Introducing America's new senators

Butch Cassidy: "Who are those guys?"

  -- later --

Sundance Kid: "Who are those guys?"

  -- later --

Butch Cassidy: "They're beginning to get on my nerves. Who ARE those guys?"

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," 1969

Trump commands center stage, but he is not alone. The U.S. Senate has 14 new people.

The U.S. Senate is going through a rough patch. Its reputation is not of a "great deliberative body." Nearly all its controversial votes are along party lines, which turns it into a tabulating machine, not a deliberative one. And Trump remains center stage; most of the attention the Senate gets is whether any Republicans (perhaps Susan Collins of Maine or Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) will dare dissent from Trump's expectations.

But the U.S. Senate -- if it exercised its power -- could be an enormous check on the president and a full partner in shaping American government. That might emerge, particularly if Trump's initiatives become unpopular to his base, which I predict. So who are those guys? 

College classmate Ben Beach wrote me to answer that question. He is a mostly-retired writer and editor, now living in Alexandria, Virginia. He set a record for the most consecutive finishes in the Boston Marathon: 54. That record was broken in April.

Beach

Guest Post by Ben Beach

You probably know that we have a new—well, sort of new—president. By the way, like the only other president to be returned to office after a loss (Grover Cleveland), Donald Trump is a New Yorker and heavy. Their weights rank them second (260 pounds for Cleveland) and third (237 pounds for Trump) among presidents. Of course, they are skin and bones compared to the 332-pound William Howard Taft.

When we elected Trump, we also elected a new Senate. Including the two who were just appointed to replace Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there are 14 new senators. They include the fourth and fifth Black women ever elected, and never before have two Black women served simultaneously. The two are Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of neighboring Maryland. During Rochester’s 2017 House swearing-in, she carried a scarf imprinted with her great-great-great-grandfather's Reconstruction-era voter registration card. He had been a slave.

The election of Alsobrooks and Rochester increased the number of women in “the world’s greatest deliberative body” from 24 to 26. Four states have two female senators: Washington, Minnesota, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

The current Senate also includes its first two Colombian-American members (Bernie Moreno, OH, and Ruben Gallego, AZ) and its first Korean American (Andy Kim, NJ). Gallego and his three sisters were raised by their single mother in a disadvantaged community, and he slept on the floor until he went to college. At Harvard.

Another newbie who had to overcome a difficult challenge is Ohio’s John Husted, just named to replace Vance. Husted, who rose to become his state’s lieutenant governor, was born in the Detroit area and immediately placed for adoption. He has stated that his biological father did not want him and his biological mother was unable to care for him.

Half of the new senators had served in the House of Representatives, a common launching pad. The group of 14 is heavy on military experience. Montana’s Tim Sheehy was a Navy SEAL, West Point grad Dave McCormick (PA) was a paratrooper in Iraq, Gallego served in Iraq with the Marines, and Indiana’s Jim Banks is an Afghanistan War veteran. Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin is a former CIA officer.

Rubio’s replacement, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, has some interesting Trump history. She and members of her family once sued him, accusing him of fraud in a dispute over a Tampa condominium project that was never built. The case was settled in 2011, and Moody has said she cannot discuss it. Since that dispute, Moody has become a supporter of the president.

Republicans have a disappointing record on climate change, at least in my view. But Senator Mitt Romney’s successor, John Curtis, does consider it a serious issue. Curtis, who converted to the Democratic Party at age 40 but returned to the GOP six years later, founded the Conservative Climate Caucus during his seven years in the House. That’s a plus, but the League of Conservation Voters gave Curtis a score of just six percent over his tenure.

Most of the new senators have parental experience. Both Curtis and McCormick have six children—all girls in the latter’s case. As of last count, Curtis also has 17 grandchildren. That’s a whole lot of names and birthdays to remember, but he’ll have a larger staff in the Senate to help him.

The new senators range in age from 39 (Sheehy, founder of an aerial firefighting company) to 73 (Jim Justice, former West Virginia governor, who is often accompanied by his English bulldog named Babydog).

Looking at the entire Senate, 60 percent identify as Protestant, including one Quaker, Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper. There are also 23 Catholics, nine Jews, three Latter-day Saints, and one Buddhist (Mazie Hirono of Hawaii). No Muslims.

Eleven percent are named John, not including Georgia’s Jon Ossoff. Among the 26 women, you can’t find more than two with the same first name.

That should be enough trivia to get you through your next cocktail party.

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Do not go gentle

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

       Dylan Thomas, published 1951

Don't give up.

"Pussy-hat," 2017

My sister called me yesterday to say she didn't listen to the inaugural speech. She sounded weary. Then she texted:

"I'm sorry I am not more outraged by Trump's plan for the nation, but my knowing how bad I think it is doesn't mean much when "the people" voted him in anyway. And I'm a little disappointed in the blue team." 

I get it. 

I invited two friends my age to my house to watch Trump's speech. As soon as he took the microphone they left for another room to talk about music and their grown children. They said they just couldn't listen. 

Only a few thousand people attended the D.C. protest rally to acknowledge the inauguration. A sign called Trump a loser, but the insult was hollow. Trump won.

It is different from eight years ago, when millions of people protested in D.C.  A friend gave me a "pussy-hat" to wear to the local protests that took place weekly for months.

Democrats believed their own argument. They argued for the validity of elections. Don't lie and protest and riot if your candidate lost. That is what Republicans do. Instead, accept the judgment of one's fellow Americans. Stand for the rule of law.

The law backfired. The law was so slow that nothing got done. Worse, a great many people didn't want the legal system to function. Election-denial became acceptable. and then required, to be a Republican in good standing. 

What a disaster. Elections don't work. The law doesn't work. 

Democrats see Trump getting away with stuff, most recently overt crony-capitalism and grift. The bibles, gold sneakers, and NFT action heroes are all small potatoes. Trump just launched crypto meme coins: $TRUMP and $MELANIA. The Trumps own 80 percent of the coins and there is a tiny public float. That gives Americans and foreigners a completely legal way -- under cover of seeking investment profits -- to enrich Trump. They aren't even hiding the grift. Coin purchases are "an expression of support for and engagement with the values embodied by” Trump, according to the filings on them.

Trump is openly, proudly transactional. He helps his friends. And they help him. Invented from thin air,  the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins made Donald Trump $50 billion dollars  richer last week last week. 

Voters bought a big package: dishonesty, grift, pardons for January 6 rioters who joyfully attacked Capitol police, open flouting of the constitution by declaring pretext states of emergency, and denying the constitution's plain language on birthright citizenship. Crowds applaud. Republican majorities in the congress go along. The Supreme Court says that Trump has immunity. 

Meanwhile, Biden, doddering and lacking self-awareness, says he shouldn't have dropped out because he is fine and could have won. Hopeless.

What is a Democrat to do? Life is short. Why punish ourselves needlessly? If the public is okay with this assault on our democracy, then heck with it. The public wants to FAFO (F--k Around and Find Out), so let them. Retreat to one's garden or bookshelf or friends or the Hallmark Channel. I am hearing that a lot.

Wait. It isn't hopeless. We live in a system of self-government. We have responsibilities. We aren't passengers in the bus. We drive the bus.

Trump is careless, and much of what he wants to do is illegal or unpopular. Governing is hard. Trump is under water in his approval ratings and this inaugural speech won't help one bit.

Trump had an opportunity to fix himself. He didn't. In the abstract, in speeches in front of adoring crowds, a golden age for America sounds easy. Balance the budget. Rid the country of crime. Deport millions of "illegals." Reverse inflation. Trump will be a disappointment. That is what will end the Trump mania. He will lose the power to intimidate Republicans, and the GOP will begin to cure itself. 

Democrats are discouraged, but Trump did not win because people approved of his character, his manner, or his policies. They just trusted Democrats less. They felt lied to. Biden should never, ever have run for re-election. Democrats can fix themselves. One or two or three leaders will emerge.

This feels like a market bottom for Democrats. That is because it is the market top for Trump. He will break things voters don't want broken. Trump allied with tech and crypto billionaires, not voters.

In the political marketplace, I am not retreating to cash. Not only am I still here, I am a buyer.

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The end is where we make a beginning.

"You say, 'Goodbye' and I say, 'Hello, hello, hello.'
I don't know why you say, 'Goodbye', I say, 'Hello, hello, hello.'"
     Paul McCartney and John Lennon, "Hello Goodbye," 1967

In respect to Jimmy Carter

Americans wanted change and they chose Donald Trump's version of it. Forty-eight years ago Americans chose Jimmy Carter's version.

Democrats expect a corrupt, authoritarian era of crony-oligarchy. It is a very real possibility that Americans will be okay with exactly that, as long as our president says clearly and loudly enough that he is making America stronger and safer and richer. Events don't explain themselves. Events need a narrator to put things into an understandable framework. Trump is narrating the American story. The institutions of communication, both mass media and social media, are falling into step to help him with his narration.

There is a lesson in the behavior of media companies in the aftermath of the November election. Trillion-dollar businesses are not "too big to scare." Quite the opposite. They are too big to risk. They fall into line.

For four years Donald Trump called TikTok a threat to American security. They might be agents of propaganda, he said. Then, a billionaire investor in TikTok made a giant contribution to Trump and the GOP. Trump switched sides. He now supports keeping TikTok. But Congress had passed a law demanding it be shut down as of Saturday night. This screen replaced TikTok that night. But TikTok had hope. Trump might overrule the law:

On Sunday normal programming resumed, along with this notice:

Biden is simply unable to be America's narrator. Trump does that. Moreover, since the election Trump acts like the real president. President Biden did not override the law that shut down TikTok. Any president's legal authority to do so is questionable at best, since the exceptions that would justify it legally are not in place. That was a constraint for Biden. Not for Trump. The law shutting down TikTok is broadly unpopular, at least among the 170 million motivated TikTok customers, and Trump is going to forge ahead and give Americans what they want. 

There is a second lesson here for Americans. Democrats fear that there are no restraints on Trump. They are correct that the law isn't a constraint. Nor is Congress much of one. The day-to-day operating constraint on Trump is what is popular with his supporters. He takes cues from his audience of GOP base voters. 

TikTok understands the new moment. If Trump is going to put a thumb on the regulatory scales for his friends -- and he has shown that this is exactly what he does, openly and proudly -- then it is smart to be a fawning friend. Kiss the ring; kiss it thoroughly and well.

Trump is exercising presidential power. The power isn't America's. It is Trump's. Trump can put his thumb on the scale of regulation and justice. Likewise, social media platforms can put a thumb on the scale of content algorithms. And why not? It's just taking care of business.

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Easy Sunday: Clown Noses

Tomorrow at noon Donald Trump will be inaugurated.

Demonstration in Washington, D.C. yesterday

I turned down an invitation to lunch tomorrow with a good friend. I said I needed to be home to watch the inauguration on TV to get the full American-citizen experience in real time. I wanted to draw my own impressions about Trump's speech, without the influence of third-person commentary.

I'm taking this seriously.

Twitter/X is taking it seriously, too. My "For You" feed -- the one the site chooses for me -- led with posts warning of violent sedition at the hands of Democrats and RINOs. Barb writes, "I've had such a bad feeling! And Biden told his staff to clear out of Washington! What do they have planned? Lord, put a hedge of protection around Trump and Washington."

CLL says, "My gut feeling is not good. Gosh, I hate these people!"

I had expected the MAGA crowd to be serene and happy -- after all, their guy won -- but the outrage runs deep, and Twitter/X reflects and amplifies that with repeated posts predicting a January 6-type event led by Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and "Killery" Clinton.

Gerald Murphy was as dismayed as any Democrat at the outcome of the November election, but Gerry takes a lighthearted view toward life. He is the guest-post author who writes school and church plays professionally, and parody comments for this blog. Here he is at a Medford park, serving food at a community potluck for indigent people.

People tell me I overthink politics and take it all too seriously. Gerry doesn't have that problem. 

Guest Post by Gerald Murphy

Lots of news coverage about the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump. I usually avoid watching “The View,” but this morning all five of the hosts expressed their opinions on Michelle Obama’s decision to skip the event.

Two of the women opined that Michelle was going against her previous mantra: “If they go low, we go high.” What would it hurt for her to keep the tradition and honor an incoming president?

Michelle also missed Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week, and the assumption was that she did this because going would have forced her to sit next to Trump, a man who had spent years attacking her husband for his supposed Kenyan birthplace, among other egregious indignities. I won’t go into every insult hurled at the Dems and the RINOs, but suffice it to say that all the previous presidents, including George W. Bush and his family, had to live with Trump’s constant juvenile taunts.

But, except for Michelle, the whole gang showed up at Carter’s funeral. In the front row were the Bidens and the Harrises. The Clintons sat in the second row with the Bushes, Barack Obama by himself, and finally, Donald and the frozen-faced Melania.

I imagine that the seating arrangements for Monday’s inauguration will be similar. Unlike Trump, all these people will show up, dressed in formal attire, to witness the swearing in of a man who skipped Biden’s inauguration a few days after he mounted a fierce attack on America’s democracy.

One could hardly blame any of these people for sending a message like, “Sorry, but you are a completely obnoxious convicted felon and the Monday ceremony would make us ill."

My own feeling is they are all missing a good chance to show their feelings about the shady con man while still showing they have a sense of humor about the whole affair.

My solution? Clown noses.

What a happy and cheerful sight to see all these previous leaders show up in the front rows wearing clown noses. No angry speeches, no petulant avoidance of the scene, just a happy and smiling group of clown-nosed American politicians.

It would bring patriotic joy to an otherwise dismal affair. And I think all Americans should don these noses for the whole week to honor our return to a clown presidency.

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Losing TikTok

I enjoy TikTok. 

I don't see the problem with TikTok. It wants to know what I like so it can offer me more of it. How American. How capitalistic.

I hope it stays available.

Like the short videos in Google-owned YouTube Shorts, Meta-owned Reels and Instagram, and Musk-owned Twitter/X, TikTok offers a person some short bit of content. If I am interested, I watch it. If not, I scroll down to the next bit of content. On TikTok, I can push a heart-shaped button if I liked it, or flick to the right to get more content by the same content-creator.

My son is a TikTok content creator. He puts up short video posts about the NBA. I watch those. I also watch short clips from movies and TV shows (especially Saturday Night Live and Breaking Bad), some political videos (mostly people criticizing Trump), athletic highlights, presentations of sleight-of-hand tricks with cards, divorced women taking two minutes to complain about lousy dates, dashcam and police body-cam videos of police stops, and athletic women doing jump-rope routines.

I get those types of videos because I have watched them in the past and TikTok notices. I hear about a secret TikTok algorithm, so apparently the inventors in China do a better job of doing exactly the same thing that FaceBook, Twitter/X, YouTube, and every other social media site, sales person, or merchant does. That is to notice what the customer or audience likes and see if they want more of it. How capitalistic. 

Supposedly, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, being owned by the Chinese and headquartered in China, makes it different from a company owned by investors from around the world and headquartered in California. ByteDance might try to influence my political opinions and ultimately American elections. 

I find that laughable and hypocritical. I still visit Twitter/X a little, and it is owned by Elon Musk, who attempts to influence my politics by sending me relentless messages. He still warns about Hillary Clinton being ugly, Biden being senile, and Mexican immigrants being criminals. If the Chinese attempted to influence our 2024 election through TikTok they were subtle about it, hiding it amid the jump rope routines. Twitter/X wasn't subtle and still isn't.

Of course, internet sites track us. We all know that. Google reads my G-mail letters, keeps track of my searches, and notices which videos I watch. So does Meta/Facebook. So does Amazon, which greets me with reminders of my last searches and purchases. So does Netflix, which recommends movies. So does Albertsons, which sends me coupons. Social media tracks us. So do our phones. We know that.

My sense is that TikTok is a tiny bit better at serving me interesting material than is their competition. I don't find that frightening. It is good, honest competition, and an opportunity for Meta and Google to up their game.

Four years ago Trump got the ball rolling on the effort to ban TikTok as part of his anti-China orientation. The Biden administration and a bipartisan Congress decided that a Chinese-headquartered company knowing what Americans found interesting was more dangerous than California-headquartered companies knowing it. But then, this summer, Jeff Yass, a  GOP mega-donor with a multi-billion-dollar stake in ByteDance, talked with Trump. Trump switched his position on TikTok, and his campaign began posting there. So did Trump personally. Trump found a huge audience -- some 15 million followers. He now asks, "Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?" 

TikTok aligns perfectly with the Trump style: A GOP donor owns part of it; Trump profits politically from it; and it fits the populist we-the-people outlaw message of right-populism. The out-of-touch elites in Congress and the Biden administration want to shut down something people like. Trump is now the people's rescuer.

I will miss TikTok if it disappears on Sunday. So will lots of Americans. If Trump brings it back, it will be a big popular "win" for him. Democrats should recognize that.

I am more concerned about the influence of billionaire oligarchs on American government than I am the influence of the Chinese.

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A Close Look at the LA Fire

Los Angeles has beautiful but flammable neighborhoods.

They built the city that way because it is the way people like to live -- until it catches on fire.

Today's post is an invitation for readers to watch an hour-long video: Inside the SoCal Firestorms on YouTube.

You might want to watch it because you are interested in what all the fuss is about.

You might want to watch it because you want to know why your fire insurance might get cancelled, or tripled in price, even if you live in a city neighborhood of single-family houses with a fire station less than a mile away. 

You might want to watch it because you should rethink your current landscaping.

I recognize that most readers won't give it that time, so I will give some quick photo highlights. If you do watch the video, don't be discouraged by the bad audio at the very beginning. They fix that promptly.

First, something unusual about the Palisades fire. It started at a high elevation and moved downhill, pushed by wind. It started in brush but then got into houses and moved from house to house downslope. Most fires move uphill. This fire got so hot that it moved from house to house across block after block of houses.

This Google street-view scene shows a Palisades neighborhood that looks like neighborhoods I see in Medford and all across America. It is a widespread idea of "the American Dream," single family homes on city lots with nice green vegetation.

Most homes have shade trees and privacy hedges, some more than others.

The narration called attention to this third blue-gray house. Notice their fire-resilience: bare ground, concrete, trees well away from their home.

It burned up anyway. The adjacent home burned, so it burned.

The narrators said that the lesson from the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed 18,000 structures in Butte County, California, including the town of Paradise, was that the homes that survived were ones that were 60 feet or greater from another structure that burned. 

Embers from burning houses spread to the next house.

A typical entry point is at the rafters, vents, and gutters. The narrators said that when firefighters see a house in this condition, they know the house typically cannot be saved.

Dry conditions and high Santa Ana winds made Los Angeles particularly vulnerable. The fire apparently started in brush land adjacent to city streets. But once the fire entered the developed area it burned houses along with the green, irrigated landscaping. Green vegetation became fuel, not protection.

People do not choose to live in bare ground and concrete. We like green plants. City planners and planning codes encourage density, not sprawl, so by intention urban and suburban houses are closer together than 60 feet. Denser cities make water, sewerages, and public transportation more efficient. But there are tradeoffs that become catastrophic under house-to-house fire conditions.

The conditions in LA were extreme, but not wholly different from conditions that exist in much of the western U.S. on a hot, dry summer day. Medford has three months of dry weather with frequent days of 100+ degree temperatures. Our winters are wetter than are LAs, but that means there is more vegetation to dry out in the summers. I am going to re-think my landscaping, especially the lovely, tall bamboo up against the wooden deck along the front of my house. Green juniper is a common ground cover in Medford. It is hardy, trouble-free, and deer don't eat it. But firefighters call it "gasoline brush" because it burns hot and intensely. That is dense juniper along the front of my house where a discarded cigarette could set it ablaze.

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A fire-fighter comments on the California fires

Bone dry vegetation, low humidity, hurricane winds.

A forest-fire fighter comments.

I had two jobs in the summers of 1967 to 1971. I grew, picked, and sold melons in the cool early mornings between daylight and 10 a.m. After 10 a.m. I was on duty at the Oregon State Forestry fire station, where I was on the hotshot crew. We fought forest fires in the brushy scrub oak wild areas on low elevation land outside the cities. We were the rapid response to small fires, typically from a cigarette tossed from a car or kids playing with matches. If there weren't wind gusts, we could usually contain the fire while it was still smaller than a football field. I know enough about fighting fires to know that wind changes everything.

Gary Shade

Gary Shade knows a lot about fighting forest fires. He was a member of an elite crew of "smokejumpers" who would parachute into remote roadless areas where lightning had started fires. 

Gary Shade is at the top left. Smokejumper crew in Grangeville, Idaho, 1977.

He shared with me a letter he received from a lifelong friend, a Pennsylvanian who gets his news from Fox, who had questions about the California fires. Then Gary's response.

The friend writes:

I have been watching the news the last few days and the main story is the horrible fires in California and I would like to hear your opinion on what the hell is going on out there.      

I watch Fox news, which I think gives a more honest opinion of the real news and I think they do a good job of exposing the failures and causes of the fires. It seems that the liberal policies to protect the environment have   actually helped to  destroy the environment. The people in charge know that every year they have a fire threat and every year they have high winds in Jan and Feb, yet nothing preventive has taken place to prevent the fires or contain them in a timely manner.  I could not believe that they actually cut the Fire Department funds, but raised the homeless allotment by billions of dollars.      

It also sounds like Newsom is focusing on himself and his political future, instead of planning for any possible disasters, which looks like he helped promote, with taking out dams in the rivers and not building water reservoirs, which the federal money was allocated to in the billions of dollars.  Not one reservoir has been built and the ones they had were empty.  It seems like all common sense has left southern California.  I know you have been fighting the forest fires in the past and would like your honest opinion on what is going on. I feel terrible about the loss of life and property and all the wild animals that have been lost and all the forests that have been lost.    

Your friend,

         B. 

 

Gary Shade's response: 

The wildland fire management in CA is complex. Fourty-six percent of the land in CA is owned by the Federal Government. Here in Jackson County, Oregon, the Feds own 53 percent of the land. Imagine if half the land in PA or Montgomery County were owned by the Feds. The Feds are responsible for fuels reduction programs and fighting wildfires on their lands.

The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Department of Interior are the primary agencies managing these lands. They have been working on fuels management and fuels reduction strategies for decades. The question is, have they done enough? They could do more with more money and less concern for environmental impacts as the argument goes.

The state agency for fighting CA wildland fires on state and private lands is Cal Fire. Cal Fire is the best firefighting agency on the planet, with the US Forest Service second.

The release of energy that destroyed Pacific Palisades was the equivalent of a strike by a tactical nuclear missile, but without the radiation. People are traumatized and angry. This can't be an "Act of God", somebody is responsible and righteous indignation floweth over. 

Weather patterns have been developing for the past two years in southern CA setting up for the perfect firestorm: a wet 2023 and an eight-month drought this year. Brush fields in southern CA were lush from last year and paper dry this year. Once there was an ignition in the wrong place at the wrong time, with hot dry east winds of hurricane force, a perfect firestorm was created. It was a wind-driven fire tsunami or fire avalanche barreling downhill to consume Pacific Palisades. 

The perfect stage has been set for a political backlash. I first think of the political backlashes from repeated hurricanes destroying Florida, or statewide winter power grid failures in Texas. Public outrage seems tempered and muted.  Republicans still keep their jobs.

The catastrophic firestorms in CA have now turned into the perfect firestorm for Dems. Now is the time to plant the stake in the heart of Newsom and environmentalists. And it is working, especially with Dems and their penchant for self-inflicted wounds and public snobbishness. The political goal is to eliminate a national Dems leader as a presidential competitor, punch the environmentalist in the nose, and keep the discussions away from the elephant in the room: a dramatically changing climate. 

The brush-filled mountains above Pacific Palisades had well-established dozer fire lines on all the ridge tops before the fire. There was work done in fuels management, and fire-breaks were effective for a topography driven fire. This was a wind-driven fire. So rather than racing uphill to the ridge-top fire breaks, the fire was driven down-slope by the winds from Hell. 

I live in the woods and a crown fire in the forest next to our compound will take out my home. There is much that I and neighbors can do to create a fire-defensible space around our homes and property. But if east winds blow hard, a fire could become a crown fire that would take out my neighborhood.

The criticisms of Dems are real and appropriate. We can and need to do better. Difficult strategic decisions will need to be made from lessons learned. My take is that, if I lose my place due to wildfire, I am not blaming the governor of Oregon. Now I could move to a more fire-secure location, but I'll take my chances with God's Acts.   

G. 

 

View of fire taken from a window seat of an airliner

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