Commentator Gerard Van der Leun is — was — a resident of Paradise, California. Now, burned out of his home along with another 30,000 people, he’s taken refuge in Chico.<\/p>\n
He writes beautifully about the individuals and businesses of the town “leaving it all on the field” for their bereft and desperate guests.<\/p>\n
A must read. There have been a lot of dramatic and moving reports<\/a> out of Paradise. But nobody says it better. Van der Leun concludes<\/a>:<\/p>\n They all were leaving it all on the field everywhere in Chico. From Penny\u2019s in the Mall to the Birkenstocks Store downtown on Broadway. In big jobs, and in small jobs, there was a long train of people working at the top of their game no matter what their game was. It has been days of this now in Chico; days of there being no big jobs or small jobs but only the unremitting effort the people to help their fellow citizens no matter what.<\/p>\n And since none of the Acronym Agencies have really shown up yet, this has all been done without any real government organization. Instead, it has been like watching a spontaneous Humanitarian Olympics rise up out of the town itself; and once started it has become as self-organizing and self-sustaining as the fire itself. Today as I moved around Chico I saw a town, untouched itself by the flames, rise up to restore and rebuild the lives of their fellow citizens of Paradise; lives that the fire had stolen. And by the end of the day, you could feel, palpably feel, that Chico knew it would win. Chico was leaving it all on the field.<\/p>\n Tomorrow? Chico will do the same.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If you follow Van der Leun’s work, you’ll know that he’s never gone out of his way to solicit donations. But if you scroll down on any one of this blog posts, you’ll find both a PayPal link and a snailing address in Chico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Commentator Gerard Van der Leun is — was — a resident of Paradise, California. Now, burned out of his home along with another 30,000 people, he’s taken refuge in Chico. He writes beautifully about the individuals and businesses of the town “leaving it all on the field” for their bereft and desperate guests. A must read. There have been a lot of dramatic and moving reports out of Paradise. But nobody says it better. Van der Leun concludes: They all were leaving it all on the field everywhere in Chico. From Penny\u2019s in the Mall to the Birkenstocks Store downtown…<\/p>\n