Alongside some cutthroat actions by humans upon humans, it is refreshing to hear about kindness being given to guilt-free animals. Two instances came across my desk recently: a vetrinarian caring for pets of the homeless and, earlier, a behavoral scientist teaching a migration path to birds extinct in the wild.
Dr. Kwane Stewart’s outreach on the streets started more than a decade ago as a personal mission that he kept to himself. “It was my way to heal,” said Stewart, a veterinarian whose nonprofit, Project Street Vet, provides medical care to the pets of people experiencing homelessness. “Maybe some of it was guilt. Maybe some of it was I just wanted my own little crusade.”https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/14/us/california-street-veterinary-medicine-pets-cnnheroes/index.html>
Separately, Johhannes Fritz, a behavioral scientist, built an aircraft and learned to fly in order to teach the bald Ibis, a bird extinct in the wild for 300 years, how to fly a 3-week migration path south from Germany through the alps by following his ultra light aircraft. Fritz founded the Waldrapp team to better understand the Ibis’s requirements, and began a bond with these species, which turned into a passion to save them. Granted, this was in 2001, but the team Fritz initiated appears to still be operative. https://www.waldrappteam.eu/en/
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THANKS!
Many thanks to friend Sallie for directing me to the following related to Christians for Judaism, discussed in my Nov. 30 post. You can check it out, but here ‘s part of it, from Wikipedia via Google:
Christian Zionism is an ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with Bible prophecy: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant — the eschatological “Gathering of Israel” — is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.[1][2] The term began to be used in the mid-20th century, in place of Christian restorationism, as proponents of the ideology rallied behind Zionists in support of a Jewish national homeland.[3][4]
Advocacy on the part of Christians for a Jewish restoration grew after the Reformation, and is rooted in 17th-century England.[1] Contemporary Israeli historian Anita Shapira suggests that England’s Zionist evangelical Christians “passed this notion on to Jewish circles” around the 1840s,[5] while Jewish nationalism in the early 19th century was largely met with hostility from British Jews.[6]
Christian pro-Zionist ideals have generally been common among Protestants since the Reformation. While supporting a mass Jewish return to the Land of Israel, Christian Zionism asserts a parallel idea that the returnees ought to be encouraged to reject Judaism and adopt Christianity as a means of fulfilling biblical prophecies.[7][8][9][10] Polling has suggested a trend of widespread distrust among Jews towards the motives of evangelical Christians.[11]
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GRIM
“My favorite ‘Twilight Zone’episode is the one where aliens land and, in a sign of their peaceful intentions, give world leaders a book. Government cryptographers work to translate the alien language. They decipher the title — ‘To Serve Man’ — and that’s reassuring, so interplanetary shuttles are set up.
“But as the cryptographers proceed, they realize — too late — that it’s a cookbook.
“That, dear reader, is the story of OpenAI.”…. much more
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SOMETIMES
I wonder, did I write my life?
If so, I was clever and did
A good job. So many dear things
Were included. Best of all was a
Sterling sense of humor. I laugh
At myself for spilling my soup
Or getting into the wrong car
(That was a hoot) or taking a
Year of French but not learning the
Word for potty when needed in
Calais. The black and yellow writing
Spiders at the farm, the fig tree,
Even the scupernong arbor, too.
Red tomatoes warm from the sun–
Patrol girl in the sixth grade and
Best of all, a grandmother with
a soft lap and dimpled elbows.
NANMYKEL.COM 