Page 12 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • April 18, 2012 known to be sweet, which can be attached to any apple tree, sweet or sour. Chapman was a Swedenborgian, and had religious objections to grafting fruit trees because they interfered, as Swedenborgians saw it, with the divine order revealed in nature. Chapman’s apple trees did not interfere with homestead production of alcoholic beverages in any way, shape, or form. Had he lived during the Prohibition Era, he might have been arrested as a bootlegger. (This would not have cost him his role as a folk hero as far as a lot of Americans were concerned.) The real Johnny Appleseed was neither an outlaw nor an outcast. Most farmers of his era took regular swigs of something intoxicating to make it through the aches and pains of the work day. The growth of the saloon after most Americans became industrial laborers helped convince respectable women and clergymen that alcohol was a menace to public health and family life. Hard cider, in the day of the ox or the horse, was more like work-ohol, or the beer that many Europeans called “liquid bread” and drank several times a day to keep going. Chapman was really the grandfather of Arbor Day. The father of Arbor Day was Julius Sterling Morton, born in New York State while Chapman was still active, later an early settler of Nebraska, and ultimately the acting governor of Nebraska Territory in the years just before the Civil War. Morton was a progressive citizen and was strongly interested in trees. His farming activities included the cultivation of apple trees and other fruit trees. He was also an influential newspaper editor and publisher. Morton started the first Arbor Day in 1872 with the idea that more trees would be a good thing for America and that more fruit trees would be a good thing for American farmers. He was appointed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture by President Grover Cleveland and helped develop the Department of Agriculture as a coordinated service for farmers and to develop reforestation programs that changed the emphasis from cutting down trees to planting them. Though Morton was a “Bourbon” (conservative) Democrat, his son, Paul Morton, founder of the Morton Salt Company, became a Progressive (liberal) Republican and served as U.S. Secretary of the Navy under Theodore Roosevelt in 1904-05. With a family background like that, Arbor Day could hardly fail to win attention and support, and Arbor Day ceremonies became a staple school event all over the United States. Birdsey Northrup of Connecticut visited Japan in 1883 and started the trend toward globalization. Arbor Day has been observed in Australia since 1889, and in New Zealand since 1890. India began a related holiday in 1950. Germany started in 1952, the Netherlands in 1954, and Luxembourg in 1991. Macedonia started a citizens’ initiative for reforestation in 2007 after a series of forest fires and, in 2008, with an official national holiday, more than 150,000 Macedonians turned out to plant two million trees in a single day – one for each citizen. The Macedonians planted six million more trees in November of 2008 and another 12.5 million in 2009. Trees are not political. Neither should the need for trees be political. Nobody seems to boycott Arbor Day because it started in the United States – following traditions from the Old Testament honored by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. This holiday should be honored and encouraged at all costs. Here’s a leap. While we continue to honor the 140-yearold expansion of a 3,000-year-old custom that encourages the planting of trees, should we not preserve the trees we already have by discouraging clear-cutting of trees, and even the cutting of quality trees for construction? Trees belong to every citizen who breathes the air and copes with the summer heat and the tendency of basements to flood almost seasonally. Charlton Heston was one of the few Hollywood stars to take an early role in the civil rights movement and one of the few Hollywood stars to defend the right of private citizens to own handguns and rifles. He even defended my right to carry the black-powder muskets my son and I sometimes carried in Revolutionary War and Civil War reenactments. That was a Constitutional right. Would Heston have defended my right to own nuclear weapons or modern artillery with explosive projectiles? I doubt it, and I hope not. An individual has a right to defend his or her castle. That individual has no right to blow up his or her neighbor’s castle with a single misplaced projectile because the graduation party got too noisy. The Constitution has to be tempered with common sense. As we condone the ownership of registered handguns and antique long arms purchased over the counter, so should we condone the right of citizens to cut down dead and dying trees or limbs that might crush their cars or homes. As we do not condone the private ownership of nuclear weapons or World War II howitzers, we should not condone the kind of clear-cutting that wipes out local groves to make way for more air pollution, bare lawns, and drainage problems. Anniversaries of catastrophic events are a feature of every author’s calendar. In recent weeks, there has been a virtual explosion of material about the RMS Titanic, but there are also anniversaries that are benign, rather than disastrous, and still worth remembering. The nation and the world are not revolving around the 140th Anniversary of Arbor Day, certainly a kinder, gentler holiday than any that has recently figured in my own inventory. However, this anniversary is also potentially more important than any of the others. The first Arbor Day was celebrated on April 10, 1872 with the planting of an estimated one million trees, almost entirely in the United States, but the holiday has since expanded to be celebrated not just in places like Canada and New Zealand, but also in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Luxembourg, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Lesotho. South Africa has an Arbor Week. Arbor Day is celebrated in both countries called China. The Republic of China – today’s Taiwan – has celebrated Arbor Day since 1927, as a memorial for Dr. Sun Yat-sen, hero of both the Nationalist Chinese and the Communist Chinese. The Republic of China celebrates on March 12. The People’s Republic of China – the mainland – started celebrating on March 12 in 1981. The law stipulates that every male between the ages of 11 and 60 should plant three to five trees per year, or do the equivalent amount of work in seeding and cultivating other greenery. The tree planting is “voluntary,” which really means that it is compulsory – but it is still a great idea. The oldest Arbor Day of all is unofficially celebrated in Israel, where the Jewish holiday Tu Bishvat is commemorated by planting trees on the fifteenth day of the lunar month of Shvat, and is mentioned in the Torah. The fruit from trees planted for food was to be left uneaten for three years. During the fourth year, the fruit was to be an offering of praise to God, and, in the fifth year, the fruit was to be used for general consumption. These laws were in one of the chapters that deal with dietary laws and the religious aspects of sexuality, so they were considered to be quite serious. Even before 1872, Arbor Day had a pre-history with the life of John Chapman, known to settlers throughout Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as Johnny Appleseed. Born in Massachusetts in 1774, Chapman was a legend during his own lifetime. He lived until 1845. Chapman’s life followed the Disney version only tangentially. He was not a simpleton, though he wore simple clothes and sometimes slept on the floors of cabins he visited. Rather than planting apple trees at random, he operated a business where he planted apple seeds in fenced fields, guarded by people he paid, and then sold the seeds to settlers who wanted their own apple trees. The settlers generally bought the apple trees not to indulge in the sweet fruit, but to use the often sour apples to produce “apple jack” or “hard cider,” an intoxicating liquor with a velocity somewhat higher than beer or ale, though with a lower octane than whiskey or gin. Sweet eating apples generally come from grafted branches of apple trees Arbor Day revisited Munchies for the Marines Thanks to donations, Brownie Troop 579 of Ramsey was able to send over 50 boxes of cookies to Marines overseas. The girls decorated the boxes with personal messages.