Lifestyle
The Southern California fires have us on the edge of our seat. When can we finally relax?
When our city went up in flames last week, everyone I know in Los Angeles was in emergency mode. Now, as a new week begins, it’s hard to know how to feel.
For those of us living in neighborhoods not decimated by fire, the acute threat seems to have passed, at least for the moment. The skies are blueish and a light breeze is blowing as I write this. There’s ash on the ground, but less of it in the air. Most LAUSD schools have thankfully reopened. Friends and neighbors who left town are trickling back home.
And yet the National Weather Service warned of a “particularly dangerous situation” with wind gusts up to 45 to 70 mph from 4 a.m. Tuesday through 12 p.m. Wednesday for swaths of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Additional powerful wind events are also expected throughout the week.
“We are not in the clear yet and we must not let our guard down,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said at a news conference Monday.
And so, in my house at least, the evacuation bags are still packed and waiting by the door and my phone remains in easy reach at all times. But how much longer do we have to live like this, allowing Watch Duty alerts to interrupt our sleep, poised for flight? When will we stop feeling the threat of fire hanging over our heads? Or has the threat always been there and we’re only now just seeing it?
“The reality check is there will always be events that nature throws at us that, no matter how great our technology, we can’t fight,” said Costas Synolakis, professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC. “We don’t have to live in fear, but this should give us pause about how vulnerable we are.”
A season of high risk
Fire experts say it was the deadly combination of extremely high Santa Ana winds of up to 99 mph and a city that hadn’t seen significant rain in eight months that set the stage for the two most destructive fires in L.A. history: the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire. Collectively they have burned more than 37,000 acres and killed at least 24 people.
“How a fire starts, grows and spreads has a lot to do with wind and rainfall,” said Amanda Stasiewicz, assistant professor of fire policy and management at the University of Oregon. “We had this duality of high risk from drought making things very pro-fire growth and pro-fire proliferation plus fast-moving winds that are going to carry it quickly, make it harder to suppress and challenge firefighter safety.”
The winds may have died down for now, but the dry conditions remain unchanged, making it easy for new fires to break out from a long list of sources. If the underbelly of an overheated car comes in contact with bone-dry vegetation, that can start a fire. If someone accidentally drags a chain behind their truck, unknowingly sending sparks into the air, that too can set our hills ablaze.
“As long as these drought conditions endure, having that go bag packed is not a bad idea,” Stasiewicz said. “If you have a wind event, the opportunity is there to have a fire get bigger, quicker — and larger fires are harder to contain.”
Her advice? Keep an eye on the weather forecast, paying special attention to wind advisories. “It’s a bit of keeping yourself on your toes,” she said.
This ends with rain
Despite the terrifying imagery and intense warnings, keep in mind that the high wind gusts predicted for the coming week are still significantly lower than the howling “Wizard of Oz”-like winds that blew through the city the night our two deadly fires began.
“To be clear, it looks very unlikely that we’ll see strong north winds of anywhere near the magnitude that we did in the beginning of [last] week,” said Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist on a YouTube livestream on Friday.
However, he does not think L.A. is out of the woods yet when it comes to fire risk.
“Relatively strong Santa Ana winds have a cumulative effect on intense drying,” he said. “I call them atmospheric blow-dryer-like winds. The longer they blow, the dryer and more flammable the vegetation becomes.”
According to Swain, the city of L.A. will not truly be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief until we see rain.
“What we really need is an inch or two of rain to truly and finally end fire season in L.A.,” he said. “Until then, any time there are dry windy conditions, we are going to see an additional risk.”
Unfortunately, there is only a slim chance of scattered showers in the forecast for the next two weeks.
“There is a chance we may continue to see fire risk into February or even March,” Swain said.
Facing a new reality
Even with no rain in the forecast, Synolakis, who has studied people’s response to natural disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes and fires across the world, thinks it’s likely that most of us will relax our hyper-vigilant state fairly soon.
“Last week the feeling in my community in Venice was eerily similar to the first few days after 9/11 when people didn’t know if there were going to be more attacks elsewhere in the United States,” he told me. “Hearing helicopters, and seeing these giant plumes of fire increased our uncertainty. People didn’t know if the fire was going to spread all the way down here.”
But as long as the fire plumes continue to clear and evacuation orders continue to be downgraded to warnings or less, he expects people who have not been directly affected by the fires to return to a semblance of normalcy.
“If there is no new flare-up, I think by the weekend people in surrounding communities will take a deep sigh of relief,” he said.
Whether that relief is warranted, however, is worth considering. The feeling of acute threat may have passed, but climate scientists have been warning us for decades that a warming world will be accompanied by more intense weather and more intense fire.
“These fires are entirely unexpected, but this is what I keep telling people about climate change,” Synolakis said. “You are going to have more events that are unexpected, and you are not going to be able to deal with them.”
Mara is a single mother of two in Minnesota. She and her family have depended on SNAP benefits to make ends meet.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
Although Mara is unemployed, she is busier than ever.
When she is not taking care of her two children, Mara is at her desk applying for jobs. She is surveying her belongings to see what she can pawn off to buy toiletries. Or she is sifting through bills, calculating which ones can wait and which need to be paid right away.
Soon, Mara, a single mom in Minnesota, may have another task on her busy schedule: figuring out how to afford food for her and her family.
That’s because of new work requirements for people receiving aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps.
“It would be so beyond hard” to lose SNAP benefits, Mara said. “Without SNAP, there’s no funds for food.” Mara asked for her last name to be withheld given the stigma tied to receiving government assistance. She is also worried that speaking publicly will affect her chances of getting a job.
Previously, SNAP recipients with children under 18 were exempt from work requirements mandating that recipients work, volunteer or participate in job training at least 80 hours a month. But now, under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that exemption only applies to those with children under 14 — which is how old Mara’s youngest child turned in December.
“It would be so beyond hard” to lose SNAP benefits, Mara said.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
The Trump administration has argued that the mission of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program has failed.
“SNAP was intended to be temporary help for those who encounter tough times. Now, it’s become so bloated that it is leaving fewer resources for those who truly need help,” the White House said in a statement in June.
But policy experts say the SNAP changes do not fully take into account the unique challenges faced by single parents like Mara or the sluggish job market in many parts of the country. They argue that losing food assistance will only create more barriers for recipients struggling to find work.
The timeline for implementing the new SNAP policy varies based on state and county. In Mara’s home state of Minnesota, recipients who don’t qualify for an exemption or meet work requirements will be at risk of losing assistance as early as April 1. Others may have more months depending on when they next need to certify they are eligible for benefits.
Over 100 job applications
Mara imagined she would have a job by now.
It was August when she was let go from her part-time administrative assistant role due to her workplace restructuring. Since then, Mara estimates that she has applied for over 100 positions. She has also attended job fairs and taken free workshops on resume writing.
She has been working since high school, she said, but “ I’ve never been out of work for more than one month, so it’s very difficult.”
Mara spends time working at the computer at CareerForce, a resource for job seekers in Minnesota, on March 4.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
Although she misses her old job, Mara said it didn’t pay enough to support her and her kids, so she relied on SNAP benefits.
Many recipients are part of the low-wage labor market, where job security is often unpredictable and turnover tends to be high, according to Lauren Bauer, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who has studied SNAP extensively.
“SNAP is supposed to be there to help people smooth that and not let the bottom fall out when they experience job loss,” she said. “And this policy doesn’t account for that at all.”
Mara’s lowest point came in November when the government shutdown led to disruptions in SNAP benefits. Not only was she searching for a new job, but she was constantly figuring out where to get her family’s next meal.
“I might be looking for food stuff during the day when I should have been looking for a job,” she said. “Then, I’m trying to make up that time in the evening after my kids go to bed.”
During the pause, Mara turned to food banks, which revealed other challenges. First, food pantries do not always provide enough for an adult and two growing teenagers, she said. Second, they often lack gluten-free foods, which is essential for her daughter who has celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes digestive problems if gluten is consumed. Gluten-free products tend to be more expensive.
If Mara loses access to SNAP again because of the new work requirements, she fears another stretch of long days spent looking for the right food and enough to feed her family.
“I would be so reliant on looking for food shelves or food banks,” she said. “There would not be time to even live.”
“We’re going to see increases in poverty. We’re going to see increases in food insecurity”
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 2.4 million people will lose food benefits in a typical month over the next decade as a result of the new SNAP requirements — including 300,000 parents like Mara with children 14 or older.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center, says many of the affected recipients will be single mothers who make up a majority of single parent households in the U.S. She added that the changes target a group that often lacks or struggles to afford a support system to help care for their children.
“How can they have a full-time job when they need to pick up their children [for] various activities?” she said. “And they are working — just not enough hours because they need to be there present for their children.”
Mara shops for groceries at a local discount grocery store.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
The new law also imposes work requirements on veterans, homeless people, young adults aging out of foster care, and able-bodied adults without dependents from ages 55 to 64.
It also toughened the criteria for waiving work requirements for recipients in areas with high unemployment. Previously, there were multiple ways to determine a weak labor market and secure a waiver. Now, it only applies to places with an unemployment rate above 10%. (Alaska and Hawaii have a different measure.)
For those who fail to meet the work requirement, SNAP provides assistance for up to three months within a three-year span. But Bauer from the Brookings Institution argues that it is not enough and the impact of SNAP changes will be widespread.
“We’re going to see increases in poverty. We’re going to see increases in food insecurity. We’re going to see increasing strain on the charitable food sector,” she said.
Mara holds her favorite anchor ring, which carries the inscription, “God for me provide thee.”
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
As anxiety hangs over her head, Mara tries to put on a brave face for her children. She does not want them to worry, explaining that her recent struggles have reminded her how tough life can get as an adult.
“I remind them it’s not their responsibility and they’re not accountable for me or for what’s happening,” she said. “I say, just know you get to be a kid.”
Dylan Dreyer
Savannah Will Likely Come Back … Just Not Sure When
Published
TMZ.com
Dylan Dreyer is giving a small update on her embattled “Today” co-host, Savannah Guthrie, as the search continues for Savannah’s mom, Nancy — telling TMZ she does believe she’ll likely return to the show at some point.
We caught Dylan leaving NBC Tuesday afternoon, and she said while she thinks Savannah will come back, the timing is totally unclear — adding everyone at the show is simply giving her the space she needs because they care about her so much.
TMZ.com
Dylan also reflected on Savannah’s emotional visit to the “TODAY” studio last Thursday, saying the hug they shared was something they both really needed in that moment.
Catch the full clip — Dylan says the visit was incredibly emotional, adding Savannah clearly wants to get back to some sense of normal life … she just doesn’t quite know how yet.
Still, Savannah managed a few smiles during the brief stop by the studio, doing her best to keep moving forward during an incredibly tough time.
TMZ.com
As we reported, Nancy was taken from her Tucson home in the middle of the night on February 1. She was last seen entering the house just before 10 PM on January 31 after dinner with her daughter Annie and Annie’s husband, Tommaso Cioni.
Kevin Kline plays actor Richard Bean, and Laura Linney is his sister-in-law Kristen, in American Classic.
David Giesbrecht/MGM+
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David Giesbrecht/MGM+
American Classic is a hidden gem, in more ways than one. It’s hidden because it’s on MGM+, a stand-alone streaming service that, let’s face it, most people don’t have. But MGM+ is available without subscription for a seven-day free trial, on its website or through Prime Video and Roku. And you should find and watch American Classic, because it’s an absolutely charming and wonderful TV jewel.
Charming, in the way it brings small towns and ordinary people to life, as in Northern Exposure. Wonderful, in the way it reflects the joys of local theater productions, as in Slings & Arrows, and the American Playhouse production of Kurt Vonnegut’s Who Am I This Time?
The creators of American Classic are Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin. Martin co-wrote and co-created Slings & Arrows, so that comparison comes easily. And back in the early 1980s, Who Am I This Time? was about people who transformed onstage from ordinary citizens into extraordinary performers. It’s a conceit that works only if you have brilliant actors to bring it to life convincingly. That American Playhouse production had two young actors — Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon — so yes, it worked. And American Classic, with its mix of veteran and young actors, does, too.
American Classic begins with Kevin Kline, as Shakespearean actor Richard Bean, confronting a New York Times drama critic about his negative opening-night review of Richard’s King Lear. The next day, Richard’s agent, played by Tony Shalhoub, calls Richard in to tell him his tantrum was captured by cellphone and went viral, and that he has to lay low for a while.
Richard returns home to the small town of Millersburg, Pa., where his parents ran a local theater. Almost everyone we meet is a treasure. His father, who has bouts of dementia, is played by Len Cariou, who starred on Broadway in Sweeney Todd. Richard’s brother, Jon, is played by Jon Tenney of The Closer, and his wife, Kristen, is played by the great Laura Linney, from Ozark and John Adams.
Things get even more complicated because the old theater is now a dinner theater, filling its schedule with performances by touring regional companies. Its survival is at risk, so Richard decides to save the theater by mounting a new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, casting the local small-town residents to play … local small-town residents.
Miranda, Richard’s college-bound niece, continues the family theatrical tradition — and Nell Verlaque, the young actress who plays her, has a breakout role here. She’s terrific — funny, touching, totally natural. And when she takes the stage as Emily in Our Town, she’s heart-wrenching. Playwright Wilder is served magnificently here — and so is William Shakespeare, whose works and words Kline tackles in more than one inspirational scene in this series.
I don’t want to reveal too much about the conflicts, and surprises, in American Classic, but please trust me: The more episodes you watch, the better it gets. The characters evolve, and go in unexpected directions and pairings. Kline’s Richard starts out thinking about only himself, but ends up just the opposite. And if, as Shakespeare wrote, the play’s the thing, the thing here is, the plays we see, and the soliloquies we hear, are spellbinding.
And there’s plenty of fun to be had outside the classics in American Classic. The table reads are the most delightful since the ones in Only Murders in the Building. The dinner-table arguments are the most explosive since the ones in The Bear. Some scenes are take-your-breath-away dramatic. Others are infectiously silly, as when Richard works with a cast member forced upon him by the angel of this new Our Town production.
Take the effort to find, and watch, American Classic. It’ll remind you why, when it’s this good, it’s easy to love the theater. And television.
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