Dr Lynn Rogers…2

Photo credit: North American Bear Center – these are two of Lynn’ study bears – bears who clearly love one another.

Working notes:

Lynn Rogers has been a mentor and a friend, a brilliant and innovative Bear Biologist whose groundbreaking work is changing the way some people see the Black Bear.

I have written about him elsewhere on this blog but until this morning did not have this information about his professional life. He is truly a remarkable man.

All the credit for the following information belongs to Lynn, who posted it on his daily update. He writes:”

“The last couple months I’ve been catching up with people who began studies about the same time I did.

Today, it was Dr. Victor Van Ballenberghe. I met him in 1969 when we were graduate students together in the U of MN Department of Ecology and Behavioral Biology. He had just wound up a moose study for his masters and was beginning a wolf study for his Ph.D. We ended up sharing a cabin in the Northwoods and helping each other catch wolves and bears to radio collar. We both have fond memories of those beginnings. Then he graduated and we lost touch for some 45 years. He made moose his specialty. I found out today that we each have followed the career of the other over the decades and saw many parallels. What we learned in the Ecology and Behavioral Biology Department under Dr. Frank McKinney sank in for both of us. We each went beyond the usual studies of how many can be killed sustainably during hunting season and looked at these animals as individuals in a social order with sons and daughters to nurture and food problems to solve. We each focused on ecology and behavior, spending thousands of hours close-up with our subjects. What makes Vic stand out is that he does what is right even if it is politically wrong. He is the main person standing up against the extreme wolf and bear killing that is taking place in Alaska in an unfounded and largely unsuccessful effort to bolster moose and caribou numbers. He is a fine speaker who tells it how it is, including mistakes he has made. He is willing to help with the moose exhibit Judy McClure and I are making for the Bear Center. I am glad to have his renowned name associated with the Bear Center.

A few weeks ago, I caught up with Dr. John Ozoga, a deer biologist who was a beginning biologist for the Michigan Department of Conservation’s Cusino Wildlife Research Station when I got my start there as a student intern. He did over 50 years of deer research while I did the same with bears—both the longest in our fields. He is now helping us with the deer exhibit that Judy and I are creating for the Bear Center, and I am again glad to have his renowned name associated with it.

A few weeks ago, I had some good talks with Dr. Michael W. Fox who I’ve never met although he has helped me out as much as he could in the past. He is a renowned veterinarian and animal behaviorist who writes national blogs and is the former vice president of the U. S. Humane Society. His writing flows from a fertile mind with broad knowledge.

Over the 50 years I have known Wolfman Dr. L. David Mech we have kept in contact. He began his Minnesota wolf study in 1968, the year before I began my Minnesota bear study. We helped each other with captures, and we co-authored several papers together. He is in his 80’s and still plugging away. He founded the International Wolf Center, and we each work together for the betterment of both the two (wolf and bear) centers.

A couple months ago, I called my old employee Pat Beringer, now a wildlife manager in Wisconsin, and thanked him for his efforts to surprise me with a Distinguished Science Award nearly 30 years ago. I had no idea at the time (1991) and recently discovered the paperwork for it. I also thanked Dr. John Probst for his part in that.

I’m very glad I caught up with my old professor Dr. Albert W. Erickson a few years back, shortly before he died. He was key to getting me started on my career, bringing me to Minnesota as his graduate student to do Minnesota’s first black bear field study.

Another person I caught up with in recent years was Dr. Robert Brander, who recommended that the USFS create a field research scientist position to conduct studies similar to my bear studies and hire me to the position if possible. It was possible, and it led to my 17 years as a research scientist with the USFS’s North Central Forest Experiment Station. Dr. Mech backed that idea as it hatched.

Finally, ever since DNR Commissioner Allen Garber stepped in with his quiet strength to overcome opposition and set me on a track to everything that has happened since 1999, we have gotten together periodically to reminisce and rejoice that he was in a position to see and understand and use his power as he did.

Beyond these people, there were so many who helped in many ways. The stories are fun to tell—how things looked dark and a shining savior stepped in to clear the way or provide funding for so many things right up to the present. The North American Bear Center is a shining example. I thank them for all they did, and I thank you for all you have done as part of that.”

Dr. Gary Stuer

 

Yesterday morning I discovered the Facebook Post that appears below this commentary. Typically, it would never have occurred to Gary to email me about his appointment  as President of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association because he possesses a rare gift: deep humility.

I first met Gary when I took a dying rabbit to be euthanized just after he began practicing in Maine. When he injected her he explained to me that it would be 15 minutes before my beloved Midnight actually died,  What struck me forcibly was the way this stranger put his hands over her body. His loving gesture helped calm the rabbit and I felt his deep compassion flowing through my body too, easing my sorrow. I no longer recall our words but I remember leaving his office experiencing both grief and wonder over what I had just witnessed and participated in on a visceral level.

Gary was an Animal Healer.

A life long relationship was born and began to flourish.

Our friendship deepened over many years. I learned to trust Gary’s impeccable diagnostic skill, his willingness to work with me to identify problems, always listening so carefully to what I thought. He respected my judgment. When I dreamed that one of my animals was dying he understood immediately that this was one way I received information and took immediate action on the animal’s behalf.  When any of my dogs were operated on I was welcome in the operating room. I learned to trust Gary on a level that I had only previously experienced with my animals.

When my dog Star was dying Gary had just had open heart surgery and was unable to be present with us. She cried out when a colleague injected her and my last moments with this dog were spent in agony.  I had never felt so abandoned. But then Gary called me. He listened in silence as I wept uncontrollably and then he apologized for putting himself first, healing me with his words.

I can’t express how much these years of deep friendship have meant to me. But I know how much I miss him here in New Mexico… Last summer one of my dogs suddenly became desperately ill and ended up staying in a terrible clinic that I later made a formal complaint to the state about. Terrified and confused by the diagnosis I called Gary and he walked me through the indecipherable notes, told me what tests to request, checked blood work, and helped ease my panic. All this occurred long distance.

Gary heals both animals and their people. He saves lives and is capable of being emotionally present for both living and dying. Anyone who has been fortunate enough to have worked with this man of great integrity, honesty, deep compassion, and humility has been given a great gift.

It is often said that we cannot choose our parents. The same holds true for our children. Although there is but 16 years difference in ages between Gary and me, I have watched this man develop into a remarkable healer and a man I deeply respect. I am as PROUD of his accomplishments, as a mother would be for her son.

Gary is the son I never had.

That the animals I have had love him is no great surprise. I love him too.

 

Portland Veterinary Specialists (Portland, Maine) ·

PVS congratulates staff veterinarian, Dr. Gary Stuer, on his recent appointment as President of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association! This is an honor, but no surprise to anyone who knows him!

Dr. Gary Stuer graduated from Tufts Veterinary School in 1987, but feels that was just the beginning of his veterinary education. He has studied and integrated into his practice several complementary methods of treating patients. In 2004, he was certified in Veterinary Acupuncture by the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS) and completed Reiki Master Training. In 2014, he also completed IVAS certification in Chinese Herbal Medicine. He is also on the staff of Portland Veterinary Specialists, where he practices Integrative Medicine with a team of Board Certified Specialists.
Dr. Stuer knew from a very early age—around 9 years old—that he wanted to become a veterinarian. He was influenced early on in his life by a family cat that was hit by a car who completely recovered with extensive medical care. He also spent a lot of time around horses when he was growing up.
Dr. Stuer is originally from Lowell, MA and moved to Maine in 1994. He and his wife enjoy being part of their community, and they also enjoy hiking and snowshoeing with their Labrador Retriever. In warmer weather, they enjoy kayaking and paddle boarding. He also has two cats, neither of whom has expressed an interest in hiking or snowshoeing.
Dr. Stuer is inspired to offer patients and their people integrative care, combining Western medicine with Eastern influences, where each animal is treated as an individual. His medicine constantly evolves as he learns more from his patients every day. He loves what he does and he is honored to be a caregiver for his clients’ treasured animals.

Israel Francisco Haros Lopez

Above: Isreal’s art: La Llorona

Borderless Haiku: (IFHL)

We have forgotten the names of each other underneath the shedding skin those names written in our blood that have danced to tonantzin tonatiuh before they knew they were lovers. 

Last week I was fortunate to have attended a poetic reading and performance by a remarkably gifted young Mexican man named Israel Francisco Haros Lopez who was born to immigrant parents in Los Angelos. He is both a visual and performance artist, and his work transcends borderlands of all kinds. Israel believes that it is critical to honor and remember the ancestors so that we may once again become one with the winged ones, all those who crawl or walk on this earth, the Four Directions, Earth Air Fire and Water, Tonanztin and Tonatiuh – the Aztec Earth Goddess and the Sun God – Israel’s expression of unity in divinity, and the universe as a whole. His visual motifs are drawn from Pre – Columbian America and his work is an attempt to search for personal truths within the context of today’s world incorporating Mexican/Indigenous stories into the whole.

Israel believes written work or visual work cannot occur without sound or vibration, because all things on this earth embody and express themselves through vibrations. As such his written and oral work is constantly shifting as it is performed or recorded.

Israel’s current body of work explores Mexican, Indigenous and Urban Street Art Identity. He is inviting the viewer to consider their own ancient script and ancestral memory in order to mend racial, geographical divides. The work is also a healing practice, which through his art workshops he invites participants to become contemporary ancient scribes exploring their own writing practices both literal and figurative.

He brings his firsthand knowledge of the realities of migration, U.S. border policies, and life as a Mexican American to his work with families and youth as a mentor, educator, art instructor, ally, workshop facilitator and activist. Even with a 1.59 High school G.P.A., Israel managed to go back to the community college and raise his grades to get accepted into U.C. Berkeley and receive a degree in English Literature and Chicano Studies followed by an M.F.A in Creative Writing. At formal and informal visual art spaces, Israel creates and collaborates with others in an interdisciplinary way that includes poetry, performance, music, visual art, and video making and curriculum creation. His work addresses a multitude of historical and spiritual layered realities of border politics, identity politics, and the re-interpretation of histories.

 

What follows are two of my favorite pieces:

 

• mexican jazz part 50

 

build that wall we come from the stars

we are the echo of grandmothers

migrating this America when it was just

and always a turtle

 

on mothers backs

more mothers backs

more mothers backs

 

this wall cannot stop the wave

of time immemorial

 

our grandmothers bones are scattered

across this rock

all rocks

along the feathered serpent

dancing with your minimal

notions

 

of what you think

you can stop with a wall

 

build that wall

you cannot stop our d.n.a.

 

• white liberal antics part 44

 

White supremacy gets tricky when you add white hispanic and spaniard

and spaniard blood is white European blood

where do you think hitler learned genoicide

through the skilled native holocaust

orchestrated by cortez and the sword

and the bible that drives the blood

underneath the asphault

runs through the veins of a city

wanting to continue its legacy

of spanish conquistador

and la virgin de la conquista

running through the rivers

of la llorona

mourning for all her children

red black yellow white brown green blue purple pink

 

how do you interrupt this white supremacy

running through the city

 

running through the rivers

of la llorona mourning

screaming for the memories

of the whiteness of the moon

screaming for the memories

of the whiteness running through

her raped indigenous body

praying for the memory

of her children that were birthed

from this

red black yellow white

brown green blue purple pink

 

begging for the songs

stuck in our throats

 

www.chicanocoloringbooks.comm

www.waterhumminbirdhouse.com

www.newmexicomuralproject.com.