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Tree's a Crowd (NY Times)

Op-Ed Sampler


Save a Tree, Don't Plant One

IN case you missed it, Friday was a holiday — National Arbor Day — although in my opinion, calling a day with no white sales, no extended store hours and no Hallmark card and which you celebrate by swinging a pickaxe for half a day a "holiday" is a bit of a stretch. Still, before the weekend is over I will have dutifully planted a shrub in the rocky clay that masquerades as soil on my Hudson Valley property. Or, as my son once put it as he watched me plant a rose bush, "That's not gardening, Dad - that's mining."

Despite my affinity for this quaint tradition, I do wonder if Arbor Day has outlived its relevance, and if 21st-century America wouldn't be better served if the focus shifted from planting a tree to saving one, or a thousand.

[Read the full op-ed]