The ghosts are jamming again. They're playing that hot jazz in the Turkish Embassy's old Sheridan Circle mansion, just as they did in the 1930s and '40s, when the ambassador's boys, Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, were always inviting their favorite musicians over to hang and blow and thump. The informal, integrated gatherings achieved near-mythic status - "Washington's most famous private jam sessions," jazz journalist Bill Gottlieb called them in The Washington Post in 1943 - and then they evaporated into history.
"So many people don't know about it," said Namik Tan, Turkey's current ambassador. He's in the mansion's second-floor music parlor, envisioning Lester Young sitting in the wood-paneled room, coaxing those light, airy notes out of his tenor saxophone. Or maybe it's Benny Carter, making his alto sax sing. And aren't those the cats from Duke Ellington's band - Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Barney Bigard - on deck to play?
Frank Ahmed, 86, a retired Foreign Service officer with the State Department, died Jan. 21 of cardiac arrest at his home in Fairfax City. Mr. Ahmed joined the Foreign Service in 1953 and had early overseas assignments in Iran and Iraq. In 1967, he and his family were evacuated from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. After returning from his final overseas posting to Turkey in 1971, Mr. Ahmed served as a consultant to the State Department until 2009.
Companies that adopt 'smart growth' policies that are innovative and safeguard natural resources will benefit from competitive advantages in a growing world economy, Muhtar Kent, president and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co., says in a video broadcast from Davos, Switzerland. Mr. Kent is attending the annual meeting that brings together top business, political and thought leaders from around the world to the Swiss ski resort. This year's forum opened Wednesday, Jan. 26, with a keynote address by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Mr. Kent provides an optimistic economic overview saying that he expects the world economy to attain pre-September 2008 growth levels by the end of the year.
Never mind the Wiki Leaks fallout for U.S. foreign policy. Today’s kicker question at a National Press Club luncheon: how do you protect Coca-Cola’s famously secret formula from WikiLeaks, the online site now uncloaking a trove of previously hush-hush U.S. diplomatic documents. “I guess that we have to have better systems than the U.S. State Department,” quipped Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola Co’s chief executive.
