We 'do' Rick's mushroom chowder and my seared scallops on mushroom risotto. Margaret MacMillan takes seconds on my cucumber salad.

With dessert, we take a trip back to the '70s with cherries jubilee, set ablaze table-side.

Later, I ask, “Who wants coffee? Who wants tea? I have both ready.”

Part of my offering elicits a scoff from Tom Hodgkinson. He pushes back his chair (which squeaks on our wood floor) and announces that coffee is for people who are impelled by ambition and wanting to 'do' things. It is guzzled by “lunch-cancellers, early-risers, guilt-ridden strivers, money-obsessives, and status-driven spiritually empty lunatics." For the sake of civility, thank goodness, Tom is not impelled to also call us "

When Michael Jordan cleared the table a while ago, he acted as if he was performing the ordinary task of a guest. And then when he poured the liqueur -- like he’s sinking a long shot which is no big deal. "I never wanted to step on anybody’s toes.” Yet, Michael said, “if you have an opportunity to score, you score. And we win.”

It’s not so much that Barb and I were sluggish in advancing the evening's momentum, or that Michael necessarily wanted to speed things along, so he can pick up and leave almost right away. No, Michael was just saying -- I’m speculating -- that he preferred to cover all bases so our evening's a winner: “You just start getting on a roll...You’re in tune with everything that’s going on, he says. "It's like you can do anything...Living the moment is something that I will continue to always understand and associate with my life."

On that, we all clinked glasses.

But you know, the more I keep obsessing about his removal of dessert dishes and his pouring of his liqueur a while ago, Michael has changed the evening's tempo. I wouldn't go so far, though, as to say that he's looking a little sheepish now for violating the expectation that guests should wait to be served. Rather, it's like he a grinning Type A personality who over-brims with energy. Michael says, "I've made mistakes before and I'm going to make mistakes now. It's just that the naysayer is going to look at that mistake and magnify it. As a person, I can't allow myself to do that. If I do, I'm doubting myself, and I should never do that."

Reflecting on all this now, Margaret MacMillan cheers Michael for exerting his conventional 110 percent. And she volunteers that she's cleared a fair number of dishes herself (experience), and that Barb and Rick should not have to do all the dinner's hustling. Margaret says she'll be happy to stack the evening's china into our dishwasher. Barb shakes her head 'No.' I, however, will not deny a guest that opportunity.

Tom Hodgkinson seems less eager to pitch in, cleaning up. He fears he'd not keep pace with Margaret and Michael's get-up-and-go. As an illustration of how laid-back he is, Tom boasts that he's recently given up e-mail. He does value Teamwork, he says. His Idler magazine couldn't survive without it. However, Tom thinks Margaret and Michael unintentionally have started a dangerous competition: Which guest can be most host-like.

Lisa Kudrow's good at drawing out others. She muses whether, similar to Art Fry and Spence Silver at 3M in Minnesota, Jack Kilby had a revelatory experience en route to his invention.

Jack recalls that he'd placed all the components on a single slab of germanium (“Not the green-and-red plant kind?” Lisa intervenes), wiring them together by hand. Barely five months later, Robert Noyce, another U.S. inventor working separately from Jack, supervised the design of a smaller, easier-to-mass-produce single circuit on a chip of silicon (“Not the breast kind?” I intervene). Jack nods, “We worked hard together to achieve commercial acceptance for integrated circuits.”

In what may pass as sagacity, I nod. As if I even had a rickety grasp of circuit workings.

Jack is prodded to note that his interest evolved from childhood: “My dad ran a power company that served a wide area in rural Kansas, and he used amateur radio in his work. I found it very interesting. In fact, it was during an ice storm during my teens, when customers throughout his area lost power, that I first saw how radio –- and by extension, electronics –- could really impact people’s lives.” The rest of us precisely understand what Jack's taking about: Radio as Lifeline, a bringer-together of people. Perhaps we’re all radio folk.

Tim Berners-Lee is speaking now of his early years and his love for electronics. His parents were programmers for one of England’s first commercial computers. Berners and Lee encouraged their son to play games with imaginary numbers at their breakfast table. He made ‘pretend’ computers out of cardboard boxes and five-hole paper tape.

That was about the time, Lisa says, colossus of art Picasso was saying “Computers are useless –- they only give you answers.” Hah!

At Oxford in the ‘70s, Tim built his first computer. He used a soldering iron, an old TV set, and –- for all I know -- one of Jack’s integrated circuits. One impetus, Tim admits, was that his hacking led Oxford to ban him from the university’s PCs.

"Ohhh, Oggsford!" Lisa qua Phoebe comically mispronounces Oxford like that character in Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby.

I feel good about Barb and I placing ourselves in the company of these folk. Our tone isn't like a tenth-year high school reunion, but I see outcroppings of conviviality.

Briefly putting my laptop aside, I participate in some idle cross-talk first with Lucian Freud, then with Elisabeth Lloyd.

He is a jovial, joking raconteur and mimic. It is easy to affiliate with such a charismatic charmer.

Early on, Elisabeth’s sunny earnestness and merry prudence also “clicks” positively with everyone.

The same with Hu Jintao, once he shakes hands firmly and apologizes for arriving late. “Traffic – it was maddening. Stop and go all the way.” he explains. We know that his aide had only “penciled” us in for tonight, and we’re grateful that Hu (and the others) showed.

Elisabeth, picking up the scent from our oven, says "Whatever it is, the food smells good."...

Joan of Arc’s mention of a trial darkens our party’s tone, provoking Billy Graham to draw back and Bob Geldof to furrow a brow or two. No one intrudes with questions about Joan’s trial, her trial’s outcome, or her present ‘nurturing’ relationship with the Francois kid. Those questions hang in the air. We’re silent because, well, because now Joan is beatific as she comes clean with us. She’s definitely not playing the victim to us friends in this room.

(Query to self: is the kid adopted? Francois sorta looks like her, only pudgy. I’m pretty certain no reference to him appears in biographies about Joan.)

Barb, habitually uneasy about prolonged silences at dinner parties, rushes into the void and attempts a smooth transition. She's saying: “Oh my, that is most interesting, Joan....Such an adorable baby too, and so well-behaved...Lucky Francois, Lucky Joan...Now, as we were saying about Paula...” That’s the core of Barb’s pivot of the room’s conversation -- only Barb is less abrupt, far more voluble and endearing.

No objection arising (even from Joan), Barb recalls that Bob Geldof’s ex-wife was a blonde, glamorous, and high-spirited music journalist. Bob produced a TV show where Paula was known for her ‘on-the-bed’ interviews. (That’s not something I see Joan or Barb doing.) Barb further reports that Paula and Bob had three daughters, each with a distinctive name.

(Because Barb and I have three kids, each with an ancestral first name, we savour this adjective ‘distinctive.’ It’s better than the demeaning ‘Such unusual names!’ reactions we used to get back when they were still at home and we would introduce them.)

Bob takes up his story from there. He shares various winsome qualities of Fifi Trixibelle Geldof, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof, and Little Pixie Geldof. Following the early deaths of Paula and her second husband, Bob went to court and became the legal guardian of Tiger Lily Hutchence, so she could be raised with her half-sisters.

At that, there’s a decided lighten-up in Joan’s grimaces at Bob.

Even Barb, sometime observer of pop culture, is in the proverbial dark, though, about that earlier ‘Breakfast Bob’ tag. The rest of us are too. Bob says he has better things to do with his life than talk about that incarnation. Abrupt?

Boomtown Rats? No one speaks up about Bob’s fore-mentioned association with those varmints either. “Were you doing slum clearance?” Billy chuckles. “Nah,” Bob comes back, “I leave redevelopment to you.”

Barb announces that ‘Boomtown Rats’ was the name of his first rock/punk band in England (funny that she knows about that: it’s not her type of music). The name comes from a line in a Woodie Guthrie song.

We are reproached by Barb for not realizing that Bob later organized a more famous group. “In 1984, his Band Aid was a tip-top group of British and Irish pop & rock musicians who recorded a poignant Christmas song.”

Yes, now of course, I remember. Last month I’d seconded Barb’s initiative to invite Bob tonight -- but that was because of my great admiration for Bob’s concerts, the ones to raise money for African relief. I had plum forget that those concerts’ precursors were the Rats and Bob’s song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Sure, vaguely I knew about them as sparky parts of pop culture. Yet up to this moment, I‘d never made the link between that Christmas song and Live Aid’s concert. I was real busy in 1984.

You know how it is with us septuagenarians from the Silent Generation. We remember and then blather on and on about the screwiest things. For a spell now, I wallow about “Do They Know?” being a titanic hit as a single. Three million copies sold. An unprecedented 96 pence for each record for aid relief.

(It’s true, it’s crass: once I too would’ve liked to have had a hit single -- even without proceeds going to provide relief. A dream every kid has when twelve years old? I’ve easily moved away from that dream, but you know, I wouldn’t mind singing at least once in a karaoke bar somewhere. You too?)

UPDATE, a fact that I had to look up: In the ‘90s, Breakfast Bob was a popular program of Bob’s TV production company.

I’d assumed that when Barb first met Billy Graham and Bob Geldof at the door tonight, she’d mentioned that Joan of Arc was here. Now I’m clueless about how to bring up the fact that the young woman blithely sitting over there is…is who she is.

Back to the surreal world and this alternate life that Barb and I live in this dinner-blog.

To much nodding of heads around the table, Bob is enthusing now about his hopes for improving chances for children in Africa. In the process, he’s again deploying his famous expletive. Bob’s comfort with that term, I recall now, became known around the world at his first Live Aid concert. Bob overruled an announcer who was directing TV-watchers to send donations through the mails. Expecting folk around the world to pledge generously as well as immediately by telephone, Bob remembers that he said, “Fuck the [postal] address,” i.e., f’god’s sake, get on with giving money to the cause. Bob robustly says he is mis-remembered, even in an Oxford Book of Quotations, as saying there “Give us your fooking money.”

I hear a sound that is more snort than laugh.

Joan appears to be quite the genteel lady, for each time Bob unleashes one of his “Fuck-offs”, she winces. Billy blinks each time too, but at least he’s been around and thus is familiar with that angry dismissal. I don’t notice Barb’s reaction to Bob’s recurrent use of the F word -- but subliminally I do recall her hooting at one of the ‘Ten Commandments for Attendance.' On big screens at openings of professional football games, we’ve seen ‘Thou shalt not swear.’

Here’s the thing. The foul-mouthed part of me is delighted by the freestyle sass that Bob is voicing, including an array of brilliant verbal “#@$+^%*!s” that I haven’t even tracked here. Pot, meet kettle. All the same, I’m conflicted because I agree with my high-school English teacher about Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. That is, I remember Eddie Snyder saying that Maugham’s onetime use of the word ‘damn’ had impact by being the only swear word throughout all of Bondage. Put another way, as I've noticed in my post-high school years, not much impact is enjoyed by folk who always act annoyed, who swear their heads off. On the other hand, if they were not such bloody one-note soreheads, their occasional indignation and curse could have impact. Just sayin'.

Keyed to our other guests’ sensitivities, I deliberate how I might button-hole Bob and privately tell him in effect to ‘Fuck-off, Bob, with your Fuck-offs.’ I sense that he’s pretty irrepressible, though, saying whatever it takes to advance his noble cause. Since I applaud the cause, I hesitate in trying to restrain. A form of constraint, if not bondage.

First in, James Dean. He comes in a leather jacket, blue jeans, and a cloud of smoke. He seems open and decent. He may not be a man's man like Clark Gable was in the movies of the '30s and '40s, a gruff chap I might have wanted to resemble (I say 'might have' because frankly I don't remember much of my early wants, except that I dwelt in externals). Nevertheless, Barb may be right: James is more than just a boy-toy. James is also interesting because he has a touch of the skepticism and 'Up Yours!' attitude of a contemporary who came to fame later, the early John McCain (as depicted in biographies with subtitles such as Man of the People and An American Odyssey).

With James, quickly we get beyond talk about the weather. The snow has stopped here, but it's still cold, and James says he doesn’t go out anymore unless he really wants to. He adds that he feels “cheerful” but not “optimistic” about being here. We’ll see if that is a distinction without a difference. Couldn't he be at least cautiously optimistic?

James says he’s seen some squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, and other small animals rummaging around outside. “That’s a sign of a healthy neighborhood, but do your neighbors try to poison them?” James seems skeptical when Barb says “No.”

James insists that he always liked mixing it up with folk who are not actors or directors. “It’s especially nice to meet people who could be schmucks but who turn out to be mostly normal.” Oh oh, tonight Barb and I will have to be mostly normal.

James says he’s interested “in seeing how people live these days.” Barb takes him on a tour of the house, the whole house.

I hear them now, down in the basement. She’s handing him a large, green, and slightly used ashtray from the ‘50s. It’s made out of plastic, has astrological signs around its circumference, and is not “us.” It’s our most unforgettable wedding gift, stored on an old shelf for moments like these. James agrees it’s not quite right as an ashtray, but adds that everything about life is not quite right anyways.

As we join the others, Rick is saying he has had several dreams lately about the U.S. election. As November approaches, he expects to have more. Once Chris Peters asks, Rick confesses that "I had favored John and Elizabeth Edwards, like other low-income white males." What brought me around, I supplement, was the Edwardses' strong call to fix U.S. health care for the less well-off.

Several friendly minutes later after a guest supports John McCain, James Dean flashes a smile and points to the plaid shirt Rick is wearing and asks, “I know it’s rude to go after what people wear at a party…” (Dramatic pause.) “but Rick, isn’t that the same plaid shirt you were wearing 35 years ago?” It is.

I mention that “all lonely,” un-walled and un-hung picture on the floor upstairs. “Well, I like old things,” Rick says. “The shirt’s seen better days, but it's comfortable. I only wear it two or three times a year.” (Not so dramatic pause) “It doesn’t smell bad, does it?”

James inhales and shakes his head no, saying “Everybody's entitled to a piece of clothing that's like a security blanket...Rick, you’re fun to rib.” I remind myself that Rick takes ribbing better now than he did 40 years ago when he was a driven Folklorist.

Chris says he has been to parties where, in addition to very old and very casual clothes, people dance on tabletops wearing lampshades on their heads. That is not my image of society in Seattle, Washington.

Rick gets up to fetch everyone's drinks. Party-wise, I think we are almost in second gear.

Danica Patrick is so young, so thin, so chic. I love her dress’s satin ruffles and its movements, even its soft noises. I tell her she looks nice. She moves close and confides, “I can look like this anytime I’m willing to put in the time it takes to get ready.” I know whereof she speaks: it can take us women an hour or, whereas guys can get ready in less than five minutes. They have it so easy.

Although casual, Chris conveys energy, as if life is a mathematical equation that measures how much one can accomplish each day. I have confidence in Chris’s sense of confidence...

Decked-out in a tux and evincing the presence of a Master, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is lengthy and firm in shaking everyone’s hands. He looks fit, like he spends at least half-hour a day on an exercise bike. Dietrich says that he has a musician son, a cellist and conductor, who’s Kenny Chesney’s age.

Anna Amalia steps up to welcome Dietrich and later Kenny Chesney as if she is tonight’s hostess. The Duchess passes out wine spritzers and the carrot-stick appetizers that Barb obviously had made. Carrot sticks are what the weight-conscious Kenny had requested when Barb conference-called Dietrich and him last month.

Anna’s hyper-activity prompts Dietrich to whisper to me, by way of explanation if not justification, that “In old age, you shouldn’t abandon that which is most important to you.” Surely as the evening progresses, Anna and our guests will not abandon their important art either. We hope they'll sing some, but (as artists do) they’ll leave us wanting more.

It develops that Kenny came to the art of music in Tennessee at age 19, when his mother gave him a guitar. On the other hand, both of our Germans declare they’ve been hard-wired for music almost from infancy, both also encouraged by their moms. Kenny and especially Dietrich seem impressed that one of Barb’s great-grandfathers used to sing lieder around his parish house. (That’s the great-grandfather/reverend who left his family to run away with the choirmaster.)

For everyone's info, and as Anna modestly seems to shrug off my data, I spell out that our Duchess played the harpsichord, violin, and flute.

Nope, I have not come correct, for it turns out that too was not this Anna Amalia right here. Instead, the three-instrument lady was the Prussian Princess. Curiously, tonight's Anna feels compelled to add, perhaps out of regal competitiveness, that her aunt's marriage was quickly annulled. Our Duchess Anna here acknowledges that she too was into music and that she too largely lived single -- but as a dowager, her royal husband having died two years into their marriage.

The present Anna became Regent for her infant son. “With prudence,” she administered the duchy for 17 years, strengthening (as she notes) its resources and diplomatic relations. This Anna was independent enough to entertain all the literary and musical artists she wanted.

Was her Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach a great state, or what?

No way do I intend to reduce good-looking women to objects of sexual desire, but let me state that such women are a happy part of culture, as is the freedom to look at their goodness. When eyeballing such women for the first time, some chaps immediately check out their teeth or their legs or their breasts or their bums (if that isn't too 1940s a term). I focus on their faces. Just so you know, I go for quick eye contact, not possession. And when I'm around town with Barb, usually I restrain myself -- out of love for my wife, I forego out-and-out staring at every beautiful face.

So let me just say that Perween’s face has presence -- worldliness, supple smile, energy level, air of intelligence and interestingness, comfort in her skin, intensity in eyes. She looks great in a sari. South Asian women dress more colorfully than North American women. I ought to get Barb a sari.

Barb brings out the appetizers, crab Rangoon and oysters Rockefeller. Amid pauses, interrupted sentences, glances towards, and glances away, the conversation veers to national sports in Perween Warsi’s native land. When Perween remarks that India won a slew of Olympic Golds in international field hockey, Jackie Robinson slaps his palms together. His older brother Matthew had won a silver-medal at Berlin’s Olympics in ‘36, finishing 0.4 seconds behind Jesse Owens.

Jackie says his brother told him about the Olympic awesomeness there of Major Dhyan Chand, a.k.a. “The Wizard.” In the 1930s’ Games, Chand easily was the world’s most awesome center-forward in field hockey. Renowned for his brilliant stick-work and goal-scoring. Officials at the Amsterdam and Tokyo Olympics were suspicious: they confiscated and disassembled The Wizzard's stick, checking for magnets and special glue. Fruitlessly.

Jackie’s says that he’d heard that at the Berlin Olympics, Hitler was pissed that his “racially superior” home team was thrashed 8-1 by the team from India. Chand scored 6 of the goals. According to Perween, “Hitler relented. He offered Chand a Field Marshall’s rank in the Nazi army if he’d settle in Germany. “And Chand refused,” Jackie nods.

Perween announces that cooking was one of Chand’s favorite hobbies. For family and friends, the field-hockey legend would prepare fish, mutton, and halwa dripping with ghee (spelling?). “Chand had this habit of drinking milk while standing up. He thought that sent vitamins straight to his body system.”

Unlike Chand, cooking is not my thing. Now, however, when I come back to the group having popped two bottles of red wine into the fridge for the next 10 to 20 minutes, I inject a brag: the soup we’ll be having tonight is one I made. Tonight it’s potato soup with smoked salmon relish. I’d read that Bangladeshi, like our still-absent guest Muhammad Yunus, are partial to fish.

When I come out of the toilet, folk have moved to the living room. As far as I can figure, they are discussing the apt disposal of excreta. Proper disposal, it appears, can reduce diarrhea by 40 percent. Hand-washing helps further.

Frankly, I’m surprised the conversation has taken this turn. Not that the sanitizing of excrement is unmentionable in polite circles, it’s just that the subject is unexpected.

A little sheepish, I sit down beside Jackie Robinson. “Hey guys, look, I washed my hands.” I’m not sure Perween Warsi is responding to me when she says, “You need to be positive, especially when things go wrong.” I haven’t the foggiest how or if that maxim ties into what they’ve been saying.

Muhammad Yunus continues holding forth: “A latrine is a kind of rare commodity in the villages. It’s not available, so people go out in the open. Right from the beginning, we introduced one practice... If you are becoming a Grameen Bank member, one of the first things you do as a show of your good faith in Grameen Bank, is to dig a hole. And from now on, you’ll use the hole as your latrine.

“In the beginning, there was a lot of opposition to it. People would complain, ‘It smells. Why should we do it in one place when we can do it everywhere?’ We explained the risk of doing it everywhere, how that spreads diseases, and so on…But we promoted that this was the way you joined Grameen Bank…

“A few years later, I was visiting a village…a woman rushed at me and hugged me, and saying something…I couldn’t understand… In Bangladesh, a woman hugging a man in front of everybody is quite a scene. So I was feeling embarrassed… but she wouldn’t let me go. She’s still saying something in the local dialect that I can’t understand. [Then a local colleague interpreted the woman’s words:] ‘You are a great savior. You saved women from the punishment of Hell.’

“I said, ‘What does it mean? How did I save women from the punishment of Hell?’ [The interpreter] explained, ‘Because of those latrines that we built, because you insisted on it…Look, men can do it anytime they want, day and night, but women had to wait until the darkness of night. No mater what problem she has, she couldn’t do it anywhere because women are not allowed to do it. Now she can do it anytime she wants.’”

“I looked at her, and it really gave me something to think about. I said, ‘We argued about the latrines and so on the health grounds. We never even realized what a difference it makes, what kind of impact it makes on women in a society that restricts them from coming out of the house, and what a punishment it is for that person.”

My wife looks like she too wants to hug Muhammad. In front of everybody.

A ladybug crawls across the floor. Barb scoops it up and takes it outside.

I feel back into the conversation, and digress aloud with a years-ago tale our kids tell about how, once when driving them to a game somewhere, Barb saw an old turtle starting to cross a certain road at Okeson's Place. Barb got out of our car, blocking traffic both ways, and carried this member of a turtle family to the other side. When she rejoined the kids in the car, she had scratches on one hand. Barb never mentioned that to me, I never noticed any scratches or heard about any infections, and the story may only be apocryphal.

Lately, at Okeson's Place, I have noticed a new sign installed by the Highway Department: an icon of a turtle followed by 'Xing.'