For 230 years, since the times of the French Revolution, a white ash tree grew in a forest beside a stream that much later became part of Baltimore. My house was built it its shadow in 1904. And by the time I moved in in 1998, its trunk was five feet across.It was on this tree that I built a rope swing that my daughters – now off to college – flew on in their white first communion dresses when they were young. Then all the neighborhood kids adopted the swing, to play on after school.Last week, I called in a tree crew with a crane to cut it down.