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Preliminary hearing for Daniel Plath continued, more charges filed for string of robberies

Local NAACP: No day off, no participation in Wilkes-Barre’s Martin Luther King program

<p>&#8220;Because of recent experiments designed with the elephant&#8217;s perspective in mind, scientists now have solid evidence that elephants are just as brilliant as they are big: They are adept tool users and cooperative problem solvers; they are highly empathic, comforting one another when upset; and they probably do have a sense of self.&#8221;</p><p>&#8212; Scientific American, February 2014</p><p>&#8226;</p><p>&#8220;I saw handlers deliver a beating &#8230; for 30 minutes. She was covered with bloody wounds. I&#8217;ll never forget her agonizing screams. Please, never take your children to a Ringling Brothers circus.&#8221;</p><p>&#8212; Archele Hundley, former Ringling Bros. circus employee</p><p>&#8226;</p><p>It&#8217;s almost pathetic that we have to celebrate the end of barbarity and torture in this day and age, but celebrate &#8211; for this fight is far from over &#8211; we should.</p><p>That&#8217;s because, after 145 years of mistreating animals, Ringling Bros. and Barnum &amp; Bailey Circus finally will stop its elephant act.</p><p>And the company appears to be feeling the tsunami of public outrage to do so: Its officials originally said that they would eliminate all elephant acts by 2018. Monday they announced that they will now do so this May, 18 months earlier.</p><p>According to The Associated Press, &#8220;The move comes amid increasing scrutiny on circus elephant acts with local governments passing &#8216;anti-circus&#8217; and &#8216;anti-elephant&#8217; ordinances in response to concerns over animal cruelty.&#8221;</p><p>The circus&#8217;s parent company, Feld Entertainment, told The Associated Press exclusively that all of the iconic elephants will be permanently retired to the company&#8217;s 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida. There are 11 elephants on tour with the circus.</p><p>As animal activists and researches well know, the highly intelligent creatures have close family ties, and it was the circus&#8217;s habit to separate mothers and offspring. As was the practice of using metal bull-hooks in training. As was the habit of chaining and confining them for long periods of time &#8211; in the off-season some were even kept in trucks, and these are animals that roam dozens of miles a day in the wild. I could go on, but suffice it to say the elephants were treated like the scum of the earth, not like the splendid creatures they are.</p><p>But as Bob Dylan wrote, you don&#8217;t need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing, and as the circus&#8217;s executive vice president said so disingenuously, &#8220;There&#8217;s been somewhat of a mood shift among our consumers.&#8221;</p><p>Even she acknowledged that so many cities and counties have passed &#8220;anti-circus&#8221; and &#8220;anti-elephant&#8221; ordinances that it was hurting the company in the pocketbook, and that&#8217;s the one thing they understand. Los Angeles prohibited the use of bull-hooks by handlers last April and Oakland did likewise in December.</p><p>So, as one television talking head said, it was &#8220;simply a business decision&#8221; and not a moral awakening. But it does show that the voices of protest can be effective.</p><p>Brave, kind souls protest wherever the circus appears, putting up with ridicule and spiteful comments. But their protests, and similar protests around the country, did result in this positive result.</p><p>It&#8217;s an important step in our nation&#8217;s progress. As Mahatma Ghandi is widely credited for saying, &#8220;The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.&#8221;</p><p>So our kindness scorecard can be upgraded to a C-minus. But we must keep the momentum going. We must fight to stop the practice of keeping highly intelligent animals &#8211; like the killer whales and dolphins at SeaWorld &#8211; in captivity for the mere amusement of an audience.</p><p>P.T. Barnum introduced elephants into his &#8220;traveling menagerie&#8221; when he brought an Asian elephant named Jumbo to America in 1882.</p><p>But even Barnum acknowledged, &#8220;We cannot all see alike, but we can all do good.&#8221;</p><p>Even if it took &#8220;The Greatest Show on Earth&#8221; 145 years to discover the truth of that.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Bob Quarteroni</p><p>Contributing Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Bob Quarteroni, a Swoyersville resident, is a freelance writer who formerly worked as a columnist and editor at the Centre Daily Times in State College.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Bob Quarteroni: Circus to discontinue elephant act, and that’s good news worth trumpeting