DEBORAH L. ARMSTRONG—Alexander Zavaly grew up in the Ukrainian Republic of the Soviet Union, in the town of Alexandria (Ukrainian: Oleksandriia), about an hour’s drive west of the Dnieper River and five hours’ drive southeast of Kiev. He lived there from the age of six, when his family first relocated there, far from the icy mining town of Vorkuta, above the arctic circle, where he had lived since his birth in 1955. As a child, he was gifted with the ability to draw, but had little opportunity to develop his budding talent. Alexandria was another mining town and his father worked the mines like most of the men in his family, who had no real connection to the world of art.
ANIMAL LIVES
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Mama Bear Refuses to Abandon Her Beloved Cubs
5 minutes readAmazing footage of a mother bear helping her cubs get over a tall fence. Something to think about, especially for those among us who think nothing of invading animal habitats or taking their lives for any reason whatsoever.
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A female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat, She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of Farallon Island (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed for help. Within a few hours, a rescue team arrived and determined that she was so badly off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her…a very dangerous proposition.
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Next time you see raccoons near the roads, think of this.
4 minutes readRespect and love for wildlife—and all animals—is our moral duty, and privilege. Gates Wildlife was called out to humanely remove a mother raccoon and her babies from an attic of a home. Watch to see what the mother does in response to us removing her babies and how quickly her maternal instincts kick in.
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As the natural world shrinks due to myopic and misguided human agency (wars, oceans and water pollution, rainforest devastation, climate change aggravated by anthropogenic factors, etc., our effort to help people and animals must be redoubled. The best thing in the world is being able to help someone in need. Sometimes this must be done through radical and enlightened political means, especially if we wish to achieve lasting and meaningful improvement affecting entire categories of beings. Other times, as seen in these videos, through direct action. Exercise your compassion imagination. Practice it as much as possible. We go around only once.