Humans for the Axiological Custody of Trees - Press Release
Beirdd

Tue Jan 23 19:00:43 2001
Humans for the Axiological Custody of Trees*p*This is a call to all Druids and others who care more for the environment than for their very selves and children, and who would rather die than live in a world wherein cruelty runs rampant.*p*Humans for the Axiological Custody of Trees (HACT) has been created to fight the hatred directed at our oldest and, indeed, slowest moving brothers and sisters -- the noble trees. These scions of the natural world have stood as silent witnesses of the ages, sheltering the creatures of the primeval forest from the deadly ultraviolet rays that threatened their very evolution. Our own ancestors, the tree shrews, skittered safely through their paterno-maternal branches for thousands of years, enjoying the shade and the taste of an occasional borer. How sad it is that those simple proto-simian symbionts have grown to use their opposable thumbs, not for nit-picking, but for trunk ripping!*p*Saving the redwoods is a worthy endeavor, yet it is the work of plywood penthouse dwellers who are repaid in lucrative book and film deals much more than what they spend on cold, hard aerial nights slathered in pain cream, let alone on recycled toilet paper. HACT has decided to cut to the very pith of the unethical treatment of trees.*p*We are serving notice on the people and culture of Japan, those cruel oppressors of the gentle giants of the sea, that we are not blind to the horror they have long perpetrated against the gentle giants of the land in the hideous practice of the “art” of bonsai.*p*If this is an “art,” then it must be the art of the torturer. Young saplings are torn from the Mother Earth to be surgically pruned of their tender, unwanted branches. Slapped into cold, shallow dishes, they are bound there by the roots with cold, unfeeling wire, which is then coiled around their immature frames in a process that is devised to rob then of the grace nature intended. These poor, defenseless arboreal juveniles are turned, against their will, into scraggly, twisted, stunted, and gnarled things, to amuse laughing garden visitors at macabre teas, or to decorate the wash stations at the eating places of the wealthy and unrooted. In addition, the practice of bonsai is also presented to the masses, even occidentally, as a viable hobby. How many humans have suffered untold mental cruelty trying to accomplish what bonsai guides describe as a simple process of nip, twist and tuck, but which is certainly an impossibility for the untrained and more compassionate hand and mind?*p*HACT now asks you: Can you afford to stand idly by and allow this torture and potential arboricide to continue? If wire is used to twist trees today, when will it be used to twist you into unimaginable forms and political thoughts? It’s already happening electronically through music and video. Check you feet for the tell-tale signs of copper. Join us. It’s time to leap into battle, screaming “Banzai!” against bonsai.*p*