Okay...so I Forgot the Camera

but here's what we had to eat:

Course One (Antipasti misti.)

Five lovely little Italian appetizers, served one or two at a time in delicate little bowls...and with a good amount of time to savor

Course Two (Primi):

Jim chose the in house handmade spring greens ravioli with anchovy butter.
I had the in house handmade tagliatelle with prosciutto and English peas

and of course we shared both...

Course Three (Secondi):

Jim chose the Ahi tuna with asparagus.
I had the Duck breast with ramps and morel mushrooms.

and of course we shared both....

Course Four (Formaggi):

Talleggio, Pipe Dream Farm and Pecorino Curdo with eggplant-walnut jam

Course Five (Dolci):

Jim chose the chocolate cake with caramel ice cream.
I chose the rhubarb tart with whipped cream...

and of course we shared both...

We had complimentary glasses of champagne to start...our neighbor is the owner/chef...

and a half bottle of a lovely red wine with dinner...

and two kinds of home made candy and dainty almond cookies at the very end, with the bill...

it was expensive but so good we didn't really mind paying.

Our Silver Wedding Anniversary

Hard to believe! The Goofy One and I have been married for 25 years today...

We're going to have dinner at Obelisk, the slightly upscale Italian restaurant owned and operated by our neighbor Chef Peter Pastan.....it's one of those restaurants where he creates the menu anew every day! So, photos and report to follow tomorrow, I guess.

Carey, Sarah, Charley Lauren and Me

outside Lia's Restaurant in Bethesda, where we went for dinner last night. "Uncle Jimmy" took the photo of just "the girls." John and Sarah leave today by plane back to Montana; Carey and I head to NYC for a couple days by train. Charley Lauren had just joined us for the evening and headed back to White Marsh about 8:30 or so.

Misogyny I Won't Miss

Article in Today's W. Post by Marie Cocco

The Portrayal of Hillary

May 13, 2008


WASHINGTON -- As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and they are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which the liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big f---in' whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White B---- Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, be gone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mockup of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).
When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons why Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com