Phoebe Kate

For my fantasy dinner party, the ladies (living or dead) I’d invite, in alphabetical order with the reasons why:

–Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)  She and I are distant cousins.  She was a breath of fresh air amongst the stuffy Royals and died way too young.  So much for fairy tale romances, eh?

–Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)  Reclusive and introverted, under-published and un-acclaimed in her lifetime, I’d like her to do a reading of her poems while coffee and liqueurs are being served.

–Dian Fossey (1932-1985)  Of Gorillas in the Mist fame and one of my biggest heroes.  Murdered in Rwanda, where she spent much of her life, she is interred at a site that she personally had constructed for her dead gorilla friends.  On her gravestone, the epitaph: “Nobody loved gorillas more…”        

–Jane Goodall.  Since I was a little kid, I’ve admired her dedication — a pale skinny little Englishwoman living for years and years in the hot, buggy African jungle to study chimpanzees.  Golly, that lady is tough. 

–Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. 

–Joan of Arc (1412-1431) Another fascinating young woman who died way too young.  The Voices in her head were right, historically.  Apart from being revered in France to this day, she’s also become a pop culture figure – much to her surprise and delight, I hope.  I promise not to have anything flambe on the menu…

–Mary, the mother of God.  Well, Jesus is on my gent’s guest list so I can’t exclude his mom (and I’m hesitant to include Mary Magdalene because no one’s really sure what their relationship was, no matter what Dan Brown says in The DaVinci Code.)  I’d like to get Mary off in a corner after she’s enjoyed a couple of Cosmos and ask what it was really like to raise that boy.  I can just hear her saying, “Oh, my!  He was a holy little handful, believe you me!”

–Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)  One of my favorite artists who said something that hit me upside the head one day when I read it: “I found myself saying to myself: I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to do, I can’t say what I want to say.  I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted.”  I’ve been writing what I want ever since.

–Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) We all saw the perfectly composed Outer Woman from the beginning of her fame to the end.  I’d like to get to know the Inner Woman.

–Rosa Parks (1913-2005) I want to give her a big hug and seat her at the head of the table.

–Elizabeth Taylor.  Oh, to see those violet eyes and all that fabulous jewelry up close.  Plus, anybody who said, “Now is the time for guts and guile” is someone I’d really like to chat with.

–Kay Yow.  Okay, unless you live in NC or are a big collegiate basketball fan, you probably don’t know the name, but now you do.  She is the coach of the women’s basketball team at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.  She has been battling breast cancer for years, and last season, she had a recurrence.  It didn’t stop her.  Though she needed a nurse at her side, an oxygen tank and sometimes had to be carried onto the court in a gurney, she traveled with the team and hardly missed a game.  Go, Wolfpack!  Go, Kay!

– phoebe kate