Nelson Daily Stories

        CHER, THE POP STAR AND KAAVAN, THE LONELY ELEPHANT Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian) is an American singer, Oscar-winning actress and television personality.   In 2018, Matthew Hawkins wrote in the McGill Tribune about her “electrifying energy” in the song “Dancing Queen.” That was then, this is now. On Sunday November 29, 2020 Cher said, “My wishes have finally come true.” What wishes? Another pop hit? A television variety show, perhaps? Oh No! Her five year campaign to help “an overweight Asian bull elephant” who spent 35 years in “a barren substandard zoo enclosure” in Pakistan was finally successful. Let us look back to see how this all happened. On September 27, 2017, an article “ Cher and her Free the Wild Foundation Advocate to save Kaavan the lonely elephant from Marghzar Zoo” written by Lauren Lewis appeared in WAN (World Animal News). It said in part, “Cher is heralded for many things including her incredible voice. Yesterday, however, it was her strength, persev

 NOT THIS TIME, MR. ALLIGATOR When the Florida Wildlife Federation (FWF) and the fSTOP foundation set up their cameras in Estero, Florida, USA earlier this year they had an aim in view. They hoped to “capture footage of wildlife in the community so that residents in the area can understand more about the animals that they live alongside including deer, racoons and wild bobcat.” https://images.app.goo.gl/2Yb2ZwA6R6t2a2yt5  There are 17 cameras across 15 different properties, according to Meredith Budd the Regional Policy Director at FWF. Jennifer Hassan’s article in The Washington Post Nov. 23, 2020, mentioned that the area is unique because of the abundance of wild animals. Now the area is even more unique because of an incident that occurred there recently.  Volunteers who agreed to be part of the project live in an area that borders wild habitat in Lee county. One of the volunteers was Richard Wilbanks. He had a new pet, a three month old puppy named Gunner.  There was also a pond in

  A SMILE CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING Jill Hutchison was depressed. She was sitting in her car in her driveway in Grove City, Columbus, Ohio, one bleak drizzly morning in spring this year. Tears ran down her face. Just then the trash truck drove up. A young black man hopped off the truck looked over at the parked car, smiled a big grin and waved to her. She noticed that his two front teeth were missing. “If this kid can smile in this weather I need to suck it up,” she said to herself. Something about his attitude touched her. The kid’s name was Jacquez ‘Jackie’ Worthy. In the story written by Theodore Decker in the Columbus Dispatch Jackie says he remembers the meeting. He has “always had the gift of just being able to read a person by their face.” On that bleak morning he saw weariness in Jill’s face and wanted to make her feel better. “A smile can change everything. Everything.” Jackie said. From then on Jackie brought Jill’s can up to her house every Thursday. Jackie, the

  THE BALD EAGLE - THE MOST PROTECTED BIRD In the 1970s, bald eagles were almost extinct in Ohio, a state in the East North Central region of midwestern USA. By the 1980s there were only four breeding pairs of the birds there. Several factors contributed to the dwindling number of birds – among them was habitat loss, fragmentation, and contaminants – PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl) an industrial pollutant, and the pesticide DDT. The bald eagle has been the National Bird of the USA since 1782 . Ever since the time of the Roman Empire the eagle has been a symbol of governmental power. Many Native American religious traditions regard the bald eagle and the golden eagle as messengers of the Creator, the Great Spirit.   A decade ago, there were only 200 nests in Ohio (the 34 th largest by area in the USA). Today, there are more than 700 nests across the state.   How and why did such a dramatic change take place? An article by Jon Stinchcomb in the Port Clinton News Herald on Nove

    PARROTS STUFFED IN PLASTIC BOTTLES!! A ship was docked in Fakfak, a port town in Indonesia’s eastern region of Papua. As the crew went about their duties they heard strange sounds “coming from inside a large box,” according to a report on the BBC website . A local police spokesman Dodik Junaidi, told the AFP news Agency that the ship’s crew “suspected there were animals inside the box.” What they found was extremely disturbing. There were “dozens of smuggled parrots stuffed in plastic bottles .” Sixty-four parrots were still alive, but ten birds were found dead. The live birds were set free. Indonesia is home to the highest number of threatened bird species in Asia and a rampant illegal trade in birds, the article said. There are avian markets in Indonesia where birds are sold domestically. But many birds are smuggled abroad . Elizabeth John from the wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC told the BBC that black capped lorries are sought after illegally to supply the pet t

 A WALK AROUND THE BLOCK with SPIKE CARLSEN Spike Carlsen has been writing for more than 20 years. His first book, “A Splintered History of Wood” in 2009 became Amazon’s No.1 Mover and Shaker. Now, after writing many more books and articles he has come up with: “A Walk Around the Block.” In a recent interview with TODAY’s Dylan Dreyer, Carlsen said there are stories behind everything – in the random things that are all around us.  He commented that we read books about going up Mt. Everest, sailing down the Amazon, going to the Moon, but we do not know much about what is just outside our front door. What do we know about the squirrels, the pigeons, what is in the trash? Why do we have manhole covers? What is the history of front porches? What are the secrets in a stoplight? Spike has had a most interesting life – “a checkered past.” He now lives in Minnesota, USA and over the years has worked as a carpenter, taught at an elementary school in Denver, worked as a teacher in Tanzania, and

Eventide Home Fire in Jamaica - Barbara Nelson  https://youtu.be/8v_iGC-ZxU4   The Eventide Home was opened in Jamaica on July 1, 1870. At that time Jamaica was a British crown colony.  The Home was a wooden building constructed specifically to house elderly women. As time passed, however, destitute crippled and handicapped old men and children were also placed there along with the elderly women. In the first year that Eventide existed about 160 old women lived there -this information comes from an article written by Daive Dunkley in the Jamaica National Heritage Trust.   Eventide is the most tragic display of human neglect our country has ever known. Let us never repeat it again.”   These are the words of Father Richard Ho Lung, founder of the Roman Catholic Charity “Missionaries of the Poor”.  “Eventide is the most tragic display of human neglect our country has ever known. Let us never repeat it again.”  “We all don’t get wealthy, travel the world, sit with kings or eat the finest f

        HE WAS AT THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME On Saturday, November 14, 2020, Stephen Ellison, a 61-year-old Englishman, was walking by a river in China. Why was he there? He wanted to see a nearby village. Ellison, who also takes part in triathlons, is head of the British mission in Chongqing, China. He is into his first month as the Consul-General.  While he was walking, a 24-year-old woman “slipped on rocks” at the side of the same river and fell into the deep water. Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic Editor at the Guardian newspaper, writes that “Footage filmed by onlookers showed her struggle in the current, disappear under a footbridge and emerge facedown, apparently unconscious.” People on the side of the river watched in dismay as the woman seemed to be drowning. Yet no one attempted to help her! White-haired Stephen Ellison, who is from Newcastle, saw what was happening. Without missing a moment, he took off his shoes, “showing some very colorful socks” and plunged, fully cloth

  RUBY BRIDGES, THE CIVIL RIGHTS ICON Lucille Bridges, the mother of Civil Rights icon Ruby Bridges, died on Tuesday, November 10, 2020. She was 86 years old. Before Ruby took part in a Zoom call hosted by the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, on Wednesday night November 11,2020, she honored her mother’s courage. Lucille, she said, wanted her children to have “a better education than she had.”  Lucille, Ruby added, was “a champion for change and her actions “altered the course of many lives.”  An article by Leah Asmelash of CNN on November 14, 2020 tells how Ruby Bridges became a trailblazer when she was just six years old. On her way to William Frantz Elementary School to begin first grade on that November morning in 1960, six-year-old Ruby was escorted by four Federal Marshalls. All along the way to school a mob of white people kept yelling and they “hurled insults at her.” “I really wasn’t aware of what was going on,” Ruby told NPR in 2010. She did not understand what the w

              MURDER HORNETS ELIMINATED IN THE USA?      NO, THEY ARE STILL AROUND In October 2020 we thought they were “eliminated” - the Asian giant hornets, also called “murder hornets” that were seen earlier in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. In December 2019, some Asian giant hornets were seen near Blaine, Washington, near to the Canadian Border in the Pacific Northwest. That was the first time that the insects were seen in the United States.  The insect “normally lives in the forests and low mountains of eastern and southeast Asia and feeds on large insects including wasps and bees,” Nicholas K. Geranios wrote in AP News in May 2020. “It’s a shockingly large hornet” a WSU Extension entomologist and invasive species specialist, Todd Murray said. He added that the creature is a health hazard and a significant predator of honeybees.  The stings of the hornet are “big and painful.” Multiple stings can kill humans. In the late summer and early fall the hornets “atta

        MILLIONS OF MINK HAVE BEEN CULLED (SLAUGHTERED) The photographs on the BBC website are very upsetting. The headline tries to explain them: Coronavirus: Denmark shaken by cull (killing) of millions of mink. Last week Denmark decided to cull all its mink because of the spread of coronavirus. That meant up to 17 million animals would be killed. The article by Adrienne Murray in Denmark said 2.85 million mink out of a population of 17 million in Denmark have been culled. Now “mass graves have appeared in the Danish countryside filled with the slaughtered animals.”  “Covid 19 originally came from a wild animal. It was then transmitted to humans and later passed on to farmed mink before jumping back to a small number of humans.” “Several different mutations have been discovered in the virus in mink that do not arise in humans. But one called Cluster 5 is of particular concern and 12 people are known to have caught it in Denmark. More than 200 people have contracted other mink-related

                  TARRA SIMMONS MAKES HISTORY Tarra Simmons did not do well in school . When she was 13 years old she became a middle school dropout. There was a lot of violence in her home. “I was around drugs and alcohol all the time,” she recalled.   In 2011 she was arrested three time for selling drugs . At 15 she had her first child . Eventually she became the first person in her family to graduate from high school. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing then worked for 11 years as a registered nurse. But in her early thirties she had a big problem with depression. To cope with it she started taking drugs .                            ===000=== In 2013 she was working at Burger King after spending 30 months in prison “for drug and theft convictions.” Tarra is 42 years old. Where is she now? What is she doing?                            ===000=== This past week Tarra won Legislative office and became “Washington state’s first felon to win legislative office.” Ca

 REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD Forty-four years is an awfully long time. Denise McCarty knows that. She lives in Vermont, USA, but many years ago she was adopted from South Korea by a family in the United States. For years she wondered how and why it happened. She was told that she was abandoned. Why? she asked herself. Now, after so many years, she has been (virtually) reunited with the family she did not know.  Denise’s birth name is Sang-Ae. Her twin sister’s name is Sang-Hee. When they were just three years old they went with their grandmother to a market in Seoul. But in the overcrowded place the little children were separated from their grandmother and lost. Three days later Sang-Hee was found. But there was no sign of Sang-Ae.  Someone had found the little child and taken her to an orphanage in Seoul. Soon after that she was adopted by Americans who became her parents. As she grew up in the United States Sang-Ae was told that she was abandoned.  She wondered why. In fact, her fa

 THE ICONIC PIG EAR SANDWICH Geno Lee is the current owner of the BIG APPLE INN restaurant. He is the great grandson of Juan “Big John” Mora who came from Mexico to Mississippi in the United States in the early 1930s.  “Big John” started the restaurant. The most famous dish at the restaurant was their Pig Ear Sandwich. Over time the BIG APPLE INN on Farish Street became an extremely popular place. It was packed day and night with partygoers and with activists of the civil rights movement.  Medgar Evers, the field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had an office nearby. The story “Pig Ear Sandwich: An Iconic Dish” written by Simon Urwin on BBC Travel is fascinating and inspiring. The NAACP members would often meet in the Inn and Lee’s grandfather, “a black Latino” supported the movement.  But in the late 1960s and early 1970s “businesses slowly began moving out.” So why did Geno decide to stay in a place that was falling apart and crumbl

  NANAIA AND HER FACIAL TATTOO   The face or the head of a person are regarded as “particularly sacred” to the Maori people of New Zealand. “So, the carvings that go on the face or head are also particularly sacred,” Mera Lee -Penehira told the BBC . Mera is a professor at the Maori educational institution Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi. Her comments came after a very unpleasant incident in which Nanaia Mahuta, the first indigenous female to hold the position of Foreign Affairs Minister was severely criticized for wearing a tattoo.   In fact, Nanaia is the first female MP in New Zealand to have a traditional facial tattoo. She was appointed as Minister in a recent cabinet reshuffle. The person who criticized Nanaia is a white New Zealand author, Olivia Pierson , who said in a tweet that “facial tattoos especially on a female diplomat is the height of ugly, uncivilized wokedom,” the Mail Online reported. Pierson’s comments “sparked anger” in the country and the response w