And The Rain Came Down In Palisades

There Is More Than An Economic Toll For Palisade Victims

Right now, I am watching much-needed rainfall on the Pacific Palisades; unfortunately, three weeks too late to make up for the incompetence of LA Mayor Karen Bass, letting a 117 million-gallon St. Ynez reservoir go dry in red flag conditions in fire season after two fires in November and a January 1st fire.

In the seven years I have known Hollywood creative consultant Peter Duke, he has warned of elitist institutions like the Berggruen Institute sweeping the rent-controlled apartments of Pacific Palisades off the hill with fire to rebuild it in their own image. The Palisades was a weekend religious pilgrimage destination for displaced fruit pickers from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the 1920s.

Proud farmers who lost everything in the Dust Bowl, who now picked apples all day for five cents a bushel so their children could eat, ventured in their jalopies to Pacific Palisades in religious communion to salve the bitterness of loss of all possessions.

https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/the-problem-of-profitable-leisure-bringing-chautauqua-to-los-angeles

The Chautauqua Movement, initially established to teach women to be Sunday School teachers, had their jewel by the Sea in Pacific Palisades. Many of these “Chautaquan” religious vacationers stayed after the Dust Bowl because they had nothing left behind them. Pacific Palisades became a working-class community rooted in churches, schools, and family gathering areas like sports fields.

The Presbyterian tolerance movement called Chataquans carved out the Pacific Palisades community before the Gettys of William Randolph Hearst could claim it. William Randolph had murdered the previous owner of the land, Tom Ince, on his yacht to try to claim the land of “Inceville” for his only personal Xanadu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_H._Ince

Tom Ince, the father of Hollywood and the Western genre, used the Palisades’ beautiful views to make over 800 films in the first Hollywood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_H._Ince

William Randolph Hearst, the insanely jealous founder of Fake News called Yellow Journalism, murdered Ince on his yacht Oneida in a play to take over Ince’s movie studio system.

But the Chataquans had got to the land before Hearst could have straw buyers acquire it, and the Sunday School teachers of America, taking collections in dimes and quarters all over America in Sunday collection baskets, beat the most powerful Fake News publishing mogul in history.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158829786684812&id=294892724811&set=a.306274404811

My mother was a Sunday School teacher, so I am a little more than proud that I am carrying on this tradition with researchers worldwide with Citizen Journalists against the Fake News giants like CNN.

William Randolph Hearst would have to build his Kubla Khan monument to himself further up the California Coast in San Simeon.

William Randoph Hearst was the founder of Fake News, called Yellow Journalism in his time.

Peter Duke was working on a screenplay in Pacific Palisades about William Randolph Hearst as a lead character before his home was consumed on January 7th by the Pacific Palisades Fire.

So the Sunday School teachers of America flocked to their new Pacific Ocean Valhalla, naming the streets after Women’s Colleges, including Peter Duke’s Swathmore Street, where I walked down hundreds of times to visit Peter.

https://rumble.com/v35jh5o-graveyard-shift-ep35-george-webb-and-peter-duke-special-by-dr.-paul-cottrel.html

Peter Duke kept up the tradition of being the underdog in citizen journalism in Southern California against the MegaWealth purveyors of Fake News, like Adam Schiff of Beverley Hills.

Peter was burned out of his home, and his daughter and brother were also burned out of their homes in Pacific Palisades, ironically not a pitching wedge in distance from the empty 117 million-gallon capacity St. Ynez Reservoir. On their first night of displacement, I helped Peter and his devout wife, Lady Jessica, find shelter in a hotel. But raging fires followed them to Newport Beach, causing another hurried evacuation. After resettling to Oxnard, yet another hurried evacuation followed fire clouds there.

Lady Jessica, who shares a similar history to Kathy O’Brien of brutal sexual traumatization over a long period in her teens and twenties, finally buckled under the constant renewed trauma. I was with Peter and another concerned citizen from the East Coast last night as he visited her getting care. The Palisades Fire, which was created by man-made neglect of not filling the St. Ynez Reservoir, not only destroyed homes, but it destroyed the sense of belonging and stability for everyone, including Peter’s wife, Lady Jessica.

I never saw Jessica in Peter Duke’s humble Palisades studio apartment, not knitting some baby shower gift of booties or sweaters. Jessica walks to the nearby Palisades bluff, just like women Sunday School teachers one hundred years before, to wash away the unchangeable traumas suffered in a past life. The Palisades Fire has not just taken away homes but also the solace of the Sea. The scores of yarning creations intended for future grandchildren in her studio apartment have been now consumed by fire, as has been the fate of all her art and Peter Duke’s world-famous photography.

The Fake News William Randolph Hearst’s of our time now on CNN are spewing more fake news that the fires were caused by “Climate Change”. The attendees of Davos this week from the World Economic Forum just happened to be staging a fire detection exercise with both Scale AI and Deep Seek Labs in Southern California during the fires. Scale AI’s young billionaire CEO, Alexander Chang, is telling us about AI’s role in predicting natural disasters.

But I have a prediction for the WEF elites in Davos. The Sunday School Teachers and Citizen Journalists will rebuild the Pacific Palisades. And the Fake News William Randolph Hearsts of our times will not get their grubby little hands on it.