V-MAIL
438th AAA AW BN
APO 578 % Postmaster, N.Y.
England
13 May, 1944
Hello darling!
Well I didn’t think I’d get a chance to write today either. Yesterday, dear, I was away all day and so for the first time in some while I couldn’t even get a V-mail off to you. I’m busy as all get-out today too – but I’m taking a few minutes off to jot you and my folks a line. It must sound awfully important, sweetheart. It really isn’t, but the fact is I’ve just been hopping around for the past 36 hours – but I think I’ll be able to write you a regular letter tomorrow. That’s all for now, dear.
Love to the folks – and
Well I didn’t think I’d get a chance to write today either. Yesterday, dear, I was away all day and so for the first time in some while I couldn’t even get a V-mail off to you. I’m busy as all get-out today too – but I’m taking a few minutes off to jot you and my folks a line. It must sound awfully important, sweetheart. It really isn’t, but the fact is I’ve just been hopping around for the past 36 hours – but I think I’ll be able to write you a regular letter tomorrow. That’s all for now, dear.
Love to the folks – and
All my love
Greg
P.S.
I love you!
P.S.
I love you!
* TIDBIT *
about Anne Frank's Tree
about Anne Frank's Tree
On May 13, 1944, only three months before her family was rounded up, Anne wrote in her diary: “Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.” On Feb. 23, 1944, she had written: “Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs. 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... As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be."
Sixty-two years after dying of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne Frank continues to haunt countless readers of her diary, with its youthful exuberance, dry humor and shattering hints of the violence that would sweep away her world. But fewer people know of the soaring chestnut tree that gave comfort to Anne while she and her family hid for more than two years during the German occupation. The tree, in the backyard of the house where Anne hid, gained fame more than a decade ago when it was damaged in 1990 by an underground oil spill and other toxic pollutants. For 17 years, the city government tried to save the tree, spending $200,000 to pump out the polluted water surrounding it, as well as trying other methods to preserve its roots. Nothing worked.
In the ensuing years, fresh ills befell the tree: fungi turned almost half its trunk to white rot, and a moth infestation attacked its crown. The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported in 2006 that botanists had spent months running tests and observing the tree, but their efforts did not improve its condition significantly. When local officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it felled in 2007, a global campaign to save the chestnut, widely known as The Anne Frank Tree, was launched. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court. In 2009, city workmen encased the trunk in a steel support system to prevent it from falling.
However, the steel support failed under rain and gale force winds on Monday, 23 August, 2010. The once mighty tree, diseased and rotted through the trunk, snapped about 3 feet (1 meter) above ground and crashed across several gardens. It damaged several sheds, but nearby buildings — including the Anne Frank House museum — escaped unscathed. No one was injured, a museum spokeswoman said. On 24 August 2010 it was reported that a small side shoot was growing out of the stump below where it broke, and there was hope that it would grow into a new tree.
But before its fall, many clones of the tree had been taken, and a plan developed to plant 11 in the U.S. as well as 150 at a park in Amsterdam. The 11 sites in the U.S. were to be chosen largely because they were places that exhibited “the consequences of intolerance — and that includes racism, discrimination and hatred.” A call went out and 34 applications were received. Three locations were chosen ahead of time:
Here's the planting in Indianapolis:
Here is the dedication at the US Capitol:
Among the other sites are Holocaust centers in
Here is the dedication in Boise:
The remaining sites are:
It turns out the saplings selected for sites in the United States were temporarily caged themselves. When they arrived in the country in December of 2009, the young trees were seized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Because of sicknesses ravaging horse chestnuts in Europe, the trees needed to be in quarantine for three years.
Sixty-two years after dying of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne Frank continues to haunt countless readers of her diary, with its youthful exuberance, dry humor and shattering hints of the violence that would sweep away her world. But fewer people know of the soaring chestnut tree that gave comfort to Anne while she and her family hid for more than two years during the German occupation. The tree, in the backyard of the house where Anne hid, gained fame more than a decade ago when it was damaged in 1990 by an underground oil spill and other toxic pollutants. For 17 years, the city government tried to save the tree, spending $200,000 to pump out the polluted water surrounding it, as well as trying other methods to preserve its roots. Nothing worked.
In the ensuing years, fresh ills befell the tree: fungi turned almost half its trunk to white rot, and a moth infestation attacked its crown. The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported in 2006 that botanists had spent months running tests and observing the tree, but their efforts did not improve its condition significantly. When local officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it felled in 2007, a global campaign to save the chestnut, widely known as The Anne Frank Tree, was launched. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court. In 2009, city workmen encased the trunk in a steel support system to prevent it from falling.
However, the steel support failed under rain and gale force winds on Monday, 23 August, 2010. The once mighty tree, diseased and rotted through the trunk, snapped about 3 feet (1 meter) above ground and crashed across several gardens. It damaged several sheds, but nearby buildings — including the Anne Frank House museum — escaped unscathed. No one was injured, a museum spokeswoman said. On 24 August 2010 it was reported that a small side shoot was growing out of the stump below where it broke, and there was hope that it would grow into a new tree.
But before its fall, many clones of the tree had been taken, and a plan developed to plant 11 in the U.S. as well as 150 at a park in Amsterdam. The 11 sites in the U.S. were to be chosen largely because they were places that exhibited “the consequences of intolerance — and that includes racism, discrimination and hatred.” A call went out and 34 applications were received. Three locations were chosen ahead of time:
* The White House
* The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, where Anne Frank was already honored, and
* The World Trade Center site in New York.
* The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, where Anne Frank was already honored, and
* The World Trade Center site in New York.
Here's the planting in Indianapolis:
Here is the dedication at the US Capitol:
* Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas was chosen because it was there that black students fought for school integration under the guard of 1,200 soldiers in 1957.
Among the other sites are Holocaust centers in
* Seattle
* Farmington Hills, Mich.
* Sonoma State University in California, whose exhibit was created by an Auschwitz survivor who attended school with Anne, and
* Boise, Idaho, (whose statue of Anne was vandalized by a white supremacist group).
* Farmington Hills, Mich.
* Sonoma State University in California, whose exhibit was created by an Auschwitz survivor who attended school with Anne, and
* Boise, Idaho, (whose statue of Anne was vandalized by a white supremacist group).
Here is the dedication in Boise:
The remaining sites are:
* The William J. Clinton Foundation in Little Rock, home of the former president’s library, which was chosen, the Anne Frank Center said, because of Mr. Clinton’s and the foundation’s commitment to social justice.
* Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, which has monuments to liberty; an 11-year-old researching what project she might undertake for her bat mitzvah asked Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, to ask for the sapling.
* The Southern Cayuga Central School District in upstate New York, which based its case on nearby landmarks like Seneca Falls, regarded as the birthplace of the women’s rights movement.
* Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, which has monuments to liberty; an 11-year-old researching what project she might undertake for her bat mitzvah asked Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, to ask for the sapling.
* The Southern Cayuga Central School District in upstate New York, which based its case on nearby landmarks like Seneca Falls, regarded as the birthplace of the women’s rights movement.
It turns out the saplings selected for sites in the United States were temporarily caged themselves. When they arrived in the country in December of 2009, the young trees were seized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Because of sicknesses ravaging horse chestnuts in Europe, the trees needed to be in quarantine for three years.
No comments:
Post a Comment