CSotD: Hope the tree is the only thing that gets cut
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Mark Trail joins in with the Christmas-themed comics with this piece on sustainable Christmas trees, and the website he plugs does have a lot of good information not only on why real trees are an environmentally sound choice but on what to do with it once you get it home. It's a better-than-average industry group site.
It may seem weird that someone who lives in the middle of a forest buys his tree at a lot in town, but even when I lived true-blue country, I only had one time that I went out into the woods and harvested a tree that hadn't been planted for that purpose.
Even out there, you often buy your tree from a local civic group — a youth hockey league, the Boy Scouts, a 4H. Usually, they're from a local farm and, if they are shipped in, it's rarely from very far away.
When I lived in Maine, I bought my trees from my state senator, not to curry favor with him but because he ran a tree farm and had a roadside lot between my office and my house, and the trees he sold had been cut within the past 48 hours or so, which made them last longer, smell better and shed less.
BTW, he's in one of my favorite photos, in which he and Sen. Olympia Snowe engage in a Droll Yankee exchange, which is where two crusty, laconic New Englanders say ridiculous things to each other and whoever cracks up first loses.
The other woman here is, as they say, "from away" and hadn't built up the tolerance required for the sport. I'm convinced that the whole crusty-laconic personna is cultivated over a lifetime for competitive advantage, particularly since the best practitioners don't even begin to hit stride until they're over 60.
The non-farm tree story came one Christmas in Northern New York, when the boys and I came across one of the copy editors from the paper with a stalled car in a parking lot and got her started up again. When I mentioned that we'd been buying rope to go get a tree, she invited us to follow her back to her place in the country and cut one as a thank-you for the rescue.
We trudged out into the snowy woods and I was looking at 6-to-10 footers, but she said that's not how you do it, and eventually picked one out for us that was about 40 feet high, which meant that its top six feet had been above the canopy and got sunlight from all sides. Now, cutting down a big tree like that and lopping off the top sounds environmentally irresponsible, except for this:
She heated her house with wood, so what she was doing was giving us basically the kindling-end of several days' worth of firewood. And nobody needs that much kindling, or, at least, nobody does who should be trusted with a woodstove and a box of matches.
Call it "pre-cycling."
Bah, humbug
Retail salutes the holidays with a grim downer, but, then, being forced to work holidays is a downer to begin with, if you're not working in an industry where being open serves a purpose beyond cha-ching.
If there is a reason to be there, it can actually be kind of fun. I have warm memories of working the holidays in the newsroom, in part because of the informal camaraderie of being the only people in the building, and in part because of the stories that turned up on non-news days.
One Christmas, I stumbled onto to a diner where the husband-and-wife owners had given the staff the day off, expecting a quiet day and got flooded, whereupon a family finished up their meal and began bussing tables, seating diners and basically pitching in for free.
At the other end of the heart-warmingness scale was the rural fire chief's chuckling report on the call that had interrupted Christmas for his crew of volunteers: A fellow who was perhaps celebrating too heartily had decided to burn the wrapping paper, only, after several matches were blown out, moved it out of the wind and next to his house.
The paper burned well, as did the vinyl siding, providing a fire call that no doubt follows the hapless fellow a quarter century later, rural humor and small towns being what they are.
But leave it to corporate HQ to screw up the holidays for no particular gain, and I hope Cooper will take some solace in the fact that at least Grumbel's has to shell out for those gift cards.
For newspapers, whether they gave you an actual turkey or ham or a gift card for the equivalent amount, it was a trade-out. The grocery store got an ad or two in exchange for the goodies, and the annual process was a win-win until corporate decided we should not be giving away free ads.
Which, you will note, were not free. But the turkeys would have spoiled on the way to HQ, and cash doesn't do that.
Corporate was operating on the theory that, if we didn't provide the free ads (which weren't free), the stores would pay cash for them instead.
Corporate operated on a lot of theories, since they were 1,000 miles away and unhampered by knowing how things worked.
Which also gave them the perspective to not address the question "So what's our budget for turkeys or hams or gift certificates?" because, of course, local papers (sorry, we call them "properties") didn't need to spend money on that.
We address staff morale by hanging the motivational posters HQ sent you.
Upon one of which somebody scrawled, "Where the hell are our Christmas hams?"
So, Coop, you may feel a grocery coupon is inadequate compensation for the long hours and lousy pay, but it beats the alternative, unless you have a very naive concept of what that alternative might be, and you weren't hired yesterday, were you?
Sorry, that was a mean question, I know.
We used to get plaques for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc. of service.
Someone started calling them "Slow Learner Trophies."
Now here's your moment of zen:
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