Public Comment of the Month for February 2021

Our news agenda is determined by you – the citizens – who decide what news stories we tell based on what you bring up during the public comment time in local meetings. Our public comment of the month for February 2021 came from David Piccioni during a Eugene City Council meeting.

David Piccioni: Hi, Cindy. Hi Ellen. Lauren. I wanted to tell you guys I consider myself very knowledgeable about issues of the environment, but more important than things that you can read in books is the feeling you get.

I have a feeling that I remember from when I was very young. This was in Buenos Aires and it was not in the urban part, but in the, where it’s more country. And I remember all the time climbing trees in that place where we went with my mom and dad. I remember this experience very vividly.

There was this one tree at an angle, it was rising at an angle. And from there, about maybe six feet off the ground, I could see it another tree with a branch going sideways, and I would take this jump and I could, I can just remember each fraction of a second, how I was flying in the air, and I would get ahold of that branch, with swing forward with my body, which would loosen my grip. But then when I swung backwards. I got my grip again, and I could hang there for a little bit and then jumped down and it wasn’t very high. I think it’s the problem in Eugene that we cut the branches on the lower parts of the trees.

Being able to climb a tree is a really good way to change your entire relationship with the environment. If you if the trees are, if the lower branches are cut, I understand it’s for a liability issues, but you’re really depriving people from an experience of climbing up a beautiful organism that loves you up there and wants to interact with you and trees are the reason why we can breathe. I don’t think they should be assigned a monetary value like this piece of lot should cost this much and we’re going to clear cut it. And then all the topsoil’s going to go into the river, kill the fish, and desertify the hill.

Another thing that I, another experience that I had, which gave me a more even a deeper connection to the environment was climbing a tree and looking down, and I was pretty much connected with everything. And then I saw a little rabbit on the ground from where I was, and that just was so like a catalyst that that just made me understand how important and connected and interdependent we are with our whole biosphere.