If A Tree Falls ...

Middletown's citizens, residents and shop owners, gather to save their trees.  They have already lost funding for their local library, and now their trees have been cut to make room for more asphalt.  The woman activist is Louise Sukle, publisher and editor of the local paper, a second generation small business owner in Middletown.  See Monday's blog post for commentary.

Don't It Always Seem to Go that You Don't Know What You've Got 'till It's Gone

"... They took all the trees, put them in a tree museum.  And they charge the people a dollar and a half just to seem them ..." -- Joni Mitchell

     So when I heard that my editor, Louise Sukle, performed an act of civil disobedience--chained her tall body to a tree, probably the tree that sits outside her office's picture window, a tree that's been there since the 70's, a tree that across the years becomes a welcome friend, a carbon dioxide exchanger that provides oxygen, a color changing work of art that displays the seasons, a place of birds and squirrels and shade--I said, "What the hell is a "Shade Tree Commission?""

      Middletown's Shade Tree Commission, three people who are in charge of, um, shade, voted 2-to-0 (where was the third member?) to act upon the advise of a tree expert who said the trees were the wrong trees:  those trees just weren't downtown trees.  Maybe the Shade Tree Commission is a branch of the U.S. Forest Service, a government "land management" agency, government institutions that give away mountain tops for coal and forests for lumber.

     So the not downtown trees that have survived downtown Middletown for years and years got the ax.

     This really is a trees for parking lot story.  I did not give you a Joni Mitchell earworm just to haunt you.  From what I've gathered on my own out here on my frozen rock in Calgary, Middletown wants to restructure the downtown to make way for "streetscape improvement."  They want to add more parking to Middletown's downtown shopping district.

     I am not a Middletown native, nor do I live there, but Central Pennsylvania is my Homeland.  I've visited the Press and Journal's office, and had lunch at pretty Alfred's.  I've walked the formerly tree-lined street and thought it lovely.  I've admired Middletown's charms while waiting for the train to take me to NYC.  I think Middletown is one of the last middle-America small town jewels.

      I've also lived in other places, boom towns, Houston and Calgary (Alberta, Canada), over-urbanized, concrete cities that offer plenty of parking.  In Calgary I've watched bulldozers smash thousands of Aspen trees and then name the development "Aspen Woods."  Apparently, they find the idea of Aspens more appealing than the actual trees.  During the worst part of the housing market implosion in Houston, the subdivisions that held value were wooded.  One is called, "The Woodlands,"and it really is wooded and beautiful.  A piece of shade is worth more than money on a one-hundred degree day.  A shade tree is a thing of beauty forever and ever.

     I think we have to look out for shady terms like streetscape, land management, and Shade Tree Commission.  I think towns like Middletown are keepers, with their local businesses and their trees, concrete splitting tree roots and all.  I like the idea of neighbors conversing on a summer's day under the canopy of shade offered by a mature tree.

    I am proud of my friend, my editor, Louise Sukle, for making a stand.  Her activism is no less than that of people like David Suzuki, environmentalists who stand for a cause. Part of freedom is the right to speak truth to power.  Our small towns, with their charms and unique heritage are at risk of turning into an every-other-town.  I'm glad there are concerned citizens in Middletown who aren't afraid to get their back up over an issue that effects their town.  And anyone who knows Louise will agree with me when I say she is a force of nature.