Wednesday, February 08, 2006
NEW ORLEANS NORTH - BLACK MOUNTAIN MARDI GRAS
Downtown Black Mountain plans to host its first Mardi Gras parade on Saturday, February 25.
“This is exciting, because there is so much for people and pets to do,” Sandy Rector, one of the Mardi Gras parade organizers, said. “It is also exciting because all the proceeds go to benefit Animal Haven and Animal Compassion network, rescuers of pets affected by Hurricane Katrina. We’ll split the proceeds between the two groups, and that way people can see their money working at home to benefit the animals.”
Continue reading...
Interesting place, Black Mountain, NC. It was the home of one of the EarthSpirit Rising Conferences. The one subtitled "A Council of Earth Elders" according to Earthkeeping News.
How do pets and Mardi Gras go together? Seems like an odd combination. I don't recall pets being central to the New Orleans Mardi Gras. Does anyone else?
The two animal organizations scheduled to benefit from the Mardi Gras doings seem to be the first two organizations listed on this Hurricane Katrina assistance website. One is locatd in Skyland, NC, the other in Asheville, NC.
Another animal friendly organization also contributed to Katrina relief--Best Friends Animal Society.
Best Friends has a curious history. You can read about it at CharlieManson.Com. A few passages stand out:
*** its key founders formed a movement that was accused - falsely, they say - of being a satanic cult. Best Friends President Michael Mountain, 57, says The Process, Church of the Final Judgment, was just a group of young people searching for spiritual truth in the crazy atmosphere of the late 1960s and early '70s.
*** ...Mountain was not overjoyed when asked about a series of corporate records that link Best Friends to the 1967 incorporation of The Process in the French Quarter of New Orleans. If he had it to do over again, Mountain says, he would have let The Process dissolve and incorporated Best Friends as a new nonprofit with no links to the church.
*** "A lot of it was really rather juvenile," says John Fripp aka Christopher Fripp aka Father John.
*** Michael Mountain...was part heir to Great Britain's largest television empire....Disinherited for his vagabond ways.
*** William Bainbridge, who is now deputyt director of information and intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation, joined the group in the early 1970s to study it. He chronicled the group in a 1978 book, Satan's Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult.
*** In late 1967, they found their way to the French Quarter in New Orleans.
*** Mountain says a rotund former lawyer for the Catholic Church was intrigued by the group and drew up the necessary papers. Mountain showed up at his home one Sunday morning. "I'm greeted by a completely naked lady," Mountain recalls. "And she says, 'Oh, come on in.' So there he is, an extremely large person, in bed with this cluster of equally naked ladies around, and he leaps up naked and says, 'Here are your articles of incorporation. Your church is complete.'" And so formally began The Process, Church of the Final Judgment.
*** The satanic part of it all is a bad rap, he says. No one prayed to Satan....Mountain says the core philosophy was that Christ was the unifying element of mankind. "In theological terms, as he explained it, the ultimate reconciliation of opposites would be a reconciliation between Christ and Satan. Christ said, 'Love your enemies.' In the end, even the most negative, the most evil can be redeemed with the power of love." Bainbridge, who taught at Wellesley College and Harvard University before joining the National Science Foundation, agrees that the group didn't pray to Satan, who to the group bore little resemblance to the Satan of the Bible anyway.
*** The group had trouble gaining traction, no matter how outrageous they acted. Mountain chalks this up to their philosophy of abstinence from sex and drugs...
*** Some members had been animal advocates for years, and German shepherds had been associated with them since they first left London in 1966. Mary Ann Degrimston, for one, had been active in the anti-vivisectionist movement.
*** The group, renamed The Foundation Faith of God...
*** Best Friends...has "become something of a flagship for this whole movement."
CBS News reports on an arrangement made between Marcello Forte, Director of Animal Haven, and Best Friends. Michael Mountain is quoted.
I have not been able to find a story that makes a direct connection between Animal Haven of Asheville and Animal Haven run by Marcello Forte. It is possible they are not the same. It is also possible that the Asheville facility is a branch of Forte's organization.
In any case, the coincidences are interesting.
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UPDATE
Charity Navigator reports on Animal Haven. Marcello Forte, Executive Director received $84,846 in compensation.
Charity Navigator has no report for Animal Haven of Asheville.
