OK, our 'live blogging' begins now. Barb and I offer accounts of breaking news that unfold at our dinner scene. Between food bites, we report observations by our guests. Links are available to our sources (in italicized blue). You can click on the "Comments" button, and please do, leaving remarks that clue us in. That said, valued reader, welcome aboard!

Contrary to what he implied when we invited him by phone, Michael Jordan shows up first. No shock. For basketball practice, he hit the court first too.

Shortly after, I cram the coats of Margaret MacMillan and Tom Hodgkinson into our front closet. Right away, Tom acknowledges that he knows the other two guests are top-notch at their specializations -- yet he’s chosen “to be kind of average at lots of things." With nods and grunts at him, we others respond “Oh?”, “Hmmm!”, and “Is that so?” Within the in-between space of our tiny foyer, what else could we say? Not a promising space to linger and talk about niches of the vocational world.

I lead the group into our living room for appetizers.

Barb and I are uneasy over how the evening is going. Maybe after more of these brushes with greatness, we'll learn to relax.

Margaret and Michael appear approachable and self-assured. And Tom? Well, he's quick to subside into an easy chair, the cushiest one in the room.

Michael Jordan's apricot liqueur is warming. It's a sweet variation of apricot brandy.

Tom Hodgkinson, who once made a few bucks importing absinthe into England during its revival in the '90s, might have preferred drinking that. I look over and see that he's fine with Michael's apricots. Cool. I don't have to mix any drinks.

By now, I would have thought our invited company would have moved on, theme-wise. Yet, curiously, everyone is still chewing the fat about the Allies "settling" the Great War. Talking about that past conflict seems one way to avoid arguing about the current one in Iraq. Or is it?

"Making peace is difficult," Margaret MacMillan judges. "It's hard to hold together coalitions. It's easy I think to get caught up and beguiled by your own power. You sit in a big place like Paris or Washington and you say we can arrange this. I think you sometimes underestimate, powerful people do, just how difficult it is to organize the world."

"That'd be a good course title," I say, grandiosely imagining myself someday taking or someday even leading a seminar on Organizing The World. "Probably, I continue, "there'd be a lot of disputatiousness throughout the class." The only person who reacts positively to my comment is Barb, ever loyal. She gives me a smile -- no, a half-smile.

Not to my credit, most of my historical sense of the Middle East is informed by a few segments of the movie Lawrence of Arabia. With her command of modern history and of contemporary international relations, Margaret easily transcends my feel for the region. Soon she has us geopolitical innocents eating figuratively out of her hands.

For instance, she posits that the major powers, as true "19th century imperialists," treated "the non-European parts of the world in a cavalier and off-hand way, and I think we're still paying for that." That thought leads us to our discussing colonial wars, past and present, Asian and African.

Another of Margaret's examples has the Treaty setting the groundwork for a Jewish homeland and independent state and thereby giving rise to some of today's Mid-East hostilities. Paris's peace-makers "thought the Arabs would give up, they'd move away, they didn't count. And I don't think they thought the Jewish presence in Palestine would develop as quickly as it did."

(To no one in particular, I quote a rabbi friend of mine, the late and much-valued Sol Tanenzapf, about how impoverished Jews in Poland and Russia, along with not-so-impoverished Jews in England, Canada, and the US donated money so land could be bought in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine. There, after following the legal forms for those purchases, Jews could settle, farm, and build houses. Sol said that people forget that Jewish settlers did not take land from anyone. Rather, they purchased it from legitimate owners, albeit in swamps and desert areas that nobody else wanted.

(Barb, who also liked Sol, gives me a hard look. She's surprised by my tangent to the conversation. Or maybe she's surprised that Sol and I had once had that particular exchange since at times I've been empathetic to Palestinians. My understanding is that those Arabs, through Ishmael, also can lay holy claim to lands now occupied by Israelis. God apparently was not into real estate.)

Iraq was another misjudgment of the Versailles gang. Barb cites a recent Op-ed,
here [subscription required], that almost seemed to regret 1) the collapse, after World War I, of the Ottoman Empire and 2) Versailles' subsequent invention of Iraq. The encompassing Ottomans were "Muslim but tolerant with an array of different cultures."

Apparently, on their own without the Ottomans' reconciling routines and without a cohesive national identity, the Shites, Sunni, and Kurds of the new Iraq ultimately proved inept at coalition-building. Enter dictators, resolving by force the contradictions of warring sects -- until Saddam's fall.

Margaret remarks that Versailles peace-makers thought Iraq was filled with folk who didn't know their own minds. "I'm not surprised that Iraq never really worked as a country because it was made up of all these disparate pieces and people who'd never had any shared history. I mean, yeah, not surprisingly, they didn't hang together terribly well."

Tonight, Barb’s been clattering back and forth to/from our kitchen, puttering around fixing different courses, parsley here, fresh raspberries there.

(Agreed, I should help more than simply making soup for these shindigs. I ought to be like our gallant son-in-law, cooking meals some nights. Maybe all nights.)

Barb now is positioning herself as the evening's promoter of Tim Berners-Lee’s work. Clearly she’s googled-up on his achievements. Before him, the Internet had millions of documents secreted away on servers round the world, accessible only through user-unfriendly lingo.

Seems Barb's eager to know about inventors’ minds, how they tick. “Tim, did you deliberately set out to create simple systems with simple rules that could be democratically decentralized and acceptable to all? For you, was it ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’? Or was it more exploratory, like ‘Ready, Fire, and then Aim’?” (Barb's curiosity is but one her gifts.)

But then, before Tim can answer, Barb's querying again. (Meantime, nostalgia jolts me. Somehow, Barb's question-per-minute style tonight is reminding me of Dr. I.Q., on old-time radio.)

Barb: “Tim, did you really enable the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, Hypertext Mark-up Language, a client interface for your World Wide Web, and" -- here Barb blinks -- "the very first server to store Web pages and dish them out on users' demand?"

"I have a related question," Lisa Kudrow piles on the much-questioned chap. "In the computer world, Tim, it's difficult to tell who really is the pioneer and who is the developer. Various people may contribute to the important idea’s development -- but the prizes, patents, and profits go to just a handful. Is that how it is?"

Tim wears a grimace that might mean “C'mon now, ladies, no one subscribes anymore to the lone-gunman theory of technological inspiration.”

Jack Kiley jumps in to emphasize that the women's grasp of who-does-what is “good enough.” Many women don’t realize, he adds, that sometimes in some spheres these days, “good enough” is all that’s required.

For Tim, however, Jack’s endorsement is not good enough. He starts to list a crowd whose work he’s drawn upon – Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, and Paul Barran for coming up with packet-switching, Paul Mockapetris (sp?) for Domain Name Service, Dave Somebody at MIT, and Van/Vann Somebody Else also at MIT.

I bring up the developer of the e-Bay auction. Tim buys online but, as far as I can tell, Tim doesn't see himself standing conceptually on that chap's shoulders. Jack refers to the creators of Facebook, Napster, and the Electronic Readers coming on the market this month. "Software is still a hotbed for young conceptual innovators."

As you can see, our dinner-party conversations sprawl. They’re anything but systematic or systemic.

Tim must be satisfied, I remark, to have invented e-mail. And then I trot out how I first went online, in the mid- ‘90s. I share that story because, well, because Barb's food is fantastic, and consequently we all feel warm, cozy, relaxed, and open to swapping autobiographies.

Actually, it was not until the ultra-late '90s that I first e-mailed. Tonight's group, though, is so tech-savvy that a confession of late adoption would be humiliating.

Here's the scoop. Years ago, during the business meeting of an international conference with 70 of my peers in Folklore, a friend (Ed) stood up to comment on an agenda item. He said our organization couldn't start an electronic newsletter -- because “a couple people, like Townsend” (me) "do not e-mail."

Tonight Jack guffaws as I tell our guests about what happened next at that international conference: I said, “Come on, fellow-Folklorists, surely the number is larger than just a ‘couple.’ Let's have a show of hands of all who are not into e-mail?” Confidently I raised my hand, the brave truth-sayer fearlessly contesting widely accepted falsehoods.

No other hand shot up, not one.

Next day, I sent my first-mail. In due course too, the Folklorists started an electronic newsletter.

Tim Berners-Lee says his “Aha” moment came to him while working after Oxford at CERN, a Swiss nuclear physics institute. ”I needed something to organize myself. I needed to be able to keep track of things and nothing out there – none of the computer programs that you could get, the spreadsheets and the databases, would really let you make this random association between absolutely anything and absolutely anything.”

Out of that need, and from CERN’s corporate wish to maintain coherent documentation among teams of visiting high-energy physicists, Tim began cobbling together a free, global database of information. He devised underlying protocols that ordinary folk could key into. Now, almost 20 years later, Tim's dismayed to see the Web corrupted by porn websites, spam, cyber-bullies, potentially dangerous chat rooms, and hackers who steal fortunes or top secrets.

Because I checked out a porno site, once it was -- with my Folklorist’s curiosity and academic interest in the Dionysian -- I let out a smirk. Does Barb notice?

Naturally, I have to mount my hobbyhorse spurred on by Lu Freud and Elisabeth Lloyd. We question the role that China has played in diplomatically shielding Sudan's leaders at the UN Security Council and arming factions in Darfur -- this in return for oil leases there needed to fuel Hu Jintao’s economy. I say that the UN's new peace-keeping force of 9,000, which was deployed earlier this week, probably is not numerically or logistically strong enough to make a difference, is it? That 'is it?' is my little inducement for Hu to begin making much more of a difference, maybe by providing helicopters and providing Chinese peace-keepers there. (We use whatever weapons we have to animate others to change, yes?)

('Weapons' is not the right word here.)

Hu assures me that his nation's influence on Sudan is limited and that the government in Khartoum is backed by other nations. China is trying, however, to be a responsible stakeholder in Darfuri affairs by backing UN and African Union forces to finally, finally end the dreadful fighting there. I want to ask about this week's tribal fighting in Kenya, but frankly I do not know if China has a presence there, as elsewhere in Africa where it has been cutting investment deals in the energy and finance sectors.

As graciously as possible and apropos of nothing in particular that I recall, Hu later says that China is reclaiming its past as the dominant power in Asia -- for instance, it is aligning itself with its neighbors through loans and slashed tariffs. China, in quest of security in its region, also is cooperating with the West to woo North Korea away from its high militarism.

Hu further asserts that his countrymen will transcend limits of their pasts. Curious. No one had said tonight that today's Chinese were copiers, but Hu still feels obliged to say that increasingly the Chinese are original in their intellects, technologies, and standards. “You’ll see," he moves closer to Rick to predict what he claims is part of the "New Confucian" outlook, "Much as China should accommodate modern science, Confucianism has a distinct lesson for Europe and America. The West will learn from us.”

Somehow the example of learning that I remember the most, involves fish. Before being served for dinner, China's fish increasingly are being raised in irrigated rice fields. Fish droppings then are recycled as natural fertilizers, a step which in turn boosts rice production and lowers usage of synthetic fertilizers. Meantime, as fish eat weeds and insects, the demand is cut for pesticides.

Hu's example sweetly plays to my green prejudices...

Greetings everyone. Although it’s hard to take notes while participating in a dinner party, Barb and I will take turns to keep you informed. Occasionally the contents of our laptops may overlap because the two of us process our party’s data separately.
_____

When Joan of Arc turns up 15 minutes early along with her 5-month old kid named Francois, Barb and I are surprised (we didn’t know about him). Let's not mince words: I'm pissed and tempted to take my samari stance and shout "Back Off, Interloper." Tonight’s conversations will have to focus on the kid or on pro-life vs. choice issues. Further complication: we no longer have rattles or toys around the house to amuse him. And sleeping arrangements for the kid will have to be improvised.

Barb's happier about the uninvited guest. After sitting beside him coo-cooing, she leaves the room to find something crib-like. Perhaps there’s a wide drawer upstairs that we can empty, bring down, and use?

Joan and I nibble at talking politics, specifically gossiping over whether today's French President Sarkozy will marry that Italian supermodel. That spills over somehow (don't ask) to our appraising just-released data on fertility rates in the native lands of our three guests -- France and Ireland (each 1.98) and the U.S. (2.1, the level required to maintain a country's population). Joan attributes recent gains in those rates to French, Irish, and U.S. economies, their influxes of immigrants, and -- in the States -- 2007's chances to use subprime mortgages to buy big houses that can hold greater numbers of babies.

While we’re waiting a while for the other guests, intermittently I keyboard on this laptop. Also I watch the kid, his laugh, and his ‘swimming’ on the floor an inch or two. I find myself waving and smiling at him, saying ‘gitchee-gitchee-goo,’ and, yes, enjoying it all.

Her English is strong.

Joan doesn’t look at all like Ingrid Bergman did in that 1950s movie about her. She’s thinner and darker-haired, with reedy arms. Similar to some folk you meet at parties, Joan comes across as modest, quiet, and sorta out-of-place. She does not seem as cheerful as an American Joan of Arc would be.

To drink, she just wants tap water. It is spiritually and physically nourishing, she says.

I find myself walking back from my initial irk and thinking, ‘You’re likeable enough, Joan.’ Is my enthusiasm too tempered? O.K., I meant to type that Joan’s plenty likeable, eh?

Twice we hear Barb answering the door. At first ring, Francois begins making such a ruckus that Joan doesn’t even look up -- her cuddling isn’t working. Over Francois’s din, I don’t even try to introduce Billy Graham, who's first on the scene. Subsequently, Bob Geldof doesn’t press for her handshake either.

Those two chaps get talking between themselves in a corner of the living room. Bob’s eliciting Bill’s views on the poorest continent. “There’s a side in Africa that’s not written up too much, all kinds of religions,” Billy observes.

Our guests slip into their places with what I hope is a sense of occasion.

Not wanting to ghoulishly remind Joan of fire, at the table tonight I have not set or lit my usual tapered candlesticks.

Rick, my dear mischief-maker, had told me that he intended to ask Bob Geldof to say grace, but now my spouse holds off. Maybe he is wary that Bob may address God as ‘Dude,’ offending sacramental tradition. So it is Billy Graham who says a fast, multi-worded grace and message of comfort, and of course he has a way of delivering it electrically. We are rapt.

It also is the most inclusive invocation that our Shaker dining table has ever witnessed. Billy even conjures blessings for our absent children, Bob’s absent daughters, Joan of Arc’s ward/stepson (?) asleep in the next room, plus Billy’s own children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. It includes Christians, secular humanists, and non-Christians. The seculars and the non-Christians may be going to Heaven too, Billy explains.

Billy’s prayer is so ecumenical, so noble, that afterwards Rick has an opening of sorts to spice things up with a contrast; that’s his curmudgeon ‘thing.’ It is a non-inclusive tale he has picked up in his Folklore research: “Have you heard the one, Billy, about the Catholic Bishop who wanted to support a Baptist counterpart? ‘In the end, we both worship the same God,’ the Bishop says in Rick’s story says, ‘you in your way, and I in His.’”

The groan from Bob is the party's only direct reaction to Rick’s religiously incorrect joke. I understand now that tale ‘works’ better -- if it ‘works’ at all -- in print than in discourse. Rick tried it out on me last night, and I did not anticipate that it would fall flat. Rick had wanted to explore why Minister A can fulminate over Minister B seeing God's ways differently. We thought the joke could launch a conversation about different churches coming to understand their differences, thereafter acting on their commonalities. My conclusion is that there is a time and place to talk about church unity but not here, not tonight.

Only partially daunted, Rick musters his pride and passionately ladles out his yellow mung dal soup. It is the most ambitious soup he has ever made. It is a mix of mung beans, turmeric, ginger, jalapeño, zucchini, chilanto, lemon juice, cumin, coriander, and three curry leaves.

Reminiscing with strangers is never easy. Nevertheless, over our second course (seared sea scallops on baby spinach with crème), once more Bob reaches back in time. In 1957, almost 30 years before his initial Live Aid show at Wembley, Bob says that same stadium was the site of the largest religious gathering in British history. At the time, Bob was only six years old. He was not there then, but he says that it was such a "big deal" that he heard about it. Next, with a melodic ‘Tah Dah,’ Bob points to that event’s central figure, “Billy, come on now, you were all wet, weren’t you?”

Oh my. They are at it again.

Billy bobs his head and beams broadly at the cut. Then there’s something revealing (and surprising to me): in 1957, a driving rain had dampened Billy and his rally. Hence Bob’s ‘all wet’ comment had a basis in fact. The problem, Billy says, was an absence of physical shelter (Billy then slips in the claim that umbrella-like, God provides a spiritual shelter).

Joan of Arc mentions Billy’s belief in Wembley and elsewhere -- that Christ’s salvation alone is the lasting solution to personal and world problems. In pretty much the same words, she also re-scores her earlier point that God is not a metaphor but a living being that affects our day-to-day lives.

Joan and Billy may be at opposite ends of our dining table, using different sets of salt & pepper shakers, but theologically they still seem together.

Billy says that is also the message of salvation that he took to New Orleans after the Katrina hurricane. For him, that visit that was “so emotional that I could not even talk to my wife for a while.”

That wife, a missionary’s daughter, died recently. Joan is the first among us to express condolences over Billy’s loss. For talking with surviving spouses, I have yet to learn how to turn my declaration of sympathy into some useful purpose. Hence tonight, when Joan mentions Ruth Graham’s passing, I keep my condolence short. Bob is better at voicing regret than I am…

If you ever want to learn about modern crusading, you should consider our two male persuaders.

During June 2005, Billy Graham ran another big-tent revival meeting in Flushing Meadows, New York. It is one that Rick is knowledgeable about. No big rain drenched it, nothing like Woodstock. Although afflicted by prostate cancer, hydrocephalus, and Parkinson’s disease, Billy made it to that event using a walker after hospital stays to repair a broken hip and pelvis. “You did your gig,” Bob says, approvingly. Billy adopts an aw-shucks posture, saying these infirmities keep him humble, helping him” “relate to people who are suffering…[and] in hospitals.”

Billy tells us that at that revival he had hoped to find people whose life could be changed. ““ Anybody that the Lord touches…I believe that while we are holding the meetings, the Holy Spirit is working among certain people.” Billy advises, “We [may] have all the trappings of true faith, but deep inside, we’ve never been born again.” He has preached that message to over 214 million.

Billy indicates that 20 or so years earlier, in order to distance himself from the Religious (political) Right, he had taken liberal stands on the era’s social issues of homelessness, capital punishment, nuclear disarmament, divorce, wayward teens, and the government’s role in eliminating the poverty that compromises social inclusion in the community. In 2005 at New York City, however, Billy only preached the Gospel. Realizing that he could have divided his audiences if he had taken on this era’s hot-button issues -- like abortion, homosexuality, Iraq, social security, and stem-cell research -- Billy says that he left it to “the younger people” to advise more specifically about responsible behaviors in society. He grins toward Bob, and Bob reacts by saying to Billy, “What’s the matter? Are you old or something?”

Billy: “I want to be shallow and say ‘No,’ but when you get to be my age, all of the world is passing you by.”

Like a schoolmaster, Rick is striving to get back on the rails our discussion about addressing global inequities. He does not succeed initially, for Joan coaxes Bob to say more about his Live Aid outreach in 1985 and his subsequent Live 8 concert for the next generation. I do not quite grasp why she has an interest in that, however...

Bob’s initial Live Aid concert took place just six short weeks after a crusade that Billy had, where the closing night saw 100,000 squeezed into New York’s Yankee Stadium in 105-degree heat. Then, 20 years later and in pleasant weather, Bob and musicians in 8 cities held a globally televised concert; 3 billion people tuned in. It was not so much to re-boost awareness of Africa’s problems but to change political policy. Live 8 was, according to our knighted guest, “the sole continent in decline since Live Aid. Why? How long do we seriously want this to continue?”

Thanks to Bob’s lobbying, that year G-8 leaders forgave debts for 14 impoverished nations, affecting 290 million Africans. Or, as Bob claims, those leaders said they would forgive debts. Governments are slithering out of their commitments, double-counting debt relief as parts of their aid budgets. “You ought to get after them Billy,” Bob urges.

Billy says softly, “We all must be doers of the Word.” (“Must,” Billy had emphasized earlier tonight, “is a Scriptural Word.”)

“We all have voices to which we respond,” Joan of Arc interjects. “Every time my voices appeared, I saw blazes of light. They spurred me to get out more. To become involved, you might say, with government.”

Pretty much Joan has been reticent entering the conversation -- much as she had been reticent 575 years ago before embarking on her divine mission. For a time way back then, when supernatural voices first were counseling her to reveal herself as one who could expel the English from her native France, Joan had demurred, saying “I am a poor girl. I do not know how to ride or fight.”

Tonight in our dining area, apparently she wants her fair share of air time, so she sits forward to recall -- all very explicitly for us -- that very time and those very "I am a poor girl” and “I do not know how” statements. From Billy and Bob’s expressions of ‘So What?’, it is obvious they do not have the foggiest about how to interpret this poor curious girl who is claiming to know zilch about riding or fighting. Rick or I have got to step in and clarify where Joan is coming from -- but at this late hour of the party, how do we start?

Using a cloth napkin to wipe from her lips a little baby arugula with warm mushroom and tomato vinaigrette, Joan chooses to unload as the other guests have done. Perhaps she is miffed that she did not have a chance to opine earlier: “I have three Reasons for being here tonight, “One, a change is better than a rest. Two, I’m also a poor cook -- I do not know how to cook or organize a dinner party. Taking care of a child’s demands can turn even a top chef into a loser in the kitchen.”

Compliment accepted, the cook in me sings. Seconds are served, all round.

Do you suppose Joan had a Reason Three for accepting our invitation?

As for questions about Joan’s knowledge about riding and fighting, they slip off our agenda. For now anyway…

For the first half of everyone’s glass of sherry, I resurrect our motif for tonight, proposing a toast to “Life As A Rush.” (I had meant to say “Race,” so I re-toast.) Chris Peters offers the toast for the second half of everyone’s glass: “To Leisure. As they say, it’s not a good life without it.” Ummm, the sherry’s second half tastes better than the first.

Chris says that while working-up Word and Excel at Microsoft, he had no time for basketball, folk-singing, theatre, or indeed for any Leisure at all. Once retired from Microsoft, however, he returned to bowling as an amateur. Then he saw that after 36 years of Saturday afternoons on ABC-TV’’s TV’’s Wide World of Sports, the game’s popularity was dwindling. The PBA league was nearing bankruptcy. Approaching his 40th birthday, he was overtaken by “a very Woody Allen-esque fear of mortality.” So rather than sitting around downing lattes, apparently like a number of Microsoft’s well-heeled alums do, Chris says he found a life-extending part of “what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

That is different from Rick’s approach to his 70th birthday, retirement time. Unfortunately, he had neither an epiphany nor a retirement ‘mentor,’ nor did he replace his social network at work with another one. For the first couple of years, Rick researched our family history, played with his lathe in the basement, and did some fly-fishing. He wanted to help a federal group inventory public statuary in the county, but that fell through. He looked into learning about navigation and renting a sailboat for six months in the Caribbean, but he relinquished that possibility too.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I notice James Dean is buttering-up Danica Patrick’s piece of bread. Danica accepts it, puts it on her side plate, but does not partake. Pity, because it is a delicious and expensive butter from a small local creamery.

Feeling the need to hold up my share of our conversation, I find a time to interject, “Our next-door neighbor grew up with bowling too and still plays with friends who are keglers. They enjoy it almost as much as watching the televised Olympics.”

“Yes, I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Chris says, and I realize that Rick beat me to the punch, mentioning Ned while I showed James the house.

Now Chris is turning to Danica, they are talking about lanes and earned polls, and whether she is stronger on the ovals or the straight courses. Then on his turf, he is saying that it is difficult to bowl precisely on professional ones. That allows me to weigh how a professional lane differs from an amateur one. As well, I turn over in my mind whether Chris's bowlers actually call themselves ‘keglers’…

Toting his guitar, Kenny Chesney has shown up tonight in his sleeveless T-shirt, trademark cowboy hat (which he takes off), and his drawstring pants (which he leaves on). He’s just in from his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In modern terms, Anna Amalia is hardly well-traveled. Tonight she’s curious about Caribbean scents and sounds. In her mind, the Islands have Rome’s bright allure. Anna remembers that Eternal City as enabling her to somewhat escape northern Europe’s gloomy seasons.

She asks Barb if she’s been to Rome. Barb hasn’t. Anna inquires if Barb has been to the Virgin Islands either. Nope. Dangerous trip-whetting questions, those. They manifest little empathy for our budget.

Kenny picks up on the travel theme, regretting that when he tours the U.S., his time is scheduled tightly. The complexity and pace of his mainland life never ceases to amaze him. He digs bringing together the energy of the crowd with the energy of his band. On the road, it’s “about time and place…but down there [on the Islands], you don’t always know what day it is. It’s great.” He invites Anna, and Barb too, to visit sometime and see for themselves. He knows this neat seaside bar where tourists don’t pester for autographs.

Anna says she’d like to take Kenny up on his invitation. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau simple-truths that travel goads one to shed provincial assumptions. "It reminds one what's important globally."

Anna asks if skinny-dipping goes on in and around the Virgin Islands, which she enjoys pronouncing it as ‘Vergin Isles.'

Now exactly where did that question come from? In her day, did she nude-bathe in the Trevi Fountain? Try that at the Trevi now and police will arrest you.

Kenny acknowledges that skinny-dipping is 'in' on the Vergins’ powdery beaches. To keep the conversation afloat, I add that old and creaky as I am, I still feel 'liberated' when swimming free, free at last in warm and sunlit waters, experiencing a sensuality that’s open, confident, respectful, and harmonious with nature.

I don't mind that Barb characterizes my ‘liberation’ at the lakeside cottage that she and I occasionally get to visit. (One of our kids married into a family with that often-empty cottage, and what's wrong with a little nepotism that gives us access?) Her Big Reveal is that I remove my trunks only after I’m in water over my height and can park my suit on a neighbor’s raft. So much for my ‘self-expression.'

Anna laughs and forgives my modesty, saying that we all reflect the time & place where we grew up. Coming of age in the '50s, I was as conforming and other-directed as our decade's organizational men.

My turn to speak: I characterize Barb as indulging my skinny-dipping during the day, but she's never done that herself -- until moonlight. Says it's more romantic then.

So much for sharing the unvarnished details of our sex life.