WE LOVE DOGS

I have always thought that animals are not bought, because they are not toys or things, and therefore I am curious to know the prices, to know why some want a dog or a cat simply for the breed and instead some are just looking for an animal to love beyond. beyond species or otherwise.

I am increasingly convinced that animals should never be bought, but adopted, as the shelters are full of puppies eager for a lot of love, instead of giving birth to new animals in the farms just for business and sale. And if we think that many dogs will stay all their lives in a kennel and that they will never be adopted, suffering from lack of space and often food, how can we think of spending money to buy an animal just because it belongs to a special breed?

The difference seems minimal but it is not: the animals in the shelters are healthy and vaccinated instead, excluding serious farms, farmed animals live in cages, becoming money-making machines, i.e. breeding machines, and puppies are often forced to get away from their mother early and make long journeys to reach the country where they will then be sold in shops, often getting sick or worse dying prematurely.

So since Christmas is approaching and you should be better off, I suggest you get yourself a nice gift and adopt a dog so that you can make a friend happy and not be alone in your life anymore. On top of that, a dog improves mental health and, if adopted, even better. Why do we tell you this? Because an adopted dog will be grateful, affectionate, tender and loving, since he will feel indebted to you for teaching him that there are not only the places where he lived and was treated badly. This will make you feel important and increase your self-esteem.

Here I put links, of Italian sites, where you can find your new partner. You can add sites in other states in the comments.

https://www.isoladelvagabondo.it/

https://www.adottauncane.net/

https://www.legadelcanemi.it/adotta/adotta-un-cane/

https://www.enpathiene.org/categoria-portfolio/cani-da-adottare/

https://m.facebook.com/pg/enpaonlus/posts/?_se_imp=2XfGmUmAv4jEPHxGb

CHRISTMAS HANDMADE GIFTS

The holidays are approaching and Christmas presents are a task to complete as soon as possible. There are many people to whom we would like to give a gift (even a small one), and it often becomes a necessity to make cheap Christmas gifts.

The perfect solution? DIY Christmas gifts are the perfect compromise between the need not to spend large sums, and the pleasure of communicating all our love to loved ones by dedicating them a thought made from the heart, to which we have dedicated time and creativity. In addition, it is a good way to make original Christmas gifts, and it is also a way of making sustainable and more ecological gifts, especially if you take advantage of creative recycling. So since there are so many people who create beautiful things but who may not have a showcase, here I would like to make this post available to give you the opportunity to link in the comments some sites or blogs of people who sell handmade items so we can help them sell something. What you think about that?

THEY STOLE MY BYCICLE

Six years ago a friend of mine gave me his bicycle as a gift and he is gone forever. For three years the bike has always served me: I loaded it like a mule to do the shopping, we went a couple of times away and then around this green area, for months she and I, her bike. For months and miles, it was my car. I remember that she was waiting for me on the last sidewalk of the station when he left. When I left for London it was brought with great difficulty to Padua and when I returned from London I went to pick it up from Padua. It was raining heavily that day, rivers of water lined the streets and the Paduans found a girl in the rain who splashed water everywhere and sang the Christmas song “Jingle bells” in the middle of summer. I was very happy to be able to ride a bike. When I arrived at the station, the track for the bike was the last one, outside the station shelter and so I had to forcefully fit the bike onto the wagon and then pull it up, in the midst of a thousand curses on that last wagon before the locomotive. Unlike the one I have at home, this one was called “Little Mermaid” because during the winter rains of a cold and merciless reverse, I always emerged from the waters on her saddle and stayed afloat. I walked around in sub-zero temperatures and warm socks under my pants. Then one day I went to the library, serene as always, and when I go out I haven’t found her. You took away not only a bike of questionable economic value, and of fundamental practical value, but you also took away a dear memory and a piece of my life. The Little Mermaid was the only memory I had of my friend. Thieves assholes!

DEAR SANTA CLAUS

Dear Santa Claus,

I know I'm pretty early to ask you for a gift already, but if I start now maybe you can organize yourself better.
What I want this year for Christmas are not the usual things: an end to war, hunger and poverty. Those are ailments treatable by man, with a little good will.
No, what I am asking of you is much simpler: make every landline or mobile phone, computer and television suddenly stop working on Christmas day.
I'm not talking about the mobile phones of people who are far away and need to hear each other because they can't see each other, touch each other.
I am talking about those who are close and have stopped looking at each other to stay attached to an electronic device, without feelings. I'm talking about those people who do not look at the sky because they no longer leave their room, too busy with the keys
of a PC or the engaging sound of TV.
I'm talking about those who when they are together with friends, girlfriend, husband, relatives, children cannot detach themselves from that damned phone and lose the best moments of life: those that last a second and then pass.
Because life is an eternal Present and whoever wastes it on a small or large screen loses the infinitesimal joys, the little lights that make a soul brighter: a laugh from the heart, a look in love, the sunset that falls on the water. or among the burnished leaves of a tree in autumn, a caress, a kiss, the breath of the wind, the voice of silence.
It can happen to everyone to read a message on the mobile phone, when you are with someone else, but dear Santa Claus there are people who do not detach from that mobile phone for a second: you can forget your car keys, house keys, your wallet, the scarf, the umbrella. Head too! But the cell phone, no. That is never forgotten.
It is like an additional limb that keeps us connected with the world and on the world.
Except where we are at that moment. And with the people we are with.
See dear Santa, how much can electronics do? This is why I ask you to make sure that this year, at Christmas, people find themselves in front of a cell phone, a PC, a TV completely dead.
Maybe so they will begin to look up at the people next to them and notice how many beautiful little things had escaped from their eyes because "they never noticed", because they hadn't paid attention.
Maybe this way people will leave the house and start chatting with each other, rather than with a cold screen.
If you do this dear Santa Claus, maybe this year we will live one less day of electronics and one more day of Light.
Thank you.

COURAGEOUS WOMEN

Margoth Escobar was at a friend’s birthday party in the town of Puyo in the Ecuadorian Amazon last September when a neighbour called to say her house was on fire.
The blaze destroyed her home and more than $50,000 worth of artisanry that she and other women planned to sell over Christmas. The local fire department said it was an act of arson against Escobar, who belongs to Mujeres Amazonicas, a collective of mostly indigenous women who have banded together to defend their land and the environment against oil extraction and mining.
It was one of several alarming attacks against members of the collective in Ecuador last year, amid a broader trend of threats, smear campaigns and physical violence against women human rights defenders across South America.
Putting aside her distrust of Ecuador’s police and justice system, Escobar filed a criminal complaint at the regional Attorney General’s Office in October. She has not been granted protective measures, despite the risk her activism brings and the attack already suffered.

https://www.amnistia.org/en/news/2019/05/10314/courageous-women-take-risks-to-defend-their-rights

DONNA TART-THE GOLDFINCH