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gainesvilletimes com
Monday, November 26, 2018
Nick Bowman Features Editor | 770-718-3426 | life@gainesvilletimes.com
Photo courtesy of Dale Jaeger.
The holly tree at the corner of Academy and Green streets in Gainesville is lit each year at Christmas on Green Street.
Rotary, city work to bring holly to light
AUSTIN STEELE I The Times
BY AMBER TYNER
atyner@gainesvilletimes.com
Every year, Christmas on
Green Street concludes with the
lighting of a big tree in downtown
Gainesville.
The tree at the fork of Academy
and Green streets isn’t the type
you’d expect for a Christmas cel
ebration. It’s not a spruce, a fir or a
pine — it’s a native American holly
tree.
While the age of the tree is
unknown, Dale Jaeger, landscape
architect, said it’s been around for
a long time.
“It’s an extremely slow-growing
tree,” she said. “So when you look
at that trunk, you know because of
the diameter that that’s a very old
holly tree.”
Jaeger is also a member of
the Rotary Club of Gainesville,
the organization that, along with
the city, gets the tree ready for
Christmas.
“The city and the Rotary work
together to get the lights put up,”
she said, explaining that Rotary
furnishes the lights while the
city provides assistance with
decorating.
The tree is strung with multi
colored LED lights each year and
decorated with a star.
“It’s an all-day thing, but they
usually get it done in one day,” she
said. “They try to get it done as
quick as they can.”
The Rotary Club also helps with
officially lighting the tree, which it
has done each year since the first
ceremony in December 1982.
“It’s just a tradition,” Jaeger
said, explaining the group tries
to involve the community at the
event.
She said the mayor of Gaines
ville is always invited to light the
tree.
“They will count down from 10
to zero and then light the tree,”
she said. “And then we also sing
carols.”
Rotary helps with the tree more
than just at Christmas. They take
care of it year-round and ensure
it’s properly pruned.
Christmas on Green
Street
When: 4:30-7:15 p.m. Dec. 2,
with tree lighting at 7
Where: Green Street,
Gainesville
“We’re on a two-year schedule
now with it,” she said about the
pruning. “We prune it basically in
the dead of winter, which is the
best time.”
She said they got on a regular
maintenance schedule after the
tree caught fire in 2009.
“During the summer, one whole
side of the tree burned,” she said.
“Thank goodness they were able to
put it out. But the tree, for that rea
son, had lost its form and had been
damaged. I’m a landscape archi
tect, and when I realized the tree
had had that damage, I suggested
to the Rotary Club that we... have a
more defined management, main
tenance program for it.”
Since then, the holly tree has
been pruned five times, and the
Rotary is planning for a sixth time
this coming winter.
“We got on that maintenance
schedule just to keep it more
healthy,” she said. “We use a
woman who has a company called
Fine Pruning, and her name is
Anna Hauser.
“Pruning is an art. You can’t
just take a set of shears and go out
there and whack at a tree. You
have to think about where each
cut is and how that cut is made in
terms of the branch and the health
of the tree.”
And while the tree probably
gets the most attention at Christ
mas, Jaeger said it’s used for other
causes throughout the year, too.
“There are times during the
year that various ribbons are put
on the tree to recognize different
community causes,” she said.
Instagram takes the ax to fake likes and followers
BY REX CRUM
The Mercury News
If you’re on Instagram, and you
get a kick out of seeing new “likes”
of your posts and getting new fol
lowers you’ve never heard of, get
ready to be disappointed.
Those numbers may soon drop.
As part of its ongoing efforts to
secure its platform, Instagram says
it has begun to remove what it calls
“inauthentic” likes, followers and
comments from the accounts of
users that use third-party apps as
a means of raising the popularity
of their posts. The company said
it was taking such steps in order to
ensure the security of its commu
nity guidelines and usage terms.
“Every day people come to Ins
tagram to have real experiences,
including genuine interactions,”
the company said. “It is our respon
sibility to ensure these experiences
aren’t disrupted by inauthentic
activity.”
Instagram said it is employing
machine learning tools—artificial
intelligence technology that lets
computers “learn” from the data
they receive without having to be
reprogrammed — to identify and
remove suspicious accounts.
Any accounts that Instagram
identifies as using the improper
third-party apps will receive an
in-app message telling them the
inauthentic likes, follows and
comments have been removed,
then ask those users to secure
their account by changing their
password.
Instagram’s move comes as its
owner, Facebook, continues to
deal with negative attention over
how its platform has been used by
political groups and other organi
zations in order to influence public
opinion on a variety of issues.
Recently, Facebook said it
removed 85 Instagram accounts it
deemed to be engaged in “coordi
nated inauthentic behavior” ahead
of the Nov. 6 midterm elections.
