Different Families
During the campaign leading up to the last, disastrous election, two things kept alerting me on the one hand and encouraging me on the other. Jane and Alex, who during the same time by coincidence felt the very same feelings, helped me explain to our group what I was talking about. This is a good time to bring up the subject of how different two families can be, both because of O'Reilly's stupid comment, and the arrest in Austin of Jeb Bush's youngest son for public intoxication, a Bush family trait. What impressed us and both Jane and her husband Alex during the campaign, was what a magnificent family both Teresa Heinz Kerry and Senator John Kerry had raised, both of them single-handedly for the most part. The young Heinz men are all productive, mature and contributors to society.

The young Kerry women are equally intelligent, articulate, productive, mature and, like the young Heinz men, they both contribute to society. Highly responsible, those five young people, and that speaks volumes about the values their parents instilled in them. On the other hand, Jane said, the Bush family, for the most part, has produced only highly dysfunctional, inarticulate, unproductive, immature, drug-addicted, alcoholic children who are not an asset to anybody. How your children turn out says a lot about you.

A Better Country
Comparing the parenting skills, or lack thereof, of these two families, we all deeply felt the country would have been in better hands with people like Teresa Heinz Kerry and Senator John Kerry. If they were able to raise such fine children, they were certainly capable of nurturing this country, which, as history is proving, needs to be nurtured by wise people. Instead, the couple presently in power are making us the most hated nation on earth and have sent us off into senseless misadventures. This dysfunctional couple unable to raise upstanding children are bankrupting our country, financially and morally, and draining it of our most precious resource: our young people.

Ah, Couples!
Some of us are just finishing our cocktails. Bob made Valencias tonight, and mixed them with sparkling wine, apricot brandy, orange curaçao and orange juice. We have two new families who have just bought neighboring farms, and because they may object to drinking alcohol, we're letting everybody who wants a cocktail to go to the "bartender du jour" and we'll institute a new system at dinner: small coasters that the non-imbibers can place over their wine glasses, and also we'll start offering a wide variety of non-alcoholic wines. But, let us tell you about the new neighbors, two couples with children.

Things just have a way of working out, don't they? And we, who love the diversity of our rural community, couldn't have been more surprised or happier to meet the two couples who bought two farms in our area. Both couples are from Iraq, but one couple is Muslim and the other is Jewish. Fareed and Nisreen and their daughter, Rania are the Muslim family from Iraq, and Eli, his wife Sagidah and their son Naim are the Jewish family from Iraq. We think, because we are all so diverse, they won't have any trouble feeling, soon, like they belong to our extended family of neighbors.

The Dinner Gong
We explained to our new neighbors that the teenagers like to take turns ringing the dinner gong to announce dinner. With the addition of two leaves, the large dining room now will hold the 14 regular couples quite comfortably, and the two new children easily found enough room at the kids' dinner table. With the variety of dishes in our dinners, we think everybody will continue to find something "on the menu" that they can eat or like. For the time being, except for the alcohol, we don't plan any changes in how we prepare or serve our dinners. Max and Charlotte prepared almost every dish for tonight's dinner, and started out by serving us. We of course don't believe Max is a pyromaniac, but boy he sure does love to cook on those grills.

For the first course tonight, he served us some Black Mission Figs that he had grilled, cooled, and then wrapped in Prosciutto di Parma. Charlotte poured a special Blanc de Blancs champagne from Pierre Peters to honor our new friends. They next served Cipollata, the Tuscan version of French Onion Soup and paired it with a Chianti they brought from their wine cellar, a Badia a Coltibuono Cetamura. A very affordable wine, but a good companion to the hearty soup. Max had smoked some salmon and paired it with a sparkling wine. The grilled medley of vegetables he served with the salmon was perfect. After dollops of guava sorbet, we looked forward to Max's Grilled Skirt Steak with Chipotles and Avocado. On the side, he served simply grilled new potatoes with garlic and chives. The steak, when paired with a Penfold's 2002 Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon was superb, as was Max's grilling.

Winding Down
We were anxious to join the kids, and were looking forward to visiting a bit with our two new teenagers. Happily, they already seemed quite at home. They were already helping themselves to Charlotte's fresh-made vanilla ice-cream. We served ourselves, and Max poured us some of his special-blend espresso. That unity, that sincere enjoyment of others is what we wish for our country.

Summary:
True family values, and families who value the best in themselves and give the best of themselves, are rare. These values are the ones you want to pass on to your children, to enable them to become mature, productive, caring people.