Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

And then one day our world changed, and we don’t know what lies ahead.

How we emerge from our isolation is key to our survival. Some have imagined that a magic day will be designated, a giant switch will be flipped, and the world will pick up where it left off. It is folly to entertain such thinking.

We are social beings, in frequent contact with friends and family. Now we show our love and respect for each other by staying away. We’re helpless as we watch small businesses close, wondering if they’ll reopen, and which of our neighbors will face financial ruin.

Since most of us rely on the efforts of others to offer relief from the daily grind, we continue to miss sports and entertainment as much as anything. When will it be safe for 40,000 people to gather for a ball game? Television and the movies have shut down their productions. Broadway is dark and theaters are shuttered. We don’t know when we’ll be able to go to concerts again or when dance clubs will turn the lights back on.

Restaurants and taverns are closed, and even going to our friends’ homes for dinner seems an unwise prospect.

Lots of folks indulge their interest in sports by joining “fantasy” leagues. I don’t see the attraction. And to be successful at it requires more statistical homework than I’m interested in, or capable of doing.

I do, however, indulge in fantasy entertaining.

Geri and I have been enjoying this little game since we were first married. Who, the question is, would you like to have over for dinner? The rules of play are that your guests can be living or dead, or a combination. How many guests you want at one party is a consideration, as is the menu and who is to do the cooking. That’s it.

The dinner party I’m working on is for four guests. Three of them are dead, so they won’t be bringing spouses. One will. Including Geri and myself, that will bring the total number to seven. To even things out, I’ll be inviting one friend who I won’t name, but will say that it’s one of you.

While each of the four will be a special guest, the guest of honor is the living one. Here are their brief profiles.

I’ve always had great admiration for Yo-Yo Ma and would enjoy breaking bread with him. As a cellist, he is without peer. He is also a dedicated educator and his humanity has been displayed throughout the world.

Ma was born in Paris to Chinese parents. Educated at Juilliard and Harvard, the classically trained cellist has played bluegrass, traditional Chinese music, Argentinian and Brazilian music. He formed his Silk Road Ensemble to explore music traditional to the cultures found along the Silk Road, an ancient trade route from Europe through Asia to China. He has also performed with Bobby McFerrin, Carlos Santana and James Taylor.

He has been honored as the United Nations Messenger of Peace by Kofi Annan and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Joining Mr. Ma and his wife will be Shirley Chisholm, Miloš Forman and Richard Feynman.

As a physicist, Dr. Feynman was involved in studies that few could begin to understand. Yet he explained his work in a series of books, lectures and theses that helped popularize an interest in the discipline. His academic resume includes degrees from MIT and Princeton, and teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell and Caltech, where he remained until his death in 1988.

Albert Einstein attended Feynman’s first academic seminar. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb as a participant in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico. For his work with quantum electrodynamics, he won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. During the 1980s he would become known as a member of the Rogers Commission, the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiographical books Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?. He was a formidable bongo player.

Named to the National Women’s Hall of Fame, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress as the Democratic representative from New York’s 12th congressional district. She served seven terms from 1969 to 1983. I voted for her in 1972, my first opportunity to cast a ballot.

Born in New York to immigrant parents from the Caribbean—her father was a laborer, her mother a domestic worker—she and her two sisters were sent to live with their maternal grandmother in Barbados, where they received their early education.

A champion of civil rights and women’s rights, Ms. Chisholm, who had earned a M.A. in elementary education from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1952, she served three terms in the New York State Assembly before running for the U.S. House. Her focus on the inner city, poverty and education led to bi-partisan legislation that expanded the food stamp program and created the WIC nutrition program. Chisholm also served on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and was named to the Education and Labor Committee.

Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 as one of its founding members, later that the same year becoming a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus. She employed only women on her staff, saying that bias against women was greater than any racial discrimination that she had faced.

In 1972, Chisholm became the first woman and the first African-American to run for President of the United States on the Democrat ticket. That same year, she convinced George Wallace to wrangle the needed southern Democrats to pass legislation guaranteeing minimum wage for domestic workers.

A vocal opponent of the draft and the Vietnam war, she supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending.

In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1932 to Jewish parents, film director Miloš Forman endured the effects of the Nazi occupation. His father, Rudolf Forman, was arrested for distributing banned books, and died a prisoner in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in 1944. Forman’s mother had died in Auschwitz the previous year.

Forman was an important figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave of cinema in the 1960s. His 1967 film, The Fireman’s Ball, was seen as a satire of Eastern European Communism and was banned. That following year, during the Prague Spring, he moved to the United States, settling in New York, where he would become a professor of film at Columbia University in 1978.

His first film in the United States was Taking Off, which won the Grand Prix at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, but received bad reviews and fared poorly at the box office. His next film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was a critical and commercial success. The film won Oscars in the five most important categories (Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay), and firmly established Forman’s reputation.

His film adaptation of the Broadway musical Hair was met with favorable reviews but was a box-office flop. His next effort, Amadeus, was a retelling of the story of Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The film was internationally acclaimed and won eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Because I don’t want to miss even a minute of the conversation that I imagine will focus on the roles of science, politics and the arts in the time of pandemic, I’ve decided to have my paternal grandmother cook a Bohemian meal.

It will include chopped liver, dill cucumbers in sour cream, roast duck with plum gravy, parslied potatoes, sauerkraut and bread dumplings. I’ll be pouring a 2015 Joseph Drouhin “Cotes de Beaune.” For dessert, apricot kolacky and slivovitz.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Pečená kachna (Bohemian Roast Duck)

1 (5-6#) duck
2 Tbs. kosher salt (more or less)
2 cloves, chopped
2 Tbs. caraway seeds, toasted
1 apple
6-8 ripe plums

Wash and pat dry inside and outside of duck.
Cut wing tips off, as well as any excess fatty skin around the neck and from the cavity.
Pierce the duck fat all over with a fork, but do not pierce the meat.
Liberally salt exterior and interior of duck.
Let rest 24 hours on a rack unwrapped in your refrigerator.
Take the duck out of the fridge and let come to room temperature.
Rub with garlic and sprinkle with caraway, inside and out.
Slice the apple and place inside the cavity.
Place duck breast-side down in a roasting pan with a lid and cover.
Heat oven to 350 F.
Pour a cup water in the bottom of the roasting pan.
Roast duck for one hour, skimming off excess fat.
Turn duck breast-side up and place the plums around the duck.
Continue to roast uncovered for another hour, basting often, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thigh registers 150 F and the skin is golden.
Remove from oven and allow it to rest 10 minutes before carving.
Use the pan drippings and the plums to make gravy. Strain before serving.