on Saturday – august 15th – my husband and i were in st. helena – a lovely little village in northern california. we discovered a wonderful new bistro “aka a bistro” on the main street. when we looked in we saw a great looking fellow hugging about 8 people. everyone seemed so happy. we realized when we were seated that he didn’t know the people he was hugging well – that they had just finished lunching there. we wondered if we would receive a hug when we finished! then some more people finished and they all hugged. a pretty friendly place i’d say. the food was spectacular and the service more than we could hope for at 4:00 in the afternoon (yes they are open between lunch and dinner!) when we left (and no, we didn’t get a hug) i asked for the proprietor’s card. his name is robert simon. i nearly fell over. my very close friend for many, many years was a robert simon – was it a sign? my bob simon worked for norm thompson outfitters and often i give him lots of credit for helping my struggling company in the early days of mary green which resulted in its success. no wonder there was a lot of hugging going around if a bob simons was running it!! again, the restaurant is called aka a bistro and is located at 1320 main street, st. helena, california. their website is http://www.akabistro.com/. and be sure to get a hug when you leave.

in june my husband and i received a phone call from washington d.c. we were invited to have dinner with president obama (and some other folks). we were off in a flash. i collected hugs from 17 people to give to him. i wondered if i would have the chance to do it – and lo and behold i did!! i told him that i was bringing him hugs from 17 people. he said that he needed hugs and that hugs were good. then i brought his hug back to those 17 people. i am never dry cleaning the suit i wore!!! it is filled with hugs.

so, truly, who in the world has been to urumqi?! and yet there it was in the news for the last while. i couldn’t believe it. i was there about 25 or so years ago. and, wow, what a place!! i loved it.

for me the great thing about urumqi, in xinjiang province in china, was that it was filled with minorities. the rest of china in those days looked very homogeneous – but not in urumqi.

i went there in my early days of trading with china. i had seen in a craft store in beijing a wonderful, ethnic boot. i thought i might be able to sell it (i was doing socks in those days) as a slipper. when i asked where it was from, it turned out it was from xinjiang province. the next thing i knew i was on a plane to this faraway, exotic part of china.

one interesting thing about china is that then (and maybe now actually) there is only one time zone. so your day starts when it is light around 10am or 11am and ends when it is dark around midnight. it has nothing to do with a regular “timed” day on the clock. it was hard to get used to this.

i remember being offered a pelt of a snow leopard – it was so traumatic that i can still close my eyes and see this beautiful animal lying on a table. i said no, but it was the most beautiful animal i had ever seen or have ever seen since.

i remember wanting to go to the top of a tall hill and look over the city. we got there and couldn’t see anything because of the coal used for heating and in the factories – the soot was everywhere in the air.

i remember wanting to see a typical village. in those days driving and visiting such places was strictly controlled by the government in china. the drivers were to listen to conversations and report back to authorities if anything was said that seemed dangerous. i loved our driver – he looked just like buddha. he said he would take us to a typical village and then off we went with some of the managers of the factory we were trying to work with. we drove and drove and drove. it was the middle of winter – cold – no heat in the car – and kind of slippery on the road. we kept passing wonderful villages – but the driver kept saying that we had to go to this particular village – that it has been approved to receive us.

finally he parked the car when we could go no further on a side road to the village – too much snow on the road. we walked for about an hour and a half (thankfully i had a long down coat and boots on!!) – in very deep snow, sinking often up to the top of my boots. then we reached the typical village. it was a bunch of posts to hold up tented rooms during the summer and used by party officials for their vacations. it was, of course, being the middle of winter, totally deserted!

well – it was not what i had been hoping for – pretty empty looking. on the walk back to the car, we had a picnic lunch that the driver had put together – right there in the snow!! pretty cold, but lovely actually. the driver had used some special coupons he had to get us a watermelon. so we ate the watermelon standing in the deep snow and we all spit out the seeds in the snow – and they sank – and i wondered if they went all the way to san francisco.

once we made it back to the car the driver said that now he might be able to stop at some of the wonderful villages on the way back. so we stopped at many, rode horses, camels (at one village i was charged by a camel – but managed to get away) and had a truly spectacular time. patience won out – and a terrific fellow as our driver.

i have some super 8 movies of me in urumqi in the bazaars – i am easy to locate – and i was definitely adding another minority to the place.

in the end i did get my boots. we redesigned them as soft slippers and sold them for several years. they were featured in a number of mail order catalogs – but i never got to go back to urumqi. and now does not seem the time to make that trip.

we received one of the best invitations ever to attend the speech of president obama before the joint session of congress on january 24th. it was exciting to sit in speaker pelosi’s box and to feel the amazing electricity in that room. and to top it all off, we were seated directly behind captain “sully” sullenberger – the hero who landed his plane in the hudson and then helped save everyone in it. he is a terrific man and, because we were sitting behind him, we got a lot of television coverage.

steve, mary and sully

president obama is an amazing speaker. you feel as though he is speaking only to you – maybe even over the back fence. yes we can!!

my favorite cake in the whole wide world was made by my mom – second best was made by my grandmother. so when, many years ago i discovered kathys kreative kakes (kathyskreativekakes@comcast.net) i couldn’t believe my luck. her cakes are at least as good as my mom’s and grandmother’s. hope they don’t mind the comparison!!

but kathy does more than just create a delicious cake – she designs them. you can have her make virtually anything you can think of. for our family she once made a cake the size of our daughter (then about 6) that looked like her and was wearing her favorite dress made out of frosting. it is still kind of famous with our daughter’s friends. she has made an underpant cake (believe it or not!), a santa in a sleigh throwing lingerie out of his bag of gifts (and this is not a flat cake – but rather an actual santa and sleigh standing up!), and lots of other inventive theme cakes.

she has does the best custom gingerbread houses i have ever seen. she personalizes them – and they are also delicious. and for years, at a lunch i give at christmas, i have her make individual stand up cakes for each of my friends – once a reindeer, a santa going down the chimney, an angel, a snowman – you get the picture. this last christmas i didn’t give the lunch and the thing all of my friends said they missed were the small cakes – not even me!

so i would like to recommend her to you. she is a friend and the best, most creative cake maker i have ever known. and, just so you know, i am a true cake lover.

my husband and i were in london in november. i had read an article in the financial times about a fabulous sounding eyewear company – called “the eye company.” the financial times called it a “cult shop.” they claimed to have a large collection of vintage sunglasses.

we only had a few days in london, but i couldn’t miss this one. i think i have more sunglasses than i do shoes – and i have a lot of shoes!

it is located at 159 wardour street in soho, london. http://www.eye-company.co.uk/. the owner is steenie and he is a great guy. if you blink, you’ll miss the store – it is so small and unassuming. but, just go inside and, if you love sunglasses, it is like a wonderland.

steenie says that his store is like a mini museum, except that it’s all for sale. he has an amazing collection of unworn vintage frames from the 1920s to the 1980s.

i ended up buying 5 pair – and they are the coolest glasses i own. steenie fits them to your face – and will actually suggest you not get something if he feels they don’t suit you. definitely not a hard sell at the eye company. we also ended up really liking steenie and so i hope if you are in london you’ll drop by his shop. the shop is worth the look and steenie is worth knowing.

i just came across an article from the new york times from november 2008. i had forgotten that barack obama had made a comment about underwear!! of all things –

the article said:

“just before election day, obama appeared on mtv and took a question about laws in some municipalities that ban a popular street look among young men who go around in low-slung pants that expose way more underwear than many of us care to see. those ordinances, the candidate said, are ‘a waste of time.’

‘having said that,’ he added, ‘brothers should pull up their pants. you‘re walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. what’s wrong with that? come on.’

‘some people might not want to see your underwear,’ obama said, ‘i’m one of them.’”

personally, i think this says it all – and i agree, even if the underwear showing is mansilk!!