The development application sign had been up for a while. Now that it's down, I can't remember what it was proposing, but it was something more than the two or three houses that covered what is now a large square patch at the NE corner of Knight and 15th Avenue.
The demolition was a month ago, and happened quickly, as is often the case when adult trees are involved. People rightly get nervous when trees are felled, even those planted in places incompatible with a tree's needs. I felt the discomfort of those trees every time I walked past them.
This picture was taken on my walk home from my dentist's on Wednesday, shortly after taking a picture of the new bookstore at 12th and Commercial (see yesterday's post), and a book from a cupboard-sized free book dispensary west of Commercial, on 13th.
The book is After the Plague (2001), a story collection by T.C. Boyle, and its first story, "Termination Dust", is Boyle at his masculine best. And by "best" here I am mean what Boyle does well, and that is criminal masculinity.
No coincidence that to make this masculinity plausible it needs to be set in a landscape where it is not uncommon. The masculinity that overtakes Boyle's Drop City (2003) communistas has them ending up in Alaska, where "Termination Dust" is set.
Could it be that "Termination Dust" began as an eddy in the Drop City manuscript? I'll read one more story before deciding whether to return the book to its dispensary. And if I do return it, maybe I'll take a better picture of that oddly walled-off portable, because I really do have something to say about it.
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