“I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and “found” tools–a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.”

A Yorkshire farm was where, from the age of 13, British artist Andy Goldsworthy first learned his trade: how to use a shovel, skin a hare, build a dry-stone wall. It’s also where he saw a painting in the lines of a plow on the land, a sculpture in a haystack, and where he realized that the idyllic landscape of rural England is one fashioned by sweat and privilege and kept green by death and dung.

Goldsworthy is a sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland who produces site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of their environment.

The materials used in Goldsworthy’s art often include brightly-coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns. He has been quoted as saying, “I think it’s incredibly brave to be working flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.” Goldsworthy is generally considered the founder of modern rock balancing. For his ephemeral works, Goldsworthy often uses only his bare hands, teeth, and found tools to prepare and arrange the materials.

Photography plays a crucial role in his art due to its often ephemeral and transient state. According to Goldsworthy, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.”[

“Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature.”

Rivers and Tides is a 2001 documentary about the artist, directed by filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer. The film received a number of awards, including the San Diego Film Critics Society and the San Francisco Film Critics Circle awards for best documentary. Now with this deeply moving film, shot in four countries and across four seasons, and the first major film he has allowed to be made, the elusive element of time adheres to his sculpture.

The director worked with Goldsworthy for over a year to shoot this film. What he found was a profound sense of breathless discovery and uncertainty in Goldsworthy’s work, in contrast to the stability of conventional sculpture.

There is risk in everything that Goldsworthy does. He takes his fragile work - and it can be as fragile in stone as in ice or twigs - right to the edge of its collapse, a very beautiful balance and a very dramatic edge within the film. The film captures the essential unpredictability of working with rivers and with tides, feels into a sense of liquidity in stone, travels with Goldsworthy underneath the skin of the earth and reveals colour and energy flowing through all things.

Rivers and Tides

Artist/naturalists

Review at Yorkshire Sculpture Park website

If you enjoy Andy Goldsworthy’s work, check out Devon-based environmental artist Linda Gordon: The Art of Place and her blog Opening Spaces

A border collie who builds pyramids out of raincoats at sunset on stormy wet days? A dalmatian who fills tire holes with vegetables? A staffordshire bull terrier who arranges cow bones into circles? A beagle who hangs socks on a fence? A vizsla who organizes leaves into separate color piles in the shape of a cross?

What explanation could there possibly be for these strange phenomena? Delve deep into these canine mysteries with Dr. Raymond Blake, a canine cultural heritage researcher and Penelope Winters, a spiritualist and diviner.

The extraordinary photographs in Dog Works document a wide variety of strangely beautiful canine constructions, while the accompanying text examines the motivation behind them from two opposing perspectives.

Are these dogs creating their structures as a result of inherited, breed specific, behavioral characteristics or are they responding creatively in a more spiritual and psychic way to unseen forces we humans have yet to understand?

This Elk was killed with a bow in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. He green scored 575″ and should net out at about 530″ non typical. He has an unbelievable outside spread of 79″. This is the biggest bull ever taken with any weapon.

However, after debate on the King’s Outdoor World hunting blog, this appears to have been a farmed elk that was killed inside a 32 square acre fenced enclosure at Laurentian Wildlife Estate, a canned hunting lodge near Mont Tremblant, Quebec, and hardly what the hunting community would deem a “fair chase”.

The blog commentary mostly saw this for what it was: a high-fence hunt, with some city slicker with enough money bringing down an elk loaded with rack-enhancing steroids. Kind of like tying up the 4-H champion bull and shooting him.

From the blog commentary:

“Wish everyone would quit raising all these ‘big bull in Idaho’ stories. These articles just draw in all the out-of-staters. As if the wolves weren’t bad enough, now we gotta contend with the number of people running around too…”

“Oh come on.. Let the horn hunters shoot the fenced animals and have their fun… It will keep them out of our beautiful mountains.. “

Better if the out-of-staters get the best chance possible for a clean shot in a high-fence guaranteed-shot enclosure, and don’t shoot holes in someone’s cow or pet dog.

From the elk’s point of view, it’s not so win-win. Sure, the big guy got fattened up and worst thing that happened (prior to his harvesting) was that he scratched his antlers a wee bit on the dog dish full of high-additive feed.

A choice of nightmares.

At least, we can hope he wasn’t eating his ground-up kin, like the fifth-rate garbage that Big Ag beef is fed. He didn’t end up in a slaughterhouse chute as a downer, getting jabbed with forklifts and waterboarded onto his feet to qualify for the McFoodChain.

Throughout the novel (Heart of Darkness) Joseph Conrad dramatizes a tension in Marlow between the restraint of civilization and the savagery of barbarism.

The darkness and amorality which Kurtz exemplifies is argued to be the reality of the human condition, upon which illusory moral structures are draped by civilization.

Marlow’s confrontation with Kurtz presents him with a ‘choice of nightmares’ - to commit himself to the savagery of the human condition, or to the lie and veneer of civilized restraint.

Though Marlow ‘cannot abide a lie’ and subsequently cannot perceive civilization as anything but a veneer hiding the savage reality of the human condition, he is also horrified by the darkness of Kurtz he sees in his own heart. After emerging from this experience, his Buddha like pose aboard the Nellie symbolizes a suspension between this choice of nightmares.”

Idaho Bull

Supplementary reading:

Temple Grandin

Matthew Scully

There’s a new bright star in the heavens, and its name is Windchill.

“On the evening of February 29th, 2008, one of the bravest souls we have ever had the honor of knowing crossed over the rainbow bridge. He passed quietly in his sleep, surrounded by his two sisters, Kisses and Sunday, at the only real home he had ever known.”

“We accepted each day with him as a gift, we watched his progress in awe - as did the entire nation. This little horse became a beacon of hope for so many who had lost their faith in humanity. He taught us that no matter what happens in your life, no matter how unfair, you can still have faith and you can find love to carry you to a better place. He found the good in the world.”

Horse-lovers worldwide have been following the story of Windchill, the nine-month-old Walkaloosa (Tennessee Walker - Appaloosa cross) colt who was near death when he was rescued in early February.

Windchill had been left outside with no shelter for at least four hours on February 9, when whipping winds made it feel like 30 below, and he had been without access to proper food or water. His owner relinquished rights to the 9-month-old colt that nearly froze to death in subzero temperatures to Kathi Davis, one of his rescuers.

Charges have been laid against Pam and Shane Javenkoski, who were boarding the colt at the request of his owner, Theresa Farmer. No charges have been laid yet against Farmer.

When he was rescued and brought to Jeff Tucker’s Raindance Farms in South Range, Wisconsin, Windchill was suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, hypothermia and frostbite.

Veterinarians visiting the colt in those first few days were unable to find a pulse in his forelegs, and were pessimistic, giving him a 1 percent chance of survival and suggesting he be put down. Windchill had bucked that death sentence by standing and walking around his stall for hours at a time. He had yet to get up on his own — he had to be hoisted to his feet with the help of a sling and six volunteers — but it’s more progress than anyone could have imagined when he was found.

Credit plenty of help from neighbours and friends — and the animals of Raindance Farms —for Windchill’s caretaking. They were cautiously optimistic that the colt would pull through, thanks to the prayers and good wishes from people across the world who offered advice and sent donations.

Tucker and Kathi Davis, who works at the farm, took time off from their regular jobs to spend time with him. Neighbours brought over horse blankets and alfalfa hay. Volunteers helped with barn duties and raising Windchill every evening. And many folks dropped by to give Windchill their best get-well wishes.

Tucker’s mares took turns keeping maternal watch in the stall next to Windchill. Walker, Tucker’s Australian Sheepdog, gave Windchill’s nose the occasional encouraging lick and Olivia, the barn cat, slept on him each night.

Oregon artist Deborah Sprague, painted a portrait of Windchill and Tucker’s dog, Walker, to auction off to pay for his care. Sprague came across Windchill’s tale on an online message board. She often auctions her paintings to benefit pet rescue, and Windchill touched her heart.

The details of the silent auction, which closed on February 29, along with other Windchill art by Deborah are on her website.

When veterinarian Jamie Meagher came to examine Windchill on February 16, the colt had a healthy appetite and had tried to stand up a few times.

Davis said Windchill had gotten used to the process of being hoisted up. When he heard the sling’s chain rattle, she said, he perked up and started pushing with his legs and making “puppy noises” — a definite sign of progress for a colt whose frozen forelegs had prevented him from standing on his own. After lifting Windchill into a standing position, the sling was loosened so that Windchill was supporting his own weight. He could stand for hours, and didn’t want to lie down again.“He took it in stride. He was very calm,” Tucker said. “He perked right up and drank a bucket of water right away.”

Still, Windchill had a lot of recovering to do if he was going to make it.

“I haven’t seen one this bad,” said Meagher, who has been a vet for 20 years. “Unfortunately every year we see a few, but this one is bad.”

Meagher estimates he weighed only 400 pounds. A nine-month-old horse should be around 750 pounds.

On the evening of February 29, Windchill lost his battle. As Kathi Davis said, “He was just too broken to recover.” His brave heart, damaged by starvation, could not keep up with his grand spirit, and he crossed the Rainbow Bridge peacefully in his sleep.

The Friends of Barbaro have registered a star in Windchill’s name - appropriately in the Pegasus cluster!

“Windchill’s eyes are what capture people’s hearts,” Tucker wrote on the Raindance Farms website. “They shine with that quiet determination. They hold wonder, sadness, intelligence and love. I’m not making that up because I’m one of those insane ‘horse people’ - non-horse people have been out to visit in droves and they see him, they kneel by him and he touches them with his innocence and fierce desire to see all this through. It’s not an in your face sort of thing - it’s more powerful than that. It’s this quiet determination he has to keep breathing. “

How you can help:

Raindance Farms is setting up a foundation for equine care in Windchill’s memory. Donations can be made at the Raindance Farms website.

Join in the vigil for Windchill by lighting a candle.

Deborah has made posters and other items available on her website, with a portion of the proceeds going to the foundation. Details are at her website.

Visit Windchill’s forum. It’s a community for all of us who have been following this story.

God speed, little Windchill

On February 1, Rescue Network’s 10th Annual Chat Week invited Nathan Winograd, author of Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America to discuss his views with the animal welfare community.

Nathan Winograd espouses and promotes the no-kill philosophy based on a growing number of successes across the U.S.

In Tompkins County, the death rate was reduced by 75 percent, and they were able to cut expenses in the process. When Winograd inherited that shelter, it had a $124,000 annual deficit. By the time they had finished reducing the death rate to only 7 percent of all impounded animals, they finished the year with a $23,000 surplus.

In Philadelphia, they went from an 88 percent killing rate to 61 percent save rate without a single dollar increase in their animal control budget. In Washoe County, they have actually been able to reduce the deficit at the same time they are reducing killing by over 50 percent.

The reason for that is that most of the programs of the No Kill Equation are more cost-effective than programs to impound and kill animals. For example, it is cheaper to neuter and release a feral cat to a volunteer caretaker than it is to impound that cat, hold that cat for the stray period, and kill that cat and dispose of the body. And the savings for neutering that cat are exponential, because of the savings of not having to care for the offspring that are never born.

The other no-kill programs are no different. Volunteers do a lot of the work of lifesaving in communities that have embraced the no-kill philosophy. Adoptions bring in revenue, while killing, while disposing of bodies costs money. At the end of the day, shelters can reduce the number of animals that are killed, and actually run a more cost-effective operation.

But it’s an effort to overcome the old-school animal control politics.

Just go read the chat transcript.

More about the No Kill Revolution at Nathan’s blog

See more folk art from Nick Herrera. That’s his Dogcatchers piece above.

OEDb (the Online Education Database, a research and education resource) was interested in the number of blogs authored by librarians, which begged the question: which librarian bloggers have the biggest reach? So they ranked all of the biggest blogs by librarians.

In ranking the top librarian blogs, their goal was to show — using objective data from reliable sources — which blogs are the most popular, according to visitor traffic and site backlinks. To this end, they used data for four metrics to calculate the rankings: Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Authority and Bloglines Subscribers.

Top Librarian Blogs

OEDb has more great lists, and lists of lists.

Killer digital libraries and archives

Hundreds of libraries and archives exist online, from university-supported sites to individual efforts. Each one has something to offer to researchers, students, and teachers. This list contains over 250 libraries and archives that focus mainly on localized, regional, and U.S. history, but it also includes larger collections, eText and eBook repositories, and a short list of directories.

The sites listed here are mainly open access, which means that the digital formats are viewable and usable by the general public.

Killer digital libraries and archives

Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources

Google, the largest search database on the planet, currently has around eight billion web pages indexed. That’s a lot of information. But it’s nothing compared to what else is out there. Google can only index the visible web, or searchable web. But the invisible web, or deep web, is estimated to be 500 times bigger than the searchable web. The invisible web comprises databases and results of specialty search engines that the popular search engines simply are not able to index.

Research beyond Google

Follow OEDb’s offerings at its own Library 2.0-style blog, iLibrarian

“In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals. The images depict a world that is without beginning or end, here or there, past or present.”
—Gregory Colbert, Creator of Ashes and Snow

Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow is an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters. Included in the exhibit are over 50 large-scale photographic artworks, a 60-minute film, and two 9-minute film haikus. With profound patience and an unswerving commitment to the expressive and artistic nature of animals, he has captured extraordinary interactions between humans and animals.

His 21st-century bestiary includes more than 40 totemic species from around the world. Since he began creating his singular work of Ashes and Snow, Colbert has mounted more than 30 expeditions to locations such as India, Egypt, Burma, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores, and Borneo.

Located in the world’s only “nomadic” museum - built temporarily and specially for Ashes and Snow out of 148 abandoned shipping containers - this installation features Colbert’s massive, sepia-toned portraits on handmade Japanese paper, some up to 10 feet in length, of humans interacting with animals like elephants, cheetahs, and manatees.

Colbert originally conceived of the idea for a sustainable travelling museum in 1999. He envisioned a sustainable structure that could easily be assembled in ports of call around the world, providing a transitory environment for Ashes and Snow on its global journey.

The show first opened at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, in 2002 and is charted to travel the globe with no final destination. The Nomadic Museum, the travelling home of Ashes and Snow, debuted in New York (March to June 2005) and then travelled to Santa Monica (January to May 2006), and Tokyo (March to June 2007). The show is mounted in Mexico City in January 2008.

The title Ashes and Snow suggests beauty and renewal, while also referring to the literary component of the exhibition—a fictional account of a man who, over the course of a yearlong journey, composes 365 letters to his wife. The source of the title is revealed in the 365th letter. Colbert’s photographs and one-hour film loosely reference the traveller’s encounters and experiences described in the letters.

These mixed media photographic works marry umber and sepia tones in a distinctive encaustic process on handmade Japanese paper. The artworks, each approximately five feet by eight feet, are mounted without explanatory text so as to encourage an open-ended interaction with the images.

Colbert wants to remove the artificial barriers between man and animals, returning to an Eden-like point in time when the world was supposedly “one”. By presenting each image as a “poetic filmstudy” he’s trying to communicate the idea that nature doesn’t have a “style” but a “voice”.

Ashes and Snow has no final destination, and the nomadic museum will continue to travel to points around the globe, each exhibit being simply a “port of call”.

Ashes and Snow

The following excerpt is entitled Feather to Fire, and is narrated in three languages by Laurence Fishburne (English), Ken Watanabe (Japanese), and Enrique Rocha (Spanish).

A horrible, wonderful, important book

Pigs prematurely taken from their mothers root incessantly for something to chew or suck on; and if they are pigs spending their abbreviated lives in a factory farm, where maybe 500 animals are crowded into a space no bigger than a living room, the thing they try to chew on is the tail of the hog in front of them. This is not a happy habit for the industrial farmer: chewed tails can result in infections, and pigs that die, in Matthew Scully’s pitch-perfect phrase, ”an unauthorized death.”

The factory farmer’s solution? When the piglets are weaned, a good 12 to 16 weeks before nature had planned, their tails are docked, the lower part amputated with a pliers-like instrument. That small operation leaves the pigs with hypersensitive tails, which means the animals will not get complaisant and will struggle ever after to keep their clipped, throbbing appendages out of the mouths of their penmates.

Should you be inclined to pity the beasts for that or any other detail of their treatment in today’s giant meat-making plants, however, the executives in charge of booming factory farms like Smithfield Foods in Virginia, which kills 82,300 pigs a day — a quarter of the nation’s total — are eager to set your conscience at ease. When Scully asked Sonny Faison, head of Smithfield’s Carroll’s Foods division, in North Carolina, whether there isn’t something ”just a little sad” about confining millions of animals to cramped concrete enclosures, where there is no sun, wind, rain or even so much as a scattering of straw to sleep on, Faison declared au contraire. ”They love it,” he insisted. ”They’re in state-of-the art confinement facilities. The conditions that we keep these animals in are much more humane than when they were out in the field.” Another Smithfield supervisor seconded the notion, painting a bleak picture of the life of free-ranging swine: ”I mean, you put ‘em out, they kind of scrounge around in the mud, and in the summer, around here, animals that are outside risk getting mosquito bites and things.”

Dominion is a horrible, wonderful, important book. It is horrible in its subject, a half-reportorial, half-philosophical examination of some of the most repugnant things that human beings do to animals, notably keeping them in the factory farms that have taken over the business of supplying America’s insatiable meat tooth; and hunting them down on a new style of ‘’safaris,” which are nothing more than canned, risk-free opportunities to bag exotic species as easily as one might drown a suckling kitten. The book is wonderful in its eloquent, mordant clarity, and its hilarious fillets of sanctimonious cant and hypocrisy. For example, Scully quotes from a book called In Defense of Hunting, by James A. Swan — an authority favored by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and other proud, manly-men hunters — citing a passage that addresses the critics who weep over the animals and asks, aren’t they special, even sacred, too?

”A thing can become truly sacred only if a person knows in his or her heart that the object or creature can somehow serve as a conduit to a realm of existence that transcends the temporal,” Swan argues. ”If hunting can be a path to spirit, unhindered by guilt, then nature has a way of making sure that hunters feel compassion.”

Dominion is important in large measure because the author, an avowed conservative Republican and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is an unexpected defender of animals against the depredations of profit-driven corporations, swaggering, gun-loving hunters, proponents of renewed ”harvesting” of whales and elephants and others who insist that all of nature is humanity’s romper room, to play with, rearrange and plunder at will.

As his friend and fellow political commentator, Joseph Sobran, said on hearing of Scully’s dietary preferences: ”A conservative, with a Catholic upbringing, and a vegetarian? Boy, talk about aggrieved minorities!” At the very least, Dominion will encourage patronage of the small, independent organic farms, where the cattle are grass-fed and treated humanely, an option that Scully calls ”a decent compromise.”

Scully’s argument is, fundamentally, wholly a moral one. It is wrong to be cruel to animals, he says, and when our cruelty expands and mutates to the point where we no longer recognize the animals in a factory farm as living creatures capable of feeling pain and fear, or when we insist on an inalienable right to stalk and slaughter intelligent, magnificent creatures like elephants or polar bears for the sheer, bracing thrill of it, then we debase ourselves. As the earth’s most powerful species and the only one capable of meditating on our actions, we have a moral responsibility to treat the animals in our care with kindness, empathy and thoughtfulness, Scully says. When we forfeit that responsibility, we forfeit the right to any of the little self-congratulatory designations we have claimed: as God’s ”chosen” ones.

As Scully sees it, we may be ”of” nature but we are not in it. For better or worse, we have dominion over the earth, and how we manage that position, whether as bloodthirsty tyrants or as benign patrons, is a core measure of our worth. ”Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind’s capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship,” he writes.

The author takes a particular dislike toward those who argue that animals, being incapable of dwelling on their mortality, therefore don’t really suffer the way neuronally well-endowed humans can suffer. He also finds fault with those he considers moral relativists, like the philosopher Peter Singer, who has argued that reason, rather than knee-jerk compassion or squeamishness, should dictate what we deem the comparative worth of the lives of animals or severely handicapped infants. Scully can wax self-righteous and absolutist, and he considers the ‘’squeamishness factor” to be a handy indicator of something, like a factory farm, that is morally wrong. ”It is usually a sign of crimes against nature that we cannot bear to see them at all, that we recoil and hide our eyes,” he writes, ”and no one has ever cringed at the sight of a soybean factory.”

Overall, a beautiful and thoughtful book that forces some of us to look more closely into the mirror.

~~ Excerpted from The New York Times Book Review, by Natalie Angier

Matthew Scully, interviewed by National Review Online:

National Review Online: In a nutshell, how are we abusing dominion, our stewardship over animals?

Matthew Scully: In the same way that human beings are prone to abusing any other kind of power — by forgetting that we are not the final authority. The people who run our industrial livestock farms, for example, have lost all regard for animals as such, as beings with needs, natures, and a humble dignity of their own. They treat these creatures like machines and “production units” of man’s own making, instead of as living creatures made by God. And you will find a similar arrogance in every other kind of cruelty as well.

Washington Post Viewpoint: Animal Cruelty and the Need for Reform

Matthew Scully

“Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog.”
~~ Oleg Georgivitch Gazenko, 1998

There was really a dog named Laika, and she touched the stars 50 years ago. Laika was the abandoned Russian puppy who was destined to become Earth’s first space traveler.

On November 3, 1957, the Soviet Union made headlines and history when they launched Sputnik II into orbit around the earth. The satellite had a passenger: a brown and white mutt named Laika.

Nick Abadzis brings her story to life in a haunting and bittersweet graphic novel, Laika, published by First Second Books. In 200 pages, he manages to portray the Russian attitude toward space conquest at the time, the grueling schedule that the scientists were forced to follow, and the heartbreaking decisions that the trainers of the dogs in the program had to make.

Laika began her life as the unwanted offspring of a highborn lady’s dog. Given to a boy as an “attitude change,” she wais locked up and abused before being thrown away. A series of events led Kudryuvka (Laika’s original name) to Yelena Dubrovsky, the trainer with the Russian space program. Both Yelena and Dr. Gazenko began to understand the sacrifice that both the dogs and the people involved in the space program were asked to make during the Space Race between Russia and the US.

The graphic novel opens with scenes of the frozen Russian gulag and a man named Korolev. Eighteen years later, he is the Chief Designer of Sputnik. Buoyed by the success of the successful launch, Prime Minister Khrushchev demands that his space program launch a second orbital vehicle within a single month…this time, with a living creature on board.

Laika, one of many dogs at the Institute of Aviation Medicine, has been trained for flight travel. She bonds immediately with her caretaker Yelena Alexandrovna Dubrovsky and endears herself to the other scientists as well. No dog is better suited for space travel, and Laika is slated to make a trip from which she will never return.

Laika dies five hours after she is launched on Sputnik II. Unlike later missions, no provision was made to ensure her safe return.

The historical facts of Laika’s life and the characters that surround her were exhaustively researched. There’s Sergei Korolev, the head of the program, whom we meet as he is walking out of one of Stalin’s gulags, whence he had been banished in the great purges, and who becomes a driven monster, forever scarred by Siberia. There’s Yelena Dubrovksy, the space medicine program’s animal handler, who has a preternatural ability to connect with the space-dogs, but who is also a scientist and Party member who is clear-eyed in confronting their eventual fate.

For the most part Abadzis maintains a simplified cartoon style. At moments of great importance, however, he renders the figure of Laika more three-dimensional. As Laika sits in the red light of her capsule, mere moments before takeoff, she becomes highly realistic. Sometimes scenes are black and white, like stills from a movie. Other times they are two page spreads that drill home the wonder or the horror of a given moment. And in dreams, the lines that make up a panel grow soft and colourful.

Abadzis talks to Jeff Vandermeer at Amazon.com about making the graphic novel:

I’d known it was a good story since I was about six years old. It had always been at the back of my mind as a story to tell. In 2002, new information came to light about the Sputnik II mission and specifically Laika’s death. That was the spark. Why a graphic novel? Well, comics are my language. It’s the medium that I’m most familiar and comfortable…so it was first choice.

I had no idea there were so few Soviet engineers and scientists involved in the nascent space program — not to trivialize their incredible achievement but, in many senses, they just winged it, borne along in great part by Korolev’s force of will and political manoeuvering. Also it was interesting to find out how much the Soviet scientists cared for their cosmodogs. Events conspired to make Laika a sacrificial passenger on board Sputnik II, but they really did honour their canine cosmonauts. There’s even a statue of Laika in Moscow. Perhaps this book will go some small way to re-establishing her position in history: whatever the circumstances, and whether you agree with what they did or not, she was the first earthling in orbit around this planet.

I could have done with another hundred pages. But I’d taken a bit of time to write and thumbnail it and when that stage was finished, the publisher and I realized that the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launches was fast approaching. When I first pitched the idea to Mark Siegel at First Second, neither of us realized that it was so close. It felt like we needed to be a part of that, so I drew it extremely fast–two hundred pages in a little over eight months. It’s an understatement to say that it was extremely hard work. What got left out was a longer explication of Laika’s origins; the scenes with Mikhail, her first owner were much longer…. Originally, I did have an idea of doing three books: Laika would be the first, Gagarin the second, and a full-on comic strip biography of Korolev would be the final part that would bind together events seen in the first two. Maybe one day.

I suppose it would have been easy to make it another overly saccharine dead-dog story but that wouldn’t have been true either to my taste or to the socio-political system and culture I was attempting to portray. Laika — the real Laika — was a cute dog, as photographs attest. I didn’t want to anthropomorphize her, at least not to the extent that she was spouting speech and thought balloons like Tintin’s Snowy. It’d be disingenuous to suggest that, in dealing with a true story that involves dogs and their owners (even if they happen to be scientists in a Soviet cosmodog program), there wouldn’t be a bit of emotion. There’s plenty (and I hope the reader feels it). But there’s also the harsh reality of the time, the place and the confluence of events that put Laika into space.

When Comrade Yelena visits Laika for one last time she can hear the dog saying her name with every bark, even when Yelena is too far away to hear them. She dreams that Laika is calling out to her for help.

No one can walk away from this book untouched.

Excerpt at First Second Books

Review at Readaboutcomics

Interview with Abadzis at Comics Reporter

Aaron George Bailey’s Laika website

BBC News: What Happened to Laika

Interviews at BBC News: The World

He hesitated just a bit as he rounded a corner inside Dulles International Airport and spotted the flock of television cameras and cooing journalists awaiting him. Then, with posture erect like a soldier’s, he trotted straight toward the action — he was used to bomb blasts and gunfire, after all, so this was nothing.

Post-escape from Baghdad and fresh off a 13-hour flight from Kuwait, Charlie the border collie mix actually seemed to be smiling for the crowd.

Five months after the SPCA International received a plea from American soldiers hoping to transfer their beloved Iraqi stray to U.S. terrain, the 9-month-old mutt became the first beneficiary of the animal advocacy organization’s effort to rescue pets from the war zones where they provide solace to service members. Charlie eventually will live in Phoenix with one of his caretaker soldiers.

It being Valentine’s Day, the SPCA dished out the emotional hyperbole. Charlie’s bond with his caretakers, the organization said, “is the ultimate love story between a man and his dog.”

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US Soldiers that have befriended stray cats and dogs while on duty in the Middle East will start to be able to bring those “adopted” animals home.

The SPCA International program is called “Operation Baghdad Pups” and the program will assist in arranging the transportation of the animals who have been brought into the unit as mascots and companion animals to the brave men and women. This is a carefully planned mission says Terri Crisp, Animal Resource and Rescue Consultant, SPCA for Operation Baghdad Pups. Baghdad Pups will be able to bring home approximately 35 to 50 dogs each year.

However there are strict limits set in place. An example is that no dog would be going to a US home that have young children. The reason behind the limits is to reduce the chance of impulse adoption by US Soldiers who are just adopting the dog prior to leaving just to get the animal out of the Middle East. This could potentially overload local shelters here in the US, which is already overloaded. So, SPCA International actually allows dogs that have been with the unit or in the care of the unit for at least 2 months and animal is shipped out 2 months ahead of the Soldier.

In Middle East countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, animals like dogs and cats are not treated as pets, they are not socialized with humans and usually live in packs or colonies. Most dog packs are around 35 dogs per pack and survival is the number one concern for the dogs.

Read more about The Unclean Children of God.

In Iraq and the Middle East, the dogs and cats befriended by US Soldiers were adopted into the unit as pups and kittens. If left on their own, survival probably would be minimal and that is after probably neglect, abuse and starvation.

There is one hurdle that SPCA International is working around, the Government Order 1-A or (GO-1A) prohibits the keeping of animals. This order however has not dampened the activities of Baghdad Pups. This is not an attempt to fix the stray population in these countries but a way to help get these morale boosters here to the states so they can continue to be a part of these soldiers’ lives.

Costs are around 4,000 dollars per animal and that is dependent on the animal’s size and the US destination. The animals that will be coming back ahead of the US Military personnel will be fostered at a special dog camp. The dogs may also need house breaking and other adjustment training to living in a home.

The SPCA International will also be helping cover the costs of animals that belong to active military personnel when they are transferred. Also foster homes are being set for personnel who can not care for their animals for an extended period.

Best Friends article

Operation Baghdad Pups - SPCA International