Hasta La Gadget!

“Honor thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;”
-Ephesians 6:2

“Happy Father’s Day,” I whispered to my father, and hastily hung up the phone, briskly ending our bittersweet exchange. I looked at my wife in a dither, the flustered look in her eyes revealed the depth of her anguish. We embraced. I squeezed her tightly, and as I did, I felt the warmth of her tears sliding from her eyes, down her cheek, then mine, before ultimately pooling on my shoulder. She began sobbing. I finally relented from my feeble attempt to restrain my frazzled emotions. We wept together. This was not how I anticipated spending Father’s Day.

Father’s Day as a national celebration arose from the desire of a woman to honor her remarkable father a little more than a century ago. Historians attribute the original idea of creating Father’s Day to Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington. Mrs. Dodd reportedly had the idea for a day to celebrate fatherhood while hearing a sermon on Mother’s Day in 1909. Her father, a Civil War veteran, raised her and her five siblings alone after her mother died in childbirth. She believed he too deserved a moment of reverence and celebration, so she pushed to have a day to honor fathers. Mrs. Dodd drummed up support among local religious leaders, who subsequently celebrated the first Father’s Day on June 19, 1910 in Washington. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation that declared the third Sunday of June as a day to celebrate fatherhood, and in so doing he officially recognized what had previously been a beloved annual celebration across the country for several decades.

Father’s Day began as a religious holiday, presumably as a means to adhere to the commands of scripture, but quickly became commercialized as it grew in popularity nationally (e.g. President Coolidge lent his support for the observance in 1924). It also has signaled a time where our nation pauses to reflect on fatherhood, celebrate those who embrace the title of father, and also serves as a jolting reminder of the deleterious impact that occurs when our fathers are absent. President Obama, who notably has reflected on fatherhood quite publicly, has used the annual celebration of fatherhood as a means to spark a national conversation on fatherhood and personal responsibility, in addition to launching an initiative that promotes responsible fatherhood and mentoring in 2010.

In essence, Father’s Day has come to hold different meanings for us all. Previously, Father’s Day for me represented a time when I would scurry to find a gift for my father more worthy of the occasion than a new tie or customized coffee mug. More recently, the day has grown in personal significance for me as I journeyed the road to fatherhood myself. Me and my wife lost who would have been our first child on Father’s Day seven years ago. A few months after our wedding day, we began debating when we would attempt to “grow” our family. While we were debating the merits of waiting a bit longer, we learned a new life had begun growing inside my wife. I, the one who advocated waiting for a more appropriate time, found myself surprisingly elated at the potential arrival, and spent the next several months eagerly preparing for the arrival of our “bundle of joy.” I had envisioned how our lives would suddenly change upon our child’s arrival with distinct clarity, an almost arrogant certainty, when, within the blinking of an eye, our hopes were dashed by the unthinkable. The “vapour of life” slipped from our grasp, vanishing before we could even fully appreciate its presence.

That jarring moment demonstrated the frailty of this life, and how little control we have over it. We were crushed, but not without hope. We took solace in the fact that God, our Father in Heaven, is breathtaking and breath-giving. It is the Creator, the Giver of Life, who determines the beginning of living, and we had to trust His timing. We learned that lesson yet again when we found out that we would become parents nearly a year to the day we suffered our crushing loss. Our family would then grow two more times in the years that followed.

Now that I am a father, I daily experience a range of emotions. Naturally, I am thrilled that God has entrusted me with this great honor of becoming a parent. I also feel consumed with a great sense of wonder and anticipation of who my children will become, along with how me and my wife will shape their growth and development. Particularly, after our experience seven years ago, I was constantly reminded of the miracle of childbirth. I still distinctly remember watching my wife waddle across the room, and the motherly glow she exuded throughout the day. I will never forget touching her belly, and feeling sudden movements from within. I will always hold dear the moments I would place my ear to her swollen abdomen and hear a faint heartbeat.

Each day my children remind me of how precious this life is, and it continually makes me consider how I am spending mine. I feel the great weight of responsibility that comes with rearing children “in the way [t]hey should go.” I find myself constantly examining myself and delving into deep introspection as I search for what lessons I will impart to them: what experiences will they remember me for, what habits are worth keeping, which should be discarded, and what will be the be the sum of my legacy? I wrestle with these questions as I think of what do I have to share that is of eternal significance.

Notwithstanding my lack of answers to these questions, my children gives my life new meaning, and new hope for what may come of it. When I peer into their eyes, I see more fulfilling joys, deeper purpose and a new sense of optimism of what the world can be. I feel an urge to strive harder to be my best knowing they will view their first glimpse of manhood from me. Knowing my son carries my name makes me fight for the name’s value. I feel a greater love for my wife as I share these precious moments with them. I feel a more urgent desire to make this world more like it should be, so that my children will know a better life than I did. I feel like a father, and there is no feeling like it.

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It’s ironic that the shooting death of Harambe, a western lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, has sparked a debate over zoos. It’s odd because: 1) Zoo shootings are so exceptionally rare that most zoos will never face any event calling for a gun, 2) Therefore, everyday conditions at zoos — not exceptional tragic events — are more appropriate reason to reconsider zoos’ role, 3) Shooting deaths of free-living animals are rampant, constant and institutionalized, 4) Domestic animals in the food system live incomparably more miserable lives than animals in zoos who usually are, at worst, securely bored, 5) Yet, many people appalled by Harambe’s death still buy meat, cheese, eggs, leather and so on — proving that we tend to be used to what we’re used to, so we miss various forests because we love trees.

Male western lowland gorilla at San Francisco Zoo. Credit: Brocken Inaglory

Before going further, I’d hasten to say that I do not think that Harambe had to be killed. Harambe lived amidst humans his whole life and knew what the boy was. To me, there seemed time to tranquilize Harambe. As in two non-fatal incidents where kids fell into gorilla enclosures, Harambe’s behavior suggested no intent of harm. If Harambe had no interest in harming — he had no motive for harm — then the child’s life was not in danger. The most certain thing we know is that Harambe’s death resulted from erring on the side of caution for the boy. Most humans value human life above other life. Certainly a dead child is more of a problem for a zoo than a dead gorilla, and the surviving gorillas cannot sue. We’ll never know.

It’s a quirk of human perception that the full shock of our dysfunctional relationship with the living world usually occurs to us only momentarily through bright but isolated events. We have trouble grasping or dealing with the bigger trend. Free-living gorillas are shot so their infants can be sold on the black market, yet the universally unwanted death of zoo-born Harambe during a freak incident becomes the focus of an intense debate over the very existence of zoos. Rightly shocked by the killing of Harambe, we ignore the human expansion, habitat destruction, trapping, and poaching that have put his kind within hailing distance of total annihilation from the world. Rightly shocked by the cruel and stupid “sport” of an American dentist shooting arrows into Cecil the lion, almost no one attends to the fact that free-living lions have declined about 75 percent in the last 50 years under continual lethal pressure from expanding villages, herders, and poachers. If you think there’s nothing you can do about the existential threats facing these creatures, there’s news for you. Search for “gorilla conservation” and have your checkbook handy.

Being a wild gorilla is far more dangerous than being a zoo-born gorilla. Yet the wild is the only slim hope of true survival; zoos are dead-ends for creatures whose dismantled native habitat makes reintroduction impossible.

Apes in zoos are not “endangered” in quite the same way free-living animals are endangered. In zoos, they’re already gone. The reason they’re endangered is that their habitat is too demolished or they’re being hunted to extinction. There’s nowhere to release a zoo-born gorilla. They are not part of the viable living world. They hang on in a weird and unnatural limbo, wholly dependent each day on the one creature who is the source of all their problems. And yet zoos, too–or at least captive populations — may become the remaining wafer of hope when the final free gorilla takes their last gasp. We have put them in terrible times, when even solutions can seem at odds with each other.

Zoos or nature? That’s not the choice. Nature or no nature is a choice, and the broad trend is that we are choosing no nature. This will not be to our advantage in the long run; in the short run it’s simply a catastrophe for billions of living things.

Wild western lowland gorilla. Credit: RedGazelle15

The welfare of creatures living in zoos is important, both for zoos and as it reflects how much a society cares for kindness. But zoos are almost literally a sideshow. Survival of the living world itself, the conservation of nature — species in viable populations, functioning relationships on interdependent species, habitats, and natural systems — is incomparably more important than zoos. So much more that most people can’t grasp it, or get overwhelmed, and turn away. Even on a strictly humane level there’s way more at stake outside zoo cages, where humans make life deadly dangerous for animals, than inside where humans make life merely predictable and dull — unless a kid falls in.

Zoos or no zoos is a question we can debate, but life is never that simple and zoos do not correspond easily to simplistic questions such as: are zoos justifiable?; are zoos ethical or not ethical?

There are better zoos and worse zoos. There are animals better suited than others to captivity. (We adopted two captive-born parrots who often perch on their cage when we leave it open all day; it’s home to them.) When I was a little child the great ape and big-cat houses were jails, entirely concrete so they could be hosed off, with big bars. No one seemed to be thinking of naturalistic habitats, social groupings, play, psychological well-being, or the range of natural motions. Now, at some zoos, even the size and texture of food is considered, so that big cats can employ their whiskers and bring a fuller range of senses into play. Much has changed for the better.

What are the reasons for captivity of wild animals? Basically three: entertainment, education, and conservation. Conservation could be served on naturalistic sanctuaries without public viewing and often without public funding, and in purely wildlife-research focused facilities supported by government funding, such as the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and others. The best zoos, such as those run by the Wildlife Conservation Society, serve a wider conservation mission using a combination of paying zoo visitors and grants to run their public zoos and global conservation projects. I see no compelling reason not to pursue both.

As a city child, going to the zoo or aquarium was a window on a realer, bigger world populated by wondrous creatures. Locking eyes with an ape or eagle can be life-changing. It was for me.

That’s why I’m not against zoos; I’m against bad zoos. Zoos must serve their animals both in their enclosures and in the wider world. When animals of the wider world serve zoos, there’s a problem. And there is. Zoos, especially in Europe and the U.S., have a much larger proportion of captive-born than wild-caught animals than ever. But overall, zoos still take more animals from natural populations than they reintroduce to help natural populations recover. There have been notable exceptions where zoos bred endangered animals for successful reintroduction to the wild, perhaps the best being zoos’ role in saving the California Condor and Golden Lion Tamarin monkey from extinction, and being the driving source for their recovery. That’s ideal. There is no longer adequate justification for taking whales and dolphins, elephants and apes, out of their wild homes so we can gawk at them. Yet it’s still being done. I am against it. Wild-caught elephants are still being shipped to zoos in the U.S.; I’m against that. I am against killer whale captivity.

Wild killer whale. Credit: Carl Safina

Why are gorillas even in zoos? Reasons high and low. Because they reflect us. Because they are beautiful. Because they make money for their captors. Because we are curious. Too curious for our own good and theirs, sometimes. Harambe was in captivity because he was born there. The only option in his case was his non-existence. This has now been granted him by the powers that be.
Meanwhile, all the big animals that people most care about are at their lowest free-living populations ever. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. Please do.

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Carl Safina‘s most recent book, Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel, will appear in paperback in July.

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From our friends at Walt Disney Animation comes Zootopia, (available now on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD) the story about a city of anthropomorphic animals where a fugitive con artist fox and a rookie bunny cop must work together to uncover a conspiracy. KIDS FIRST! Film Critic Mia A. comments, “I thoroughly enjoyed Disney’s Zootopia because the animation took me into a beautiful world just like ours, but completely filled with animals.” Tre’ana H. chimes in with, “I really adored this film because it is very different from any ordinary film. The characters belong to the zoo animals’ collection. It is hilarious because all the animals act like humans and engage in everyday, normal conversations like we do.” See their full reviews below.

Zootopia
By Mia A, KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 12

I thoroughly enjoyed Disney’s Zootopia because the animation took me into a beautiful world just like ours, but completely filled with animals.

Zootopia is about a bunny named Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) who grew up on a carrot farm. Judy always wanted to be a cop when she grew up even though she is a bunny and bunnies do not become policemen. She goes to police training and then becomes a cop in Zootopia.

Zootopia is a land where all different types of animals, prey and predators, live together in peace. When Judy gets to Zootopia she is not taken seriously as a Bunny Cop, so Judy has to finish a case in 48 hours or else she resign. She teams up with a fox named Nick (Jason Bateman) to help figure out the case. Will she get taken seriously as a cop and finish the case? You’ll have to watch it to find out.

My favorite character in Zootopia is Nick, a clever, funny and mischievous fox. Nick got lots of laughs from the audience and I learned to care about him after his backstory was revealed.

My favorite scene is with the sloths. Judy and Nick go to check a license plate and all the workers at the DMV are sloths. The main sloth named Flash (Raymond S. Persi) says everything slowly. Judy is in a big rush and to make the process even slower, Nick tells Flash a joke. This is one of the funniest scenes that got lots of laughs from the audience.

The film’s animation is incredible. It’s filled with lots of color and creative, minute details. In one scene, Judy travels through the different zones of Zootopia and, in the rainforest zone, it starts raining and the rain hits the train. This scene is filled with detailed colors and light.

Zootopia is a mystery movie, but it is also a comedy. The mystery part of this movie could be scary to little kids because there are dark scenes with intense action and it shows some animals going savage.

There are a couple scenes with nude animals. This isn’t that bad because it only shows animals without clothes on. It is funny though because the animals freak out even though, in real life, animals are always “nude”.

Mia’s interview with Animation Supervisor Kira Lehtomaki:

I rate this movie a 4.5 out of 5 stars because there are some scenes little kids might find scary but everything has a reason even if it doesn’t seem important at the time. Since this is a Disney movie, some parents might think it is good for all ages. But, I recommend it for kids age 6 to 15 because of the fear factor. If your kids like mysteries and dark scenes then, that won’t be a problem. Disney’s Zootopia is now available on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD.

Zootopia
By Tre’ana H., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 12

I really adored this film because it is very different from any ordinary film. The characters belong to the zoo animals’ collection. It is hilarious because all the animals act like humans and engage in everyday, normal conversations like we do. Directors, Byron Howard and Rich Moore have delivered a creative and amazing story filled with imagination.

In the city of Zootopia the animals live a diversified life. They all get along with each other until a plague hits some of the animals and they start to be aggressive with each other. A fugitive con artist / fox named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) and a rookie bunny cop named Judy Hoops, (Ginnifer Godwin) work together to uncover the conspiracy that is taking over their city. You will not believe the deception that is taking place.

My most memorable scene is when the bunny first goes to Zootopia. I liked this part best because, when she is on the train, you see the entire city of Zootopia. It made me feel like I was part of the scene touring Zootopia with Judy. This section of the film shows each part of the city and reveals all the different scenery in each section. This is the coolest scene and is so beautifully detailed.

The setting of this story made me feel like I wanted to be a part of this world of Zootopia. The colors are very bright and it looks like an amusement park with plenty of animals.

The moral message of this film is that you should never let anyone bring you down or stop you from being the person you want to be. People may try to break you down, but you can’t let them. You can be whatever you want to be in this world of freedom.

I recommend this film for ages 6 to 18 and I give it 5 out of 5 Stars because it is child friendly, hilarious, exciting and everyone will enjoy it. Disney’s Zootopia is now available on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD.

Mia A., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 12

Tre’ana H., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 12

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Over the last couple of seasons of television, critics and audiences have begun to pay a considerable amount of attention to the role of women and racial diversity on their favorite shows. Despite being set in the future, science fiction television has often been stubbornly stuck in the past. With its latest lineup, however, the Syfy channel has demonstrated that a proactive approach can create lasting change.

Read more…

Most polls at present show that Hillary Clinton will beat Trump in their presumed presidential face-off in the Fall. The problem with this is that polls measure what people tell pollsters and that’s what ends up in their numbers and percentage crunching. In some cases, the numbers ultimately prove right and the presidential candidates that polls show will win do win.

This may or may not be the case in trying to figure out where Trump really stands with millions of voters. He’s banking that the polls are dead wrong. In a speech back in July in Phoenix he reached back more than four decades and snatched at a line and a concept that then GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon pulled out of his political hat in November, 1969. Nixon publicly called on those he dubbed “the silent majority” to bail him out on his plan to settle the Vietnam War.

Nixon had much more in mind than drumming up support for his war plan — he had coined a new code word for millions of mostly white, conservative, blue collar and middle income voters, who were appalled by and mad as hell at the ghetto riots, campus demonstrations, rampant drug and “permissive” culture and disrespect for law. They were in Nixon’s view so denigrated, mocked, marginalized and pushed to the side by the mainstream media, and ignored by Washington politicians and bureaucrats, that they would hit back, and hit back hard, in the one way they knew how. That was at the polls. That meant a vote for Nixon.

The implication was that untold numbers of these closet Nixon backers might not show up in the polls as Nixon supporters precisely because they weren’t part of a voter sample. Or, if they were, they wouldn’t tip their hand about backing Nixon. A decade later, the hidden bias, masked feeling and the penchant of many white voters to shade, deceive or just plain lie to pollsters and interviewers when they told them that color didn’t mean anything to them in an election, surfaced with a vengeance in the heated contest for California governor in 1982. Polls consistently showed L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley would beat his white GOP rival and become the first African-American governor. The polls were wrong and Bradley lost. Pollsters tried everything they could afterwards to weed out hidden bias in the polls with mixed results.

In Trump’s case, the issue isn’t race in trying to decipher why many voters might not let on how they really feel about him. It’s how he’s been routinely caricatured, and that’s as a clown, loud mouth, liar, conniver, racist and women/immigrant/Muslim-basher. These aren’t exactly the qualities of person, let alone a presidential candidate, that would make someone proudly tell pollsters, or anyone else that they would stand in a line to vote for.

The primaries gave a clue about how this presidential election cycle is unlike few others in modern times. Even though polls showed Trump at the top ahead of his GOP rivals for months before the first primary, the experts were virtually unanimous that the polls couldn’t really be believed, and that he would wither on the vine in the first round of the primaries. The polls for the most part were right about his popularity. But since then with his wave of shoot from the lip bluster and fights with Obama blaming him for the Orlando massacre, and his double and triple down in attacks on Muslims, the same polls are showing him slipping further behind Clinton.

Can they really be believed? The brutal reality is that millions think that Muslims are terrorists, and that the country is under siege, that the Obama administration and Clinton would do a lousy job in protecting them and that they haven’t done a darn thing about keeping jobs here. And, worse, they’d take away their guns. They are likely to seethe in quiet anger at the sight of demonstrators repeatedly disrupting Trump rallies and clashing in the streets with police. Many, when asked, might not express that anger and frustration. Worse, as Nixon played on and up, they aren’t even asked how they feel about issues, or paid any attention to. Yet they more than showed in the primaries when they voted for Trump that they are there in massive numbers.

People say there aren’t enough less educated, blue-collar white men in the electorate to push Trump over the top. But that’s misleading. Trump has actually gotten a lot of votes from middle class white people — male and female, college educated, business and professional people.

There’s more still to the potential Trump vote total. Elections are almost always won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters. In Trump’s case, white males, older voters, middle-income, college educated voters, vote consistently and faithfully. And most times they vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks, and especially young voters.

Nixon was definitely on to something in 1969 when he corralled his silent majority and bagged the White House. The jury is way out on whether Trump can do the same. But the danger is there.

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Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of Let’s Stop Denying Made in America Terrorism, (Amazon Kindle) He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.

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