Jeremy Mora Treestory

heres a tree story...in my hometown, Mesa Arizona there was an orchard of
orange trees in a lot close to a friends house. the orchard used to be
stuffed with mexican immigrants - picking away and loading up a big truck
with oranges... at the time, we were mischeivious little bastards - we would
sneak through the dense orchards and throw oranges at the unsuspecting
workers.....anyway, at the corner of that lot there was an enormous old
tree - huge old tree - it looked over the orchard and the
intersection........we used to hang out under the tree cause in addition to
the abundant shade, it provided something of hiding place for staging our
attacks on the workers there....punk kids causing the ruckus
Fast Forward...a number of years - My friend was now in the military and we
had all grown up a little bit - we'd become a little more considerate of
others i guess. That tree that we hid under had slowly found it self
surrounded by a number of housing developments. The orchards had since been
bulldozed and the ground leveled. The tree stood there looking over an empty
field, a much busier intersection and a bunch of wooden skeletons for brand
new cookie cutter houses... I remember thinking how lonely the tree looked.
So, this sounds a tiny bit sad in itself...i think anyway...but it gets a
bit worse. I would soon discover, and boy was i shocked, that the tree had
no place in the development plan. They cut it down. Can't imagine how old it
was - they just cut it down. In its place now is an entrance to a housing
development - a particularly bland one i might add. To top it all off,
instead of having a huge tree at the entrance they built a 'beautiful'
waterfall on each side of the entrance gate.....a beautiful desert oasis of
an entry.

Atomic Bomb Treestory 1

Click on picture for larger image.
Image from the Peace Musem, Chicago, IL.

Atomic Bomb Treestory 2

Click on picture for larger image.
Image from the Peace Musem, Chicago, IL.

Dogwood and Job

 I was listening to NPR this morning and they had a strange tribute to Dogwood trees. The woman telling the story decided to determine what kind of song Dogwoods sing. Anyway, it quickly turned into comparing the trees to woman and the simple arraignment of the Dogwood making other trees, like a cherry, look like a "tart". As I pondered the ridiculousness of calling trees whores I thought about our need to map ourselves and our cultures onto to nature. The I thought, your projects are more about mapping nature on to us. I think this may be why Darwin is so feared and hated. He proved that we follow natures rules, not the other way around. This is similar to an interpretation of the Book of Job. There, Job, the super-righteous man, suffers heaps of troubles--his whole family dies, he looses all his wealth, he gets boils--and as he's sitting on the road covered in welts and dust his friends try to convince him that he must have done something wrong because God doesnt punish the righteous. Finally, God gives an "answer" to Job's lament by spending many chapters describing the magnificance of his creation: nature. So, Job asks, why do the righteous suffer and God answers, arent waterfalls amazing. A scholar, whose name escapes me, who believes that God is making the point that all the human, Job included, in the story are acting on the assumption that nature should follow the rules of humans, eg fairness and justice. When, in fact, nature follows its own rules: sometimes there's rain in the desert and none on the farm.

by Anne Knafl

Cedar/Live Oak

These pictures are from St. Francisville LA of a big cedar grown completely around a small live-oak, so only a few of the lesser's branches poke out.  The tortoise is catching up to the hare though. The cedar wood is cracking and splitting quite a lot- with patches of oak bark showing through.  It makes for a very strange tree.
Chris and Marine.

Elf Tree

Minneapolis has hundreds, perhaps thousands of trees. Beside Lake Harriet,though, there is a very special tree, a tree where three special creatures live...three ELVES. This tree has a beautiful, small door, like the door of an old castle, where children and adults of all ages, after opening the door, leave their letters to the elves inside, hoping for a reply.

Believe it or not, each letter gets a reply that people can come back and pickup later! What is most beautiful about this tree in particular is that, everyday, children walking around the lake with their parents stop by to drop off their letters to an elf, or to retrieve a reply. Another beautiful thing is that people of all ages come on occasion to help improve the area around the tree to make it more pleasant. This tree is a good example of how the simplest things are definitely the most beautiful things in life.

So, in a little story about trees and children, we are forced to believe, to believe strongly, that it is possible to change many things for the better. We may, then, also believe in a better tomorrow, with more trees...and more happy children.

Rodrigo

boat branches

just happened to look out the window as i walked to the front desk and saw
a car hauling a metal row boat filled over the top with tree branches..very
creative...using a boat as a trailer...like a giant bucket! was heading to
the compost site!

Out East

Here are some trees for you from my trip out East.  
The big fat ones are in Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn - I liked their fleshy quality.
[Beech?  Burl elm?]  The other one with me in it is in Soho, NYC.
Yuichiro claims that it was planted in the 60s or 70s by Fluxus headman
George Machiunas.  Cannot confirm that.
-David-

The Great Banyan Tree

As a young child I had visited this place called the Great Banyan Tree. We would make field trips from my school to this site where there was a huge banyan tree. The prop roots from this tree would hang almost to the ground. Myself and with other kids would hang on to the young prop roots and swing. We would climb on some branches and sit chatting, making jokes, and having fun. This tree provided a lot of shade, and was an ideal place for picnics. The tree covered about half an acre of land. It was an ideal place to play hide and seek. There were couple of times, I went with our family and played with my cousins. I have good memories of this. Recently when I went to India with my husband and children, we were in this neighborhood of the Banyan tree. Because of my own experience at this site, I thought this would be a nice place for my kids to play.

So we drove to that area, even though we didn't have enough time to be there, we stopped to take a quick look. I was greatly disappointed with what I saw. The tree was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The wires were so close to the tree, it looked like the tree didn't have enough room to breathe. There was a small entrance and a watch man was there who was not friendly. Bluntly he said no one is allowed inside. As I looked through the fence I could see the tree was coated with dust. It looked uninhabited. My children could not understand why I was giving such importance to this tree, even though I had good memories of it. I wish I had not brought them there. I felt like all of my sweet memories of this place were erased. We went home greatly disappointed.