Unlike New Albany, "The people of Somerville, Massachusetts really, really care about trees."

In New Albany, tree board meetings are held in the afternoon. The public barely knows, since the city's web site is rarely updated.

New Albany's Tree Board -- statute, staff and board members.

Apathy.

It may suck for trees in New Gahania, but it makes junta campaign financing so very much easier.

In The Mood For Drama? Go To An Urban Tree Hearing, by Cara Giaimo (Atlas Obscura)

The people of Somerville, Massachusetts really, really care about trees.

Sometime last month, the street trees of Somerville, Massachusetts were overtaken by a strange crop. Seemingly overnight, vertical inhabitants of all sorts—sprawling neighborhood giants, slim sidewalk-shaders, even the occasional telephone pole—sprouted identical flyers. In inch-high all-caps, in standard bureaucratic font, the signs carried an ominous message: "NOTICE OF A PUBLIC HEARING," they read, "IN RELATION TO THE REMOVAL OF THIS TREE."

In another city, such an appearance might amount to a death sentence for the trees. It's easy to imagine busy urbanites walking or biking right past these signs, en route to work or the grocery store, thinking "that's too bad"—and then, months later when the chainsaws come, thinking it again.

But this is Somerville, winner of a Tree City USA award at least 17 years running. Such honors do not come without a populace committed to tree preservation. So at 5:30 pm on a balmy Thursday, a good 50 people have stuffed themselves inside the city's Water Department Building to exercise their arboreal rights.

Blue state reflections, and Brazilian appetizers.

Boston has survived visiting Hoosiers ranging from Larry Bird (French Lick) and Woody Harrelson (via Hanover College). It now has slumbered through the presence of a New Albanian delegation -- Mr. and Mrs. Confidential -- which traveled to Beantown last week for the annual family reunion, thanks to my cousin who resides in Concord.

Funny, that; I viewed the North Bridge in Concord, where the farmers gathered to unleash musketry on the redcoats, and there was not a tea bagger in sight.

We stayed at a B & B of sorts, although without the second "B," and it was a fine experience. The lodging is located in Somerville, just across the Charles River from Boston proper, and east of Cambridge. Somerville is a densely populated, multi-ethnic city in transition. It is trying mightily to be green. Public transportation is profuse, and both walking and biking preferred. I've written here previously of Somerville's "buy local" movement, but it isn't the only place we saw it. All around Boston, there is consciousness. It's a liberating thing.

I understand that my experience in the Boston area was too brief for my observations to be universally valid. I also grasp that making comparisons between the vicinity of Harvard and MIT and any locale capable of electing Steve Price and Dan Coffey to city council is a glib and futile gesture; the contrast is self-evident, and speaks all too plainly for itself.

Still, as my Facebook friends already have heard me spout: I now feel what Peter the Great felt, and didn't have to leave the country of my birth to grok it. Quite simply, and I'm sorry if it offends you, my homeland here is immeasurably backward. I persist in believing that this owes to an over-abundance of fundamentalism, and far too little education.

Good beer eases the pain, though. If there's time, I'll write more. For now, it's back to work putting out fires. Many thanks to Jeff for pinch-hitting, and to our diligent cat-sitters.