Anne Frank tree is gone . . .

Storm knocks down tree that cheered Anne Frank
Associated Press Writer Toby Sterling, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 10 mins ago


AMSTERDAM – The monumental chestnut tree that cheered Anne Frank while she was in hiding from the Nazis was toppled by wind and heavy rain on Monday.


The once mighty tree, now diseased and rotted through the trunk, snapped about 3 feet (1 meter) above ground and crashed across several gardens. It damaged a brick wall and several sheds, but nearby buildings — including the Anne Frank House museum — escaped unscathed. No one was injured, a museum spokeswoman said.

"Someone yelled, 'It's falling. The tree is falling,' and then you heard it go down," said museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart. "Luckily no one was hurt."


A global campaign to save the chestnut, widely known as The Anne Frank Tree, was launched in 2007 after city officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it felled. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court.

The 150-year-old tree suffered from fungus and moths that had caused more than half its trunk to rot.

Two years ago city workmen encased the trunk in a steel support system to prevent it from falling, but that failed under windy weather Monday.

The Netherlands' Trees Institute, one of the most prominent supporters of the preservation project, said it was "unpleasantly surprised" by the news of the tree's fall early Monday afternoon.


"On the advice of experts in tree care, it had been calculated that the tree could live several more decades" with the support structure, the institute said in a statement.


"Alas, in the event it seems that nature is stronger."

The institute said it didn't know why the support structure had failed.

Many clones of the tree have been taken, including 11 planted at sites around the United States and 150 at a park in Amsterdam. It is not clear whether a new tree will replace the original one on the same spot, since it rests on property belonging to a neighbor.
The Jewish teenager made several references to the tree in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until her family was arrested in August 1944.


"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind."


She also wrote: "As long as this exists, ... and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies — while this lasts I cannot be unhappy."


Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. Her diary was recovered and published after her death. It has become the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.

A nice mention in a fun blog

Pam Williams mentions Don't You Marry the Mormon Boys in her blog. Click on the link and take a look!

Beloit List for the Class of 2014 Part Two of Three

26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.


28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.


29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.


30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.


31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.


32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.


33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.


34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals.


35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.


36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.


37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”


38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.


39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.


40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.


41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.


42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.


43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.


44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.


45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.


46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.


47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.


48. Someone has always gotten married in space.


49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.


50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.

How to start the day

Honestly, photos like this leave me speechless. It's #3 son and his favorite hobby.

Don't Mess with the Coach, man!

OK - If I get the story right, #47 is trying to protect my son (coach of opposing team, in black) from his charging teammate. Evidently #47 tackled his colleague so hard that the troublemaker's helmet flew off. I just love knowing I raised gentle children who participate in this most gentle of games. Still, this makes me laugh. If you listen carefully, someone is cussing in Finnish, I'm sure.

The Benoit List for the class of 2014 - Section one of three

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.


For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.


1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.


2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.


3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”


4. Al Gore has always been animated.


5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.


6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.


7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.


8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.


9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.


10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.


11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.


12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.


13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.


14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.


15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.


16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.


17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.


18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.


19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.


20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.


21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.


22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.


23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.


24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.


25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.

2014 Incoming Freshmen Mindset c/o Beloit College

Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow.


Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually.


The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.


Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.


Next post: the first 25 items on the list

I always thought that I'd see you again . . .

I've put this off for a long time. Here it goes. James Taylor sums it all up:

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain

I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I'd see you again

When I review and edit my list of email contacts, I realize that several of their owners have died in the past year or so, but I just can't delete their names. I'll tell you about these people and maybe you'll understand why I like to keep them in my address book.

Patrice Moss was beautiful, multi-talented, and full of energy. She was generous and took care of everyone around her. I needed some mothering and she gave it, lovingly. She saw me through some difficult times and I hope I was helpful when she had her own challenges. She mourned for her son who was killed in an auto accident at age 17. Then, about four years later, she was also killed in an auto accident. I like to imagine that the two of them are very happy and busy on the other side, but to do that she had to leave the rest of her family behind, and they are struggling, just as any bereaved family would. I don't believe I've ever known anyone who gave unconditional love the way she did.

Ross Whipple was in our local writers group. He was a World War 11 veteran and a geophysicist ("I study the bowels of the earth," he used to say). He was a gifted writer and when I met him he was writing short stories, some of which I have and treasure. His style reminded me of O'Henry. He never wasted a word and though we chuckled at various points as he read his stories to the group we roared with laughter at the end. He was brilliant with comic twists that seemed to come out of nowhere. Sometimes he'd send a piece to me for feedback but there wasn't much I could say because it usually didn't need any edits at all. But I was honored that he'd ask. It was like going to a sneak preview of a movie. 

One year he took first place in short story in the League of Utah Writers competition. The first place winners traditionally read their piece to the whole audience at the banquet. Ross wasn't there to receive his award so someone else read it in his place. I could tell the reader had not read the story before, and he didn't do justice to it. He didn't even get the phrasing right. He read in a monotone and tripped over familiar words. I winced as I heard it. Basically, he ruined it, and polite clapping was the result, as nobody "got" it. When I read Ross's work I hear his voice, strong and expressive and always with a touch of irony.


We had white elephants at Christmas parties. I went to the local thrift shop and picked up a couple of "bodice ripper" romances. Of all people, 80-something Ross got them. It was hilarious to see his reaction.

When we had parties he also brought painted rocks for everyone. They were flat and averaged about 4 x 4 inches. He painted comical faces on them. We have one that looks like Picasso could have painted it. They make great paperweights and are reminders of a multi-talented man.

Ken Rand - I doubt there are many writers in Utah who haven't heard of Ken. He offered frequent writing workshops and courses. I attended one of his workshops early in my writing career and it basically caused an epiphany. I didn't know what an epiphany was then, but now as I look back, that's what it was. We walked into the room and found yellow legal tablets with our names on them, with the statement: "I am a Writer." When he talked about basic plot elements and how they worked in a story, I squirmed. I had a half-written novel in the works, and I had made every mistake he described. He also ran through a list of other mistakes beginning writers make. I wrote down the list and put a check by nearly every element, thinking of my own writing. He was spot on. I was miserable and I wanted to go home at that point. Just kidding. I was eager to go home and fix it! Ken was so constructive and positive as he presented, we all walked out of there motivated and feeling good.


Ken later edited some of my work and was so helpful. I wrote a story that won an award and was to be published in the organization's magazine. I was absolutely thrilled that it was going to be published. It looks good on a resume (that was rather slim at the time) and I needed that credential. Based on the feedback from the magazine's editor, I made many revisions to meet their expectations, and we exchanged many drafts. I couldn't seem to satisfy them, no matter how I revised the work. When Ken read their feedback, he emailed me. "Who ARE these people? Run, do not walk, away from them!" He was right. Despite my hard work and numerous edits, I realized I was never going to please the editors and my story wouldn't be published. So I growled and grieved a bit and had a little pity party and moved on. What a learning experience.  


Ken's love was science fiction, and he had many fans. He was deeply involved in sci fi writing circles. But I preferred his mainstream fiction, particularly his short stories. He loved the west and created wonderfully quirky characters and seamless plots. He pulled the reader in to the story and I felt that I was standing in the bar, out of range of possible gunshots, watching the whole story play out. I didn't see the end coming. What a surprise - a great surprise. It worked. I love it when a writer can be unpredictable but still true to the story.


One of the books I like to give beginning writers (well, I'm not a mentor at all, but occasionally I meet someone who wants to start writing, and I suggest it immediately)  is Ken's book, The Ten Percent Solution. It helps writers break bad habits they never knew they had. In his workshops he was all about self-editing, and he stressed the concept that every page should ideally touch all of the senses, i.e.,  touch, feel, smell, hearing, etc. I have tried to incorporate that into my writing, with some success.


Ken mentored many writers of all abilities and he was generous with his time. I miss his sense of humor. I miss his energy. I miss being able to ask him a question and get a pithy answer. I miss Ken.


These are people whose email addresses I cannot delete.  I guess reading their names brings wonderful memories to mind. I don't think friendships really end if we keep them in our hearts.

Nashville tribute concert

Sounds like a great night!