Trees may be extinct like the elephants

I only remember two homes from my childhood in San Jose...faint memories of living in the Evergreen neighborhood, and then years and years of memories in the "Ramblewood" part of town. My parents moved the family into the sparkling new Morrison Homes tract in 1975, and there they stayed until they retired several years back. (The building permit shows a $28,000 valuation, which is about $113,000 in adjusted 2010 dollars and about a quarter of today's house value...I'm sure the nearby San Jose Dump didn't inflate the price at all.)

When I was about six years old my dad came home with a couple redwood tree saplings, and he planted them in the back yard. By the time I was in high school those trees were well over 60 feet high, and I often wonder how they're doing these days.

So now I'm in Downtown Los Angeles, and in a dense, urban setting, every tree counts. I appreciate it when the City of Los Angeles plants more trees in public areas (like in the sidewalk tree well in front of the Los Angeles Theatre Center...photo below), and I appreciate folks who plant trees on private property. It pains me to see mature trees cut like the tree hacked up on Monday.