(no subject)

[camwyn]

BartPE is a godsend when one of your computers has a hard drive failure. It truly is. Pity I can't get network support to work yet, but it's done a far better job at scandisking that bastard into submission than Windows Recovery Console ever did.

Wonder if I can get it to recognize a USB CD burner. If so, great. If not, I'm calling our consultants and asking for our portable hard drive back so I can schlep the remaining material off this computer and onto a working disk. But BartPE works and is free, and the hard drive wouldn't be any use to me without the work I've been able to do with BartPE, so- am happy.

In other news, they're in the process of decorating the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Am I the only one who finds this wrong? They cut down a tree of immense age every year so it'll temporarily be pretty, then get rid of it somewhere. I'm all for Christmas and Yule symbols, but it seems wrong to hack down a tree that's survived more than any of the guys with chainsaws ever have, just to be pretty for people to gawk at.

Comments

Yule Tree

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

That tree is from a forest that is being logged, believe me. In Finland, trees are regarded as a 'crop' just as much as wheat is, it just takes longer before you can 'harvest' it. The tree is 'worshipped' by thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people who live in a city, but are hopefully reminded of forests by the presence of the tree. There aren't many of these huge tall trees that are cut for Yule trees. Most of them become things like ships' masts or furniture or floors or - paper - . Yule trees are actually a real crop, planned for in advance, with whole fields being planted with trees to be cut for Yule. I remember a 'tree farmer' who packed up the trees and drove down from Canada to Florida - his whole family got a Walt Disney World Florida vacation from his crop of trees. Just my take on things.

Re: Yule Tree

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

yeah, I'm kind of with you. Careful tree farming is okay, as long as you plants as much as you harvest and don't make row-by-row forests that are nearly dead, I don't mind.

We often got to cut our own tree, because there was almost every year a small fir tree at our summer house that was growing somewhere we couldn't let it become too large (near a building, leaning dangerously etc)

Re: Yule Tree

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

Yes. Here, you are required by law to replant logged forests, or apply for re-zoning (which almost no one does). Most forest owners are opting today for 'natural regeneration', which means you leave 15% of the trees standing, to naturally die off, and in the meantime to re-seed the area around them. When the seedlings reach a certain height, they are 'thinned', much as you would 'thin' e.g. rows of carrots. I was horrified by the single-species, row-by-row, forests I saw in Scotland.
We have also gotten our own Yule tree for many years for the same reasons you have!! Ours is always a spruce: the literal translation of the Yule tree from the Finnish is 'Yule Spruce'. The Germans have firs. Scotch pine is making headway in Finland in the cities, primarily because of the EU. Scotch tree farmers come to Finland to sell pine trees!! How's *that* for 'coals to Newcastle'??

Re: Yule Tree

[camwyn]

I've been to tree farms before; my parents and sister and I have cut a tree for the house several years in the past. (These days they buy their trees from the local Jaycees and let the money go to social service programmes.) Here, though... Last year the Rockefeller Center tree was from a backyard in Wayne, New Jersey. Not a farm. It wasn't planted with the intent of being cut down to serve as a symbol; it just grew there, got noticed when it was fifty, and got bought and cut and put up in New York City.

It's one thing for a tree that was planted and cultivated with the intent of being what amounts to the city's Yule symbol to be cut down. It's another entirely for a tree that was just doing what trees do to be taken.

Re: Yule Tree

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

I understand that the city is offered the tree from several different sources...the whole process is very interesting. I hear what you are saying, but I still think that the tree is very carefully selected, by foresters who are hopefully responsible ecologists (all the foresters of my acquaintance, i.e. almost all the men of my acquaintance, ARE ecologically responsible...).