Sweaters on the Porch
Cooler weather is settling in. It certainly is getting darker earlier and earlier. Tonight we lit a small brazier to keep the chill off. Later in the season we'll get the huge brazier going. We all enjoy sitting around it before going inside. AJ had fixed a large pitcher of a cocktail he particularly likes, a Havana Beach, made with good white rum. The minute bits of lime floating throughout the drink make it attractive as well as good.

Numbing Pain Back in the Great Room
Bob and Judy had been to a lecture at a University in a city about two hours away from our farms and ranches. They were both visibly disturbed and visibly angry. Bob just happens to be a big backer of women's rights, as is Judy, who deplores my occasional use of the word girl, when I'm talking about a woman. She knows however, that I only use the word when the woman at issue doesn't deserve the honor of being called anything but a girl. Or a female dog.
What had Bob and Judy so unfathomably angry soon had us hot under the collar also. The Mousey Librarian, AKA Laura Bush, who allowed a woman expressing her right to free speech to be arrested, and her detestable, weak-kneed, sans- cojones husband, after decrying, for the benefit of the media, the deplorable condition of many women in the Middle East forced to wear burkas, and just recently eating cake in Krawford and dooming quite free and unfettered women in Iraq to a life of hell. Seems the Führerette of Krawford is more interested in the Iraqis formalizing a constitution by a certain date. Freedom of person, life and liberty be damned. In one fell swoop those two are declaring:

It's fine and dandy, if you want to beat your wife black and blue daily, hell, it's your right as a man.

If you don't want women to vote, they're just like cattle anyway, aren't they?
Let women drive and go to work, in comfortable clothes? Why, they're just chattel. And anyway, why should women work, they really don't need to use their brains or have any right to self-validation.

Inherit your parent's property, if you're a woman? Heck no man, it's all for the guy. And if your guy divorces you and you didn't get your parent's inheritance, so what if you starve to death, as long as you're covered in black from head to toe.

Anyway, Bob and Judy said, it's shameful that the Mousey Librarian (who in private really isn't mousey) doesn't, for the sake of millions of women, stand up to her husband, and much more shameful, that we are going to let a neurotic, pouty and childish, megalomaniac husband abandon all the women of the Middle East for the sake of meeting some narcissistic deadline. In other words, Bob said, it's same ol' same ol': It's my way or no way. Now you see what happens when you cross an ex-CIA guy with a Silver Vixen. Too bad those weren't neutered before their spawn soiled the world.

Liz's Quote on Women and the Vote
Liz, our Quote Queen, never fails to have something apropos our evening discussion. This one is right on the mark, though terribly sad. Thank you Laura and George:

"So greatly did she care for freedom that she died for it. So dearly did she love women that she offered her life as their ransom. That is the verdict given at the great Inquest of the Nation on the death of Emily Wilding Davison." This was written by Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958), speaking about a woman who threw herself under the charging horse of the King of England to protest the imprisonment of women seeking the vote. And just think Liz, said, Laura and Georgie Porgie could have avoided that, had they had the cojones to help women in Iraq, once they made the stupid, imbecile decision to invade a non-aggressor.

A Child's Voice
One of our children, who was engrossed by our discussion, had heard in school from a brave, involved teacher, another voice for disenfranchised women:

"But when at last woman stands on an even platform with man, his acknowledged equal everywhere, with the same freedom to express herself in the religion and government of the country, then, and not until then, will he be able to legislate as wisely and generously for her as for himself."
Elizabeth Cody Stanton, 1881

This same young woman, a Junior in High School, couldn't understand why the Bush's were going to set Iraqi women back a millennium, when they proclaim, for the Press, their hope for Democracy. Even a High School Junior can smell hypocrisy. Sad. Sad Country. We have to do better and that can only occur through regime change.

Change of Venue and Mood
The kids went to take their places at their table in the great room, and we retreated to the large dining room. Just as we were sitting down, Kim started serving some small tartlets she had just baked. She had filled the shells with smoked salmon, dill and horseradish. Kim and Barry are devout Jews who just moved here from Israel, but they are not Orthodox and thus have a little leeway in what they eat. They moved here to protest what was going on in Israel and the way Israel is treating the Palestinians. That, however, does not make them any less Israeli, just more conscientious.

The California sparkling wine they paired with the tartlets was sheer genius.
Barry, in scooped-out butternut squashes, served a curried mussel and butternut squash soup that he had tried on their way over here from Israel. They tried this in Belgium, and so he paired the soup with a Belgian Blanche de Bruges beer. This was a first for us, and perhaps an initiation to other libations than wine? For those who found the transition back to wine difficult, Kim served dollops of coconut sorbet to cleanse our palates in preparation for the next course.

They then served Guinea Hens on a bed of potatoes, Provençale Roast Tomatoes and a watercress salad, all of which they paired with a young Bordeaux from Margaux.

Kim, for our dessert, served us a country-style Fresh Plum Tart smothered in almond cream, pairing it with a sweet Spanish sparkling wine.

Winding Down
When we joined the kids in the great room to have our after-dinner coffee and check on how their day had gone, they were still talking about the rights of women in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were a little bit surprised by their sincere interest in this subject, but then, we remembered, they have been brought up in the culture of "salon" and good food. We were so proud of them, a few tears could be seen in the eyes of many of the parents.