Sierra Scene: New Obedience-training course helps tame the 'Moose Calf'
Right now I have two dogs: Aspen, a 1-year-old golden retriever and Moses, a 5-month-old puppy.
2008-11-07 08:00:00Ko-Ko - Such A Cutie
Ko-Ko is an adorable two-year-old dog who hopes to find a forever home soon! With lots of energy and charisma, Ko-Ko has shown great improvement...
2008-10-31 09:42:23Aida Edemariam learns how to swing
Every fortnight for the past five months, I have found myself standing in a living room in south London, quacking like an angry duck, meowing like a cat, whining like a dog, baaing like a sheep, and nagging like a witch. I've pretended I'm Carmen Miranda, a Smurf and a bored robot. I've wailed like a baby while pointing my chin up at the ceiling and holding my tongue between thumb and forefinger. I've beaten my chest and made creaking-door sounds. When Laura Zakian asks me, "Have we done 'going up sniffy mother-in-law, going down twang'" the answer is yes.I met Zakian a year ago when, somewhat ill-advisedly, I auditioned for a jazz-singing course. I liked her because she was bossy and forthright. Turns out she's also a pretty good teacher. She had to be: my voice is not exactly a jazz voice. I'm a soprano, for starters, and a mixture of requiems, evensong and a term singing choral music in French and German at university has produced a voice that's high, clear and polite. My Miss Otis Regrets came out as if I'd suddenly become a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. "It's terribly smart," said Zakian, amused. Part of jazz's impact comes from the sense of being directly spoken to, though that, as Zakian puts it, "doesn't mean speaking it", but rather using elements more associated with your speaking voice. It turns out I had no "speech quality" at all. Any idea that I could make the transition from choirgirl to jazz singer in six weeks was dispelled in that first lesson. We would have to start from scratch, entirely retooling my vocal chords. There are, say laryngologists, two modes for the voice. The first is thick-fold, or chest voice: the voice that most of us speak in, where the vocal chords are relaxed and thick, producing a richer sound, up to what is called the first passagio, the note at which they start to stretch and thin. For women, this is usually at the D flat above middle C. The second mode is called, unsurprisingly, thin-fold. "That's fine if you're doing classical singing," says Zakian. But in pop and jazz, the idea is to get a more mixed sound over the passagio, blending it so that there is no break, while staying in speech quality. Because I'm used to the upper register, I simply don't have the vocal musculature required to take thick-fold higher. My vocal chords just flop, making a sound like a teenage boy's voice cracking. It feels like an elastic band twanging in my throat. Singing takes all of you. That's what makes it so joyful - and so exasperating. The lessons prove incredibly physical, all about pelvic floors, hormonal cycles, tongues, spines and breath. You can sound different depending on how you stand, or how you tilt your head. And the voice is a barometer of psychological weather: tension is obvious; happiness lifts a voice; depression can take it away altogether. Self-consciousness strangles it, so you have to be vulnerable, relaxed - but in control. It's a tricky balance. As for training the voice, I quickly learned that musical comprehension happens on various levels: intellectual, which is straightforward enough; and physical, which is a whole other thing, achieved through practice and a kind of unconscious coaxing. Will a delicate muscle to work and the chances are it will promptly disobey. Hence my introduction to what Zakian calls "the department of funny noises", designed to improve flexibility and strength, and develop speech quality. It's like doing press-ups: we're training muscles, even if we can't see or feel them much. In our first lesson, Zakian said I "might see a difference in three months - your voice won't change if you don't practise on a daily basis". Daily practice combined with a full-time job is a bit of a pipe dream for me, though. Some weeks I manage three hour-long sessions, others none at all. It feels frustrating and pointless. But then one day my voice just feels different, as though all the gubbins in my throat have suddenly got the point.Another absolute fundamental in jazz, of course, is swing. While it is possible to say, as Zakian does, that "the underlying feel is one of triplets with the first two crotchets tied and the third accented a little to give you swing quavers", the fact is that there is a kind of alchemy involved, an unconscious understanding you only really get from listening to jazz all your life. Though she doesn't spell it out, I am not, it is fair to say, her most apt pupil. I didn't grow up listening to jazz and never thought about rhythm much, even in 10 years of piano lessons; trying to understand how someone might "push the quavers a lot, or sit back on them" defeats me. The fact that a professional jazz singer is expected to name a groove for the band, who will then launch into, say, a cut-time funk version of Love For Sale, I find incomprehensible. But it's also true that when I stop listening so hard, and over-thinking, and beating myself up because I've counted wrong, and just feel, things go a lot better. And singing songs like Shiny Stockings, by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Foster, make you swing despite yourself.I am a great deal happier with phrasing and melodic improvisation. Zakian's favourite jazz singer is Carmen McRae, because of the way she privileges delivering the story. "The words are the most important thing," says Zakian, "because you're a singer, and therefore a songsmith, and therefore a wordsmith. Even if you haven't written them yourself, you're interpreting the meaning of them." The composer is paramount in most classical singing: you can interpret mood and feeling, but you have to follow, accurately, both the melody and the tempo written on the page. In jazz, what's on the page is the starting point. It's a performer's art, and the performance changes every time. Which sounds brilliant - licence to do whatever you like - but, of course, it's not quite that simple. You have to learn a language, of what works and what doesn't, and then you have to make it second nature. "It's like any language," says Zakian. "You choose which words to use, but you're not going to go through a sentence saying, 'Well, I've used a preposition and a verb followed by a conjunction, so now I'll use a noun.' You have to have the vocabulary in your head."And so we learn octave displacement, in which you sing a note at the octave below or above the one written a favourite Ella Fitzgerald trick; passing notes, in which you touch on notes between two written notes "typically jazz - they give a bit more rhythmic agitation"; and melisma, in which you take a syllable and bend it through various notes before proceeding you have to be careful with this, or it can go a bit Mariah Carey. We try inverting the melodic line, a bit of anticipation, a bit of delay, a bit of silence, a bit of a lick a short melodic motif. For a little inspiration, I go to see Claire Martin and Anita Wardell at Ronnie Scott's, and the amazing Christine Tobin at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho, appreciating their nifty ways with chromatics. We try a bit of that, too, climbing up through semi-tones to see where I end up. Doing too much of it makes me sound like a drunk warbling in a shower, but used sparingly, it makes for lovely light and shade.Finally, it's time to put it all together, in a rendition of Rodgers and Hart's My Funny Valentine, which seems straightforward enough - except that putting it all together, and making it sound natural and easy, is a bit like rubbing your stomach, patting your head, tap-dancing, doing yoga and having an intimate conversation, all at the same time. At least I don't have to think too much about swing. My Funny Valentine has been performed in many ways, from Sinatra's croon, to Fitzgerald's lush version with violins, to Sarah Vaughan's exploration of most of her four octaves, but no one really messes much with the tempo.Everything else about it is hard enough, though. I've discovered a pleasingly resonant sound in my bottom register I can now sing a low G, too, but this makes tackling the higher phrases without flipping into an operatic vibrato far more difficult. I've been practising in the key Ella sings it in, G minor, but Zakian moves me up to an A minor, which denies me some nice low notes, but makes it all sound much more integrated. Once I get over my attachment to how the song "ought" to be and make my first forays into improvisation, playing with the melodic line turns out to be a lot of fun. We decide on a Chet Baker approach, slow and fragile, then throw in octave displacements, and an inversion or two. I try a bit of chromaticism, sliding into "unphotographable" like a snowball descending a hillside - and encountering a tree. I'm inordinately pleased, if a bit baffled, when Zakian says: "That's nice! Because you're getting the major 7 against the minor 7. That's really nice!" But every time you think you're getting somewhere, something pops up to remind you just how far you have to go. Singing with a pianist, for example. Zakian explains: "Because you can sing anything you like, within reason, melodically and rhythmically, if the pianist plays the melodic line for you, that's going to constrain you." So the pianist Chris Lee improvises away, while I have to rely "on being able to hear the chord changes, being able to feel where the beat is". It's like being sent out into a busy street blindfolded. But you just have to calm down, breathe, and listen, listen, listen. The first time I get it - when I start in the right place and end in the right place, nothing more - it feels amazing. Then, when I manage to sing with the piano, and improvise, and mostly stay in speech quality, well, it might not seem so to anyone else, but it feels to me as if I'm beginning to make music.Laura Zakian's album About Love is out on December 1.Jazzguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
2008-10-26 20:41:19Abu Yahya al-Libi: Al-Qaeda's Theological Enforcer - Part 1
07/31/2007 - By Michael Scheuer from Terrorism Focus, July 31 - In the rising generation of post-9/11 al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Yahya al-Libi seems to be assuming the unique position of insurgent-theologian. Since escaping from U.S. detention at Bagram air base in Afghanistan...
2008-10-26 12:19:25Passing out parade of dogs held
12 dogs completing their nine month long training course, held a parade, at the Kerala Police Academy in Thrissur.
2008-10-19 08:23:08Thick security blanket for Durga Puja in Kolkata
NAT27National/Religion/SecurityThick security blanket for Durga Puja in KolkataKolkata, Oct 5 IANS Watch towers, hidden cameras and commandos trained in combating militant strikes are the novel features as the city was wrapped in a thick security blanket for the Durga Puja - the main festival of West Bengal - which is just a night away. After the serial bomb blasts in Bangalore, Delhi and Agartala, and a couple of hoax emails threatening blasts in Kolkata, the eastern metropolis is ready to immerse in the festivities amid heightened security. Over 20,000 police personnel were ready to be deployed on the streets for the four Puja days, beginning Monday. "We will install at least 70 hidden cameras at all the major Puja pandals marquee in south and north Kolkata. Besides there will be CCTVs close-circuit televisions in almost all pandals to keep an eye on the visitors," said city police commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakraborty.Automatic gun-wielding Quick Response Teams, all of whose members have been given special commando training for tackling militant strikes or armed riots, have been kept in full readiness, he said. Twenty one watch towers have been set up in pandals which are likely to draw large number of puja revellers, he added. The Kolkata Police have also taken inputs from several intelligence agencies like the Research and Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau and Defence Intelligence Agency before finalising the plans for the festival days. "We have not got any message that raises concerns. But still, we are keeping no stone unturned to ensure fool-proof security," he said. The police have banned cycle parking at the puja pandals to avoid a bomb blast. "We have declared that no cycle will be parked in front of the pandals this year," he added.This is the time when people from across the state come to Kolkata to see various pandals and idols. "For the first time we have trained some members from some of the noted puja committees and made them join our volunteer team here. The volunteers will make work easy for the police by keeping a vigil on the crowds of visitors and control them," Chakraborty said. Additional police personnel have already been deployed at the metro railway stations, railway stations and other important junctions of the city. "The number of policemen at metro stations across the city has been increased from 70 to 250. Similarly there will be additional deployment of at least 4,000 policemen across the city during the puja," Chakraborty said. Besides, the police have asked parents to write down their details with their children. "There are chances that kids may be lost amid the crowd at a pandal. So we request all parents and guardians to keep a chit with the kid mentioning all their contact details, names and blood group of the kid," the commissioner said. The city police have also arranged for additional 300 beds at all the government-run hospitals during the puja, he said. However, security is not just the concern of the police but the puja organisers too. "This time we are accommodating a door-frame metal detector at the entrance of our pandal to avoid any untoward incident," said Anadi Roy, one of the puja organisers from Barisha Club of Behala in south Kolkata.The Jodhpur Park puja pandal in south Kolkata will even have a special squad of sniffer dogs hired from a private security agency. "Besides, our volunteers will be roaming about with metal detectors and a number of CCTVs have been installed across the pandal to keep a vigil on the happenings," said Sanjay Bose, an organiser of Jodhpur Park Sharadiya Puja Committee. --Indo-Asian News Service bs/ssp/rd/dg666 Words05101401
2008-10-05 07:03:07Rover, call me an ambulance — dog calls 911 AP
AP - "Man's best friend" doesn't go far enough for Buddy — a German shepherd who remembered his training and saved his owner's life by calling 911 when the man had a seizure.
2008-09-15 11:40:07Dog calls 911 after owner's seizure
"Man's best friend" doesn't go far enough for Buddy — a German shepherd who remembered his training and saved his owner's life by calling 911 when the man had a seizure.
2008-09-15 04:25:14A Nation of Poor Health And Safety part 2
Last week, I commenced a series which I am concluding today. It has become an undeniable fact that Ghana's health and safety standard is poor. And as the saying goes no chain is stronger than its weakest link. What links a nation to productivity is good health and once there is no proper regime to check this, the country is always found in the dark corridors of not being able to meets its developmental targets. Making health and safety top of every agenda would not only prevent avoidable disasters but would also save lives and provide huge savings in terms of medical bills and days off from work due to injuries sustained on the job. There is a saying that Ghana is good in formulating high sounding laws but when it comes to the implementation or the enforcement, it falls flat. I cannot see any difference between what has been happening and the proposals being put forth here. I am not trying to be a pessimist. A barking dog is more useful than a sleeping lion. If we want to safeguard life and property in this country then it is time for Ghana to formulate a health and safety bill. THE WAY FORWARD LEGISLATION It is trite but imperative that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. To be able to achieve a standard which can be acceptable, government must as a matter of urgency place a bill on health and safety for all professions and trades before parliament. All professional groups should be brought on board in drafting the bill such that by the time the bill is formulated every sector or segment of society is covered. Government working in collaboration with the Ghana Standards Board and the Ghana Health Service, and ultimately bringing every profession or trade -architects, building and quantity surveyors, mechanical engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc - would help formulate a workable health and safety policy for the country. Most of the accidents that occur on the roads are as results of driver fatigue. Health and safety means that there every commercial car--bus or truck should not drive more than certain miles per day. There should be a mechanism to be able to track all these so as to locate any driver who flouts this rule. It must be noted that every road user has his or her safety dependent on the oncoming vehicle. EDUCATION Education is the key to everything. I always say that the May 9th stadium disaster which happened sometime ago could have been prevented if the Ghana Sports Council had ensured that all the emergency doors of the stadiums were in good shape. Again, if football fans had been educated on how to conduct themselves during an emergency, the magnitude of the casualties would not have been what it was. In the developed world, anytime you enter into hotel or a building for the first time, you are told where the emergency doors are located, just in case of fire or any other problems. What I mean by education is that issues of health and safety should be discussed in all facets of life - schools, churches, market places, etc. HEALTH AND SAFETY AUTHORITY Health and safety in the country should be handled by the Ghana Health and Safety Authority, an autonomous body with the power to be able to bite. The bill should also allow the authority to inspect all establishments which fall under the law. And if any organization, business entity or establishment falls foul of the law, that entity should be penalised - fined or prosecuted. If a road contractor refuses to put the appropriate warning signs to warn commuters about any hazard that the ongoing work has brought, that company should be fined. In the same vein if the city authorities leave trenches open without covering, the city must be fined. Take for instance, when the Accra Metropolitan Authority AMA or Kumasi Metropolitan Authority KMA or Zoomlion garbage truck refuses to cover the garbage that it is transporting and it becomes a health hazard. The health and safety authority should be able to fine them for not doing the right thing. In this country, the people who are supposed to enforce the law government agencies, police and the districts/municipals/metropolitan are those who flout the law. TESTING AND CERTIFICATION It is suggested the that National Health and Safety Authority is to develop training manuals for institutions and anyone who wants to work in areas such as the haulage of petroleum products, transit goods, electrical installations and be made to undergo or sit an exam related to that industry. Only trained and competent people should be allowed to work on such areas. Why do we have to allow just any driver to operate a fifty-seater bus just because he has a driving license Proper training and certification by the appropriate body would help reduce accidents caused by hazards perception. As I stated in part one of this article last week, most of the accidents that happens on our road are due to hazards or broken cars on the road. If people in the country, especially drivers, are made to write health and safety tests related to the usage of the road, most accidents on the road can be prevented. A word to the wise is enough.
2008-09-05 00:20:07Pets' Corner: Our Labrador can't be trained to come back
We have a beautiful two-year-old black Labrador, who simply cannot be trained to come back. We've spent a fortune on one-to-one training and started to use an electric shock collar on him. Even with this and food, he still doesn't come back. He just finds other dogs irresistible. Please help! Mr and Mrs Mackenzie, Hampshire
2008-08-15 18:22:38
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