Teddy Mink

Along came Teddy Mink, as usual, with the girls in tow
The Mink Quadrant was a tight unit, a hard act to follow

Sheila, Joyce, Melissa, and Stephanie came up in lockstep
The classic lineup, they danced as if they were doing it to death

But Teddy insisted, he laid down the funk rules of the beat
And Diana and Mary couldn't handle the supreme heat

They’d opted for Motown and greener pastures
Get down on the one, the groove was the master

The drum is a woman, The Duke had said it before
Teddy agreed with this aspect of Ellington's Law

He'd had a falling out with Cucumber Bones
Over the woman, and the song, Aretha is Home

Something about the credits and, as usual, the royalties
But, mostly, it was the oversight in the liner notes that he found petty

And now that he had something to prove on his hands
He was determined not to lose the battle of the bands

As a bandleader, he drilled the musicians harder then the Godfather
His work ethic approached Prince, truly, no one did it better

In the warehouse, the grooves and ideas flowed, the pace was unrelenting
And as for the dancers, he wouldn't let them quit - man, it was exhausting

His love language was a jam session, he lived for music, it was an obsession
But who the hell knew if they would defeat Cucumber Bones and Frankie Ocean?

A brief sketch, as told to me by the then 4 year old

The names of my son's imaginary friends have become more interesting. Who is this Cucumber Bones? And what is he singing with Frankie Ocean?

Teddy Mink, a playlist

A soundtrack for this jam session. (spotify version)

• Doing it to Death by James Brown
  The immortal groove

  We're gonna have a funky good time.
  We gotta take you higher

• Jerk Out by The Time
• Another Part of Me by Michael Jackson
  Before the then 4 year old got into Cucumber Bones and Teddy Mink, he was obsessed with Michael Jackson and the Bad tour. Or perhaps it was the other way around? The performance for Another Part of Me especially got him moving.
• Teddy's Jam by Guy
• Let's take it to the Stage by Funkadelic
  Both of my children are grounded in funk
• Battle of the Species by Antibalas
• Battle Royal by Count Basie and Duke Ellington
• Blues at the Five Spot by Oliver Nelson
• Blues for M.F by Oliver Nelson
• The Cocoa Boys by Prince
  We'll end with this soundtrack for a mooted film about a battle of the bands. Essential funk. Let's take it to the stage.

See also Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar

File under: culture, youth, children, imagination, music, whimsy, competition, storytelling, humour, parenting, family, fun, Small Things, poetry, toli

Writing log. Concept March 25, 2017. May 5, 2021

Inoculation Efficiency

We know the names by now, start with the golden child, Pfizer
Their application of mRNA vaccines led the way, as did that of Moderna
That last featured a weekend assist from good old Doctor Fauci
Fingers crossed, modulo new variants, we're on the way to herd immunity

And then there's the Oxford AstraZeneca variant that one should mention
Whose rollout in the UK temporarily saved the clown Boris Johnson
Surprising really, that vaccine bounce seems to have paused the clock
When the Grim Political Reaper should have dealt with him and Matt Hancock

For their neglect is measured in tens of thousands of dead bodies
And worldwide, there've been millions of devastated families
Sure, the virus sets the timeline and has moved to new epicenters
But the wounds have cut too deep; these are affairs to remember

While Merck were disappointed with the results of their own concoction
Uncle Amtrak Joe cajoled them to assist Johnson & Johnson
Well, cajoled is the nice way of putting that fact
He quietly threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act

They hastened to act quickly,
  this was no time to be quibbling about consent
When the specter has been raised,
   in this emergency, about waiving patents
No, it wouldn't do. Pharmaceutical profits,
   hook or crook, had to be maintained
Without intellectual property protections,
   monopolists are in a world of pain

We're all learning about logistics and vaccine supply chains
And about custom fridges and efficiently deployed cold chains
When you lack infrastructure
  you favor something cheap and easy to store
A surefire reason those in the global south would prefer a one stop shop

All those making a fuss about vaccine efficiency
  have fallen for misdirection
Spare a thought for those highlighting
  who controls the means of production
Generics is the watchword and its corollary is profits
Like the quote from The Graduate, "One word: Plastics"

One read that GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi are also playing catch up
But all these new variants mean that there'll be time enough to level up
While we now hear about vaccine diplomacy,
   I must say it's a seller's market
For when no one is coming, as a buyer,
  you'll pay whatever usurious price is set

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: coronavirus, pandemic, culture, observation, humour, vaccine, competition, economics, strategy, monopoly, capitalism, power, shell game, public health, poetry, covidious, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: May 3, 2021

Emotional Vaccination

Now that Pfizer has gotten their two jabs of flesh,
(Or was it Moderna's two pinpricks at rest?),
After the Oxford AstraZeneca two step potion
Comes the Johnson & Johnson one stop concoction

Sputnik flies again, the one from Gamaleya Research in Russia
And what of the Sinovac, the CoronaVac from China?
My parents in Ghana recently benefited from the Covax facility
But, while overjoyed, never mentioned the brand equity

A relief, but this lack of detail is causing me to wonder
For, if it was a two dose variant, say the Covaxin from India,
Whether there will be enough supply of vaccine for Ghana
Since this pandemic has seen a surge in those epicenters

The mosquito principle, while deceptively simple,
   points to a few limitations
The most obvious is that mitigating a global disease
   requires global solutions
In political philosophy, the problem is described as collective action
Social living is only the start of the journey to emotional vaccination

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: coronavirus, pandemic, culture, observation, humour, vaccine, competition, social, strategy, relief, coordination, public health, poetry, covidious, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: May 2, 2021

The Dining Philosophers Problem

The dining philosophers problem is well known in computer science
Dealing with matters of access, it has analogues in our headlines
Humanity's curriculum involves many rituals and traditions
Perhaps, then, it's worth explaining the problem's formulation

The diners that are gathered here today are five in number
Imagine, if you will, your favorite group of philosophers
They are initially presented in a state of silence at the venue
Around a round table, hungry they are, for spaghetti is on the menu

The central conceit is that each philosopher must alternately think and eat
Implicit also is that they are vegetarians or vegans, for there is no meat
The rules of the social game adds the constraint of manners as the main course
That they can only dig into their spaghetti if they have both left and right forks

After a philosopher finishes eating, but before launching into thought,
They must put down both forks to make them available for others.
Forks, in this arrangement, can only be held by one philosopher at a time.
The problem's construction teaches that sharing is caring at mealtime

To add realism to the scenario, we can assume there is an unlimited supply of food
And that our philosophers can eat long past the point that would normally be good
With these core ingredients: philosophers, spaghetti, forks (but no knives)
The problem is meant to illustrate the challenges of living parallel lives

An utter conundrum, this problem when it was presented to me at university
That, while I could discern that it had applications in the study of concurrency,
The problem was going from this set of instructions to designing an architecture
Full disclosure, I damn near failed this course on algorithms and data structures

The enduring challenge, if you think about it, is how to avoid deadlock
The fear is of resource starvation such that the actors find themselves stuck
We want a world in which no philosopher will starve and continue forever
To eat and think deep thoughts; a metaphor, this immortal philosopher

Timing is everything in the choreography of actors
Finding a strategy to manage this human infrastructure
The fundamental issue at hand, the term of art, is mutual exclusion
A stark concept, therein lies the difficulty with the algorithm

The conventional solution involves a resource hierarchy
I found it quite unfair because it clearly lacks neutrality
But it can be proven to work, if one heeds the instructions and laws
It applies an ordering to the distribution of shared resources

Another strategy that has been advanced is arbitration
This one I tried out, as I'm a firm believer in conversation
Once you designate a mediator, and open yourself up to abide by their resolution,
As the song goes, it takes behavior to get along, diplomacy can be the solution

The philosophical issues are many with middlemen, think of Caesar's tax collectors
And of the oligarchs and monopolists who insert themselves as toll collectors
Who are the designers of these systems in humanity's curriculum?
Who gets to make the rules? And who pays soul insurance premiums?

Game theory can come into play, think of the prisoner's dilemma
The shortest path to success might be to seize resources - state capture
Write the ruler's rules, and steal power like a conqueror
Rehearse a coup drill following the lead of many a dictator

I found that the problem had all the makings of a cautionary fable
Earlier, you might recall, I held my fire at that philosopher's table
Where rage, and its contemporary uses, were the bone of contention
'Twas decidedly, I'd explained, a case of normalcy prohibition

I had been thinking about this modernity of parallel lives
Where some have the great privilege of their insatiable appetites
A state of the world in which no progress is possible
We would do well to study the Mosquito Principle

See previously:

• Normalcy Prohibition
• Masks of Civility
• The Traveling Salesman
• The Skeptic's Credo
• The Last Philosophers

The Dining Philosophers Problem, a playlist

A soundtrack for this treatise, bookended by the great divas (spotify version)

• Dinner with Gershwin by Brenda Russell
• Competition by New Edition
• Insatiable by Omar (ft. Natasha Watts)
• Sharing by Bugge Wesseltoft's New Conception of Jazz
• Dinner with Gershwin by Donna Summer
• Insatiable by Prince
• Share my World by Mary J. Blige
• No Competition by Eric B & Rakim
• Share Your Love With Me by Aretha Franklin

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: humour, folktale, software, algorithms, philosophy, competition, design, best practices, culture, observation, perception, social, technology, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: March 28, 2021

Ghana vrs USA

Before

This happened to be on my living room table a few days ago. I'll reserve comment until after the Ghana USA match.

Our national anthem is playing. No more blogging...

Later

There is probably a parable to be made about a stick figure made out of spark plugs and improvised bent wire pointing a bow and arrow standing on top of Uncle Sam (a faceless Sam at that albeit with slick production values and glossy magazine accoutrements) but that would be reading far too much into an image...

[Ghana beat the USA 2-1]

Also, in case this was missed in the preceding posts, this was my mother's toli on the previous matches (To The Shout Of "Ghana", You Respond "Respect" and Firmly On The Map). She's heading our eight person family delegation to the World Cup.

The African Nation and The American Dream

I was going to save this photo for a piece I've been working on about immigrants and the diaspora but it seems strangely appropriate here. You can blame this juxtaposition on the journalistic impulse.

The American Dream!

"You've got big dreams, we've got the big money!"

The exclamation point is of typographical importance. This is an advert for a mortgage company on the back page of the March 2006 issue of The African Nation, a free monthly newspaper for immigrants in the US that is often found wherever there's an "ethnic" grocery shop. Published mostly by Nigerians and Camerounians in Silver Spring, Maryland, it features the typical optimism and entrepreneurial spirit of the most vigourous of our West African brethren. The newspaper is billed as

"A success guide for Smart African-Americans, West Indians & Africans in the diaspora".

In short, it's an all-inclusive and expansive production. I will return later to dispense a critique of some of the paper's content (the articles on Nollywood, Green Cards, Obasanjo, corruption, Sudan, Frantz Fanon, the latest society weddings in DC, the latest immigration news, advertisements for lawyers, disquisitions on where we can get authentic comfort food, travel agencies that claim to find the cheapest rate for you to head home etc.). It is worthy of some focused commentary.

The Color of Memory

I first watched the World Cup in 1978 during a trip my mum and I made to Senegal to visit some family friends. It was my first trip outside Ghana and my first time on a plane. My only memories are of the color red in the marketplaces, a vivid red that I haven't seen since, the shimmering cloths the Senegalese wore (they pay attention to their looks to an extent that puts most Ghanaians to shame), the excitement about the Dutch team who played the most beautiful game, and the disappointment at their fate at the hands of Argentina. We watched all the matches on black and white TVs except for the final, and therein lies my other memory: the orange of the Dutch team and their fans. I'm still gutted about that match.

I have been waiting ever since for my team to be at the World Cup. This is something deep inside of me.

And it has been a long wait. Watching my favourite teams disappoint time and again: the Brazilians in 82 (Zico and Socrates slain by a baby-faced assassin named Paolo Rossi), Platini, Tigana and co in 82 and 86 (there was that perfidious Schumacher guy), Hoddle, Waddle, John Barnes and the like (the Hand of God) (and wherefore Gazza and Shearer?), Roger Milla and Cameroon, Gullit and Rijkaard, Nigeria causing ulcers and palpitations to everyone, Senegal exhilarating the last time around... The teams that Abedi Pele and Tony Yeboah led in the 1990s were arguably more talented than our current heroes but they proved incapable of qualifying for the world cup. Thus we had only the memories of Polo and Razak, the legendary Black Stars of the past, glorious in the African Cup of Nations or, of late, our success at the junior level or at the Olympics.

It is a good day to be a Ghanaian, but it has been a long wait.

Identity and Allegiance

I recently calculated that I have now spent more time in Cambridge than anywhere else, what with the university years and the Lotus/IBM years. This beats my stints in Ghana, France or England. Thus I am quite the conflicted soul about who to support and am typically mid-Atlantic in my sensibilities. The Brits have the "cricket match test' to sort out the "good" immigrants from the chaff and I wonder where I lie and whether I'll pass. This is a very difficult test when it comes to football, and especially the World Cup, because any fan of the game (and I am a great football fan) will find some tribal aspect to latch onto in every team.

Until their last match, I thought Ecuador were the best team from Latin America; they were my pick for the tournament since they seemed more "ready" than Brazil or Argentina. They still might come through and I hope they do. Of course I've rooted for all the African teams and, even if the Ivoriens are out of the tournament with the label of the best team not to progress, I can still find favour in those who beat them. I apparently have Dutch ancestry and the good Captain John Vanderpuje (or Vanderpoy as we pronounce it in Ghana) was surely smiling as that free kick rocketed into the Ivorien net and also at the way Arjen Robben played in Holland's demolition of Serbia and Montenegro. When I mentioned my Dutch connection to a friend yesterday, he noted that my allegiance would likely depend on my family history. My reply was that in the mist of the centuries that have passed, it is unclear whether said ancestor was a benign adventurer or a rapacious colonist. Identity is identity and many tribes can claim me. I, in turn, claim all those tribes through victory and defeat.

Note well the use of the deflating passive tense in the headlines that followed in the US, it isn't David beats Goliath, or even Ghana Through... Brazil next, it's rather US eliminated by Ghana. The frame is typical of the big media companies and their prevailing script: the US were the actors, the Ghanaians were the sideshow. This of course would be news to anyone who watched the match, but such is the Great Game of life. How does the song go again?

They're all political actors... 'Don't worry'. He says 'Don't worry.'

The only team that leaves me cold in the tournament is Switzerland. I can't figure out the reason for this since they are just as talented as any of the other teams and play fluent European-style football. Whither neutrality? I was hoping Togo would beat them yesterday if only because of the amount of money Eyadema père had stashed in those well-run banks. But it wasn't to be, and such is life. Hopefully Eyadema fils will repatriate some of that loot to Togo. There is a startling statistic about the number of public schools constructed in Togo since independence (less than five in almost 50 years, if my memory serves me right). That is worth pondering at the same time as matters of elation are considered. But that's also for later toli... In any case South Korea might oblige tomorrow and deal with the Swiss tribe.

Hearts of Oak

The Wife called the following photo "working from home" for some reason. I was a little surprised. I didn't pretend to be working for those two glorious hours, and Big Blue couldn't have made me work at such a time. In reality there was no dilemma, there was only ecstasy.

I had dug up my Accra Hearts of Oak shirts since the World Cup is all about tribes and belonging. A good friend was good-natured enough to wear one even though his allegiances were more in line with Uncle Sam. There is no tribe more loyal than the "Phobians", the Hearts of Oak fans. Really. Truly. We dig deep. You Red Sox or Arsenal fans have nothing on us.

There's nothing like a football match to bring out the drama of life, and we see shattered dreams for some, and bite-sized triumphs for others. Michael Essien's second yellow card is the most painful thing he will endure in his life as he'll miss the choicest game we'll face, and it tempers the Ghanaian jubilation somewhat. My American friends might be hurting right now, but rather than devolving into recriminations (as it appeared would be the case judging by the later coverage on ESPN), this Phobian will suggest instead a transfer of allegiance to the Black Stars. I've been told that the latest hiplife rhyme back home is

Black Stars checked the Czechs and cleared the bush.

We play to a different drumbeat and with our own musicality. I'll conclude with the Hearts of Oak motto

Never say die until the bones are rotten.

Next step Brazil.

I nominate this note for the Things Fall Apart series, under the banner of Social Living.

Next: Friends Today, Enemies Tomorrow

See also: On IBM and Africa

File under: Ghana, USA, Africa, America, world cup, collage, art, serendipity, humour, sculpture, juxtaposition, competition, Strange Bedfellows, Things Fall Apart, Social Living, football, soccer, sports, fever, obsession, memory, ingenuity, identity, communities, fun, tribes, allegiance, Holland, funny, history, Cambridge, diaspora, immigrant, life, memory, family, humour, toli