Hasta La Gadget!

style=”float: left; margin:10px”My blogs are normally about dogs. As an animal lover, however, I am so angered and saddened by a recent incident at the Cincinnati Zoo that I can’t help but speak out. Piecing together various accounts, here’s what happened: A 4-year-old boy crawled through a barrier and fell into a gorilla enclosure. Zookeepers quickly moved the 2 female gorillas into another area, but the 17-year old male gorilla was still inside. An eyewitness reported that the gorilla “rushed toward the boy and led him by the arm through the water in the enclosure,” and that he, “seemed protective and only alarmed by all the screaming.” The boy was in the enclosure for 10 minutes with no injuries. The zoo president says, “while Harambe didn’t attack the child, the animal’s size and strength posed a great danger.” The zoo’s Dangerous Animal Response team felt a tranquilizer would have taken too long to take effect and so, with the boy between the gorilla’s legs, they shot Harambe dead. The boy was taken to a hospital where he was determined to have sustained non-life-threatening but serious injuries.

How did this happen in the first place? To reach the gorillas, the boy had to go under the safety rail, crawl through wires, and climb over the moat wall. According to one eyewitness, the boy’s mother was “tending to several other children” when he slipped away. Unfortunately, this is far from the first time this type of thing has happened. In 2014, a 3-year-old boy at the Little Rock Zoo “fell into” the big cat exhibit after his grandfather put him up on the railing to see the cats. A zookeeper reported seeing a yellow jaguar with its jaws around the neck of the boy. In this case, the staff used a fire extinguisher to drive the cat back, lower a ladder, and rescue the boy. The boy was treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Need more? Last year at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, a 2-year old boy fell into a cheetah exhibit. The boy’s mother was “holding him and another child” over the railing when he fell in. Fortunately, they were able to get the boy out and the cheetah seemed more curious than anything.

There have been many similar incidents at zoos over the years. I’m not a parent (unless you count my fur-kids), and I’m sure it’s difficult to keep an eye on your child 24/7. But in each of these cases, had a parent been supervising, not to mention not doing anything incredibly stupid like standing the child up on a railing or other precarious spot, these incidents would never have occurred. I spend time photographing zoo animals, and almost every time I visit I see exactly this kind of insanity.

Regardless of how you feel about whether zoos should exist, they do, and a large part of their income comes from families with children. Instead of blaming parents or zookeepers, what about coming up with a solution? Here’s mine, and it has two parts: First, any family with a child that is seen up on a railing or other precarious area must be escorted out of the zoo immediately. Highly visible signage around the zoo should warn them this will happen. Second, there are harness/leash combinations that are specifically designed for children. Children of a certain age and below should be required to wear one while on zoo grounds. This would prevent this sort of tragedy from ever happening again. It would also prevent children from running into other visitors (something I have experienced quite often) and from getting lost.

The death of Harambe, a western lowland gorilla — a critically endangered species — could have easily been prevented. So could many other similar incidents. Let’s learn from this heartbreaking tragedy and change things so it can’t happen again.

Nicole Wilde is a canine behavior specialist and author. You can visit her website, follow her on Facebook and view her photography/art here.

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Let’s face it. I am an Indian mom. That means, among other things, I am genetically programmed to begin and end every phone call and every conversation with my children and family with a couple of mandatory questions.

Did you eat? (It doesn’t matter what time of day it is.)

What did you eat? (If the answer to the above is yes.)

When and what will you eat? (If the answer is no.)

Sometimes the call may be just about whether they ate or plan to eat.

My kids have accepted that this would always be so. It used to be so bad that I would ask them what they wanted for lunch, as they were finishing breakfast.

These days, when they come home for a weekend, I typically start asking what they want to eat when they’re home a couple of days prior to their visit. Between my two, and my son’s girlfriend, who, incidentally, is vegan and loves Indian food, I look forward to cooking for three children, and a husband who thinks I only make special things when the kids are home.

But on a recent weekend with the three of them visiting with two dogs, things got a little bit crazier than normal.

First, I had my Saturday morning French class (part of my plan on how to handle being an empty nester, blogged here), for which I was doing the homework the night before. Out went the precious “I’ll make all the make ahead stuff before they come home” time.

My husband was getting ready to go to India, and also running around to help pick up my son’s car and get the paperwork and insurance done, all on Saturday morning.

What happened was this: the kids, as much as they helped, couldn’t do it as fast as I wanted them to. We didn’t see Raj all of Saturday that made me pretty mad, as he was leaving for India early Sunday.

And, being an empty nester for the last 5 years, I had gotten used to making real simple meals for me and Raj, and to get back into heavy cooking for the weekend was not as easy as it used to be, how much ever I planned and tried to be efficient.

In the end, there was frustration all around. By lunchtime on Saturday, I was ready to call it a day. And I had three more meals to go.

And that got me thinking: maybe it shouldn’t be all about food. I loved feeding them food I knew they missed and they really enjoyed it, but I was determined to squeeze so much in a 48-hour period, and focused on just feeding them, that I had missed out on the most important thing: being there, being in the moment and simply enjoying their company.

We were a tired and grumpy bunch midway through the weekend. But hey, they were well fed!

After the three kids, two dogs and one husband left, a sudden quiet fell and there was an aching vacuum. Show over, the theater was empty and I had absolutely nothing to do, nobody to feed and nobody to talk to.

As I tried to think back to the last two and a half days, all I had was brief, fuzzy flashes of conversations:

– My daughter telling me about her school, that I only half-listened,

– My son telling about all the exciting things he was getting to do in his first job, and how cool Philly was,

-The questions I had meant to ask and never did. The questions I did ask, but was too distracted to pay attention to the answers, leaving them still questions.

Allison who was a bit ill, and quiet, that I barely noticed that she wasn’t even eating much
And I realized that I had missed seeing the forest for the trees. As much as they enjoy my cooking, they also kept telling me that they would rather spend time with me, maybe play some games or watch a movie without me falling asleep in the first ten minutes. But I didn’t listen, because dammit, they were going to be fed, the dishes had to be done and the kitchen was going to be spotless.

So, here’s my promise, kiddos (or threat, depending) — next time, we will play Sequence, and watch a movie or two and have some real conversations. And maybe some take out and pizza.

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Contrary to click-bait headlines this week, the State Department inspector general’s report proves that Hillary Clinton is by a long shot the most qualified and trustworthy candidate running for president. But don’t take my word for it, take five minutes and read the report yourself. The section about Clinton “breaking the rules” is less than six pages long.

The actual rules, however, would take weeks to read. They are mostly contained in the “Foreign Affairs Manual,” and just skimming them is dizzying. They make the report’s conclusion that “longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State” come as no surprise

No surprise either that with its budget declining and national security mission growing for decades, “records management” hasn’t been a high priority for the State Department.

What may be surprising is that had Clinton used a government server and email address, we would know nothing more about anything today; in fact, we’d probably know less since Clinton’s records retention system was far more sophisticated, well-maintained, secure and organized than the government’s. What definitely came as a shocker in the report was the government’s so-called “system” for retaining email: 1. Print every one and stick it in a box in random order. 2. Put said box on a shelf somewhere. 3. Start a new box. Seriously. Read the report. There are thousands of boxes of emails in no order, with no way of knowing whether they are comprehensive.

Well, I guess we know they’re not comprehensive. The report clarifies that Colin Powell, for instance, hasn’t printed any of his emails from his private server.

“Printing and filing remained the only method by which emails could properly be preserved within the office of the secretary in full compliance with existing FAM Guidance,” says the report, and “80 percent of agencies had an elevated risk for the improper management of electronic records reflecting serious challenges handling vast amounts of email, integrating records management functionality into electronic systems, and adapting to the changing technological and regulatory environments.”

How’s that for a confidence booster?

The specific “rule” Clinton allegedly broke states that the “general policy” of the State Department is for employees to use government email service on a government-issued device, but it then goes on to provide the conditions under which exceptions are made. The report acknowledges that Clinton had been openly using her private email server since she was a senator, through her 2008 presidential campaign and then as secretary of state. In fact, during her tenure at the State Department, 55,000 emails were sent by Clinton using her clintonemail.com email address, all of which have been printed and made available, more than any other previous secretaries.

The report also clearly states: “Laws and regulations did not prohibit employees from using their personal email accounts for the conduct of official Department business.” And nowhere in the report is there suggestion that Clinton’s use of a private email address and server was “illegal.”

Instead, the thrust of the criticism of Clinton is that the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Information Resource Management were not asked permission by Clinton to use her private server. Had she asked, the new person in charge says, permission would have been denied.

How the new person in charge of security knows what the old person in charge of security when Clinton was secretary would have done is not explained, but bureaucrats under a microscope are like cockroaches when the lights come on. They scatter.

“These officials all stated that they were not asked to approve or otherwise review the use of Secretary Clinton’s server and that they had no knowledge of approval or review by other department staff. These officials also stated that they were unaware of the scope or extent of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account, though many of them sent emails to the secretary on this account.”

So let’s get this straight: The bureaucrats “in charge” of security knew Clinton was using a private email server since 2001 — and they sent her email regularly to it between 2009 and 2013 — but they wouldn’t have given her permission to do that?

They sent her emails to her personal address, but they didn’t know she had a personal address?

This was no covert operation, for heaven’s sake. It’s not like Clinton was secretly selling arms to Iran and funding the Contras. The Clintons paid out-of-pocket for a few techies to work in their basement keeping this server humming and free from cyber breaches. Staffers from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security inspected the email system, looked at the logs and communicated with these people on a regular basis. The bureau even refused to help fix it when Hurricane Sandy disrupted power “because it was a private server,” according to the report.

Clinton reasonably believed her private server was allowed because the bureaucrats in charge of security allowed it. This present-day conviction for violating rule 12 FAM 544.2 after the fact means nothing of any consequence. Nobody was hurt. No security was breached. Who cares?

Oh, but other rules were broken –12 FAM 592.4 and 12 FAM 682.2-6 to be exact. These fault Clinton for failing to report a suspected a cyber-security “incident.”

Sounds Benghazi-like, right? Sounds pretty darn serious, right?

Wrong. The “incident” was Clinton sending an email to her under secretary that said, “Is this really from you? I was worried about opening it!”

The use of an unnecessary exclamation point might be fair game for critique, but really, in the grand scheme of things, do you care that she didn’t report this “incident?”

It’s not like she had nothing better to do as secretary of state. In 55,000 pages of email one alleged incident went unreported, so that makes her untrustworthy? Compared to whom? Trump? Bernie? How about reporting your tax returns, fellas?

The inspector general’s report found the State Department under Secretaries Albright, Powell, Rice and Kerry fell short of rules around the management, storage and protection of email transmission — as do virtually every other government agency and corporation.

In Maine we have rules, too, about document retention, and guess what? Nobody follows them, including Gov. Paul LePage. Until a document-shredding scandal was exposed, the Secretary of State’s office wasn’t even aware that 60 percent of state agencies didn’t have a records custodian, the board responsible for rulemaking was defunct and retention schedules were 30 years old.

Does this justify bad behavior? Of course not, but there’s a reason why so many people don’t care about Hillary Clinton’s 55,000 emails. The fact is, had she followed the letter of the law, our lives would be no better or worse. We would have had boxes of printed emails and instead we have boxes of printed emails. There’s not one iota of evidence of any motive to do harm, break the law or personally gain.

So to the people who were hoping the inspector general’s report would be the second-to-last nail in the coffin before a much-anticipated criminal indictment: sorry. Clinton remains the most qualified, experienced and trustworthy candidate by a long shot. She neither blames others for the technical rule violations, nor tried to cover up or conceal emails she sent or received.

The American people are sick and tired of hearing about her damn emails. There’s no smoking gun in the report. If that makes you unhappy, blame the liberal media.

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Here’s a recurring scene in our kitchen: my vibrant 6-year-old daughter on her step stool, elbows on the kitchen counter waiting for Mommy to gather recipe ingredients. She taps out a drum rhythm with her measuring cup, eager to dump flour into the large bowl in front of her. I get lost for a moment, looking at this little beauty in front of me. I don’t take one single moment for granted, considering the journey we’ve been through together.

When I found out I was pregnant with Anya, I was excited and nervous at the same time. It made me grow up overnight knowing I would be responsible for raising a child. I began to relax into it and enjoy the pregnancy, writing down possible baby names. I sang lullabies to the new life in my belly. I followed the weekly “How big is your baby?” stages of development in food terms. “Now the baby is as big as a blueberry, a cherry, a kumquat…”

Because I was over 35, it was recommended that I have a CVS test to rule out any birth defects or genetic issues with the baby. I almost didn’t go since I was so sure that everything was fine.

I still remember the day I received the results. “The baby tested positive for Down Syndrome.” Jumbled sounds echoed through my head. I was in complete shock and couldn’t find words to respond. I felt dizzy as I clutched the phone. I asked softly, “Is it a boy or girl?”

When the woman told me that I was having a girl, I collapsed to the floor and burst into tears. I was growing this precious life inside of me and was in love with her already. I was also suddenly afraid of all the unknowns. Anya’s father and I had separated early into the pregnancy, so doing this as a single mother only added to my fears.

Immediately I began scouring the internet to find out everything I possibly could about Down Syndrome. What would her life be like? How could I best prepare as her mother? The information was conflicting and not very reassuring. So I called the National Down Syndrome Society to see if I could attend a social or support group. They connected me to an amazing group of parents who completely changed my outlook.

One summer day I went to the group’s annual pool party in Bucks County, PA, and got a chance to meet all of their beautiful children. For some reason, up to that time I had never had the opportunity to even meet anyone with Down Syndrome. The kids were running around, swimming and splashing, and I felt so reassured to see their joyful playfulness.

That winter Anya was born with four holes in her heart. She required a month in the NICU and, at just 12 weeks, she had open heart surgery. Over the next few years, Anya would require six more surgeries including several sets of ear tubes. She faced all of it with so much determination and courage, and I gave the very best of myself as her mom. As a baby she had the immune-boosting benefits of breastfeeding for 15 months exclusively through pumping and bottle transfers. And as she grew I always brought healthy, homemade food to the hospital, along with bags of toys and familiar blankets. The nurses even let me climb into her hospital bed next to her every chance I could.

Thankfully today she thrives. In addition to regular appointments with her pediatrician and specialists, I also take her to a holistic pediatrician for adjunctive therapies. I don’t know what the future holds, but taking a comprehensive approach to Anya’s well-being, one that includes natural approaches, empowers me. I give her daily massages, a super healthy diet and special supplements for kids with DS after I learned that the 21st chromosome requires unique vitamins to stay healthy.

All mothers worry about their children, but when you have a child with special needs, that worry can get magnified. It’s easy to start wondering if she’ll get married, or drive, or who will take care of her when she gets older. These are concerns that I have to consciously keep in check each day, focusing on prayer, positive visualizations of her future and keeping a sense of humor and lightness with her. Rather than focusing on unpredictable circumstances, I shift my energy to the positive, and savor each moment in the now.

I’m raising this beautiful child to have the healthiest, brightest start possible. I’m so happy that she follows my example of living a healthy lifestyle and I make it my mission every day to be a better person as her mom and role model. Getting to where we are has had its challenges along the way, but I am immensely grateful for each step of the journey with Anya. In her six short years, she has taught me more about strength, courage, love, life and happiness than any other person. She is my hero and angel, and I’m excited for each day with her by my side.

Tap tap! Her measuring cup beats a little louder on the countertop, bringing me back into the present moment. We share a giggly hug and get back to baking, part of our daily magic together.

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It’s no secret that the new Doom is chock-full of Easter eggs and other surprises, but the latest is one you wouldn’t find just by wandering around the game’s tortured halls. Intrepid fan TomButcher has noticed that at least one tune in the soundtra…