“Janice and I lived in our home since 1979. We raised our children and grandchildren here. Every inch of our house was filled with love. Beautiful memories that can’t be taken away.”
This one hit me hard. I wish what Billy said was true, but it isn’t that simple. As we get older, it gets very difficult to remember everything clearly. When people say “a house full of memories”, what they really mean is a “a house full of memory triggers”. Mr. Crystal, his wife, and his children have lost a lot of those triggers to the fire.
I might be silly and sentimental, but this made me genuinely very sad.
I feel bad for people who lose cherished homes, but a lot less when they’re multi-millionaires who can easily buy a new one and replace all the material possessions. How many people lost a home and will have to battle insurance to maybe make them whole? Let’s be sad for them.
Proud of my ability to feel empathy for more than a single social group at a time.
They literally said they feel bad for both but go ahead and break your arm to pat yourself on the back if it makes you feel better.
It does, thank you 🙏
I do too, but I’m having difficulty reconciling that empathy with the fact that the privileged experiencing this type of loss may also finally be the catalyst for change with will have a greater positive impact on the non-privileged.
How many new and powerful advocates for wildfire control/climate change actions will appear after these tragic events?
I’m sure if he could, he would apologize for making money at you. He seems like a nice guy.
In this case its not about the individual in the story. Its the fact that him losing him home could have a positive effect on many more people not losing their homes. I don’t want people (anyone) to lose their home to fire, but its possible if the “right” people do now, far fewer will in the future.
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$60 mil net worth. I’m sure he’s not spending the night at the Laquinta like when my neighborhood was on fire.
I got the last one before realizing a fire fighter that was working the past 16 hours was right behind me and needed a room to rest and start again tomorrow.
Well, did you share the room with the firefighter?
Gave him the room, and luckily enough, they found 1 more room for us! Buuuut there were many other civilians behind us who had to try the next hotel.
Well done! You’re a good egg! ;)
If that’s what you got out of my post, then you missed the point. Yes, Billy Crystal is getting press because he’s a celebrity but what really hits hard is the loss of a home of 46 years. Nobody is rich enough to replace the irreplaceable, and many people with a lot less means than they are also losing generational homes. It is that irreplaceable loss that hits hard.
I was dirt poor when a hurricane devastated my home literally two weeks after my mother had died. It wasn’t the fact that I uad to live with relatives for months that hurt, it was that all but one photo album covering my mother’s life and most of my childhood were ruined. Material losses hurt but emotional losses are devastating, and they know no social class.
Don’t let your heart harden by putting people in groups of “others”.
This isn’t to detract from your larger “it sucks to have your house burn down” point, but specifically for photo albums, it’s fairly reasonable to have an off-site backup these days. Don’t even need fancy cloud storage or anything, if you don’t want to worry about data harvesting or leaks or whatever – can just get yourself a USB key drive and a safe deposit box. Hell, even just drop them off with a relative or something.
I think that most people have at least some things that they can be sure won’t be lost in a disaster like a house fire, so worth thinking about. I’m not saying that everyone has actually done that, but I do think that it’s a good thing to maybe think about doing.
On the back up idea, remember 321 3 backups, 2 types of media, 1 off-site