Residents of the desert are used to summer news reports that include an "excessive heat warning." It's the desert. It's summer.

One of those alerts was sounded in 2016, my first summer as a resident of the Coachella Valley, and it was a whopper. One July weekday, an excessive heat warning was issued for Palm Springs, where I worked downtown. The afternoon forecast was 122 degrees, extreme even for California's low desert. That's a number you might see in Death Valley. Planet Mercury, maybe.

Around 3 that day, I left the coolly conditioned air in my office and walked outside to see what 122 degrees felt like standing on the sidewalk in full sun. It was breathtaking. Literally. My lungs could not draw enough air to fill. It was as if the atmosphere was being rationed, as if a governor on my windpipe would allow only my bare share of respirable oxygen.

Sources vary, but most weather-watchers peg the record high temperature for Palm Springs at 123, a benchmark reached on two success days in July 1995. Even if you grade on the curve, that's momentous meteorology. This past Sunday, it reached 121 in Palm Springs, and 118 in nearby Palm Desert, where I live.

At 6:20 that morning, I woke up in a sweat. The AC was silent. The fan still. The radio dead. I called the Southern California Edison outage line. The automated response confirmed the power outage, and said the estimated time of restoration was 9 a.m. It invited callers to log onto the website to monitor progress, an activity that requires ... electricity. Or a working external wifi signal and precious cellphone battery reserve.

Is there a worse time to be deprived of power? On the hottest day of the year? During a stay-home pandemic? The weather forecast was not a surprise -- wouldn't the power company have anticipated high use over the weekend, and taken measures to adjust for the energy suck?

A spokeswoman for SoCal Edison contacted a bunch of company techies on my behalf to find out, but got no joy. Her colleague contacted me later and said that the company staffs up in advance of excessive heat events that are likely to increase the load because, as he said, "the reality is that there will be more outages."

The best way to minimize them, he said, was for the company to maintain its equipment (which is why there are planned outages) and for customers to use less electricity.

A recent study of U.S. energy use by WalletHub, a financial website, concluded that California ranked 50th in electricity consumption per consumer. Only residents of Washington, D.C. used less juice.

The Edison spokesman said even turning off your AC at night would help, that consumers should "conserve, where reasonable." Sunday night in Palm Desert, the temperature at midnight was still flirting with triple digits. The spokesman acknowledged that conservation "was harder in some hotter areas."

Earlier, the tech folks had told the spokeswoman that the Palm Desert outage was "weather-related," but not due to the load. They said, she said, that it was "an equipment issue, not a load issue." That it was "equipment failure due to excessive heat."

Am I splitting hairs to wonder what's the difference between excessive load and excessive temperatures causing a sudden power outage? She didn't think so, but she can't make up answers, only convey them.

We have a lot of power outages. The duration of planned outages is reasonably knowable. Others, like the one on Sunday, are accidents, and no one, often not even Edison, knows how long you should refrain from opening your fridge or draining the battery on your phone.

My neighbors to the east got the hell out of Dodge, and headed for their son's house in Thousand Oaks, where Sunday's temperature topped out at a wussy 90 degrees. Like me, my neighbor to the west hunkered down inside her hot house with the drapes drawn. She opened her freezer just once to snatch some Fudgsicles. I opened my fridge just once to grab a peach and some guacamole. I drank tepid water from the tap, checked my phone battery too often and tried to read in the dim, increasingly cloying air as the hours passed. It was so hot outside the lizards were panting.

Automated SoCal Edison called twice with optimistic estimated times of power restoration. Neither was correct. I checked the batteries in my flashlight and headlamps in case darkness arrived before electricity. I worried about missing Sunday's episode of "Grantchester on Masterpiece," and having to wait for the rerun to learn how Geordie would figure out who killed that guy, and if Will the hunky vicar would get over his sex guilt and start to play nice with Ellie.

The outage was inflicted on three separate Palm Desert neighborhoods. Power was lost and restored to those areas at different times over the course of a very long day. The earliest outage, according to the spokeswoman, was 2:45 a.m., and it was 9:22 p.m. (halfway through "Grantchester") before the last 4,000 addresses got switched back on. At one time, 12,000 customers were power-free. There's no way to know how many people were affected, because those numbers reflect billing addresses, not resident humans and their miserably overdressed dogs.

Shortly after 3 p.m., my cable box began to hum. The fridge groaned and the power light on the ice-and-water dispenser illuminated. The oven clock blinked. "I'm back, baby," I shouted, plugged in my phone and called my neighbor. Her appliances also were cheerfully chattering. It took a few more minutes for the thermostat to awaken. It said the temperature was 87, which seemed like an outrageous lie, and I had the body odor to prove it.

Once the AC cranked up, it took nearly three hours for my house to reclaim the set temp of 82. (I'm a conserver.) It was 109 outside.

I reset the TV. Several hours later I microwaved a cup of tea and turned on "Grantchester." Spoiler alert: The boxing coach did it.

Outage map photo courtesy Southern California Edison.

A mulch fire in Thermal that produced nasty air during the day, offers the Coachella Valley a glorious apology when the sun sets.

Photo: Ellen Alperstein

But amid viral pandemic and election-year noise, we the people have found our voice. And, maybe, our soul.

Once again, the world is hearing us, hearing how we make the mess that is democracy into a crucible of humanity. The world is listening to our exuberant protest against racial injustice, and emulating it. Once again, the world acknowledges that we're good at something, and we dare not shut up.

This time, we dare not stop talking to each other about race.

It's the hardest thing we do. No one likes to have difficult conversations, so racism simmers in a country where most people are not racists. Most white people know what to do but they don't know what to say. When to say it. To whom it should be said. Most black people know that most white people are not racists, but they are tired of them doing things that assuages guilt even if their point is nobler.

You can't communicate if you're afraid of offending. You don't try to communicate if you know that someone can never understand what it's like to be you.

This failure to communicate is like a pulled muscle -- the hurt won't heal if the other muscles keep compensating for its weakness.

Meaningful talk requires trust. You must trust that most people who say something offensive deserve enlightenment, not opprobrium. You must trust that most people without your white skin do not envy your color even in the cold shadow of its privilege.

Drew Brees, a white NFL quarterback known for his generosity and decency, was heard loud and clear last week when he said that he could not countenance athletes who took a knee during the national anthem because he had too much respect for the flag and the veterans who fought for it. He got the blowback he deserved. But what might have been another ugly spitting match was actually a discussion in which Brees not only listened, he heard.

"Through my ongoing conversations with friends, teammates, and leaders in the black community," he tweeted, "I realize this is not an issue about the American flag. It has never been. ...

"We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform. ... If not now, then when?

"... The black community cannot do it alone. This will require all of us."

Talk helped Brees understand that taking a knee is not dissing America, it is the articulate voice of America.

That was a public come-to-Jesus moment, but we've all had private moments of conversational terror in which we did an end-around the scrimmage, and got past it. For a while.

A black woman with whom I was friendly left our mutual place of employment. A few weeks later, we agreed to meet for lunch. I knew only one restaurant near her house, so, figuring everyone loved the chicken noodle soup and tapioca pudding as much as I did, I suggested Soup Plantation. She paused, then agreed. We met a couple days later, but she seemed cooler than her friendly work-colleague self.

Later, a mutual acquaintance mentioned that she probably was uncomfortable at a plantation.

She heard "Soup Plantation" the way I would have heard "Dachau Diner."

Was I hopelessly ignorant and insensitive? Did she overreact? Does it matter?

I regret suggesting the venue, but what I regret even more is that we didn't talk about it.

During one protest march last week, a news photographer captured a middle-aged white protester carrying a sign that read "I surrender my privilege."

He doesn't get to do that, but the sentiment is genuine. Sometimes even that's difficult to talk about. A black newspaper columnist recently recounted a conversation about George Floyd in which a white woman said, "My soul is aching about what happened."

"You?" a black woman replied. "What about me?"

The columnist advised white people not to "share sympathy."

We cannot discuss race if we do not trust someone to be honest. And if being honest offends, that's part of the deal. It doesn't always end favorably for anybody. But it will never end if we don't grapple.

Speak up in private. Speak up at work. Use your voice to find your soul.

Thousands of marchers all over America are reclaiming our collective soul. Let's not lose it. Again.

"There is no theater in Los Angeles."

This line, or some variation of it, has been around for decades -- sometimes spoken by real people, sometimes ascribed to fictional characters. It's normally a snarky wisecrack, completely unrelated to the truth.

Right now, however, this line is much more accurate than usual. Like theaters in most of the rest of the world, L.A. stages -- in the sense of physical spaces where actors and audiences gather -- are dormant.

Most years, I see at least a hundred plays and musicals in greater Los Angeles -- some years, more than 200. In 2020, I had already seen 30 theatrical productions here, when suddenly it all stopped. The last production I saw in a theater was A Noise Within's "Alice in Wonderland" on March 8.

Like Alice, Angelenos are grappling with an adventure, but unlike Alice's, most of our COVID-era adventure is within familiar domestic surroundings -- not necessarily a theater-friendly terrain.

The essence of theater is that we leave home and enter that intersection between live performers and live spectators -- in a public, physical locale. How exactly is that going to happen until most audience members, as well as artists, are vaccinated against this virus?

In a recent national survey of 401 people who see at least two professional theatrical productions a year, almost two-thirds (63%) said that they would probably wait at least a few months before returning to the theaters after they re-open, while a similarly sized proportion (64%) said a vaccine would be the single factor that would most encourage them to return.

Of those aged 55 and above -- a key theatrical demographic and the age group that is at most risk of the virus -- only 21% said they would be likely to return in the next season after theaters re-open.

Sure, theater companies could require masks and then separate audience members -- or at least household groups -- from each other by six feet. The productions would have to be written and staged so that none of the masked cast members or backstage crew members is within six feet of the others.

In South Salt Lake, Utah, the Parker Theatre recently re-opened using those techniques. Here is more information about its arrangements for a 35-minute comedy revue, "The Corona Conundrum," inside its regular venue. The company's website includes a video tour which explains the venue's distancing precautions and offers brief views of the production, in which the performers appear to occupy solo positions on the stage.

I haven't seen "Corona Conundrum." But while sheltering at home, I've already seen a lot of free online comedy about sheltering at home -- for example, two music-video parodies, from different creators, that play on the rhyme of "quarantine" and "Billie Jean." If I were in Utah, I doubt that I would want to pay $17 to see still more COVID-era humor, while wearing a mask.

In L.A., there is some talk about possible "drive-in theater." Anyone up for adapting "A Chorus Line" so that the chorus never forms a line? (Actually, something that suggests this is on video, here).

Of course, distancing on the recommended scale would reduce the seating capacity of most theaters, and their potential box-office revenue, to small fractions of the previous numbers. With many L.A. theaters already operating as small-scale nonprofits, this sounds unworkable.

Even after most of us are vaccinated and distancing isn't required, will theatergoers eagerly return to seats with shared armrests -- or with no armrests (as in some of the smaller theaters) -- or during the season when audience coughs often punctuate or even muffle some of the spoken lines?

Movie theaters might be even more vulnerable, because so many of us have spent so much of our shelter-at-home time streaming movies and TV. I'm certainly streaming more often than ever, and I'm wondering if I'll ever return to a cinema.

But theater artists should remember that their art is different from movies and TV, or at least it should be.

At most theater productions, lurking in the background is the possibility that this particular performance could be at least slightly different from the previous night's or the next matinee's. For me, that adds an element of excitement -- even though I almost never hear that there were any significant variations -- because it means that these artists are performing for us in particular, not for the unseen masses who might watch a frozen-in-time movie or TV series or YouTube video.

When theater spectators laugh or cry (or, unfortunately, snore or heckle), the actors often hear us. The communication is much more of a two-way channel than it is at any screening.

During the last two months, most L.A. theater companies have increased online activities with a vengeance, reminding us that they're still here, that they need the support of their fans. Some of them are charging for filmed online versions of their previous work.

The remarkable blossoming of Zoom has made some of the digital encounters interactive, somewhat closer to that sense of a theatrical communion between performers and audience. But most of the online content that employs Zoom is on the level of the real-life audience talkbacks that often follow performances in theaters, instead of serving as the main event itself.

The big exception so far is "The Present," a Geffen Playhouse production that's taking place only online. It's a live, close-up magic show, which is the one theatrical genre that might be better-suited for Zoom than it is for production inside a theater. At some previous cards-intensive shows inside even small theaters, including those of the late Ricky Jay, I've had a slight sensation that I was too far away to adequately see what was going on.

But "The Present" casts that problem into the past. Only 25 households join "The Present" at any single performance. On Zoom, we not only glimpse our fellow audience members, but we can hear their louder reactions. We can even read their names appearing on the screen as we virtually assemble.

Assuming we use "speaker mode" on Zoom, we get a large image of the unassuming Portuguese-born Helder Guimarães, who performed his legerdemain inside the Geffen itself a year ago, during "Invisible Tango." We see his cards in close-up, as he astonishes us with his sleight of hand.

He also intertwines, among the card tricks, an affecting story about his own childhood experience when he was more or less quarantined after an accident, and how it changed his relationship with the grandfather who monitored his activities when his parents were at work.

The title refers not only to the present moment of COVID-caused quarantine, but also to a package that arrives in the regular US mail at each guest's address, several days before the reserved performance. Without revealing too much, I can say that the contents of this mailed "present" enable us to participate more fully in the onscreen events.

The production also is enabled by the fact that Guimarães is not in Actors' Equity, so the usual union contracts that regulate the use of professional actors at the Geffen aren't a factor. Tickets, now at $125 per household, are selling out almost as soon as they become available, including the most recent batch through August 16.

While the Geffen's previous relationship with Guimarães is paying off big-time right now, "The Present" is hardly a model for how to return the Geffen or any theater company to its regular fare -- actors in plays and musicals.

Theater managers and artists are considering all the options but are stymied by the absence of a clear-cut schedule. At what point do they decide that the next batch of in-theater shows must also be canceled? Perhaps what they need right now isn't a sleight-of-hand artist but a seer.

I must briefly note that the pondering of such questions must unfortunately continue without the expert services and easy affability of two pillars of the LA theater community who died (but not from coronavirus) since the theaters closed in March.

Diane Rodriguez was a vital and endearing administrator and artist. My most vivid recent memory of her was when we walked together from the Music Center to the starting point, near Olvera Street, of "Remote L.A.," a remarkable Center Theatre Group production that used headsets and guides to consider philosophical questions, as the audience strolled (and rode a subway) through downtown LA, in 2017. Rodriguez had discovered the German company that would create "Remote L.A." when she was at a theater event in Santiago - a mark of her combination of an international vision with the determination and ability to employ it for LA-specific art.

Kerry English was a pediatrician by day, but during much of the rest of his time he was attending theater, where we often chatted in lobbies. He not only seemed to see as many productions as I do, but he also served on some of the theaters' boards, helping them navigate through their endemic financial straits. He was an exemplar of the kind of theater devotee that the present moment requires if L.A. theater is to again become "the fabulous invalid" that not only survives but thrives in the post-pandemic world.