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!!

hippos, hippos and more hippos – mostly blue. this was what my grandson, ryan, drew for at least a year – no one could figure it out. i finally gave him a big, blue stuffed hippo (since most of the hippos that he drew were blue).

so when we were looking through my old photo albums to find a catalog cover at mary green – lo and behold there it was – a blue hippo!! given to me, probably by my sister, terry, for my birthday. so is the mystery solved? i have often felt an unspoken connection with ryan – but a blue hippo connection wow!!

mom, mary and terry

when i told ryan that i had discovered a photo of me with my new, blue stuffed hippo – in my teens – and reminded him that he used to love hippos – he looked at me, and said with a very strong voice “I still do nana.” and when i told him that it was blue, he said “oh my gosh!” so we are forever connected by hippos.

the photo made me have lots of feelings. first there was the blue hippo sitting in front of a delicious cake. i had forgotten that my mom, chris, made what were considered the best cakes for the church bake sale. they were angel food cakes with a white frosting. then she melted some bittersweet chocolate and dripped it over the frosting. people were always lined up when she brought the cakes to the church bake sale, waiting for her famous, delicious cakes. i was young and felt very proud of my mom.

we got to choose the cake we wanted for our birthday – and we got to lick the bowl of the cake mix and the frosting. so i always chose this wonderful cake. today my favorite cake is done by max’s cafe in san francisco – a niagara chocolate cake – and it looks just like my mom’s cake.

seeing my sister, terry, in the photo made me wonder how she is and what she is doing. i haven’t seen her for many years – brought together again by the blue hippo? who knows?

i stopped blogging in august. i don’t exactly know why. i have been asked why, but couldn’t come up with a good reason. i think it was because i was waiting to see if barack obama got elected. well, he did!!! my husband and i are going to his inauguration and we are very excited about the possibilities.

all that is to say that i want to blog again.

a couple of months ago a wonderful young man came to see me. he is 21 and his name is rong. he is from hangzhou, china. i first met him when he was about 4 years old. i remember that he met me at the airport in shanghai with his mom (with whom i have worked with for many years). he told me that i was his first foreigner. through the years, watching him grow, i was amazed at the confidence that he had about life. and then, here he was in my office – alone in the united states – going to a conference in texas and then walking part of the appalachian trail, i couldn’t believe it. we talked about his dreams – he is a student in the school of economics at zhejiang university and is expecting a b.a. in finance in 2010. he talked about a sustainable future. he told me that he and two other students were a team and had won a local competition to compete nationally (in china) in the l’oreal ingenius contest. if they won the all-china competition, they could next compete at the international level in france. we got him in touch with my husband’s college, which focuses on sustainability, and a friend who runs the solar electric light fund.

well, rong just emailed me that he and his team (with majors in computer science, mathematics and finance) had taken 2nd in all of china. i am so proud i had to blog on it. the contest focused alot on industrial design and chemical engineering. he said he felt that we had helped a lot – but personally, i think it was all rong and his team. we just sent him the love.

i am putting a photo of me, rong and pete (we have worked together forever) below. when i meet young people like rong, i know the world will be o.k. by the way, he is a big fan of obama.

pete, rong, mary

my husband and i own an elephant – yes a real live elephant. her name is tom’s ram kali (named after my dad, sort of). she is about 30 years old and plays excellent elephant polo. we fell in love with her when we were playing elephant polo in nepal at tiger tops about 10 years ago and asked if we could buy her. i probably had some secret desire/plan to somehow get her over here and have her as a pet in my garden – fortunately for everyone involved, that never materialized. tom (as we call her) lives at tiger tops and we let them use her to give tourists rides and to play elephant polo when needed. she has had a mahout who has been with her since birth – so if my secret plan had materialized, i think we would have had to bring her mahout along with her. we did make a very good friend who kind of looks after tom for us – bhim. bhim was working at tiger tops when we visited and we immediately took a liking to each other. he was our “ringer” in elephant polo and i think any trophies we won were because of bhim. the mallot was 95 or so inches. long and you had to use it with one hand, sitting on top of an elephant, galloping over the polo field to hit a little, tiny ball. women were allowed to use two hands – but by so doing you lean way over the elephant and i nearly fell off in the middle of the polo field when the rope that tied me on came untied. kind of scary. bhim is now at the university of minnesota and has just gotten his ph.d in tiger conservation. he is a wonderful man with a wonderful family. we feel pretty lucky to have ever met him.

the latest on tom is that she is pregnant. so we will have two elephants. i think the gestation period is about 2 years and for awhile you don’t really know if there is a pregnancy. however, romeo, the rogue elephant of the neighborhood, was around and causing some trouble and we heard that tom ran of with him for a week or so. they found her and got her back (with difficulty – she was trying to stay with romeo) but it seems she is going to have a baby elephant in 18 or 20 months. i can hardly wait.

tom's rali kam (top left) ; romeo (top right); tiger tops lodge (bottom)