Tree Marking Underground Railroad Cut Down

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=2&u=/ap/20041214/ap_on_re_us/underground_railroad_tree

A 300-year-old sycamore that served as a marker on the Underground Railroad and a meeting place for abolitionists including Frederick Douglass has been cut down after city officials said it was too badly damaged to save.

The remains of "The Liberty Tree" were fed into a chipper Monday despite the efforts of residents who had tried to win National Historic Register status for the tree and build a park and museum around it.

"I am just so disappointed that this tree, an object that referenced, revered, and celebrated runaway slaves and freedom seekers, has to come to this ignoble end," said resident Dwight Miller. "It's a shame."

Brockton Mayor John Yunits said he had to put public safety ahead of sentiment.

Oh well, it was fun well it lasted. As the New World Order of Opression takes hold, there will be more underground railroads and new Liberty Trees to mark them, in Canada and Europe and Mexico and Japan and New Zealand and...

If enough gets into the chipper, it'll overload and break down.

of this facist nation. looking to inhabit other places where it's people came to us for freedom...didn't janis sing "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.."

Come on guys - by the way the title is a joke - if the same tree had been cut down in Georgia all of ya'll would be bitchin' about how we are still rascist and nothing has changed.

I'm only surprised the Yankees didn't turn the tree into souvenirs and sell them on e-Bay.

in any locale.

and nothing *has* changed.

most only last 150...

to keep on "educating" others about that time in history and all proceeds could have gone to education in the form of a scholarship or something. If people are willing to buy ash from Mt. St. Helen or other historical events why not this? Once again they are in a big hurry to tear down history.

Why is it that they send in wood chippers immediately? When a tornado downed most of the old trees on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus college a few years back, I called down to the campus as soon as I could get through to suggest that the make something, anything out of the wood.

I was going to tell them that whatever they made, alumni would buy it, raising money for repairs, maybe some work for citizens of St. Peter, etc. I was told that it was a good idea, but all the trees were already chipped up.

urging Americans to preserve our history...

:puke:

would like to be alive today and enjoying some history, starting with their own.

Nothing lives forever. Sheesh. If the tree was diseased and dying, and its continued presence was only going to spread further arboreal illness, cut it down, feed it into the chipper and PLANT ANOTHER TREE.

Not that difficult an issue, if you ask me. Which, for the record, I note that nobody did. Ask me, that is.

Have a beautiful marker made, with the history of that spot of land. Plant another tree. The spirit isn't gone just because the hardwood is.

I never realized he was that much of a shithead.

He said it on multiple occasions too:

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/reagan%20quotes.htm

"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981

Thanks! :beer:

by enclosing himself in a room with a running car while someone else sat in a room with a couple of those polluting trees.

300 years seems pretty good for a sycamore, to me.

a nice stone monument might be nice, too.

Or would that be arboreal masturbation and therefor prohibited by radical religious law?

MUST have seeds or offspring.

Clones of the tree have been planted in other parts of the suburban Boston town, including at the Brockton Historical Society, Yunits said

That was in my hometown too!

Sometimes a tree's gotta go.

Remember the Charter Oak?

Hit by a storm. Too damaged to save.

When I was a kid there was an oak a block from my hose that was reputed to be over 600 years old. It, too, died in a storm. Lightening hit it (sounded like a nuclear blast to e cuz I was a kid!), split it at the bottom of the main trunk and both halves toppled of their own weight. I remember crying.

A 2,000 pound branch crashed into an adjacent parking lot two weeks ago during a wind storm and three arborists had determined it was rotting from the inside.

Sad, but perhaps understandable under these circumstances. I have to admit that even a good-hearted Yankee like me would be thinking less about Frederick Douglass and more about my hide if it was heading for my windshield.

It toppled over from too many earthquakes and floods and some idiot who tried to poison it. The tree surgeon said the growth rings were a thousand years old. People bought condos on the street for the view of the mighty oak. Now they have a view of the back of a Starbucks.

Bummer...

democracy down the crapper.

My hometown made a ceremonial table out of a centuries-old elm that finally gave up the ghost after being attacked by insects (and a hurricane). They used a section that wasn't too badly rotted, so it's possible to count some of the rings.

I'm glad that they took cuttings (I assume that's what they mean by "clones"). That, or tissue culturing, can ensure the tree's DNA survives. (They're attempting this with "The Golden Spruce", a Canadian landmark that was felled a few years ago ... for reasons quite different from the sycamore, unfortunately.)


http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?021104fa_fact

n/t

another sapling should be planted in-place of that grand old tree - which clearly marked the spirit and the will to be free .... and the compassion of those, who would honor that spirit-wish.