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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