Following up on my tree entry a couple days ago, I want to tell you about what two Rhode Island School of Design teachers decided to do with one ancient tree.
“An old elm tree that met its end two years ago at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline might have been headed for the chipper, but two faculty members at Rhode Island School of Design had a better idea,” writes Cate McQuaid in the Boston Globe.
“The elm, designated as a witness tree by the National Park Service because it was present as history was made, provided material for the Witness Tree Project, taught each fall by RISD associate professor of American studies Daniel Cavicchi and artist Dale Broholm, a senior critic in the school’s furniture design department.
“Undergraduates took two classes, one in history and one in woodworking. They visited the site, studied Olmsted, often recognized as the father of landscape architecture in the United States, and made objects inspired by what they learned.” More.
Photograph: Dale Broholm/RISD, Witness Tree Project
Wood from the Olmsted Elm after it was processed at a saw mill in Lunenberg last summer and made ready to start a new life.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
I like the idea of a witness tree, and it gets me thinking about how people like to take down the memories of people who have lived a long time. Imagine if we could record the memories of trees. (The items the RISD students made from the Olmstead elm were interesting.)
I love the idea of recording a tree’s memories. I have seen cross sections (at Cooperstown?) where you can read what famous thing happened at each ring in the stump, but not, alas, what the tree remembers.