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Southern California’s past can play a role in rebuilding for the future – Jobsmaa.com

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As the fire continued to burn and burn, the mourners poured out. Many have lost everything; The rest of us mourn with them for lives shaped by the routines of mortgage and rent checks, jobs and housework, food and pets. Even now, smoke, fire and barricades prevent us from seeing the extent of the devastation. That damn bill is coming.

New houses will rise. The complex webs of urban and suburban infrastructure will be transformed. But we must do more than simply replicate what has been there. We should not stand on structures and power lines. Many of the threads in the intricate webs that connect us and give meaning and foundation to our daily lives have been lost. Rebuilding our soft infrastructure, the network of social ties that bring communities together, wires, wood and steel must be a high priority.

Exit orders form a response amid growing panic. Catch the dog. Pack medicine and laptop. Find bonds and titles, passports and credit cards. If there is time and space, pick up photo albums. If it goes, history will burn. We've seen images of family photos fly far beyond what people understand. But it was always only a few: all the rest fell into the fire.

Fires took homes, and they took the things that bind us together out of our homes. I live in Pasadena. North of my house, our neighbors in Altadena lost a church, a mosque and a temple. Firestorms work with agnostic efficiency.

Environment died in flames, our communal relations A shared past. We hear that in the timeline connecting their loss: a Hardware store In business for 80 years, it was a World War I-era grocery store. A community parish in operation since before the Second World War. A beloved restaurant, its “Noah's Ark” breakfast pairing of two eggs, two pancakes and two slices of bacon dates back to the mid-1950s. A quirky 25-year-old museum dedicated entirely to rabbits. In the ashes of the Palisades fire, A Bungalow “Auto Court” It dates back a century, as does the farmhouse and stables built by Will Rogers in the 1920s.

Repair and replace roads and waterways, yes. Fill the reservoirs. Repair power and communication networks. Help people build sustainable shelter. And reweave our sung civic fabric, the places of everyday life that make the sprawling city meaningful and manageable: businesses, public parks, houses of worship, schools, libraries. Part of the work of rebuilding involves marking and remembering, trying to reconnect the threads that connect us to history and place.

When they are ready, this will come from people in communities that have been hit and burned, but people outside the flight and fire zones can help. It represents where this or that beloved local institution once stood. Finding meaningful ways to remind people of what once was, to remember and honor through that reminder. Eventually, when the pain subsides somewhat, telling stories about what happened, interviewing friends and neighbors who went through it, and creating archives to preserve those memories. Local governments or philanthropic organizations can help those at the grassroots level. Shared history is powerful; It can be rearranged. Those of us who are saved have a special duty to serve.

We have examples of right turns in Southern California. In 1871 Chinese MassacreA mob of 500 Angelenos killed 18 Chinese men and boys in a bout of brutal racial violence. Long forgotten, save for a compelling plaque on the sidewalk, it's now the focus of a concerted memorial effort that marks the sites of violence with stark sculptural beauty and artificial interpretation. This collaborative effort will ensure that victims are not forgotten, even in anonymity. It is very promising that a perspective on historical trauma offers the possibility of social repair.

The Civic Memory Task Force It recently moved forward with this initiative, leaving the city with a list of other historic obligations yet to be met, challenging issues that remain unresolved in the region's past.

Now the list is a task long.

The past is behind us. No history. What Lincoln called “The Magic Rings of Memory” will help keep affected neighborhoods and neighbors together and, over time, will help make connections beyond roads and pipelines and power grids.

This should be a priority before the fires come back, because they will. Commitment to community, place and history should not have geographical or disaster boundaries.

William Deverell is a historian at USC and co-director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

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