Sunday Morning III: The Big Tree

Or, is this a big deal?

I was walking down to the Max when I saw this sign.

 

The tree in question is located on school property, and the 1930's era school building is being torn down ( the reason it is being torn down is an entire post in itself, but let's just say that a poorly maintained school building had to go to make way for a shrine "for the children".

Damn tree is beautiful.  I am guessing 100+ feet high and 4-5 feet across the base.  I am betting you that it is 100+ years old.

At first I was kind of enraged.  What kind of people would do such a thing.  Then I started to think about it.  It is really the only honest way to go about the process.  The only way that the society around us can deal with such a thing and stay true to what brought us here.

Here in suburbia, that kind of thing is important.  When you look about you, the place is mostly populated with a ring of low-income apartments and subsidized housing.  Just outside of this first ring is a smattering of what was once high end local gentry housing set in a medium  of 1960's tract homes.  In other words, I live in the close suburbs built post WWII.

The place is getting "gentrified".  Which means the folks with money are coming.  Houses are getting bought for absurd prices.  Remodeling firms are doing just fine.  The 9.9% are on their way and they will require a school adequate to their spawn.  So the first reason the tree has to go is that it doesn't fit the modern progressive idea of "better in the future".

The teachers hated the place too.  Used the old school building as an excuse for the poor performance of the students.  Didn't fit into the requirements of their self esteem that only the best is good enough.  And the best is just barely good enough.  No mentioned of a dumbed down curriculum or cell-phone addiction or just plain crappy teachers to be found everywhere.  It was all the buildings fault.

Nope, I think that the tree had to go as a sacrifice.  Maybe appeasing the god of Abraham is the ticket.  Consider for a moment the tale told in 8th century Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldi. Thor's Oak was cut down to cow the pagans and a church was put up in its place, using the wood of the oak as a building material.  That showed those pesky pagans

Well, I am thinking that this is the same story writ anew.  The purveyors of progress chop down a beautiful old tree and "Display and Repurpose" the wood throughout the new building.  That will show those damned environmentalists and nature-lovers that a tree has no place in a progressive society.