REVIEWS: Animal Abuse: Why Cops Can and Need to Stop it

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Animal Abuse: Why Cops Can & Need To Stop It
Video from In The Line of Duty (P.O. Box 6798, Brentwood Station,
St. Louis, MO 63144), 2002. 35 minutes. $95.00.

Matthew Kaczorowski, 21, pleaded guilty to mischief on
April 9, 2003 in Toronto. The last of three participants to face
justice for making a purported “art video” of the torture killing of
a cat, Kaczorowski was arrested in Vancouver and flown back to
Toronto for trial approximately one year after Jesse Power, 22, was
sentenced to serve 90 days in jail on weekends followed by 18 months
of house arrest (which he has appealed), and Anthony Wennekers, 25,
was sentenced to the 11 months he spent in jail awaiting trial.

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BOOKS: Bird Hand Book

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Bird Hand Book
Photographs by Victor Schrager, text by A.S. Byatt
Graphis (307 5th Ave, 10th floor, New York, NY 100016), 2001.
128 pages, hardcover. $60.00.

Beautifully photographed, as one would expect from from
Victor Schrager, in sepia rather than stark black-and-white or the
often explosive color of the birds depicted, Bird Hand Book at first
glance appears to offer nothing more provocative than just 98 birds
perching on human hands, with a few words beside each bird by
novelist A.S. Byatt or quoted from someone famous.

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BOOKS: Whose Coat?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Whose Coat?
by John Luksetich, illustrated by Patti Kern
Imagine Nation Press (P.O. Box 172, Lakewood, CA 90714;
<www.imagenationpress.com>), 2001. 26 pages, hardcover. $14.95.

Marketing is not Whose Coat? author/publisher John
Luksetich’s forte. First he was unable to find a commercial
publisher for Whose Coat? in 17 years of trying, even though it is
eminently marketable. Then, when he published Whose Coat? himself
in an attractive format that ought to sell, he forgot to put the
price on either the book, the promotional flyers he sent to ANIMAL
PEOPLE, or the first few pages of his web site–and he advertised it
as “animal rights” literature, the kiss of death in pursuing the
library and school markets that account for the two biggest shares of
children’s book sales. To most librarians and school personnel,
“animal rights” signifies “controversy” and “trouble”–and any
mention of ideology in reference to a children’s book usually also
connotes heavyhanded propaganda.

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BOOKS: America’s National Wildlife Refuges

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

America’s National Wildlife Refuges:
a complete guide
by Russell D. Butcher
Roberts Rinehart Publishers in cooperation with Ducks Unlimited
(c/o Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 4501 Forbes Blvd.,
Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706), 2003.
714 pages. $29.95.

Published in honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding
of the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge system, America’s National
Wildlife Refuges: a complete guide exists, like the refuges
themselves, in part because of funding from Ducks Unlimited.
Hunter/conservationists help to finance the acquisition of
wildlife refuges through taxes on hunting and fishing gear, as well
as through grants by organizations such as Ducks Unlimited and The
Nature Conserv-ancy–and view this as entitling them to have extra
say in how the refuges are managed.

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Animal obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Emily the cow, 10, who escaped from a Massachusetts
slaughterhouse in 1995 and was eventually purchased by Sherborn Peace
Abbey founders Meg and Lewis Randa, died on March 31 from cancer.
Boston Globe correspondent Benjamin Gedan remembered her as “an
inarticulate but persuasive spokeswoman for vegetarianism.” Added
Meg Randa, “It’s easy to go to the grocery, but Emily put a face on
that packet of beef.”

Randy the dolphin, 11, “so-called because of his attraction
to women wearing rubber wetsuits,” according to Martin Lea of the
Dorset Echo, was reportedly hit and killed by a boat in Weymouth
Harbor, England, on April 3, 11 months after dolphin rescuer Ric
O’Barry warned that such an accident would happen and tried
unsuccessfully to steer him back to his former home near Cherbourg,
France, where he was known as Georges.

Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Franklin M. Loew, 63, died on April 22 after a three-year
battle with a rare form of neuroendocrinal liver cancer. “I come to
work but go home early because I tire out,” Loew e-mailed to ANIMAL
PEOPLE on February 2. “I’m in a clinical trial of thalidomide, of
all things, which has been shown to have anti-cancer properties,”
Loew added, seeming to enjoy the idea that he was himself now a lab
animal, participating in one of the voluntary trials of drugs in
terminal human patients that he had often mentioned as an accessible
option for “reducing, refining, and replacing” the numbers of
animals used in biomedical research.

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