Perry Mason, 2 good books and a good, if depressing, movie

Did you know that Raymond Burr from the old Perry Mason and Ironside TV shows was a champion of child sponsorship? He gave enormous sums of money (including his salaries from the Perry Mason movies) to charity. He sponsored 27 foster children through the Christian Children's Fund. He would sponsor children with the greatest medical needs because he had the money to help them. He never had biological children but in this way he was father to many. I remember an Ironside episode I saw when I was a kid. His sponsored daughter from China was coming to visit him and she needed his help cause some Chinese gangsters had followed her over and were threatening her somehow. Here he is in later life at his vineyard with long time companion Robert Benevides and dear friend Barbara Hale who played the delectable Della Street in the Perry Mason series and later in the movies. I loved the Perry Mason show, didn't you? Do you know of any other celebrities who have sponsored children? If so please leave a comment and let me know.

I have recently read a good book called The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Australian author Peter Singer. He asks: If your were walking down the street and saw a child drowning in a shallow pond, would you save them? You'll mess up your pants, ruin your new shoes and be late for work. What would you do? Most people state unequivocally that they would save the child, the collateral damage is immaterial when a life is at stake. So why do we let a child on the other side of the globe die for want of couple dollars worth of food or medicine? You can read the first chapter of the book here. He makes a powerful argument. I know that most of you reading this don't need to hear this message, you're already on board. But I thought reading it might give my fellow sponsors ammunition when other people scoff at you for your philanthropy; for sponsoring, caring and being so involved with your sponsored children as some of you have reported.

Another great book I read recently was Sold by Patricia McCormick written for the young adult/teen market. It's about a young girl from Nepal who gets sold into slavery in a brothel in India. It's interesting how this book came my way. It was sent by accident to my husband in place of something he had ordered. The seller got his labels mixed up and I got to read the book (it only took an evening) before Greg had to send it back. I had just finished another book on the plight of women in developing countries that dealt with this among other issues. You can get more info and see an interview with the author here. There are also links to anti trafficking organization on her site. (Go to the white menu box just beneath her name near the top left of the site to find lists of books and links to organizations.)

Both of these books are probably available at your library. So you can save your money to send to the organizations. Or if you can't get them any other way buy them but be sure to share widely among your friends and family. Then maybe see if your library would like to add them to their collection.

Finally we watched a DVD last night that we borrowed from the library. It's called Holly and it's about child sex trafficking in South East Asia. I will warn you now that there is no happy ending to this film. Info about the film is here, though I couldn't seem to get the trailer to run. You can read a synopsis there, see the cast and read about the film maker's projects. In bonus materials on the disk there is an interview with the film maker who said while walking down the street in Phnom Penh in broad day light he was suddenly surrounded by 5 and 6 year old girls aggressively soliciting him. The younger the child, the more valuable because they're less likely to have AIDS. You can link to their anti trafficking campaign here.

I find it interesting that these sources of anti trafficking material have all come into my life in the last few months. I won't say I was unaware of the problem before that, but I had no idea so many were enslaved in this way. There are now more slaves on earth than at any time during the Atlantic slave trade of the 18th and 19th Centuries. How depressing. The good news is that there are many individuals, authors and organizations, both local and global, mobilizing to raise awareness of the problem and fight it. And making some progress too.