More Trees, Please

To The Utah Community Forestry Council/Utah Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture:

We need more trees in order to thrive as a society. As the body responsible for providing arboricultural and improving tree preservation in the state of Utah (UCFC mission statement), you are uniquely positioned to help legislators improve city- and state-wide urban forestry objectives. These should include a more holistic view of the need for trees in urban areas, as well as promote the tree-related benefits that are frequently overlooked. Currently, the importance of nature far exceeds the limited view of most urban forestry objectives.

Trees provide social benefits that are often overlooked.

There are many reasons we need trees,

including social, economic, and health benefits that even today’s advanced technology aren’t able to provide. According to a study done by Yale University, crime rates are inversely related to canopy cover in neighborhoods, and girls with a view of nature and trees at home score higher on tests of self-discipline. Industrialization can provide, at a much higher cost than trees, some of the same ecological services like carbon sequestration, water and air purification, pollutant immobilization, shade, and soil stabilization, but without the public's help, science and technology aren’t powerful enough to keep up with the pace of industrialization.

We can reach these goals by

engaging the public and providing access to incentives. John Chapman (better known as Johnny Appleseed) was the pioneer of this and made his living by planting orchards in a type of sharecropping model. Today, discounts on utilities or taxes could be offered to individuals that plant trees or increase canopy cover on their properties. Industry and technology can be incentivised to further developed to reclaim harvested trees, and even provide services that are only possible because of today’s technology. My peer Kenzie recently made me aware of an organization called Tab for a Cause that will plant a tree for each new subscriber they get. Another non-profit called Ecosia uses ad revenue from their search engine to plant trees. These are models that can be used in many other businesses to reach urban forestry goals, engage the public, and even impact the economy. The outlets available in today’s

Installing a cable in a tree to reduce risk of
failure

information age need to be leveraged in order to access the power of the public and strengthen the industry. Knowledge is a critical component of your mission as well as reaching improved urban forestry goals. Social media pages can be promoted to help the public understand the importance, goals, and incentives of tree preservation. Many people are afraid that their huge, beautiful tree is going to fall on their house. They don’t care that the tree sequesters 50 pounds of CO2, recycles 36,000 gallons of water, and produces 300 pounds of oxygen each year, because they are scared it will fall as soon as there is snow on the branches. These people need to be made aware of qualified professionals that can accurately assess the condition of the tree and provide options other than removing the tree to reduce risk, like cabling and bracing. Unless this information is presented to the public, there will not be enough support from the public to drive demand for the services needed to reach urban forestry goals.

In summary,

trees are essential components of a healthy ecosystem and society, and we need to promote legislature that supports urban forests and funding to educate the public on the benefits of trees, the opportunities for revenue, and the services and incentives that will help us improve our communities with trees.

Serving those who have served by pruning trees at a Veteran's Cemetery.
Healthy and safe trees contribute to a respectful atmosphere at the cemetery.

Sources:

Gilstad-Hayden, Kathryn, et al. "Research note: Greater tree canopy cover is associated with lower rates of both violent and property crime in New Haven, CT." Landscape and Urban Planning 143 (2015): 248-253. Benefits of Trees, Canopy.org. https://canopy.org/tree-info/benefits-of-trees/ Accessed 12 December 2019

Extending an Online Olive Branch Between Digital Demographics

Dear Digital Immigrant,

An Introduction
I realize that I am addressing an audience that may not recognize their own identity, so I will begin by introducing myself: I am a digital native. I was born into technology and can’t remember a world without it. I’m fluent in Adobe Illustrator, thrive on Instagram, and can navigate Google better than the streets of my own hometown.

You, on the other hand, may be a digital immigrant: someone who didn’t grow up with a keyboard at your fingertips. Memes are a foreign dialect to you. The term VSCO girl may not exist in your vocabulary. You probably reminisce about the days where face-to-face interactions exceeded those on FaceTime, and understand how to use an actual, physical map...

I might actually be jealous of that last part. 

Welcome to the Salon

“Where Many Gather, Let Them Enter with Grace”

Salons are more than your weekly pit stop to manage our superficial outward appearances. It’s more than a meet and greet. Once a place of community, perspective and an intersection of the intellect; that had been gathered from all walks of life. An invitation for all, however your acceptance, is only received through the sharing of intellect; a willingness to share.

Gathered together around the table of communal cognition, the English 212 class began the endeavor of the salon. Spanning the realm from the Renaissance to the Reformation. It was a true testament that you do not need to become an expert in all matters of education, however, you must learn the art of learning. Dare to learn. Dare to know just enough about all subjects that when opportunity arises, you might share a gem of knowledge to begin conversation where all are participator friends, elevating all in attendance to a sphere of new thought.

A delicate display of such a discussion, in which I wish to share just a few insights of thought, that were produced under the umbrella topics of the salon.

To begin, and interesting comparison of the the printing press’s effect on humanity. As common knowledge, during the Reformation, the printing press was a revolutionary invention, thus allowing no longer just the elites ability to read and right, but that of the very commoner. Allowing individuals to take oral knowledge, story,etc. to the press, allowing physical dissemination of information that you could personally have. It no longer came from a “chosen” individual or informational gatekeeper. Compared to the Renaissance, travel was the mode for the “printing press”. As travel became the way to go back to the source and find civilizational roots, it became a mode of transferring information. As Europeans began to see new lands, they saw new ways of living. They gathered new forms of plants, societal interaction and new ways of understanding the world around them.

Once Greek oration and collective learning were the basis for ground breaking education. Though, slowly as time progressed, we began moving away from collective learning until the Reformation and one became the mouthpiece; mainly the preacher. As “religion” becomes the center of towns and communal gather, the preacher in a sense became the gatekeeper of understanding. Which today, we see, in society still in part exists; yet through reformation we have greater awareness of individual ability to learn, teach and understand information on our own.

They say we must learn from the past so we might not make the same mistakes. However, I believe we must understand the principles of the past, that we might continue the legacy of innovation. To gather the processes and patterns that brought forth light, life, and the continued cultivation of human intellect. Atmospheres of learning. Once Salons, now found within classrooms, homes, and barbershops. Let us continue to gather in intellect, let us bring home the salon.

Man of the Renaissance

"To be interesting or not to be, that is the question."

An age of discovery, a journey back to the roots of man, and the ideal creation of the “Ideal” individual. Through the span of time there has always been a search for authenticity or the begin; whether it be mans’ begin or a heightened understanding of our own personal roots, that make up the woven foundational tapestry of our ancestral lines. This was the time and age of the Renaissance.

Two great principles struck chord with me that became pivotal to this period of time, while in personal conviction, believe the knowledge gained from these principles could unify mankind crossing all boundaries of race, language and social-economic status: The Dignity of Man and Becoming Well-Rounded.

For what is man? No more worthy of praise due to brutish tenancies that break even the most tender soul. Yet, a creature so divine, able to will into existence the greatest masterpieces ever created, even that of David or Adam and God; pieces that envelop the very emotions not utter able by the tongue of man. This is human, this is mankind. Man is seen in light as an important dual being who has a wondering beauty, yes mortal, but the focus is on the supernal.

As Castiglione implies, along with the voice of the Greeks, the mission of man is to be well-rounded in all things; to develop every aspect of his personality. In so doing, he may benefit others around him with his grace, but if he himself cannot attend such skill, know enough to be able to assist others in critic.

Whether ages old or within the current, the principles of the Renaissance live on. Let us then grasp the rod of knowledge by understanding our divine duality. That we might become interested in being interesting.

A Romantic Industry

Connecting two worlds of individual complexity: a world for the individual and the individual for the world.

"Coalbrookdale by Night" by Philip James de Loutherbourg

The Industrial Revolution was a period of new inventions, new forms of government, and a seeming opposite view from the sentimentality; the Romantic Period embodied.

In Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel Sunset Song, he connects the Romantic Period and the Industrial Revolution through his main characters, Chris and Ewan Tavendale. As Ewan is drafted to go to war against the Germans at the beginning of WW1, Chris is left to maintain the farm and take care of the children. When Ewan returns, Chris laments the loss of her old Ewan, as he has been changed by war. Her sorrow relationship embodies Romanticism, as essentially it is a mode by which people lament a period that was different--when woods had not yet been replaced by factories, and communities were more important than the individual.

Just as Chris no longer recognizes her husband in the soldier that has come home to her, many living in the Industrial Age no longer recognized the places they had once known, due to the new innovations of the Second Industrial revolution--horses and buggies being replaced by automobiles, and a new social environment created through the invention of the telegraph and the telephone.

Romantic ideals held the land as sacred--as something holy to be worshipped; used with care and restraint. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, science seemed to be inexorably diminishing, even undermining the preeminence of nature. The problems of humanity could now be solved by machines, inventions, and people would no longer be slaves to seasons and weather.

For Chis and Ewan, the land was everything, but at the end of the novel, a forest above their farm is cleared for the construction of a new factory, destroying the productivity of the farmland below. As land became less important for monetary means and living, people traded traded enslavement to nature for enslavement to a different master: industry.

Adam Smith was apparently influenced by the Romanticism of his time, as he acknowledges the humanity of the workers in English society. “Great labour,” he says, “either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible … If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous and sometimes fatal, … It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work” (page 46, The Wealth of Nations)

In contrast to the Industrial Age ideal that people might be machines, capable of near-constant work and conforming perfectly to an industrial society, Adam Smith stresses the need for human workers to rest, unwind, and experience a moment of freedom from that great machine of societal structure.

Let’s learn the lessons of these two opposing times and work towards an ideal compromise, where productivity and creative freedom--industrialization and romanticism--are two complementary sides of the same coin.

Authors: Mitchell Bayles, Amelia Oross, Jake Smith, Kaylee Tanner

Faraway New Worlds

“Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment.” -Paul Fussell

Background

Whether we are discussing exploration, travel, or tourism, man has always been fascinated with stories of faraway lands. There is something dreamy about locations outside of what one calls home. Europeans have conquered and explored various parts of North America, as well as Asia, and the tales of these journeys have painted these distant places in both better and worse light.

European’s View of Indigenous People

The late 15th and 16th centuries saw an increase in the desire of Europeans to voyage into the unknown. Infamous explorers like Columbus, Magellan, and De Gama started an era of exploration and wonder for places unknown. The discovery of the “new” continents of the Americas as well as new routes in the Indian and Pacific oceans brought with it great tales of how the people lived in these new places. Europeans enjoyed in fantasizing about the strange and interesting lives lived by these new people. During one of Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific islands, he brought back a native Tahitian prince named Omai to London. The English marveled at what they called the “noble savage” and the customs by which he was chosen as a ruler. But, even though Omai was esteemed as a wonder, the Europeans viewed him as exotic and backwater compared to themselves. The stories shared among Europeans about the native people in the newly discovered lands instilled ideas of awe and wonder toward the unknown cultures, but this awe and wonder was only to be given at a distance.

European's View of Asia

Romanticism is all about extremes of emotion in the human experience. This led to gothic terrors and fantasies about nature. It also brought us a very romanticized view of Asia. The Norton Anthology of Literature observed that, “Pleasurable terror and pleasurable exoticism are kindred experiences, with unreality and strangeness at the root of both.” This collection of beliefs, termed “orientalism,” allowed people in Europe to skew reality about the peoples of Asia and effectively ‘other’ them. This motivated many to write great poetry and make art which made Asia into both a European love affair and also a new ‘noble savage’ that wouldn’t be viewed as human in the same way as a European.

Conclusion

In both the newly discovered worlds of the Renaissance and the rediscovered Orient of the Romantic period, the European’s exotic view of “other” people placed unfamiliar cultures into fantastic, but inferior social spheres. The Europeans would continue to conquer and colonize without feelings of remorse for these “exotic” cultures for the next few centuries. To those living in the Renaissance and Romantic periods, however, these exotic cultures were pieces of beauty worth observing given to them by the world.

-The Humanists