L.A.'s Poetree

"Uncle Ruthie" and her tree                           Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times

A while back, I wrote about the charming little "libraries" that have been springing up in neighborhoods around here and elsewhere (see "Very Public Libraries," March 2013). Reminiscent of those and of Yoko Ono's Wish Trees (to which I took our school's children when they were in our area) is the Chinese elm that graces Ruth Buell's front yard. "Uncle Ruthie," as she is known from her children's radio show, has turned it into a community bulletin board of sorts, surrounded by seating and covered now with poems on scraps of paper: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0605-lopez-poets-20130605,0,188485.column