Reporting on the incident, Action 4 News tells that on May 10^th, an ex-military employee Luis Ortiz found his dear pet dog Mijo lying in a pool of blood “just inches from his home”. The channel reports that Luis traced the trail of the blood to the “end of the street” and called the county’s sheriff’s office immediately to file a report of the dog’s killing. Obtaining the report’s copy from the police, Action 4 News report states that it wasn’t the first time Mijo ventured into that “neighbor-in-question’s yard”. But this time, as the channel refers to the report, Mijo got aggressive, as claimed by the neighbor, and made him fear for his life. So he hit him with a machete to drive him away from his property and family. Further, since the dog was on the neighbor’s property, the sheriff’s office says no charges will be filed.

Readers may already have noticed how the news protected the name of the dog’s killer, all the while referring to him as “neighbor”. For those who already don’t know, this “neighbor” accused of killing the dog brutally by repeated strokes of a machete, he is in fact Texan minister Jose Salazar who lives near Luis Ortiz. Usually, media reports in detail on people and places involved, unless deliberately holding back names to protect the privacy of people for safety concerns. In this case, the minister’s name already was on blogs and social media as the person who killed the dog. But maybe, Jose Salazar’s name was not to be revealed in so-called “professional” media sources because the time spent in spelling it was needed for including more distortions in the report.

As told on the facebook page and confirmed to the journal of Humanitarian Affairs by the victimized dog’s owner, the blood trail began across the minister’s street. Obviously then, the dog was killed not “on the property” of the “neighbor” but outside on the street. Mijo could not be a threat to the minister on the street and if the police report tells that Mijo was on Jose Salazar’s property, the blood trail should have been traced to there.

The self-contradicting story told in the report and on Action 4 News point well to the owner’s account available to the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs wherein he expressed disappointment at the concerned sheriff’s office playing delaying tactics to let the case die down. By the owner’s account, the first officer that came when he (Luis Ortiz) called the police to report that Mijo was killed didn’t even want to look at the dog’s body, how many wounds he had, or anything.

“He is supposed to do this to make sure that the story lines up with the guy who killed him,” said Luis Ortiz. “Every time I call, it’s like they don’t even care. I believe that they want to sweep this under the rug.”

What was reported on Action 4 News seems to confirm that Luis’s suspicion is not unfounded. The police will not frame charges because of a concocted report heavily inclined on the minister’s side. And media won’t give the minister’s name; in fact, as told by Luis Ortiz, KNVO 48 and other news sources also came over to interview him but none has so far presented his complete story in his own words or named the minister as the accused.

Both police and media in the case of Mijo’s killing are playing partners in crime, covering up the horror that was inflicted on an innocent dog and his family. Only the animal rights advocates are asking for justice and a petition has been launched in this regard asking the Alamo Sheriff Department to take action against Jose Salazar; for if this person can do such a brutal thing to an innocent dog, “what could this man do to another person, or child?”

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Greece riots, 2008, wikimedia commons

Carol Forsloff –The world’s economists and bankers are watching Greece in its social and political turmoil.  The cradle of modern civilization stands precariously on the brink of total collapse, but is Greece too important to fail and what about the big banks in America, like Chase?

News reports tell us Greeks have withdrawn $900 million from local banks.  This week I felt like withdrawing my money from Chase Bank, whom newscasters refer to as the champion of the banking industry, too big to fail,  but that has lost $2 billion in its investments.  But how do failures of countries like Greece and banks like Chase affect the rest of us?

Greece is in political chaos, and business insiders speculate that the austerity path could lead to civil war, even as the financial world warns that if the country moves away from the Euro union, it could be catastrophic.  Germany and other countries have offered bailout money in return for Greek austerity.  But the people of Greece, used to vast social programs and a mountain of debt, remain fixed on living the good life, when money is no longer plentiful.

The world is connected, as we all say, in many, many ways, some of the connections positive and others that could lead many countries to ruin.  The United States has relationships with European countries, both in trade agreements and political alliances, so that if Europe is in chaos, the trickle down that folks talk about in business will be the negative streams of social anguish and turmoil.  That is what folks like Paul Krugman, the well-known economist,  maintain might happen, as it did during those days of the Great Depression.  He relates the parallels in his recent book,  End the Depression Now.  He reminds us that whereas folks need to be thrifty, spending brings money into the economy and thrift prevents its flow.  That means what you spend helps me keep my job and what I spend allows you to keep your job as well.

In the banking industry, the 1% at the top, like the President of Chase Bank,  James Diamond, have stood in the way of the exercise of financial controls put in place to prevent another stock market crash and another great depression.  Yet the gambles taken, and the strong stance against government regulation, mirror the arrogance of these same financial groups and their leaders prior to the collapse of the financial market that facilitated the depression around the world.  It is a world crisis.

Chase has its detractors, apart from the $2 billion loss.   One long-term customer of Chase spells out his concerns, echoed by others, as this, in an open letter to Diamond: ” I understand that at a March speech to the US Chamber in Washington D.C. you said, “companies need to start doing the right thing before a crisis.” Is this a promise to your customers that you will do the right thing by us? Because the middle class is beginning to crumble, attempting to bear the weight of all these economic policies. And your bank, Chase Bank, is not working on our behalf either.” This customer, and others, rage against the practices that have allowed large fees for overdrafts, and the payment of the largest check first, that often creates the overdrafts before customers can correct their accounts.  In spite of consumer complaints, it took the collective pressure of many people to begin to end that practice.  But the rage continues, for a whole set of problems, not the least of which is the $2 billion loss.

There are cracks in the veneer of, “We’re too big to fail” notions, as big businesses failed and fell fast during that 1929 watershed year.  Chase has its financial fingers in every pie in the world, with its banks and investments.  $2 billion is sniffed at by the experts brought out for television viewers, but that’s the kind of money that can save a big company, and some entire industries, from failure.  It could pay the medical bills of many thousands of people.

I am a journalist who examines the details to report them, but I am also a consumer who looks at the world from the eyes of someone who uses banks and relies on the flow of goods and services from many directions.  Of that certain age of retirement, and with complex medical problems, my view is one that is founded on some anxiety, as I watch small banking errors, wrong addresses, wrong phone numbers, wrong information, information misplaced and a host of clerical errors on my bank account with Chase.  Am I alone in my concern?  Are these details just incidental, the kind a clerk apologizes for that goes away after minor adjustments?  Or are they symptomatic of a bigger problem at the top and more to come?  And if Chase is having trouble, what other banks might have similar problems, or is the bigness, the distance between business and consumer, making it less and less possible to check the errors and correct them?

And what of the old, the ones who have their money tucked in savings deposits, watching the financial institutions as politicians debate cuts in Social Security and Medicare in the United States?  Watching the details and correcting mistakes becomes an ever-increasing problem when folks are taxed by age and age-related issues.

So pull out your bills, your bank statements and the rest, and look carefully and regularly for mistakes, for as 60 minutes reported years ago, errors not in your favor are increasing.  And the watchdogs are being crippled by cries for freedom from regulation, making it even harder to discover mistakes before it is too late.  Like it might be for Greece one day–or Chase.

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My family gave up a cable subscription through the local TV monopoly in the area due to hard economic times and the bad service of the cable company. Instead we simply kept our Internet at $25 a month and bought a subscription to Netflix. We also purchased a $10 antenna to pick up the local TV for news and weather. Over all I pay around $35 a month for our access to television entertainment.

With the move from cable to basic channels and netflix I left behind the 24/7 news channels, the all kid all the time channels, and the over 300 channels of “nothing on” and replaced it with only channels I needed to stay informed locally and shows and movies on demand in whatever genre I wanted. There is no more sitting in front of the TV for hours watching mind numbing shows just for something to watch nor flipping channels for hours on end. The amount of productivity wasted in just trying to find something to watch has been eliminated.

I was addicted to the 24/7 news channels that fed into a world view of mine where politics were at the forefront along with anger and disenfranchisement. I can honestly say my stress levels were through the roof. Now I only get my national news from local newspapers or the internet. I don’t watch commentary and it has helped me form my own decisions and lessened my blood pressure considerably.

My kids watch less TV now too, and when they do watch it they can go right to their favorite shows. This also means we can monitor what they are watching at all times because Netflix keeps a list of recently watched shows. Parental controls and quality television time that can be used for entertainment or learning are now at my fingertips. The kids love that they can go to the “children” category and find exactly what they want.
I am glad that I got rid of cable television.

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The comments section of the CBC story, about the increase in butterflies in Eastern Canada, for the most part, shows that readers missed the real opportunity this story offers. The commentors prefer to toss around the climate change football with the supporters saying this shows climate change is real, and others denying that it is.

Change is natural and, in fact, is the only thing we can count on. The increase in the number of butterflies demands attention but discussion is better focused on what this means from an ecosystem perspective.

What changes does an increase in a species mean for the ecosystem within which that change occurs? The simplest way to understand this is to look at the food chain.

The food chain provides information about whom or what eats who or what, in other words, who is predator and who is prey. This may sound simple, except for the fact that all living things play both roles, predator and prey. Modern humans, when it comes to food, do their hunting, for the most part in grocery stores and farmers markets, and all they need to feed themselves is money or access to money or credit.

Back to the butterflies, they are eaten by and eat other beings within the ecosystem. When the number of butterflies increases the food the butterflies consume is in greater demand and supply will eventually be impacted. More butterflies mean more snacks for birds and other beings which dine on the winged wonders.

This will, for a time increase the supply of the birds etc. This means that those that feed on birds have a bigger buffet to pick from and so on and so on until something happens and balance is restored. What we do not know is what changes actually take place within the ecosystem when the balance is upset.

The missed opportunity I referred to in the opening of this piece is a learning one. Events, such as an increased migration of butterflies, or the death of bats, provide us with both a formal and informal means to develop classroom and other discussions around how ecosystems function.
When we study food chains and the interconnected relationships between the various members of the chain we are able to gain an understanding of how Nature works.

Everything eats and this is the common ground that connects us all together. Everything plays a role and we do not really know what role any one element plays until after it vanishes, and things begin to change. Balance is likely to be restored, and life continue but we do not know what that life will be like.

What we do know is that a creature had someone for lunch and was someone else’s lunch.

Questions remain: Who will go uneaten and who will go unfed if that creature is removed from the ecosystem?

What effects will these changes bring? These are questions that need to be answered before we shrug off a species’ disappearance, and roll on as though nothing of import took place.

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Domestic violence has been a hot button issue on both sides of the political aisle, although these days some folks associate abuse with women’s rights restrictions as well.   There may be a ring of truth to that, as it was in those decades of the 50′s we sometimes reflect on with nostalgia, when women often followed the husband’s dictates, even to how she should vote.

These days domestic violence comes in many forms.  While it is often thought that the fist is the primary assault weapon, words offer tremendous pain as well.   Rap videos and songs often focus on the woman as an object to be ridiculed or used for sex.  Those are abusive elements in our culture that come through in many ways, including the “bad girl” television shows that accent girls pummeling each other, fighting over fellows or just fighting to be the “baddest.”

The scars of abuse come in many forms.  While we may think of the abused person with the black eye or the torn garments, it is often the more subtle signs experts tell us must be looked at as a sign that someone is being victimized.  Often the victim of abuse has serious problems with self-esteem and avoids conflict in order to protect himself or herself from further abuse.  Isolation is another characteristic of the abused; friends and family are left behind as the victim lives a type of closeted lifestyle that keeps out those folks who could help.

With the discussions recently on the rights of women and gays, Democrats and Republicans were torn over the expansion of the Violence Against Women Act.  Republicans were opposed to expanding the bill to include gays and lesbians, immigrants and tribal communities.  Although most Senate Republicans voted against the expansion, enough were in favor of it to allow the bill to be passed in the Senate.   Presently the  House is debating the bill, with Republicans putting forth their own version of the bill to eliminate protections for immigrants, tribal members and same-sex couples.  The Republican version of the bill takes away the confidentiality protections for immigrant women as well.   Folks are concerned that a bipartisan bill in the Senate is turning into a major political battle over the issues of immigration and same-sex relationships, specifically with regard to expansion of protection to these groups.  It also removes the ability of people to keep confidential their report of abuse.

The issue of domestic violence remains a controversial one, with most folks agreeing that a man should not hit a woman nor a woman hit a man, but the definition of abuse, what type of relationships might be included and whether folks should open themselves up to retaliation from the abuser after reporting a dispute remains a political debate.  And this hits many people particularly hard.

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Bob Dylan and Joan Baez both writers and performers with copyrighted songs

Carol Forsloff – The Today Show hosts recently interviewed the new YouTube video sensation, Noah Guthrie, doing what is commonly called a “cover” song of LMFAO’s”Sexy and I Know It,”  with the assumption that copyright infringement is not an issue.   The problem, however, is that cover songs do violate the copyright laws much of the time and create ambiguity for many performers.

The problem of cover songs and what is copyrighted and what is not is presently creating a stir in the music industry in some circles, as more and more people with high numbers of views are receiving notices of copyright infringement.  In some cases, entire YouTube accounts of some of the more popular musicians have been deleted.  This means millions of songs by fledgling musicians and folks waiting to be discovered for their music prowess are at risk.  It further means that risk for a young musician awaiting that big chance, as occurred with Noah Guthrie’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It” getting more than 2.5 million views on YouTube and ending up as a guest on the Today Show.

The publication Wired looks into the matter of copyright infringement and the subject of cover songs in its online article that refers to the issue as one that is entangled by a number of complexities and misunderstandings.   Wired relates information about the agreement made by YouTube and various music publishers that the copyright owners receive a portion of advertising revenue on accounts where cover songs are performed.  The problem is, however, that the agreement doesn’t cover all publishers, only those who signed the agreement; and it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the typical musician to determine which publishers have made an agreement and which ones have not.   Some musicians believe that just because they are making no money, they are immune from copyright problems, however the law encompasses use of music that belongs to someone else regardless of whether money is earned or not.

Copyright laws do provide exceptions to the use of copyrighted material.  Certain types of educational activities or use by a journalist can be done, so long as the use is partial content or when it is clearly demonstrated that the music in its entirety is essential to the understanding of a given concept.  Still that too is iffy, as folks grapple with the complexities of copyright issues.

What about religious music?  It turns out that religious groups have no inherent protection but can purchase an agreement allowing the use of copyrighted music in the actual worship service.  It does not, however, cover any special use by groups, including choirs, as one researcher on the topic has found.

It’s also risky to take advice from the miscellaneous posts about copyright,  such as one on eHow that discusses how to do cover songs legally.  Performing  cover songs during live sets, a writer maintains, is representative of Fair Use under the law.  But the law does not make that assumption and requires permission and the payment of a fee for any public performance, live or mechanical.

While musicians wrangle over music they can or cannot perform, and under what circumstances, those who write songs believe they too have a voice, which is why the copyright laws went into effect and were extended by Sonny Bono’s efforts to extend the period of time when material could be covered by copyright.  Right now music performed between 1923 and 1978 will not begin to enter the copyright-free status until 2019.

This is what one attorney maintains musicians need to know about cover songs and the matter of copyrights:   lCover songs reflect the limited exclusivity provided by copyright. The original copyright owner has an exclusive right to publish or release the first sound recording of a song. After that, all other performers have the right to cut their own version of the song.”   These, the attorney remarks, are called mechanical rights and “under the law, the compulsory fee is paid through the Copyright Office to the copyright owners of the composition. Presently, the rates are the higher of 9.1 cents per song or 1.75 cents per minute of playing time.

Adam Rafferty is a man with a mission on music, as a performer and someone who has examined for himself some of the problems encountered by musicians in relationship to copyright laws.   He wails about his own situation, where he has done cover songs himself and worries about the future of these videos.  He points to the problems that have occurred with many people on YouTube, as the enforcement of copyright laws continues to heighten, as they have had to delete popular accounts.    His advice:  open up a non-infringing account to protect original work and copyright-free material if the account is at risk because of cover songs.  His underlying statement, however, is for the musician to perform his/her own material, therefore avoiding copyright problems in the first place. Added to this is a vast database of copyright-free material written before 1923, which is the date used by the copyright laws as the cutoff for writers and producers to make claims.

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Women working

Carol Forsloff —  Today’s mothers are unique, as “the hand that rocks the cradle” may be difficult to identify anymore with the new families struggling to decide who and what mother is.

The classic image in “Leave It to Beaver” is not the American family of today.  Today’s mother is apt to work outside the home and have little time to have all the neighborhood kids over for the day.  The new world of busy mothers means children are more and more requiring technology to be tethered to the family, as opposed to the dinner hour when everyone gathers around the table to chat about the day.

In La Grande, Oregon and other small towns like Natchitoches, Louisiana one can still find mothers doing the same things they used to but paying for it with their lives.  Mothers now die like fathers do on the open roads of life and have the tensions of the work world.  But a small town means families that have remained in the town remain close emotionally as well.  Yet that is changing as well.  Emotional or physical estrangement from many causes has created distances far greater than yesterday’s mother found.  What’s worse is the question:  Who is the mother?

These days mothers are stepmothers, big sisters, auntie or the neighbor next door or even the Facebook mom who nurtures everyone.

So what are the dreams of the mothers today, as in the past the responsibility was to care carefully, play with the child and provide guidance for major life directions.  Today’s mothers dreams of having the time to do that and hoping that, despite a unique relationship that may not be tied to a birth of a child,  they will be identified with motherhood in the same way.

Today we will attend a funeral of a stepmother with a family wrenched apart by clashes with the deceased woman’s new boyfriend and the step-family, as the children’s father had been married twice.  So the children have had to make shifts in their lives to accommodate new relationships after a divorce or death.  The natural mother of the adult children is seldom mentioned in the mix, as the grown children continue to identify relationships.  And the answer to “who is the mother” becomes complicated.

For all those women who have children, have cared for the children of others, who watch over children in the work world or who take the time the time for a little mothering on a street corner of a child’s life, congratulations, as new life has been poetically identified as not just the physical but spiritual renewal.  Congratulations to all those who offer that kind of relationship and to all mothers who have dreams of a better world for all of us.

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My informant was my youngest niece that afternoon. As I sat having lunch after the tiring travel, the kid sat by me and talked to me, re-socializing after a month of separation. Telling me about home and people and events, she said, “We made a grave there in the yard,” pointing at the place with her finger.

“Grave? For whom?” I asked, a little surprised.

“The sparrow, you don’t know?” she answered.

“Oh, tell me about it”, I asked her. She started telling how a sparrow fell inside the house and died. So she and her sister and another child took the sparrow to the middle of the yard and buried it there. I asked her if she will show me the grave. She agreed.

So after the lunch, she led me to the place where I could see dried mud defining a small, roughly circular area, bordered by pebbles, with small twigs stuck at the borders and decorative fabric, discolored by rain, wrapped around them so as to “shelter” the grave as is done traditionally in the local cemeteries. I sat there with the child, silence connecting the spirits in and out of the grave and all around. All resentments of people abusing life and nature dissolved in the silent music that celebrated my pilgrimage in the house.

Later, I learnt that strong wind had blown the unfortunate sparrow inside our house and had it smashed against the glass window, causing its death. The three little girls were playing when the sparrow fell dead near them. They quickly got to her and tried to revive her but when told by the grownups that the bird had died, they decided to bury it as people are buried upon the final departure. This was the first funeral and burial of their young lives.

In the late afternoon, I once again visited the sparrow’s grave with the youngest angel. Wind had started to blow leaves and small, light things about the place. The decorative ribbons were blown off the twigs, leaving the grave surface bare.

“It is not good,” the child had a tone of religious commitment as she replaced the pale ribbons to where they were previously. She sat by the grave for a while, looking solemn in silence like paying respect to the deceased. I stood there, still, after taking a photo of the grave. Silence had its music and the wind sang us a song. Without embracing a ritual, my pilgrimage was complete. I held the hand of the angel to return to my world, though I never left the small shrine in spirit.

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Taylor Swift

Today’s music is the folk music of tomorrow.  This means the best will be preserved, even as other music that is meant for a short turn dissolves with time.  Some tunes, however, are done so well they are remade again, not just because of their copyright-free status because of their age but the message rendered that is eternal.

Folk music is no longer the popular genre as it was in the 1960′s, but there are folks who in looking for their personal roots find that the old music supports it.  Music tells of the times in which it was written.  Music was used, and still is, to record history.  In that sense, the musician one passes on that street corner in a city somewhere in the world may be doing something that will last for centuries, when elements of the new technology has long faded.

The musicians of great reknown know this, as Elvis Presley recorded not just the modern rock and roll songs with which we are familiar but the old-time music as well, including “Old Shep” and the gospel songs that were part of his personal roots.  Bruce Springsteen is another of the relatively new artists of today who looks for certain types of root music to perform, then gives it that modern twist or two that identifies it is his personal sound.

Many songs, when they have been rearranged, change so significantly that the meaning of the author has been lost.  The song  “Letter Edged in Black” became known by the country artists of the 1950′s through Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, but its different theme in modern lyrics took away from the writer’s story of how family estrangement can cause pain for generations.  This is an eternal message, even as the war protest words were that were later written to the melody and known  in later years.  But the history of time and the idea that we continue to learn from our history only when we know it, and the messages it gives, is lost when too many of our original music is lost as well.

So for those looking for their ancestry and building scrapbooks to identify a family, include with it a scrap of music from that same time.  Look beyond the words of today in looking for the good of yesterday that we can all enjoy again.

When we speak of traditional values, traditional music needs to be included in that definition, so long as its meaning remains what identifies us all as a community of individuals with one thing in common—our humanity.

As for modern music, it too has a distinctive place in that it records the events of the day and in time will become roots music of future generations.  It shares, in that regard, those old melodies that remain because we care.  So those folks on Americas Got Talent may be looking for their dreams to be fulfilled, and we can look at them with new eyes when we recognize how valuable music becomes when time has passed from what we knew of simpler times.

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