Pão com Mortadela
People Are Writing Thousands of Emails to Trees
A história é de 2015, mas vale a lida ainda hoje. A cidade de Melbourne criou um endereço de email para cada árvore. A princípio, os emails eram para ser utilizados para a população reportar problemas com as árvores, como galhos caídos, ou raízes expostas, etc.
Acabou que a população começou a enviar mensagens de amor e carinho às suas árvores favoritas:
To: Golden Elm, Tree ID 103714821 May 2015
I’m so sorry you’re going to die soon. It makes me sad when trucks damage your low hanging branches. Are you as tired of all this construction work as we are?
Essa foi enviada por outra árvore, nos EUA:
To: Oak, Tree ID 107054611 February 2015
How y’all? Just sayin how do. My name is Quercus Alba. Y’all can call me Al. I’m about 350 years old and live on a small farm in N.E. Mississippi, USA. I’m about 80 feet tall, with a trunk girth of about 16 feet. I don’t travel much (actually haven’t moved since I was an acorn). I just stand around and provide a perch for local birds and squirrels. Have good day, Al
É tão linda a forma que nossa relação com árvores aparece no nosso cotidiano, como a sumaúma que comoveu Belémno início desse ano.
Adrianne LaFrance, no The Atlantic:
These sorts of initiatives encourage civic engagement and perhaps help with city maintenance, but they also enable people’s relationship with their city to play out at the micro level. Why have a favorite park when you can have a favorite park bench?
The trees I have loved do not have email addresses. But if they did, I might take the time to remark on the lovely crook of one question-mark-shaped branch, and the softness of summer maple leaves dappling four o’clock sunlight onto my desk.
“Dear 1037148,” wrote one admirer to a golden elm in May. “You deserve to be known by more than a number. I love you. Always and forever.”