Support Merrill Feitell and Ted Senn: Fire Recovery Fund

From Merrill:

When the fires started, I happened to be in NYC with my laptop and a 50-lb suitcase of stuff. This was lucky. Ted Senn evacuated with nothing. Not a change of clothes. Nothing. And this is what became of the house and everything in it.

I keep thinking: Ok, as soon as I get back there, I’ll just grab my boots and work gloves—but then I remember I no longer have those things and no amount of digging is going to unearth my dad’s 1970s embroidered chambray shirt, my mom’s pearls, the handmade books, the dog’s ashes, or all the latex models I made of his funny teeth.

But as I sit here in my childhood bedroom with a pair of back-up Converse I keep at my mom’s, it kills me to think about Ted driving around in need of socks and navigating this burning world on just his phone.

I know stuff is just stuff and it doesn't matter, but as I sit here looking at all the photos I luckily still have on the laptop I luckily brought with me, it's impossible to believe that every single thing in these pictures is gone. I'm so sad that Ted doesn’t even have his computer or pictures.

I mean, forget the bikes and the books and the art and the new Gola sneakers; forget the beautiful wood doors and the hunt for great walnut stains and revolutionary varnishes; forget the research that went into building the astonishingly effective DIY whole-house fan—and forget the balls it took to saw a hole in your own roof to install it; forget the time spent solving the maddening puzzle of the chicken-smelling weed that miraculously sprouted up as yet another chicken-smelling tree—and yet another!—and forget the muscle that went into digging it all up and hauling it out to plant a drought-tolerant Eden with a grassy patch of turkey tangle foot strictly for the dog.

A life-long renter and tiny-apartment dweller, I never knew you could build and rebuild and restore and create so many things! I'm so lucky to be looking at pictures that remind me of all this.