DINNER WITH THE NEW MAPMAKER
Last night, I enjoyed a delicious meal at Fogo de Chao in the company of Dr. Barnett, his very bright and spirited daughter, Emily, fellow Chicago Boyz blogger Lexington Green and his gracious wife…umm…”Mrs. Green“. As Brazilian cuisine is basically a salad followed by about seven pounds of meat, we may all still be in the process of digestion even as I write this post (Special thanks to Sean ” Jack Bauer” Meade and Mrs. Zenpundit for facilitating the communication logistics of this get-together).
This was my first occasion meeting Tom and he was pretty much as I had expected him to be, except taller. An interesting aspect of the discussion was that if you have seen Dr. Barnett’s televised brief, that represents a modulated pacing, of his sometimes rapid-fire conversational delivery, highly energized by ideas and their prospective implementation. The discussion was wide-ranging and intriguing, though some elements of it have been or will be posted on Tom’s blog as they related to his recent Central Asian tour with Admiral Fallon, chief of CENTCOM, but good books, politics, Japanese anime, various public intellectuals and writing all came up as topics of conversation.
The food was excellent, as was the company. I’d like to thank Dr. Barnett for taking the time out of a very busy travel schedule with Emily for a social engagement with the Greens and myself, as well as for dinner. The generous gesture is much appreciated. It was also a pleasure to see Lex and his wife again. Hopefully, we can all sit down again sometime in the future.
November 11th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Zen you dog!:-) To borrow a quote back to you by Tom on a recent post. Seriously, a chance to break bread with Tom Barnett is to be the envy of all of us.
November 11th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
“Jack Bauer” Meade?
November 11th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Sounds like an especially enlightening engagement. That’s a whole lot of brain power around one table.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Hi historyguy99,
It was fun. Fortunately, Tom was en route on a family trip and was passing through Chicago.
Hi a.e.
An inside joke regarding Sean having shaved off his goatee recently, creating a resemblence to Mr. Kefir Sutherland.
Hi sub
Thank you. Someday, we’ll have to all do some kind of mini-blogcon for our little corner of the blogosphere and sit around a larger table together.
November 12th, 2007 at 3:06 am
that and i sometimes interrogate commenters enhanced-ly đŸ˜‰
November 12th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Mark, it was indeed a good evening.
A great treat to meet the man in person.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:31 am
Hi Lex,
Agreed.
Perhaps some Sunday in the coming months we’ll do the book jaunt you suggested and invite Dave Schuler and a few other like minded individuals.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I’m up for pretty much anything.
There’s quite a little coterie of bloggers in the Chicago metropolitan area. Besides those you’ve already met there’s iowahawk (Dave Burge), Lynn Kiesling (an energy economist), and quite a few others some of whom I’ve met and some just corresponded with.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Hi Dave,
I agree – aside from Lex, there may be several other Chicago Boyz around, a.e. at Simulatedlaughter and so on. A larger group outing would be enjoyable.