David Robinson is a local character. He was born in 1950 1 and is still alive in 2009. Acquaintances describe him as looking something like an elderly and etiolatediUgo Tognazzi, when they describe him at all. (Ugo Tognazzi was born in 1922, by the way, and died in 1990, for those who like those year links. He has been a member of the City of Davis Tree Commission since September 1986, served several years as a trustee of Explorit, and is the current president of Tree Davis. In 2009, that is.

When he isn't involved in his daily rounds of drawling, stretching, and fainting in coils, he used to be found training for the California International Marathon, which he has run 2 twice and will never be up to again (because he is chronically injured and enfeebled, currently with a torn meniscus), working on any number of genealogy projects, especially those involving families of York County, Maine (he is the host of the USGenWeb Wells, ME site) and New Englanders who made their way to California, or staring into the sky because something shiny caught his attention.

You can get a glimpse of his genealogy database, although information about living people has, for the most part, been privatized.

He reads obituaries almost compulsively and many would dispute the "almost."

He posts very occasional musings and snapshots at his abused trees blog and finds the Davis Wiki fascinating, although he doesn't think that everything needs a link, despite a tendency to that among its diligent editors.

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2010-10-12 12:06:15   Thanks for the additional info on George Covell! —TomGarberson


2011-12-27 10:27:58   Ok got it. Thanks. —DavidFritsch


2011-12-28 02:46:38   man I've got some great tree abuse shots from when West Coast (the people with the safety trim contract) came thru —StevenDaubert


2011-12-29 14:35:59   they trimmed the lower 2/3rd out of the Ash next door (looks very unhappy now), and they cut off our counterbalance dead weight on our mostly dead mistletoe ridden city tree (now when it falls it falls onto lots of cars). Moreover, it was lots of flesh cuts / poorly done cuts (my buddy used to work under an arborist, and he said the dudes obviously didn't have one with them... —StevenDaubert


2011-12-29 15:50:34   also I think the most ruthless offenders is utility, mainly because they have to keep the trees away from the lines. If a tree is growing up from below it will get topped —StevenDaubert


2012-08-10 10:22:24   Until recently, Wikipedia reputedly had the wonderful sentence: "Charlotte's Web is a children's novel by American author E. B. White, about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte."

I know that I'm terrified of intelligent spiders trying to slaughter me. —JabberWokky


2013-04-26 16:40:55   Mr. Robinson, my wife attended the Tree Commission meeting; I am the wiki editor in the family. Trees being replaced on Claremont include oaks that predate the city street, do they not? —DougWalter

  • Most of the north side trees were removed on Wednesday; they were part of the street scape, but I understood from my wife's account that it wasn't something the Commission had control over. It's great that five oaks are being planted, and it's possible they'll lend shade to the street in as little as a decade or two. We will not convince each other about the rights and wrongs of PG&E's investments in lines and trees. As to the page about Claremont Drive there's a need to acknowledge the lack of canopy there for the next half-dozen years. I hope we can work out a way that includes the editorial right to opinions. —DougWalter

2013-04-26 22:21:26   You write, "If Mr. Walter wishes to add rude, untrue characterizations, let him do it in the comments. Is that not where opinion belongs, rather than in the body of an article?" No, that is not correct. Please read the MPOV page. It seems to me that "paltry" is both relative (to the trees that are being replaced) and a matter of opinion. DW's opinion is just as welcome on this wiki as yours is. If you wish to express an alternate opinion, you should do so, rather than seeking to eliminate his. —CovertProfessor

Footnotes

1. Some sources give his date of birth as 1949 or 1951. They are poorly informed.
2. Some people would dispute this description of his unique style of locomotion, although it does get him across the finish line at half-marathons and other events, as running, even if ever more rarely at distances that exceed 26 miles. Those people are poorly informed.