Entry for January 10, 2007/Orange For the ASPCA and Animals Everywhere

Dear Friends and Supporters of the ASPCA:

It gives me great pleasure to tell you that ASPCA^® Mission: Orange™ is now officially underway. Launched today from our shelter in New York City, ASPCA^® Mission: Orange™ is a focused, measurable effort to create a country of humane communities, one community at a time, where animals receive the compassion and respect due to them as sentient beings, and where there is no more unnecessary euthanasia of adoptable animals simply because of a lack of resources or awareness.

With the collaboration of community and animal welfare leaders in "target communities" across the country, it is our hope that we will begin to effect immediate, measurable and sustainable change for animals in these communities, especially for those animals most at risk: the shelter population. To this end, the ASPCA will be focusing the bulk of its resources, both financial and programmatic, on building capacity and animal welfare efforts in these communities, aimed at reaching a day when they are sustainable. This will allow the ASPCA to then enter new communities and bring them under the umbrella of ASPCA^® Mission: Orange™—and thus, community by community, create an entire country of humane communities.

On this website, you will find details on the fine work all our partners are doing in the 2007 ASPCA^® Mission: Orange™ target communities. Please visit these pages often, since they will be constantly updated, and let us know what you think of our combined efforts. Remember, your community leaders are in the trenches, fighting animal cruelty, day in and day out. I hope you will give your community heroes the encouragement and acknowledgement they so deserve. Most of all, though, thank you for caring about the fate of animals around the country—it is because of your support and faith that the ASPCA is able to undertake such an ambitious campaign—one that we are convinced will succeed.

Sincerely,

Poetry Wednesday/Leonard Cohen

"Poetry Is just the evidence of life.

If your life is burning well,

poetry is just the ash."

Leonard Cohen

Last night I watched a DVD entitled "Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man" a tribute to Leonard Cohen with many wonderful performers doing his material. Great singers all because his words deserve only the best. While I was watching this I remembered what a great poet he is and how wonderful it would be if I featured him on Poetry Wednesday. He has written poetry whick has been published, but mostly we know him for his songs, which are true poetry.

I feature two here today, from the tribute DVD. I know you will enjoy them. The first is Leonard and a few fans doing "Tower of Song" and the second I am sure you have heard before performed by Rufus Wainwright, who performs it here. "Hallalujah". What a beautiful song.

Something Cute For Tuesday

I thought I would leave this really cute doggie picture here for a good friend who is a dog person and I am pretty sure she will like this. Who wouldn't.

Happy Tuesday

Entry for January 06, 2007

Some cat art for Art Sunday. This painting is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Entry for January 05, 2007

My weekly news installment from the ASPCA. Lets take time to think about the other species of animals in our lives as we come up to Go Orange For Animals Day on January 10th. Lets see that orange.

TODAY IS NATIONAL BIRD DAY—ARE YOUR FEATHERED FRIENDS SAFE?
January 5 marks the fifth annualNational Bird Day, a time to appreciate the birds in our own backyard and reflect on how we treat native avians of other countries. And if you have companion birds in your home, it’s a great time to think about how to ensure that your feathered friends remain happy and healthy. To help raise awareness about responsible bird caretaking, we’re offering the following poison prevention tips to keep your companion avian in the “sing” of things:

* Birds are highly sensitive to inhalant fumes, so please avoid exposing yours to fumes from self-cleaning ovens and overheated cookware, automobile exhaust, tobacco smoke, glues and paints, insecticidal fumigants, perfume and hair spray.

* Keep all prescription and over-the-counter drugs out of beak's reach, preferably in closed cabinets. Pain killers, cold medicines, anticancer drugs, vitamins and diet pills are all examples of human medications that can be lethal to birds, even in small amounts.

* Never allow your bird access to areas in which cleaning agents are being used or stored. Should your pet ingest them, he could suffer from a range of symptoms, depending on the substance, from mild stomach upset to severe burns of the tongue, mouth and crop.

* Foods and beverages that could be dangerous to birds include:
- avocados
- chocolate in any form
- coffee & tea
- moldy or spoiled foods
- onions & garlic
- tomato leaves and stems
- yeast dough

Please feel free toforward this information to all the pet bird parents in your life. For additional bird safety tips, visitASPCA online.

WEAR YOUR ORANGE FOR ANIMALS ON JANUARY 10!
Here at the ASPCA, we’re going orange in a big way in 2007—and we need your support. Make sure to check our website next Wednesday, when we officially announce plans to help homeless animals this year and beyond.... You might say we’re on a mission!

In the meantime, get ready to show your love and support for animals by going orange in any way you can next Wednesday—and tell all your animal-loving friends and co-workers, too! Send in photos of how you went orange for animals and the ASPCA on January 10, and you could make it into a futureASPCA News Alert. Email your photos togoorange@aspca.org by January 26…and thank you for all you do for the animals!

Shown above are more of my furry family. You have meet Khay the Elder before, the one lying down, and the other is his younger brother, Wannabe. Arn't they beautiful. Of course I am prejudice. \

Happy Friday, you all have a great weekend.

Susan

Poetry Wednesday

photo: New Directions Publishing Corp. Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas was born in Wales in 1914. He was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own; he read all ofD. H. Lawrence's poetry, impressed by Lawrence's descriptions of a vivid natural world. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading, but neglected other subjects and dropped out of school at sixteen. His first book,Eighteen Poems, was published to great acclaim when he was twenty. Thomas did not sympathize withT. S. Eliot andW. H. Auden's thematic concerns with social and intellectual issues, and his writing, with its intense lyricism and highly charged emotion, has more in common with the Romantic tradition. Thomas first visited America in January 1950, at the age of thirty-five. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as new medium for the art, are famous and notorious, for Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. Tragically, he died from alcoholism at the age of 39 after a particularly long drinking bout in New York City in 1953. This has always been a favorite poem of mine. I hope you will like it also. Do not go gentle into that good night byDylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. A little tid bit of trivia "The White Horse Tavern " where Dylan Thomas literally drank himself to death was my neighborhood bar, one block from my apartment, in New York City. I went there for many years until it turned into a college yuppie hang out. What a loose to the great taverns of this world. click White Horse Tavern

Working in The New Year

I decided I would have a New Years Resolution. A really easy one. Before I start work everyday I am going to make sure I read the comics. I use to get the paper and that was the thing I did with breadfast. Then I started reading them on line from the paper I use to get. So I have them all set up, the ones I like one right after the other, but I sort of fell off the wagon and wasn't reading them for awhile. Now I have decided I need to start my day in a good mood this year and what a better way to do it than reading the comics. I have just finished the comics, my oatmeat and my coffee and I feel much better.

Who out there likes the comics and which one is your favorite. Comics arn't just for kids.

The picture is of my sister Robin and I from when they were visiting. It is an overlook above the valley I live in. The Verde Valley and we are on Mingus Mountain.

I just realized that you can not see the view from where we were standing and this silly Yahoo won't let me, for some reason, delete the picture without losing what I have written...so we are still on Mingus Mountain, you just can't see the Valley.