by Eric Mills, coordinator, Action for Animals, Oakland, California “Cowboys, sensing—like gorillas—that their time has passed, cling ever more desperately to anachronistic styles, not willing to admit that the myth has degenerated, the traditions eroded to a point where attempting to sustain them falls somewhere between silliness and the outright ridiculous.” ––Larry McMurtry in the […]
An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature by Jim Mason
Reviewed by Merritt Clifton 193 pages, paperback. $20.00. Lantern Publishing & Media, www.lanternpm.org The slimmed-and-trimmed 2021 edition of An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature, published 28 years after the first edition, is dated only by author Jim Mason’s new introduction, in which he acknowledges the many changes in the world occurring […]
TNR boomed before COVID-19 hit, Alley Cat Rescue survey shows
Feral cat sterilizations were up 23% in seven years; what is happening now? MOUNT RANIER, Maryland––Feral cat control by trap-neuter-return [TNR] was accomplishing more than ever before through 2019, including a 23% increase in the numbers of cats sterilized over the annual average in 2012, suggests newly released data from the Alley Cat Rescue […]
Aloha Rodeo: animal advocates, Disney, & Cheyenne showdown
Will forthcoming film “glorify steer roping” & help to revive rodeo, or help to finish it? UPDATE: The online entertainment periodical Deadline on May 18, 2021 announced that it had “learned that Disney is no longer moving forward with the [Aloha Rodeo] project.” CHEYENNE, Wyoming––Walt Disney Inc., Cheyenne Frontier Days, and a coalition of animal […]
Pit hags, rescue angels, crazy cat ladies, dog men & chicken fighters: what’s in a name?
The late linguist, lexicographer, and “crazy cat man” Reinhold Aman would have relished the question SONOMA, California––Researching the etymology of the terms “pit hag,” “rescue angel,” “crazy cat lady,” “dog man” and “chicken fighter,” absent from most dictionaries yet almost universally understood within the animal advocacy world, would have fascinated Reinhold Aman, 82, who died […]
England Goes to the Dogs, by Gavin Ehringer
The following is an excerpt from Leaving the Wild: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows, and Horses by Gavin Ehringer, which explores the ever-evolving relationship between humans and domesticated animals. Preamble, by Jessica Case, deputy publisher, Pegasus Books: The little-examined, yet omnipresent act of breeding lies at the core of Gavin Ehringer’s book. You’ll meet cows cloned from […]
Cats: Life in the Great Indoors, by Gavin Ehringer
The following is an excerpt from Leaving the Wild: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows, and Horses by Gavin Ehringer, which explores the ever-evolving relationship between humans and domesticated animals. Preamble, by Jessica Case, deputy publisher, Pegasus Books: The domestication of animals changed the course of human history. But what about the animals who […]
Leaving The Wild: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows & Horses
by Gavin Ehringer Pegasus Books, distributed by W.W. Norton & Co. 364 pages. $27.95 hardcover. In stores December 5, 2017. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Remember the most gripping and informative few books you ever read about dogs, cats, cows, and/or horses, by authors as thorough as the multi-time best sellers Desmond Morris, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, […]
Standing Rock: Who let the dogs out?
With suspects identified, will the injured Sioux sue? FORT YATES, North Dakota––Who let the dogs out? Confronting protesters near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on September 3, 2016 with five to eight leashed but leaping, lunging, and biting dogs, who injured at least six people and a horse, the Dakota Access pipeline construction security […]