by Jim Harrison in The Shape of the Journey

I went to Tucson and it gave
me a headache. I don’t know how.
Everyone’s a cousin in this world.
I drove down a road of enormous houses
that encompass many toilets. Down hallways,
leaping left or right, you can crap at will.
A mile away a dead Mexican child slept
out in the desert on the wrong side of a mattress.

Jim Harrison is sometimes a satisfying source of insight. He has some clever quips that show he’s trying to avoid resting on the surface of things…

So I was fiddling around with some of the new online home valuation services, like Zillow, and found them disappointingly superficial. Who thinks up these algorithms? Can they be a real reflection of our society? For example, I noticed I could just keep adding bathrooms to increase an estimate of a home’s value. It does not matter how many bedrooms, kitchens etc. are in the house; configure a single-story 1 bedroom, 5 bathroom house and it is worth far more than a two-story 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom house.

Clearly, the more toilets, the better off you are.