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SUNDAY SHOW & TELL
vol.57

This Sunday, we thought it fitting to start off with photos of a very unique construction: a majestic Gothic cathedral comprised of living hornbeam trees. The framework, completed in 2010 and laid in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, will eventually rot away, replaced by pillars of trunks with a canopy of meshed together branches forming a vaulted ceiling.

TREE CATHEDRAL (photos)

Next, a fun PSA from the UK that urges drivers to pay attention to their mirrors. You never know what you'll see! Potentially NSFW.

NOW YOU SEE ME (video)

Looking for a good book to read this holiday season? If you enjoy nonfiction, we recommend "American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation," by Eric Rutkow.

As listed on Amazon, "Rutkow's 'deeply fascinating' (The Boston Globe) work shows how trees were essential to the early years of the republic and indivisible from the country's rise as both an empire and a civilization. Among American Canopy's many captivating stories: the Liberty Trees, where colonists gathered to plot rebellion again the British; Henry David Thoreau's famous retreat into the woods; the creation of New York City's Central Park; the great fire of 1871 that killed a thousand people in the lumber town Peshtigo, Wisconsin; the fevered attempts to save the American chestnut and the American elm from extinction; and the controversy over spotted owls and the old-growth forests they inhabited. Rutkow also explains how trees were of deep interest to such figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, who oversaw the planting of some three billion trees nationally in his time as president."

Pickup a copy of this great book online at AmazonSmile using the link below and support RETREET with your purchase!

BOOK RECOMMENDATION (link to AmazonSmile)