An illusion of paradise up in smoke
LOS ANGELES - Southern California is the landscape of dreams, or so the mythology goes. Newcomers arrive. They raise the roof beam high over the simplest foundations and pass on to a new generation the hope that they too might believe in this sun-drenched paradise.
Time, however, has cast a shadow on this pact, and it sometimes feels like a distant romance. Yet glimpses of it can still be seen, as the fires of this last week have shown.
Beginning Monday the wildfires have been indiscriminately cruel ââ incinerating homes, killing horses and upending lives. It has touched mogul and farmer,
