Dinner guests

I’m pretty sure I’ve done this one before but I’m too damn lazy to sort through six hundred-plus entries to find out. So, I’m just going to risk redundancy.

I was cross-commenting in Facebook with Cecille, a friend from high school days about a woman who runs the Safe Place for Kids in Baltimore and I mentioned this woman is someone with whom I’d like to have dinner. Which of course led me to thinking about how to round out the guest list, which of course, included the word ‘list’ and you can guess where this is going, right?

My perfect dinner gathering, not including the people who read this, who go without saying will be invited but will probably have to sit at the kids table, no offense intended:

·         Ericka Alston – She created the Penn North Safe Kids Zone, and you could spend 21 minutes in a lot worse way than watching her TED talk, The Greatest Love Story Ever Told.

·         Sheila - Because I think she and Ericka would drive the conversation even if no one else spoke.

·         Carl Sagan – For his humanity and intelligence and incredible insight.

·         Elie Wiesel – So we don’t forget

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·         Chita Rivera – When I did a show with her we had some dead time waiting behind a set piece together for our entrance and she talked and talked about her daughter. Not about herself or her career on Broadway or politics or, or, or… Oh, and also for her jokes.

·         Sylvia Earle – The marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer-In-Residence. I could listen to her for hours.

·         Arland Williams, Jr. – He chose to save others at cost of his own life and had to have known he was doing so. I’ve wondered about him from time to time for thirty-four years.

·         Malala Yousafzai – Shot for daring to demand her right to an education, she has become a beacon for a generation.

Mary and I would serve, thus allowing us to eavesdrop.