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Membership Orgs, Don’t Do This to Your Members

Last fall, I became a member of the Arbor Day Foundation. Yay, trees! I love trees. I want to save trees. The Arbor Day Foundation loves and plants trees. Sounds like a membership marriage made in heaven, right? Not exactly. Almost immediately after becoming an annual member, like within a couple of months, I received a mailing from the Arbor Day Foundation asking me to renew my membership. What the what? Excuse me, I just…

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history observations pragmatic historian writing

Why Are There Dinosaurs in My Plant Catalog?

A couple of months ago, I received a Farmer Seed and Nursery spring catalog in the mail. Having never received one of these before, I can only surmise that the Arbor Day Foundation shared my information with the company. I became a member of the Arbor Day Foundation in November 2019 and when I got my membership materials, something in them indicated they would sell my info for marketing purposes. Let me just say, aside…

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history pragmatic historian

Tree Planting for Planetary Preservation

Johnny Appleseed – The Mythic Tree-Planting Hero Remember learning about Johnny Appleseed as a kid in elementary school? I do. For my readers who may not have heard about Johnny Appleseed, he was a guy from the past who, we were told, wore a tin pot on his head and walked all over the place planting apple trees in America. It’s a pretty vague mythic sort of tale. Where did this guy walk? In my…

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