Before I get to the fun name dropping, here are a couple other items:

1. Iraq Report. I am extremely pleased to report that B., the US Marine who Holly and I are friends with, who was serving in Iraq, has made it back to the United States, with all limbs and his sanity intact. However, in a time-honored tradition, his girlfriend (who Holly and I met a couple of times) ran off with someone else while B. was in Iraq. "Stealing" a significant other from a soldier while the soldier is serving overseas is a despicable act, but of course, it takes two to tango. The person who did the "stealing" in this case is a relatively famous actor. I wish I could tell you his name so you could boycott him for the rest of his career, but for sake of privacy of all involved, I will keep mum on names. Suffice to say that the new "Dear John Letter" is a YouTube video. Despicable in the extreme.

2. Africa Report. Holly and I were at an Easter party in the San Francisco Bay Area yesterday and saw M., an old friend. M. is a fellow who I have been good friends for 23+ years, and he is an occasional reader of this thread. M., who knew my father, spoke eloquently about Peter at a memorial gathing in 2005. Anyway, M. met his terrific wife S. when he was teaching in South Africa; she is from the Congo. S. recently traveled back to the Congo for a *surprise* visit to her parents. It was a great story. On the way to Congo, S. stopped in Zimbabwe, a country which has been in the news a lot lately because Mugabe, the dictator, has turned the country into a keptocracy and is relentlessly pushing the county into the abyss, with a 1700% annual inflation rate and desperation in every nook and cranny. I was surprised to hear that Zimbabwe's airport was very clean, modern, and efficient; it's perhaps the only government-run thing in the country that can claim all three.

3. Name drop. The Easter party was thrown by the family of another old friend, MJ, who I have been pals with since high school and whose family lives about five minutes from Holly's folks. MJ is an amazing separate story--for example, she spent several months as a volunteer in refugee camps in Rwanda in 1994; she started her work while the Tutsis and Hutus were still hacking each other to death.

But the point here is something else...MJ's dad is a fairly big-time real estate player and has been politically active for a long time; when we were in high school, he had a big fundraiser at his house for Mike Dukakis before Dukakis stuck his head out of the tank hatch. If you look at the family kitchen, there are all sorts of casual pix with the family hanging out with folks like Bill Clinton. It's funny, in some people's offices, a picture with the president is a revered item that is framed. In MJ's house, 3X5's of presidents and prime ministers with her family are casually taped up on the kitchen wall like you would any old snapshot.

So when the guys with earpieces and sport coats with the telltale bulge on the hip started showing up at the Easter party yesterday, I wasn't surprised; the only question was who they were protecting. Turns out that it was Nancy Pelosi's Praetorian Guard. Given that Pelosi is second in line in the presidential succession, I am pretty sure that the security folks were all US Secret Service. Pelosi is long-time pals with MJ's family, so she was ostensibly just there to enjoy the Easter party, not to fundraise, etc.

I know that some readers of this blog have a very low opinion of Pelosi, and I can't say I am happy with her vote-buying to get the vote she wanted on Iraq. But regardless of what you think of her politics, I think you have to be impressed by what she has accomplished: She is the highest-ranking elected woman in the history of the United States (an achievement that I hope will not be eclipsed by Hillary). We didn't have a long chat with Pelosi, but I introduced Holly to her and we both congratulated her on her achievement. It did not seem to be an opportune time to give Pelosi an earful about the Iraq bill vote-buying. Afterwards, I was struck once again by same thing I thought after I met Rudy Giuliani--so many folks seem larger than life until you actually shake hands with them, and then when you reflect on it later, you realize again that they are just people too; with all sorts of strengths and weaknesses and hopes and fears and insecurities. And the cliche is old because of its veracity: they all put on their pants one leg at a time.