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And People Say One's Mind Goes First!

With the kind of certainty that The Trump shows every time he insults someone--that is to say, whenever he talks--I am sure that you have been following the saga of the mesquite tree that tipped over in our backyard.

The tree is gone, now, to its eternal reward, consigned to a monstrous wood chipper at a facility owned by the green-trucked people who own all the trash in the western world.  It will become truckloads of new "soil", tenderly cultivated by road graders and tanker trucks spraying instant decay.

Since the fence around our back yard was destroyed, anyway, the yard has been enlarged into the desert, hillside lot, and for want of a purpose in life, I decided to build a rondavel.  A rondavel is a traditional African building with a thatched roof and a dung floor.  I am taking some artistic liberties with the details.  "Ron-DA-vel" is pronounced something like "rendezvous", with the accent on "DA".  It will have a conical roof.

There is no hidden agenda or deep logic to building a rondavel in Tucson.  I shall be eighty-four--tomorrow--and only God knows what goes through the head of an octogenarian, and Dr. Ben Carson has not yet said what that is:  something about grain storage, I should guess.

The plastic sheathing was finished today, so I put the tools away and took a shower.  Mari was so pleased (not necessarily about the tools).  Tonight--courtesy of Michael--we shall have dinner at a casino steak house and toast mobility that creaks when we move.

Next, I will cover the sheathing with plastic sheeting and wire for the stucco.  Someone else will do the stuccoing.  Had I been more traditional--think dung floor and a thatched roof--I might have done the wattle and mud walls myself, and that is why I did not do it.

You might remember that, prior to the mesquite tree loosing its footing, I had built a hexagon platform abound the base of an orange tree that drank too deeply of Drano in the septic system, intending to create a display of flower pots.  Jao thought it a fine house, so I had put a tarp-on-2X2s to make a house for him.  The tree, in its lunge for the fence, messed that up, too, so now the hexagon has a new site.

No, no, there is no mythical or mystical geometric plot, in all of this.  It just happened.  It would be absurd of me to add a giant globe or an isosceles triangle, wouldn't it?  I am too young for that kind of absurdity.  Old age will bring its problems, I suppose.


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