Please do not be as dismissive of Oxford as Rick. The place has nurtured so much.

Besides, I have lined up a Great from there as one of next month's guests.

I am going to bed.

We chaps haven't exactly thought of ourselves as creating ”composites,” but we all admit we're “in the composite business.” Tim Berners-Lee mentions (actually, re-mentions) the important theoretical work by Vannevar Bush, a predecessor of his at M.I.T. on storing information based on associations.

That's a killer first name, Van-ne-var. A kick to roll off the tongue. What if we'd named a son Vannevar? Would he have gone to M.I.T., and now roll around Technology all day?

Jack Kiley backs the idea of science as a composite, though his words are sort of boilerplate flat: “I’m grateful to the innovative thinkers who came before me, and I admire the innovators who have followed.”

Our guests’ easy consensus is that innovative thinking is a composite with something extra that turns out to be useful. Everyone goes along, sort of, with that definition, the better to get along with each other across the rest of the evening. We're not seminar-exact.

As our little supper party winds down, Lisa Kudrow vouches that everyone appreciates Barb’s work making our meal and post-prandial snack. "Her time in the kitchen has meant she’s had to miss some of tonight’s conviviality, yes? I get the impression Barb want to be more in the midst of dining-room things?"

Oh-Oh.

“Sure do,” my wife jumps at Lisa's lead, weary of having to ask us to speak louder when she's in the kitchen. Like her father the doctor, this Lisa woman is interested in curing long-term headaches.

Because cheese is traditionally absent from Chinese diets, we hosts are audacious enough to want to cosmopolitan-ize the President. Tonight, from an online recipe, I’ve prepared chicken and wild mushroom broth with cheddar cheese wontons. They go over fine.

When Barb speak of imported-from-China foods that she buys at our local market, Hu Jintao casually mentions that he’s cancelled his country’s agriculture tax. As I understand it, that step reduced the urban/rural economic divide and somewhat whittled away at China’s income disparities. Hu, who sure is comfortable with statistics, elaborates that just 1 percent of his population control 60 percent of the wealth. By contrast, in the U.S., 5 percent control 60 percent. Hu strikes me as one of those CEOs who believe it’s difficult to manage unless you measure.

Assuming ownership of a radish, Hu argues for recognition of his country’s progress. He assures us that China doesn’t just belch black smokestacks, the favored signs of progress of his predecessor (by 30 years) Mao Zedong. It’s propelling far into the Information Age. Relatively it’s becoming Innovation Country. “Relative to what?” Elisabeth probes -- but politely. She seems like a who-what-where kind of person.

Over quail, “the yield of the hunt” and Lucian Freud’s favorite Western food, Hu says that his young countrymen want to try out the thinking of Westerners like the economist Milton Friedman and the philosopher John Rawls. “Try out Rawls?” Elisabeth Lloyd fiddles with a fork and seems genuinely excited, “As in trying out a political order where liberty and equality are reconciled?” Hu replies with a statesman’s stiffness, “A qualified yes. Our Rawlsians are exploring a middle ground, without arguing for liberty against equality. Our interest is in moral duties and obligations that accord with people’s common idea of modern justice.”

Our company kicks that idea around for a while. Lucian, it evolves, wants "liberty first," prioritizing a society with as much individual opportunity as possible to exploit one's talents and endowments. As vigorously, Barb wants "equality first" in the "shared social space with fellow-citizens." Those differ, amicably enough, in their emphases and on the function of taxes. They do not 'triangulate' to a centrist position. That’s O.K. Somewhat opposing views have been heard and middle grounds not found. In this, I suspect we are unlike Hu's Middle Kingdom today, which after all is collapsing the boundaries between communism and capitalism.

Billy Graham is aware of Bob Geldof’s Christmas song, recalling that the record’s vast earnings were channeled by Bob towards reducing famine among Ethopians. “That’s right, Dude,” Bob says. Bob also has ‘Dude-d’ Rick earlier tonight.

Bob: “I sold DVDs. One of them sold shitloads. The difference is this one kept people alive because of me. The weirdest thing is the carol singers coming round…They don’t know it’s my flat, but they start with “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and then soon they’re into ‘It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid…’ They think it’s as old as ‘Silent Night.’ You go, ‘[Expletive], something really entered the culture.’”

(The realization hits me suddenly: two of our guests are not wearing clothes that fit their ‘brand.’ Bob is decked out in a formal tux, Irish green, but still a tux. Joan of Arc is indulging her inner rock star, wearing Led Zeppelin-inspired velvet pants. Billy, however, conforms to his image: he is all-American in colors, with a power-blue suit, red tie, and white handkerchief in his jacket.

(Rick is in his turtle-neck mode; he got that gray sweater for Christmas. Oh, how he resisted my buying it for him -- regularly these days, we squabble about whatever clothes I buy him. He thinks elders do not need anything new. And me? I am in a powder-blue pants-suit…These days it is hard to find nice dresses in stores, so practically every woman I know goes around in pants. I predict dresses will come back again as the woman’s brand.)

While I have been appraising everyone’s outfits, tonight’s talk has veered. The topic has shifted, from sales of Bob’s Christmas records to other aspects of Africa, including the terror this week in Kenya and the ongoing genocide in Darfur. I am surprised to learn that evangelicals have taken a key role in fighting poverty, AIDS, malaria, and climate change. Globally, not just in Africa.

Then we flip back to how Bob led Live Aid’s televised concert in 1985. Somebody mentions how it raised $84 million for starving and dying in Ethiopia and how, at Bob’s behest, 60 musical acts played for free.

Bob is aghast that, even after that concert and assorted other charity stints, just as many are hungry in Africa as before. In some places, more.

Not to miss the moment, Billy gently is saying that people instinctively know, and feel uneasy, about the world’s present inequities. Poverty impedes access to -- here, Billy easily cites the usual sectors (health, education, et al.)

Saying something in an earnest manner can help convince others, and so Rick looks terribly earnest as he lays out what he admits is a cliché. "Yet it's still true: $160 billion, less than a tenth of the cost of the total budget for the Iraq War, could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, and make huge leaps in the battle against AIDS."

Bob asks Rick for the source of that $160-billion statistic. When Rick gets red-faced and embarrassed that he cannot recall, I back up my husband, citing an economist’s blog we both read. (We spouses have to look after each other. But it would require more than $160 billion annually to raise global levels, would it not?)

Joan observes that more aid does not always lead to more development and therefore less poverty.

Bob's chagrin is the enormous Live Earth pop concert in the Summer of ‘07, an event that many people thought he had put together. Bob says he would have only organized Live Earth if he could have gone on stage and announced "concrete environmental measures from the American presidential candidates, Congress or major corporations… Everybody's known about that [greenhouse effect] problem for years. We are all [expletive] conscious of global warming."

I have a chagrin to share too, and when it is my turn to speak, I sound off like a lawyer writing a threatening letter, i.e., I am "adamant and irrevocably in opposition towards African rulers who are more interested in their own welfare than their people’s. Corrupt elites in Africa, you better watch out." (Bob’s mention of Christmas lyrics somehow has got me retrieving that ‘watch out’ line from “Santa Claus is coming to town.”)

At some point at other dinner parties elsewhere tonight, I imagine other diners also are verbally smiting their enemies, hips and thighs.

I glance over now at two in front of me, Joan and Billy. They do not look vengeful, not at all. So I need to qualify what I said about other dinner parties: a portion of diners everywhere, not all, are verbally smiting villainous characters.

One thing is unnerving me, and that is the dynamic between Billy and Bob. They are making cracks about each other, only a very few of which I have noted here (too off-putting) or laughed at (too weird, not ha-ha). Maybe I am over-reacting, but the edge of their comments strikes me as mean-spirited. Oddly enough, from their body language, neither is particularly bothered. It is almost as if they are masochists.

To quote somebody (I do not remember who) quoting Yul Brynner quoting Oscar Hammerstein quoting the Teacher Anna Leonowens quoting the King of Siam, “Is a puzzlement.”

Let me tell you, however: at dinner parties, women do not snipe at each other like that.

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.

During our tour, James Dean is impressed that our great room/open kitchen has replaced our formal dining room.* James is unaware that such restyled spaces are common these days. Nor does he truly grasp the role that feminism has played in this domestic reconfiguration. James looks uncertain as I bring him up-to-date on this aspect of modern North American women.

Boiled down, my thesis is that the sisterhood no longer wants to be servants in their own homes. We have had it with carting foods back and forth from our kitchens to separate dining rooms. It is not fair for us to absent ourselves from other diners, whether family members or guests. Kitchen parties are ‘in.’

“I like the way you let it all hang out,” says James, waving at the dirty dishes, pots, and measuring cups, looming on our countertop and horribly visible from the dining table.

By our fridge, James asks if he can have some milk “to coat my stomach if we’re going to do some serious drinking.” He chugalugs straight out of our big carton of 1 percent skim, wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve. The only other person I have seen drink straight from a pitcher is one of Rick’s colleagues. He was on a panel at a conference and he did not dribble like James does now.

Thank goodness our second floor approaches tidiness. The bed is made. No underwear is on the floor. He does not notice the cobwebs in the corners.

In Rick’s den, James bends over to study the five people huddled together in our family portrait, one son with braces showing. That photograph sits upright on the floor because we have no place to hang it. James says he likes it down there, “all lonely.” The picture dates back in the 1970s. James says he does not have such an artifact of his family. That comment hits me as a little self-pitying, but then James puts his aloneness in context: “I was a child of the '50s, in shows that treated the family as a tragic crossroad. That was just the Zeitgeist." He stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray he's been carrying.

I realize that actors seldom resemble the roles they play, yet I had anticipated more histrionics, more soulfulness from him. My impression is that James is not as vain or showy as Rick thought he would be. Also on the positive side, he inquires about our family and is a good listener.

James, I am learning, can be something of a joker. Like when he sees that I see the bottom of a T-shirt sticking out of one of Rick’s bureau drawers: “Don’t worry,” James deadpans, tugging out the bottom of the T-shirt he is wearing, “messiness is part of the human condition.” He peeks into our medicine cabinet and gives a vocal lift to “Ah-hah,” as if he expects to find shelves of Viagra. He congratulates us on having toilet tissues that can be pulled down from the top -- "You'd be surprised how many families have to reach around under the roll."

If this playful young man can keep his wistfulness in check, he should put a little salt into our evening -- or so I tell myself as we move back toward the LR....

* BACKDATE: For more on our kitchen/dining room makeover, see the final posts
here.

("I greet you warmly," were the opening words of then-Governor Earl Warren in 1948 at the Republican National Convention. He was broadcasting from an auditorium without air conditioning. I liked his double meaning and although my contexts have differed from his that night, those words have stuck with me: I've since used them as my signature 'howdy' thousands of times.)

So I go out to Anna Amalia for my little meet & greet spiel.

Arriving in a stately Mercedes-Benz, she has not kept us waiting after all. I hadn't known that M-Bs were used as taxis. Ever.

Befitting the royal family that Anna married into in 1756 (that’s not a typo), she’s bejeweled and be-gowned. She is of a certain age. I'm reminded of a summer day by the scent of her perfume.

At first, Anna acts as if I’m another just-arriving guest. When I say that I'm her co-host, she winks and sizes me up as ‘My Lord,” as if to give attention to my “Estate.” Once inside our pad -- it's not grand, no vaulted ceilings or wow-inducing staircases, for instance -- she no longer "My Lord(s)" me.

Returning the kindness of our invitation, Anna has brought a cabbage casserole for us and special meat bones for our white-haired dog ‘Presto,’ which she pronounces with a rolled r as in Priesto. He responds to her language of food.

Right away, with a glance here, a head toss there, the lady exudes good will.

I show Anna into our dinner party’s staging area, which she dubs the ‘Conservatory.’ What da? it’s only a small living/sitting/meeting room. It is well-lit, however. We figure that will make everyone feel 'up.' Anna, who lived without electrification, is fascinated.

Anna likes our positioning of chairs in a circle near the harpsichord, the better to spur music and music-talk. Experienced in hosting musicians, she says she particularly craves harpsichord proximity. Anna, it appears, is less partial to piano chords, and so I feel vindicated: Barb and I had contemplated clustering chairs tonight in our dining-kitchen space ‘round the battered upright piano that we bought third or fourth-hand back in 1974 for $200. (Our daughter was supposed to learn how to play it. Piano-playing is another skill I once wished that I had.)

(Hope you don’t mind all these flashbacks. As they say, isn’t Memory, Life?)

Barb joins us from the kitchen and to my surprise the two women shake hands indifferently, warily. From the way she holds herself, Anna slights -- or seems chilly towards -- Barb. What gives?

What's not to like about the woman I love? Does aristocrat Anna have some sort of radar that enables her to discern and disagree with Barb's feminist goals, e.g., better wages and benefits for working-class and middle-class women in the retail and health-care sectors? Does Anna somehow sense Barb’s irreverence towards ruling classes and political families? To cut to a really core belief, does our rich guest intuit (very mystically) that Barb interprets the Bible partly in terms of its suggestions for the 'good of the poor and marginalized'? At bottom do these two women have rival world views?

Where are Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Kenny Chesney anyway?

While driving here tonight, Perween Warsi and I had developed a certain camaraderie. Given that Rick and Jackie Robinson also seem to have developed that human connection, I grow emboldened. Current events are likely to crop up, and I hope we will not be reduced to talking pointlessly about vice-presidential possibilities in the States. Perween does not wish to talk about today's "horrible" stock market fall. She made that clear on our drive here.

“We’re all want to do racial and gender justice," I open. "But which animosity do you think has been more oppressive in the Democratic primaries? Racism or sexism? Both involve some fear of the other, the new.”

Right off, Rick attempts to add ageism to the mix of prejudices. He mentions jibes about John McCain’s 70 years. Rick wants people to recognize that septuagenarians like he and John can get out of bed in the morning, can get dressed, can have a life.

Jackie points to some anti-Muslimism in the presidential campaign too, even though no candidate is one. Religion, in the guise of Reverend Wright's televised sermons, may be reason enough for some whites not voting for his former parishioner Obama. Jackie also nudges us to consider the import of Obama's gender. "That may have been a sexist advantage for him. Likewise, it's possible Hillary’s race was an advantage for her."

Perween agrees, but first she wants to get some things off her chest about the England in which she settled 40 years ago. There were the ghettos, the inferior schools, and those “Go Home” messages aimed at non-whites. After 9/11, there was increased bias against “foreign” races and religions. Perween is concerned a pool of ethnic minority citizens does badly in the “marketplace as compared to mainstream society.”

Jackie asks her if Britain's prisons are as full of blacks as America's.

To myself, I think that being Britain’s first- or second- richest Asian woman must make Perween feel she is at home, as do those two Orders of the British Empire (MBE, CBE) that Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, conferred on her before having lunch together. I sense that even although Perween may not have read Simone de Beauvoir’s foundational tract on feminism, she heartily sees herself as her husband’s equal.

At a soirée, spurs are not won by saying the obvious. Tonight the most obvious campaign point probably is Rick's, who helps move us back to American politics. That guy who held up that "Iron My Shirt" sign at a Clinton event "was a jerk." We are such pitiful conspiracy theorists, though, that we consider whether that guy was Clinton plant, provoking sympathy for a woman who was smart and competent.

Perween’s across-the-Atlantic impression is that putting aside paramount concerns like the war, racism trumped gender in America’s discrimination sweepstakes. She attributes that to 1) racial profiling, 2) police brutality against blacks, and 3) discomfort in certain quarters with presidential candidate Obama’s “blood lines,” affecting his ability to win over white voters. Granted, only Perween's last point bears directly on the just-concluded primaries, but a host can not very well police a guest who goes off-topic. And anyhow, who am I to delimit our topics? And with regard to blackitty black blacks, maybe profiling and police brutality do factor somehow into the political scene?

Dear Rick is still thinking baseball. He says America has come grandly far from the ‘50s when guys in the bleachers mocked Jackie by wearing mops on their heads. And when Jackie was at bat, members of the Phillies team tossed watermelons and black cats onto the field. Jackie’s view of that era’s national sport is rueful: “No black was given the chance to manage a ball club or to run its front office.”

Jackie says that, until recently, he had not given credence to a gender barrier for progressive leadership in the America. After all, his wife Rachel has been a working Director, not merely a symbol, for the Jackie Robinson Foundation. “Education is our pitch,” Jackie says of his Foundation that collects and gives money to needy members of minority groups. He is so proud, rightly proud, of that Foundation that I find myself almost hoping he will give us its web address and toll-free phone number.

Hillary's withdrawl is expected tomorrow and Jackie’s second thought is that sexism has been "the colder wind." He perceives a woman losing out to a black, his fellow-Americans having a problem with women as leaders of grit and iron. He did not care for the media featuring photos that showed her looking weak and vulnerable. She deserved a lot more respect.

Perween surprises with a Hollywood ‘take’ on the campaign. She suggests that Hillary C. -- with her mantra that she was a fighter to the end -- patterned herself on Million Dollar Baby. Specifically, she resembled the boxer that Hillary Swank played. The champ of the working-class, striving to make it in a man’s world.

Jackie is bothered that while other nations have had effective Prime Ministers who were female, 1) put-downs are common against a woman’s plausible campaign to succeed 43 white males in the American Presidency, 2) male supporters of the bi-racial Obama often are facilely portrayed as gender-neutral, while 3) women are damned if they vote for Hillary (“gender bias”) or damned if they back Obama (“no gender pride or solidarity”).

One of this blog’s first commenters, back last year, requested that we invite a poverty fighter. Acting on that suggestion, we invited Muhammad Yunus, but he has not yet presented himself. He could certainly add his two cents worth -- or his $27 worth on sexism or racism in a poverty context. Maybe that will come up later.

Before we move on, tired of this topic and of one movement overwhelming another, we reach something of a consensus: when race or gender cards are played, attention gets diverted from candidates’ skills, outlooks, dispositions, platforms, and track records. Well, if that is not much of a bright resolution, so be it.

Through all this, Rick and I cannot hide which candidate we are rooting for. We have come to identify with our candidate so much that we worry about certain friends of ours. How can Margo and Bob stay together when they are so split over which one to favor?

Back to you, Rick. I cut out for the kitchen, still in earshot at first. I overhear Perween pondering if “a female-led business has to be better than its male competitors to fare equally well in the marketplace.” Jackie speculates that testosterone levels increase as you progress up the business. Rick, in your next post, please jot down what else they say about this...

“How many blacks have you invited to supper here, Rick?” We are not jolted by Jackie Robinson’s equal-opportunity challenge. As the son of a sportswriter, Rick knew Jackie used to chide journalists in the ‘60s with ”How many blacks on your sports staff? I thought so.”

Rick has no rhetorical acrobatics to spin. Blacks have been under-represented at our table.

“Jackie,” my hubby mumbles, finishing a chew, “give me a break. I was there with you on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Actually Rick did not see Jackie there in August ‘63, but we know the guy was there, a friendly face in the friendly crowd.

“That morning," Rick resumes," I remember Nancy Dickerson on the morning news."

Perween Warsi and Muhammad Yunus do not seem to recognize the name, and so I put in a good word for her: "Nancy broke a glass ceiling as CBS-TV's first Washington reporter. She was a Washington Insider."

"Anyway," Rick takes back the floor, "Nancy discouraged viewers from walking anywhere near the route from Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial. Trouble was expected. A quarter million people and I went anyhow. We passed thickets of FBI agents snapping our pictures.

“I hung out there for five or six hours, listening to singers like Mihalia Jackson, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Speakers like Walter Reuther, Ralph Abernathy, and Charleton Heston, who I mis-remembered for years as Burt Lancaster. Plus James Farmer, John Lewis, and other chaps pushing for meaningful civil rights legislation.” Just to pronounce these names brings gravitas to tonight’s party.

“I’d forgotten to wear a hat, and after five hours standing mostly in the sun, around 3:15, I went back to where I was staying. On the evening’s news, I learned about the final speech, the ‘I have a Dream’ one. Greatest speech of my lifetime. Hearing Martin Luther King unfiltered would have been worth a sunburn.”

Jackie is okay with my ramble. He adds that he supported King’s non-violent strategy for achieving equity, just as he respected the mobilizing talents of the ‘60s other charismatic leader of American Negroes, Malcolm X. “When I disagreed with Malcolm’s strategy of hating whites and wresting freedom by any means necessary, black militants labeled me an ‘Uncle Tom.’” Well, I saw through their tactic -- it was a case of 'If you can't play the hockey puck, play the man. If you can't win on the merits of your argument, discredit the person you're arguing with.'..."

Conversation partners shift. Rick ask Perween Warsi about the 20 awards that her foods have won. My ear grows larger for the side talk Jackie Robinson is having with Muhammad Yunus. The American presses for additional details on Grameen’s financing.

“We do get it back,” Muhammad insists. “All told, 99 percent of Grameen’s borrowers have repaid their debt, and the bank makes a modest profit. What we have are ‘solidarity groups,’ informal teams who apply for loans together, act as co-guarantors, and encourage one another to advance economically. Nowadays, 70 percent of the money for business and housing comes from the borrowers themselves: people save their money in Grameen, and they borrow it from there.

”I strongly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we want to [within two generations]…In that kind of world, [the] only place you can see poverty is in the museum. When school children will be on a tour of the Poverty Museum, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhumane condition…”

Jackie resonates to Muhammad’s idea that credit enables a poor person ”to unwrap that gift of one’s self and find out who he is.” The Baseball Hall of Famer reflects, “Have to say that your approach for wealth creation sounds better than mine. After I retired, I started the Freedom National Bank in Harlem. You know, maybe Grameen also beats my company that built houses for low-income families...”