For the last few weeks we’ve all been watching video coverage of the Ukraine carnage, and in just about every clip I’ve noticed there are almost no large trees in that country. There are occasional glimpses of modest forests and scrub-brush regions that surround dull brutalist apartment and office buildings. Yes, the 19th Century architecture in the old section of downtown Kyiv is handsome and baroque, but the outlying areas are mostly flat fields, flat fields and more flat fields. And I keep asking myself, “Jesus, is there some kind of law against big trees in Ukraine?” There are hundreds of magnificent oak trees on both sides of Rome’s Tiber, and when you walk under them they make you feel that all is right with the world.