Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Free to be Trees?

Is the life of a Christmas tree a happy one? Raised on plantations, with all that that implies, they are cut down to satisfy an ancient desire, one long pre-dating any supposed winter births of a manifest god.

Yet it seems to me that if we are to worship trees, or even just respect them, we should do it to the live ones.

It’s a short life and an even shorter afterlife for the ol' Tannenbaum. This is the week Sanitation picks them up, so the trees are piled on the sidewalks now like green tumbleweeds that have been snagged on the curb. However, there is some hope in the after-death. Sanitation recycles them by turning them over to the parks, giving back what we taken from the earth. I take some consolation in that.

And this weekend -- you know you've been waiting all year for this -- Parks & Recreation will be having its annual Mulchfest all around the city, so that gardeners and farmers can get some of that mulch for themselves.

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