Belinda the willow seems to be coming down now

[unbelman.livejournal.com]

If you are wanting to pay your respects, it seems the whole tree is on its way down now

Comments

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

So the talk about letting us bring in a non-commercial arborist to evaluate the situation was just a stall tactic.

Once more I'm grateful that I'm a tenant, if that's what landowning requires/produces in a person.

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

That's really annoying of your landlord. :(

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

I don't live on the property in question. My own landlord is actually ethical, so perhaps there's hope for the breed yet! What the heck, when I hit the lottery, I might go for some real estate, and see how long I can hang onto my honesty and cognizance of community responsibility. It'd certainly be a fascinating experiment.

[ellf.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[firepail.livejournal.com]

what has you so convinced that an arborist was not consulted? or that the tree is not a hazard? it has been established that willows are not good urban trees. I don't think it is fair to villianize the landlord for not consulting YOU on your opinion about HIS tree. he is going through great cost to be responsible and remove a hazard from his property.

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SavetheThorndikeWillow/message/13

A commercial "arborist" (tree removal company) advised the landlord as you detailed above. Another neighbor offered to bring in an independent arborist to assess the situation at the shared expense of those who agreed that a neutral opinion would be helpful. The landlord was evasive.

Nobody's questioning the landlord's rights (noun, legal concept). Some question whether his actions are right (adjective, social concept).

[m00n.livejournal.com]

All this talk about private property does not a good community make. The fact in this case (if you read through the comments on the first few posts about this issue) is that the landlord was making quite a bit of effort to be a good neighbor about this, and took meticulous care of this tree until keeping it on his property started to make him a bad neighbor rather than a good one. My sense is that the land owner is only cutting it down as a very last resort and plans to replace it with another tree that is more suitable to the area.

I'd encourage you to go back and read the very thoughtful letter that the landlord wrote to the tenants before going forward with this. It might make you think twice this.

[ron_newman]

Still, there seemed to be an agreement between everyone concerned that the tree wouldn't be cut down until an independent arborist from Boston Tree Preservation could make his own evaluation. I don't know whether that happened or what the result of that was.

[ron_newman]

Thorndike St. willow 'Belinda' comes down (Somerville Journal)

Al Bermani, watching the willow’s branches being cut down by chainsaw, noted there is a spring that starts near the willow, and in colonial times, he said, a brook ran from Thorndike to Alewife Brook.

“They’ll need three trees to suck all that water,” Bermani said, saying the water will be up to his chest in some basements if there isn’t another way found to absorb the water.

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

Glasshouses, stones, etc. Being a tenant is piss easy.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I totally concur. Sometimes being a good neighbor means cutting down the tree even in Somerville.

All gone.

[first-clark.livejournal.com]

Pro or con, the deed is done.

[ellf.livejournal.com]

And in my opinion, that resolves the question of whether the action was "right" in any reasonable person's definition of the word.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

That independent arborist was supposed to have arrived, by your own posting, on the 25th of November. Either the arborist came, or didn't - but it isn't the responsibility of the property owner to chase him down.

By your own admission, you don't know whether that happened or what the result was. probably best to figure that out before you start demonizing the property owner.

160+ People Dead in Mumbai...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

...and the Davis Square Community is naming willow trees.

Good for us.

Could we be anymore self adsorbed?

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

Ah. Sorry, I thought from what you said that you were one of the tenants involved.

As a landlord myself, I know I make difficult decisions that impact my tenants and my neighbors. It sounds like Benoit might be doing his best.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

It is precisely because our system of "ownership" grants absolute rights in some folks and no rights in other folks that this framework could use some very careful reconsidering.

If one starts from the assumption that the earth, nature, etc. belongs to all people equally, and though resources need a structure for division, the right to enjoyment of nature belongs to each and every one of us, one comes to some very different conclusions about what the structure of property law should consist of.

This is, of course, not the structure of property law recognized by the American government. One must always remember, however, that our current way of thinking about property rights is not absolute- it is simply the way we agree to do things in this time and place. Not everyone feels this is the best way to do things.

Please give redcolumbine more credit than to say he/she "doesn't seem to realize" his/her lack of legal rights re: our system of property rights. On the contrary, he/she does realize very deeply the "all or nothing" nature of the system of property rights in our society, and is making a statement that he/she would rather choose to be on the "nothing" side as a matter of principle than own property and participate actively in the system that would condone what has happened here.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

If only the law recognized "community responsibility" as part of our understanding of "ownership"...

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Why is it not possible for the community, through a separate contract, to assume legal responsibility for damage caused by the tree?

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Hm... if a community wants to keep a tree badly enough that members of the community are willing to jointly assume liability for damage and costs caused by the tree's presence, then the law should allow for that. I'd bet there's a way to do that if people were clever enough with how they used the law.

Re: 160+ People Dead in Mumbai...

[ron_newman]

I'm going to throw that one back at you. What should the Davis Square community (or the davis_square community, for that matter) have done about the events in Mumbai?

[n.b. I'm in Columbus, Ohio with my family for the weekend, and therefore have not directly seen or heard anything going on in Somerville for the last two days]

[ron_newman]

Boston Tree Preservation is a company, not a 'society'. Their web site says that one of their services is "Hazardous Tree Evaluations". The main difference between them and Cambridge Lanscaping seems to be that they try to "protect and preserve the urban forest for present and future generations."

If they recommended continued pruning instead of removal, it's unfortunate that the landlord didn't pay attention.

Re: 160+ People Dead in Mumbai...

[maelithil.livejournal.com]

Oh, baaaaw.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

/laugh/

This is completely not my position and you know it. ^_^

[ron_newman]

The only system that works at all, or the only one that works here? How did some of the other 'cultural approaches' that you studied work?