Mary Novaria

Some of my friends can’t wait for the holidays. The rest can’t wait for them to be over. It’s no wonder we’re conflicted. We’ve allowed our most traditional, warm and fuzzy holiday to be smothered by an avalanche of consumerism and immediate gratification. Goodbye “over the river and through the woods.” This year, it’s over to Target to get the goods. Meanwhile, Squanto and Norman Rockwell are spinning in their graves and Thanksgiving is forced to stand as a bookend for a season of competitive retailing and manufactured desire. There’s plenty of cluck-clucking and tsk-tsking over stores that dare to be open Thanksgiving, but we have only ourselves to blame. And by “we” I mean this collective society in which we live... the same way that “we” are to blame for Congress: We put up with the insanity. Walmart and Macy’s know they can count on us to worship at their altars, that we will happily whip out our credit cards and partake in their communion of gr...

A week before the Woolsey Fire began, I hiked with my cousin Kristen in Topanga State Park. A doe and her fawn greeted us in the parking lot, as though someone had arranged it that way for a Hollywood shoot. The afternoon was warm and clear, offering sweeping views of the ocean and other peaks beyond the Santa Monica Mountains. As our elevation increased, we talked about the terrain — the scrubby chaparral (Was that sage we smelled?) and the parched grey-brown meadows below. “Was it ever green?” Kristen asked. Our landscape is intriguing for someone who lives in Alaska and still is for me, six years removed from the Midwest. “Yes,” I said, “after last spring’s rain. I can’t remember exactly when that was.” “Everything’s so dry.” I checked the humidity on my iPhone's Weather Channel app. Twenty-five percent. “Yeah, it’s a real tinder box,” I sighed, the reality of living in this region of Southern California. Little did we know the comm...