WHICH ARE THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS?

There’s been a lot of controversy over when the Twelve Days of Christmas begin and end, but the Church of England stands firm that the first day of Christmas begins at sunset on Christmas Eve and ends on the night of January 5^th (Twelfth Night). I’m in the other camp who believe the First Day of Christmas is Christmas Day and the Twelfth Day of Christmas is January 6^th, the Feast of the Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day. Since Epiphany is the celebration of the visit of the Wise Men, it makes no sense to me that Christmas would end the day before.

Which brings me to something else that doesn’t make sense - Christmas decorations going up in November. Hello! Christmas isn’t in November. And it isn’t over on December 26^th, the day so many Christmas trees are now being stripped of their ornaments and discarded. I’m a traditionalist when it comes to Christmas, so forgive me if I find all of this straying from tradition a bit bah, humbuggy.

Call me sentimental, but I can’t help longing for a good old fashioned Christmas like the ones I enjoyed as a child. Nativity plays in elementary school, singing Christmas carols, the Christmas tree being brought home by my father just before Christmas, helping him decorate it, placing the star I’d made at school on the top. Christmas morning was always exciting, but it was never an orgy of opening presents and it was full of surprises because my brothers and I didn’t have a clue what we’d be getting. There were no TV commercials to solicit a desire for the latest toy or gadget.

Speaking of presents, I've often wondered how all those presents came to be in the Twelve Days of Christmas song seeing that the twelve days were originally feast days of the church. I’ve tried to find out, but the only thing I learned is that thought to be French in origin, the lyrics were first published in England in 1780 as part of a children’s book entitled Mirth without Mischief.

On that note I'll leave you with warm wishes for a merry Twelve Days of Christmas and a new year filled with blessings.

P.S. My romantic thriller The Tangled Web is on sale for 99 cents until the Twelfth Day of Christmas. If you haven't already read it, now's the time to grab it. On sale in all Kindle stores.

US http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Z5Y3ZQ UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007Z5Y3ZQ?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

They're going to kill me. It's only a matter of time.

I am a victim of the Canned Hunting industry. 

Look at me...Remember my face.

My beautiful mother was forced to breed many times in her life, so she could produce as many litters of cubs like me as possible. I was taken away from her when I was only a few days old....I cannot imagine her grief losing me, as I can only remember mine.

I got sick, I was stressed because of losing my mother, I was not fed properly, I lost some of my hair, and no one cared, Not even the tourists who came to see me, because if they knew the "truth" they would not have paid to hold me, to never let me have peace. All they wanted to do was hold me. I needed my mother, not them.

My life will consist of being patted, mauled, forced to be held, while camera flashes go off in my face over and over again, and when the next day comes, it starts all over like the day before and the day before that, and the day before that.

When I start to grow, and get too big to be cuddled, I will then be put on a leash and walked by tourists who come to places like where I am, who are told that I am a part of a breeding conservation facility. I wish I could yell out the Truth!!!!

The truth is this. I was born for one reason and one reason only. I was born to be killed. I was "Bred for the Bullet." I was born suffering and I will die suffering when I am full grown and killed by a "Canned Hunter."

I will not know he is a hunter. I will not know that what he holds in his hands will cause me to bleed and suffer until my life ends. I will not know he is to be feared because I have been hand reared all my life, so humans do not scare me.

I will more than likely see that bullet coming at me....Until it strikes....Me.

That is my life. Please tell the world about me.

Tell the world about us who are bred to die. Bred for the Bullet.

Please tell the world about the industry that I was born into, "The Canned Hunting Industry." 

There is nothing cute about petting me. You are simply helping me be killed.  Please always remember this, no matter how cute I look, I suffer inside and I need you to tell the world about me and what they are doing to all of us.

Thank you for being our Voice.

Dawn Warren Flann is a wildlife advocate supporting Blood Lions Tweet Storms for TV premiers and screenings worldwide.

Be another voice for the Blood Lions. Join the Tweet Storm to save them at 

https://sites.google.com/site/watchbloodlionseu/

I've got my marching orders

I love animals, I always have and it saddens me that three of my four favorite animals in the wild are under threat of extinction because of human activity. One of them, the polar bear, isn't getting much attention this week. It will have have to wait in the wings while elephants, lions and rhinos, which are under a more immediate threat, take center stage as people in 137 locations around the world march to bring attention to the dire situation that is taking place in Africa.

It's unbelievable to think that African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at the rate of one every 15 minutes. Add that up. I can hardly wrap my head around such numbers. Rhinos are being slaughtered for their horns at the rate of about one every 7 to 11 hours. The poor lion, once king of the jungle, has been reduced to a caged animal bred for hunting. Accustomed to having humans feeding him, the caged lion doesn't stand a chance when he's let out of confinement to walk a few yards only to be shot to death by a sports hunter.

You're thinking this is awful, aren't you? It's more than awful because the only reason the elephants and rhinos are being illegally poached is because a lot of people like ivory and others erroneously believe rhino horn has medicinal properties. The lions are under threat because there are people who actually enjoy killing lions for fun and they have the means to go to Africa and hunt them.

So what can we do? To begin with, we can help build awareness of the dire situation these animals are in. As Ekhart Tolle said, "Awareness is the greatest agent for change." If people don't know there is a problem, they can't do anything to solve it. Most people who buy ivory aren't thinking that an elephant has to be killed in order to get the tusks from which the trinket they're buying was made. Those who buy rhino horn for its so-called medicinal properties are most likely unaware that the horns are cut out of the rhino's heads leaving them to bleed to death. Most Americans don't know that the United States is the second largest importer of illegal ivory in the world. I didn't know that about the U.S. Did you?

I'm joining thousands of other wildlife advocates this weekend for the Global March for Elephants, Lions and Rhinos. I'll be marching in Gainesville, Florida, a university town with a population of 124,000 that's about 25 miles from my house. I'm proud that little Gainesville has joined the march. It may not turn out to be as large as some of the huge ones that are being planned, but that's not the point. The point is Gainesville folks will be showing up to add their voices to the outcry against an atrocity nobody who cares about animals can tolerate.

Even if you're unable to join the march this weekend, you can join those speaking out against wildlife crime by sharing this post, joining the Global March For Elephants and Rhinos community on Facebook and retweeting from their hashtag stream #GMFER. I'll be tweeting too, so you can also retweet me from @jpLANEauthor. Let's pool our social media resources and put a stop to the killing. We have the voice. We have the power. Now we just need to unleash it and help save the elephants, lions and rhinos of Africa before it's too late.

Thanks very much for your much appreciated comments. For some reason I'm not able to reply to them at the moment. I will as soon as I've sorted out this glitch.

I was thinking about a few things

Sri Lanka 1981: First time meeting an elephant 

I was thinking about social media this morning. I admit that when I first stepped tentatively into that universe it was with the intention of bringing my writing to the attention of as many people as possible. Being a private person, I was a bit confused by Facebook, which has always had me in a bind. On the one hand, I don't like sharing every little detail of my life, except with very close friends. On the other hand, I'm not comfortable promoting my work on Facebook as often as I should.

Twitter was a different story. With only 140 characters with which to say what needed to be said, it allowed a certain amount of anonymity. I could promote my book to my heart's content on Twitter without feeling as though I was being a nuisance. Best of all, it didn't seem anybody cared one way or another about my personal life. That was fine by me.

Yet it's through Twitter that I've met the most people and made the most friends. It's on Twitter that I find myself engaging in conversation. I enjoy chatting, if briefly, with people from every continent. When I'm on Twitter, I'm connected with the entire world and I love that. That world gets bigger every day and my views on why I'm in it have changed a lot since I opened my Twitter account and set out to sell my debut novel.

Audrey Hepburn said something that resonates with me now that I'm getting older. She said, "As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others." Having a social media platform was originally for the purpose of marketing. Now it's also for helping to create awareness of things that need to be changed, things we can all help to change. As Eckhart Tolle said, "Awareness is the greatest agent for change."

Yesterday was a joyous day for me. I read the Pope's encyclical. It's what inspired this post. I also read numerous news items and editorials about it. I can't remember when last I felt so excited. Which environmental and wildlife activist wouldn't be excited to see the stir it created and the action it's inspired? Not to mention the awareness it's created of the danger Mother Earth is in.

ENCYCLICAL LETTER

LAUDATO SI’

OF THE HOLY FATHER

FRANCIS

ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME

1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.”

2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.Click here for complete text

Here's what Bartholomew and Justin Welby had to say in their  commentary "Climate Change and Moral Responsibility" in yesterday's New York Times.

"However, health is symptomatic of a larger problem, which undermines and fragments our broader worldview. In addition to highlighting the effects of climate change, we must address the root of the problem. In so doing, we will discover how the benefits of assuming moral responsibility and taking immediate action — not just on matters related to health, but also world economy and global policy — far outweigh the cost of remaining indifferent and passive."

Which came first - the chicken or the egg?

J.P. Lane

Please visit my Pinterest board Protect Our Planet if you have a chance.
There's a beautiful collection of wildlife, plus all sorts of articles.

NO LONGER GREEN AS GRASS

Three years, and what a ride, though it seems like yesterday when my author friend, Linda Nance, hosted a Facebook event for the launch of The Tangled Web. As far as I remember, my only involvement was making the book free for the event – which was a disaster – for 37 terrifying hours.

Every author’s nightmare

The event was planned for a Friday and Saturday. Early Friday morning, (3:00 a.m. on the dot) I dashed to my computer to see if the price change was in effect. It wasn’t. I was concerned, but who was I going to message at 3:00 a.m.? I went back to bed and woke at around 6:00. Still no price change. I began to have a bad feeling.

Linda surfaced at around 9:00. She didn’t think there was any reason to panic – yet. When afternoon rolled around and the book still wasn't free, she conceded there might be some cause for concern. By this time, guests were pouring onto the event page on Facebook. I was cringing while making futile calls to Amazon. Linda kept posting, “Check back in an hour.” I can't count how many times she did that.

Being green as grass back then, I didn’t know anything about the workings of Facebook, but those comments, which would have showed up on news feeds, must have made a few people curious. By mid-afternoon the event page was crowded with comments as more and more guests arrived. By nightfall I was drained. The book still wasn't free. Saturday dawned and the situation remained the same, but still guests kept coming back.

And then it happened

It was shortly after 4:00 on Saturday afternoon when the good news came all the way from Scotland in the form of a post on the event page by author Jon Magee. “It’s free in the UK!” OMG, it was free – finally! I rushed to Amazon. To my dismay, it still wasn’t free in the U.S.

I’m not sure when the U.S. finally made it to the free line, but it wasn’t long after the U.K. Linda had virtually taken over the event by this. My mind had turned to mush. I’m not sure when she started posting the rankings either. I just remember messaging her to ask what all that stuff she was posting meant. I never knew there was such a thing as an Amazon ranking. “It’s a free bestseller in its genre!” she explained in a very excited voice. “It’s #14 in Romantic Suspense in the U.S. and #17 in the UK." Armed with this knew knowledge, I checked all the Amazon stores myself. Surprise of surprises, it was #15 in Germany. To cut this long story short, the two-day event turned into a three-day event which took me about as many days to recover from.

43 Kindle Reviews Later

Oprah never did invite me to be a guest on her show, and The Tangled Web never made it to the New York Times bestseller list, but I have a lot to be thankful for. The Kindle edition of The Tangled Web has 43 reviews (Amazon U.S. and U.K. combined) with a 4.5-star average ranking in U.S. and 4.6-stars in the U.K. It also has 75 ratings/32 reviews on Goodreads. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has read the Tangled Web and to those who took the time to review it. And many thanks to Linda Nance for being such a great friend, and for my first interview back in 2012. Read it here.

Comments from reviewers

"Loved it."
"Absolutely brilliant book/read."
"Captivating, enthralling, intriguing.”

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TANGLED WEB

US http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Z5Y3ZQ

UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007Z5Y3ZQ?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

CA http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B007Z5Y3ZQ?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

AU http://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B007Z5Y3ZQ?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Please don't rush off to download The Tangled Web just yet. There's one more thing. I'd like to dedicate this Beatles song to all the wonderful authors who have supported me. Thank you, dear friends. I couldn't have got by without your help. 

ALASKA

If anyone should be celebrating International Poetry Month it's me. My writing career was launched because of a poem. Were it not for that poem, I probably wouldn't have become a writer. But that's a long story, so I'll save it for another time. I haven't written much poetry since that poem that changed my life. Here's one of the few...it's about Alaska...a place that would inspire anyone to wax poetic.

Alaska…raw, rare, primeval, other-worldly…a vast white wonderland of jagged mountains carved from the heated rage of Earth during a time we can no longer remember.

Alaska…where through a misted sky the eagle soars in search of some morsel from the bounty offered up by a sea made chill by ice cast off from gemstone-blue glaciers that have had their fill of earth and rock and sand.

Alaska… where time hangs suspended in endless day that becomes endless night until it becomes endless day once more to cast its spell upon your body and mind.

Was that a mountain peak, snow-capped, cast adrift on a sea of clouds and ice, or was it the ghost of something that bewitched the eyes to become a memory so vivid that memory and reality become one in a limitless, breathtaking landscape?

Alaska…bodies bundled from the wind and drizzle, a red parka stark against the flint-grey cold of a pebbled beach where the sea makes certain that fishers, casting their lines shoulder to shoulder, do not wait long for their catch.

Alaska…you are too awesome to paint, even in words. Your landscape escapes capture, making mockery of the camera’s lens just as the Orca diving to arctic depths scorns the curiosity seeker, offering him, at very best, a mere glimpse of its grandeur.

The white man nobody’s talking about

His name was William Wilberforce. He was born on August 24, 1759 and died on July 29, 1833 – just three days after hearing that the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act, an act of Parliament which he had fought for more than two decades to bring to passage, was finally passed.

Wilberforce became a leading English abolitionist shortly after meeting Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave trade activists in 1787. A man who believed in morality and education, he headed the parliamentary campaign against the powerful British slave trade for twenty-six years. Although there were many involved, it is  Wilberforce to whom we mostly owe thanks for the end of slavery in the west. I think it’s only fitting that we acknowledge Wilberforce as one of the most important human rights activists of all time and count him among our heroes during Black History Month. Click here for more about him.

“Slavery is wicked thing, Mr. Courtney.” – Sarah Granville, main female character in the story I’m writing, part of which is about slavery in the West Indies at the turn of the 19th century.

“Although they are being hailed as heroes by sentimental fools, Wilberforce and Clarkson will have done Great Britain a great disservice if they succeed in having slavery abolished. If that should happen, fortunes will be lost, sir, fortunes.” – Lord Berrington, a friend of Sarah’s parents.

Had he actually lived, Lord Berrington would have seen his fear materialize with the abolition of slavery.

British Empire: Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833

United States: Passed by Congress thirty-two years later in 1865