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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (195287)	7/21/2004 6:01:00 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572171

>Yeah.......have you heard of him before? He's an interesting guy. Nope, can't say I have, but I'm impressed. When I was in school, he had a radio program. Sometimes we'd sit around and listen to the program......because it was odd listening to the radio for something other than music. Essentially, he would talk about all things Minnesota.......inside stuff....Lake Woebegone etc. But behind his oratory and humor was that midwestern sense of being in this life together; that we were meant to help each other out when the going got tough. The same thing he touches on in that article. I am not sure it translates very well to the outside world but then, MN has a somewhat unique cultural and governmental infrastructure. It has a perspective that leads to an outlook very different from other places. The result is a can do attitude with the ultimate goal of making life as good as possible for as many people as possible. One very small example........when I was a kid, they would talk about how the Elm tree disease had pretty much wiped out all of the elm trees in eastern cities. This was in the 70s. The disease was caused by a European beetle. They would show pics of eastern cities with no street trees.........looking really denuded. Meanwhile both Mpls. and St. Paul had incredible elm trees. The trees were very old amd formed a canopy of shade over many of their the streets. I realize now that the trees helped make the two cities attractive. With the beetle moving rapidly west, there was a lot of concern that the twin cities would lose all of their elm trees. Determined not to lose them, the two cities went into action. First, they both established tree nurseries in the exurbs and started growing trees just in case the worst happen. In this scenario, they figured by the time the elm trees were all dead, they would have nearly full grown trees in the nurseries to replace them or ones growing under the dying trees that would shortly take their place. Secondly, they instituted an inspection program where in the fall, each Elm tree in each city would be inspected and if there was any signs of the beetle, the offending limb would be encircled in white and a crew would come, chop it down and grind it up, and then take the chips to be burned. Private citizens also checked the trees and were encouraged to call if they saw evidence of the beatle. In the late eighties, they began to inject a spray into the trees that would kill the beatles but not hurt the trees. And finally, they began to plant small trees under the elms on streets where it looked like the elms would eventually die off. When I say 'they', I don't just mean the city but everyone would participate......neighborhoods would have tree planting parties, corporations would sponsor plantings, private nurseries would donate trees etc. The upshot is that Mpls. saved a lot of its elm trees, and importantly, never went through a period where the streetscape was devoid of tall trees. While its a relatively minor example, its not without its financial benefits........studies have shown that houses on streets with mature street trees command 10-20% more money that ones on streets without. This unique MN spirit permeates a lot of what Keillor says and writes. He's a unique guy in a unusual state. ted