight months in 2007-2008. The receptionist and engineer I talked to were very nice and efficient, and I feel good about our decision. The work will be done Monday. I hope that means Monday morning, because I just this moment realized I'm scheduled to work at church on Monday afternoon.

After dropping of the meter relocation contract, I grabbed a flatbread sandwich at Subway and headed to church for another training and work session. I got to work with payroll and bills and band reconciliation, so I'm rapidly getting practice in on most of the routine stuff. It looks like I'll be going to training sessions on the Church Windows software (and fund accounting) on Wednesday and possibly Thursday morning next week. I invited John to take vacation time and come along, on the theory that he could browse comic book shops during my seminars. But although he's dying to get out of town, his work situation and our finances led him to say no. Ah, well, some other time we'll get a proper break together.

I'm also still waiting for a call back from the gentleman who interviewed me a week ago. He left a message on my cell phone this morning, which was two rooms away (and I was asleep). I've left him two voicemails, so with luck I hope to hear from him before the day is out.

K.

Weekend Assignment Results: Fired Up

Last week, I asked you to tell us about something that involved fire.

Saqib tells us of a time when a backup generator turned into an electrical fire - which without his prompt action could have become something much worse.

Mike tells of two fires, one relatively harmless, the other actually benign. Interesting, though!

Kristi Wachter claims that The Joy of Cooking saved her life.

Carly tells us of a traumatic incident from her childhood.

Florinda presents her slightly abridged diary of last October's Southern California wildfires, as they happened.

Sarah explains the connection between King Lear and household disasters.

Kiva explains the charm of matchbooks, a dying art form.

Ice hot, folks! (That's a Doctor Who expression.) Thanks for your fiery tales. A new topic will follow shortly.

Karen

Fire Bad, Tree Pretty

Sun good, tree meh

As is so often the case on the night after I post my Round Robin entry, this is a followup to that - except that this one is also a followup on my previous posting, the Weekend Assignment. I think I've used the subject line before, and I may even have seen Carly quoting it today (it's from Buffy the Vampire Slayer). But it's too perfect not to use it tonight as well.

Here is the context of the original quote. Buffy and her friends have just defeated the evil mayor of Sunnyvale after he changed into a giant demon snake. They've also seen their odious principal eaten by said snake, lost some of their fellow classmates to a vampire attack, lost Buffy's vampire boyfriend to an attack of angst, and, oh, yeah, blown up their high school on the very day they graduated from it. After the graduation, battle and mass destruction, Buffy says,

Buffy: "I haven't processed everything yet. My brain isn't really functioning on the higher levels. It's pretty much: fire bad; tree pretty."

As her Watcher, Giles, muses on what happened, he quickly gets a bit too esoteric for Buffy in her current state of mind:

Giles: "There is a certain dramatic irony that's attached to all this. A synchronicity that borders on…on predestination, one might say."
Buffy (firmly): "Fire bad; tree pretty."

I'm not sure I've ever gotten to a "fire bad, tree pretty" state of mind, and the fact that Buffy can explain what she means by it is proof that she's not quite there, either. But I'm eternally fascinated by concepts like this, the idea of a human being reacting on an instinctive level, with little or no rational thought. Exploring what such a mode of thought might be like is a big part of my characterization of feral tengremen in the Mâvarin books.

Well, anyway.

Although I doubt I'll ever manage to "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream," as John Lennon described meditation (or possibly drugs, or both) in Tomorrow Never Knows, I've certainly reached a level of sleepiness or exhaustion that resulted in other interesting effects. Last night I was up on my usual Friday all-nighter, knowing that I could then go to bed and sleep well into the afternoon. (Or so I thought.*) By the time I got my Round Robin entry posted, it was later than I'd planned, and I'm afraid my sleepiness at that point was evident in the quality of the entry. The photos were okay, but the text was a bit sketchy, and full of the sorts of typos a spellchecker will never find; wrong words, mostly. It's fixed now, and fleshed out a bit. If you looked at the entry early in the day on Saturday I hope you'll glance over it again.

The closet doesn't quite match the paneling

Meanwhile, the postings and comments of others over the last day or so have me considering further the subjects of my last two entries. It occurs to me that although our house is mostly brick on the outside, there is plenty of wood inside, especially in my office. I like the faux walnut paneling on the west side of my office, and the real (albeit hollow) wood of the closet doors in here.

Doctor Who appears in several places in the MotW.

They're not great as functioning closet doors, though. Since they fold outward, there isn't much room to work with them.

And if you look on the other side of this room, you'll see that it was never finished. The north side of it is all studs and plywood, with no plaster or paneling or anything like that. But hey, it's wood! Here is a partial answer to a question of Bea's, about whether the Museum of the Weird is all cleaned up and renovated and pretty now. Well, no. It's a mess, and very little renovation or repair has actually been completed. I simply decline to show you the place at its worst, so much so that I routinely clean up carpet and stains digitally in my photos when I should probably be trying to do that in the real world instead.

Here's an example. If I were to show you the vertically-oriented shot that goes with the one above, you would see an old lamp, leftover wood, and boxes full of junk I'm supposed to sort through. This shot is also an answer to Kiva's idea that you can find the Museum of the Weird by watching for a TARDIS-colored door. It won't work; the yellow alcove-thing John built years ago keeps the door hidden away.

Fire bad.

Tree pretty.

Interestingly, some of the Round Robin posts by others had implications for my thoughts on the subject of Fire, this week's Weekend Assignment topic. Gattina posted a shot of a burned out forest, and people said in comments that it was a shame the forest had burnt. But I was reading a few nights ago about the function of fire in keeping an ecosystem healthy. Here in Tucson, the Santa Catalina Mountains have one fire policy, which the Rincons have another, in part because Mount Lemmon is inhabited and has roads in it, while the Rincons aren't and don't. Both ranges are subject to wildfires, but the ones on Mount Lemmon are more frequent and more devastating. They do controlled burns on the Rincons, which burn away the kinds of grasses and such that help to fuel the wildfires. And the USFS or whatever can choose when the burn takes place, so the conditions are right for it to burn, bt not too much. But they don't dare to do that sort of thing on most of Mount Lemmon, because they can't take a chance on starting a fire that will spread to people's homes and businesses. Result: the Aspen Fire of 2003, a wildfire that took out 300 homes anyway. And artificially keeping fire away robs the land of the germination of certain kinds of seeds, and the process of succession, in which the land goes through a series of stages in the growth and varieties of plants as it progresses from grasses and shrubs to mature forest. In some ways and at certain times, fires can be a good thing. It will be interesting to see whether anyone tackles the Weekend Assignment in that light.

Karen

*I'd forgotten about the Democratic Party, which wakes me up nearly every week with phone calls asking for money. I was rather rude to the Obama fundraiser this morning.

Weekend Assignment #216: Fire!

Clouds and smoke and dust fill the sky, May 15, 2008

A couple of minutes before I arrived home from work this evening, I became aware of the smell and tang of smoke in my nose and throat and lungs. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the car, and looking around as I drove east on Golf Links, I couldn't see any fire. Nevertheless, there was obviously a fire going on somewhere. The sky was brownish gray, a combination of clouds, dust storm and smoke.

Fire on Mount Lemmon, circa 1986. Photo by JBlocher.

Usually when smoke hangs in the air over the city of Tucson, it's coming from a wildfire on Mount Lemmon. Occasionally it's from one of the other mountain ranges that ring the city, either the Rincons to the east or the Santa Ritas to the south, as seen below. But by daylight, looking through the nearly opaque sky, I couldn't find a fire.

The "Florida" fire, Santa Rita mountains, 2005

Tonight on the news, though, they mentioned that the smoke was from a controlled burn, blown into the city by a strong wind. They stopped seeding the fire after a while, but hope to burn some more tomorrow, to stave off the devastation of wildfires and clear the way for the brush and plant life that provide habitat to some of the animal species that inhabit, well, whichever mountain they're burning. All of which makes for a longer-than-usual introduction to this week's Weekend Assignment:

Weekend Assignment #216: Tell us a story or anecdote that involves fire in some way. It can be a forest fire, a house fire, a campfire, logs in the fireplace, or even a lit match, a tale of comfort or destruction. Whatever comes to mind, if it's interesting and fire plays a role, we want to read about it!

Extra Credit: Is the area where you live subject to dangerous wildfires?

Okay, I've told this story before, but not since 2005.

It was March 10th, 1979. Well, maybe. It was almost certainly 1979, it was definitely a Sunday, it was probably March, and I think it was on or near my birthday. I was engaged to John by then, and planning to visit him in Columbus, Ohio over spring break, which was imminent. I was still a student at Syracuse University, living in a rooming house on Westcott Street that had recently been condemned in a legal dispute between a judge, my ex-boyfriend, and the new landlord, a bit of a jerk who hadn't closed on the property yet.

About 7:30 AM, my young dog Jenny (AKA Princess Guinevere of Westcott Street) and a black Labrador puppy I had temporarily adopted, Wafer (short for Wayfarer), started barking, which woke me up. When I tried to get them to stop, my neighbor across the hall shouted, "Karen, get out! There's a fire!" I grabbed just enough clothing to manage in public, and not freeze in March weather - much. The ensemble consisted of a jacket over a nightgown. I think I had on flip-flops, and had just cut my foot on broken glass. I didn't even manage to find my glasses! I just got the puppies and got out. A fireman later retrieved my glasses for me.

It was odd to be standing, half-dressed, with my dad, my dogs and my neighbors outside that white wooden house in the child of a March morning in Syracuse, wondering whether I would lose my Beatles records and Harlan Ellison books to smoke and water damage. Fortunately, the fire was in a second floor apartment. Aside from a smoky smell, it never reached my little studio apartment at all. Lucky me!

Oh, and on the extra credit, yes, metro Tucson's mountain ranges have been through quite a few wildfires since we got here in 1986. And I can't help but wonder whether a windy day in May, when it hasn't rained here in weeks and weeks and the fire danger is at least "High" if not "Extreme," is the best timing for a controlled burn.

Your turn! Tell us about some fire or other. Write it up in your journal or blog, along with a link back here, and then leave a link to your entry in the comments below. As usual, I'll do a roundup of your entries a week from now. Go to it - but please, no dangerous experiments for the sake of the entry!

Karen