Reading the news today, I felt called to the beach. Groups of school children were there through Nature Bridge. What a delight to hear them exclaim over rocks, shells, crab holes, and kelp.
I offer photos to energize a response to counteract those who are undermining democracy and trying to overthrow the Constitution.
Yesterday I was at the beach for a five year old’s birthday party. Five children to celebrate a five year old. Each child’s party favor was a kite. In the howling wind, the father patiently put each kite together and each child waited patiently for their turn. Grandson got a green King Cobra kite, which he found thrilling since he loves snakes and the color green.
I’m with the words of Julia Butterfly Hill:
If we take action out of anger, we’re only making more problems in the world. But when you can take action out of love, then miracles can happen.
Bruce Springsteen says it perfectly.
I was at Cavallo Point today looking up at the Golden Gate Bridge, and came across a sign explaining that “a Physical Suicide Deterrent System is being installed along the west and east sides of the Bridge. The potentially life-saving system will rely on horizontal stainless steel nets supported by steel struts connected to the Golden Gate Bridge structure. The net will lie approximately 20 feet below the sidewalk and will extend horizontally approximately 20 feet from the Bridge. The South Approach Viaduct, Fort Point Arch, Suspension Bridge and the North Approach Viaduct will be fitted with this protective barrier. Further protection is being provided by a 12-foot-high picket fence installed atop the concrete bridge railing at the north end of the bridge.”
It was such a beautiful day and I thought how can this be, that anyone feels so hopeless that they have no choice but to jump off this bridge, and yet, money is spent, and people are working to prevent that. May this expense, work, and care give hope.
I’m with these words of Howard Zinn: “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It’s based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness.”
Pope Leo XIV offers hope with his words: “We must seek together how to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges, dialogue, [and is] always open to receive—like this square, with open arms—everyone, all those who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love,”
He says J.D. Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.
May the world shift now from a deranged man led and influenced by those who hate to an open embrace of Compassion, Kindness, and Love.
Yesterday I was at Cavallo Point where I saw a Black-Crowned Heron catch a Monkey Face eel in the rocks. I had no idea of the abundance of sea life there until I watched a video on poke poling in the rocks.
It took some time for the Heron to swallow the eel, so one gull, and then, two, came in to offer help. There was an interesting scuffle but the Heron held on, and eventually gulped down the whole, juicy, eel.
The wonderful poet Stanley Kunitz wrote: You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin …
The same is true of us. We must be careful not to deprive our innate nature of its wild origin.
We’re coming together to bring forth our wildness as we reclaim our rights and fight for what nourishes: parks, libraries, education, art, roads, health care, connection, and a network of support.
Robin Wall Kimmerer:
If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the “Sun” of a human gift economy, the source that constantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love.
In the New York Times, I read an article by Molly Young on Finland topping the World’s Happiness Index. What’s the measure since Bhutan, the country whose Gross National Happiness Index gave rise to the report, has been absent from the list since 2019, when it came in number 95?
After visiting saunas, Young goes to Helsinki’s main library called Oodi which is Finnish for Ode. She writes that the library is “enchanting but it was a piece of signage that took my breath away. At home in Brooklyn, the library is papered with reminders to “Please keep your voice down.” In contradistinction, the signs at Oodi said, “Please let others work in peace!” The two commands are almost — but meaningfully not — synonymous. The Brooklyn version is a plea for self-control. The Finnish version is a request to acknowledge the existence of other people. You see the difference.“
“On the top floor were books, games and sheet music from composers like Edvard Grieg and Yanni. There was a second cafe (more salmon soup, pink-domed princess cakes) and glass jars of fresh flowers at every table. Bucida buceras trees grew indoors. Sunshine pressed gently through curved glass walls. Beyond the walls stood the House of Parliament with its mighty gray facade. The Oodi balcony was designed to rest at precisely the same level as the entrance to the House — “to symbolise democracy and dialogue,” according to a library brochure.“
“Children in stocking feet rolled down a sloping spruce floor as though it were a grassy hill. (Pause to contemplate the farfetchedness of a public library in a major U.S. city that is clean enough for floor-rolling.) Watching them frolic beneath a wavy egg of ceiling I became, once again, very sad. Here was a vision of human flourishing that was simultaneously simple and inconceivable. As a kid in San Francisco, I remember walking into a public library and overhearing a man crack the following joke: “For a homeless shelter, this place sure has a lot of books.”“
“It would be a mistake not to mention that Oodi performed a shelter function, too. There were people with an unusual volume of possessions using the space as a temperature-controlled sleeping enclosure. It was allowed.”
She goes on but I’m struck by how each of us measures our own happiness, and how a country spends its money. Trump wants to increase the defense budget to one trillion dollars for 2026 while cutting programs that benefit the people, and so sadly the happiness index of the U.S. is going down and we’re in 24th place.
There are 25,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. Stretched out end to end they’d reach the moon. We amaze with our circulatory reach.
I keep trying to avoid politics here, but it’s true that protesting works. Slowly perhaps, but it works. There are two this week in my area. Thursday, May 1, and Saturday, May 3rd.
As I read Heather Cox Richardson today, an exercise in meditative strength, I focus on another way to protest. Don’t buy or eat chicken. She states the ways Trump has sold out to corporations and billionaires, but this one seems an easy and safe way to protest as most of us prefer to not get salmonella.
HCR: Those investments in a Trump administration are paying off. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is withdrawing a Biden-era rule requiring poultry companies to keep the levels of salmonella bacteria below a certain level in their meats to prevent illnesses commonly known as food poisoning. When the Biden administration proposed the rule, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explained that salmonella causes 1.35 million infections a year and kills 420 people. The USDA said that about 125,000 of those infections came from chicken and another 43,000 from turkey. Officials estimated that the new rule would reduce salmonella illnesses by 25%.
The National Chicken Council celebrated the Trump administration’s reversal of the rule, saying it would have had “no meaningful impact on public health.” On Friday, Charisma Madarang of Rolling Stone pointed out that the poultry company Pilgrim’s Pride gave $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, making it the largest donor to that effort. Two of the company’s executives, chief executive officer Fabio Sandri and head of the company’s food safety and quality assurance Kendra Waldbusser, serve on the board of the National Chicken Council.
On Sunday, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) began a live-streamed sit-in protest and discussion on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to call attention to the Republicans’ budget bill. Why isn’t this front-page news? Isn’t it more important than Trump’s blue suit?
A true conservative, Bret Stephens writes today: But I doubt the president will fire Hegseth, at least not anytime soon. First, because it would mean Trump admitting that he was wrong and that people like Mitch McConnell, who voted against Hegseth’s confirmation, were right. Second, because Hegseth’s manifest incompetence guarantees his loyalty to the president. Third, because Trump probably enjoys seeing Hegseth like this, hanging by a thread. Fourth, because for Trump no institution of government is sacred, and having a clown like Hegseth atop the Pentagon drives home the message that there’s nothing in America he isn’t willing to trash.
And with that, photos of connection, renewal, and peace.
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