| The
house is burning...
...do you know where your pictures are?
The
fire’s final toll, of course, will be much larger than the
grim statistics which included at last count over 3,400 homes reduced
to ash.
What a horrible experience that must
be, walls of 30-foot, hot swirling flames surround you, devouring
everything you can see. To feel the experience of Hell on earth.
You have a few minutes to look around at your whole life and decide
what you can take. Imagining the charred remains of anything that
you can’t. A neighbor told me in San Clemente’s ’75
fire, one lady was so panicked that she ran out of the house with
nothing but a bread box, and no idea why.
Most people I’ve talked with
tell me the first thing they would take (after all family members,
I assume) would be their photographs. It was far and away the number
one response in my unofficial poll. It’s no real surprise.
Photographs are the visual recordings of our lives, hard copes of
cherished memories that provide irreplaceable archives of the people
and places that helped to define who we are.
I started taking pictures in 1969,
when my mom’s boss gave me an old 35 MM Agfa camera and the
requisite light meter. I was 12. I became the family photographer.
It wasn’t long before we turned an upstairs bathroom into
a makeshift darkroom and I started developing my own memories in
black and white. Oh, the pictures I have, oh the massive, unorganized
boxes of dog-eared pictures I have. I must have recorded 3/4 of
my life on photosensitive paper, as well as most of my friends and
family. My children's whole lives are in boxes, from their first
breath on. And then there’s that nasty little habit of never
throwing any away. I would need a truck to escape a fire, and another
one for the disks of computer files I’ve collected since my
camera went digital five years ago. I shouldn’t take such
poor care of things that are important to me.
Writing is important to me, too. I once had what I consider now
a rather pathetic piece of poetry published in an eighth grade school
newsletter. They gave me an American Heritage award and made me
read it in front of the school. It began a lifelong desire to record
my thoughts (and accounted for my deathly fear of public speaking).
My father once told me to never throw away anything I had ever written,
leaving me today with another firehazard of unorganized boxes. I
kept journals up until the day I started publishing one.
For the last eight years I have had
the pleasure of putting pictures and words together in the creation
of The San Clemente
Journal. I believe it has become that one thing that I was born
to do. And I wish to sincerely thank all those who have helped us
make it happen. Our writers and photographers are lending their
talents, to record for today and for history, the never-ending story
of this city that I am so proud to call home.
The Holidays will hopefully provide
us all time to show appreciation for all the people we love. Take
time for the important things. Too often it takes devastating tragedies
like an uncontrolled fire to help put things in perspective, to
encourage us to take the time to take care of the people and things
that we cannot replace.
I might even have to organize my pictures.
Have
a Happy Holiday!!!
Don R. Kindred
Publisher
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