Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Ever short on inspiration? Well, these writer's block "kicks in the pants" have been around a long time but I still love them. Most of them were borrowed from All About Me by Philipp Keel (yeah, that's how you spell his name).

1. For your last dinner, you would love to invite these five people.
2. Someone's diary you would love to read.
3. What is your first memory?

Here's my answers:

For your last dinner, you would love to invite these five people.

Okay, let's say that Jesus and Buddha and Gandhi were all there. And let's say it's actually ten people. (I know, I know but it's not that many people in the span of human history.) After them, I think I would like to invite:

Oscar Wilde Because he would make me laugh and make me think. Here's some quotations:

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

Pocahontas Because she discovered a culture and traveled the world. Did you know that Virginia had a "Pocahontas exception" during Jim Crow to exempt all the first families who claimed to descend from Pocahontas?

Jane Austen Because she was an astute judge of character and I'd love to listen to her and Oscar go at it.

David Sedaris - Okay, if you have not read or heard David Sedaris' essays, go find them now! You can listen to him reading his essays on YouTube or pick up the books at the library. He is hilarious!!! He is soooo talented.

Charlotte Bronte- I'd probably have to pull her into a corner to get her to talk but she wrote my favorite book so she has to be there.

Sojourner Truth Because she got to the heart of the matter and had enough integrity and concern for her fellows to stand up and say, "This is wrong." Maybe I should seat her next to George Bush II, eh? Speaking of which, try reading the Declaration of Independence and just inserting "George W. Bush" instead of King George III. Most of the accusations fit pretty well, don't you think? Also, it has one of my favorite sentences of all time, "Let these Facts be submitted to a candid World."

"Indictment" of the United States Declaration of Independence

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Scary.


Thich Nhat Hanh He wrote an excellent book called Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames that is so full of compassion and devoid of judgment. He also has a great book called Living Buddha, Living Christ that explores the themes of grace and compassion in both faiths. I used to have more of his books but I loaned to this guy who later smashed in my windshield when I reported him for sexual harassment. I guess he needs them more than me.

More Thoughts from Thich Nhat Hanh:

"If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work."

"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."

"My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

My actions are the ground upon which I stand."


Malika Oufkir She was a Moroccan princess who was "adopted" (stolen) from her parents by the sultan, who then threw her and her family into a desert prison when her father attempted a coup. And this was in the '60s. They were imprisoned for twenty years, during which she kept the family's spirit alive by weaving these fantastic tales about a family of Russian aristocracy, until she and her sibs succeeded in digging out of the prison with a spoon. I am so not kidding. Check it out in Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail.

My uncle John Because he seems to have touched a lot of lives. I wrote an e-mail to his class rep at his high school to ask if anyone had any recollections. Here's what his good friend Tom Woodward had to say:

Megan Drury:
I recently received your email from my and John's friend Jimi Akin. John and I were close friends, both at Sandy Spring and Reed. I cannot remember when we first met, but it was definitely during our first year at Sandy Spring in 10th grade. We shared many classes; we shared many inter-mural activities: ”nerdley bowl" and flag football; we played soccer together under the tutelage of Ari Preuss; we were frequent visitors at each others home and at Jimi Akin's house; we spent one intersession trip at Cape Hatteress (to watch how waves break on the beach or something equally profound); we registered for the draft together; I would go down to Scientists Cliffs with John and parents (Robert and Kay, am I right?); and we worked together on the same construction crew our last summer in high school (along with Michael Dettart and Billy Amend). And there was also our trip to the four day blue grass festival in the hills of North Carolina.

The beginning of college we went our own ways. John, Jimi Akin and I borrowed my parents' VW bus and drove from Washington DC north to Canada, west to the Pacific, and south to Portland, Oregon where I would attend Reed College. John and Jimi flew back to Washington together, John to start Bard College in the fall of 1971. During the summer of '72 we traveled to Europe together, flying to Germany and hitchhiking through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium on nothing but a wing and a prayer. At the end of the trip we met John's parents for four or five days in southern Germany. That fall John transferred to Reed College. We were house mates, house guests¦ best of friends. He lived with a wonderful woman during that whole time¦Kareen Malone. We would share philosophical arguments, dinner, swimming, trips to the river, and camping trips to the Cascade Mountain lakes.

But Reed College was a very intense environment, and I am afraid that intensity did not suit John well. John completed all the class requirements, but the requirement of a final written project "thesis" somehow became a major obstacle that would slowly and insidiously eat away at John's self-confidence. In his mind he saw himself as a failure, despite my and all of his friends efforts to convince him otherwise. I was with John on his last day and I will forever remember the horror of the following day and the loss that I still feel today.

John was a very fun-loving, intelligent, strikingly handsome and brave young man.

Brave: I remember John volunteering to be a marshal at one of the huge anti-war rallies in downtown Washington D.C.

Fun-loving: especially as a star in one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas directed by Barry Morley at Sandy Spring's "Yeoman of the Guard" or perhaps "Iolathe."

Handsome: Let's just say that he was well-noticed.

And intelligent: endlessly debating right and wrong; good and evil; despair and hope.

I have certainly not forgotten John, or the times that we shared. However, I deeply wish that he could have stayed with us and shared in all these experiences that make
up our lives.

I hope I have been able to give you a glimpse into the life and adventures of John. I am certainly willing to talk more about John if you so desire, to hold onto and relive these memories. As Jimi said in her note to me: "it's good to know someone is going to collect John into one place again."

I am also curious about your relation to John; from my memory John had a brother, just slightly older, who lived in Washington DC as well as a sister who lived in Seattle (we actually stayed in her house near Green Lake when we traveled from DC to Portland in 1971). Just thinking that maybe you lived out here on the Pacific side of the country.

Please remember: John was a beautiful person, and his absence is all of
our loss.

Thomas Woodward

Well, I think I'll tackle the other questions later.