Sonomabuzz

October 8, 2022

Smoke of our sadness
Loss we have yet to measure
Drifts across the hearts

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Memorial poem to the people who died in the 2017 fire:

The goodness of each one ripples down through time.
These people who have shared our life
The kindness of a word or a touch when it was needed
Flows onward
The space in time we each share
Is here like a wave
Leaving a ripple in our hearts.
And lessons recognized in their passing
Spread as rings on water, seen, then remembered
The goodness of each one ripples down through time

The goodness of each one ripples down through time.
These people who have shared our life
The kindness of a word or a touch when it was needed
Flows onward
The space in time we each share
Is here like a wave
Leaving a ripple in our hearts.
And lessons recognized in their passing
Spread as rings on water, seen, then remembered
The goodness of each one ripples down through time
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Five years after the firestorm in Santa Rosa, these are the words and the descriptions of what happened. Here are the poems that I wrote for this cataclysm. These are the photos of one house before the fire, after the fire, and after the reconstruction.

I was surprisingly blessed to be passed over for some of the sadness and loss. My neighbors and friends were not lucky like me. In January 2017 after I moved out of the house, and took all my collected art, I updated all of my insurance. So I received both an insurance settlement and had the ability to sell the property and walk away. Because I knew myself to be lucky, I took what I consider to be the excess profits and put them into SHARE Sonoma County because I believe that shared housing was a big part of the housing solution and a part of the recovery.
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Santa Rosa Fire 2017 – the response
I worked in the Emergency operations center, the SR Fairgrounds, the Sonoma Valley High School, and the Petaluma Fairgrounds.

Brookdale before and after the fire

Among the flame then ash

The fire’s path across our community

Measure of time

Ode to the place where so many memories happened.

Haiku from the fire days

Ripples through time

The post for the people who died.  This monument at the Luther Burbank Center was developed by the Leadership Santa Rosa Class I cohort, led by Carole Bennett.