I am especially interested in that portion of Paris that covers Margaret MacMillan’s great-grandfather, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and his role in peace negotiations.

The story goes that one of my great-grandfathers was a peacemaker too -- within his extended family. My other great-grandfather was a married minister who ran off with his unmarried choir director. I don't mention either great-grandfather's story tonight.

In an aside now, Margaret mentions that once, during a conversation about Art, the graying French Premier Georges Clemenceau showed Margaret’s grandmother (then a young woman) a set of salacious French postcards. We assume the sexual content was slight and not gross, and so that story somehow helps all five of us diners to twig to the frisky Monsieur Clemenceau. He seems more sparky, frankly, than that Metro stop named for him on Paris's Line 1 between Concord and Franklin Roosevelt (Rick's favorite subway stop). (Actually, it's Champs Elysees-Clemenceau, but darn if I can find on this keyboard the accented 'e' for the second 'e' in Elysees.)

Margaret is reflective about U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, "the most complicated" member of the triumvirate crafting the peace. He was “in some ways I think a very good man” with his wildly idealistic 14 Points and his notion of a League of Nations that seemed to promise many people the fulfillment of their dreams. According to our historian, however, Wilson was “humorless, stubborn, and vindictive. If someone disagreed with him, he thought there was something wrong with that person, morally wrong, and it made him a bad politician and he was self-righteous and he had this assumption, which was absolutely foolish, that he understood the people of the world better than anyone else did. And so whenever someone disagreed, he said, 'Well, the people are with me.'"”

With opinion pollsters around these days, I say Presidents have to be a lot more prudent in staking that populist claim.

According to Margaret, with the final decisions for Europe, Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George did "almost as good as could be done because the conditions for peace just weren’t there. It was impossible to draw boundaries that would satisfy people in the middle of Europe.” In dismantling bankrupt empires and thus sketching a still-troubled part of our modern world, in creating new nations like Iraq and Yugoslavia, the Allies in 1919 strove for stability. Nonetheless, they did not really solve the ills of places that are still problematic.

Margaret does not present her ancestor, the P.M., as flawless. Nevertheless, I suppose she could apportion a tad more blame tonight for the current ferment in the Middle East to her wily great-grandfather. True, Lloyd George was impressive as a war leader. And true, he did mediate ably between fellow-mustachioed Clemenceau’s harsh demands and clean-shaved Wilson’s so-idealistic proposals. I suspect, however, that it is also true that Lloyd George pushed for his country's mandate over the new Iraq, the better to expand greedy British Empire interests there in petroleum and military bases.

Tomorrow I must buy and read Margaret's Paris. If I e-mailed her asking more about her great-grandfather, she'd probably tell me true because, well, because I don't believe she wrote that book as an act of family loyalty.

Frowning, Tom Hodgkinson remarks that President Wilson sounds like he was a "botherer" with an attitude problem in Paris. That depiction sparks Margaret into observing that Wilson compounded his cause back home in Washington D.C.: "Where he really fell down, and I think it was a character flaw, was in not getting congressional opinion behind him in the United States. In my view, he unnecessarily alienated the Republicans...He tended to treat his Republican critics as if they were traitors and fools -- which is no way to win people over."...

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…

It is my idea to invite James (in my head, we are on a first-name basis). From front pages, I still remember how he was speeding to a sports-car meet in 1955 when he crashed his custom Porsche 550 Spyder, fatally. This movie star, tough but sensitive, was only 24. That end to a spectacular career ‘stopped’ me, like later deaths of JFK, Elvis, and John Lennon.

At the time of James Dean’s accident, I was closing in on becoming a teen-ager. My siblings and I saw him as expressing our restlessness. He was the smoldering antithesis of the well-behaved modern kids that we were expected to be.

Rick, who did not join the Oscar Party at the Wellborne's house last week, says he does not learn much from "Hollywood types.” Rick is the one who wanted to meet Danica Patrick. In 2005, she brought him and 300,000 others to their feet as she almost took the biggest purse in auto-racing. Last month Rick saw her again, not first-hand but in a sophomoric and salacious ad that Fox-TV had banned from its 2008 Super Bowl show. On a website, Rick ferreted it out anyway. He expects to learn tonight much about "Indianapolis Speedway types." He has also endowed Danica's contest around the track with near-mythic proportions, emblematic of those two metaphors that Homer bequeathed to us in Iliad and Odyssey, life is a journey and life is a battle.

Ned Wellbourne is a bowling buff. One day this neighbor suggested we invite Chris Peters, co-owner of America’s Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). Chris is in his late 40s, an organizational guy, a ‘graduate’ of Microsoft. According to Ned, Chris “threw off the ‘golden handcuffs’ of his deferred stock options, retired early, and bought into -- and transformed -- the PBA.”

I had not heard of Chris Peters, but so what? Rick and I do not limit our parties to household names or, for that matter, to public intellectuals like a number of our past guests. If you are spectacularly rich, awesomely young, and gorgeously talented, we do not loathe you... at least not automatically...

("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?

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?

A week ago, after we nailed down a visit, Muhammad Yunus phoned back to ask if he could be helpful in facilitating tonight’s party. “Much obliged,” we’d said, “we’re taking care of it.” He asked for the name of the nearest hotel.

Now, he drives up in a haste on a foot-pedal bike from that hotel, leans that two-wheeler against our porch, and sweeps us away with his vitality. I suspect his force is internal, not because of any milk he drinks standing up. Muhammad bemoans his tardiness and wishes that Mapquest had a guide for bike routes. Its online (car) directions misled him.

Jackie Robinson is impressed the hotel rents bicycles. Muhammad explains that it tries to be eco-friendly for travelers. “I get to see more communities that way.” Muhammad’s not eco-preachy in making that point.

En route he was taken by the fair number of our locale's hardware stores. He passed a plumbing supply store that was holding a seminar on solar heating.

Perween Warsi says, "Coming here tonight, I saw a fair number of construction bins in driveways. I figure your neighbors are buying renovation goodies at those stores and fixing up their houses."

Jackie had noticed a home where half of a pile of logs was split and stacked for firewood.

I venture that after our hard winter, this year’s spring is exceptionally brilliant. This is the best time of the year to see our neighborhood in its green gladrags. Cool weather plus abundant rain have yielded rich colors. I allow as how our young neighbors think our foliage isn't all that special. Because Barb and I are the geezers on the street, these neighbors joke that our verdict stems from our advanced age, weak eyesight perhaps.

"After the rain, good weather/In the wink of an eye/The universe throws off/its muddy cloths." That's Perween. Reciting a poem Ho Chi Minh wrote while in prison.

We demand more. "...All the birds sing at once/Men and animals rise up reborn/What could be more natural?/After sorrow comes happiness."

A young neighbor from up the street ambles by with his 4 or 5-year-old daughter. They both wave.

Perween turns to Mohammad. “The whole world was very happy in 2006 to hear you’d won the Nobel Peace Prize. I even gloated.”

A quick intake of breath and Muhammad shares the moment when he and his fellow-citizens first heard. He was at home, in lungi (sp?), which I assume is informal clothing for Bangladeshi men. To acknowledge the thousands who had rushed to congratulate him, he came out of his house so fast that it was difficult to change clothes.

Jackie sees me drawing a blank. “‘Lungi’ means ‘loincloth,’” he says.

On prodding, Muhammad says he shared the Prize with the Grammen (village) Bank that he founded. It loans an applicant just a little money, about $200 US. In the under-developed world, that’s been enough to lift most applicants out of poverty.

Perween lauds her fellow-South Asian for giving his share of the $1.4 million for other anti-poverty measures including an eye bank, a health scheme, and a system for drinking water in rural Bangladesh. She’s especially delighted that he’s harnessed market forces in a start-up that’s developing low-cost, high-nutrition food. That initiative supplements his Bank’s selling of penny packets of different seeds. Grameen is the country’s largest supplier of seeds.

Barb fishes for more personal data: “Did your parents live to see your marvelous successes?” Most did.

That discussion reels in data about everyone’s childhoods. The grandson of a slave and a sharecropper’s son, Jackie was the most disadvantaged. Grew up with four siblings and a single Mother who worked 12-hour days as a domestic. Jackie did odd jobs, joined a gang, and (as he admits) stole food from grocery stores.

When she was living in Bihar state, Perween was part of a cohesive, well-off family with an amply stocked kitchen. She doesn’t say if she was high-caste.

From his tiny ornaments shop, Muhammad’s Father struggled to send nine children to higher education. Mohammad’s memory of his Mother, before her mental illness, was of her reciting stories and poems. He doesn't remember any by Ho Chi Minh.

Muhammad Yunus has been quizzing Jackie Robinson over whether baseball is truly the superior sport that philosopher John Rawls proclaimed. "There's the beautiful symmetry of the diamond that footall and tennis lack." And Jackie Robinson has been quizzing Muhammad Yunus on extending credit to those who have nothing.

“Banks gave me an extremely negative response,” says the banker to the poor. Money men had mindsets that the risks of not being repaid were too high. However, I thought that making micro-credit loans could be a viable business model,” Muhammad is pleased to explain. “Once I offered myself as the guarantor, banks did loan me some cash…

"Ultimately I negotiated with the government to become a full-fledged bank, eligible for loans from government and other banks…Leftists thought we were exploiting the poor. Conservative clergy told women that if they borrowed money from us, they’d be denied burial.”

Perween Warsi says she understands something about the difficulty of prying loose funds for business. In the ‘90s, she had to fight to regain control of her business after a buy-out had fallen into receivership. Her anxieties weren’t over. In 2003, her cash flow tumbled from the loss of an account with Safeway Groceries. She had to lay-off 400 loyal workers.

That vignette is the basis for the economics professor and the company owner putting their heads together now. I largely tune out, but I do hear something about supply creating its own demand. And scrappy words like “investment,” “expansion”, “re-hires,” “putting debt behind S & A,” and “returns to profitability.” Perween utters that last phrase triumphantly.

Prior to Muhammad Yunus wheeling into our yard, Rick and I blogged only some of the interaction between Perween Warsi and Jackie Robinson. Friendly as age peers, our early arrivals had spent time bs'ing about this and that. On the basis of their rapport, you might guess they would be the dominant dyad within our guest triad.

Not so. All night, latecomer Muhammad has been right in there in, chattery with both. Dinner parties can include those whom nobody want to speak with, but not here, not tonight. No imbalance mars our guests’ speaking order or talking time. No peer conflicts arise over preceding moves of the others. No guest spends time looking at titles on our bookshelf to mask feelings of being left-out of the flow.

Then later, at one point, there's Jackie Robinson saying to Muhammad Yunus, "How many Nobels do you Third World economists have?”

“Some.”

“I thought so. The reformer of property rights?”

“Yeah. Hernado de Soto. I don’t think he’s been to Oslo, but he’s earned plenty of other Prizes.”

“Made a difference in Peru?”

“Oh yes. Cut governmental red tape and gave titles to something like 1.2 million families. He operates out of an Institute there.”

“From my son the coffee grower, I know de Soto designed a similar program. For poverty-reduction in Tanzania.”

“Yes. Elsewhere too.”

“Surely the protection of assets is an obvious need for the dynamic of capitalism,” interjects Perween Warsi.

“Righto. For trust, what’s needed is a formal property system.”

“Such as?” Again from Jackie. These exchanges are starting to resemble a ping-pong match.

“Where individual ownership and transactions are recorded clearly. Deeds can be used for collateral. More loans [can be] made available for new developments.”

“Frankly, I'm not sure that de Soto does it for me.”

Property rights as a wedge issue tonight? Surely not.

“Yes, he's had a hard sell, Jackie. Leftists claim his approach benefits well-to-do squatters at the expense of poorer ones. Conservatives claim some individuals don’t want to change their tradition of communal ownership. Critics fume that he claims a firming-up of property rights will eradicate poverty. That’s throwing too sharp an elbow at him. Hernando argues that other reforms are essential too.”

“Maybe he over-sells his idea?” Perween asks. Is she also suggesting Muhammad is overselling his major idea?

Muhammad’s face contorts to override her reservation. “Over-sell? Not at all. His idea certainly is not a brand. Oh, Hernando may have an occasionally jaunty self-regard, I don’t know. But my view is that he demonstrates the confidence to share his innovative ideas as actionable…” Now, Muhammad conciliates, “Rather like you did, Perween, with your company.”

Jackie attacks us with statistics -- like there are 1.2 billion people now in abject poverty. Like 50,000 people die everyday from poverty-related causes. I have difficulty wrapping my mind around those numbers. With her eyes, Barb communicates to me her equal inability to make sense of those stats too.

Preoccupied as we already are, Jackie wants us to get cracking to reduce those numbers soon. “If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life.”

We five do not want to wimp out. After a while, we even agree -- and this is astounding -- to meet again for actionable ideas, next week, here. Far out!

Yet like Muhammad says, as anti-poverty guys, “Each of us is improveable.”

__________

Muhammad + Jackie + Perween. That's a combination that looked good ‘on paper.’ True, I had doubts this past week whether they would translate into an ensemble. Now, as they get ready to leave -- they are thanking us and we are thanking them -- the optimist in me believes that, more often than not, they coalesced.

If the world has under-achieved in reducing global poverty, advocacies of folk like Hernando and Muhammad point to plausible ways. Perween and Jackie are idealists for humanity too, but they also strike me as pragmatic folk. The type who could help people help themselves.