At the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round. Three of the horses on the runners and one charred one to the side with a plaque around its neck are from the original Lincoln Heights Merry-Go-Round, the one my parents would have ridden on as children.

Griffith park can burn, the back lot of Universal Studios can burn. All these places make up the background in the tapestry of my youth. They are inviolate there. And so when set upon by disaster, I have full reckoning of their mythic, Phoenix abilities to rebound and become again stage fronts to any play you can mount.