At 8:00 am, Ito’s world fell apart. A tree-trimming crew arrived to take down the pillar that held up Father Sky, or pinned down Mother Earth; Yggdrasil, to Ito, the only firm thing that stood between him and the clattering chaos of the garbage truck. For us humans, the View improved when the crew took down the misplaced, rather dowdy, rather dangerous, too-pretentiously-grand-for-the-yard, double brace of 15-year-old African date palms. Now that the Sweet Gums have grown in so nicely, we won’t miss the unwieldy palms. I can now see Mendenhall Peak, for instance! (Can you?)

Ito is still marveling that the sky hasn’t collapsed on us like the top deck of the Embarcadero Freeway.

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