An Anne Frank tree grows in Seattle
"...From my favorite spot on the floor, I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree..."
So wrote Anne Frank, in "The Diary of a Young Girl," in 1944. And soon, a sapling from the tree she spied from a window in Amsterdam will be growing here.
The arboreal gift is one of 11 saplings taken from the tree to be given to U.S. institutions known for having fought against intolerance; the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center is a local recipient. Due to arrive before the end of the year, Seattle's tree will eventually be placed in Volunteer Park.
At somewhere between 150 to 170 years old, the original horse chestnut suffers from a moth infestation and fungus. The tree stood outside Frank's rear annex, where she and her family hid for two years from the Nazis. When the sapling arrives in Seattle it must be quarantined, ironically, for two years.
A virtual online exhibit of its growth can be followed at the Holocaust Center's site, www.wsherc.org.
Cold times in the Land of the Midnight Sun
This time of year, the average highs in Anchorage, Alaska, barely make it over 30 degrees. But the 50th state's homeless have to contend with more than weather.
According to an Oct. 25 New York Times article, "Homeless Deaths Rise, and Anchorage Copes," which addresses 13 homeless deaths since the spring, Republican mayor Dan Sullivan has set up a task force and staff position to deal with homelessness. But the city has also authorized the police to dismantle encampments -- "with just 12 hours' notice." And a detox and alcohol abuse center has also begun accepting chronic inebriates "who have been taken there essentially by force." A judge can order the person -- who may not have committed a crime -- held for 30 days. Or longer.
While the article never fully answers why homeless people are dying, it does note that "public drunkenness is part of a larger homeless problem that disproportionately affects Native Alaskans, particularly men who have moved in from rural parts of Alaska and lost their way in the city."
And the winter is only bound to get colder.