Tuesday, July 24, 2018 5:24 AM

A mound of red dirt, several stories tall, is rising at the center of town. It's as if archaeologists, rather than digging through an ancient tel, were constructing a new one, so people millennia from now could learn about us from the junk we left behind. They're going to be building apartments there, hundreds of them in one city block. Our central bus station used to be there. I'd been to it long ago, but only vaguely remember it. Buses still stop on the streets around the fenced-in space. A new bus station is about to open a few kilometers away, out near the train station, along a street with shaggy topiaries on its median strip. I don't think it will have a building at all. And two new train stations have opened in the next town. One is closer to my house than my own town's station. Some day when it's light out and I'm awake, I'll have to wander over there and check it out.