BOOKS: A Boy, A Chicken, and The Lion of Judah: How Ari Became A Vegetarian

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

A Boy, A Chicken, and The Lion of Judah:
How Ari Became A Vegetarian, by Roberta
Kalechovsky. Micah Publications (255 Humphrey St.,
Marblehead, MA 10945), 1995. 50 pages, paperback,
$8.00.
Robert Kalechovsky’s A Boy, A Chicken, and The
Lion of Judah is the only book on vegetarianism that ever
brought tears to my eyes. This occurred as often during my
second reading as during my first.

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BOOKS: Titles to read aloud

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

The FURRY Alphabet Book
The EXTINCT Alphabet Book
The BUTTERFLY Alphabet Book
All by Jerry Pallotta; butterfly book with
Brian Cassie; illustrated, respectively,
by Mark Astrella, Edgar Stewart,
and Ralph Masiello. Charles Bridge Publishing
(85 Main Street, Watertown, MA 02172), 1991,
1993, 1995. $6.95 each, paperback.

Somewhere along the line someone sat on Jerry
Pallotta’s offbeat sense of humor. The Furry Alphabet Book
is a hit with children because it lightheartedly but factually
introduces 26 of the oddest creatures Pallotta could think of,
including the hyrax, the quokka, and the naked mole rat.

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BOOKS: Animologies

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Animologies: “A fine kettle of fish” & 150
other animal expressions, by Michael
Macrone. Cader Books (151 E. 29th St., New York,
NY 10016), 1995. 160 pp., $14.95 hardback.

Michael Macrone takes a colorful crack at explaining
the origins of animal-related phrases, but misses absurdly
often––failing, for instance, to recognize that “dingbat” is
a typographical term, not animal-related, originally applied
to the ornamental battens that kept a hand-operated letterpress
from “dinging” a sheet of paper by forcing it against an
uneven surface. Macrone is equally bewildered by “bat out
of hell,” having apparently never seen bats boiling from a
cavern at sunset. And he asserts that, “Dylan Thomas
coined ass—- in a 1935 letter.” Many people still alive can
testify otherwise.

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BOOKS: Cat Angels

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Cat Angels, edited by Jeff Rovin, illustrated
by Ernie Colon. Harper Paperbacks (10 East
53rd St., New York, NY 10022-5299), 1995. 96
pages; $6.99.

Cat Angels ties the revived interest in angels to
the perennial popularity of cats. From the rust-and-white
tabby on the front cover, complete with wings, halo, and
demurely heavenward-looking eyes, to the back cover,
bearing quotations admitting feline slips from grace, this
book is a charmer. You will find quotations from Jules
Verne, pet tombstones, Lowell Thomas, Mark Twain,
Gertrude Jekyll, Henrich Heine, and Charlton Heston,
among others, interlaced with editorial comments about
cats in world religions. There are a few rather cloying
Victorian verses, saved by sharing the page with funny little
sketches by Ernest Colon, whose cats usually appear to
be in free fall rather than angelic flight.

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BOOKS: Rabbis and Vegetarianism

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Rabbis and Vegetarianism: an evolving tra –
dition, by Roberta Kalechovsky. Micah
Publications (255 Humphrey St., Marblehead, MA
10945), 104 pages, $10.00.

As founder and director of Jews for Animal Rights,
and as director of Micah Publications, Inc., Roberta
Kalechofsky has made major contributions to the animal
rights/vegetarian causes, especially with regard to connections
to Jews and Judaism.

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Crimes against humans
Preliminary hearings began
January 30 in Chicago in the case of Marsha
Norskog, of Palos Hills, vs. Roger and Gayle
Pfiel, of Crete Township. In October 1995 the
Pfiel’s son Steven, 19, drew 100 years for the
July 14, 1993 thrill-killing of Norskog’s daughter
Hillary, 13, and the March 1995 bludgeoning/slashing
murder of his brother Roger, then
19. Norskog contends in a potential landmark
case that Steven Pfiel’s history of sadistic animal
killing gave his parents ample warning that
their son was a threat to commit murder, but
that instead of dealing with his violent tendencies,
they encouraged him to hunt and gave
him the car and hunting knife he used to kill
Hillary. Roger Pfiel is a meatpacking executive.

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Activism

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

The Louisiana-based Coalition to
Abolish the Fur Trade said on January 22 that
it had received an Animal Liberation Front communique
claiming credit for the release four
days earlier of 200 to 400 mink from a fur farm
owned by Robert Zimbal, of Sheboygan,
Wisconsin. The release came three days after
the release on their own recognizance of 17 of
22 anti-fur activists who had refused to pay bail
and had gone on a three-day hunger strike, following
their January 13 arrest for trespassing at
a CAFT-led protest against the International
Mink Show in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Two
juveniles were released immediately and three
arrestees posted bail. Hitting fur farms in
British Columbia, Washington, Minnesota,
and Tennessee, the ALF claims to have
released 6,800 mink, 30 foxes, and a coyote in
six raids since October 1995, as well as spraypainting
$75,000 worth of furs at the Valley
River Center Mall in Eugene, Oregon, on Fur
Free Friday. Virtually all the released mink
were quickly recovered. The other releases
haven’t been acknowledged in fur trade media.

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Sportsmen

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Philadelphia Inquirer photographer
Vicki Valiero’s image of bowhunter
Rex Perysian astride a dead pig just about
told the story on February 2 of her visit to a
canned hunt in Cheboygan, Michigan, on
assignment with staff writer Alfred
Lubrano––but if the picture wasn’t graphic
enough, there were Perysian’s words: “I’ll
grab it like I grab my women,” he told his
pals. Then Perysian dropped the animal’s
head and bellowed into the woods, boasting
that the kill had sexually aroused him.”
The article went on to detail, first-hand, the
exercise in sadism that brought Perysian and
pals to that climax.
Michael Nunn, manager of the
Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge,
in Oregon, on January 31 advised Friends of
Animals that he would recommend that the
refuge “back off” from a proposed aerial
coyote shoot, and instead do two years of
data collection before deciding on any
course of action. Refuge staff blamed coyotes
for a low rate of young pronghorn survival,
but outside biological expertise identified
other more likely causes, including
overgrazing. FoA attacked the coyotekilling
plan in newspaper ads that reportedly
sparked more than 1,200 letters of protest.

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Monk seals imperiled by near-war in Aegean

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

ISTANBUL––As a game of capture-theflag
among youths on the rocky islands between
Greece and Turkey escalated from taunts to trouble in
late January, Turkish Mediterranean monk seal expert
Bayram Ozturk of the Istanbul University faculty of
fisheries apparently tried to pour oil on the troubled
waters, but only stoked the conflagration, which was
eventually stopped only through the personal intercession
of U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Said Ozturk on January 31 via the MARMAM
online bulletin board, “The Mediterranean
monk seal population in Turkey is no longer stable,”
something of an understatement. “The most recent
census, made last year, found 47 individuals. On
the Bodram Peninsula, only six individuals including
pups are living in the small islands called Cavus,
Iremit, and Kardak. Since 1991, the Monk Seal
Protection Project has been conducted in these islets
on behalf of the Turkish Ministry of the Environment
by Istanbul University. Unfortunately,” Ozturk continued,
“Kardak got occupied by Greek soldiers.

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