John Messeder

(Click the Play arrow to listen to this column.) This week started with snow falling gently on the Couple Acre Wood. Outside my window, half-inch gray branches turned white, two inches and getting fatter. The pup seemed not quite as confused as the first time he encountered snow.

The fires in Los Angeles County make excellent television, with plenty of flames and smoke, burned hulls of homes with their former residents telling us through their tears how they’ve “lost everything.” Night after night of rerun videos of fire-fighting aircraft dropping water and chemicals on “hot spots” — a cool word some reporters repeat in reference to burned, burning and soon-to-be-burning homes, businesses and forests. Some points have been missed in the coverage.

Plowed snowbanks lead to an aged singlewide mobile home at the edge of a snow-covered field near a river. — AI-generated image by John Messeder (Click the Play arrow to listen to this column.) A young woman of my earlier acquaintance lived with her two boys in a singlewide parked in an abandoned pasture. The field of weeds and young trees sat alongside a state highway where it paralleled a virtually unnoticed river flowing from the upper reaches of the rural county.