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Autumn 2004 index CivAb index previous page

This is the final issue of CivAb

A number of events have come together that tell me the time has come to make this the last issue of The Civil Abolitionist.

I will still carry on contributing to the world wide campaign to replace vivisection with more scientific (and less expensive) methods of research. I will just be reluctantly dropping the paper part of it.

Despite generous support from longtime readers (Helen and Jack Richard of Canada immediately come to mind), there is not enough money in the Civitas account to pay for printing and posting even this farewell issue. I have seen this "bankruptcy" creeping up for a number of years but simply don't have time for fund-raising in addition to everything else. Besides, I really dislike asking for contributions. It goes against the grain.

Common sense would have dictated dropping paper publishing several years ago, but I persevered because I sensed, even though I did not actually know, that many readers did not have internet access. Your encouraging comments inspired me to keep publishing on paper even though CivAb was reaching fewer people every year. Also, I didn't want to cut communication with so many people who had become friends even though we hadn't actually met.

I hope to continue to exchange information with any of you who are so inclined on an individual basis and hope you will get in touch with your ideas.

Another reason for dropping paper publishing is that the mailing list has shrunk by almost 50%. People pass on and move away, and there have been ever more frequent cases of mail being returned as "undeliverable as addressed" even though the address is correct and plainly written. I attribute this to the pressure on postal workers to work faster at the cost of accuracy.

For example, between Monday and Saturday this past week I received three different issues of The Economist, a weekly news magazine. Two were late, one a little earlier than usual..

The wonderful internet which makes so much information available takes up a lot of my time. I could work full time and overtime just retrieving information and responding to opportunities for input. I could also work full time and more just keeping the Civitas webpage up to date. It is now over 500 pages long and several months in arrears. In short, I have taken on a bigger workload than I can handle, especially since losing Dave three years ago making it necessary for me to assume responsibility for all the things he used to take care of in addition to his archeological work. He even did most of the cooking (and became very good at it) so I didn't have to take off the time to do it.

Then, there is the matter that I will be 82 when my next birthday rolls around. I feel fine and am enjoying the pain-free results of a very successful hip replacement to repair damage from two bad skiing falls, but the old brain is less nimble than it used to be, not that it was ever particularly quick to grasp things. The slower pace makes everything take longer. I have to double check everything because I make more mistakes.

My computer skills have not improved as they should have. The fussy job of getting everything to fit in takes longer than it used to.

The simple mechanical job of collating , folding and addressing newsletters and lugging them to the post office eats up several days when little else gets done.

It is also up to me to look after the 500-acre Civitas Wildlife Sanctuary. It mostly needs to be left alone, but there are things I should do like working on signs to identify plants , improving the existing trail, developing new ones, and working on public education. I hope to be able to provide a worthwhile wildlife learning experience for school groups in contrast to hunting and trapping presentations dished out by the NY State Bureau of Wildlife

Everything seems to take more time, and time seems to flit by faster than it used to so it makes sense to drop the most time-consuming part of my efforts that reaches the smallest number of people and uses up the most money. I will concentrate instead on motivating new people through the internet and writing more letters to editors.

I encourage all of you to help spread the word in every way you can that information obtained through animal experimentation is not reliable for assessing effects on humans and can harm the humans it is supposed to help.

--Bina