Decal Update, Fires

Decal Update:

I know there's a few that are waitlisted, but I asked for a fairly large class. And, after speaking with somebody in the Ethnic Studies Department, I'm fairly sure anybody that wants to get in will be able to do so. The capacity of the reserved classroom is sixty-five students and from the past two semesters I've facilitated this course and the two semesters before that in which I enrolled in Stella Kim's DeCal, I believe it should be plenty of space.

Fires:

I've been meaning to post in detail what happened when I visited the North Korean embassies in the U.K. and France, but among other things, such as the beginning of my (super) senior year, I've also been preoccupied with the fire as of late. Despite what I may have said about the reporting done by the Los Angeles Times, which to me strikes a sensational tone to this tragedy, it truly is amazing when you consider how large of an area the fire has spread to and continues to burn, and yet how few homes have actually been lost. Not to mention the fact that my mother's home in La Crescenta had been until today under mandatory evacuation, but as I lived there for a large chunk of my life, from Mountain Avenue Elementary and Rosemont Middle School to Crescenta Valley High School, I still hold a strong affinity to the neighborhood. I lived on the La Crescenta side of Pickens Canyon and as a kid I remember building clubhouses with friends and then setting traps to protect our clubhouses, getting poison oak while exploring, or just simply making a routine cross through Pickens Canyon to reach those friends that lived in La Canada. While the two suburbs straddle each other, there is no direct road that runs from La Crescenta to La Canada until you get down to Foothill Blvd, so I remember the canyon intimately. A picture "Los Angeles firefighter Thomas Rindge takes a break from battling the Station fire in La Crescenta Monday" (Los Angeles Times):

And, from Wikipedia, this is a beautiful picture of the area before the fires. La Canada-Flintridge is also in the picture and is the middle-right part of the picture.