ME, GRATEFUL TO Instagram? This may be the least expected turn of 2025 for me, who had all but sworn off social media. I have been using the app to check on friends in Los Angeles, all of whom are safe, thank goodness. I should be impaled for writing this, but the wildfire footage is cinematic. The roaring, sparking flames, transmitted from one phone to another, are captivatingly gorgeous even as they devour homes, schools, hospitals. Those of you who live in LA who I don't follow on Instagram, I am fervently hoping that you are also safe and your home is intact. I have relatives who lost their home in Altadena. The devastation is stunning, beyond comprehension. Chad and I trade information without looking up from our phones. "The grounds at the Getty Villa were destroyed," he tells me while staring at his screen. "But the collection is safe," I say, scrolling through Insta. "So far," he says, "the Eames House is intact."

But what about the animals? The vegetation? I saw a video of a man trying to save a rabbit from an inferno. What had once been forest is now a ragged stand of stumps.

As I learn of one celebrity after another whose home has been lost, I confess that I don't feel a great deal of sympathy for these wealthy, good-looking people who probably have at least one other home to which they can retreat. Yet the fact that a demographic so well protected could be so quickly decimated means only that if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere. I know what this fire represents for me: a signal to to get ready for the (un)natural disaster that will eventually head our way. How do I protect my family? Shore up neighborhood networks, find a system that will enable me to check on my neighbors who may not have easy access to the internet? What do I pack in the go-bags? How do I ensure that we have stored a sufficient amount of drinking water?

This is a hugely inelegant transition, and possibly also in poor taste, but here's a page from my comic diary about our travails from a few weeks ago when we packed the car for the twenty-minute drive to my parents house for Christmas. It felt like everything that could go wrong, did. But the Hasselback potatoes made it more or less intact and were delicious.

Three Things That Kept Me Going This Week

"In Their Hands": I did not expect this documentary to move me as much as it did. I wept when Carrasquillo's family was finally able to welcome him home; it really did seem like a miracle. Carrasquillo's lawyers found a way to get him out of prison without having to depend on the biased, politicized Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Parole in this state is in desperate need of total overhaul. Also we should not be looking to prisons to provide jobs and boost the local economy; that's just a really stupid idea. (Nor should we depend on incarcerated firefighters to tackle wildfires while only making $10 a day.)

Chicago decides birds don't have to be sacrificed for buildings. "Bird collisions at McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center have decreased by more than 95 percent since the installation of bird-safe window film in summer 2024, according to data from Field Museum in a news release." I'm so grateful that this issue was taken seriously and actually addressed in what seems to be a painless, cost-effective manner. Would that everything were so easy.
I did not know that Jimmy Carter was the first president to light the "National Menorah" near the Mall. Nor did I know that the United States Holocaust Museum exists as a result of his creating a President’s Commission on the Holocaust after the neo-Nazi demonstrations in Skokie, Illinois. (So in a twisted, fucked up way . . . everything dope about America really does come from Chicago.)
Bonus: Kim Deal's new album, Nobody Loves You More. Chad put this on last night and now I know what I be playing on repeat for the next several days.

That's it from me this week. Stay safe.

Claire

Thank you for reading! If you like Mushroom Head, you can always leave me a tip, or share this with a friend. And if you're new here, welcome. Mushroom Head is a comic diary about me, Claire, a middle-aged lady who lives in Oak Park. Previous installments recorded the time I thought I'd ODed on THC and my experience parenting a person with ADHD as a person who has ADHD. There are also occasional forays into the surreal. If you'd like to get in touch with me, please feel free to respond directly to this email. I'm always happy to hear from you! (Also, you might want to put the Mushroom Head email address into your contacts to avoid having it go to your junk folder.) And if someone forwarded this email to you, I hope you will subscribe, because you are welcome here! Unless you are a bot. In that case, boo, please go away.

I Heart L.A.

I should be impaled for writing this, but the wildfire footage is cinematic.