On last night's news I heard
of an engineer named K_ who
invented the microchip and changed
our lives. How the chip now contains
a billion circuits which I still don't get
but what I do perceive is this engineer's
(a man modest in pride, fame and wealth)
achievement of Teilhard de Chardin's vision
of a world that is one organism and a single-
minded mankind.
                                 Also mentioned
were Edison, the Wrights and Ford,
oddly not Einstein, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton,
Hamilton or Jefferson, Christ or Buddha,
or the unknown gatherers and traders
who invented agriculture, money.
8,000 generations and each individual
an experiment gone well or wrong, a chance
to respond with love or grief to the universe's effort
to extinguish us.

Family of weasels, young ones playful.
One reference says they're vicious murderers,
killing for sport. Absurd, I think, in the wild.
Another clarifies they eat ½ their body weight daily,
extremely active, high metabolism, hunt all their caloric needs
before eating. And, like the raccoon, ferocious defenders
of their young.