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Our efforts are working. We hear from people across the country about the progress they’re making with feral cats in their areas. Trap, Neuter, and Return is making a very real difference for feral cats in communities just like yours. Below are some tips to help you help the cats.

Tip #1 Learn who your city council members are. You can do this by searching for your city government website on the internet. If your city does not have a website, look in your local white pages and call the city clerk's office. Make sure to get their full name, mailing address, and phone numbers (and e-mail if they have one listed). Take the time to introduce yourself to your city council members and start a line of communication with them. See more information about changing your community.

Tip #2 Start your own Trap, Neuter, and Return group! Alley Cat Allies has broken down the steps necessary for you to create your own organization dedicated to bettering the lives of outdoor cats through a Trap, Neuter, and Return program. If you are interested in creating a new clinic in your area, click here.

Tip #3 Feel like you are all alone in your town and trying to single-handedly help the outdoor cats yourself? Don’t. Organize! Getting the word out about your work will help encourage and inspire others to help you in your mission. Educate other people by holding a class about Trap, Neuter, and Return at your local library. Tell people about the steps involved in the process, and make sure to get everyone’s name so you can contact them to help you in the future. For more about how to change your community by organizing, download this PDF.

Tip #4 Are you thinking about talking to your local animal control officer about Trap, Neuter, and Return? Set up an appointment with him or her and bring some goodies. These officers are the people who you will need to work with in order to seek change in your community. If you are worried about what to say, download this PDF to learn how to best get the message across to your local officers.

Tip #5 Trap, neuter, and return works! Wondering who else in the animal protection movement has a position on Trap, Neuter, and Return? Click here to read other organization’s perspectives. Using the perspectives of the other nationally respected organizations that support the humane method of outdoor cat population management may help you change the minds of important figures in your community.

Tip #6 Are people asking you for hard facts, and are you having a difficult time answering their questions about Trap, Neuter, and Return? With some time and a little research, you can be fully prepared for those questions. Alley Cat Allies has compiled many scientific studies and posted them and discussions about them online. You can check out our past newsletter articles or read some scientific studies.

Tip #7 Stand out in the crowd! Wear an orange ribbon, and encourage your supporters to do the same. This is an effective method of showing your support when attending a town hall meeting. Council representatives often want to know how many in the crowd support the issue in front of them. Make sure to have your speaker, if you are allowed to give a presentation, point out that all the people in the audience wearing an orange ribbon want Trap, Neuter, and Return in your community. Click here to order your own orange ribbons.

Tip #8 Is your town considering new animal ordinances, or do they have ordinances that aren’t benefiting animals? Unsure? Click here to learn how licensing cats and leash laws make life for outdoor cats much harder and certainly more dangerous. Learn how to organize and fight these antiquated laws.

Tip #9 Work with the media. News reporters are not intimidating, and speaking to them should not cause you hot sweats. Take your cues from the politicians you see on TV — have a few talking points and repeat them over and over again. Just because the reporter asks you the question doesn’t mean you have to answer it in a straightforward way. Stay positive, smile for the camera, and tell truth. For more tips on working with the media — click here.

// posted by Alice @ Saturday, September 23, 2006 0 Comments

Other Presurfer productions are: The Presurfer Unusual Churches

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, September 20, 2006 1 Comments

Lucy

Feral cat activist Julie Smith tells me of Debbie Meyer, a newspaper columnist who writes informative articles on animals. We finally meet at her serene home on a pond. Three friendly horses approach me and walk right by to Debbie with the hay. In the barn, tabby Violet peers down. Orange tabby Dante inspects my car. Dogs Zelda and Buzz are leaping up in their pen to be noticed. Betsy, the adopted potbelly pig, is not in view. Inside this airy house a one-eyed black & white cat, Schroedinger, greets us, and three-legged black cat Ella scoots by. The youngest cat, Steward, bounds up the stairs.

At animal shelters I have seen people surrender animals to face uncertain futures because they are moving, the animal sheds, or it doesn't match the new couch; the list of heartless reasons goes on. At Debbie and Eric's exquisite new home, the philosophy is the opposite. "You can't replace a life, but you can a couch." Actually, Buzz destroyed their couch -- twice!

Debbie has written on homeopathy for animals, feral cat colonies, good horse care, and a woman that tamed a cat by reading to her nightly from the Bible. An irate reader writes to accuse her of "just" caring about animals. As it turns out, Debbie chairs a mentoring program for youths, works full-time at Duke University on one of the world's most important scientific weeklies, and facilitates a column at the Chapel Hill newspaper called "My View." Would the complainer take in blind amputee cats or care enough about people to help them be heard?

The Queen Mother, cat Lucy, with one blue eye, the other yellow, nearing 20 years, looks out over the pond. Ella shakes her head to the right for Debbie to scratch under her chin. With her right leg missing, she can't reach that spot. "Part of the attraction of getting involved with animals is that they easily make us feel like heroes. I do something as simple as loan a trap. A cat gets caught and spayed, and many lives don't suffer in vain." Nobody is suffering at this location.

// posted by Alice @ Sunday, September 17, 2006 0 Comments

Scarlett

An alleged crack house in an abandoned garage is up in flames. Possibly arson, probably a careless crackhead with a light. These details are moot points; what matters to the stray cat that lives there is getting her five kittens out alive. She makes five trips, each time returning to a structure that is further engulfed by flames and smoke. Every hair singed off her body, ears radically burned, eyes melting shut, she will not stop until she has rescued all five.

Firefighter David Giannelli finds the unconscious cat lying near her kittens. He carefully gathers the feline family and goes directly to North Shore Animal League. Word goes around the world about this heroic cat. The masses pray for her, send cards with best wishes, and 7,000 offers to adopt her pour in. After a month, the white kitten succumbs to smoke inhalation. After three months, Scarlett is healed enough to go to a new home. Out of thousands of potential adoptees, Karen Wellen is selected -- herself the survivor of a terrible accident. Two pairs of kittens go to the homes of two other finalists.

Five years later, and I am visiting with the famous cat in her Brooklyn home. Scarlett is now a solid 16 pounds, with a full, shiny calico coat. The deep scars on her legs and feet, near hairless face, oddly upturned eyes, and nubbed ears bear witness to her ordeal. She needs no bribing to pose for me; she enjoys being around people. Scarlett is a symbol of loyalty, heroism, and the best stuff life is made of.

// posted by Alice @ Saturday, September 16, 2006 0 Comments

10. Der Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter)

The story of Slovenly Peter is apparently one that you will laugh along with or interpret as being incredibly disturbing. It is a tale of German origin about a child who has, to put it simply, really let himself go. As the pictures can attest, he’s given up all interest in his own personal appearance, and all children both make fun of him and fear him at the same time. This leads to all sorts of shinanigans in a collection of strange short stories (such as the tale of three boys making fun of a black man who then fall into a vat of ink). Leave it to the Germans to write such a masterpeice.

http://www.ricochet-jeunes.org/eng/biblio/books/solvenly.html

9. It’s Just A Plant

This book describes to children how marijuana is “just a plant” and is used for a variety of things other than, well, what immediately comes to mind. I don’t know if targetting those who can’t vote to legalize marijuana is necessarily the best tactic around, but it might pay off in 10-20 years. Try reading this to your kid and not have him smoke a joint when he turns 10… go ahead… I DARE you!

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0509,pietras,61592,6.html

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, September 13, 2006 0 Comments

The length of the holy mantra is 120 m. It took 500 kilos of white paint to paint the stones. 'Tibetan Buddhists usually engrave holy mantras on the stones. A great many of them can be seen on the mountainous slopes and passes, as Tupten Shakia, the monk group leader, explained. However, there is hardly such a huge mantra made of big stones even in Tibet, he noted.

The tradition of writing of stones on the mountainous slopes was spread in the Soviet times. Schoolchildren and students wrote the motto "Glory to the CPSS!" on the even slopes. One could have read the name of Lenin on the top of the mountain, which could be seen well from any place in Kyzyl, recently. In the 90s the word "Lenin" was changed into "Dogee", which was the real name of the mountain, as Tuvan perestroika apologists believed.

The mantra "om mani padme hum" is not a mere prayer to Buddha of Compassion. In accordance with Buddhist holy texts, it has the holy power of his blessing and love. In this sense a mantra, either written or pronounced, is the god itself, which revealed itself in this world to help all the creatures. 'Everyone who can see, hear or read this holy mantra gets blessing from the Buddha of Compassion,' Tupten Shakia says, 'And the wind, which touches the stones making the mantra on Dogee slope will carry its blessing further as a gift to all the life forms on its way.'

The mantra construction of the Buddha of Compassion, whose embodiment on the Earth is His Holiness Dalai Lama, started when the spiritual leader of the Buddhists visited Mongolia, the neighboring country. The mantra capable of accumulation and spreading of the tremendous positive energy was built with a wish of longevity to Dalai Lama and prayers for spiritual merits of Tuvan people to help to remove the obstacles preventing the meeting of Buddhist Tuva with its spiritual teacher.

It is worth mentioning that Tibetan monks of Gyudmed Monastery arrived in Tuva by invitation of Kamba Lama Spiritual Directorate of the republic and the public fund "Enerel" (Compassion), which took up coordination of construction works of the mantra a bid prayer drum, which is to be erected on the central square in Kyzyl soon.

// posted by Alice @ Tuesday, September 12, 2006 0 Comments

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. *giggles* Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Fawkes was born in York in on April 13th, 1570. His father was called Edward and his mother was called Edith.

Fawkes was brought up as a protestant and was baptised in the Church of St. Michael Belfry. He went to the Free School of St Peter's near the great cathedral of York Minster.

His father died when Fawkes was eight in 1578 and his mother lived as a widow for nine years. She re-married in 1587 and both she and Guy went to live in the village of Scotton, about 20 miles from York. Here Guy was heavily influenced by his step-father and it was his step-father who was very important in Guy's conversion to Catholicism.

Fawkes left England in 1593 aged 23 as a converted catholic and fought for Catholic Spain in its war against the Dutch. In this war, Fawkes learned all about the use of explosives - especially the art of mining and sapping which were used to blow up buildings and in siege warfare. Fawkes fought for the Archduke Albert of Austria and was described as

Fawkes and others visited Philip III of Spain in 1603 to encourage an attempt an another armada - the invasion of England. In his confession, Fawkes claimed that he was approached by Thomas Wintour in the Easter of 1604 to join the plotters.

He was out of the country for 15 years so when he returned to join the plotters in May 1604, no-one would have known him. This anonymity was important for the task he was to get himself involved with.

A Dutch artist's impression of Guy Fawkes

In London, Fawkes became "John Johnson" and acted as the servant of Thomas Percy.

It was Fawkes who supervised the attempt to build a tunnel from the rented house at the Palace of Westminster; he also stayed with the barrels of gunpowder right up to the end. He was caught with both matches and fuse. He, above anyone, would have known how much fuse was needed to make the time to explosion short enough to avoid possible detection but long enough for him to get away from the blast. he was instructed by Catesby to flee to Flanders once the explosion had occurred.

There is no doubt that Fawkes was brave while kept in the Tower of London. James I himself had ordered that the torturers use the lesser tortures first, but graduate to the more unpleasant ones later.

He endured much torture before giving away the names of other conspirators. His ruined and broken body can be seen in his signature on his confession.

Fawkes was given some sort of trial and found guilty of treason with the other conspirators. He was taken from the Tower of London to the Old Palace Yard and executed on January 31st 1606. * Elizabethan England - The Age of Treason

History is alive in each one of us. The aggregation of all that we collectively, and individually have been, is our History.

In the flow of time there are moments when individuality is enhanced. Those moments throw up the remarkable, the defining moments, the very course by which we define our cultural development. Often they are moments when the flow of time seems to enter a narrow gorge, before opening out into a torrent of change. England in the 1590’s and early 1600’s is just such a moment.

It is a time that has given us stability, and chaos in one. A time that has given us great advances in physics, chemistry, medicine and the very physical definition of the world in which we live. It is a time that has given us the words of Shakespeare and Marlowe, and a time that has given us personalities who have long since been woven into the tapestry of who we are - Ralegh, Essex, Drake, Donne and Bacon. But it was also a time that brought conflict and violent religious turmoil. It was a time when Elizabeth and James I succeeded in galvanizing the very faith of a nation, against a backlash of insurgency, recusancy and calls for religious freedom. It was thus a time that not only nurtured treason, but provoked it, fueled it, and all too often manufactured it.

The seeds of discontent at the treatment of Catholics in England, which ultimately led to the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, were first sown in the late 1520s during the reign of Henry VIII. Henry had been declared Defender of the Faith by the pope and had written tracts against Protestantism. However, dissatisfied with the Pope's refusal to grant him a divorce from his first wife Catherine of Aragon, Henry broke away from the See of Rome, extinguished all papal power in England, and executed his investiture as the head of the Church of England. This was followed by the methodical Dissolution of the Monasteries, under the supervision of Thomas Cromwell, which aided the English war chest and was instrumental in eroding the English power of the Catholic Church. Henry's Church of England was initially not Protestant, but remained closer to his traditional belief of Catholicism.

In the turbulent years that followed Henry’s death, England swayed back and forth on a theological pendulum. Henry's successor, his son Edward VI, steered the Anglican Church down the path of Protestantism, whereas his sister "Bloody" Mary I attempted to violently restore England to Catholicism through severe Protestant persecution, until Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, when the tide was again reversed.

Fearful of a now encroaching Catholic Europe, Elizabeth embarked upon a systematic course of repression and persecution of Catholics within her own country, in an attempt to ensure that there was no discontented populace which could assist a foreign invasion, or which could be seen as a beacon if a foreign invasion occurred. When the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, Elizabeth had all but extinguished the hopes for an end to persecution of those Catholics in England who saw Spain as their great ally. The previous year she had had her rival, the deposed and imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots, executed in order to prevent underground Catholic cells rallying to Mary’s cause and attempting to depose Elizabeth. Such activities as this had been only too evident in the Babington Plot of 1586 which uncovered Mary's coveting of the English crown and which was subsequently a main reason for her eventual execution. Mary's claim to the English throne came through her grandmother Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's eldest sister, who had married James IV of Scotland.

When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, there was disagreement about her right to follow Mary I. Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn, was according to some, not legally married, because Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon was not legal as it would not be ratified by the Pope (the reason Henry broke away from the Catholic Church). So, upon Anne Boleyn's execution for treason, Elizabeth was separately declared a bastard, then removed from the succession by an act of the Privy Council. However, Henry placed her back in the succession, but never legitimized her.

Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, the Catholic strongholds in the north of England, who had been instrumental in the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536/37 and the Norfolk and Northern Uprising of 1569, began sending envoys to both Phillip II of Spain and James VI of Scotland (the son of Mary Queen of Scots). It had become illegal to talk of the succession, yet James was commonly seen as Elizabeth's heir by both Protestants and Catholics, by virtue of closeness of blood to Henry VIII.

The Essex Rebellion of 1601 brought the names of many of those who were at the forefront of the Catholic cause to the attention of the Government, including that of Robert Catesby, who was later to become the leader of the Gunpowder Plot. The Catholics, relieved at the prospect that the son of a Catholic monarch had seemingly been guranteed the throne after Elizabeth's death, had acquired from James the promise of toleration in the event that he did succeed Elizabeth. However, their embassies to Spain, dubbed the Spanish Treason, had been met with a lukewarm response by the Spanish Government, and in fact England and Spain signed a peace treaty soon after the last of these embassies had returned home.

When James eventually succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 as James I, there was initial celebration by the Catholic leaders, who under Elizabeth had been persecuted to such an extreme that any sign of Catholic sympathy risked the severest of penalties, including death. James, however, was not to be their saviour. No sooner had the Hampton Court Conference ended -- with no compromise being given to either the Puritan faction or the Catholics -- than James re-introduced the harsh penalties for recusancy.

The individual biographies of the conspirators provide detailed accounts of the formulation and failure of the Gunpowder Plot. Please also resd through the Archives section to read transcripts of letters, interrogations and confessions.

// posted by Alice @ Saturday, September 09, 2006 0 Comments