For the past two years, I have been working as a high school math teacher in Oakland, California. I love my job, and could ask for a better place to work, really. Having two months off during the summer conveniently allows me to build domes for Burning Man folk. If you should happen to send me an e-mail during the school year, there's a good chance that you won't get a response. Not because I don't read the e-mails, but because teaching is HARD! I am getting better at managing my time though.

I am from Louisiana, and am proud to call myself a cajun. I thought I might take this opportunity to clear up a few misconceptions about cajun people. We do not bite the heads off of alligators like in The Waterboy. We do eat alligator on occasion, but the truth is, it's not all that great. New Orleans isn't the only city in Louisiana, and we do not all live there. We don't all have a "cajun" accent. Some of us do, some of us don't. Cajun food is not meant to make you lunge for the nearest glass of water as soon as you take a bite. Making food spicy doesn't make it cajun. If you want to try authentic cajun food, you will have to go to Louisiana to get it.

OK. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I guess I need to explain how this whole geodesic dome thing started. I went to Burning Man for the first time in 1996 and was not fully prepared for the SUN. I had been living in San Francisco for two years and had not seen the sun very much during that time. If you live there or have ever visited, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, we spent all of our days following the shade and waiting for the sun to go down. I explored around a bit and noticed that the people who had domes were able to find shade all the time. What a concept! I decided that I was going to build a dome for our camp the next year. Of course I went straight to my computer when I got home and searched the internet for information on how to make a geodesic dome. There were pages about domes, but none of them gave me the information that I needed. The next day I went to the San Francisco Public Library, and found what I was looking for. While I was in the process of learning how to build my first dome, I started working on a website that would teach other people how to build their own domes. It started out with just a few pages, and gradually escalated to what you see today. This is a completely free website, and will be as long as I can afford it. Thank you for all of the wonderful e-mails that you sent over the years, (I do read all of them) and good luck with your domes!

Tara Landry

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