Today was focused primarily on panda nutrition needs and preferences. As the the result of a small competition yesterday, myself and three others (Ylenia, Aimee and Craig) were given the privileged opportunity to make “panda cakes” for the Chengdu Panda Base red and giant pandas. The cakes are primarily comprised of grains, bamboo and minerals and are used to supplement the panda diet. In captivity, bamboo only makes up 95% of their diet vs. 99% in the wild. It was a lot of fun playing “panda keeper” and getting to make food for the pandas. CCTV, the main broadcasting company in China, covered the whole process so I’m hoping to get some of their footage to have for memories sake. The best part about it all was that after we steamed the cakes, we took them to the panda enclosure to feed five of the base’s pandas (videos to be on facebook soon), including two younger adult twins and the famous panda, Wu Yi! Wu Yi (meaning 51) was born at 51 g at Chengdu Panda Base on August 7, 2006 . At birth he only weighed 51 g, but due to the hard work of the base, he is alive and well.

Later in the day we learned how to identify 10 different types of bamboo, which was very interesting and was assessed with an exam at the end of the day. We have all been very exhausted, but that did not keep us from celebrating Halloween at Happy Valley, an amusement park a mere 5 min walk from the hotel. The media crew following us around made everyone stare even more and thought  we were celebrities. Tomorrow should be an exciting day as well!!! Can’t wait!

Feeding the pandas!! :)

Today I pet a panda, made “panda cakes” for them, helped make a broadcast release with the US finalists introducing the 7 panda cubs of 2012 to the world, and learned how they train pandas for various tasks–not to mention I got to work with one of the pandas to practice my training skills! Every day is more and more amazing. Today will be hard to beat though. I ACTUALLY PET AND FED A PANDA. He licked my hand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  If you wanna see me practicing how panda keepers train a panda, I made a video on facebook!!

Tiger in Chitwan National Park, Nepal.

A recent study using motion-detection camera traps provided thousands of photos as evidence that the approximately 121 tigers in Nepal’s Chitwan valley have made a pronounced shift towards nocturnal activity.

Study co-author Neil Carter spent two seasons setting motion-detecting camera traps for tigers. (Photo: Sue Nicols, Michigan State University)

Since the start of the 20th Century, the world’s population of wild tigers has dropped by 97% from an estimated 100,000 to approximately 3,000 individuals. The world’s remaining tigers are being pushed into small spaces, and being able to share that space with humans is a critical survival skill.

The tigers here appear to have found a middle ground that keeps their population viable.

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Source: BBC.

As a part of my continuing education, each Friday I am going to post a new question concerning different species!

Happy Friday!

I’d seen the elephants at Angkor, dressed and trussed for tourists to ride on and I didn’t feel comfortable with that. I’d also met Sambo the only elephant left in Phnom Penh, working seven days a week for rides with painfully abscessed feet. But here, around an hours drive outside Phnom Penh, Phnom Tamao is home to a huge range of species. Rescued animals like Lucky the elephant can walk freely in the surrounding forests, you need to be there around 2/3pm to go for a walk with her, find her keeper Sitheng, and you might be able to have a bath with her too! It is large scale, maybe a bit laborious in a tuk tuk but great for a four wheel day trip, grab a picnic and go explore…

I visited with Nick Marx, Director of Rescue for Wildlife Alliance, who introduced me to the tigers that he has raised after saving them from illegal trading. Nick is a man dedicated to his task and as he took me for a peek to meet the tigers ‘back stage’ I watched as they sniffed his forearms and made low welcoming growls for the man they know as friend. Find out more about Nick, his work and watch this great vid…

If you are planning your trip to Cambodia would like to meet Lucky on a photo tour great for the whole family (including picnic, photo guide, donation to Wildlife Alliance and transport!) just drop me a line at greentourscambodia@gmail.com

The Red Panda is a very good climber using its specially adapted feet with rotatable ankles to control downward climbs. They have very strong claws which they use to grasp branches and leaves when feeding. Bamboo makes up the most part of their diet however they occasionally eat eggs, berries or fruit depending on the availability of their main food during foraging. Mostly nocturnal, they forage by night and sleep by day, spending the majority of their time in the trees.

Their main form of communication is by means of body language however they are usually a solitary animal, rarely interacting with other Red Pandas apart from during mating and when caring for young. Even though they are born very small, females have a considerably long gestation period of up to 135 days and usually only have one or two at a time. This also presents limitations in captive breeding programmes and makes the management of their habitat all the more important as they are fragile reproducers.

The main threats to Red Panda populations in the wild are: habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching and inbreeding depression. While human populations increase, Red Panda populations decrease as the humans claim more and more of their habitats for their own. This unfortunately is not restricted to the Red Pandas but uncountable different species worldwide suffer a similar threat and many unique habitats are suffering under the pressure. Road construction, commercial logging, localized logging and clearing for farm lands, being just some of the culprits in the fragmentation of habitats.

Poaching does not present as serious a threat to the Red Panda as habitat loss; however it is still a big problem mainly in China. They are hunted mainly for their fur and their beautiful tails. Outside China they are usually only killed by accident, caught up in traps meant for other animals and shot occasionally because the opportunity was there, rather than being deliberately hunted for.

Research and Habitat protection are vital for the survival of this species. They are known to be shy and due to their nocturnal behaviour observation and data collection can be difficult, so it is important that population studies are fronted in order to get a clearer picture of this secretive animal’s lifestyle. The more known about the Red Panda, the easier it becomes to protect. There are several protected areas covering some of the Red Pandas habitats across their home countries, however not near enough if they are to thrive in the long term and get the management and protection they need.

If you want to know more you can visit the Red Panda Network webpage. They are an organisation that focuses on education, research and conservation. All of which are important in the protection of a species.

Don’t get me wrong. I love them. But I wear leather…I eat meat.

That’s why some of you may be surprised to know that recently I got upset when I read about the plight of coyotes in my area.

You see, there’s been a problem involving coyotes and our (farming) population.

Source

I didn’t think that it was serious. That is, until a few weeks ago when I checked my local paper. Some people have suggested that we adopt a bounty program.

I’ve been worried ever since. Follow-up articles have done nothing to ease my mind.

On the plus side, I’ve been praying for a way to become more involved in my community. And this could very well be it. Who knows…I may turn into an animal activist.

We have just adopted a new dog, and his name is Mika. He’s a West Siberian Laika that we got from a farm in Indiana where the couple that lived there rescued animals to help out the county they live in. He’s registered, and his papers trace his bloodline back a hundred years to Russia. He’s a sweet boy that’s gentle, very loving and full of personality. We could not have asked for a better dog, and we already love him so much!

This is my chance to promote the humane treatment/welfare of all animals, as well as the opportunity to dedicate time and experience to making sure myself and others gain knowledge and understanding of all lovely creatures. This is a glimpse of what’s to come. Animals make me happy. I am constantly trying to come up with new ideas to help some animal, somewhere, find the relief or enrichment they are looking for, as well as new ways to stay involved and up to date on current issues. My passion for animals stems from childhood where I learned to trust the family dog more than most people. At a young age, I learned how helpful and healing animals could be in times of stress and daily struggle. Because of these experiences, I’ve made it a goal to devote a heavy percentage of “life” making sure I help in any way I can and learn as much as possible along the way. So, there you have it. This is my one hundred percent promise and guarantee. I’m just getting started.
-FoxTail Photography©

The idea had already been initiated in 2007, but the first release was in 2010 due to typical geeky laziness.

Flattr was founded to help people share money, not just content. Before Flattr, the only reasonable way to donate has been to use Paypal or other systems to send money to people. The threshold for this is quite high. People would just ignore the option to send donations if it wasn’t for a really important cause. Sending just a small sum has always been a pain in the ass. Who would ever even login to a payment system just to donate €0.01? And €10 was just too high for just one blog entry we liked…

Flattr solves this issue. When you’re registered to flattr, you pay a small monthly fee. You set the amount yourself. At the end of the month, that fee is divided between all the things you flattered. You’re always logged in to the account. That means that giving someone some flattr-love is just a button away. And you should! Clicking one more button doesn’t add to your fee, it just divides the fee between more people! Flattr tries to encourage people to share. Not only pieces of content, but also some money to support the people who created them. With love!

Flattr has no different user types. We know that everybody that create also uses other content. And vice versa. We make no difference between people.

Flattr can be used as a complement to accepting donations. Or to having advertising on your blog. Or to help getting small donations you never get for your open source software.

To Start A Flattr Account And Donate Click On: Flattr.Com

Every once in a while, you run into an individual who’s got that “It” thing going on. You know, the bigger-than-life types… the ones who exude confidence, awareness and over-the-top, in-yer-face personality. The ones with an undeniable energy. The ones who stake their claim to the space simply by being there.

And, in my experience, these It-Factor types occur with animals as well as humans.

And every once in a while, I run into an animal who just oozes It-Factor. Like my Buddha Toad here. I mean no disrespect to the followers of Buddhism, however, I do think he seems to have attained some sort of knowledge and enlightenment. Just look at him. When he sits back in my hand and looks out at the world (and scornfully at me), I am convinced that he knows far more than I do…

My research indicates that this little fellow may be an Oak Toad (Anaxyrus quercicus). According to the Virginia Herpetological Society, these little toads are quite rare in the state and require a “very high conservation need” as the species is at high risk for extinction or extirpation.

Photo note: I tried, tried, tried, to achieve a photo with Buddha Toad’s nose in the same focal plane as the rest of his body… however, my trusty iPhone camera was not so trusty on that day; Buddha Toad’s nose remains out of focus in a photo or two. But then, I figured his personality transcends all technical issues… so I’ve published anyway. I promise to find another It-Factor amphibian and try again!

All photos taken with an iPhone 4. © 2012 EddinsImages

Jeff co-wrote the book with Julie Scardina, the animal ambassador for Sea World Parks & Entertainment. The book has beautiful photographs and interesting statistics and stories about each species and conservationist’s work. There are three canine species profiled, the African Painted Dog, the maned wolf of Central South America and the Ethiopian wolf.

Jeff said the African Painted Dog is a unique species found only in Africa that evolved separately from other canids. These exotic-looking dogs have a body type similar to a small wolf or fox, but with large upright ears, alert amber eyes, and a mottled tan and black coat with a white-tipped bushy tail.

Sadly, the dogs are commonly perceived as savage vermin, and are routinely shot, snared or run over. In fact, the dogs are loyal, pack-oriented and gentle. Painted Dogs will bring food to and nurse the wounds of an injured pack member and they have been shown to mourn deceased dogs.

Their numbers are declining, with an estimate 3,000 to 5,500 dogs left on the entire African continent. Gregory Rasmussen, founder of Painted Dog Conservation, has worked since 1989 to protect them through hands on conservation, education and community involvement.

PDC has reduced road kills 50 percent by placing reflective collars on the dogs and road signs at common dog crossing points. To change perceptions of the dogs, Rasmussen created the Children’s Bush Camp, where Zimbabwe youth learn about the species and get introduced to the normally elusive dogs at the PDC Rescue Center.

Jeff is also the DC Office Director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. He had these suggestions for anyone wanting to support worldwide efforts to help animals:

Donate money directly. It might be easier to set up a monthly automated donation to the organization(s) of your choice rather than a big amount all at once. For example, a one-time donation of $180 could be hard, but a regular monthly donation of $15 is basically giving up just three lattes a month.

Fundraise. This is something you can get kids involved in, which also teaches valuable lessons about giving back. Jeff suggested having a birthday party with a “help animals” theme and request donations to a conservation organization that the child picks out instead of gifts. You can get creative with this, for example, serving animal crackers in dog bowls or playing “pin the mane on the lion.”

Join activist groups. The big conservation organizations have ways to help even if you can’t donate money. For example, IFAW’s “Get Involved” section on their website has seven different petitions you can sign online to send messages to government decision makers.

“Wildlife Heroes” is going into its third printing, and was recognized with a Green Book Festival award for Best Wildlife Book. It is available online at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com for around $14.

Painted dog photo courtesy of www.painteddog.org.

 a haven for big cats

Hello from T.I.G.E.R.S. in Myrtle Beach!  Most people do not realize that we are in the midst of a mass extinction that is affecting every living thing on this planet. We are losing up to a dozen species of plant and animal every day. This rate is far faster than when the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. A stunningly beautiful animal like a tiger captures people’s attention so they become more willing to learn about critical conservation issues. Tigers are an important living example of the environmental problems facing the world, which makes them the perfect wildlife ambassadors. Wild tigers are currently on the brink of extinction. Due to rampant habitat destruction and poaching we may be losing a tiger a day.

Perhaps this article can give a little hope.
From msnbc.com

“The dens of two snow leopard mothers and their cubs have been located in Mongolia for the first time, with new, unprecedented video showing the mothers and their young inside the den, a conservation organization announced July 12.

Snow leopard dens are difficult to find because of the animals’ secretive, elusive nature and the difficult, mountainous terrain in which they live. Finding the dens is an important step in learning more about the reproductive behavior and the young of this endangered species.

“We have spent years trying to determine when and where snow leopards give birth, the size of their litters, and the chances a cub has of surviving into adulthood,” said Tom McCarthy, executive director of the snow leopard program at Panthera, a wild cat conservation organization.

Most of what has been previously known about snow leopards and their young has been gleaned from animals in zoos, where litters typically consist of one to three cubs. How big wild litters are and how the young fair in the wild — where they are subject to predation, disease, poaching and capture for the illegal wildlife trade — was not known.

The dens were discovered in Mongolia’s Tost Mountains, where locals refer to the creatures as “Asia’s Mountain Ghost.”

A team of scientists from Panthera and the Snow Leopard Trust entered the dens when the mothers were away hunting. They found that the first had two cubs and the second, one. All three cubs were weighed, measured and photographed and handled with extreme care, according to a Panthera release. Two were fixed with tiny microchip ID tags (about the size of a grain of rice) that were placed under their skin for future identification.

The use of these tags and observations from the team can help scientists learn how long the cubs stay in their den, when they begin to venture out with mom and how long and often mom leaves to go hunting.

“Knowledge about the first days and weeks of life is vital to our understanding of how big cat populations work, and how likely it is for a newborn to reach adulthood and contribute to a healthy population. A valid conservation program requires such information, which this new development in snow leopard research provides,” Howard Quigley, Panthera’s executive director of jaguar and cougar programs, said in the statement.

Only around 4,500 to 7.500 snow leopards are thought to remain in the wild. In recent years, pictures of snow leopards from camera traps have also been taken in other parts of the animal’s range, including Bhutan, Siberia, Kashmir and Afghanistan.”

Help us save these beautiful animals by joining T.I.G.E.R.S. (The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species) adopt an animal program and help make a difference. For more information contact T.I.G.E.R.S.

Related articles

• Wild Snow Leopard Mother and Cubs (neatorama.com)
• First ever videos of snow leopard mother and cubs in dens recorded in Mongolia (esciencenews.com)

Reblogged from Ann Novek--With the Sky as the Ceiling and the Heart Outdoors:

The Oklahoman2012-07-28:                        By MIKE IVES, Associated Press | AN BINH, Vietnam — Nineteen tigers prowl outdoor cages the size of dormitory rooms, nibbling frayed wire fences and roaring at a caretaker who taunts them with his sandal. It looks like a zoo, but it's closed to the public. The facility breeds tigers, but has never supplied a conservation program with any animals nor sold any to zoos.

Read more… 35 more words

White Tiger (Singapore Zoo) (Photo credit: madaboutasia)

Tiger Fundraising Events

From Tiger Awareness:http://www.tigerawareness.co.uk/tiger_fundraising_events.html

We really appreciate the efforts of people who have helped to raise funds for our efforts.

Some details below:

Leeds Fun Run
A group organised by Claire O’Neill and friend raised £700 at the Fun Run In Leeds in August 2011.

Tara Broughton – £1500
I chose tiger awareness because tigers are my favourite animal and I am all too aware of what an endangered species they are. Having read about Tiger Awareness I was very impressed that not only do they contribute to saving the tiger but also in educating people about the plight of the tiger.

I know that there are many tiger charities that have a similar ethos but the final factor was that they are based in Leicester, which is the home of the rugby team I support and who funnily enough are known as “Leicester Tigers”!!”

Read more information here about the donation from Tara Broughton from Animal Friends Insurance.

Rob Edlington
Rob raised £1200 on September 26th 2010 by running a half marathon. Great effort!

Andy Watts and Fern his dog walked from Lands End to John O’Groats to raise funds for Tiger Awareness and Project Era Foundation in Bandhavgarh. Andy raised £4000.

Karl Davies ran the Bath Half Marathon in March and raised £280 for Tiger Awareness.

Emma and Pete raised £100 at their wedding, to help our work.

Bob Smith had a passion for helping Tigers – he would watch many documentaries on them. Bob passed away on February 2nd 2010 aged 83. The family collected £370 for our projects in remembrance of Bob.

Charity Netball Event 19th July 2009. Big THANK YOU to Claire Brandom and City Tigers for raising £1000.

Philip Elliott ran the Silverstone half marathon March 15th and raised £350.00.

A presentation of a cheque for £1350 from CHOKOLIT for the sales of the BITING BACK Bar.

Drawing from Outwoods Edge School, Loughborough, Leicestershire.

Emma Taylor, aged 9, hopes that her picture will inspire other children to think about the plight of the tiger.

Many thanks to the girls from Queen Elizabeth School in Dorset who raised £30 at the end of June 2008.

Craig Smith raised £1000 by running the Edinburgh marathon and climbing the two tallest mountains in Tanzania.

Craig did the marathon on May 25th (the time is on the photo!) and he climbed Mt Meru and Mt Kilimanjaro between June 4th and 16th.

Top class from Brentry Primary School who had a Tiger
Day in January 2008 and raised £700.

July 2007 – Claire Brandom and City Tigers had a charity netball tournament and raised £1500.

Jenny Osgood had a good street collection and rasied £110.

April 2007 – Tom Taylor completed the London Marathon in 3 Hrs 30 Minutes and raised £660.

January 2007 – ICTUS raised £315 by having a gig in Leicester.

Search

Raise money for Charity just by searching the web. Support Tiger Awareness through everyclick.com, the search engine that helps charity.

http://www.tigerawareness.co.uk/tiger_fundraising_events.html

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There are so many sites: Anyone who sends in a picture of a Tiger(s) that brings awareness will be posted on my tiger page and this blog. All interest is appreciated!

Related articles

• Tiger facts & future (aytacgok.wordpress.com)
• Zoo denies white tiger cub was eaten by starving companions (theweek.co.uk)

“i-like-america-and-america-likes-me”

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys: Past the Affable
“… just as you have come to me, because of what I’ve made, and we can talk about it …”— Beuys

Joseph Beuys: Suit

The two most acclaimed German artists at the moment, at least in this country, are Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys. Kiefer’s stardom was earned by his dealing with what, in Germany, had been unapproachable before: a looking at the recent past and an accepting of the facts with an attempt to express a response where before there had only been avoidance and denial. With his paintings of the early 1980s of the raped landscape and funerary cellars (in effect, of the brutalized psyche), a dialog was finally opened. Here was the invitation to begin a public discussion, a way to express feelings long suppressed in collective shame and blindness at unknowable solutions.
Beuys was rewarded for similar reasons. As clown, shaman, and creative force whose artistry respected no boundary lines, the public welcomed this alert distraction from the immense shadow of the recent past. Beuys answered a need of the population, waking up from the shock of its economic social and cultural lethargy following the war, and showed a way to rise from the ashes that was as fun as it was holistic and spiritually challenging.
Non-Germans seem glad to be able to embrace both these figures, beyond the achievements of their art, as a way of forgiving, for a reconciliation with that part of Germany that is most acceptable, most generative, least harmful or threatening, and certainly, most profitable.

Anselm Kiefer

Beuys’s work certainly served, in its initial contact with an audience, as a diversion. But to regard his work simply as an entertainment to nullify the realities in which it was created, is to miss the point of its revolutionary nature. For Beuys, a moment of rapture in engagement with an art article, or art as a respite from the daily grind, is a sentimental act that has no purpose in today’s world. He calls for nothing less than a complete overhaul of that system in which art is a product of a consumer society who needs paintings to decorate walls, to use as barter, or to receive momentary uplifting. “Art is,” he said, “a genuinely human medium for revolutionary change in the sense of completing the transformation from a sick world to a healthy one.” (Beuys quoted in Quartetto, exhibition catalog, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1984, Milano, p. 106)
Beuys’s project challenges the established assumptions. The subscription audience expects its standards to be played year after year. These rules are put in place by the powers that be to enforce their own perpetuation. Large doses of the repertoire—Mozart, Schubert, Picasso, Hemingway—uphold the values of the ticket buyers. They’re made into cultural icons, like flags waving, like a crest for the bourgeois. These are the models, we’re told. This canon is defended by the tastemakers to preserve their values and to acclaim them as the standard.
It’s not that one must choose sides, that you must either pledge allegiance to easel painting or to Beuys. But Beuys encourages a new attitude at regarding our former preconceptions, our assumptions in looking at art, at the museum and gallery visit. Beuys is not so reactionary as to deny the existence of the entire art history repertoire, or even to extinguish it from present consciousness. He does, however, break with the tradition that would have him making precious objects to be exhibited in a system that needs these accouterments to congratulate itself for its creative achievement or to applaud itself for its taste.
For Beuys, the art piece no longer has to be an object to worship for its beauty, for its achievement at duplicating or interpreting in some way our own nostalgia for the unspoiled wilderness (in landscape), or human desirability (nudes, pretty people), portraits (persistence of the regal, historical perpetuation of the conqueror and vanquished), or religious fervor (biblical reenactments, testaments to observance [getting with the program] or its corollary: physical or spiritual pain for straying).
His is an art that rejects that academic perseverance and dedication to craft, the years of figure drawing, of working from models, from casts. His agenda turns away from the need to duplicate, to accurately render. He abandons that skill which we all so admire in artists of the past who are so able to fool us, with their craft of illusion making, by creating those scenes we long to see.
In recognizing the responsibility of the post-World War II artist to offer new possibilities, Lyotard says: “Those who refuse to reexamine the rules of art pursue successful careers in mass conformism by communicating, by means of the ‘correct rules,’ the endemic desire for reality with objects and situations capable of gratifying it.” (Lyotard, Jean-Francois, “Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism,” in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984, p. 75) The experimental nature of Beuys’s work and its insistence on process is a response to the “rules of the beautiful” (Lyotard) that a complacent public desires from its artists; a public that would have simple, easily pleasing, pretty pictures to gaze at and admire, to deal with as commodity, accept as necessary embellishments to its comfort, with perhaps a hint at transformation or enlightenment. Beuys moves past the conservative crowd’s intent on perpetuating itself with images of beauty, images that can only remind one of the familiar and which fail to initiate any thought but that of pleasure in the comfortable and accepted. He won’t accept the narrow confines of a beauty that is a “form of defense from the inertia of the everyday.” (Leon Battista Alberti quoted by Achille Bonito Olivia, Quartetto, p. 102)
Beuys’s art objects and performances weren’t/aren’t about entertaining an audience, though in their confluence of wacky happenings with strange substances, in their novelty, they must have at least entertained the most unwilling observer. Beuys wanted to awaken the populace, shake one out of the routines, the acceptable rigors one can pass through life with unobservant of the disparities and conflicts all around. “…I not only want to stimulate people, I want to provoke them.” (Bastian, Heines and Jeannot Simmen, “Interview with Joseph Beuys,” in the catalog exhibition, Joseph Beuys, Drawings, Victoria and Albert Museum, Westerham Press, 1983, no folio)
Beuys insisted on a recognition of the whole, not just those aspects of the whole which were capable of giving pleasure and instant gratification. Beuys opened up a route to the possible, a kinetic realm where beauty was as available as anything else. All that was forbidden was apathy.
Beauty, however, becomes an archaic concept in Beuys’s sphere. Not that what we recognize as beautiful is banished. Rather, that limitation of regarding beauty as an object of veneration or a holding a mirror up to the ideal is extended. Beuys creates a new idea of beauty. One that would regard as silly the traditional conception of that being beautiful which satisfies a sentiment within us that reflects to us some scene of recreation or sereneness or leisure (I’m thinking of Impressionism); the art object existing to soothe us.
While Impressionist paintings are undeniably beautiful, it is also undeniable that they helped to create and to preserve—in their depiction of the pleasures of cafe life, the comfortable drawing room interiors, the attended ladies at bath—a class divided from the world in its comforts and signs of sophistication. Beauty is attendant as the price paid for financial superiority.
Beauty, here, is a means of escaping from the issues and obligations of the day. It is a way to avoid engagement with the mundane reality surrounding one; a way to lift oneself out of the ditch of the ordinary; to ascend to a plane where comfort is allowable to those who can afford it. Beauty separates those who appreciate it and wish to reside within its frontiers, from the peasant and working class who can only dream. Lotto is a current beauty.
Recently, Arthur Danto, in his Nation column, made the distinction between art that retained “a continuity with classical antiquity, with marble forms and cadenced architectures, with clarity, certainty, exactitude and the kind of universability Kant believed integral to our concept of beauty…” (Danto, Arthur, “What Happened to Beauty,” The Nation, Vol. 254, No. 12, March 30, 1992, p. 419) and that contemporary work which he saw as discontinuous with that tradition.
I’d contend that beauty is found in the unfamiliarity of Beuys’s work. To the person who comes to a Beuys’s piece of action, who is open to the encounter, a whole new realm, unconceived before, is made available. Beauty comes in the steering of us into new places where we transcend the familiar relation we had with objects. In his ritualizations, those objects or materials—like fat, felt—are transformed into instruments of a secular upheaval. It is that moving away from the traditional models, Beuys’s insistence on rejecting just those standards the usually less conservative Danto defines as necessary for the beauty experience, that openness to a multicultural model, a willingness to include all models not just the white bourgeois crowd pleaser standard, that shapes what Beuys has called his “social sculpture.”

David Tremlell: The Spring Recordings

Duchamp’s urinal blazed the trail. If the Dada movement insisted on slapping the public’s face in order to demand alternatives to the affable, to impolitely wake society up to the limits of its current progression, it still continued to operate in that society’s forum. Though it wished to transform society, its operators were too bound with that system to give up the privileges that society afforded them. What are its artists doing, in photo after photo, wearing the clothes of the bourgeois they deride so aggressively? Why do they adapt the affectations and symbols—in their tuxedos, stiff collars, and fine dresses—of that system they would seem to detest? Many of the Dada artists come right out of the privileged class, and that’s the point: you don’t come out. You remain, no matter how fervently you deny it. You’re connected and a degree of outrageousness will be accepted as the euphoria of an art parlor game. Which is not to deny the power of the art itself by regarding it as product for patrons who had the taste andforesight to collect it.
Beuys certainly inherits Dada’s rage at the powers that be and he responds with Dada’s audacity at not remaining subservient to the restrictions that system would oppress expression with. Dada was an awakening in the form of a movement—artistic, activist/social, but most forcefully, psychological: Its artists refused to adhere to the limits of the expected, or the patronized obligation to entertain and please. Their break was radical in its insistence on offending. It was a people voicing resistance to a social system that would prefer decoration to intellectual fervor. Dada sought to undermine, to question, to reject.
Speaking of Polke, Danto points out that being that the artist was born in 1941, his “aesthetic of ruin” proceeds from the conditions of his childhood in a devastated Germany, going on to surmise that “in the older spirit of Dada, his art is an indictment of the values of those responsible for the ruination of World War II.” (Danto, p. 421)
Beuys might be seen in the same way. Except Beuys’s work doesn’t need to condemn or indict or find blame or name names. It reacts by offering alternatives, by not playing by the rules of that system which would destroy itself. His art breaks with the need for that value system; it makes not attempt to be accepted or to offer itself for judgment to that bureaucratic maze. By not accepting the criteria, the rules, Beuys courageously forges ahead into new, unexplored territory. He doesn’t prolong the themes and variations of the machinery. What his step tells us is that it’s possible, indeed necessary, to seek new routes. He takes former student Kiefer to task, sighing that Kiefer just didn’t get it.
Many of the aspects of Arnold Schoenberg’s music that Theodor Adorno investigates so passionately, further illustrates what I’m addressing here. Adorno speaks of Schoenberg’s being “driven incessantly by the disgust of everything he produces which is not entirely new.” (Adorno, Theodor W., “Arnold Schoenberg, 1874–1951,” in Prisms, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA., 1981, p. 151) The boldness of creating a music varying from the Wagnerian standard is stressed. Adorno finds in Schoenberg a champion of new processes, a perfect exemplifier of that daring, courage and conviction so necessary in making it new. Adorno recognizes the psychological daring of Schoenberg’s breakthrough, his willingness to forge ahead into unfamiliar terrain. He calls for the “renunciation of the customary crutches of a listening which always knows what to expect.” (Adorno, p. 149)
This is what Beuys demands. His work points to the necessity of not depending on a conforming to the established norms as this can only lead to stasis. With Beuys, affability ceases, as Adorno exclaimed about Schoenberg. No longer can art be used to separate the pleasing from the entirety of experience. Beuys’s work demonstrates how to accept the range of sensations and include them all. “He sins against the division of life into work and leisure . . .” (Adorno, p. 150)

Currently on display on the second floor of the DIA Center for the Arts’ building at 548 West 22nd Street is a version of Beuys’s installation Arena—where would I have got if had been intelligent!, dated 1970–72.
Approaching the DIA building on a Sunday afternoon, salsa music blares out of an open doorway, the only sound on the otherwise desolate westernmost edge of 22nd street. With the street of closed warehouses empty of all activity, it seems like old New York. Corrugated steel gates are drawn on most doorways. The culture seeker is drawn to the one building on the block with trees in front and a neat facade. One enters the building and feels a slight sense of rescue from the dangers of the street as you quickly acclimate to the familiarity of the museum lobby and welcome its safety: front desk, book and gift shop, doors and stairs leading to the quested. This experience has its price: $3.
The second floor space is a huge, clean expanse. The concrete floor is painted a light gray and extends in its uninterrupted flatness much further than one would expect in a city context. The outer perimeter arcs around with its wings divided into 3 alcoves on each side. One hundred panels are hung neatly and orderly winding around the entirety of the wall space. The panels are each of an identical size with identical industrial-type frames fabricated from two rectangular rimes that fit together and are bolted flush. Most panels display photographs of Beuys in performance or capture him in conversation at various “actions” with audience members and participants, or the photos are of objects from his workshop, some the basic materials, others the materials juxtaposed with other objects instituting a piece.
Though this is a Beuys exhibit, most, if not all, of the photos were not made by Beuys. The art is not the usually ascribed medium of photography. The photographs document the art, the performances, the tools and component elements used in the performances.
The person or persons who took these photos—who in a traditional context would be the “artist”—is not even mentioned. That person is an anonymous helper, a lab assistant or studio assistant, performing the drudge work. Beuys’s aura hogs the attention, absorbs the focus. Photos of corners of workplaces become Beuys’s workplace, close-up details become details of Beuys’s objects. A ready-made page, removed from a magazine, smeared with, perhaps, animal fat, is a Beuysian piece. There are no labels, no titles to insist on a meaning or to steer our associations.
The photos are the relics, the holy objects in the enshrining of Beuys’s work, of offering witness to the energy field still emanating from these performances and the studio clutter. The photograph’s grainy textures, torn edges, out of focus, badly lit, obscured subjects, irreverently cropped, poorly printed, creased—all elements abhorrent to the gallery/archival system—point the way to a reordering of priorities: It announces that the acts recorded are more important than the materials used to preserve them. A radical restructuring is going on. Beuys’s emphasis is not on creating objects, or in this case, “high-art” photographs (in the sense of pristine, sellable prints). He’s involving the viewer in a different way. He’s offering, like a scrapbook, some samples from his playing field. These are the ingredients of his recipe. We don’t regard these photos as fine art prints, each to be admired and praised. Instead, they become evidence and part of Beuys’s process, defying the devotional aspects of art: art piece as precious object, as material for consumer passion, art as collateral, art as prestigious product.
Beuys doesn’t participate in that process. His system offers the alternative of accepting all as part of the art process, not just the pristine result, suitable for framing and admiring; and buying and selling. His art is a call for inclusion; of calling into the realm of art the everyday object—felt, workshop materials—as well as inviting in the organic—live and dead animals, trees, fat, himself.
We recognize common things—a phonograph record, a piano, branches, flashlights, a horse, tools, string—but it is their arrangement into unfamiliar confluences that startles us and transforms the way we perceive the formerly taken for granted.
What is “arty” about putting a branch over a phonograph record or two bricks on a hotplate? Just as we might adjust to the shock of the carelessness, casualness of the materials, our sense of values might adjust to this reordering, this playful questioning of structures, the crossing of boundaries, not adhering to the rigidity of formerly unquestioned purposefulness, the refusal to accept the authority of the preconscribed, to become acclimated to the re-ordering of a things’ “thingness.”

“By combining Vitex agnus castus with the coldness of cobalt and the warmth of sulphur, then making active manual contact with the female element copper, Beuys was asserting the role of the human being by activating the battery; ‘Energy emanates from the two poles, male and female. My action drew them together. I mean a different concept of chastity produced by this reaction and the conflict of elements.’ . . . This implies an active struggle and leads back to the meaning of the arena in which so much of Beuys’s life is spent, in discussion, political organization, permanent conference and the circus of the art world.” (Tisdall, Caroline, Joseph Beuys, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1979, p. 225)

In this current incarnation at DIA, the two-foot-high piles of slabs stand apart in the vastness of the room with an oil can placed besides them. This is what remains from that occurrence and seems a sentimental reminder. It’s difficult to label this arrangement as sculpture. It exists on its own terms yet is also the cocoon from which Beuys emerged. It’s like a postcard from the artist to remind us not only of the essential elements themselves, but also of what he did with them twenty years ago in Edinburgh, Naples, and Rome.
This presentation, even in the solemnity of its 100 cast frames, arranged so pristinely in perfect symmetry in the trade-hall-like expanse of the DIA room, is about process and celebrates indeterminacy and flux. It is unwilling to accept the idea of the fixed, the end product. It refuses the finality that a finished product represents. The polished surface, the slick facade, the object of veneration is a death to Beuys. It’s a closed door, an end to discussion: There it is. Now there’s nothing to be done but admire it.
The whole body of Beuys’s project is to suggest transformation, to show the way, to set an example. The “actions,” or performances he staged, were rituals to induce new ways of perceiving and to heighten appreciation of the everyday objects involved. Skeptics can call these acts silly and ridiculous—Beuys sitting in a tub of water with flashlights attached to each thigh is documented in this installation—but the act initiates a change. One is changed simply by contact with the site, absorbed into the theater, the ritualization. One has come freely to participate. There are no observers, one can’t remain detached. You become an initiate. Beuys’s performance—his invocations and even his talking to the audience afterwards—has a charisma and power that survives and casts its healing spell even in these photographs and piles of stones with oil can from twenty years ago.

(The previous article was written by Greg Masters and is included in The Artchive with his permission.)

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W., “Arnold Schoenberg, 1874–1951,” in Prisms, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA., 1981

Danto, Arthur, “What Happened to Beauty,” The Nation, Vol. 254, No. 12, March 30, 1992

Galloway, David, “A Report from Germany,” Art in America, Vol. 74, No. 5, May 1986

Kuoni, Carin, editor, Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America, Four Walls Eight Windows, NYC, 1990

Kuspit, Donald, “Joseph Beuys: The Body of the Artist,” Artforum, Vol. XXIX, No. 10, Summer 1991

Lyotard, Jean-Francois, “Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism,” in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984

MacKintosh, Alastair, “Beuys in Edinburgh,” Art and Artists, Vol. 5, No. 8, November 1970

Morgan, Robert C., review, ARTS Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 7, March 1989

Quartetto, exhibition catalog, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1984

Schellman, Jorg and Bernd Kluser, editors, Multiples—Joseph Beuys, Catalogue Raisonne—Multiple Prints 1965–80, NYU Press, NYC 1980

Seymour, Anne, Joseph Beuys, Drawings, Victoria and Albert Museum, Westerham Press, 1983

Tisdall, Caroline, Joseph Beuys, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, NYC, 1979

Zweite, Armin, editor, Beuys zu Ehren, catalog of exhibition at Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1986
(at DIA Center for the Arts)

— previously unpublished

This Blog was inspired by biblioklepkt which I would highly recommend and to whom I owe this push for this publishing; to see their post visit and overall information.

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With the existing animal awareness trends through endless communication, information and education through the mass media and the animal loving society, the feeling of taking greater care to these beautiful creatures which have rights to have families and rights to roam the beautiful lands, swim in the deepest  oceans and sore in the clear blue skies. While man’s quest for knowledge and material goods not forgetting his daily bread which can only be satisfied by these beautiful animals, there is a need for people to ponder at the rate which the conservation and awareness trends are heading keeping in mind the plight of all the animals in their natural habitat and the animals in captivity. While keeping in mind that people would love to see these animals in their localities, the sheer love for animals is just not a yardstick for being capable of taking care of these beautiful animals. With little experts in the world at its disposal collective bargain has to be part of the individuals and communities in order to help love these animals and secure them for our generation and the coming generations as well. It’s not just going for an African animal safari which qualifies someone to actively helping in the conservation of these animals but the energy which lingers day in and day out till the entire safaris gone.

While some just come for the pleasure, the adrenaline is just the same if the days are full of events and great animal pictures will emerge as the best moment of the animal safari. While there is no animal safari which is complete by giving back to the community where these safaris are held, the common man who should be the ring leader in that natural habitat should be the cornerstone of all the progress as the global day today events unfolds in order to save all while still loving all animals with equal rights. As man ventures to many of the world’s animal safaris in search of the unknown during these dangerous voyages in the natural habitat of the unknown, there have always been costs in times of money, time manpower, and a lot of research which grinds to a halt due to luck of knowledge of the unknown and the ability to perceive what is just limited to man.

Though in the main and in the while the fact that man has carried on with research about endangered species, the gravity of the endangerment has just come to the limelight of many of the people of the world who cherish these beautiful animals on earth and the plight of the future animals as habitat loss, deforestation and the thirst for more animal product which is deeply entrenched in many cultures of Africa where bush meet is a delicacy which supplies the proteins at a relatively low cost and is used with many rituals,  Asia where endangered animals are often used for their medicinal purposes,  Europe home to many dangerous and beautiful  endangered animals where hunting for pleasure and for the use of these animals for research has created a hue and cry from many of the animal lovers and animal right groups and even America where endangered  animals have ended up in captivity as a result of people buying animals and keeping them as pets which has seen fatalities as a results of animal attacks within the human habitat as well.

There are always many ways to get things done but when you want things get done someone has to have an intuition about it and let others be guided on how to go about it as the existing awareness becomes entrenched to bring about a bigger and better change to the flora and fauna of the world at large

Today, not only did I experience these cool animals for the first time, I also broadened my horizons and options in the environmental field. On top of environmental engineering, environmental lawmaker, and the various other careers I’ve thought about going into, I learned about some new ones that would be interesting, too. A panel of professionals talked to us about careers in being a Small Population Research Scientist (how cool would that be!), Zoo Veterinarian, Zoo Curator, and Animal Keeper. These people had such a passion for their jobs and the animals that they’re working towards conserving.

Also, I learned about a little birdie that doesn’t fly… the one known as kiwi! Did you know that the Brown Kiwi have whiskers, can swim, and the females have one of the largest egg to body ratio – roughly 1:6 to 1:4. That’s like a 100 pound woman having a 15-25 pound baby!

Today, some interestingly deep questions entered into my brain and are still stuck their tonight as I am writing this. Questions such as, do animals have emotion? How do you choose which animals to help and which not to? Can killing animals really be the answer to helping others survive? What impact is captive breeding having on the genetics of that particular species? Are some species of animals going extinct for a reason? How do you convince someone why we should be conserving these animals?

The only one that I really have started to answer is perhaps the last one. If you have studied even a little bit of ecology in high school biology, you will have known at one point about food webs. A food web demonstrates how most, if not all, living life forms in an habitat acquire energy from another at one point. In other words they are all connected. Who would have thought that if all the grasshoppers died, even the coyotes would be impacted? If even the smallest organism at the bottom is ignored and destroyed, eventually we humans, at the top will be devastated by the impact of something we probably thought useless decades or longer ago when we chose not to conserve it. Mother nature once had a balance, and is very capable of supporting every species if only we take good care of her and let her take care of us. As my mommy always says, if you take care of something, it will take care of you. Although she always says this about horses, I’m sure the same is true about our planet Earth.

Good night, from Fairfax, Virginia!

   Title

   Lullabies and Fire Flies

Slurred words, muttering, still.

Pursuance. A letter’s cornered ear.

A flattened fear still sticking, with Rabbit skin glue.

Ink blurred; open and black. Pages beat…   back.

The Ocean’s skin.

Pages still swelling, roughly, straddling; wet

With tears. True rain hears.

Wet with the feeling of real rain raining;

rung with reels of skinned stories, a lathed cat.

A manic hanging, of her ghostly tongue, a cat skinned.

Words enshrined, a convalescent bee.

 Flat, slight fit, land, living trap, eye capped. Cloths drying pinned.

On this thin-skinned page, pacing sunshine.

A forever fire Fly. Or a corrugated field. An accident of the pen;

Detected by time, a shutter-feed design.

 Appeasing, hung out to dry.

A blasphemy, to love undetected. Lured.

Eye capped;

A camera celluliar  insight, tear-ducked,

 to far to cry.

An unopened hatching, beautiful list, yet touched.

  dry. bundles wrapped,

 Defected, but sweetly caught,

 a watershed; Attached.

  Of nerves. Trapped.

Honed in. Honey sucked. Sacked.

 Foundering, sinking meaning, a paper meal.

Lures deflected, sold for Lye, stitches, weighted and scaled.

Yellow and twirled, wounded and aubergine lute, a paper light proverb.

A wadded washington, eagle ironed; handed appeal.

For a dime-store lulling, no reverb.

Shelved salt-taffy tails.

Death is walking, where fireflies are talking.

Where hearts meet, a unwundered street, love is there, in dimming light,

Unspoken history, blue-colored, perfect fifth key word. Stalking.

A voice from a outsider’s. To lay against write.

Paper weight, A. Changed.

The original title.

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” HELP ME ! I’M A LOWLAND GORILLA
INCARCERATED IN THIS ZOO.
ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO GET
ME MORE SPACE WILL BE
APPRECIATED ! “

Except for a visit to a zoo, when was the last time you had a close encounter with a gorilla? I know, that’s a silly question, but I couldn’t resist asking…  

Please remember, the gorillas in these videos are really wild and what you see has not been staged or rehearsed. These gorillas are not drugged or sedated in any way. These gorillas are 100% alert and real. The gorillas in these videos are habituated (accustom) to humans and will allow people to carefully (respectfully) approach. Some gorilla families are not accustom to seeing people; when anyone approaches them, they will  promptly flee.

You may already know, but there are 2 kinds of gorillas; the lowland gorilla (the gorilla you see when you go to a zoo) and the highland gorilla, also called a mountain gorilla. Mountain gorillas live in the mountains of Uganda, Rwanda and Zaire (Africa), high in the Viruge Volcano range, and are slightly larger than the lowland gorillas. A silverback (male) mountain gorilla has long black hair, except for its silver-haired back, and weighs around 485 lbs. Diane Fossey made mountain gorillas famous through her many years of in person field studies and her book, GORILLAS IN THE MIST, which became a major movie starring Sigourney Weaver and Bryan Brown. A silverback (male) lowland gorilla has short brown or gray hair, except for its silver-haired back, and weighs around 220 lbs., up to around 400 lbs., depending on which habitat it’s from. It lives in the eastern and western lowland tropical forests of Africa, this includes Cameron, Zaire, Congo, Gabon and Nigeria. The females of both types are solid black, gray or brown, depending on whether they are a mountain or lowland gorilla, and they are much smaller than their silverbacks. Each silverback is the head of his gorilla family; the guy in charge, their protector, the one that keeps everyone else in line. He’s the big one with the silver hair on his back. You can’t miss him.

These videos are too awesome not to pass on. If you already had the good fortune to experience these videos, watch’m anyway. They are still as exciting as ever. May I suggest, use the “full screen” feature, and turn the volume up so you can hear the silverback’s belch vocalizations and other background conversation and sounds. 

The following video is a tribute to Dian Fossey; she negated the myth of the vicious, rampaging Hollywood 800 lb. gorilla  jokes. This video is from the documentary “FINAL DAYS OF DIAN FOSSEY” (2005). As you’ll see, there are no 800 lb. charging gorillas. Also, the music is fantastic.

You’ll see in this next video people having awesome and exhilarating experiences during their very close encounter with a family of mountain gorillas. It’s worth repeating, the silverback in this video is the head of his family; the guy in charge, the one that keeps everyone else in line. He’s the big one with the silver hair on his back. You can’t miss him. You’ll see, even when the silverback “attacks”, it’s not really an attack. It’s more like the silverback saying to the people, “You guys are getting on my nerves. I’m going to have a little fun with you guys, so you’ll leave us alone.” The silverback could have easily grabbed this individual’s ankle, but he didn’t; he simply grabbed the cloth covering the ankle. Of course, when a silverback attacks another silverback encroaching on his territory and family, the attack will be a “no joking around” attack. A close encounter with a mountain gorilla family is definitely on my bucket list. All I need to do is mind my manners and act submissive, which will be real easy to do. So, if the Good Lord sees fit, I’ll make this close encounter happen someday.

Is there something for us to learn from witnessing families of wild mountain gorillas, Dian Fossey and other individuals all getting along? I think there is. It’s something to think about. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the magnificence of God’s creation.  

Carefully positioned on observation platforms with telescopes and cameras, researchers were able to track the number of females each male mated with, and the number of offspring produced by each adult male and their survival. Their findings indicate that in gorilla mating circles – size does indeed matter. Consistently, the bigger the adult male, the more mates it had. “Our findings of correlations between physical traits and male reproductive success could be considered evidence of a selection process in gorillas, but it is not yet proof,” said Thomas Breuer, the lead author of the study.

In order to assess the role of size in the reproductive success of the gorillas, researchers selected three physical factors for measurement: overall body length, the size of the adult male’s head crest, and the size of an individual’s gluteal muscles on the animal’s posterior. The researchers then compared this data with information on group dynamics to discover that all three characteristics were positively correlated to an adult male’s average number of mates.

Interestingly, the data on gorilla size was not gained by using tape measures, but rather a non-invasive method called digital photogrammetry, which renders accurate measurements of individual gorillas and their characteristics from digital images by converting pixel size to actual lengths.

The SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund is a supporter of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s efforts in the Mbeli Bai and is pleased to help illuminate the selective pressures that influence the evolution of great apes.