Quote of the Week: Chestnut Tree

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy." -Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, February 23, 1944

Fourteen years ago, right around the time that I walked away from Lutheranism, I read The Diary of a Young Girl for a study hall class and tried (but failed) to hide my tears when I came to the end of it. I remember following the cut-it-down-don't-cut-it-down debate of 2007 over Anne Frank's dying chestnut tree with a vested interest and being saddened to learn in 2010 (just as I was beginning the official conversion process to become Jewish) that it had finally fallen down.

Since then, saplings from Anne Frank's tree have been planted all over the world and now, the tree is coming to Washington, DC! I am so excited!

Anne Frank's Tree outside the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, circa 2009
Image courtesy of The New York Times