It doesn't take long, just three rain sessions in a row, to make it seem it's been raining forever.

Just this Saturday afternoon the sun came out. It broke in time to save the Echo Park Art Walk, which looked to me like a success. Lots of people and a care-free vibe. But now we're back to worrying about drainage -- where it doesn't work around my house -- and worrying about drainage -- where it works too well in taking rainwater to the ocean.

A few days ago, I had coffee with a friend, whom I have known since childhood. I started blustering about the wasted water from all this rain, and he agreed it was a bad thing, but he also had some perspective, having actually talked to engineers in the foothills about storing water. Big surprise, it isn't that simple -- it sounds enormously difficult in fact. (I couldn't try to explain the particulars.) ... But then again, I think, didn't they drain some huge swamps to create Central Park in New York and, of course, much of upper Manhattan? It took about 4,000 laborers to create Central Park, which is designed to evoke the wilds of Connecticut. And that was over 150 years ago.

Cluck, cluck.

Meanwhile, it was a few days ago, Saturday, but now I am looking back fondly to the Artwalk. It stretched from Chicken Corner (Grafton-Delta streets on Echo Park Ave.) to Fix cafe a ways up the road. I skirted the edges of it, peeking into a few of the 20 gallery/installations, with my dog on leash. I enjoyed the sight of clumps of friends and solo walkers filling the sidewalks, consulting their paper maps -- coming to the neighborhood to feed their sense of connection to the culture at large. They came to be nourished, but they also were there to be fed: Three taco trucks were parked on north Echo Park Avenue, where you never see them, though only two actually sold tacos. One sold burgers and pommes frites and a dish it called "carcass." French, maybe?

One of my favorite installations was a "self-help center," which was set up in the dog supplies store Blue Collar. It was made of plastic sheeting forming three walls. Inside was a desk, some paper and pens, and a small library of off-brand self-help texts. It wasn't the only kind of help available in the store. While I was there, a couple came in with a big orange-colored pit bull they had found wandering on Echo Park Avenue. The unneutered male had been visiting the galleries and following other dogs, including, earlier, my own. (I had shooed the pit away.) Now the young man and woman wanted to know what to do with the dog, and a small crowd of helpers formed.

Outside on Echo Park Avenue, the husband of the woman who owns the boutique Tavin played jazz on an electric organ in front of her shop. I wandered into Lucas to make an appointment to have my hair cut. An artist showed paintings on a sidewalk table made from a surfboard. It was a lucky thing the rain had stopped.