The Power of Google

The Power of GOOGLE exposes just about everything and everyone. Type a name, an address, an historic figure in your browser and voila - it is there. The thing about GOOGLE and the internet is once it is there, it is  there forever. Sometimes you just need to hit the right buttons to find it. 

I was thinking about all the trees that disappeared right after Hurricane Irma ravaged Key West in 2017. We lost a lot of really big beautiful canopy trees. Palm trees are designed to bend and go with the flow. Mahogany and other big trees lose limbs and sometimes get uprooted and topple to their death. 

We don't have apple or cherry trees in Key West. But we have all kinds of other trees including mango, mahogany, gumbo limbo, royal poinciana, and so many more. We even have an Urban Forester and a Tree Commission who exist to serve, to protect, and to defend our trees from homeowners and builders. We also have roving code enforcement officers who drive the streets (even on weekends) looking for homeowners taking control of their property free of government interference.

Let me say this up front: I don't have a dog in this fight. I have no axe to grind. George Washington had an axe and look what that got him. I was looking thru my old shoebox last week and saw a photo I took the afternoon after Hurricane Irma headed away form town. I drove around town photographing the damage. I have a lot of photos of trees that got toppled. Too many of those. And I have photos of trees that survived the hurricane. One particular photo caught my eye. It is of a Key West Fire Department truck driving down the street where a prominent city official lived  - surveilling the damage. The photo also shows a large - unharmed mahogany tree in the official's yard. The tree survived the hurricane  I remember going down that same street a few days later. The tree was gone.

It seems that George Washington biographer Mason Locke Weems made up the story of six year old Washington confessing "I cannot tell a lie" in response to his angry father's demand for an explanation of  how his cherry tree was damaged. I've got the photo!