The rough year for trees at Wellesley Town Hall continues, as a big catalpa tree went down over the weekend, presumably with some help from strong winds.
We happened by another big tree mess in July when a sugar maple dropped a giant limb on the air conditioning compressor next to Town Hall.
According to a group dubbed Extinction Rebellion, Town Hall will be part of route planned for a socially distanced funeral parade to call attention to the climate crisis on Oct. 24 between 3-5pm. The group has, ironically, downgraded the environment by planting ugly yard signs in front of Town Hall, some of which have quickly become litter.
Town Meeting votes on a climate crisis article (#12) later this month.
Update 10/16/20: After initial cleanup
That lovely tree was a catalpa. It has long bean-like seed pods and simply gorgeous white flowers in the spring. As children, we would put the flowers as caps on our fingers.
Thanks for sharing this Gig
Finally! I was wondering which tree it was, and was surprised that it was not identified in the post. I grew up in Wellesley, and loved the trees surrounding the Town Hall. I remember that catalpa well.
Bob Brown, claiming to be a journalist commented:
“According to a group dubbed Extinction Rebellion, Town Hall will be part of route planned for a socially distanced funeral parade to call attention to the climate crisis on Oct. 24 between 3-5pm.”
Instead of checking in with freely available sources of information Mr Brown could have pursued this story further and discovered that the “funeral parade” is being organized by Extinction Rebellion AND a diverse coalition of climate activists including many townspeople, students from the High School and Dana Hall School as well as Wellesley College and Babson students.
Extinction Rebellion (https://www.xrmass.org/demands) is an international mobilization for non-violent disobedience against governments’ criminal inaction on climate change and the wider ecological emergency. Wellesley’s government, in the form of the town meeting, will vote this month on a proposal to increase awareness of the deteriorating climate situation and how it affects the town. In our opinion the proposal does not go anything like far enough and makes no mandates that town agencies will need to follow. The proposal does not even characterize the current situation as an emergency or crisis. It is of notice that a similar proposal passed by the town in 2014 has been a spectacular failure in meeting its stated objectives.
Wellesley needs to wake up to the fact that young people now attending school in the town will soon have to face a climate disaster far worse in it’s effects than the current Covid emergency.
By the way Mr Bob Brown your characterization of the yard signs smacks of editorial commentary – not professional journalism!
Thanks for your comments Peter. The website regarding the funeral clearly states that the event is hosted by Extinction Rebellion Boston, as we wrote (minus the Boston). We linked to it so that people could access additional info, like the stuff you mention, if interested.
And regarding editorial commentary, we’re a blog, and do mix in editorial commentary at times with our reporting. I stand by our take that Wellesley suffers from sign pollution.
Does it not occur to you, Mr Brown, that the “bad year for trees at the town hall” just might have something to do with the climate emergency. The drought this summer has dried out and loosened the soil around the roots of this particular tree. How long will you continue to ignore the increasing signs of what is in store for the whole town as nothing bold enough is done to reduce the town’s, the state’s, the country’s carbon footprint.
There are massive trees around Rockridge Pond that are down. I’ve been walking the pond for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like it!
Judy, thanks for mentioning this. I passed along to the Wellesley Trails Committee, and they are taking care of the smaller ones, and passing the info on to the DPW for the big ones. Bob