Dinner Party Guest List--Any Ten People Who Ever Lived

Really? I don't know that much about laudanum (um, exactly what, eh?) but that it was quite the popular thing..
I do have a general sense that Wyatt was a jerk.

I love the old west as well. Can you tell? :-D

10 guest list
1. A slave working in building the great pyramid
2. A coal miner in Scotland in the 1700 or 1800
3. The person who killed Jimmy Hoffa
4. A carver from Easter Island
5. A shepherd in Bethlehem when Christ was born
6. A frenchman who fought with Joan of Arc
7. A Filipino tribeman who participated in building the rice terraces
8. Lee Harvey Oswand
9. John Wilkes Booth
10. Isaac Asimov

All of these people were selected not exactly in order of importance but they will all help me unravel some of the mysteries of life.

All right. I like this list a great deal.

Welcome to a2k, Ricky Tizon.

Very smart first post, maybe a medal winner.

(if there were a medal....)

Hi Ricky and welcome. What a thoughtful and thought-provoking list. I would dearly love to be at that party. Many unanswered questions would finally be answered! I'm not fishing for an invitation. And I'm not much of a cook. What if I volunteer to serve dinner and clean up? Huh? What do you say?

Ricky Tizon
Ricky Tizon, welcome to Able2Know. What a grand entrance you've made to our community.

I enjoyed your dinner guest list. But I wonder what each of them would tell you to solve the mysteries of interest to you---and to others. What do you think?

---BumbleBeeBoogie

Welcome Ricky Tizon. Your choice of ordinary people for most of your guest list is just what I would choose. They would be the people most likely to be able to give us the most accurate view of what life was really like in a particular era.
For a gathering of characters from the old west, I would choose my grandmother. She started teaching school in Texas going out to lonely ranches and living with the families for a few months at a time. I wish I could hear her stories. I'm sure she could give old Wyatt a run for his money.

Okay, Diane, Your grandmother--and who else?

OK Boidy, I would include Chief Joseph and Gen. Custer. Naturally, Chief Joseph's eloquence would make Custer appear to be the dolt he really was.

Seven more, Diane, tap tap tap....

Roberta, Gotta share something funny that just happened when I read the title of your forum as "Donner Party Guest List......."

c.i., How clever of you. The guest list and menu--all rolled into one!

Diane, Take your time. Chief Joseph--we will fight no more forever. True eloquence. You want Georgie Custer there? It's your party, kid.

Eeeuuuwww, c.i., that is one dinner party I would choose to miss.

Roberta, Georgie would feel out of place, but then he might learn about true civility.

So far, my grandmother, Chief Joseph and George Custer. My next invitation would go out to Cochise, then Father Kino, the monk who helped build so many Spanish Missions from Arizona through to California.

San Xavier del Bac ( The White Dove of the Desert) is a beautiful mission outside Tucson, AZ. Kino was smart enough to welcome native ritual into the Catholic mass, making the Indians feel comfortable and more inclined to stay. He was one of the few Spanish churchmen who didn't actually enslave the local Indians.

I'll be back with more.

Not to upstage Diane, but she has inspired me to pitch a teepee and invite a whole passel of dinner guests to a repast of buffalo steaks and venison, with pemmican on the side. Tiswin, the fairly weak Apache beer, will be served as the only libation.

Chief Joseph, yes, if he can tear himself away from Diane's sumptuous table.

Goklya (aka Geronimo), the feistiest of the Apache warriors who held out the longest against the US Cavalry and didn't surrender until the late 1880s.

Cochise, man of war, man of peace. He started out by befriending the Americans when they wrested the New Mexico Territory from old Mexico, against the advice of some of his warriors. Forced onto the warpath by white betrayal, he made peace early on and lived honorably in the Chiracahua Mountains of Arizona until his death in the early 1970s. There's a whole county named for him.

Thomas Jeffords, the white man who accomplished the miracle of convincing Cochise to take the path of peace and became the Apache chief's blood brother. (We need him to interpret. Cochise spoke fluent Spanish but very limited English.)

Tom Horn, just in case Jefford gets tongue-tied with tiswin. Horn was also fluent in Apache and knew their folkways inside out.

Ta-Shunka Witko (aka Crazy Horse), who led the Lakota to victory at the Little Big Horn.

Quana Parker, Comanche war chief, whose mother was a white woman kidnapped by the Comanche. He, too, became a respected man of peace by-and-by.

Sequoya, the Cherokee who invented an alphabet for the language of his people and began publishing a newspaper in that language before they were sent on the tragic Road of Tears to Oklahoma.

Sam Houston, who, probably more than any other Texan of his time, not only understood the Indians but had great sympathy for their plight.

Washakie, the Shoshone chief who became the best friend the white man ever had in the Pacific Northwest.

Before all you feminists start lambasting me, I had Sacajewea on the original list until I remembered that at sit-down meals virtually all Native Americans practiced a strict gender segregation. If you enter a teepee, the men go to the right, the women to the left to find their seats around the central hearth. So having a female present, I reasoned, might make the menfolk uncomfortable and stifle good after-dinner conversation.

My list
Ralph Nader- whom i dont really have a particular fondness for, but I named my parrot after him.

Horatio Sanz- the fat guy from Saturday Night Live. I give him alot of credit because on SNL, the fat guy always ends up dying!! He's brave.

Karen Fischer- she's this really hot girl that gave me her phone number at a bar the other night. God, she's attractive!!

James Randi (The Amazing Randi)- a semi-famous magician from the 1970's who has devoted the last 25 years of his life to debunking pseudoscience.

John Haines- opened up the very first strip joint in the united states in 1802. Thanks John!!

Kamato Hongo- worlds oldest known living person, who just celebrated her 115th birthday. Takes alot of spunk!!

Shirley Myers- my mother! Who's hair has completely turned grey after puting up with 28 years of me!

Og- the name scientists have given to the oldest known skeletal remains of a human being, dated over seven million years old. He is the most successful arguer against Creationism ever known.

Rowan Atkinson- best known for his role as BBC star "Mr. Bean". He knows that in comedy, sometimes less is more.

Homer Simpson- he captures the best in all of us.

OK, OK, sorry for tapping. Was only tappingnudging anyway.

Tap.

Osso, you should know you never have to apologize to me--anyway, I need nudging every now and then.

MA, I love your group. Could we make this a moveable feast and have dinner at your house and dessert at mine? I make fabulous desserts, but should never eat them, so I love making them for guests, knwoing that most, if not all, of it will be gone at the end of the night.

BTW, Sacajewea was next on my list. If there is need of gender separation, the women can sit on the left of the table and the men on the right-I'm not such a strict feminist that I can't accomodate well established traditions. This might be a way of women bringing enlightenment to otherwise male conversation. I know my grandmother would have brought enlightenment as well as a dry sense of humor to any dinner with any company.

Skeptic, if Shirley, your mother is at the dinner along with Karen, I hope she doesn't embarrass you as I probably would. I'm so ready to be a grandmother that I'm tempted to ask my son's if their girlfriends are fertile. Not, of course, that I've ever done such a thing (heaven forbid) just thought it. I only worry that, someday, it might slip out.

This is such an interesting group right here that I would like to have a dinner and invite all of you. Good conversation would be guaranteed.

Diane, Glad to see you're finally rolling. Keep 'em coming.

Osso, An inspired guest list if ever there was one. If women have to be separate, where are you gonna be?

skeptic, I like this list. Better hurry and get the invitations out--for Kamato's sake. I admire the amazing Randi too. He's a wonderful debunker.

Osso says huh? My guest list was way back at the thread beginning...

Well then Osso, come on over and keep my granny and Sacajewea company.