In the Desert Sun, Tod talks about what it means to live in California.

“The apparent ease of California life, Joan Didion wrote in “The White Album,” is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion real live here in only the most temporary way. Didion was speaking at the time about the water crises of the late 1970s, specifically, but the truth is that the people of California have always been of pretty hearty stock. You live in a place where the very ground you stand on is, at best, temporary and you recognize that choosing to live here means choosing to live in flux, always a bag at the ready, in case you need to flee. We don’t expect empathy from the lattice-work of fault lines, reason from the wild fires, decency from the sun. But we do from the people of the state and, increasingly, that means that living in California is a moral choice…”