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TREES REMAIN SPEECHLESS
Author, biology teacher, and Webdiarist Joan Maloof on the silence of the elms:
Why do local politicians, tree lovers all, allow yet more forest destruction? Why do humans all claim to love trees, but their actions deny their claim? I think it has to do with fear. When a would-be exploiter of trees stands before a politician and requests, or demands, the right to clear a forest, the politician, out of fear, complies. But we do not fear trees. We do not fear their retaliation.
Trees stand mute despite our betrayal. Perhaps that is one of the reasons we really love them. But if we want to do more than love them, if we want to save them, we must become fearless.
It might help if the trees ended their counter-productive muteness policy and spoke up for themselves. Then again, as Jack Handey reminds us:
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
Further greenish views are available from Florida Cracker.
UPDATE. Mark Steyn:
That’s what I’ve always loathed about them, the way they just stand there giving you the silent arborial treatment. I was about to clearcut 20 acres when to my astonishment they offered to wake me up each morning with a fully choreographed branch-waving rendition of “This Is The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius”. In fall, the golds and reds give it an appealingly psychadelic quality.
I can’t help but recall Eccles (The Goon Show):
“I talk to the trees….that’s why they put me away…”
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 17 at 10:08 AM • permalinkOK, your schools are in trouble when your biology teachers are stealing their material from Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing comics…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 17 at 10:21 AM • permalinkBut don’t get me wrong, I love trees. I plan on surrounding my house with them in the form of a deck. And I haven’t even started talking about the furniture!
Trees are great. I’d love them even more if they didn’t drop leaves all over the yard though. Now that I think about it, if it wasn’t for trees I’d have no use for my chainsaw, ax or woodchipper. More reasons to love trees.Aw, Bob, I’m sure that as long as the jihad is on you’d find a use for the axe and chainsaw.
Drift, I am reminded of other great Eccles moments:
“Eccles, take one of these cannonballs.”
“Awright.” Gulp.
“No, you fool!”And who could forget:
“These are for you! I grew them myself!”
“Ah! A handful of hair!”So, if trees are mute, and you’re teaching them, how do you know that they’re comprehending the material?
The course is graded on attendance only.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 07 17 at 10:55 AM • permalinkPlease forgive “null.”
I know not what I do.
Posted by Bill Spencer on 2006 07 17 at 10:58 AM • permalink#12: I keep picturing those trees in The Wizard of Oz who plucked their own apples and fired away at Dorothy and her cronies. Perhaps after a trying day teaching the trees, Professor Joan just sighs and wipes the apple sauce off her face.
On the subject of apples, my Uncle Otha made the best cider ever swallered in Stanly County, North Carolina. God rest his kind soul.
Another stupid thing about trees is that axe handles are made of wood. They supply the instruments of their own demise. Trees are leftists.
Look for treeish head tilts.
And then trees publish the same thing over and over every year, from every branch ; even as, as Ponge put it, every fall they clean out the library and throw it all away.
Trees are a large part of the TV demographic, along with soap opera women.
rhhardin
These ones do?http://farrer.csu.edu.au/ASGAP/APOL15/sep9914d.html
BTW if a screaming tree falls in the forest and no-one is around to hear does it make a noise?
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 07 17 at 12:07 PM • permalink#7 & #12 What’s the matter, guys, you’ve never heard of the SATrees before? LOOK OUT, TIM! It’s a wattle with a handgun—behind you!
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 07 17 at 12:16 PM • permalink#3 - Yes, and Eccles and Bluebottle and (?) also made noises like unstamped letters to get thrown out of and thus escape their confinement in a large red London postal box. No tree-like muteness for these hardy men. But who was the third man and what was he doing? Was it Neddy Seagoon “needle nodal nooing” or was it the rumble of Major Dennis Bloodnok’s digestive system? I can’t recall.
Ying Tong Iddle I Po
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2006 07 17 at 12:27 PM • permalinkYou okay, Tim? That was a close one.
BTW, is it a cycle of violence when a forestry company re-plants in an area that’s just been logged? And is fire Gaia going genocidal?
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 07 17 at 12:30 PM • permalinkHmmm.
The best thing about trees, something that Ms. Maloof should emulate, is that they don’t talk.
Posted by memomachine on 2006 07 17 at 02:25 PM • permalinkThere is a tree that grows in South Florida - can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called - that is actually parasitic. Whenever one springs up next to a cabbage palm, it will gradually send out tendrils toward the palm that eventually envelope the latter and kill it. There was a very dramatic specimen in a park in South Miami: the tendril had thickened into a branch which looked just like a crooked human arm, and the end of it formed “fingers” which appeared for all the world to be strangling the cabbage palm.
25 paco;
There is a tree that grows in South Florida - can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called - that is actually parasiticErnieG: Paco, that sounds like a strangler fig.
No, no, no. See #15 rhhardin:
Another stupid thing about trees is that axe handles are made of wood. They supply the instruments of their own demise. Trees are leftists.Thye Florida tree is called a Leftoides welfaresuckus
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 17 at 03:57 PM • permalinkI’m pretty sure that if there’s nobody in the forest, the damned trees are talking to each other. Sneaky bastards. My dog hates them.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 07 17 at 04:13 PM • permalinkWhy tell them all your secrets,
Who kissed there long ago;
Whispering grass, the trees don’t need to know.
Don’t you tell it to the breeze,
Coz she will tell the birds and bees
And everyone will know
Because you told the blabbering trees.
Oh yes, you told them once before,
And It is no secret anymore:
I will not have gossip in this jungle!
(as performed by Windsor Davies and Done Estelle in “It Ain’t ‘Alf Hot Mum”)My dog is quiet* and has roots** whenever he can - does that make him a tree??
* Unless you try to come into my property and he doesn’t know you - then he goes off like a cracker and will try and take your leg off - Blue Heeler/kelpie Crosses can be like that - especially since the Razorette was born last year. I don’t know who is more protective - Mrs Razor or the dog. Beats the Crab Apple trees at guarding the house.
Poor bugger is fixed so he is shooting blanks, but he still has a go - what a champ!! Very funny watching the owners of female dogs who don’t know he is fixed.
Anyone who thinks that trees are innocent bystanders in all this is clearly being naive…just ask Sonny Bono
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 07 17 at 11:13 PM • permalink#37 - (as performed by Windsor Davies and Done Estelle in “It Ain’t ‘Alf Hot Mum”)
The greatest pity is the PC killed the reissue of this great show - it’s not going to be released on DVD. It was a hoot.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 07 18 at 01:52 AM • permalink
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Well, only if there is no one in the forest.