What the World Needs Now

I’m on the Baja where I lead an annual writing retreat. I started this column before I headed out of town and am now picking up where I left off, or trying to. It’s not easy. Instead of the wall of my office, from where I’m sitting I have an uninterrupted view of the Pacific. Big breakers focus their might on rearranging the shoreline. Brown pelicans cruise like too cool jazz notes inches above the water. Female grey whales, having calved in Magdalena Bay, cavort and spyhop their way to the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez, the ultimate baby whale nursery. When the time comes to begin the migration north, these cows and their young go last, following the newly pregnant females, and the adult and juvenile bulls. What I want to know is how do they figure all that out? How does any of this work? It’s nearly 6pm here. The songbirds grow silent. The wind picks up slightly, palm fronds clacking in the breeze. The only manmade sound I hear is the tick tick of the fan suspended from the palapa roof. Silhouetted figures begin gathering on the nearby beach in hopes they’ll see the green flash. Others congregate at a volunteer-run greenhouse where Olive Ridley and Leatherback turtle eggs are incubated, safe from two and four-legged predators. Today’s hatchlings will be released after sunset when there are fewer gulls, caracaras, frigatebirds and ravens on the prowl. That something so much bigger than any one of us humans is constantly going on around us is writ large here. I wish we all saw that, stopped believing we’re the something bigger.

But back to what I wanted to say before the Baja interrupted. How about that double dose of comfort food February 2026 served up for us Norte Americanos to enjoy, the Super Bowl and the Olympics! We all got to kick back and enjoy two athletic traditions, reassuring in their familiarity, their reliability. Winners, losers, rules and regulations, some injuries, some disappointing results, but in the end a good time had by all. Overlooking the hype and over-the-top fanfare associated with both, you must admit there’s nothing quite like families and fans gathering to cheer on their favorite teams or favorite individual competitors while dining on beer brats or chicken wings. For me, watching Madison Chock and Evan Bates ice dancing at the Olympics was a valentine in motion. (BTW, dancers, on average, cover the equivalent of three football fields by the time their four-minute routine is over.) What about the thrill, make that relief, as A.J. Barner made a long-awaited Seahawk touchdown! We learned the backstories of these superior athletes who hail from every corner of the globe…and that includes not only

Olympians but also the football players of Panamanian, Colombian, Mexican and Nigerian heritage on the 2026 roster. Seventy percent of NFL players are black. For fans of football, the game mattered more than anything else. As fans of the Olympics, we forgot our differences, we’re all part of the same team cheering for our country, for America.

The one peaceful world nation genie is out of the bottle.
Ellen waterston

When it comes to pageantry the Olympics have their eye-popping opening ceremony, replete with parades and fireworks. The Super Bowl equivalent? The halftime show. Taking the stage this year was Bad Bunny, recent winner of Best Album at the 2026 Grammy awards, the first time a Spanish-language album has won in the 67-year history of the ceremony. At the Super Bowl, the Puerto Rican rapper delivered a 13-minute performance in Spanish that left commentators and journalists scrambling to interpret every detail of the bold, bawdy (enough with the crotch-grab) performance, notably its cultural and political messages. He made one clear. “America the Beautiful” embraces not only Puerto Rico, a commonwealth of the United States, but also the countries and territories that are part of the Americas which Bad Bunny belted out in one long breath.

Seven million residents of the United States speak an Asian language at home. Projections suggest that the U.S. could become the largest Spanish-speaking population by 2050. Where I had dinner last night on the Baja I heard Italian, French, German, English, Swedish and Spanish spoken at tables nearby. The one peaceful world nation genie is out of the bottle. I dearly hope it’s impossible to get it back in.

Valentine’s Day is also a February fixture. We humans should take a page from the grey whales who celebrate it every day. It’s how you discern between grey whales and other whales in the water…the grey whales’ spout erupts in the shape of a heart. As Bad Bunny brazenly reminded us, love is what the world needs more of. Happy Valentine’s Day every day.

This article appears in the Source February 26, 2026.