Ideas and Changes at Eleblog
I’ve moved Eleblog to it’s own domain name, eleblognews.com. If you have bookmarked or linked to this page, please update. If you are subscribed to the RSS feed, your feed should still work without any problems.
You can see that I’ve added a new theme and some additional advertising. I’m going to be designing my own theme soon but for now, I needed to get the site moved. I am not trying to make any money from the ads – just pay for some of the hosting costs. If you see an offensive ad, please let me know and I will block it. I’ve already blocked a couple that were selling ivory.
I’ve been gathering elephant news for over 6 years now and there are almost 4,000 entries. I’ve been feeling, however, that this site is lifeless; that it doesn’t have a community.
I’m going to start writing features once or twice a week, adding photos and videos, and continue posting the news. I’ve also added the Elephant Bookstore, which includes books, movies, and music about elephants. If you see anything in which you are interested, visiting through my link will assist in supporting this site.
What other additions would you like to see to create a community? A forum? Activism resources? Guest posts? I know that I am going to be more responsive to comments, am going to add a contact form so it is easier to reach me, and am going to work at creating more interesting content.
Please post your ideas in the comments. I love elephants and I believe they and my readers deserve more than what I’ve been providing.
photo credit: Carmelo Aquilina
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November 29, 2008
9 comments
The site looks fantastic, Kim. All of the changes are great. I’m looking forward to watching this site grow.
And the picture for this post is adorable.
Jim
Great site, Kim! I had noticed you mentioning an elephant blog before, but never got a URL to visit.
How did you get interested in elephants? As a child? An adult?
@Jim – Thanks! I should have put more real effort into this 5 years ago – there’s almost 4,000 posts in the database.
@Mike – Thanks for checking out the site. I don’t remember loving elephants as a child – I don’t really know when it started. I probably read a book 7-10 years ago that started my love of them.
Elephants everywhere suffer from man’s ignorance and cruelty. Kim – through eleblog you educate, and you publicise to the world what the abusers of elephants want to keep hidden. More power to you – your work is priceless.
@Michael and Shelia – Thank you so much! I remember you from 2 years ago when I was going to discontinue the site but you encouraged me to continue. You used the collection of ivory articles to turn the UK govt against the sale of stockpiled ivory.
Unfortunately, stockpiled ivory started being sold a month ago.
I’m glad to know that you are still visiting.
Kim,
Good to know that you have restructured the blog… My request you is to include more stories of Asian elephants (and especially about how elephants are used in India for festivals, work etc). There are two aspects to it – one about majesty and glory where ornamented (full gold on their temple sometimes) elephants are paraded along with the deity, The other about how they are tortured to do heavy work such as labour at wood mills, replacing crane services… Many of them die due to torture, at least in my place.
The Asian elephant is an endangered species with hardly 40,000 of them left. I was born and brought up in a village near Hindu temples where we are used to have elephants nearby… some wild, some trained (there’s a crude training camp in our state border as well). Read more about elephants in our state here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants_in_Kerala_culture
(Also search for ‘Guruvayoor Kesavan’ and you will hear some interesting actual stories about this great elephant who has celebrity status. A superhit movie itself was produced about his stories in the 80’s)
And I found and excellent RSS icon for you…
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/28/feed-me-animals-a-free-rss-feed-icon-set/
(Check out the cute elephant feed me icon there)
Cheers,
Ajith
PS: I will try to visit this blog often though I keep forgeting…
Kim – I love what you’re doing with the site now! Totally awesome! Two things you could focus on are the struggle in Dallas, TX, to get Jenny the elephant moved to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. They were going to send her to this horrible place in Mexico, but, we all raised such an uproar – and this one awesome reporter visited both the place in Mexico, as well as TES – so they decided not to send her there. She is miserable in Dallas, too, though. She TOTALLY deserves to spend the last of her days at TES.
The other thing you could focus on would be The Elephant Sanctuary itself, and what wonderful things they are doing! They are so awesome!!
I particularly like this line, from one of their brochures (it had me bawling):
“It is heartening to see attitudes begin to shift, with more
and more people realizing that “seeing” an elephant has
clearly not been successful in either public education or
species conservation in the wild. Our challenge with
the Education Gallery & Welcome Center is to create
an experience where visitors and supporters will walk
away with a greater understanding and respect for
elephants, without having compromised the freedom of
one single elephant.”
I’m excited about the changes here!
Ajith – I had seen those the other day, too, and considered using the elephant!
@Ajith – Thanks for visiting.
Thank you so much for the ideas. Issues with elephants used in festivals and for labor in India and Kerala is an important issue to discuss. I’ve got some research to do now!
And thanks for the elephant RSS icon – that is adorable
I’m just going to have to remind you to keep coming back …
@Lisa Marie Mary – Thank you for visiting. It’s great to find another elephant lover via Twitter. Thank you for the compliments. I have been following the Jenny story – an article is a great idea. If you search this site on Jenny you will get a list of all the news stories on the topic that I have indexed. Jenny should definitely be sent to The Elephant Sanctuary – I don’t even understand how Dallas can be making an issue out of this.
Thanks!
I shall be keeping an eye out for this blog in future. Great stuff!
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