How Eddie Rabbitt Framed America

Dispatch

Fire for Hire

Mercenary fire-fighting rigs loaded up with adventurers, old GIs, and ex-cons flock to the big burns for glory and profit.

They protect the houses of the rich on behalf of big insurance companies. Sometimes, they start fires themselves.

Our chaotic, crooked approach to managing fire and timber is reflected in what happens on the ground.

By Lazo Gitchos

The fire began in silence. On the west ridge, an expensive radiographic weather station stood guard. The fire would not get that far. Below, in the green valley bottom, heavy equipment requisitioned from logging companies cut fuel breaks. The Overhead, as firefighters call the command team, buzzed all around in side-by-sides, using radios to deploy fire engines like ours: oversized pickup trucks loaded with water tanks and tools. We sidehilled the truck, our water tank full with 400 gallons, and it lurched on its tires. Twenty men from a handcrew fanned out, watering the smoldering brush with thin, lateral hoses. Burning stumps and rootballs turned the air sour. Our other engine hand remained in the back seat, moping and nauseous, while the boss and I played dominoes on the hood. “That looks promising,” said the boss, as lightning began to thread the clouds together. That August day was nearly done; a few miles of road patrolled and the fire held back behind it, water driven and …

Remedies

Tansy

Miraculous flower essence works directly on self-awareness; 4 drops under the tongue will cure your procrastinating, turn you into a model of healthy vigor and drive.

The Carolingian emperor Charlemagne new its qualities. So did Hildegard von ingen, Madame Restell, and the herbalist Steve Horne.

Ask President Henry Dunster of Harvard, whose corpse it helped to preserve.

By Amanda Fortini

Two summers ago, my neighbor in Las Vegas — an eloquent and refined man with one of the sharpest minds (and tongues) of anyone I know, a Wildean wit — admitted to me that he was depressed, and that his doldrums took the form of playing video games. If Oscar Wilde himself had materialized and told me he was a big fan of Grand Theft Auto, I could not have been more surprised. My neighbor is impressively well read, a person who recaps Thackeray novels for me as he finishes them, and with whom I discussed Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady over Zoom during the most stultifying months of the pandemic. He has serious literary aspirations, often waking at the crack of dawn to write before opening the small business he owns with his husband. And somehow, with all this talent, intelligence, and promise, he was sitting around wasting time… playing video games. Reader, forgive me: I am open-minded about many subjects, but when it comes to video games, I take a dim view. Luckily, so does my …