Best wishes to any and all of the individuals, families, businesses and other entities affected by the recent wildfires that have hopscotched the region … It was just a few hours before the mayhem started, the night of Dec. 4, that I enjoyed a cup of coffee with Yossi Dina at his only-in-Beverly Hills pawn shop before heading for Pacific Palisades to join a gathering at the home of Moira Shourie and her husband, Rajath, a managing director at Oaktree Capital. The Shouries opened their place for Zócalo Public Square, whose founder, Gregory Rodriguez, conducted a thoughtful interview of Prof. James C. Cobb of the University of Georgia, a leading historian of the American South. Cobb offered fascinating insights on how the South earned its place in the American imagination and historic record. A crowd filled with Westerners and Yankees were engaged in a way that offered hope that our society hasn’t grown nearly so closed-minded as it might seem from internet churn, cable TV and talk radio … The talk in the Palisades came under the banner of What It Means to Be an American, “a national, multiplatform, multimedia conversation” hosted by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and Arizona State University, and produced by Zócalo … Moira Shourie offered a touching example of what being an American means, greeting the crowd with an infectious enthusiasm that brimmed over when she told them she and Rajath had just become U.S. citizens. She then pledged to continue to offer her home as a place for free-ranging discussions … Moira mixed in some show-biz pizzazz, informing the crowd that the salon that comfortably held the crowd of 50 or more was built over what had been the Lawrence Welk’s pool as part of the original design of Cliff May, considered the father of the modern California ranch house … Prof. Cobb mixed in some humor in describing how he determines whether he’s still in the South or has reached the West. Bar fights in the South happen in parking lots outside the honky tonks, but they go down inside the joints in the West … Might be time to give some serious thought to regional and other differences and how to build better bridges. Turn to our Commentary on page 62 for a reminder of how the lost art of bipartisanship might be a great help to our city and state these days … Count the late Nathan Shapell – Holocaust survivor and founder of Shapell Industries, which fetched $1.6 billion in a 2013 sale to homebuilder Toll Bros. – as a model of bipartisanship. He and his wife, Lilly, were founding members of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and he was appointed to its governing council by President George H. W. Bush and reappointed twice by President Bill Clinton. Their daughter and son-in-law, Vera and Paul Guerin, look to be making such dedication a family tradition. They’ve been tabbed for a National Leadership Award from the museum at a March 1 dinner, where the Shapells will receive a posthumous special tribute …Sullivan Says: Café Istanbul on the 300 block of S. Beverly Drive calls it Choban Kavurma, but I call it the perfect beef stew.