This has nothing to do with animals or India (although there is Una, a Golden Retriever, in the photo), but I must say that Washington, DC has a pathetic excuse for winter. It snowed once, barely.

 

Thankfully, I was able to visit Cambridge for a few days, where there is still over a foot of snow on the ground.

So I guess I'll just have to keep making my own snow here:  

I spent the day yesterday with all the animals at Jurassic Park Poplar Spring animal sanctuary. To the right, is me and Norman, the biggest cow I've ever seen in my life. Unfortunately, I didn't get the name of the cow in the other photo.

It was a celebration day for the turkeys, who were given a yummy meal. Then there was a vegan potluck for the humans.

The best part of the day was late in the afternoon, when it was time for smashing pumpkins (not the musical band). It was when everyone carried pumpkins down to the area where the pigs lived and lobbed them over the fence, breaking them open so the pigs could feast on them. It was quite a scene with 30+ pigs beside themselves with joy at all the pumpkins coming their way.

Home internet access has briefly been bestowed upon me (since my move to D.C., I've been mostly without) so I am posting an image from a news story that two of my friends back in Cambridge sent me today -- both had independently been reminded of me by this series of photos on the BBC news website.

Nepal is celebrating the festival of Tihar, its equivalent of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. In Nepal, on the second day of the feast, special honour is bestowed on dogs.

As the photo series points out, although dogs are honored on this one day, the rest of the year street dogs are not treated well at all. Visit Street Dogs of Nepal for more info.

Text, photos: Charles Haviland

I haven't done a darn thing with this website in the past 2 months because I have moved from Cambridge, Mass, to Washington, D.C. to take a job with the largest animal protection organization in the U.S.

Having lived in Cambridge for close to 25 years, the move has been a major event that took months of purging, packing and planning. Hopefully, when I am settled here (it's been less than a week--but I've already made scones), I'll put more products on the site and post new entries.

While I'll miss attending the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival, doing bhangra, sitting and reading in the window at the 1369 Coffeehouse, and all the other wonderful things Boston/Cambridge has to offer, I'm looking forward to exploring D.C. And most of all, spending my days working to help animals.

Mary of Animal Person tagged me with a meme (what that heck is a meme?). Although I am up to my eyeballs in stuff I need to do, I thought it would at least be a good way to update my blog, since I haven’t in eons.

There are rules to this meme and here they are:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here are 8 random facts about me:

1. I am a human barometer. I get nasty sinus headaches whenever it is going to precipitate. One of these days I want to keep a chart on severity of pain compared to inches of rain/snow to see if there is any correlation.

2. I have been making oatmeal-raisin scones every week for the past 20+ years. I put them in the freezer and take one out each morning for breakfast. The recipe came from a Quaker Oats recipe booklet. An early variation on that recipe was using applesauce for half the butter required in order to make them lower in fat. Now, I substitute vegan margarine for butter, egg replacer for the egg, and soy or rice milk for cow’s milk to make them vegan. Photo above shows “Sconehenge,” as created for breakfast on the winter (or was it summer?) solstice many years ago when I worked at the MFA, Boston. The figures are plastic cowboys wrapped in brown paper toweling; they were meant to portray druids.

3. I read the meme responses of Deb, who tagged Mary, who tagged me. As one of her facts she had that she has a slight degree of face blindness. I have been reading a lot about face blindness lately, it seems to be in the news. Funnily, at Harvard, I was a research subject, participating in the psych studies examining face blindness. But my fact is that I have the opposite of face blindness. I guess it would be a photographic memory for faces. I few years ago I recognized a guy on the street in Cambridge; he was my TA for German class at UMASS Amherst in 1980. I am surprised when people I’ve eaten a meal with don’t recognize me. I am always saying “hello” to people on the street who I’ve met, and I know they haven’t the foggiest idea who I am.

4. If there were such a thing as a “former life,” I would have been a Punjabi. Doing bhangra seems to be in my blood. See here and here.

5. I am a hoarder packrat.

6. I am more turned off by food textures than food tastes. I have a hard time with: carbonated drinks; peaches (I prefer fuzz-less nectarines); raw spinach and that metallic feeling your teeth get from it; custard-like (or “mucus-y,” as I call them) desserts; and meat (good thing I’m vegan).

7. I have a tattoo that reads “Ahimsa” in memory of my dog Rudy. Or would read if my skin hadn’t rejected the ink (it is the color of a henna tattoo). So it looks like a mess. Just today, I guy asked me if it was a burn. Ouch! Here is a photo of what it should look like.

8. It’s a rare day that I’m not wearing bangles.

I don’t know many other bloggers and the few whose blogs I do read have already been tagged. So, I am only tagging 5 others. They are Desi in Boston, Vegan Heart Doc, The Lifelong Activist, and to expand internationally, Straying Around and anakbrunei.

From India New England

Issue Date: June 1-15, 2007

Secondo sells Indian wares to help country’s creatures
By MEERA RAJAGOPALAN

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — It was during her third trip to India in 2005 that Joellen Secondo met Indian animal activist Maneka Gandhi, and explained her idea — to buy crafts from India and sell them in the United States, and donating the profits to animal welfare organizations in India. Read the rest of the article.

I just spent the weekend in the Washington, D.C. area. I went to Baltimore, whre I was surprised to see an exhibition focused on animals at the American Visionary Art Museum, an “outsider art” museum that I hadn’t been to since 1996.

“Home & Beast” brought together a very loose collection of animal themes: animals in mythology, animals in every day life, sculptures of animals with no intended meaning to them, etc. What was most interesting were the animal causes and facts presented in the text panels. They didn’t have much to do with the artwork, but I was pleased to see such animal-friendly information presented where one wouldn’t really expect it. There was a text panel on The Top 10 Things Meat-Eaters Should Know on the impact of meat-eating on the environment, health, and animals; research on animal intelligence and pleasure; the link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to violent behavior towards humans, and so on.

I suspect there was a vegan animal rights activist behind the show.

Photo: A beast in his home, Oliver, my host for the weekend

For the month of June, the Best Friends Animal Society's Network is hosting an India campaign. The Nework is a global online community of people who want to help animals. The India community, which I help edit, was launched at the beginning of this year.

For the India campaign, there will be at least one new news story a day featuring one of the five animal welfare organizations visited by the Best Friends staff (and  me) this past January. You can read about my visit to these orgranizations' shelters, rescue centers, and sanctuaries in my India Trip 2007 blog on this site. The campaign aims to raise money for these groups and encourage people to join the Best Friends India campaign.

Photo: Dog surveying the wares in a market in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

Dogs—sleeping in alleys, calmly waiting on a railway platform, looking directly at the camera, and doing other ordinary dog activities—are the subjects of Maine photographer Michelle Lohutko’s photographs. Her black and white images show the quiet dignity of dogs who often must fend for themselves. While many of these dogs are community-owned and can count on handouts from street vendors, restaurant workers, or other kind residents, their lives are still filled with great risks and hardship.

A photographer since the age of 14, Michelle always knew she wanted to do something with her talents to better the lives of animals. In 2001, she started as a pet photographer.

Eventually, Michelle met and married a man who is originally from Kolkata in the state of West Bengal, India. When viewing her husband’s photographs of a trip back home, Michelle’s eyes gravitated to the dogs that populated the backgrounds of most scenes. She bombarded her husband with questions and then started researching stray dogs in India.

In December of 2004, Michelle traveled around West Bengal for 5 weeks. She spent most of her time photographing dogs on the streets. This life-changing experience prompted her to educate others about India’s street dogs.

In 2005, Michelle held an exhibition of her photographs. They sold out within hours. She donated the proceeds from this exhibit (amounting to $3,200) to Compassionate Crusaders Trust, which spays, neuters, vaccinates, and shelters stray dogs in Kolkata.

I am selling three images from Michelle's "Stray Dogs of India" series. Click on "photographs" in the navigation bar to the left. All of the profits from their sale will go to Compassionate Crusaders Trust.

This is Dexter, an almost-13-year-old black lab mix. He loves playing with toys, napping, and meeting new people and dogs.

Dexter is a BBD, or a Big Black Dog. He was given up by the human family he had known most of his life because they had a child. So, Dexter was to be surrendered to an animal shelter at the age of 12. It is well know among animal shelter workers that BBDs are the last to be adopted, if they are adopted at all. Older dogs are also less likely to be adopted. So, in all likelihood, Dexter would not have made it out of that shelter. He would have been killed, as are 3-4 million dogs and cats who enter shelters each year.

Given that more than 50% of dogs and cats who enter shelters are killed for lack of homes, many shelters are being proactive about placing older dogs, black dogs, and dogs who do not have behavioral problems.

This past Sunday, an article by Charles Siebert in The New York Times Magazine went inside a shelter in Texas to learn about temperament testing, and the sad fate of dogs who don’t pass the tests. Even though dogs entering shelters might not do well on the tests because they are in unfamiliar, highly stressful situations, it is still a death sentence. Unfortunately, shelters do not have the resources to work with dogs on behavioral issues. Be sure to watch the audio slide show, A Dog Story, accompanying the article about the personal impact the shelter had on Siebert.

Dexter is now happily living with my friend Chris, who couldn’t bear the thought of Dexter going off to a shelter to die.

To help dogs like Dexter who are abandoned later in life, consider donating to Old Dog Haven, which provides doggie assisted living and hospice care as well as senior dog placement assistance.

Photos:  Dexter smiling. Dexter naps artfully with toys.