First off, let us welcome the newest addition to the Plant a Wish documentary team is Sara’s sister Rachel (that’s her on the left). Rachel is spending a few months with us here on Maui, working hard to help us get our footage organized, logged, and digitized so we can begin our edit in an orderly fashion. (That’s necessary when you have 83 hours of footage and the project is only halfway done!) Lucky for us, she’s got a solid background in documentary production (she worked on this film in NYC) and a big love of Maui. So it’s a win-win!
Every week Rachel will select a short clip from what she’s seen and will share it with you here on our blog. We’ll call them “Rachel’s Picks of the Week”.
This week’s clip is from our Knoxville, Iowa planting, and features Dr. Bob Leonard, an anthropologist who knows a lot about the local history there. In this clip, we’re about to plant a red maple tree as our Iowa “Plant a Wish” tree, and he’s giving us a sense of place and a background on the landscape of the surrounding area. It’s just a short excerpt, but we feel it really tells us a lot – about Bob and his wonderful sensibilities, and about the very special place we chose to plant in while in Iowa in June. It also gives us a hint about the name of one of our favorite breweries – also located in Knoxville – called the Peace Tree Brewing Company! We also did a full interview with Dr. Bob for the documentary – where he’s standing in front of the largest Cottonwood Tree in Iowa – not too far from this spot.
Enjoy the clip (below), and send us your comments. What does your town’s history (and local folklore) have to say about its trees?
Thanks for sharing! Planting the tree, along with our wishes was so fun and memorable. The other day, my 9year old, Asa, was telling a friend all about it, and remembered that his wish was for “An eternal Snack Bar”. So, not so tree related, but definitely keeps the notion of the importance of the tree at the top of his consciousness.