I am (this is going to be a political rant) beside myself at the injustices of this country, this world, and the inequities, and the selfishness. Capitalism: I spit on it. It's just the new brand of feudalism—a few at the top, the rest of us below, getting stomped on.
Not that I, personally, am getting stomped on—but my needs are modest. I managed to get born in an in-between moment when it was looking good for a middle class, when the rich weren't especially filthy. My husband worked a good job, and we managed to save up some.
But what about the various Gens—X, Millennial, Z, Alpha, and now Beta: I see a lot of worrying about their futures. Justifiably, maybe. I don't know how you can actually make a career out of being an "influencer." But some seem to manage it. And hopefully real jobs will stay around.
Though the poor—there's never been a time without destitution. No matter the generation. Capitalism makes it hard to get anywhere. You've got to have serious breaks. Heaven forbid the government could help individuals find a decent life.
Anyway, yeah: tonight I got to thinking about all those billionaires. Careless, uncaring. What CAN they do with all that money? I honestly don't have a clue. How many yachts, helicopters, or private jets, never mind "homes," can one own?
As of March 2026, so Google AI tells me, there are 3,428 billionaires in the world, 989 in the U.S., followed next by China and India. There's a new billionaire every day, apparently. Altogether, these people (481 of whom are women) have a combined wealth of $20.1 trillion.
As Google AI again tells me, "a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) is visually represented as a massive, 100-level-high structure of $100-note pallets covering a football field twice, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty. It is 10,000 stacks of $100 million crates, enough to dwarf a human, making them look like an ant."
A mere billions dollars, meanwhile, "is best visualized as a 34-foot high cube of $100 bills, or in $1 bills would reach 67 miles high . . . and would take 274 years to spend at a rate of $10,000 per day."
And here I'm feeling extravagant for booking a $250-a-night hotel for a week in Berlin in June? (And yeah, it does feel extravagant.)
You can find the top ten industries for billionaires, and the richest individuals in each, here. (Though that article is from two years ago, so who knows what the shake-down is now.)
Meanwhile, I get incensed by footballers and actors and musicians getting paid tens of millions of dollars for their—I want to put "work" in quotation marks, but sure, they are working. It might not be improving the future of humanity, but it's work. And in the case of movie actors and musicians, I eat it up, so what I am complaining about?
I also know actors who make nothing, but who do the work because they love it. I have many musician friends who go out every week and perform at a local venue, with a dedicated coterie of fans, and still they are struggling to make ends meet.
Some actors and musicians and footballers get lucky, and good for them.
But these billionaires? Who seem to be taking over the U.S. government? What are they actually doing?
I don't have a particular point here. Except that the world has shifted dramatically from what I grew up expecting. And I don't like it.
And a big part of me says I should stop listening to/reading the news. Wouldn't that be nice?
I posted this a while back on FB, but I'll post it here too, for posterity. Here's what I wrote on FB:
Almost 18 years ago, I completed my first photo-a-day project (Project 365), which I posted daily on Flickr. Back in December, I started my fifth such project—after a gap of 13 years. Here it is so far, 88 days in. It's simple enough: take a photo every day, and post it, with a bit of explanation of why or what. I find it a fascinating (I guess I'm easily fascinated!) record of the mostly tiny moments that make up my days, my life.
Since then, a couple of weeks have passed. And yes, more pictures!
I'm up to day 107 now—almost a third of the way along. Some days I completely forget to take a picture—days when I'm busy at home, with a work project usually (currently: editing a book about an early woman lawyer)—and then have to find something, anything, in my immediate surroundings to document (a cat, for example; cats are easy targets).
It's strange and lovely to go back, even all the way back to 2008 and the first Project 365, and remember that very moment, where I was, what I was struck by to take that shot. I do sometimes wish I were better at embracing moments without the aid of a photograph. But I'm also glad I have all these photos to remind me of the wealth of my experience.
Here are the photos I've taken the last seven days, complete with their Flickr captions:
Trail closed. But that doesn’t stop us, outlaws that we are. Or judging from the well-defined groove in the grass, others either.
Morning light on shells. This sight made me happy this morning as I started one of two poetry Zooms for today. Sometimes it’s the little things…
New books. I'm not much into shopping (just take a look at my closet)—except when it comes to books. The subtlest recommendation, and I'm off to the internet putting in an order. These books arrived yesterday and today. The one on the bottom was a freebie (two copies, actually): a gorgeous book about the photographer Edward Steichen and his delphiniums, which I was fortunate enough to proofread for the Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, for an upcoming exhibition. The next one up is a book of poetry, by a poet I admire. The one above is Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), writing about the vanishing of his world—recommended by a guest on Ezra Klein's podcast, for its present-day pertinence. I certainly do feel like the world I've always relied on has vanished. Americanah is a novel my SIL said she loved. And I'm not exactly sure where I heard about One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (it's about Gaza), but it sounded important. Winner of prizes, but the very title is so provocative. So yeah: I do shop. Bur pretty much only for books. And groceries. Gotta eat.
Oh Canada. This guy was very calm—though he never took that eye off me as I made my way past on my afternoon walk.
Morro Bay. Spent the day visiting friends in Morro Bay and Cambria. I always enjoy spending time in this corner of the California coast. It feels quieter and more secluded than our own corner. We started our visit with a walk at Cloisters Beach.
Pinnacles High Peaks. Three of us went for an 8.5-mile hike today at Pinnacles National Park. The forecast was for 90-degree heat in the afternoon, so we got going from our house at 6:30, arriving at 7:30. It was delightfully cool as we set out, and although it did grow gradually warmer during the course of the morning (we finished up around 12:30), we were perfectly comfortable. We saw many wildflowers, some chipmunks and squirrels, many turkey vultures (though the condors remained tucked away waiting for afternoon thermals), and the best: a foot-long southwestern pond turtle in a small stream; a beautifully patterned frog, in the same stream; and a western rattlesnake stretched across the trail. Several women were taking a big detour (into the stream) to avoid it, but we figured, what? it's not coiled, it's just enjoying the sun—no problem. So we marched right past it, and sure enough, although it flicked its tongue at us (tasting us), it didn't seem to care one whit. I bet that sun on its long body felt sooooooo good!
Great egret. A frog pond visitor. From the sound of the frogs singing in the evenings, s/he is probably finding plenty to snack on.
Yesterday on FB I ran into a poem by Ross Gay, a sparkle of a man whose writing I enjoy so much.
Sorrow Is Not My Name
—after Gwendolyn Brooks
No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.
—for Walter Aikens
Well, that just got me curious about the epigraph: "after Gwendolyn Brooks." Fortunately, others have gotten curious too, and I quickly found an essay in the Paris Review that unlocks the secret. In it, the author references the poem that Gay was responding to:
To The Young Who Want To Die
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here—through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
I have had less luck learning who Walter Aikens is. A young friend of Gay's, perhaps, who was battling his own sorrows. No telling, and not important—except for the connection that the two of them had (the poem was published in 2011) and hopefully still have.
In a sense, lately, death is all around me—in the continued (eternal) absence of our Milo. No more early morning walk, no more breakfast to be portioned out (kibble + a few spoonfuls of canned food), no more exuberant greeting when we arrive home from running errands, no more afternoon walk, no more tossing of the increasingly vanishing dog toy (his last two, a llama and a red panda, remain rather sadly intact), no more sticks thrown, no more river swims, no more evening meal (which increasingly became whatever he would eat, chiefly roast chicken, and salmon skin when we had salmon for dinner, and freeze-dried duck), no more neck scritches, no more sigh-and-thump as he settled onto his bed by ours. No more forbidden licking of my toes.
But we've got his little shrine—his ashes-containing box, his consolement cards, his pawprint pendants, his fur—to which I've added a calendar I made, for 2012, of his first year, and I rotate the pages every so often. Little Milo flying along a path! Milo standing tall at Sonora Pass! Milo chewing on his chew toys! Milo at SEATAC on his way to his new home! I intend to make a little book from some of the many, many photos I took of him over the years. He was my muse, my joy.
As a friend commented the other day after attending the memorial service for a good friend of hers, "And of course, the unsolved question of what happens to dead people, where are they, where do they go? They seem to suddenly just disappear." Same goes for dogs.
Cats too. We'll be finding out, but hopefully not too soon. That said, I have lost cats—four of them—but only one of those did we "put to sleep." That cat, the empress Tisiphone, I cried buckets over. But that was thirty years ago. The pain has dulled to fond remembrance. (The other three disappeared in the neighborhood. We found the remains of one—the victim of a coyote. I know: we should keep them indoors. I won't argue my case for not doing that here...)
So, the past two days:
On Sunday, my writing group received word that our leader couldn't attend our Monday meeting because her partner was in the hospital, so we were postponing for a week. Yesterday (Monday) evening, she wrote that he had died, at 10:10 p.m. (There is something so poignant about that precise time.) This evening she wrote that we will still meet next week, that "I am in shock but still walking around."
That's the strangeness of it, isn't it? You still walk around. You have to: go to the bathroom, pour a glass of water, make your way to a chair in the sunshine where you cry, eat some food. Somehow, you take yourself to the store and buy groceries (I'd probably go straight to the Ben & Jerry's freezer). You keep going. You just do.
Today, I read on FB of two more deaths: my Antioch U friend Consuelo's kitty Bear Boy, and the longtime companion of the mother of another Antioch friend, Monique. It was moving to me to read their tributes to these important beings in their lives.
Then there's Country Joe McDonald, whose "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" was so pertinent then, and seems just as pertinent now. He died on March 7, age 84.
And today my friend Nina's computer died! She's getting a new, modern, much lighter one, and fortunately she had backed up the more important files. But still: even transitioning to a new laptop requires adjustment. Death is never easy.
But the biggest death these past few days happened just a few hours ago: my Howler friend Sherilyn's father, Ron, who suffered a serious stroke nine years ago, finally slipped to the other side. All these nine years, three of us—Sherilyn, Kim, and I—have met pretty much every morning (travel aside) to spend ninety minutes writing or in other creative pursuits (and pretty much all day on weekends). This evening at 6:06 she texted: "Ron has died. He passed away comfortably in his sleep about 15 minutes ago. Thank you for supporting us."
It's strange how in the chest that simple statement hit me. All these years, Sherilyn has been flying back and forth every week between Burbank, where she and her husband, Grant, live, and Santa Clara, where Ron and her mom, Cindy, live, to take care of him. There were caregivers early on, but then the pandemic hit and caregiving became a two-person gig. Though it was mainly Sherilyn on watch. Grant would come up every so often to help out. It was a small, but twenty-four-hour, operation, keeping Ron going.
And now he's gone.
Just this last week, they signed up with hospice. Ron stopped eating several weeks ago; it was but a matter of time. And hospice seemed to spark Cindy into action, making plans. She announced, for example, that she'll be selling the house and moving back to Hawaii, where she's from. She started going through Ron's shirts. Hospice seemed to provide an opening, a new horizon.
And now he's gone. And the new horizon can swim more clearly into view.
I'm excited for Sherilyn, and for Cindy. Sad too, of course, but Ron really went away with that stroke.
I asked Sherilyn if she'd send a picture of Ron, because I'd never seen one. I had this vague image of a man lying in bed, a big man, an Asian American man, but I didn't really know what he looked like. She sent this:
Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas, 12/2014—a couple of years before the stroke. "We have tons but the fastest search was 'Las Vegas,'" she wrote. "He loved Vegas! Proof he's from Hawaii!"
He looked like a big happy bear of a man. I'm so sorry he spent his last almost ten years living the diminished life he did.
I trust Sherilyn and Cindy won't mind that I featured them here. It's just so strange for the death of someone I never even knew to hit me so hard. But in a way, I've lived with the three of them for nine years now. Their story, what little I know of it, is in my own heart.
And I will finish with something my cousin Kris wrote (on FB), in response to this post:
My feelings on death swing… a pendulum, accepting it as the course of all things. An order, a relief, the completion of the wondrous circle... then the arc unfolds personal emptiness and loss. I sit in sadness. Heavy. The weight makes it hard to breathe. And hard not to. Gradually the feelings file into a stack. Sleep seems to help the stack and breathing. Laughter always helps when it's organic. Best to go outside where the world's bigger. Breathing is easier and you see the light and souls in life...
Thanks to Mr. Trump's war and rising gas prices, I was goosed out of my normal lethargy when it comes to booking airplane tickets, and over the last few days I, yes, booked airplane tickets. In June, to Berlin and Oslo; in August, to Brazil.
It feels good to have that done.
It feels good, too, to have a respite from this benighted country to look forward to.
Not that I'll stop looking at the news, but still. Soon I'll have entirely new universes to explore. Berlin: WWII, the Cold War with its Wall, jazz clubs, walking in the Havelhöhenweg, and more. Oslo: spending time with family and revisiting favorite spots—the Vigeland sculpture park, the Fram polar exploration museum, the new library, the opera house . . . and more! Brazil: São Paulo and then the Pantanal.
Here are a few pictures of the Pantanal. It's a vast wetland I first heard about from a Brazilian fellow traveler in Botswana almost thirty years ago, and it's stuck in my head all this time. Lately, I see more and more stories about its diminishment due to climate change—fires, drought. I am crossing my fingers that this August will be a good season for seeing birds and wildlife—including giant river otters, giant anteaters, jaguars, yacaré caiman, hyacinth macaws, and 650 other bird species.
Humankind is destroying this planet. The government of the country I happen to live in doesn't seem to give a shit. I feel a need to visit the wondrous places while I still can—by which I mean both me, physically, while I can still move around; and while these places still exist, because they won't for long, at this rate.
I am looking forward to my travels. They help me stay buoyed up.
I despair for what the youngest generations will be coming up against. It won't be easy. Even if we have the most innovative, forward-thinking people in charge. Which recent votes have shown isn't particularly likely.
Today's poetry group prompt involved parodying an existing poem. One of the examples was William Carlos William's "This Is Just to Say."
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
and which you were probably saving for breakfast
Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
And here's a representative parody:
Variations on a Theme
Kenneth Koch
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years. The man who asked for it was shabby and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
Our prompter today, Karla, also mentioned that way back when, Garrison Keillor hosted the poet Billy Collins on his Prairie Home Companion, and they had fun with this very same poem. Here is one of the some thirty-four parodies they offered up:
BC: Listen to this poem—
I stand by the window,
Listening to dogs
Barking in the cold rain
That falls like vinegar.
A brown leaf reminds me of my grandmother.
And eating gooseberries in the Piazza Navona
That summer of our first love.
—It's a poem written by a computer!
GK: How can you tell?
BC: By the little sprocket holes on both sides.
(Mind you, this was performed in 2002. But still: AI anyone?)
It (by which I mean WCW's original) is a perfect poem, really. Parody it all you like—you can't defeat it.
But finally, here's a short film about Williams (1883–1963). You really can't help but love him. At least, I can't.
My title is a little tongue in cheek, but not much. Michael Pollan, of course, is an author, starting with Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (1991) and including most famously The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001),The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), and This Is Your Mind on Plants (2021), about psychedelics. As his interests have evolved he's become a philosopher, and lately has been delving into the question of consciousness—as in his brand-new book A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. Because of this book, he's been popping up in interviews, on podcasts and on TV. So I thought I'd feature a few of those here, plus a couple of ancillary references.
Stephen Colbert spoke with Pollan last week:
He was also Terry Gross's guest recently on Fresh Air, and the guest of David Marchese on the New York Times's "The Interview":
In the first video above, Pollan mentions a 1974 essay by Thomas Nagel titled "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which I happily found online, and you too can read it here.
But finally, what really brought me here was the poem by e.e. cummings that Colbert recites in the second video, which a FB friend of mine, Leslie, mentioned in her daily post. She also quotes a different poem of cummings's. So I will end with both those. You're welcome!
