Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California
The weather has been a challenge for us temperature-sensitive San Franciscans, reaching somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees, depending on which side of the city’s hills and valleys you live. We, here in Noe Valley, are luckier than some. Still, we abandoned even minimal yard work these past few days, and retreated to the ground floor which is naturally air-conditioned by a creek flowing well beneath the house.
Temperature fluctuations are on a much, much smaller scale than where I came from, which would imply that my complaints about the weather could be called whining except that most houses (and other establishments) in this city have only minimal heat and no air conditioners, so the weather is what it is, and one deals with it - mostly by layering and un-layering our clothes. Most houses don’t have screens, either, because it’s only in this kind of heat that the region’s small-ish mosquitos emerge from who knows where and feed on us (well, me, actually, since John seems naturally and infuriatingly exempt) until the weather cools again and they disappear from whence they came. Good riddance.
Today marks day number 73 of the city's shelter in place edict, and 100,000 deaths in a country that prides itself in being first at everything. Grief and anger grip the city of Minneapolis as racial tension spills into the streets for yet another day. Sorrow and frustration mount nationwide as the economic ripple effect means fewer people will be able to pay June's bills and rent, and as more and more evidence emerges that the president’s slow response to the virus caused tens of thousands of unnecessary people to die, families to grieve. It would be a good day to have a real leader in the White House, one who’s willing to take the heat, one who can lead us through the tender and probably volatile days ahead.
This morning the wind seems to have shifted from bearing the heat westward from the simmering Central Valley, to pushing air eastward from off the cooler ocean. We see fog at the top of the hill where these dueling temperatures meet. Looks like I’ll need to get my jeans back out of the drawer and find my sweater before I go out to finish weeding.