Elephants And Family Quotes

To be a baby elephant must be wonderful. Surrounded by a loving family 24 hours a day…. I think it must be how it ought to be, in a perfect world.

We were left with nothing because of a love like acid that ate its way through our entire family.

This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.

Elephants? Really? My God, what does he see in you? Certainly not your intellect or wit, since we’ve yet to see any evidence it exists. And your idea of a love scene? So Disney, so Family Channel, so dreadfully boring. Really, Ever, may I remind you that Damen’s been around for hundreds of years, including the free-love sixties?

The coolies pull them across Howrah bridge, which they share with cars, trucks, bullock carts, a party of young women in saris strolling in no hurry wearing bangles on their ankles, an elephant also in no hurry, and a cow that is lying down in the middle of the road chewing lazily a booklet entitled Dr W C Roy’s SPECIFIC FOR INSANITY. The camera pauses on a portion of the half-eaten text: “Dr Roy’s insanity medicine acted a charm. I am completely cured,” says Srinath Ghosh of Bundelkund. 5 rupees per phial.

They taught me that all life forms are important to each other in our common quest for happiness and survival. That there is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind.

And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was practically our family pet.

Don’t you want Simi to be your family?...This is the part where you say, ‘Yes, Simi, I would like to be your family.’ ‘Cause if you don’t, then I’ll have to take my mitt back and barbecue you. Akri is still upset about the last Dark-Hunter I barbecued and that was…oh, a thousand or so years ago. He part elephant when it comes to remembering things. (Simi)

And that is how the problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room. It was practically our family pet.

Sometimes we encounter men, even entire families, whose gross ignorance, unappealing mien or reckless habits make us wonder how their genes have survived the trials and tribulations of the ages. Yet we do well to remember that, should the world be plunged into nuclear holocaust, the principal candidate for survival is neither man, nor the great elephant, nor the swift stallion, nor the wily fox – it is the lowly cockroach.

Whales are like elephants of the sea. They have family structures, mannerisms, and habits that are similar to our own.

I GREW UP IN THE untouchable slum of Elwin Peta in Kakinada. All around me was abject poverty. When you are surrounded by so much misery, you don’t see it as anything extraordinary.

Spoilers follow I started reading the third act of Hamlet, and I got about two pages in when I realized there's no point. I am never going back to school. I am never going to the university. I am never going to watch wolves stalk through the northern forests or elephants graze on the savanna. I am never going to have sex or get married or raise a family. I'm never going to have a first apartment, a first house, a first car. I'm never

Perhaps people felt there was nothing more they could do, you know? After all, how can someone be helped who doesn’t see the need? A Christian counselor I saw for a while described such situations as, “a White Elephant everyone can see but no one wants to deal with; everyone hopes the problem will just go away on its own.” Just like with my mom. Back then it seemed women were almost expected to go a little loopy sometimes. After all we’re the ones with raging hormones that get out of whack – by our periods, PMS or pregnancy and childbirth – and cause craziness and bizarre behavior. And because of those uncontrollable hormones, women are also more emotional and predisposed to depression. These are things my mom was actually told by her parents, her family, her husbands and friends... even her doctor. Eventually, she made herself believe that her erratic behavior stemmed from PMS, not mania or alcohol.

This year, Rebecca instituted a White Elephant gift exchange, that passive-aggressive method of conveying just how little the people you see more often than family mean to you via the splendor of craptastic gifting.

Most people fantasize that if they won the lottery, they would quit their jobs and immerse themselves in leisure, play, family, parenthood, occasional thrilling sex; they'd eat when they were hungry and sleep whenever they felt sleepy. Many people, if they won the lottery and got rich quick, would want to live like elephants.

Why do you never see elephants hiding up in trees? Because they’re really good at it. I’m reading an anti-gravity book. I can’t put it down!

A nation is not the soil. A nation is the people.

In the end, the only thing that really matters is family. -Jackson Freestone

Men have nothing in common with me--there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him-- caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, whether his mother is sick or well, whether he is looked up to in society or not, whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider--he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent.

If I went to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, I didn’t go for the horse or the elephant – I went for the freak show in the back: the one-breasted man; the half-bearded woman (in other words, the people who today have become politicians). In my day they were in the back room of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey,

He went to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo—or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded,

She laughed a bit at the simple beauty of it all - the white paper, the elegant arc, the soft green grass; and, beside her, the purple backpack, Grandad's golden straw hat, the sky a pale-blue umbrella embracing the whole town

The Hebrew word, qeren (#H7161 קֶ֣רֶן), is a horn of a bull, or is sometimes used to describe the tusk of an elephant. The English translation here is, “might.” In either case, the business-end of either animal is the symbol of its strength. pg 41

When poachers target the matriarchs or older females—as they often do, because older elephants usually have larger tusks—they also destroy that lifetime of learning and knowledge. For an elephant family, the death of a matriarch must feel like losing an encyclopedia, or an entire library—and for us, the loss makes stopping the poaching even more urgent, if only to protect the experienced matriarchs, who keep their families out of harm’s way.

In the wild, a mother elephant and her daughter will stay together until one or the other dies. But there is one exception: In a year when there are limited resources— a drought, say, or a herd that has grown too big to sustain feeding all its members in a given area— the matriarch may make the decision to split the group. She will lead some of the elephants off in one direction, and her daughter will lead the rest on another route. They are still family, but they know that being together will bring about high mortality for the herd, that there is a better chance of survival when they aren’t competing for the same resources. But things change. When the land blossoms and the rivers run flush again, the mother and daughter reunite. It’s a celebration, a fanfare. There is trumpeting, roaring, touching, stroking. It’s like they have never been apart.

You are as subtle as an elephant at a mouse party.

He is an offensive man,” Manjula said. “Why?” “He asked me an offensive question.” “What did he say?” “He wanted to know if I know cooking.

No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates, realized that I was going through life asleep.

I’m almost never hungry in the physical sense. But I’m always craving an emotional high, the kind that comes from making love, or being in the crowd for great live music, or watching the sun come up over the ocean. And I’m always wanting something to counter the low, when I’m anxious about work or arguing with family or depressed for reasons I can’t understand.

And our ages never bothered her from the very beginning. I was married, but that didn’t matter, either. She seemed to consider things like age and family and income to be of the same a priori order as shoe size and vocal pitch and the shape of one’s fingernails. The sort of thing that thinking about won’t change one bit. And that much said, well, she had a point.

PERCY WAS WAITING FOR THEM. He looked mad. He stood at the edge of the glacier, leaning on the staff with the golden eagle, gazing down at the wreckage he’d caused: several hundred acres of newly open water dotted with icebergs and flotsam from the ruined camp. The only remains on the glacier were the main gates, which listed sideways, and a tattered blue banner lying over a pile of snow-bricks. When they ran up to him, Percy said, “Hey,” like they were just meeting for lunch or something. “You’re alive!” Frank marveled. Percy frowned. “The fall? That was nothing. I fell twice that far from the St. Louis Arch.” “You did what?” Hazel asked. “Never mind. The important thing was I didn’t drown.” “So the prophecy was incomplete!” Hazel grinned. “It probably said something like: The son of Neptune will drown a whole bunch of ghosts.” Percy shrugged. He was still looking at Frank like he was miffed. “I got a bone to pick with you, Zhang. You can turn into an eagle? And a bear?” “And an elephant,” Hazel said proudly. “An elephant.” Percy shook his head in disbelief. “That’s your family gift? You can change shape?” Frank shuffled his feet. “Um…yeah. Periclymenus, my ancestor, the Argonaut—he could do that. He passed down the ability.” “And he got that gift from Poseidon,” Percy said. “That’s completely unfair. I can’t turn into animals.” Frank stared at him. “Unfair? You can breathe underwater and blow up glaciers and summon freaking hurricanes—and it’s unfair that I can be an elephant?” Percy considered. “Okay. I guess you got a point. But next time I say you’re totally beast—” “Just shut up,” Frank said. “Please.” Percy cracked a smile.

In the courtyard there was an angel of black stone, and its angel head rose above giant elephant leaves; the stark glass angel eyes, bright as the bleached blue of sailor eyes, stared upward. One observed the angel from an intricate green balcony — mine, this balcony, for I lived beyond in three old white rooms, rooms with elaborate wedding-cake ceilings, wide sliding doors, tall French windows. On warm evenings, with these windows open, conversation was pleasant there, tuneful, for wind rustled the interior like fan-breeze made by ancient ladies. And on such warm evenings this town is quiet. Only voices: family talk weaving on an ivy-curtained porch; a barefoot woman humming as she rocks a sidewalk chair, lulling to sleep a baby she nurses quite publicly; the complaining foreign tongue of an irritated lady who, sitting on her balcony, plucks a fryer, the loosened feathers floating from her hands, slipping into air, sliding lazily downward.

Our society has tried to make death invisible, thinking that if we ignore it long enough it will go away. Often we as family and loved ones are so afraid of death that even mentioning the word to terminal patients is taboo. We think the dying are oblivious to what is happening to them. Sadly, a dying person frequently feels afraid to bring it up him or herself. When I enter a hospital room I often hear a sigh of relief. At last, someone is here to help the family come to terms with what is playing out before them. Death has too long been the elephant in the living room, while everyone awkwardly discusses the weather.

It is all gone, though Peter. All of it is gone! And there is no way to get it back. 'Eat,' said Leo Matienne again, very gently. Peter looked the truth of what he had lost full in the face. And then he ate.

The night before, Bharati had been sitting at the entrance of her hut studying for the exam with a small kerosene lamp for light. Her mother was asleep on the ground outside. They were so poor they couldn’t afford a lamp with a glass cover over the flame. Bharati dozed off. The lamp fell over. Kerosene spilled. The hut caught fire. Thirteen-year-old Bharati, the daughter of the martyr Noble, was consumed in the blaze.

People who go through a heavy experience like that are changed men, like it or not,” he said. “They change for the better and they change for the worse. On the good side, they become unshakable. Next to that half year, the rest of the suffering I’ve experienced doesn’t even count. I can put up with almost anything. And I also am a lot more sensitive to the pain of people around me. That’s on the plus side. It made me capable of making some real friends. But there’s also the minus side. I mean, it’s impossible, in my own mind, to believe in people. I don’t hate people, and I haven’t lost my faith in humanity. I’ve got a wife and kids. We’ve made a home and we protect each other. Those things you can’t do without trust. It’s just that, sure, we’re living a good life right now, but if something were to happen, if something really were to come along and yank up everything by the roots, even surrounded by a happy family and good friends, I don’t know what I’d do. What would happen if one day, for no reason, no one believes a word you say? It happens, you know. Suddenly, one day, out of the blue. I’m always thinking about it. Last time, it was only six months, but the next time? No one can say; there’s no guarantee. I don’t have confidence in how long I can hold out the next time. When I think of these things, I really get shaken up. I’ll dream about it and wake up in the middle of the night. It happens a little too often, in fact. And when it happens, I wake my wife up and I hold on to her and cry. Sometimes for a whole hour, I’m so scared.

Trees are like people and give the answers to the way of Man. They grow from the top down. Children, like treetops, have flexibility of youth, and sway more than larger adults at the bottom. They are more vulnerable to the elements, and are put to the test of survival by life's strong winds, rain, freezing cold, and hot sun. Constantly challenged. As they mature, they journey down the tree, strengthening the family unit until one day they have become big hefty branches. In the stillness below, having weathered the seasons, they now relax in their old age, no longer subject to the stress from above. It's always warmer and more enclosed at the base of the tree. The members remain protected and strong as they bear the weight and give support to the entire tree. They have the endurance.

A researcher once played a recording of an elephant who had died. The sound emanated from a speaker hidden in the thicket. The family went wild calling, looking all around. The dead’s elephant daughter called for days afterword. The researchers never again did such a thing.

Every fat person, and every fat person’s family, pays with anger and heartache and pain. For every one of us who can’t shed the weight, there are spouses and parents and kids and friends who grieve for us. We carve lines in their faces. We sentence them to long years alone.

We’ve seen that the major moral divisions in our politics derive from two opposed models of the family: a progressive (nurturant parent) morality and a conservative (strict father) morality. That is no accident, since your family life has a profound effect on how you understand yourself as a person.

वक्रतुंड महाकाय कोटिसूर्यसमप्रभ। निर्विघ्नं कुरु मे देव सर्वकार्येषु सर्वदा॥ “Lord Ganesh of curved elephant trunk and huge body, Whose brilliance is equal to billions of suns in intensity, Always removes all obstacles from my endeavours truly, I respectfully pray to him with all my revered sincerity.

I love everything about life,” Breitbart says, his voice growing louder now. “Familial love, parental love, spousal love, lust. I love beauty, I love fashion, I love art, I love music, I love food, I love plays, I love drama, I love poetry, I love movies. There are very few things I don’t have an interest in. I love being alive.” He’s gesturing widely, at the window, at the pouring, driving rain. “But even with all these loves,” he says, “you’re born with a set of limitations: your genetic legacy, your time, your place, your family. I could have been born a Rockefeller, but I wasn’t. I could have been born into a family living in a remote tribe where I thought God was a blue elephant, but I wasn’t. You’re born into this reality: that life is full of dangers, it’s an uncertain place. Events occur—you have an accident, someone shoots you, you develop an illness. All sorts of things happen. You have to respond.

After a natural death, the herd encourages the grieving individual to eventually move on. After a mass killing by humans, there is—by definition—no herd left for support. To date, the animal research community has been reluctant to believe that elephant behavior might be affected by the trauma of watching one’s family being killed.

Finally, as the sky began to grow light in the morning, I’d feel that I might be drifting off. But that wasn’t sleep. My fingertips were just barely brushing against the outermost edge of sleep. And all the while, my mind was awake. I would feel a hint of drowsiness, but my mind was there, in its own room, on the other side of a transparent wall, watching me. My physical self was drifting through the feeble morning light, and all the while it could feel my mind staring, breathing, close beside it. I was both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake. The incomplete drowsiness would continue on and off all day. My head was always foggy. I couldn’t get an accurate fix on the things around me—their distance or mass or texture. The drowsiness would overtake me at regular, wavelike intervals: on the subway, in the classroom, at the diner table. My mind would slip away from my body. The world would sway soundlessly. I would drop things. My pencil or my purse or my fork would clatter to the floor. All I wanted was to throw myself down and sleep. But I couldn’t. The wakefulness was always there beside me. I could feel its chilling shadow. It was the shadow of myself. Weird, I would think as the drowsiness overtook me, I’m in my own shadow. I would walk and eat and talk to people inside my drowsiness. And the strangest thing was that no one noticed. I lost fifteen pounds that month, and no one noticed. No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates, realized that I was going through life asleep. It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think that my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. Hold tight, I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

But notice all the conspicuous effort in this story. If Charles’s physicians had simply prescribed soup and bed rest, everyone might have questioned whether “enough” had been done. Instead, the king’s treatments were elaborate and esoteric. By sparing no expense or effort—by procuring fluids from a torture victim and stones from exotic goat bellies—the physicians were safe from accusations of malpractice. Their heroic measures also reflected well on their employers, that is, the king’s family and advisers.

What I want you to understand, more than anything else, is that telling a fat person Eat less and exercise is like telling a boxer Don’t get hit. You act as if there’s not an opponent. Losing weight is a fucking rock fight. The enemies come from all sides. The deluge of marketing telling us to eat worse and eat more. The culture that has turned food into one of the last acceptable vices. Our families and friends who want us to share in their pleasure. Our own body chemistry, dragging us back to the table out of fear that we’ll starve.

Few survivors carried anything, except for anguished tales of their abandonment by the Raj. Lying in their cholera beds, they told of Anglo-Indian families whose darker-skinned daughters were turned away from camps for Europeans; of columns of Indian refugees held back until Europeans had passed, so the roads would be less begrimed; of elephants struggling up the slopes, hind legs quivering, as they carried mahogany desks out over the bodies of children. The most despised rumour, which travelled well in India, was that the Army enforced separate ‘White’ and ‘Black’ routes: so little did Indian lives count in the end.

I got a bone to pick with you, Zhang. You can turn into an eagle and a bear?” “And an elephant,” Hazel said proudly.” “An elephant.” Percy shook his head in disbelief. “That’s your family gift? You can change shape?” Frank shuffled his feet, “Um, yeah. Periclymenus, my ancestor, the argonaut, he could do that. He passed down the ability.” “And he got that gift from Poseidon,” Percy said. “That’s completely unfair! I can’t turn into animals!” Frank stared at him. “Unfair?! You can breath under water and blow up glaciers, and summon freaking hurricanes! And it’s unfair that I can be an elephant?” Percy considered. “Okay, I guess you got a point, but next time I call you totally beast....” “Just shut up,” Frank said.

out. This was the turning point: “From this illness, my father never quite recovered.”26 Had there been any possibility of Eleanor’s experiencing the joys or even routine of childhood, that time was now passing. In August, she was sent away to Grandmother Hall’s, and at Tivoli learned that her brother Elliott Roosevelt, Jr., had been born on September 29. She wrote a letter to her father, in which she wished her parents well, offered advice to the baby’s nurse should the newborn cry, then came straight to the crucial question about any child of Anna Roosevelt’s: “How does he look? Some people tell me he looks like an elephant and some say he is like a bunny.”27 Except for one pitiable moment at Half-Way Nirvana when Eleanor identified an Angora kitten as an “Angostura,”28 those aromatic bitters that flavored her father’s liquor, she showed few signs of registering the impact of addiction on their lives. “Little Eleanor is as happy as the day is long,” Elliott convinced himself during the heavy self-medicated month following his accident: “Plays with her kitten, the puppy & the chickens all the time & is very dirty as a general rule. I am the only ‘off’ member of the family.”29

When people in this country ask me what it means to be an untouchable, I explain that caste is like racism against blacks here. But then they ask, “How does anyone know what your caste is?” They know caste isn’t visible, like skin color. I explain it like this. In Indian villages and towns, everyone knows everyone else. Each caste has its own special role and its own place to live. The brahmins (who perform priestly functions), the potters, the blacksmiths, the carpenters, the washer people, and so on—they each have their own separate place to live within the village. The untouchables, whose special role—whose hereditary duty—is to labor in the fields of others or to do other work that Hindu society considers filthy, are not allowed to live in the village at all. They must live outside the boundaries of the village proper. They are not allowed to enter temples. Not allowed to come near sources of drinking water used by other castes. Not allowed to eat sitting next to a caste Hindu or to use the same utensils. There are thousands of other such restrictions and indignities that vary from place to place. Every day in an Indian newspaper you can read of an untouchable beaten or killed for wearing sandals, for riding a bicycle.

Egalitarianism among foragers is concerned primarily with preventing a single individual or coalition from dominating (and thereby making life miserable for) the rest of the group. This leads foragers to be vigilant for early warning signs of people who position themselves above others. This includes dominating or bullying individuals (outside the household ot immediate family), bragging, seeking authority too eagerly, ganging up with other members of the group, and otherwise attempting to control others' behavior. Foragers would readily support the motto fo the early American general Christopher Gadsden: "Don't tread on me." Many of the norms that were common among our forager ancestors are by now deeply embedded in human nature. But these aren't our only norms. Most societies also teach their children norms specific to their society. This ability of societies to adopt different norms is part of what has let humans spread across the Earth, by adopting norms better suited to each local environment. This "cultural flexibility" also enabled our ancestors to implement the huge behavior changes required to turn hunters and gatherers into farmers and herders, roughly 10,000 years ago. Farmers have norms supporting marriage, war, and property, as well as rough treatment of animals, lower classes, and slaves. To help enforce these new norms, farmers also had stronger norms of social conformity, as well as stronger religions with moralizing gods.

You may not recognize the name Steven Schussler, CEO of Schussler Creative Inc., but you are probably familiar with his very popular theme restaurant Rainforest Café. Steve is one of the scrappiest people I know, with countless scrappy stories. He is open and honest about his wins and losses. This story about how he launched Rainforest Café is one of my favorites: Steve first envisioned a tropical-themed family restaurant back in the 1980s, but unfortunately, he couldn’t persuade anyone else to buy into the idea at the time. Not willing to give up easily, he decided to get scrappy and be “all in.” To sell his vision, he transformed his own split-level suburban home into a living, mist-enshrouded rain forest to convince potential investors that the concept was viable. Yes, you read that correctly—he converted his own house into a jungle dwelling complete with rock outcroppings, waterfalls, rivers, and layers of fog and mist that rose from the ground. The jungle included a life-size replica of an elephant near the front door, forty tropical birds in cages, and a live baby baboon named Charlie. Steve shared the following details: Every room, every closet, every hallway of my house was set up as a three-dimensional vignette: an attempt to present my idea of what a rain forest restaurant would look like in actual operation. . . . [I]t took me three years and almost $400,000 to get the house developed to the point where I felt comfortable showing it to potential investors. . . . [S]everal of my neighbors weren’t exactly thrilled to be living near a jungle habitat. . . . On one occasion, Steve received a visit from the Drug Enforcement Administration. They wanted to search the premises for drugs, presuming he may have had an illegal drug lab in his home because of his huge residential electric bill. I imagine they were astonished when they discovered the tropical rain forest filled with jungle creatures. Steve’s plan was beautiful, creative, fun, and scrappy, but the results weren’t coming as quickly as he would have liked. It took all of his resources, and he was running out of time and money to make something happen. (It’s important to note that your scrappy efforts may not generate results immediately.) I asked Steve if he ever thought about quitting, how tight was the money really, and if there was a time factor, and he said, “Yes to all three! Of course I thought about quitting. I was running out of money and time.” Ultimately, Steve’s plan succeeded. After many visits and more than two years later, gaming executive and venture capitalist Lyle Berman bought into the concept and raised the funds necessary to get the Rainforest Café up and running. The Rainforest Café chain became one of the most successful themed restaurants ever created, and continues that way under Landry’s Restaurants and Tilman Fertitta’s leadership. Today, Steve creates restaurant concepts in fantastic warehouses far from his residential neighborhood!

[Magyar] had an intense dislike for terms like 'illiberal,' which focused on traits the regimes did not possess--like free media or fair elections. This he likened to trying to describe an elephant by saying that the elephant cannot fly or cannot swim--it says nothing about what the elephant actually is. Nor did he like the term 'hybrid regime,' which to him seemed like an imitation of a definition, since it failed to define what the regime was ostensibly a hybrid of. Magyar developed his own concept: the 'post-communist mafia state.' Both halves of the designation were significant: 'post-communist' because "the conditions preceding the democratic big bang have a decisive role in the formation of the system. Namely that it came about on the foundations of a communist dictatorship, as a product of the debris left by its decay." (quoting Balint Magyar) The ruling elites of post-communist states most often hail from the old nomenklatura, be it Party or secret service. But to Magyar this was not the countries' most important common feature: what mattered most was that some of these old groups evolved into structures centered around a single man who led them in wielding power. Consolidating power and resources was relatively simple because these countries had just recently had Party monopoly on power and a state monopoly on property. ... A mafia state, in Magyar's definition, was different from other states ruled by one person surrounded by a small elite. In a mafia state, the small powerful group was structured just like a family. The center of the family is the patriarch, who does not govern: "he disposes--of positions, wealth, statuses, persons." The system works like a caricature of the Communist distribution economy. The patriarch and his family have only two goals: accumulating wealth and concentrating power. The family-like structure is strictly hierarchical, and membership in it can be obtained only through birth or adoption. In Putin's case, his inner circle consisted of men with whom he grew up in the streets and judo clubs of Leningrad, the next circle included men with whom he had worked with in the KGB/FSB, and the next circle was made up of men who had worked in the St. Petersburg administration with him. Very rarely, he 'adopted' someone into the family as he did with Kholmanskikh, the head of the assembly shop, who was elevated from obscurity to a sort of third-cousin-hood. One cannot leave the family voluntarily: one can only be kicked out, disowned and disinherited. Violence and ideology, the pillars of the totalitarian state, became, in the hands of the mafia state, mere instruments. The post-communist mafia state, in Magyar's words, is an "ideology-applying regime" (while a totalitarian regime is 'ideology-driven'). A crackdown required both force and ideology. While the instruments of force---the riot police, the interior troops, and even the street-washing machines---were within arm's reach, ready to be used, ideology was less apparently available. Up until spring 2012, Putin's ideological repertoire had consisted of the word 'stability,' a lament for the loss of the Soviet empire, a steady but barely articulated restoration of the Soviet aesthetic and the myth of the Great Patriotic War, and general statements about the United States and NATO, which had cheated Russia and threatened it now. All these components had been employed during the 'preventative counter-revolution,' when the country, and especially its youth, was called upon to battle the American-inspired orange menace, which threatened stability. Putin employed the same set of images when he first responded to the protests in December. But Dugin was now arguing that this was not enough. At the end of December, Dugin published an article in which he predicted the fall of Putin if he continued to ignore the importance of ideas and history.

Over those 20,000 years humankind moved from hunting mammoth with stone-tipped spears to exploring the solar system with spaceships not thanks to the evolution of more dexterous hands or bigger brains (our brains today seem actually to be smaller). 17 Instead, the crucial factor in our conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another. 18 Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and more nimble-fingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of co-operating flexibly in large numbers. Intelligence and toolmaking were obviously very important as well. But if humans had not learned to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, our crafty brains and deft hands would still be splitting flint stones rather than uranium atoms. If cooperation is the key, how come the ants and bees did not beat us to the nuclear bomb even though they learned to cooperate en masse millions of years before us? Because their cooperation lacks flexibility. Bees cooperate in very sophisticated ways, but they cannot reinvent their social system overnight. If a hive faces a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot, for example, guillotine the queen and establish a republic. Social mammals such as elephants and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than bees, but they do so only with small numbers of friends and family members. Their cooperation is based on personal acquaintance. If I am a chimpanzee and you are a chimpanzee and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you personally: what kind of chimp are you? Are you a nice chimp? Are you an evil chimp? How can I cooperate with you if I don’t know you? To the best of our knowledge, only Sapiens can cooperate in very flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. This concrete capability–rather than an eternal soul or some unique kind of consciousness–explains our mastery of planet Earth.

Over those 20,000 years humankind moved from hunting mammoth with stone-tipped spears to exploring the solar system with spaceships not thanks to the evolution of more dexterous hands or bigger brains (our brains today seem actually to be smaller).17 Instead, the crucial factor in our conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another.18 Humans nowadays completely dominate the planet not because the individual human is far smarter and more nimble-fingered than the individual chimp or wolf, but because Homo sapiens is the only species on earth capable of co-operating flexibly in large numbers. Intelligence and toolmaking were obviously very important as well. But if humans had not learned to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, our crafty brains and deft hands would still be splitting flint stones rather than uranium atoms. If cooperation is the key, how come the ants and bees did not beat us to the nuclear bomb even though they learned to cooperate en masse millions of years before us? Because their cooperation lacks flexibility. Bees cooperate in very sophisticated ways, but they cannot reinvent their social system overnight. If a hive faces a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot, for example, guillotine the queen and establish a republic. Social mammals such as elephants and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than bees, but they do so only with small numbers of friends and family members. Their cooperation is based on personal acquaintance. If I am a chimpanzee and you are a chimpanzee and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you personally: what kind of chimp are you? Are you a nice chimp? Are you an evil chimp? How can I cooperate with you if I don’t know you? To the best of our knowledge, only Sapiens can cooperate in very flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. This concrete capability – rather than an eternal soul or some unique kind of consciousness – explains our mastery of planet Earth. Long

In the wild, a young female is an allomother long before she bears her own offspring. She has fifteen years to practice being a big sister to the calves that are born to the herd. I’d seen calves approach young female elephants to suckle for comfort, even though the juveniles did not have breasts or milk yet. But the young female would put her foot forward, the way her mother and aunties did, and proudly pretend. She could act like a mother without having any of the real responsibility until she was ready. But when there is no family to teach a young female to raise her own calf, things can go horribly awry. When I was working in Pilanesberg, this story repeated itself. There, young bulls that had been translocated began to charge vehicles. They killed a tourist. More than forty white rhino were found dead in the reserve before we realized that these subadult males were the ones who’d attacked them—highly aggressive behavior that was far from normal. What is the common denominator for the odd behavior of the young female elephant that didn’t care about her own calf and the belligerent pack of teenage bulls? Certainly there was a lack of parental guidance. But was that the only issue at play? All those elephants had seen their families killed in front of them, as a result of culling. The grief that I have studied in the wild, where a herd loses an old matriarch, for example, must be contrasted to the grief that comes from observing the violent death of a family member—because the long-term effects are so markedly different. After a natural death, the herd encourages the grieving individual to eventually move on. After a mass killing by humans, there is—by definition—no herd left for support. To date, the animal research community has been reluctant to believe that elephant behavior might be affected by the trauma of watching one’s family being killed. I think this isn’t scientific objection as much as it is political shame—after all, we humans have been the perpetrators of this violence. At the very least, it is crucial when studying the grief of elephants to remember that death is a natural occurrence. Murder is not.

Skiddy Cottontail—that was his name—and he defended LGBT equality. He was a flamboyant, colorful striped rabbit, with a headdress of a rainbow crown on his forehead. The radiance of his energy was violet, scarlet, and turquoise; as it represented his love for everyone. In the infancy years of his existence, he was abandoned—alone—unwanted—unloved; rejected by a world that disdains him. His father wished him deceased, his family exiled him from the warren, he was physically mistreated and preyed on by homophobic mobs in the surrounding community by Elephants—Hyenas—rats. They splashed spit at his face, advising him that God condemns homosexuality—as Christ did not. They would slam him on the pavement with their Bibles, strike him in the stomach with their feet, throw boulders of stone at his body: imploring—abusing—condemning him to a tyrannical sentence. Skiddy Cottontail thought that his existence would end with this case of cruelty—violence—assault that was perpetrated against him. He wanted to cease to exist— he wanted to commit the ultimate murder on himself—he no more desired to go on living— he realized hope is already deceased. He yearned to have the courage to emerge, to discover his bravery that would sever this spiral of sensations of oppression. Being a victim made him a slave to his opponent—as his adversaries have full leverage against him. Life has become a thread of light, which he longed to be liberated from its shackles. His demon—a voice that keeps blaming him for his crimes in the back of his mind—a glass that continually cracks in his heart—will keep breaking him if he does not devise a way out of this crisis. He was conscious by his innermost conviction that there was candlelight with a key that had the potential to illuminate a new chapter that will erase this trail of obscurity behind him. He sees a new horizon with greater comprehension, a journey that can give him the roses of affection than a handful of dead birds that his adversaries handed him along the way. The stunning blossoming trees did have a forest—beautiful greenery that was colorful like the rainbow in the Heavens. This home will embrace him with a warm embrace of open arms, where cruelty is forbidden; where adoration can forever abound. Dawn will know him when he arrives. No more hurricanes or strife will be here—no crying of a sad humanity are here—only a gift of harmony and devotion, beyond all explanation, will abide in the heart of Skiddy Cottontail—when he finds his way out from this opponent world for a beautiful existence that is called liberation. Skiddy Cottontail has found a happiness that can only bring him contentment like nothing in this hurtful world can. Find your own sense of balance like him, Skiddy Cottontail, and you will experience serenity as much as him.

Once a little boy went to school. One morning, when the little boy had been in school a while, his teacher said: “Today we are going to make a picture.” “Good!” thought the little boy. He liked to make pictures. He could make all kinds. Lions and tigers, Chickens and cows, trains and boats, and he took out his box of crayons and began to draw. But the teacher said: “Wait! It is not time to begin!” And she waited until everyone looked ready. “Now,” said the teacher, “We are going to make flowers.” “Good!” thought the little boy, he liked to make flowers, and he began to make beautiful ones with his pink and orange and blue crayons. But the teacher said “Wait! And I will show you how.” And it was red with a green stem. “There,” said the teacher, “Now you may begin.” The little boy looked at the teacher’s. Then he looked at this own flower. He liked his flower better than the teacher’s. But he did not say this. He just turned his paper over. And made a flower like the teacher’s. It was red with a green stem. On another day, when the little boy had opened the door from the outside all by himself, the teacher said: “Today we are going to make something with clay.” “Good!” thought the little boy. Snakes and snowmen, elephants and mice, cars, and trucks, and he began to pull and pinch his ball of clay. But the teacher said: “Wait!” It is not time to begin!” And she waited until everyone looked ready. “Now,” said the teacher, “We are going to make a dish.” He liked to make dishes. And he began to make some that were all shapes and sizes. But the teacher said, “Wait! And I will show you how.” And she showed everyone how to make a deep dish. “There,” said the teacher. “Now you may begin.” The little boy looked at the teacher’s dish, then he looked at his own. He liked his dish better than the teacher’s. But he did not say this. He just rolled his clay into a big ball again. And made a dish like the teacher’s. It was a deep dish. And pretty soon the little boy learned to wait, and to watch and to make things just like the teacher. And pretty soon he didn’t make things of his own anymore. Then it happened that the little boy and his family moved to another house, in another city, and the little boy had to go to another school. And the very first day he was there the teacher said: “Today we are going to make a picture.” “Good!” Thought the little boy and he waited for the teacher to tell him what to do. But the teacher didn’t say anything. She just walked around the room. When she came to the little boy she said, “Don’t you want to make a picture?” “Yes,” said the little boy. “What are we going to make?” “I don’t know until you make it,” said the teacher. “How shall I make it?” asked the little boy. “Why, any way you like,” said the teacher. “Any color?” asked the little boy. “Any color,” said the teacher. “If everyone made the same picture, and the used the same colors, how would I know who made what?” “I don’t know,” said the little boy. And he began to make a red flower with a green stem.

Zoopharmacognosy is the long-winded scientific label for studying animal self-medication. You may have seen your pet cat or dog chewing on grass when it's unwell. Chemicals in animal-chosen medicinal plants have been shown to have antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and antihelminthic (antiparasitic worm) properties. Wild chimps eat Vernonia amygdalina to rid themselves of intestinal parasites and aspilla leaves for rheumatism, viruses, and fungal infections. Other animals chew on charcoal and clay to neutralize food toxins and rub themselves wtih citrus, clematis, and piper for skin ailments. Pregnant elephants have been seen to walk miles to find a certain tree of the Boraginaceae family that brings on labor. There are undoubtedly many more remarkable opportunities to be understood and adapted.

I say, Lucien, you all right?” He spied his brother, Lawrence, a few feet behind him in the open doorway. Except for the fact he was five years younger, he was a mirror image of Lucien. Anger still boiling deep inside him like a dormant volcano, Lucien now aimed the vase at his meddlesome brother. Lawrence stepped back, hands raised in surrender. “If you break that, mother will be most upset. She spent a fortune getting that back from Shanghai for you. To hear her tell it, she hired an entire caravan of elephants like Hannibal for part of the journey.” With a snarl, he set the vase back down on the cherrywood side table and glowered at his smirking brother. “I thought you were in France.” His brother gave a casual shrug. “I came back with Avery.” “Have you obtained lodgings?” “Not as of yet.” “Then you must stay here,” Lucien replied, but his heart wasn’t in the gesture. He wasn’t in the mood to entertain, not even his family. Was it so bad to want some peace and quiet to sort out the messy tangle of emotions that plagued him? His brother flicked an invisible speck of dust off his coat sleeve. “I’m only here for a few days and I wouldn’t dare to impose, especially since you seem to be having rather heated issues with your décor.” Lawrence was well known for his sarcasm. Lucien had had words, and more than words with him over such remarks when they’d been younger. “Just because we are no longer children doesn’t mean I won’t box your ears.” “You could try.” Lucien swung his fist good-naturedly at his brother, who danced back a step. They laughed, and Lucien found his anger deflated. God bless Lawrence. -Lawrence & Lucien

One exhibition to which Tom Norman became particularly attached was his family of midgets. It consisted of two midgets, billed as man and wife and always brought into town in a specially constructed miniature coach drawn by ponies. In each town on the tour he made a point of closing the show down for a few days so as to allow the lady midget to ‘give birth to her baby’. A new-born infant would then be hired to stand in for the hypothetical offspring, and even larger queues always gathered after such a ‘happy event’ to see the new arrival. The only problem was the difficulty he had in restraining the ‘mother’ from swearing volubly, smoking a pipe and drinking gin in front of the customers. The exhibition finally came to grief when the ‘mother’ ran away one night, objecting to being displayed as a woman any longer, both midgets being men.

Even when behaviors are clearly stress-related, they can be difficult to interpret. Mel Richardson was once asked to examine a tree kangaroo at the San Antonio Zoo that the keepers said was acting bizarrely. With the ears of a teddy bear, the rounded chub of a koala, and the tail of a fuzzy monkey, tree kangaroos are very cute. But this female was acting vicious. She was attacking her babies, and the keepers had no idea why. Mel went to check on her. Sure enough, as soon as he approached, the kangaroo ran to her babies and started hitting and clawing at them with her paws. He stepped back, and she stopped. He walked forward, and she ran at the babies again. “I realized,” said Mel, “that she wasn’t viciously attacking her babies at all. She was trying to pick them up off the floor, but her little paws weren’t meant for that. In her native Australia and Papua New Guinea her babies never would have been on the ground. Her whole family would have been up in the trees.” The mother kangaroo wanted to move the babies away from the humans. What looked like abnormal attacks on her young were actually her way of trying to protect them. Her behavior wasn’t mental illness at all but a response to the stress of being a mother in an unnatural environment. After the keepers redesigned the kangaroos’ cage so that more of it was elevated and farther from the door, she relaxed and stopped hitting her babies. Mel explained, “As flippant as it might sound, the truth is that in order to know what’s abnormal, you must first know what’s normal. In this case in order to determine pathology, I had to understand the animal’s psychology. It’s pretty easy for people to get this wrong.

THE ROAR of the death blast on the Avenue of the Americas cannot be heard in faraway Johannesburg. With eight weeks to go to the opening game in Soccer City, Sepp Blatter and his South African capos have enough problems. Outraged by price gouging, fans are staying home. In the townships citizens protest every day; ‘Service riots’ send messages to politicians that public money should be spent on homes, water, sewage plants and jobs, not stadiums that will become white elephants. Why should they listen? They have the police beat back the protestors. The World Cup is good news for Danny Jordaan, leader of the bid and now chief executive for the tournament. Quietly, his brother Andrew has been given a well-paid job as Hospitality liaison with MATCH Event Services at the Port Elizabeth stadium. A stakeholder in the MATCH company is Sepp Blatter’s nephew Philippe Blatter. The majority owners are Mexican brothers Jaime and Enrique Byrom, based in Manchester, England, Zurich, Switzerland and with some of their bank accounts in Spain and the Isle of Man. The Brothers are not happy. Sepp Blatter awarded them the lucrative 2010 hospitality contract aimed at wealthy football patrons, mostly from abroad. If that wasn’t enough, Blatter also gave them the contract to manage and distribute the three million tickets. The brothers are charging top rates for hotels and internal flights and expected to make huge profits. Instead, they are on their way to losing $50 million. They plan to recoup these losses in Brazil in four years time.

family is a somewhat flexible notion.

Family can expand without diminishing the love.

The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself.… The whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge … where my heart stopped.… Standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant … staring out to sea!… A female with a left tusk broken off near the base.… I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a color photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title “The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant.” This was the Matriarch herself.… She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing. My heart went out to her. The whole idea of this grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place.… The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating! In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind. I turned, blinking away the tears, and left them to it. This was no place for a mere man.… Early afternoon. They were coming to this place, to this tall grass, all along. They will feed here for a while and then, because there’s no water right here, go down to where those egrets are. There’s water there. After they’ve had a good drink, they might make a big loop and come back here again later to feed some more. It will be a one-family-at-a-time choice as the adults decide when to drink and bathe. When elephants are finally ready to make a significant move, everyone points in the same direction. But they do wait until the matriarch decides. “I’ve seen families cued up waiting for half an hour,” comments Vicki, “waiting for the matriarch to signal, ‘Okay.’” And now they go. Makelele, eleven years old, walks with a deep limp. Five years ago he showed up with a broken right rear leg. It must have been agony, and it’s healed at a horrible angle, almost as if his knee faces backward, shaping that leg like the hock on a horse. Yet he is here, surviving with a little help from his friends. “He’s slow,” Vicki acknowledges. “It’s remarkable that he’s managing, but his family seems to wait for him.” Another Amboseli elephant, named Tito, broke a leg when he was a year old, probably from falling into a garbage pit.

Trust, honesty, and open communication are fundamental progressive values—in a community as in a family.

Conservatives seem not to understand what nurturant morality is about, both in the family and in the nation. They find any view that is not strict to be “permissive.

The basic progressive vision is of community—of America as family, a caring, responsible family. We envision an America where people care about each other, not just themselves, and act responsibly both for themselves and their fellow citizens with strength and effectiveness.

Family breathes for each other, and close family breathes as one.

The strict father worldview is so named because according to its own beliefs, the father is the head of the family. The nurturant parent worldview is gender neutral.

I finally realized who really ran the show at home; my mom. I just didn't realize how toxic it was until I saw him crumble under her will and joined forces with her when I was violated. I had no idea at the time what this kind of dysfunction was, but I knew it was wrong and unfair treatment. My dad was a decent hard-working man who found himself caught in a web of an extremely controlling wife he loved but who emasculated him. He found her difficult to live with, and so the best way he could try to keep peace in the marriage was to play the role of “go along to get along”. That grew into a whole different branch of coping mechanism; enabling.  Mom was the boss and he accepted it by withdrawing and avoiding the big elephant in the family. His little girl, his only girl, his “little shadow” no longer was his priority; pleasing mom at all cost was the main vein that fed his insufficiency to step into his authority as the head of the home. As time passed, I witnessed repeatedly, that his needs were not a priority and he accepted my mom's behavior no matter how it infected us or the atmosphere of the home. He did all this just to keep her pleased and so he didn't have to hear the constant bickering, even though it was a temporary fix.

When you lose the knack of hugging each other or twisting trunks together, how do you get it back again? Can society ever find peace once the family has fallen apart?

Perita is the dog,” Gracie said, in a tone which implied Rosalind was a dimwit for having not immediately understood this. “You packed for a dog. Yes, I see.” The young dog was a lovely chocolate brown with the typical black mastiff mask. “She has quite a big head,” Rosalind observed. “Of course, she does.” Gracie sounded affronted by her sister’s ignorance. “That’s the breed. Her mother, Medea, was even bigger than Hercules, you know.” Rosalind was impressed. Hercules was the size of a small pony. At least, that’s how it seemed when he was flying through the halls of Sweetbriar and came barreling unexpectedly around a corner. “Why Perita? Don’t you mean Perdita?” “Not Shakespeare, silly. Alexander the Great.” Gracie was looking disgusted once more. “Well, his was Peritas as it was male. I’ve feminized it. Did you know Peritas bit off an elephant’s face when it tried to charge Alexander once?” “Bit it off?” “Probably not completely off. At least, I hope not. But I suppose it would have been justified if Peritas was protecting his master from being trampled to death,” Gracie said, looking thoughtful. “I’m sure Perita would do the very same for me. Or you.” She rubbed the pup’s head affectionately. “Yes. How lovely.” Rosalind decided not to imagine what a faceless elephant would look like.

Nyayang has received some warnings from a few family members telling her who to avoid. Chuol has talked to her about how he wants her to be. There is nothing desirable about a woman who gets easily wound up in a crowd of women, simply for being part of the same community. When Chuol’s mother comes to her and speaks these scenarios in her ears again, it gets Nyayang thinking. “These are bad women. They have no respect for their husbands. Whose wife could leave her house, come in between compounds and brazenly open her mouth and say things that only an elephant could swallow? These women are misleaders. They don’t like seeing young women like you staying in their marriages, because in many ways, they are not really in one. They are just misleaders.” She says this to her daughter-in-law in a way that it seems as if she is not really talking to her, but the fact that there is not any other wife in the compound narrows it down to Nyayang that she is speaking to her. Nyayang looks around. She doesn’t know anything about what she is talking about. Women get into fights all the time. Sometimes it is about their children, other times it is about their husbands. There is no connection, Nyayang thinks. But she is not supposed to say anything and so she says nothing. But the mother-in-law knows what she is talking about, she just came back from separating some women. She knows what she is talking about. But, even if she knows, is there any reason to talk about these lost souls who have often had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of other women? That is all they know. Blaming each other.

This millennial generation of elephants is an orphan generation. In the last few decades, humans have murdered, mutilated, or displaced an entire generation of older elephants who might have bestowed upon this generation the familial, societal, and emotional skills required to handle one’s individual fifteen thousand pounds of muscle and bone, through which courses intolerable memories of pain, trauma, and grief.

Right from the start, she felt at home with them. They sensed it, too, and soon, following her pattern, she was treating twice, then three times as many patients as anyone else at the hospital. More important, she was getting results, with patients and families increasingly requesting her as their therapist. The V.A. staff took notice, happy to have someone carry the elephant’s load.

natives who were laughing with that light, eternal laughter which is their way of enduring all things I don’t know where the English dug up all that damned self-assurance, but T imagine it’s just part of their sense of humor. the odd thing is that, whether it s true or not, the consequences are the same: one large group of human beings or another turned out to be triple-distilled sons-of-bitches, which proves that we all have it in us There's one merit nobody will ever be able to take away from the Communists: that of having looked man in the face. They didn't send him to Eton to learn protective coloration. Maybe the West is a civilization, but the Communists are an ugly truth about man. Don't accuse them of inhuman methods: everything about them is human. We're all one great, lovely zoological family, and we shouldn't forget it. That's how you came to be in the gutter Colonel and it's no use your taking refuge on an island and behaving like an ostrich— being English, I mean; the gutter is there, it's you, or rather in you; it flows in your veins. Have you ever seen a baby elephant lying on its side, with its tnink inert, gazing at you with eyes in which there seem to have taken refuge all those so highly praised human qualities of which humanity is so largely devoid? that spark of misanthropy which most people carry in them, a presentiment of some different and better company than their own kind, He had spent five years in the Sahara himself, at the head of a Camel Corps unit, and those years had been the happiest of his life.It was true that in the desert a man felt less lonely than elsewhere, perhaps because he lived there in constant, almost physical contact with the sky, and so had all the company he needed. For what remained, a pipe was enough. He wanted to say all this to Haas, but his years in the desert hadn’t made him very talkative, and he also noticed that certain things which he felt deeply changed their meaning at the touch of words, so that he could no longer recognize them himself as he spoke. So that indeed he often wondered whether thinking were enough, whether thoughts were not a mere groping for something that was forever out of reach, whether days of real vision were not still ahead, and whether the mysterious cells which lay still unused in man’s brain would not, one day, lead toward light. he felt less and less need to exchange ideas with other men, because essentially they no longer came to him as questions, but as certainties. the man who changed species’ and of the last ‘fighter for dignity.’ Men are dying to preserve a certain splendor of life. Call it freedom, or dignity . . . They are dying to preserve a certain natural splendor.” people who mistake their private neurosis for a philosophical outlook.” Men are dying to preserve a certain splendor of life. Call it free- dom, or dignity . . . They are dying to preserve a certain natural .splendor.

Mariah and I had never thought so much about race and racism in our lives. It was the great underlying obsession of the Mississippi delta. The elephant in every room. Almost every charming, gracious, hospitable, generous white landowner we met came from a family that had profited from an American version of apartheid. Or more accurately a blueprint for the South African version.

Stay away from those families—they go crazy as they age and it is not pretty.

Who would tell the story of the elephant when she was gone? A family was only as strong as their stories.

Organization and mutual aid are essential aspects in many animal cultures, including elephants, gorillas, and chimpanzees. Zoos, however, are places wherein that culture is restricted, altered, or even destroyed. This is done, whether intentionally or not, through the removal of autonomy, the break up of the family unit, restrictions on corporeal movement, continuous transfer of animals from one facility to next, and in the alteration of other living patterns. Psychologists call this a process of alienation and institutionalization. Hence, within these species, what we tend to see in zoos is a much more individualistic-based community.

I gave Razer his chance. Has he used it?” Lucky decided to change topics and acknowledge the elephant in the room. “I’ve avoided her and her calls, but I’m not waiting forever for Razer to make up his mind.” “He waited for you. When the other men in the unit left your ass in that village, Razer waited. You kept him waiting for three days while you helped that sick family. Razer got you back to the unit safely when no one else gave a fuck. He put his life on the line for you.” “I don’t need you to remind me; I remember. What am I supposed to do, just pretend I don’t care about her?” “Let’s be real, Lucky; you don’t. She’s a beautiful woman, and you haven’t had any pussy for a couple of years. I told you to pretend to go on a sabbatical for a couple of days and visit the Ohio clubhouse.” “I won’t do that.” Shade shook his head. “Then, brother, I suggest you pull out the soap and grab a shower, because Beth isn’t going to be the one to help you with your blue balls. Razer will make his move.” Lucky took a seat behind his desk, picking up a pencil to hold in a tight grip. “What did you come here for, Shade?

THE MOTIVATION BEHIND behavior rarely includes the goals for which it evolved. These goals stay behind the veil of evolution. We evolved nurturant tendencies, for example, to raise our own biological children, but a cute puppy triggers these tendencies just as well. Whereas reproduction is the evolutionary goal of nurturance, it isn’t part of its motivation. After a mother dies, other adult primates often take care of her weaned juvenile. Humans, too, adopt on a large scale, often going through hellish bureaucratic procedures to add children to their families. Stranger yet is cross-species adoption, such as by Pea, a rescued ostrich at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. Pea was beloved by all orphaned elephant calves at the trust and took special care of a baby named Jotto, who’d stay by her side and sleep with his head on her soft feathered body. The maternal instinct is remarkably generous.38 Some biological purists call such behavior a “mistake.” If adaptive goals are the measure, Pea was making a colossal error. As soon as we move from biology to psychology, however, the perspective changes. Our impulse to take care of vulnerable young is real and overwhelming even outside the family. Similarly, when human volunteers push a stranded whale back into the ocean, they employ empathic impulses that, I can assure you, didn’t evolve to take care of marine mammals. Human empathy arose for the sake of family and friends. But once a capacity exists, it takes on a life of its own. Rather than calling the saving of a whale a mistake, we should be glad that empathy isn’t tied down by what evolution intended it for. This is what makes our behavior as rich as it is. This line of thought can also be applied to sex.

Animals love to follow one another. Their collective is often named for the verb they enact. A group of bees is a swarm. Crocodiles, a bask. A group of elephants, a parade. Flamingos, a stand. A family of hippopotami is a bloat. Lemurs make up a conspiracy. A leap of leopards. A crash of rhinoceroses. A knot of toads. Parrots are a pandemonium. Skunks are a stench. A group of thin girls, in recovery, we are surviving.

My family says I’ve got the memory of an elephant,” I say, walking into the bright and airy coffee shop. Mason pulls out a chair for me at the table beside the large bay window. “Then, I am absolutely sorry for everything I did, ahead of time.

Do you want to isolate yourself or be in community? Do you want to limit conversations to the safe subjects, or do you want to explore more interesting and spicy topics? Do you want to surround yourself with people who think just like you do, or do you want to learn and be challenged? Do you want painful pride-wrecked relationships with family and friends? Or do you want love powerful enough to outlast conflict created by names on a ballot?

Time...is a rocking horse. When Krishna was a child, he pulled its ear, released it, and walked away, laughing. It creaked, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Noisy nonstop. We worship Krishna in the child form because we want him to come and grab that Time Horse by its tail; when he does, the horse’s grinning face will come to a halt and silence will descend. Peace, at last, from the noise of time. Isn’t that the need at the heart of our every prayer, whatever our material demands, whatever words we choose? Peace from the noise of time.

The Rooster taught me to wake up early and be a leader. The Butterfly encouraged me to allow a period of struggles to develop strong and look beautiful. The Squirrel showed me to be alert and fast all the time. The Dog influenced me to give up my life for my best friend. The Cat told me to exercise every day. Otherwise, I will be lazy and crazy. The Fox illustrated me to be subtle and keep my place organized and neat. The Snake demonstrated to me to hold my peace even if I am capable of attack, harm, or kill. The Monkey stimulated me to be vocal and communicate. The Tiger cultivated me to be active and fast. The Lion cultured me not to be lazy especially if I have strength and power that could be used. The Eagle was my sample for patience, beauty, courage, bravery, honor, pride, grace, and determination. The Rat skilled me to find my way out no matter what or how long it takes. The Chameleon revealed to me the ability to change my color for beauty and protection. The Fish display to live in peace even if I have to live a short life. The Delphin enhanced me to be the source of kindness, peace, harmony, and protection. The Shark enthused me to live as active and restful as I can be. The Octopus exhibited me to be silent and intelligent. The Elephant experienced me with the value of cooperation and family. To care for others and respect elders. The Pig indicated to me to act smart, clean, and shameless. The Panda appears to me as life is full of white and black times but my thick fur will enable me to survive. The Kangaroo enthused me to live with pride even if I am unable to walk backward. The Penguin influenced me to never underestimate a person. The Deer reveals the ability to sense the presence of hunters before they sense you. The Turtle brightened me to realize that I will get there no matter how long it takes me while having a shell of protection above me. The Rabbit reassured me to allow myself to be playful and silly. The Bat proved to me that I can fly even in darkness. The Alligator/crocodile alerted me that threat exists. The Ant moved me to be organized, active, and social with others. The Bee educated me to be the source of honey and cure for others. The Horse my best intelligent friend with who I bond. Trained me to recover fast from tough conditions. The Whale prompted me to take care of my young ones and show them life abilities. The Crab/Lobster enlightened me not to follow them when they make resolutions depending on previous undesirable events.

With every person there comes a new complement of love, and there is no limit to it,” Elder Nelson summarized. “A newborn baby is the most helpless individual in all of life. When a colt is born, it can walk on its feeble legs. When an elephant is born, it can walk. But an infant can’t do anything but cry. That very nature of dependency upon the father and mother allows you to serve them, and that service is what galvanizes the love. If they were self-sufficient, I don’t think you could love them as much. Family is the supreme blessing in life.

If you are as ardent a fan of the National Geographic channel as I am, some of or all the following scenes should be familiar to you. A male lion roaring to assert his dominance over a pride; female baboons with their bright sexual swelling indicating their readiness to mate; bees performing their waggle dance to show the direction and distance of flowers; a female elephant caressing her calf to soothe him; a deep-sea squid emitting light to attract prey; and a meerkat squealing to warn her family of a predatory eagle. All these are examples of signals, and no textbook on evolutionary theory is complete without a lengthy discussion on them.1 Signals emitted by a “sender” have explicitly evolved to alter the behavior of the “receiver” and are used to communicate with and influence the behavior of prey, predators, mates, competitors, friends, and family.

A lot of what is inside us can seem daft: how we felt a strange impulse to burst into tears when reading a children’s book (about an elephant befriending a baby sparrow); how we sometimes imagine acquiring the power to go back in time and correct the missed opportunities of adolescence. Some of it is, from a harsh angle, distinctly pathetic: how worried we are about asking where the bathroom is; how envious we are of a close acquaintance; how much we worry about our hair. A significant part is alarming and quasi-illegal: our fantasies about a work colleague and a family member; our plans for what we’d ideally do to an enemy.

The natives started their trek to the village and the bus followed slowly. No one saw any lions, but Butubu pointed out graceful elands and kudus. They resembled American deer but their horns were quite different. Those of the elands were long and straight and pointed slightly backwards. The kudus’ rose straight up from the forehead and curved in such a way that from a distance they resembled snakes. Suddenly Butubu stopped the bus. “Look!” he said, pointing toward a tree-shaded area. “There’s a family of hyrax. In Africa we call them dassies.‘” “Aren’t they cute?” Bess exclaimed. “Are they some kind of rabbit?” “No,” Butubu replied. “If you will look closely, you will see that they have no tails. People used to think they belonged to the rat family. But scientists made a study of their bodies and say their nearest relatives are the elephants.” “Hard to believe,” said Burt. “Think of a rabbit-sized elephant!” The small, dark-brown animals were sunning themselves on an outcropping of rocks. Three babies were hopping about their mother. Butubu explained that they were among the most interesting African animals. “The babies start walking around within a few minutes of their birth and after the first day they’re on their own. They return to the mother only long enough to be fed, but they start eating greens very quickly.” Butubu drove on but continued to talk about the dassies. “There is an amusing folk tale about these little animals. It was said that in the days when the earth was first formed and animals were being put on it, the weather was cold and rainy. ”When all the animals were called to a certain spot to be given tails, the dassie did not want to go. As other kinds passed him, he begged them to bring him back a tail.“ Nancy laughed. “But none of them did.” “That is right,” Butubu answered. “And so to this day they have no tails that they can use to switch flies.” Everyone in the bus thanked him for relating the charming little legend, then looked out the windows. They were approaching a village of grass-roofed huts. The small homes were built in a semicircle.

And although I don't remember my family, I understand the longing. It's possible to miss people you don't remember.

My family is gone, but the zoo is my home.

On my first day of freedom, I decided to do something Daddy would never do—get a job. All my life, I’d wanted to live like normal people. From what I could tell, employment was the dividing line between my family and normal people.

After growing up in isolation without any close friends, my family was everything to me.

Winter was coming, and I felt guilty living in a comfortable house with modern conveniences while my family struggled in a rustic cabin. I lay awake at night wondering if my siblings were warm enough or if Momma had enough money for food.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that Thanksgiving is all about the food, don't you dare believe them, sure, some people will try to make it about the food, but it's really about love, respect, and gratitude. Without those ingredients, you might as well be serving cardboard.