Many will recall the nearly 3-year battle between Lake Claire residents and a property owner along DeKalb Avenue to save a giant pecan tree named Grandma Gordon.  Residents threw up numerous legal road blocks over the years to stop the property owner from cutting down trees and developing the property.

Today, an eye-witness reports in…

There’s currently a tree crew, a handful of protesters and some cops at the site and the tree is 90% gone…Guess the legal battle wrapped up…

One more pic after the jump.

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Photo courtesy of Anne

Judd sent me a link yesterday to this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Journal Lenore Skenazy – the “Free Range Kids” lady who we’ve discussed before – about how many parents fear their kids’ few hours of freedom on Halloween despite all evidence to the contrary.

It’s a good, sarcastic and irritated rant.  Full of fun facts and assertions.  I’m a fan of this line in particular, “Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.” (However, I’m a sucker for a sentence that starts with “Sure,” truth be told.)

Anyway.  Parents, free-range advocates, those annoyed by “nanny-”anything will all find something to cherish in its peevish paragraphs.  I strongly recommend it.

But Judd’s right on the money when he remarks that the conclusion reminds him of assertions often made here on DM…

In fact, she says, “We almost called this paper, ‘Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,’ because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day.”

Why is it so safe? Because despite our mounting fears and apoplectic media, it is still the day that many of us, of all ages, go outside. We knock on doors. We meet each other. And all that giving and taking and trick-or-treating is building the very thing that keeps us safe: community.

We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn’t dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too.

Hell yeah.  Take back the night from the apoplectic media.