May 16, 2005
Dinner at the Club
Pardon me for going on about this event for another entry, but my life is a bit thin at the moment, as are my thoughts, nothing else, unfortunately. .
The real treat of the weekend was the alumni dinner which was held in a veritable Bastion of the Patriarchy, the Union League of Philadelphia . Of course I couldn't fit my camera into my evening bag, so you will have to be satisfied watching the slide show on their website and clicking "banquet and function rooms", which do not do the premises justice, I might add.
As a simple farm girl from the midwest, I feel quite privileged to have been invited inside at all, ever, since it is a private club to which I might not want to belong, I'm not quite sure. There are women members, and the tenth annual Passover seder was celebrated (ostensibly with Beef Wellington, but I'm not sure whether the member/participant was kidding, since puff pastry is not what one would call unleavened).
The building is an architectural extravaganza, eight floors, 250,000 square feet, filling a full city block. It was built in 1862 as a "patriotic society to support the policies of Abraham Lincoln". Lord knows just who it can find to support today. Let us hope it's not you know who, but I suspect it is. Power, after all, is power.
Really, I have done my share of trooping through the castles of Europe and various historic buildings in the US of A, and I was impressed that a nonmunicipal group could get something like this together.
After cocktails in the vast paneled ballroom with the group as a whole, the class of '60, was assigned a more intimate space, one of dozens, with thirty foot ceilings, lined with leaded glass bookcases, set in rare woods.
A compatriot and I did a fairly thorough search of the hallowed halls of the first and second floors to see if we could see something other than an old white man among its extensive portraiture, oil and photographic. We did find one woman in a group photo under Teddy Roosevelt, Ike and MacArthur. It was Sandra Day O'Conner.
And that folks is as close as I will get to rubbing elbows with the hooha this decade
Photo note: A Philadelphia woman (on her way, no doubt, to the Union League) and some boys from the "hood. They get dressed up in Philadelphia.
Posted by Dakota at May 16, 2005 10:11 PM