The senior rock proffered no advice. It was but one in a long line beneath the arbor. Some were smooth faced like headstones. All were engraved with a year of graduation, and the twisting vines made green shade, until going russet in their season. Ah, the seasons . . .

Grapes and stones were a legacy for The Sisters Of The Presentation. An almost inevitable irony. The seminary for Jesuit priests, Alma College, was just down Bear Creek Road from Montezuma School For Boys. Senior rocks were an institution of briefer duration.

And the moral of the story? It's tempting to think over the implications. Enough to say, I'm thinking of Joseph Campbell's Asian Journal, in which he talks about visiting India, and temples bereft of the spirit that built them. The stones of which they are built, he says, cannot vitiate them.

Now let's consider San Francisco, or Mountain View, or Santa Clara, from a remove. Keep homeless encampments and Oakland side shows in abeyance for a moment. Far enough to metabolize The City, seen as a stack of concrete stones. People living amidst the stacks clash, nothing better to do.

Moving right along to riots and the weather. Where nuclear waste is normal. And we're told one the evening news ~ of a remotely controlled drone strike, a family blown to bits by mistake. Next we're shown a cowering mountain ion, at the edge of his natural range, facing stacks of The City, trapped and darted. And there's a new political punt ~ the pandemic.

It's true. Heard it on the video vine. And had the senior rock proffered anything, I'd have returned it.