mailbox / By North Coast Journal Readers

Your Brain on Caltrans

(April 15, 2010)  Editor:

I read the “Roads and Redwoods” article by Cristina Bauss twice (April 8). I was oh, so hoping that Bauss would write that she is a redwood tree-hugger. But no, she turned out to be a stalwart journalist — a professional reporter, which is at times lacking in that vocation. She reported the facts from both sides and she got me thinking.

Cutting the roots of 40 or so redwood trees in Richardson Grove seemed similar to a book I just finished reading entitled My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Howard had a frontal lobotomy at the age of 12 — amazingly, as recently as 1960. To me, there seems to be a relationship to cutting into a human’s brain and cutting into the root system of redwoods.

Through an MRI, doctors said it was “easy to see” where the “ice pick” instruments had entered — “there were these two dark areas, like tunnels, coming up from my eye sockets. They were dark … because when brain cells are damaged, they die.” The doctors who performed the MRI saw “a perfect road map of my lobotomy that showed where the knives went in and the exact area of the brain they had damaged.” Dr. Walter Freeman performed Howard’s lobotomy and severed all sorts of pathways in the brain.

Could it be that cutting the intertwining root system of trees will damage, destroy or eventually kill those trees? There are no MRIs for trees, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that these trees will be killed.

I see Caltrans as being Dr. Freeman. He was careful with his patients, all 2,500 of them! He gave them electroshock treatment prior to the lobotomy. He took pictures before, during and after. He believed in his medical technique and that it helped people. Just like Caltrans thinks that the “use of a sharp instrument (like Freeman’s ice pick instrument) in order to promote healing” for roots will be safe. Who are they kidding? Not me or the public. Sticking an ice pick in someone’s eye sockets and twirling it around does permanent damage just like cutting the root system of a tree and whatever else is in and around that system. Caltrans, you have no good reason to widen the road by harming trees; just like Dr. Freeman had no good reason to perform lobotomies, which ultimately ended in tragedy. Hey, Caltrans, go find a worthwhile project to spend the taxpayers money on.

Congratulations to Bauss’ objective reporting and letting the readers decide for themselves. Looking forward to Part II.

Jessica Puccinelli, Fortuna

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