Friday, June 1, 2012: Shade trees, the Second Amendment and east-west highways

Shade the asphalt

Several weeks ago, Camden celebrated Arbor Day and its 17th year as a Tree City USA, honoring the urban canopy provided by the nearly 50 years of planting shade trees along town streets. The Camden Garden Club, the town itself and many residents and donors have contributed these many trees, inspired by the loss of the towns great elms in the mid 70s.

The trees provide many services to the town: green-ness, fresh clean air, beauty, softening of the hard lines of brick and mortar. They add value to the homes on the town streets. But most significantly, and sometimes forgotten, they provide a cooler town in the summer, when they shade dark roofs and asphalt streets, driveways and parking lots, sheltering the dark surfaces that otherwise absorb and radiate the suns heat into the surrounding air. The difference in surrounding air can be as much as 45 degrees F sun on black asphalt versus shade on grass. Try walking along a shady street on a hot day and feel the heat blast when you come to an open treeless area.

We are talking about becoming an even more walkable town than we already are, so it will make sense to work on getting more shade trees into our downtown area and along our streets, especially on the more southerly sides of streets. We can be thinking about where we need them this summer, on the hot days.

Beedy Parker

Camden

In the weekend BDN, May 26-27, Maine Sen. Cynthia Dill of Cape Elizabeth claims a letter-writer lied about her position on firearms ownership. Then Dill makes plenty of false statements, herself.

First, she says she never called Maine gun owners vigilantes and that she supports the Second Amendment. Oddly, everything she says in the letter from that point does, indeed, call Maine gun owners dangerous vigilantes.

Dill claims that special interest groups (read here the NRA) hijack government for their own purposes, and that our legislative priorities should not be widening access to assault rifles designed to rapidly kill people. Those are strange words, coming from a supporter of the Second Amendment.

If that were not enough, Dill speaks of her fear of allowing Mainers to take the law into their own hands during an emergency or carry guns into workplaces or public buildings such as the State House.

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Friday, June 1, 2012: Shade trees, the Second Amendment and east-west highways