Saved

You never can tell. Sometimes even when you're far out to sea and there's no help in sight, a miracle happens, beyond all odds.

This Christmas: Save the Elephants

Jenny and Shirley at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee

I hate to bring up the subject of Christmas, because I despise thinking about it this early in the year.  Unfortunately, there are too many silly or greedy people in our society who have turned the whole concept into a circus of display and consumerism.  For myself, I make it a firm rule never to put up any Christmas decorations before the 15th of December, and what few I do put up are very modest.  But the stores are already filling up with Christmas dreck, and every one of you reading this is already making certain plans for the season, I know you are.  So I'm going to put a bug in your ear about all that, as we say down South.

Your Head Trucker would like to send this little suggestion out to the world, for what it's worth:  this Christmas, instead of spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on decorations and parties and expensive crap to give to your friends and relations, who already have too much crap of every kind and color to deal with - why not have a smaller, more modest holiday, and instead get your loved ones to join with you in adopting an elephant?  Elephants are smart, gentle, emotional creatures who are too often vulnerable to cruelty and abuse.  Check out these videos, and see what I mean.

"Spaceless in Seattle" is a short film about the elephants at the Woodland Park Zoo in that city:



More about The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee:



And this video is about the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya:



And here's the Performing Animal Welfare Society in Galt, California - which also makes a home for lions and tigers and bears, I kid you not.  And some primates, too.



Scott Riddle, at his Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary in Greenbrier, Arkansas, explains the global human-elephant conflict:




Now please listen to ol' Russ before you click away.  Whether you are a believer or a non-believer, your Head Trucker asks you to just stop everything for one five minutes, and consider why you go through all your holiday routines in the month of December, by whatever name you call them.  Is it all really to celebrate the warm relationships you have with others in your life?  Or is it possible that you do all that to celebrate - yourself.  Your taste, your wealth, your fabulousness, your one little precious snowflake of a life?

If your religion, or your lack of religion, does not make you a bigger, better, more thoughtful, more compassionate person - then what exactly is the point of all you believe, or disbelieve?

Come to think of it, what is the point of human life, anyway?

What is the point of your life?

Or is there one?

You don't have to tell me, fellas.  But do think it over.  It will do you a world of good.

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Of course, there are many other worthy causes in need of your help, and I'll be blogging about some of those in the weeks to come.

But do be aware that you can check the performance of legitimate charities, including the ones above, at such excellent sites as Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau.