Simultaneous with the nation’s crisis, is California’s water crisis. Pundits currently argue about whether or not it is over. This alone marks a milestone. San Francisco is well ahead of normal rainfall. Even I will admit that a few dry days would be welcome. And a few dry days are all that we can expect in the current forecast. Meteorology has given us one less thing to worry about. Now we can shift to the others.

For months the media has been arguing about the national divide. What are the faultlines? Who’s fault is it? Is the drama we are witnessing Ubu Roi or Armageddon?

Only moments ago I bade goodbye too a repairman who had come to deal with our broken washer. How can a washing machine break after only two years of existence? How can a German washing machine break at all? Either way, the service guy seemed to know what he was doing. Though I didn’t quite know what I was doing. It made me nervous having a black guy in the house. And honestly for no good reason. But I was shot by a black guy. And even half a century later (almost) there is enough irrational racial fear knocking around inside me to make me nervous. Nervous about what? Well, more or less, that he’s going to shoot me. Even though the likelihood of him pulling off a washer seal with one hand and going for a revolver with the other…is rather remote.

Never mind. Fear is never remote. Nor is the past. But still, it would be nice to move on. I just heard a quote from our former president. A simple statistic: the US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prison population. Meanwhile, I watch while a guy who happens to be black is using his laptop to find a Bosch washer component. I apologize for the barking dog. I would apologize for everything else, but I can’t find the words.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood rabbi…and fortunately we have one…was explaining only yesterday the nuanced words for ‘fear’ in Hebrew. In conjunction with the wrath of the deity, a better translation is actually ‘awe.’ As in, aw that’s great. People said things like ‘aw, that’s great’ and even more often, ‘aw, that’s swell,’ in the 1930s. The focus of one of my adult education courses is just that, Warner Bros. films of the 1930s.

Was that era more innocent? Across the decades on celluloid, the speech is certainly more quaint, the acting seemingly broader. But, from a social perspective, what a horrible time. The nation was just as easily incited to hate, it seems. Human nature. It was always thus. What can one do but tend to one’s own garden?

Which, by the way, will shortly be bursting with potatoes. Not to mention broad beans. Both of these crops seem to flourish in the San Francisco winter. Especially now that the latter is turning mild and staying wet. Having all these crops come to life in the heart of a city has its own special qualities. I keep thinking of ways to share the experience. Not just the potatoes, but their birth. Surely kids would delight in seeing big yellow potatoes emerge from the earth. That’s what neighbors are for. Neighbors? They are the people who just happen to be there.