After weeks of anxiety and lethargy and cold, often gray weather, this past Wednesday we got the heating system in our house tuned up. Today was a sunny Saturday, still a bit on the cold side, but bright and tinged with green. The daylight hours are now longer (6:30 am to 6 pm) and the sun definitely brighter at midday. Everywhere in the small suburban towns I bicycled past, people were out in the cafés. Entering San Rafael’s 4th Street, the first three groups I cycled past on the sidewalk didn’t even bother to wear masks, and of course those in the beer gardens and café parklets didn’t either. It was dreamlike, you could imagine we weren’t still seeing thousands die every day. But with the weather and the green shoots and the weariness who could blame these people?

Shady Lane in Ross was particularly beautiful with the young Prospector elm trees that replaced the diseased elms all putting out baby leaves. Elsewhere, there were abundant camellias, citrus trees overflowing with oranges and lemons, and magnolias and ornamental fruit trees in bloom.

I had started painting again the day before, forcing myself back to the canvas, after feeling “why bother?” for six or eight weeks. The exercise was somewhat rewarding, rediscovering the small delights of yellows, oranges, and blue sky pigments. Today was one of my two sons’ birthday. Even though he was out of touch, on a weekend getaway somewhere in deep Oregon, we could imagine he was filled with spring happiness as well. Meanwhile, his older brother was enduring the Texas winter disaster where millions across the state were without water or electricity for days on end in zero-degree weather. His inconvenience in having to boil drinking and cooking water was probably outweighed by the fact that he could share this medieval experience with his girlfriend, the two of them iced in for nearly a week.

So now Rachel and I await our second vaccination dose this coming week, hoping that the supply has not been broken. Across California, they are still trying to open schools. Newsom, who seems less and less confident every day, has ordered that 10% of the doses in the state will be allocated to teachers, but at the current delivery rates, that would take an entire year to give them all shots. The teachers union in LA is holding firm on vaccinations being a prerequisite to a return to the campus. And [two of our closest friends, both in the preferred over-70 demographic] are still probing the broken system trying to procure even a first shot. It is not an impressive response by the fractured health care system we have.

The promise of higher rates of vaccination is always described as “coming soon,” “by March,” or “by summer.” We will wait and see if the world is any better by the September and October dates of planned weddings and a trip to France. The G-7 is ponying up minimal billions for the purchase of vaccines for the Third World, but it appears as though they just want to do public relations against China and Russia, who are offering real doses now at cost, or for free, to many countries (not just future money). No one expects that the rest of the world will be able to cover their populations for two to three more years, by which time we will probably be seeing a radically new variant of SARS-CoV-2, and we’ll need another 10 billion doses of vaccine to handle it. Just ask Larry Brilliant.