Conference hydra::dejavu

    
    I'm going to make a ritual sacrifice out of it.....;-)
    

    Re .0 (Mikie?):
          
    Some years ago, my wife and I decided to get an artificial tree.
    We haver a beauty -- Looks nearly real (with lights, etc. on it,
    even more so).
    
    Cost == $125.00
    
    Amortized over a decade, $12.50 per year.
    
    Better than killing real trees, and more cost-effective.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    If one must have a real (as opposed to artificial) evergreen tree for
    the festivities, live trees are a good alternative to slain trees.
    
    They provide the same visual and olfactory stimulus as their dead 
    counterparts and can be replanted afterward.
    
    
    Happy Yule,
    
    kitty

    Thanx Steve,
    
    I just think it's a _little_ strange killing a live entity to celebrate
    a season of birth and happiness. And with all the tree killing going on
    in the world...
    
    Other than smell, I think artifical trees look better. After all, how
    are the forest deities going to get all that great looking tinsel on
    the tree? Magic?

    When I use to live up in Maine...I had some people who were 
    tree farmers as friends. They had a good deal of land and planted
    mostly fir trees that they grew to be your 100% authentic real live
    Christmas Tree. They didn't make large amounts of money out
    of this enterprise...but it seemed a worthy enterprise just
    the same. For every tree they cut down, they planted two.
    
    For myself I never had any problems with celebrating the 
    christmas season with a live tree. Especially with all that
    reindeer meat I have in the freezer downstairs.
    
    -Arthur

Mikie,
I agree I plan to buy a live potted tree and add it to the landscape after
the holiday is over.
Dead trees don't make oxygen,-j

    Re .3 (Kitty):
    
    >If one must have a real (as opposed to artificial) evergreen tree for
    >the festivities, live trees are a good alternative to slain trees.
     
    Good idea -- however, I've talked to nurserymen about it.  If you
    want to go that route, you've got to take a lot of precautions if
    the tree is to survive.  The shock of going from a Winter environment
    to a household one, and then back again, can be too much for a tree.
    Check with a good nurseryman to determine how, given your conditions,
    this can be done.  He or she may be able to come up with a plan
    that will enable you to do this.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
                     

    
    	I would like to wish you all a positive and special holiday
    	season.
    
    	Carla
    

    to all
    
    we had live trees for 4 or 5 years in Connecticut. The only precautions
    we took were to :
    a. keep the temperature as low as possible in that room. It was the
       family room of a raised ranch which helped.
    b. it was a custom to raise and decorate the tree on Christmas Eve.
       SO the tree was in the house for maybe 5 days MAX.
    c. lights on only when you were in the room admiring the tree.
    d. the tree was in a 5 ft diameter aluminum something (like a beer
       tub.) which always had water in it.
    
    I drove by that house last June for the first time in many many moons
    and all those pine trees were taller than the house! go for it.

    A couple of days ago a copy of "Funny Times: The Newspaper That's Fun"
    arrived in my mailbox for unknown reasons -- I presume someone not yet
    revealed has given us a subscription for the holidays.  It consists of
    various selected columns and cartoons, mostly from newspaper
    syndicates.  Anyway the following column appears in it (quoted without
    permission, for "purposes of review" of course ;-)).

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

		    Christmas Trees & Planetary Guilt

				by Stephanie Brush [really! TC]

    My Christmas tree has been barking at me again.  But I guess I should
    start back at the beginning.

    I am basically the perennial winner of the Bleeding-Heart-Sucker-of-
    the-Year Award.  All of my seasonal mail reads essentially like: "Dear
    Miss Resident Occupant Addressee -- Won't you take a moment during this
    holiday season to think about the humpbacked wolverine?"

    So, I do.  Then my checkbook hand starts twitching in a horrifying,
    palsied way.

    Which leads me to why my Christmas tree is unusually animated this
    year.  Because it is, in fact, A-LIVE.  I do not mean that it was "once
    alive" (which is what they usually mean when they say "Live Christmas
    Trees").  My Christmas tree is laughing-and-scratchingly alive now,
    which means that it still has the roots attached, even as it sits in
    the living room.  In about five days, Bob and I are going to take it
    out in the yard and plant it again, because we are too wracked with
    planetary guilt to do otherwise.

    Every year, millions of Americans drag the decomposing corpses of
    once-alive trees out of their living rooms.  I just couldn't stand
    feeling like Tony Perkins in "Psycho" anymore: wrapping the prickly old
    body in a shower curtain, throwing it in the trunk of a Volkswagen,
    sinking the whole thing in a swamp, sweeping up the needles and waiting
    for the police to arrive.

    Plus, I got into the following heavy-duty conversation about Christmas
    trees, with a fellow environmentalist, at a party.  "You're a murdering
    tree-killer," she said festively.  "There aren't enough trees left on
    the planet as it is, and you would kill one just to turn it into a sort
    of designer coat rack for tinsel."

    This was when I realized that the politicization of Christmas trees was
    complete and inevitable.

    "We don't just go and kill a Christmas tree for fun," I said, quite
    abashed.  "We always eat it afterwards."

    You may have noticed that there's been a shift in the world's political
    climate.  Hence, all the famous rock musicians have run out of causes
    to sing about, because there aren't any wars going on worth protesting.
    So what they are doing now, mostly, is musically saving trees.

    It is an indisputable fact that the Amazon Rain Forest is being turned
    into a giant Grand Union, with parking for 700 million.  Jerry Garcia
    of the Grateful Dead was recently quoted as saying, "Somebody needs to
    do something.  It's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us."

    And what can one do, but concur?  If you cut down trees, you're bad. If
    you invite trees (and their baggage) to live in your house, you're
    good.  Although having any conifer you've barely been introduced to in
    your house is a very strange concept, if you ask me: utterly not the
    same as a human house guest.

    Having a living tree -- with the roots still attached -- is like
    sharing quarters with an extremely irritable water buffalo.  The tree
    has more round-the-clock needs than any pet or child.  The tree, and my
    home computer, between them, have about $5,000-worth of climate-control
    devices to share.  The tree needs humidity.  The tree needs
    fertilization.  The tree needs to have great literature read to it.

    The tree weighs 400 pounds.  The tree doesn't actually weigh 400 pounds
    -- the enormous amount of frozen dirt, wrapped in leaking burlap, which
    the tree came equipped with, weighs 399 pounds -- and I have no idea
    how we ever dead-lifted the thing into the house, because I blocked out
    the experience.  I think that what we will probably do is chop a hole
    in the floor when we are done with the tree, so that the roots will
    just grow down naturally.

    I apologize to this tree nearly every day, as it is, that my house
    somehow got in its way.  And the tree kind of sits there and
    photosynthesizes in that superior way that trees have.

    I know that this column is going to cause ideological arguments in
    households all across America, because it already has: My best friend's
    husband told me I was an idiot for refusing to cut down a tree,
    because, he said, "They have farms where they raise these trees
    deliberately to give up their little lives for Santa.  The trees don't
    know any better."

    "They have farms where they raise minks," I said.  "I don't think the
    minks sign up to be fur coats voluntarily."

    Anyway, I have decided to avoid the entire issue next year, and abide
    by the gospel according to Jerry Garcia.  It posits that artificial
    (once know [sic TC] as "fake and yucchy") trees are good, and not only
    "good" but groovy.

    I'll be setting up a fake tree: something pink-and-nylon '50s and
    frilly and about eight inches tall.

    It will be like living with a small transvestite poodle  But, unlike my
    conscience, it will not bark when I'm trying to sleep.

		copyright 1988 Washington Post Writers Group.

    
    If dead Christmas trees were outlawed then only outlaws would have dead
    Christmas trees.

    Probably true, but then, those persons who just have to kill a tree
    will recognize their obsession. <Snicker>

    I'm not sure I understand the issue here.  Is it the destruction
    of "life" of any kind that is being recommended against?  In that
    case, should we refrain from eating veggies, having cut flowers
    as centerpieces, sending greeting cards (made from Wood products,
    you know), etc. etc.??
    
    Or is the issue denuding our forests?  From what I understand, many
    Xmas trees come from Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.  I know NH
    is among the most forested states in the U.S.  In addition, trees
    raised for use at Xmas are a crop, and are replanted every year.
    
    Or is there some sort of religious deference to the killing of trees?
    If that is the case, I certainly respect the rights of persons who
    adhere to that particular religion, although I don't know what/who
    they are.
    
    Jack (Who does not intend to have a Xmas tree, but who has a *LIVE*
    Poinsettia in the *Living* room!  ;')

    Re .13 (Jack):
    
    >I'm not sure I understand the issue here.  Is it the destruction
    >of "life" of any kind that is being recommended against?  In that
    >case, should we refrain from eating veggies, having cut flowers
    >as centerpieces, sending greeting cards (made from Wood products,
    >you know), etc. etc.??
     
    I can't speak for others, but for myself, it's a matter of philosophy
    and aesthetics.  A Christmas Tree is an appropriate festal decoration
    around this time of year, but buying a tree that will be tossed
    out in a few weeks seems a waste.  Also, left alone, it would live
    for many more years.  An artificial has (or can have) the same visual
    appeal without unnecessarily destroying a live tree.  Also,
    financially, it makes far more sense: an artificial tree lasts and
    generally costs no more thanb three times the price of a natural
    one.  Our tree's paid for itself in terms of natural ones, and half
    of this year and all subsequent years will be "free." 
                                                        
    On the absolute right to life: until we can exist without eating
    anything, we will have to eat at least vegetables.
    
    >Or is there some sort of religious deference to the killing of trees?
    
    To some.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    
      Christmas trees are grown on farms set up for specificaly that purpose.
  Most of the trees around here are grown in Canada on huge tree farms
    that replant them every year. 
     If you want one in your house, they smell great, don't think that
    nature will be deprived. 

    Kevin

    I certainly don't think that anyone is a "monster" or anything for
    using a dead tree.  For that matter I'm not sure where I actually
    stand on the issue.  It's not clear to me that the arguments on one
    side outweigh the valid arguments on the other (its a moot point since
    we do not celebrate the holiday within my home).
    
    But taking the side of "no dead trees":
    
    1) There is a serious question as to whether taking a life which will
    not contribute to warmth, shelter or sustenance is a good symbol for
    what the day is supposed to commemorate.
    
    2) The farm-bred issue is somewhat of a red herring.  Those farms exist
    and are maintained at the cost of resources which would otherwise
    plausibly remain in the natural biosphere.  If the farms were not
    producing trees they would either be left wild, or be being used for
    food production which would in turn free other areas now being used
    for food production (including marginal lands which are being destroyed
    for all non-intensively-supported growth).  Fertilizers -- whether
    natural (unlikely) or artificial -- are very costly on the environment.
    Plus whatever is being done to prevent pest damage.
    
    You grow a tree on a farm only at the cost of trees, other plants,
    and animals elsewhere.  The life of *this* tree may mean nothing, but
    what does mean something is the life or lives that never were so that
    this tree could be grown and killed.  Those lives are lost as much
    as if they had been rape-logged from the wild.
    
    						Topher

    Along with the points Topher and Steve made I think my greatest concern
    is that something like a tree is killed for a _celebration_ of
    life--the returning sun. This shows that something in our minds is
    programmed to think that a death is _appropriate_ for a celebration. 
    
    Of course all this goes against the grain of the (quite illusionary)
    American Dream. But what messages to ourselves and our young are we
    perpetuating?
    
    Now the samething is appliable to meat foods and vegies. I can do
    without the turkey and hams. I can even do without the celebration. I
    now find myself reacting against the wave of Christmas adds amd music
    which pervade my environment. Kill! Eat! Consume!
    
    When Willie Nelson comes on the radio singing "White Christmas" I
    salute him with the raised middle finger.
    
    We won't have a tree at my house however we may give small handmade
    gifts to each other. Dec. 25th is just another day for me. I think it's
    a damn shame that many millions feel alienated for feeling different
    about Christmas, and that many millions will be depressed by the
    Christsmas season.
    
    But there is a positive note. I sense the tide turning. Many that I
    know don't celebrate a commerical gift giving Christmas. They have their
    own ways of celebrating, but it isn't Christmas. And to me it feels
    better.
    
    BTW, I'm not the Grinch!
    
    For all those, including our Jewish friends, I say happy holidays.

    
    We will have a real tree in our home this christmas.
    
    We've moved so far away from nature into our own detached worlds
    of plastic trees and manmade shelters.  We choose to forget that 
    death is a part of the experience of life.  Without death there 
    would be no life at all.  Every morsel we eat, every particle that
    we breath is life sacrificed to maintain life.  All of reality is 
    life feeding upon itself, changing and moving in endless patterns
    to create and maintain the atomic illusions of our universe.  
    
    If there is a purpose to life at all, it must be to experience it
    to the fullest.  To enjoy it and partake of it while we are able.
    And when it is over, we are planted in the ground to nourish the
    trees and all of nature comes together in an unending dance while
    life moves through and around and beyond reality.
    
    So there will be a tree in our home this year.  And we will smell
    it and stare at the lights on cold snowy nights, and the new puppy 
    will tug on its branches and the children will sit under it dreaming 
    about christmas morning.  We bring the tree into our homes because
    of tradition and because somewhere deep in my subliminal, primordial
    mind, I've always lived among the trees.  I love the trees.
    After its all over I'll clean up the needles and put it out with the trash.
    
    Sort of a metaphor for all of us really_:-)  We are born and we
    contribute what we can.  We laugh and love and smell and hurt and
    when it is all over, someone will clean up after us and put us out
    in the trash._:-)  
    
    But the experience... ah the experience of it all.
    It will be wonderful.  And we will love and admire and appreciate
    our tree together.  It will be another memory, another of the many
    experiences that make life worth living for any being, sentient
    or otherwise, who manages to manifest itself here.... maybe even
    including the tree itself.
    
    Have a wonderful holiday everyone.  I wish you all the happiness
    in the world.
    
    Mary

    nice nice very nice reply Mary!!! makes me want to RUN out and 
    get my tree.....I think that I will get a LIVE tree like we use
    to for a few years in a row. Then when Christmas is over we can 
    plant it outside. I remember that everytime I looked at our old
    Christmas trees planted out front, it brought back all the sweet
    wonderfully special moments of that Christmas! I think those trees
    liked hanging around our house too, because they grew like weeds!
    
    try it next year.
    
    r.k.

    Mary, your reply is just beautiful.  I've been reading this note with
    interest and dismay because I have had many arguments with myself over
    the issue of whether or not I wanted to get a Christmas tree.  I went
    without a tree for about 20 years but my new husband likes them so we bought
    one a couple of years ago.  This year we talked about it at length and
    finally decided that there are people on this planet in remote areas
    that need to make a living and some of those folks grow Christmas trees.
    True they chose to be where they are and could choose to move to Boston 
    or L.A. or wherever and do something else, but they are raising Christmas 
    trees.  I felt wonderful buying the tree this year, it is beautiful and
    has been grown with great care.  I felt even better when it was decorated 
    and I turned on the lights.  My kitties like it too, they bat the 
    ornaments all over the house!  It seems to me that the decision 
    to have a "dead" tree or a live tree or no tree or a plastic tree is a 
    very personal one.  When I think of all the reasons for me not to get a 
    tree I'm suddenly giving up my books, and all my food, and my house.  So, 
    I have a tree, I'm happy, and I'm past my fear of writing about my feelings 
    in this notes file. 
    
    Pam Rickard, until now just a reader.

    
    My own approach to this is to purchase a wreath made of branches of 
    a tree from a local church 'green' sale.  The wonderful aroma of pine
    still fills my home and the proceeds go to a worthy cause.
    
    Cindy
                            

    Of course, people with fireplaces need not waste a perfectly good
    tree.  While it's green, the tree can cheer you up.  When it's brown,
    it can keep you warm.
    
    --Karen

RE: .22 (Karen)
    
    Sorry, Karen.  This will work if you have a wood-buring stove and for
    a small percentage of modern fireplaces, but for most fireplaces,
    more heat from the room goes up the flue than the fire puts back into
    the room.  There is a net loss of heat from the house from a fire
    in those fireplaces.  It may be cheery and provide *emotional* warmth,
    but in the long run, the furnace will burn more fuel than if the
    fire weren't burnt.
    
    					Topher

    
    Yes, Topher, but those of us up here in the sticks know that wood
    also warms a person when they carry it, cut it, etc....;-)
    
    Guy
    

Had to add my $.02

I've had both types when growing up and both have their
advantages and disadvantages.

One episode of WKRP, Johnny said " and in the spirt of
Christmas I killed a tree for you ", it sort of made
an impression.

But to clear my conscience and to help inform;

Last year I started a small Christmass Tree farm, planted 350 trees.
Next spring I hope to plant 3000 seedlings.
I had a forester walk the land with me and point out all the
dead/dying trees that needed to come down to make room for the
seedlings. A few good trees will have to be removed, but even 
those will be used, nice firewood.  With proper management I think 
I'm helping the environment. Yes, in 8 years I will be killing 
thousands of trees but I intend to replace them all and even increase 
the plantings.

Hope everyone enjoys their tree, whether real or not, and has a 
		
			MERRY CHRISTMAS

later

Ken

All of this has made me wonder, how many people are eating artificial turkeys 
this year? :-)

		Dave

    Re .26 (Dave):
    
    A Perdue Oven-Stuffer roaster is an artificial turkey.  ;-)
              
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    [For those outside the Maine-Washington,D.C. region, Frank Purdue raises
    chickens.  The Oven-Stuffer roaster is a l_a_r_g_e chicken that's as good
    as any turkey.]

    
    re: .26 (Dave)
    
    ho ho ho ! ;-)
    
    Guy

    oh my goodness, even worse -- *live* turkeys....
    
    Estelle

    Well last night I celebrated by decorating my Christmas Tree,
    putting on popcorn strings, flashing lights and bulbs, and 
    the whole works. And Yes This Conference Can Make A Difference
    because I decorated my 4-1/2 foot high *Rubber Plant* instead
    of a using anything than what I had in my own living room.
    
    Kind of like Christmas in Jamaica...
    
    -Arthur

    Well - I cooked my turkey Monday night.  It defrosted prematurely. 
    Anybody want to start on leftovers a little early?
    
    :-)
    
    Nanci

    
    	Nanci,
    
    	"It defrosted prematurely" sums it up so neatly!  I can't stop 
    	laughing!
    
    	Carla
    

    Hello everyone,
    
    After reading all the replies in this note, I thought that it was
    time for someone across the pond to pass on the Christmas greeting.
    
    We have just been handed our turkey and box of cakes, as happens
    every year, and now it's time to wind down.  Tomorrow is a half
    day and we close up about 12.00 pm.
    
    So merry christmas to everyone over there and a very Guid New Year.
    
    Best wishes for '90.
    
    Tracy