Zebra Crossing

Barley, a dog, trots along an inclined lawn. The street in the background is wet, but is drying in banded striped.

For whatever reason, some of the streets near my parents’ home have narrow grooves in the concrete, running perpendicular to the direction of traffic. It always struck me that effectively giving the neighborhood corduroy streets might not be prudent (seems like the roads would wear more rapidly), but maybe there’s some benefit from the way they channel water and prevent it from pooling. That might explain why, in the hours after it rains, the roads tend to dry in a pattern of blotchy, irregular bands, captured by accident in the photograph that was intended to simply be a shot of Barley trotting along with particular verve.