Murdering Trees
DOT Should Know Better

Friday afternoon, Dec. 5, I was driving down M.L.K. Parkway headed for my place on Commerce Rd. when much to my disbelief there was the tree-grinding excavator mutilating one of my favorite exit ramp trees. There at the corner of Commerce Rd. and the northbound exit ramp this beautiful water oak was being mulched from the top down. That was the last straw of silence for me.

For weeks I watched tree after tree after tree removed from the north side of Loop 10. From Atlanta Highway all the way around past Highway 29, trees were being obliterated.

At first I thought they must taking out some hazardous trees that might pose a danger to vehicular traffic on the road. NO.

About a week later I saw a tree harvester out there cutting off trees and pushing them down through other trees along the highway. They must be widening the road here I thought to myself? NO. Then the excavators with the wood grinders on the end were on the scene, grinding away at the sides of trees, toppling them and mulching tree and stump to the ground. At one point I witnessed an excavator grinder mowing the light vegetation off the bank at the Prince Avenue exit, right down to the soil. Now that's just dumb. The trees were disappearing fast; the beautiful stretch of wooded highway on the north side was losing its dense canopy. I could see lots of buildings from the highway that were once screened by trees.

I didn't like what I was seeing at all. Some trees that were not removed are mortally wounded and will soon become a hazard. Two Japanese maples at the bottom of Chase street exit ramp are now gone. At their mature height of 15-20 feet these trees were like a smile on the corner, not a hazard to anything. Trees have been removed, trees have been wounded and soil has been disturbed. Why?

I needed an answer. I called the Georgia Department of Transportation to voice my dismay and find out why this massive canopy loss was taking place and why they were mulching this beautiful oak at Exit 9. A supervisor agreed to meet me at Exit 9 in five minutes. I was there in three with my camera snapping photos of what was left of the oak I had so admired for the past years. I was concerned they would clear the whole corner; three oaks still remained. They had already done considerable damage to these trees by dumping hot asphalt on the roots and parking asphalt rollers, pavers, loaders and dump trucks up under the trees. The DOT guys were just doing their jobs according to specs.

The trees were being removed because of ice and snow hazard. The project had been on the books for two years they told me. My mind and heart melted for a moment. I asked if they had a certified arborist evaluate the trees to determine which ones should be removed. No. It was the old pull the tape measure and everything on this side gets cut.

I did my best to shed some leaves of information upon them. I explained the benefits of tree canopy to the individual tree, safety in numbers. That is if you remove the trees from the edges of a stand with disregard for structural integrity of the individual tree, you may wind up with more trees falling in the road then if you had cut nothing. The tree canopy works as a whole unit. The canopy diffuses the forces of wind, rain, ice and snow. Each tree plays its part, in a small but important role of the whole tree canopy. Remove trees indiscriminately, and the weaker tree or trees not adjusted to the forces come down. Trees that grow in dense woods have thinner trunks without as much taper. These trees are not used to handling as much force because they grew among other trees, sharing the load. The trees on the edges of the woods are exposed too much greater forces. So their trunks are usually larger to handle the wind, rain, ice and snow. Ripping limbs off a tree is not good for the tree and may cause irreversible damage, which can lead to failure of the system. That means the tree dies and falls in the road.

I'm not opposed to removing trees for the right reason; it's part of what I do to pay the bills. I understand we can't have trees hanging in or falling on the highways and roads. But to just go and chop indiscriminately without taking into consideration the importance of the individual tree is ignorance. If a healthy tree falls due to natural stresses, it's known as an act of god. Insurance covers acts of God. If a dead or hazardous tree falls and there is a claim due to loss, it's known as negligence. DOT is responsible for lots of things, not just the pavement we drive on. A better understanding of the big picture would surely do us all some good.

Mark McConnell
Mark McConnell is an arborist certified by the International Society of Arboriculture.

Christmas
Overheard In Waffle Houses

Hitler only had one testicle... and boy are my arms tired. All the "cool" people are out tonight... I think I'm going home.

Things are getting better... Things are pretty good... Things are really bad. I need a stroke of good luck. I need some help, but man things are getting better every day.

There's a "pretty good" band playing tonight. God wears a baseball cap. I think Santa's elves are evil. I saw them staring at me in the frozen produce section at Kroger's.

It's snowing this Christmas, the kind of non-snow that we read about in Rosicrucian and Theosophist pamphlets, the kind of non-snow you can only see from the other side.

Things are getting better... Things are pretty good... Things are really bad. I need a stroke of good luck. I need some help, but man things are getting better every day.

Man, I couldn't believe it when they told me that Santa is Satan spelled backwards... I just had to GET MYSELF TOGETHER!

But The Homo Security Act will save us this Christmas... God wants to save us from homos, and I'm sure glad I saw God driving down the Atlanta Highway the other day. And no, God doesn't drive an SUV, I swear. It was a Toyota. A red Toyota. And a baseball cap.

God only had one testicle... and boy are my arms tired. All the "cool" people are out tonight... I think I'm going home.

Things are getting better... Things are pretty good... Things are really bad. I need a stroke of good luck. I need some help, but man things are getting better every day.

I need a drink, but I don't drink. Actually that's a lie. The reason I don't drink is because I don't have a mouth. I like Dear Abbey's new daughter from Mars... You know who I mean: Jean Phillips. She has a face that could give Hitler back his lost testicle.

And good advice.

And a red Toyota.

And a baseball cap.

And an evil elf.

Coach, you old evil elf, in 7th grade you made us line up, line up, line up for jock inspection that's no lie, and I saw you beat the shit out of Kevin Mackle because he wasn't part of your jock-boy Nazi goon squad and then you goaded them into beating him up even worse and one of them kicked him so hard in the nuts that he had to have one of his testicles surgically removed... He was so sweet and frail and good-natured... When he came out of the hospital he told me: "The doctor says that the other one is just going to have to work twice as hard!"

Kevin only had one testicle... and boy are my arms tired. It's Christmas time. All the "cool" people are out tonight... I think I'm going home.

Things are getting better... Things are pretty good... Things are really bad. I need a stroke of good luck. I need some help, but man things are getting better every day.

Paul Thomas

Paul Thomas is proprietor of the X-Ray Café downtown.

Institute Index
Law & Order

o Amount of fines a Texas woman faces for selling a vibrator to undercover police: $10,000

o Number of Dallas drug cases overturned because police illegally planted fake cocaine: 80

o Fines faced by a Florida peace volunteer for "breaking sanctions" and going to Iraq: $10,000

o Fines faced by Halliburton Co. for $73 million in Iraq business deals in late 1990s, under sanctions: $0

o Share of private prison market held by Corrections Corporation of America: 49.4 percent

o Approximate number of prisoners mistakenly released by CCA at a Tulsa jail: 12

o Amount spent by CCA to settle shareholder lawsuits, in millions: $120

o Staff turnover rate at a CCA prison in Tennessee: 104.8 percent

Sources on file at the Institute for Southern Studies, P.O. Box 531, Durham, NC 27702. (919) 419-8311. www.southernstudies.org.

Trial Of Saddam
From a Future Transcript

Ahmed Chalabi: Good morning, Mr. Hussein. I am Ahmed Chalabi, chairman of the Iraqi National Congress, President-in-Waiting of the Islamic Republic of Occupied Mesopotamia and special prosecutor in The People of Iraq vs. Hussein.

Saddam Hussein: I know who you are.

AC: Are you Saddam Hussein, most recently to have resided at No. 4 Chicken Run Road, Basement Apt. 1, Ad Dwar, Salahuddin Province?

SH: The one and only!

AC: Very well. As you are aware, you have been charged with a number of serious offenses. Let's begin with your war against Iran, which killed more than a million Iraqis and Iranians between 1980 and 1988 and destroyed our national economy.

SH: Ah, well, I can explain that. I wanted to give up that stupid war as soon as the Iranians began fighting back, but Secretary of State George Schultz kept bugging me about it. He called me up all the time, in the middle of the night - like the whole world is on Washington time, you know? Keep on rockin,' Saddie, he said. Don't be a wuss. You're our strategic bulwark against Iran. I admit it. I was flattered. When the Great Satan tells you he needs you to become his "strategic bulwark," what are you gonna do, say no? Plus President Reagan kept sending me cash and bombs.

AC: Did you use a nerve gas called tabun against the Iranians, in violation of the 1925 Geneva protocol against the use of chemical weapons?

SH: Well, yeah, but Donald Rumsfeld gave me a note.

AC: Why don't we just...

SH: You see, Rumsfeld was Reagan's special Middle East envoy - '83, I think it was - and he came over to visit me at the palace. We celebrated Ramadan together, saw a few shows. We were tight, though you'd never know it to hear the way he talks now! Back then, though, Rummy was my dog. He told me that the president had authorized him to do "whatever's necessary" to help me go all the way to Teheran. The Americans knew that I was gassing those Shiite Iranians like nobody's business, and they loved it! You have to understand, they were still pissed about that hostage thing. That's why they offered me full diplomatic relations. I figured hey, it's a tough neighborhood, what with psycho Israelis bombing my brand-new nuke plant and the Saudis chopping off their princesses' heads down south - I needed a friend; Rummy needed a friend; it worked out.

AC: You gassed 5,000 Kurds at the town of Halabja in 1988?

SH: Actually, that was the Iranians. Hold on... (fumbles through papers)... here it is. Stephen Pelletiere, the main CIA political analyst on Iraq during the 1980s, wrote about this in the New York Times last January. He says yes, Kurds were gassed during one battle between us and Iranian troops, but the CIA "cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds... The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time." Rumsfeld gave me permission for mustard gas.

AC: Still, your soldiers used poison gas! Didn't you realize that you'd gone too far?

SH: The Americans kept telling me I hadn't gone far enough! I told them I wanted to end the war, but Reagan didn't want me to submit to "regime change" - that was Ayatollah Khomeini's main demand to stop the fighting. Reagan had his CIA director Bill Casey ship me zillions of Chilean cluster bombs, but they still didn't stop the Iranians. Some "strategic bulwark," huh? [bitter laughter]

AC: Um, OK. When did you decide to invade Kuwait?

SH: That was a terrible misunderstanding. Look, the other OPEC guys were leaning on me to do something about Kuwait because they were exceeding production limits and driving down prices. They're your problem, they said. I figured, why not kill three birds with one stone - reunite with a province artificially partitioned by the Brits, sate OPEC and stop the Kuwaitis' nasty habit of drilling sideways into our oilfields? But I was a good CIA employee. I would never have done something like that without talking to my bosses in the Bush Administration first.

AC: This would be George H. W. Bush?

SH: Yeah, yeah, the slightly smarter one. Anyway, I had my intelligence people analyze statements coming out of the White House to figure out whether they'd mind if I invaded. On July 24, 1990, a week before we went in, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said, "We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait." On July 31, Representative Lee Hamilton asked Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly, testifying before a House foreign affairs subcommittee, whether it was true that the U.S. would not send troops to defend Kuwait if I invaded. "That is correct," Kelly said. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie - they both told me it was okay to take out Kuwait! Then, when I did, they pretended we'd never talked about it first. It all goes to show, never deal with a middleman. I didn't want to bother President Bush during his August vacation. That's what you get for showing a little consideration. By the way, do you think there's any chance I could get my old job back? Tell Rummy I miss him!

AC: Your honor, I'd like to request an adjournment.

SH: But you haven't asked about my weapons of mass destruction!

Ted Rall

Ted Rall is editor of the new anthology of alternative cartoons, Attitude 2: The New Subversive Social Commentary Cartoonists.