Crowds turn out for annual sharpening of 20-foot-tall pencil

The pencil, known as the Loti Tree, was once a much-beloved 180-year-old bur oak before it was damaged by a thunderstorm in 2017. In 2022, Higgins then commissioned Curtis Ingvoldstad to sculpt the damaged tree into a living artwork, in the form of a 20-foot-tall No.2 pencil.