The President Bows to a Foreign Leader?

Since there's so much kerfluffel over the supposed Obama bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, I thought I would post another picture of a sitting US president bowing to a foreign leader. The president is Richard M. Nixon, the foreign leader is Japan's emperor Hirohito, and the occasion is their meeting in Alaska in 1971.

J. Max Bond Jr., 1935-2009

My earliest memories of books are in the cool, cavernous Bolgatanga library, J. Max Bond Jr.'s first major project and his favorite design. One of our family's friends was the librarian back in the late 1970s. It's a really special place--even on the hottest day it was cool and airy in there. I never knew that the library was engineered not to need air conditioning. In this time of energy crisis, I wonder if Bond's design could be duplicated in other buildings.

Bolgatanga and the Uppers

Here's French actress Aissa Maiga mouthing the lyrics to the song "Naam" by Christy Azuma and Uppers International, a clip from the award-winning 2006 film Bamako, directed by Abderrahman Sissako. The song is traditionally based and has something to do with an appeal to the chief--I will have to get some more competent Farefare speaker to work it out for me.

When I was four and five we lived in Bolgatanga in a Presbyterian Mission house with high eaves in a shady neighborhood. Across an open valley behind our house was the Catering Rest House, a hotel complex built by Nkrumah in the 1960s. Before June 4, 1979, the Uppers would play there on the weekends, and the sound would waft across through our rooms at night as we slept. After the coup, the Uppers were replaced by the Police Band, who had a tendency to get more out of tune on their trumpets and trombones as the night wore on and the free drinks took their toll.

One of the guitarists for the Uppers was a friend of my parents before he hit the big-time. There's a great picture of me and my siblings with him as a teenager in the late 1970s with his creation of a guitar out of cardboard and papier-mache. I saw him again in the late 1990s on a visit, then retired from music and just living at home, farming. I wonder whether any of those people got any royalties from the excellent disk Ghana Soundz: Afro-Beat, Funk, and Fusion in 1970s Ghana Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Christy Azuma's track is on Vol. 2.

2008

Shipley's run

Here's Jordan Shipley's 96-yard kickoff return against the Sooners. The Longhorns were down 14-3 at the time.

My Brokers Have Terrible Judgment

Doh! I just learned that, after a boneheaded stock purchase a couple weeks ago of a couple of mortgage companies, my brokerage firm of Paulson Bernanke LLC went ahead and bought me controlling interest in a bankrupt insurance company.

Now, I'm no pro, but I would have thought maybe some shares in tech or healthcare or something like that might have been a better investment these days of my hard earned cash, instead of real estate and insurance. I'm only out a couple grand, since I have 300 million fellow shareholders, and it's bargain pricing... But still! These are not the soundest investments. And now they're talking about buying a failing S&L!

At least our contract is running out soon. I'll have the option to dump these guys in November. I figure it's a no-brainer.

Sarah!

In a good posting, Steve Shaviro takes overly aggressive Democrats to task for their misogynistic attacks on Sarah Palin. I had noticed this too, and I'm glad other people are pointing it out. But Steve also makes the point there that Palin is a much stronger candidate than she's been given credit for being:

...at this point, Sarah Palin is more a Sarah Connor than she is a Harriet Miers or Tom Eagleton.

I knew about Harriet Myers and Tom Eagleton, both past failures at pre-nomination vetting. But it took me a while to place Sarah Connor. Of course! The gun-toting (future) mother from the Terminator movies.



I was looking for a picture of an armed Sarah Palin to make the point. This is the best I could find: