I love elephants, and find them fascinating. Such majestic creatures, and also playful and clever!

The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee provides a home, haven, and herd for rescued elephants on their property. Currently, 11 elephants are in residence, enjoying companionship with other elephants and care for their well-being.

The Sanctuary has fourteen cameras set up in three of the habitats so we non-pachyderms can enjoy the residents’ adventures. There’s nothing quite like watching two elephants play together to brighten one’s day!

The human staff also have an Elecrafts page, so you can play along by making your own elephant-themed art projects.

Best of all, you don’t have to go to Tennessee to visit—the Sanctuary Visitors Center can arrange a virtual visit for a groups of all kinds and all ages—not just for school children!

Photo Credit: The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

Three Poems
—Ping Hsin
Translated from Chinese by Julia C. Lin

The fishing boats have returned!
Behold the specks of red light above the river!

The evening rain,
Strand by strand is woven into the thoughts of the poet.

This ancient courtyard,
This twilight,
This silken thread of verse
Closely binds the departing sun and me.

While the occasion is nothing to celebrate (the streets are empty because everyone is sheltering in place due to the virus), this video of some of the major sites of Florence, Italy is amazing. Instead of the virus, just imagine that it’s *very* early morning, which is why the streets are empty.

If you want to see Florence with the usual flock of people inhabiting it, check out this video of a walk through Florence.

Bonus: You do not have to sit on a airplane for 15 hours, or battle crowds and heat, to see the sights!

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Image Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica

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Morning, or Evening?
—Vincent Katz

Everywhere, right now, parents are making breakfast,
Older people waking up alone, another day

Walking down platform, seeing the flood of faces coming into the city,
One is taken, not by a Heinrich Böllian sense of dull sameness,
But rather that this is an epochal moment
We all share, we are all somehow in this together.

Repeated rhythms, every Thursday, placing coins or a bill or two
Into the open valise of the trumpeter always there—
Grand Central he plays, and the lineage, where that music flows from,
Where it is going, an undeniable story in our midst,
Woven into our fabric, that none, in their heart of hearts, can deny.

Important to be in one’s own head, not subject to advertising or even
others’ art.

Leaving tracks covered in snow, tracks in snow, rock imposing wall,
Cross the river, gain speed, struts protect the building from falling
down.

Clouds travel faster than houses, farther back, we pass towns,
Skirt highways, fly through wetlands,
Faster than speed, we are bringing information, ways of seeing:

Transmit focus to fingers on controls,
So blighted, threatened, scared as little children, terrified of own
ignorance.

This is a chapter; it will end,
And there will be another chapter, and that will end, and so on,
Until we come to the end of the book, and that’s that.
But the thing is, what did your book add up to, what did it say?
The Greeks believed your character determines your fate.
You can veer here and there, but ultimately something inside you,
the way you are,
Has already determined the kinds of choices you will make.