You know what has very little information written on it? Trees. Those guys don't say nothing. That time Pinkeye Paulsen was killed in the botched bank job on 17th? The cops caught his partner, Jimmy the Elm, and even though they tried for days to get something out of him, anything, they even started ringing his trunk, but Jimmy never talked. Well i thought it was time one of them came clean.

There's a largish dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) at SJSU. I love dawn redwoods in the same way i love the coelacanth, and i think people don't know enough about these neat neat trees. So i decided to make helpful placards to educate the public.

First i made helpful placards.


They included information that i found on wikipedia, and that sounded plausible. I chose biodegradable paper and cotton string, because littering makes kittens cry.

Then I gave blood.


Then i went downtown. Outside Roy's Station, i ran into Jonni Aebleskiver of the Danish supergroup Alan and His Absent Gun. I told him about giving blood, and he was so impressed that he wrote
this song. Last i heard it was #3 on the Icelandic R&B chart. So we continued to SJSU, where we saw this tree.


What is up with you, tree? Do you need to eat more? were you confined as a sapling? is it performance art? did someone cut you into pieces, flip the middle one over, and then graft you back together? There was a tense moment while i couldn't find the dawn redwood, and my comrade said i'd have to settle for a late-afternoon redwood. I was wrestling with that when we found the tree.

the branches were barely low enough for my tallness, and i neglected to bring a heightener. But it worked out!


The tags spun merrily in the breeze.


It was then that i noticed that this tree wasn't actually entirely devoid of information. Unlike most trees, this tree had a small plaque saying what it was and why it was there.


If only i were committed to science in the same way that teucer and help i'm a bear are!

But there's no helping it now. This unusually loquacious tree will still inform and enlighten passers-by, and spread knowledge about dawn redwoods.