"What's burning now?" asked a headline on the L.A. Times homepage yesterday. "What isn't burning now?" I thought. 

But the headline was, of course, quite literal. It linked to a map of the millions of Western acres aflame. Here in Los Angeles, the sky has turned yellow. Everything is covered in a layer of ash and cast a sickly sepia that does not photograph dramatically enough to feature on the news in cities far away. But I, forever an L.A. partisan, have decided that these sallow skies feel somehow more appropriate to the moment than blazing red or alarmist orange. They reflect a jaundiced world, a kind of cowardice. These skies don't scream, "Run! Now!" They whisper, "Well this is unsettling, isn't it?" and "Sit with what you've ignored."

I canceled a walk with a friend yesterday when the air-quality index hit 112. Instead I went only as far as my front steps, where I angled my phone toward the sky, half expecting the yellow tint to not even show up in the photo. But there it was. And while I did not post this evidence of our collective environmental failure to instagram, here I am sharing it with all of you. Asking you, I guess, to feel the discomfort with me. 

Why is anyone still on social media? Would you feel more urgency about climate change if you could see the smoke in person? The era of extreme heat is here. Historically, plagues prompt apocalyptic thinking. America's pandemic spiral. "The friendship and support I’ve experienced during the pandemic is exactly what I wanted when I had cancer." For the first time, America may have an anti-racist majority. The unfinished story of Emmett Till’s final journey. A tale of two mothers, one with paid leave and one without. A Kenyan woman fights to hold her employer accountable for poisoning her town. The Philippine fishermen stranded at sea by pandemic. QAnon is not just a conspiracy theory, it's a collective delusion. On letting go of a language to learn a new one. What does it mean to be 'bad with money'? Who gets paid to create things in the digital age. Brands vs. blands. A gentrification font. The barter economy. Rediscovering the habit of drawing. The addictive science of potato chips. In defense of the spice blend.

Pie is free thanks to the support of my paying members. Join them for just $5/year—that's less than 10 cents per edition of this newsletter. A bargain!

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Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou's piano music has been calming me lately. (Also this quote from her: "We can’t always choose what life brings. But we can choose how to respond.") I'm very excited for the new season of Lost Notes. A mixtape by Okay Kaya. And, wow, Ursula K. LeGuin's house.

The Western U.S. sky gradient.

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• Making some calls on behalf of candidates that support the Green New Deal and donating to one of many local groups helping wildfire victims. 
• Signing up to be a poll worker on election day.
• Checking out the list of demands that #TheShowMustBePaused activists have made of companies that operate in the world of Black music. These accountability questions apply beyond the music industry, and I'll be asking them of businesses that I work and shop with.
• Joining one of GiveEssential's labor month events in support of essential workers. They're offering cooking and exercise classes in exchange for a donation, hosting a 5k run, and more.