Day 75: Change

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California

The first hydrangea blossom took its time in coming and arrived a color we did not expect. When planted some years back, the bush boasted delicate blue petals surrounding a smaller white bouquet. Those outer petals, at least, have since turned towards red, until they're now approaching the color of the bougainvillea in the background (also newly blooming). We’ll see what happens when the inner circle finally opens up, but can you see shades of pink in those buds as well? It has to do with the soil, I am reading - in strongly acid soil, hydrangea flowers turn blue. In alkaline soil, the flowers turn pink or even red. I’ve been dutifully feeding the two bushes in our garden with an organic mix designed for them. I guess I should stop if ever we want to see again that original shade of blue.

I needed beauty this morning after staying up ’til all hours watching America’s cities burn, especially in what I have come to consider at least my honorary home - the Twin Cities. This morning my usual media sources chronicle the destruction that has been wrought there - buildings burned, agitators arrested, businesses closed, stranded neighborhoods in need of the most basic supplies (as if the pandemic’s shortages had not already been enough). Some people say that these events feel different - that perhaps we’ve reached a point from which there is no turning back. Maybe so. But my whole life, I’ve been told that racial disparity was on the way to being rooted out… that improved, integrated schools would solve the problem… integrated housing… the Great Society... affirmative action… voter protection laws... so many efforts that have not worked or have been abandoned and undermined. If we are to try again (and even if we know how it can be done), this will require an effort harder than finding a vaccine for the virus, more difficult than righting the broken economy. It will require personal and institutional responsibility, a united front (and even sacrifice) from white America, lots of money and political will. Sadly, I have my doubts that we can pull it off, especially now, in such a divided country.

But here’s the hope, small though it may be: my FaceBook feed is filled with tales more generous than the media's - thousands of impromptu volunteers with buckets and brooms, clearing debris and sweeping the streets; acres of free groceries piling up for distribution; neighbors pitching in to board up the storefronts of local businesses, and offering to stand in front of them tonight to discourage their being torched; impromptu neighborhood peace-keeping committees being formed block by block; garden hoses deployed, ready to put out rooftop fires when the fire company does not come. Can that energy and generosity be sustained and channeled into more systemic change? Let's hope it's at least a start. We’ll have to see what happens next.

Day 74: Carnage

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California

Going out to finish watering the garden this morning, this is what I saw on the way to the back shed: carnage. The Angel Trumpets, as predicted, have fallen en masse and they are all lined up like dead bodies in the path. There must have been a strong wind to knock so many off the tree in a single night. 

I cannot think of a better garden metaphor than this for the emotional and physical carnage that happened these past few days and especially last night in my former home, the Twin Cities. Carnage. My heart aches for everyone who lives there - wounded, all of them, of every stripe and color (no pity spared for those who fan the flames with rhetoric or with subterfuge). All of this destruction comes from anguish and frustration generations in the making, I know. It’s never as simple as flowers fallen from a tree. And yet I’ll pray with all my heart there is no wind tonight.

Day 73: Too Hot

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.