In the “Welcome to my world” department, I heard Monday that one member of the Pop’s Diner Advisory Board queried the other members that morning about why the Bradford Pears in the downtown area had not yet been cut down and removed. Can you believe that? His words were, “The paper said the trees were going to be cut down, but I want to know when they are going to do it?”

Someone slipped his name to me and I have half a notion to remove him from my list of six regular readers. He read it here, but did not see it when he drove downtown. He comes to town often, by the way. He should have noticed by now. It has been more than a week and I devoted an entire opinion column in the past issue to the removal of the blasted pear trees. I may call his wife and have her take away his truck keys. He has to travel about 10 miles to get to Peabody and there is no telling what he might think is in the road in front of him — or what is not there! A menace to society if I ever saw one.

No wonder no one knows what’s going on in this community. If a person does not see (after being told) that all the trees in a given block have been cut down and the remaining stumps covered in striped caution tape, how can we expect him to properly share information about anything slightly abstract? City government ordinances, school district policy on cheating, online banking or shopping, speed limits that change all over town, personal property taxes, our water system, or any other important issues that rack the community conscience in some shade other than plain old black or white.

Here is a test.

The following are three things that fall into the “for sure” news department — a doctor has returned to Peabody, soon we will have a packaged liquor store, and yes, some guy bought the house at 602 Walnut and it is being remodeled by an employee of his from Wisconsin.

Let me know what you hear about those three facts in the next week, will you? This answer doesn’t count: “The house at 602 Walnut is going to be a packaged liquor store when the doctor who is back from Wisconsin gets through with the remodeling.”

I guess I shouldn’t stomp my foot and complain too loudly about issues like this. Until I heard the tree story, I didn’t have anything to put in this column, but telling all of you about it got me right down here to the end of the space I am supposed to fill every week. So, OK, the Pop’s Diner Advisory Board member has one more chance to remain on the list of my six regular readers. I’ll be accommodating about his mistake this time.

However, he’d best not come to me with an answer to the above test unless he is just darn sure he is right!

— SUSAN MARSHALL