The Guinness Is Good For You Suitcase

When I first moved to Kano, Nigeria, I was looking for opportunities to learn how to speak Hausa - the language spoken by most of the population of northern Nigeria.

So, I would head to the City Market at the end of the day, as business was winding down.  I would talk to various vendors, noting which ones seemed willing to listen to an American mangle their language.

I would stop and talk with a money changer in the market named Aliyu:

I would stop and talk with a hat cleaner in the market named Danladi (in the red shirt):

I would stop and talk with a whitesmith in the market named Nasidi.  

African whitesmiths work with metal.  However, they do not use fire like blacksmiths do.  They basically beat metal into shapes.

Nigerians do not throw metal away.  Instead, scrap metal is turned into everyday objects by the whitesmiths.  Metal barrels become woks or they become rainspouts.  Metal scraps become knives. 

On a smaller scale, evaporated milk containers are turned into kerosene lamps.  I was always impressed that my students managed to do their homework at night by the weak light of these small lamps.

 

Kano’s extreme climate was not kind to paper or to wood.  So, breweries that wanted to advertise their products used metal signs to put their ads on the walls of Kano’s pubs.  Guinness had signs that proclaimed how their product would enhance your health “Guinness is good for you” and how their product would enhance your sex life “Guinness gives you power” --- where 'power’ is a thinly veiled reference to 'virility'.

Many of these metal signs did not make it to the walls of a pub; they wound up in the hands of a whitesmith, who would ingeniously turn the signs into suitcases.

The Guinness signs were beaten into the shape of a rectangular box.  A clasp and a handle were added.  Then the suitcases were painted.

One day I saw a whitesmith about to paint a suitcase.  I asked Nasidi to make him stop.  Nasidi told the fellow that the American who is learning Hausa wants to buy a suitcase that is unpainted.  The fellow probably thought I was a bit crazy, but he sold it to me as is. 

I got a thrill out of owning a Guinness Is Good For You suitcase.

Nowadays, the suitcase sits in the back of a closet in our house.  I think I need to display it more prominently.  It is not a work of art, but it is a tribute to African ingenuity: a clever handmade African object from the 1960s --- a suitcase that proclaims you can improve your health and your sex life simply by drinking a beer.

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To view a current 2-minute ad for Guinness in Africa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoB_YPIFr0

Here is the LANDFILL HARMONIC, showing what whitesmiths in the slums of Paraguay can do.  The video is 11 minutes long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJxxdQox7n0

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

The Phenomenon In The Valley

I drove through the green rolling hills of the Ozarks in southern Missouri.  Farmhouses, small towns, livestock...typical rural scenery until the highway crested at the top of a hill and I gazed into the valley below.  There, I saw the Titanic.

Not the real Titanic, of course, whose wreckage is at the bottom of the ocean, but a half-scale replica of the Titanic, which is at the bottom of a valley in the Ozark Mountains.  This Titanic sits in water, complete with a replica of an iceberg.

The Titanic is surrounded by a town called Branson, Missouri, with 10,000 people and 36 live music theaters.  I had lived in Missouri for sixteen years, and I thought it was time to visit this town.

I was there on a Thursday in April.  The 36 theaters usually put on two shows a day (matinee and evening), and I had 62 shows to choose from.  Choosing which show to attend was difficult...not because there are so many, but because they are all wholesome family entertainment.

Some of the shows on that Thursday in April were: Hank Williams Revisited, the Baldknobbers Jubilee Show, Roy Rogers Jr, and the High Riders, Breakfast With Mark Twain, The Sons Of The Pioneers, The Texas Tenors, New Jersey Nights, The Johnny Cash Songbook.  As I drove around town, a number of intersections sported a statue of a pharaoh --- a reminder that Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was another choice.

Many of the theaters had been built by a performer specifically for their own performances: Jim Stafford performs at the Jim Stafford Theater; Shoji Tabuchi performs at the Shoji Tabuchi Theater; The Oak Ridge Boys perform at the Oak Ridge Boys Theater; Yakov  Smirnoff performs at the Yakov Smirnoff Theater; Andy Williams died in 2012, but the Andy Williams Moon River Theater is still going strong and featured A Musical Tribute To Frankie Valli.

I decided on a show at the New Shanghai Circus Theater, featuring some amazing acrobats.  This way I avoided anything syrupy or corny.

Besides the myriad shows, Branson had other forms of entertainment: Lost Canyon Mini-Golf, Dinosaur Canyon Mini-Golf, Pirates' Cove Mini-Golf, the Adventure Zipline, Parakeet Pete's Zipline, the world's largest toy museum, a branch of Stone Hill Winery. the Hollywood Wax Museum, Castle Rock Water Park, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, Talking Rock Cavern, and go-karts that drove down a vertical spiral rather than on a flat oval.

I could also have visited the Titanic, which is a museum built by John Joslyn, who led a 1987 expedition to the wreckage of the ship at the bottom of the ocean.

I skipped all these temptations, and went to the Veterans Memorial Museum.  There, I saw - shudder - Hermann Goering's sterling silver tea set and Eva Braun's hairbrush.

I only spent a day there, but clearly Branson is a phenomenon --- a phenomenon in a valley, in the Ozark Mountains, a few miles north of Arkansas.

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A 1-minute ad for the New Shanghai Circus on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ5qPHehXH4

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

There Are Sixty Born Every Hour

 The topic at lunchtime in our company cafeteria was ‘scams’.

A co-worker said, “If someone sent me an email saying that they need to move millions of dollars out of Nigeria, I would not be stupid and answer the email.”

Another co-worker said, “If someone sent me an email saying that he found Saddam Hussein’s stash of gold and needed to move the gold out of Iraq, I would not be stupid and answer the email.”

A third co-worker said, “If someone sent me an email saying that I won the UK Lotto and he was going to help me collect my jackpot, I would not be stupid and answer the email.”

Then I chimed in:

I got an email saying that eight people are flying from Europe to St. Louis because they want to take dance lessons from me to get ready for an upcoming family wedding.  They will be in St. Louis for a week, and they will send me their credit card number so I can book a dance studio for that week.

My co-workers’ eyes lit up.  “You are going to answer that email, aren’t you?”

I said, “No.”

My co-workers were outraged.  “Doug, you would be stupid NOT to answer that email.”

Some co-workers pointed out how much money I would rake in.  Some co-workers started to fantasize on what they could do with someone else’s credit card number.  One co-worker suggested that the Europeans could cut their expenses by sending two people to St. Louis instead of eight, and those two could go back to Europe and teach the others.

Three minutes ago, these co-workers had said they would never fall for a scam, and now they had all fallen for this one.

I feel flattered that my co-workers think that my reputation as a Scottish country dance teacher in St. Louis has spread to Europe and people are willing to spend thousands of dollars to fly here for some dance instruction from me.

However, answering the email would mean receiving a stolen credit card number, with instructions to pay for the studio rental with a few thousand left over, and please remit the excess to Europe.  Then I would face debt and possibly jail time.

I told my co-workers that they were gullible….and did they know that the word gullible is not in the dictionary.

“Really, 'gullible' is not in the dictionary?”  I am sure they left the lunchroom and proceeded to google the word 'gullible'.

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NOT A SCAM: a touching 4-minute version of Forever Young at the memorial service for Steve Jobs, sung outdoors by Norah Jones.  Notice the audience's faces reflected in her piano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jEKY-3eNZc

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

Thursday Night Is The New Friday Night

About eighteen years ago, I was the only person riding in the shuttle from the airport terminal to the airport parking lot.  I said to the driver, “The shuttle is pretty empty for a Friday night.”  The driver had an explanation.  He said that people who go away on business trips try to fit all their work into four days so they can go home on Thursday, rather than Friday.  That’s why I was the only passenger on the shuttle.

So, Thursday night is the new Friday night.

That was evident at the St. Louis airport last month as I waited to board a plane on a Thursday night.  I wanted to have dinner before I got on my plane; all the airport dining spots were jammed and the waiting lines were very long.  I got in line for a tapas restaurant, and started chatting with the woman behind me.  I noticed that the restaurant was seating solo diners at tables for two.  I got clever and suggested to the woman that we should share a table so we would get seated quicker.  My suggestion worked.

The woman having dinner with me was from Charleston, South Carolina.  She told me she was an attorney --- a mesothelioma attorney.  Dinner at the airport tapas restaurant suddenly became somber.

I had a high school classmate named Nancy who died of mesothelioma.  Her sister told me that Nancy suffered greatly: her sister called the disease "a deadly form of lung cancer -- asbestos related -- a virtual death sentence”.

And I had a friend in the St. Louis area named Dennis who died of mesothelioma.  Dennis had grown up in Libby, Montana, which calls itself the pride of the Kootenai Valley.  As a teenager, Dennis worked at the open-pit vermiculite mine; it was the best job a teenager could have in Libby.  However, the townspeople were not told that the vermiculite was contaminated with asbestos.  There were heaps of vermiculite waiting to be shipped out of town by railroad.  Kids played in those vermiculite heaps, located right next to the baseball fields in Libby, and there is now a memorial outside of town - a cross for every resident who died from asbestos.

I knew the answer, but I asked the attorney anyway: has the statute of limitations expired for my friends?  “Yes,” she said.

When Dennis was on his deathbed, his voice was weak, and people had difficulty hearing him.  The solution: an Aker MR1506 personal amplifier, which draped around his neck while a microphone hung from an ear piece.  People could then hear him.

After Dennis died, I was honored to be given his MR1506 personal amplifier.  When he was healthy he had been on some of my walking tours.  I was unamplified then, but I am amplified now.

Sometimes I tell people on my tours the story of how I got the device that drapes around my neck.  I think Dennis would be pleased to know that his legacy helps me show people the history and the architecture of St. Louis.

And I think Dennis would be tickled to hear that I had tapas in the airport on a busy Thursday night, which is the new Friday night, and  I dined with an attorney who works to get compensation for people who suffer from the disease that struck Dennis down.

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A 4-minute YouTube video made by Janelle Bedel, a mesothelioma survivor in Indiana.  The beauty of Jason Mraz's song I Won't Give Up contrasts with Janelle's no-holds-barred photographs.
  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_DRd0KzJ24

(The photo of Doug Schneider giving a tour using the Aker MR1506 was taken by Jess Newbury.)

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com