David Stone
Founder & Euro Editor
Navigating Apps with Changes in Memory: Join Our Study
December 2, 2025
Weill Cornell Medicine seeks older adults with mild memory loss for a study on improving navigation apps. Participation is valuable,...
Help Shape NYC’s First Urban Forest Plan
Your Voice Can Plant the Next Million Trees By Erika, Roosevelt Island Daily Beat Reporter If you have ever lingered beneath the gingko grove next to Blackwell House on a humid summer afternoon, you know how a single patch of shade…
Life as a City Tree: Observations from a Hackberry
In a bustling city, a hackberry tree observes human habits and muses on their peculiar contradictions. From frantic busyness to tech addiction and extravagant waste, it questions if humans truly appreciate the world around them. The tree suggests slowing down, embracing simplicity, and experiencing the environment to coexist more harmoniously.
A Tree Scar Now Marks the Ghost of a Red Maple RIOC Killed in 2022
Sometimes, it’s not easy to see the mark left by a tree cut down, but for the maple tree destroyed on November 15th, 2022, there is still a reminder… a tree scar. by David Stone The Roosevelt Island Daily News…
Why Urban Forests Are Just Right for Roosevelt Island
IDig2Learn‘s Christina Delfico asked for RIOC‘s partnership in developing urban forests on Roosevelt Island, but one is already underway. A small nest of infant trees is nudging skyward in the first phase of changing an environment. It’s a new age,…
The De-Greening of Roosevelt Island 2023, and Now the Hunt for Cornel West
No matter how RIOC phrases the annual de-greening of Roosevelt Island – this year, it’s remediation – it always raises questions, ones never answered. And bad memories. This year, though, the exercise includes some unintentional humor along with the expected…
RIOC Killed a Healthy Red Maple – But Left the Remains Behind
A healthy red maple caught the full assault of RIOC‘s war on trees in early November. The power-saw-wielding state agency cooked up a loony rationale, but the damage was done. Perversely, they left a pile of wood chip litter behind…
Haynes’s Apologia for Harming Trees Fails, Raises New Questions
RIOC President/CEO Shelton J. Haynes’s apologia came after numerous Roosevelt Islanders protested another incident in the local war on trees. Cheers to the community for rising up. Boo to Haynes for reacting ineptly. We now have more questions than answers….
The RIOC War on Trees Claims a Century-Old Beauty on Main Street
The continuing war on trees that RIOC started two decades ago, wiping out innumerable, often healthy trees, hit the community again. Already long gone are the willow grove accenting Lighthouse Park, the towering old-growth trees shading the middle of the…
Brace Yourselves for RIOC Tree Pruning, Out of Season Again
Tree pruning is best done, for the sake of the trees, in winter. That’s because the trees are dormant then, their leaves fallen. Before that, trees struggle with the damage and can be permanently injured. An October assault on cherry…
Shut Up. Listen Hard. Because Most of the Talk Is Silent
The vast majority of conversations in the world, we discovered from Suzanne Simard’s brilliant Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, are silent. Intricate lines of communication between trees thrive in underground mycorrhizal fungi networks. by David…
David Stone
Founder & Euro Editor