Kicker: Making a point

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Imagine looking out the window and seeing a gigantic canary yellow No. 2 pencil where once there stood a proud oak.

AMY HIGGINS: Why is there a giant pencil? Good question. So we had a beautiful oak tree that we loved and gave us lots of shade, and it came down in a wind storm.

And when it did, the Higgins family faced a choice.

JOHN HIGGINS: Do we just cut the stubby trunk down or do we try to create new life? That chance for renewal, that promise, people really seem to buy into it.

They did. And every year since, neighbors gather to “sharpen” that 20-foot-tall pencil, literally three to 10 inches at a time, and they make a big party of it.

But every sharpening shortens the story. Whittle away 10 inches a year and by 2045 , they’ll be down to the eraser end. Yet even a stub can still make its mark.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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