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Friday, September 14, 2012

Irony


It’s probably none of my business, but I wanted to say that I find dead trees a little anti-environmental and not really a good symbol for an “Ecofest” event. They are not eco-friendly.

Greentopia/Ecofest is called “a celebration of all things green”.  It started out as a good idea.  They used the old First National Bank building at 35 State Street. I walk by there every day on my way into and out of work. That space has been empty for quite some time, and I was surprised to see something going on there. They were turning it into the Greentopia/Film Festival Forest Cinema.


First they delivered the “forest” – a stack of wrapped and bound Christmas trees.  Then there were the cinder blocks.  I walked by one evening and heard them planning to make it all look like a forest of trees. The next morning it smelled like a pine forest (or a Christmas tree farm). They took all the cut-down trees and stuck them into the holes in the cinder blocks to make them stand up. They didn't even put them in water like you do with a Christmas tree.

Compare below the artist’s rendering on their website of what it was supposed to look like, and the photos that I took through the lunchroom window at work of how it came out.  It’s not quite the same. They took the dead trees in their cinder block holders and put them in between the columns of the bank building's facade. Trust me - they smell much better than they look. It looks kind-of pathetic from my photos. It also looks as if the trees in the rendering are in pots or planters of some sort. It looks so pretty and clean in the rendering.


I could buy into celebrating all things green if those evergreen trees were still alive and in pots instead of cut down in their beautiful prime.  I am not an environmentalist, but I find it a little disturbing that they are touting ecology and environment, but they killed the trees. Did anyone even price it out to see if they could have used live trees? Perhaps a local nursery could have donated some potted trees.  Oh, wait, this is downtown Rochester.  Anything worth something likely would have been stolen.





It looks much grander in the rendering, doesn't it? I’m sure those evergreen trees would have been happier (certainly a lot less pathetic) if they’d been “recycled” (planted) in a park or someone’s yard after the event.  Not much of a celebration for those green things, is it?


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