Tina Sabatini and the building of Stickhenge
Tina's full name was "Tina Sabatini, Carmine Sabatini's only daughter, who gets exactly what she wants exactly when she wants it". It's a long name, but there was no cutting it down for convenience.
When Tina was about ten months old she launched a construction project. She set out to build a perfect isosceles triangle, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet in the center of the lawn fronting our house.
If she was working from blueprints or CAD drawings we never found them, but there was no question the plan preceded the execution.
She assembled sticks of various lengths and widths and began to lay them out, end to end, side by side, starting at each 60 degree angle and working inwards. This made for shorter spans to fill than going from point to point and therefore reduced her risk of error in straying from a straight line.
Each week the lawn mower man and his thuggies would come and mow down the lawn, the plants, most of the young trees, anything with a flower on it, and her skeletal triangle. Each week an hour after they left she would begin to rebuild. As this process continued her time for re-establishing and then adding to the architecture became shorter as she had learned the process up to the point of destruction.
This went on for most of the Spring and Summer months, and I began to photograph the work in progress. Initially the owners of the local one-hour photo store were as close as they could get to being curious about why I was photographing sticks. At the end of the second month the owner looked up at me with very wide eyes and said, "I think your dog is building something." Being as cautious as the next person about making insane statements, I replied, "I think so too."
"What?" She asked.
"'Don't know", I replied.
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By September the form had become firmly established and Tina started the process of decoration. Each point of the triangle was embellished with brightly colored objects. I understand that it is a common belief that color blindness would be a factor to consider, but in this case it didn't apply. She sourced her procurement from local throw-aways: colored packing tape, small toys, food package wrapping...items that could be found in the local neighbors' yards (well, actually often in their garbage) and anything she could take from the house. Once taken from the house and placed on the yard depreciated the value of the component as an indoor object.
As the season progressed the visits from Conan the landscaper became fewer and farther between, as the rate of growth of the grass slowed. This meant less rebuilding and greater progress.
One bright day in autumn she placed the last colored tennis ball on the central point, stood back, surveyed her work and declared the job completed.
She slowly walked to the center of the triangle and gently and carefully positioned herself in a seated posture, staring straight ahead. She sat there, just gazing forward for almost five hours, until the sun set and the light was gone. Then she stood up and left the equilateral space and went into the house for dinner.
The Terminator returned in several days and the front lawn reverted to lawn. She never picked up a stick again.
We've often speculated about what she was doing sitting for those five hours, within her perfect isosceles triangle, made all the more visible by its bright markings and its tape blowing in the wind. Personally I've always believed she was communing with the mother ship for instructions as to how one proceeds on this planet as a dog, but your guess is as good as mine.
Whatever the source she was the brightest, the most clever and the most entertaining companion I've known. She was tenacious, resourceful, proud, loving and dedicated to taking care of everyone who loved her. It was a privilege to have known her.
"Tina Sabatini, Carmine Sabatini's only daughter, who gets exactly what she wants exactly when she wants it"
February 7,1992 ~ May 26th, 2005
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