November 27, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local Life

Hiller trying to save elephants from extinction
by JEAN-BERNARD HYPPOLITE

Populations of elephants have been wiped out because of war-torn areas like Chad and Sudan. Many humans have also died in the process. To get the ivory, people will use a machine gun to break off elephant tusks; the elephants are left for dead. The population of elephants from one specific area dove from 14,000 to 1,000.

Springside School graduate Virginia Pearson is on a mission to save elephants from possible extinction.

“The trunk has 100,000 muscles,” Virginia said, adding that a “Bullet” elephant could shorten its elastic trunk like an accordion or simply lay it on the ground. Pearson knows that an elephant can move a telephone pole, pick up a dime or even remove a gold earring with ease. “It may be a little sloppy, though.” 

And that’s not even the half of it. Pearson has seen elephants do amazing tasks that not only show skills but intelligence as well. In American society elephants aren’t portrayed as the smartest beings, but Pearson’s extensive analysis has shown elephants to be “truly sentient beings … We are just now cracking, we think, the language that elephants communicate with,” said Virginia, who keeps in contact with fellow researchers  throughout the world via the International Elephant Foundation.  One of the projects that researchers are working on is the mapping of  elephants’ “special” memory. 

Believe it or not, Virginia has not yet seen an elephant in the wild. She’s only seen them within America and has learned what she knows through extensive research. Virginia links the world of elephants to the author Henry Beston’s The Outermost House, which includes the observation, “They are not brethren, they are other nations, caught with us in the trivial of the earth.”

Magarity Ford: much more lost than jobs
by LEN LEAR

Chuck Stemple (right), 49, and Joe McGlade, 53, the two “service advisors” at Magarity Ford, are able to manage one last smile despite the fact that they and their fellow workers are devastated by the closing of the dealership this weekend. Chuck has been with Magarity for 19 years and Joe for six years. (Photo by Len Lear)

About 25 years ago, a three-year old girl in Texas was stuck in a deep well, and in took a few days to get her out. You may recall that the news coverage of the rescue attempt was of the “Martians Invade Philadelphia” variety. Front page newspaper headlines and leadoff pieces on the national TV news programs every day. All for one child who was apparently fine physically and mentally after the ordeal and today is a mother herself.

At the same time, I believe there was a cyclone or tornado in Bangladesh that killed tens of thousands of people but received relatively scant news coverage in the U.S., certainly nothing to rival that of the girl in the well. An old, grizzled editor once explained to me the seemingly out-of-kilter coverage of one child versus the death of thousands this way: “It’s a lot easier to identify with and shed tears over one child with a name and a face than it is with a statistic. No matter how big that statistic may be, it’s still just a number, not a child named Suzy with big, sad blue eyes.”

Hill area teacher keeps dreams alive for African immigrants
by BETSY SELF ELIJAH

Susannah Erinle, 58 (center), worked as an elementary school teacher for 25 years in Lagos, Nigeria, before before immigrating to the U.S. a decade ago. She is seen with daughters Bukky, 30 (left), and Tuyin, 23.

“Mom, let’s start college together and finish together,” 18-year-old Helen said to her mother Ruth Habtemichael this past year. Ruth, a 42-year-old single mom living in West Philadelphia, had worked three jobs to raise Helen and Helen’s 21-year-old sister Lula. Once both her daughters were college aged, Ruth, an immigrant from Eritrea in Northeast Africa, wasn’t sure what to do next. It was her daughters who told Ruth she should go back to school for an associate degree in nursing. And it’s her daughters who help Ruth with her homework and check on her daily. “If I take a test, they ask me what I got. They say, ‘You can’t hide from us. Make sure you get an A,’” she says.

Free turkey dinners, thanks to warm-hearted owner
by LEN LEAR

“I don’t have to tell you how the economy is hurting us as well as many other restaurants,” said Ralph Berarducci, owner of Portofino, 1227 Walnut St., “but there is no way in the world that I can stop our Thanksgiving tradition. People look forward to it for months, so I will find a way to get it done. We will provide free dinners for hundreds of needy and homeless people, just as we always do. I’m over 70, and it’s getting harder physically to get this done, but I have no family in the U.S., so the customers are my family.”