IN CASE YOU MISSED IT—"Bryan Weaver Snags Latino Caucus Endorsement," "Adrian Fenty Is Bustin' Loose"

Good Morning. LL has tons of mayoral campaign items. But first, WaPo's editorial board drops a masterful editorial on Vincent Gray's tenure as DHS Director under then-Mayor Sharon Pratt. It's a must read for anyone who a) Didn't live in the District in the bad old early '90s; and b) feels like they need a straight-forward, clear-eyed assessment of what Gray accomplished or didn't accomplish when he ran a big city agency. WaPo writes:

"Mr. Gray's campaign provided us with an eight-page document detailing his accomplishments at the department. He expanded early childhood programs, developing a plan to immunize children and reduce infant deaths. Outreach and education efforts initiated by Mr. Gray helped to lower infant mortality from a rate of 20 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 16.1 in 1995. (The rate was 13.1 in 2007, the most recent year with confirmed data.) He helped engineer a partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for a new approach to helping the homeless. He was unafraid of advocating for needed but controversial programs to combat AIDS such as condom distribution in schools and clean needle exchanges. Likewise, he refused to let racial politics derail the appointment of able Health Commissioner Mohammad N. Akhter, opposed by some because he wasn't black or from the District.

Nonetheless, the campaign document provides an incomplete, if not distorted, picture. It boasts about his closing the Cedar Knoll youth facility without mentioning that Congress forced the shutdown. It claims credit for a decision to place nurses in D.C. public schools, which came only after the city was held in contempt for failing to do so. Mr. Gray closed the city's notorious Forest Haven mental asylum, but that accomplishment would be tarnished by subsequent abuses that occurred in the community settings that replaced it. Overall, the early '90s proved to be a period in which the city was either unable or unwilling to administer its own social programs. From juvenile justice to foster care to treatment of the mentally ill, the city was in a free fall that the Dixon (and, after her marriage, Kelly) administration proved inept at stopping or even slowing."

There's so much more. Just click on the link. LL will just quote WaPo's final line: "It's hard to take issue with an assessment of his record as one of heartfelt labor, minimal progress and major setbacks."

OK. Now that the history lesson is over with, can we get on to the real issues? What would a Gray administration set as priorities for the next four years? What would another Fenty term look like? Would Peter Nickles still be playing Fenty's Dick Cheney? WaPo's Tim Craig reports that both candidates seem content on rehashing and litigating the past; neither candidate has so far been willing to offer detailed proposals on how they intend to deal with the bloated budget, the tax burden on the middle class, or the still-not-so-great school system. In other words, where are those four-color pamphlets with the bullet-point plans to make our streets safer and our kids book smart? Craig reports: "Officials with both campaigns said they are refining their messages to offer more specifics in coming weeks. But political strategists said Fenty and Gray face different obstacles as they seek to develop a message and persona that would offer more insight about how they would govern to an already agitated electorate. Gray, who remains relatively unknown to the broader electorate, needs to distinguish himself from Fenty on the issues while crafting a narrative that threads a thicket of competing interests to avoid divisions between voters in different parts of the city, some say. Fenty, who has been fighting perceptions that he is distant and arrogant, might have to acknowledge concerns about his personality, perhaps even make a public mea culpa, and then do a better job of explaining his governing style, observers said. And because many think Fenty benefited from policies and projects that originated with former mayor Anthony A. Williams, some observers said he needs to convince voters that he has a plan for leading a city expected to face tough spending choices."

AFTER THE JUMP—Barry's old drug connection donates thousands to Fenty campaign, Fenty vs. Gray: the Battle of the Go-Go Bands, Metro screws up fare hike, new AIDS cases decline, and much, much more!

NEW D.C. AIDS CASES IN DECLINE: WUSA9 via the AP reports the encouraging news: "HIV testing is up and new AIDS cases are down in Washington D.C. That's according to a new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The HIV/AIDS rate in the nation's capital is nearly 10 times the national rate. But the report shows that the number of newly diagnosed AIDS cases decreased from 164 cases per 100,000 people in 2004 to 107 in 2008."

THE '80S ARE ALSO BACK: Both major mayoral candidates are finding themselves battling over which go-go bands and musicians will support them. WaPo's Nikita Stewart has a breakdown—with the edge maybe going to Gray since Chuck Brown attended a fundraiser for the challenger. Anyway, Fenty held a go-go show this weekend. Stewart reports: "The price of admission is a voter registration form. No one under 18 is allowed without a parent. And a team of security clad in black is checking bags. After registering, guests get a green fentyreelect.com wristband. Fenty friends Sinclair Skinner, Keith Lomax and Ron Moten, all involved in controversies over the past year, are in attendance. And the basketball court is filling up with people ready to hear Subtle Thoughts, Junkyard Band and EU featuring Sugar Bear."

HISPANIC STUDENTS BEAT PEERS IN TESTING: The Examiner's Leah Fabel reports: "Among eighth-graders, Hispanic students' math scores jumped by 15 points between 2007 and 2009 on the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Black students saw gains of about 4 percentage points, and other racial groups were too small to be recorded accurately. Among fourth-graders, Hispanic students saw seven-point math gains since 2007, and 21 points since 2003. Their black peers saw gains of about 3 points since 2007, and 10 points since 2003. DCPS was among the only districts in the nation to see statistically significant gains among both racial groups. The NAEP, also called the Nation's Report Card, is given every two years and is the only identical measure used in districts throughout the United States. In districts like DCPS, the test is used as a measure of how well reform-minded superintendents like Michelle Rhee are succeeding. Reading scores among all racial groups saw little change between 2007 and 2009, but substantial progress since 2003, according to NAEP data. Again, Hispanic students sped ahead of their peers, gaining 19 points since 2003 while black students gained about 11 points."

METER RELIEF: You won't have to keep feeding the meter after dark on some District streets, WaPo's Nikita Stewart reports: "Just in time for the summer campaign season, the District has lifted new parking meter rules that required motorists to feed meters while trying to enjoying a night on the town. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), who proposed requiring the fees to generate revenue, has heard complaints on the campaign trail. He said in an earlier interview that he would revisit the issue. On Friday, the D.C. Department of Transportation announced that many commercial areas would no longer require feeding the meters from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m."

JONETTA ROSE BARRAS: Spotlights the Ward 6 Council race between incumbent Tommy Wells and challenger Kelvin Robinson: "Residents I spoke with had mixed reactions to both candidates. One person had never heard of either — although Wells has been in office for three years. Ronald Drake, citing his encounter with the incumbent over an issue involving representation of special education students, called Wells a 'wimp and a wannabe' and accused Wells of seeing himself as 'part of the establishment and the bureaucracy,' not as a representative of the people and their needs. Adam Clampitt, who knows both candidates, disagreed. He said Wells has been 'great on the issues' and 'very responsive to citizens.' Truth be told, none of this may matter. Residents and media have focused mostly on the mayoral race — although there also are competitive and interesting contests in Wards 1, 5 and, yes, 6. 'This is a really hard environment for anyone running down ticket,' Wells said. That makes it tough for Wells but even tougher for Robinson, who, like other challengers in the council races, is unlikely likely to receive much attention."

COLBY KING: Writes about Nardyne Jefferies, whose 16-year-old daughter was killed in the March 30 drive-by, as she launches a quest for answers re: DYRS.

JAY MATHEWS: Thinks more kids should enroll in summer school: "Summer learning loss has been shown to be a likely cause of low achievement in cities such as Washington. Karl L. Alexander of Johns Hopkins University found that by ninth grade, accumulated learning loss for low-income children accounted for two-thirds of the achievement gap between them and higher-income children who had summer learning opportunities, such as trips to the library and museums."

METRO MESS: A software problem caused a delay in the new fare hikes for some. WaPo's Lisa Rein reports: "A software glitch on the first day of Metro's higher fares allowed riders using paper fare cards at 34 stations to enter for the old fare Sunday. Metro technicians discovered the problem early in the morning, said Reggie Woodruff, a Metro spokesman. The last fare gate was fixed by 2 p.m., when all stations were charging the higher fare. SmarTrip cards were charged the correct fare throughout the day. Woodruff said it was unclear why the software, recently added to fare gates in the 34 stations to upgrade the transit agency's fare collection system, failed to charge the higher amount. 'We anticipated that there might be glitches,' he said. 'With all the programming we did for so many stations, it was bound to happen.'" More fare hike coverage via WTOP, DCist.

MERCHANT OUTREACH: NC8 reports that Fenty and D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier hit NE with a little outreach: "DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and Police Chief Cathy Lanier say it's time for the violence to stop. They visited a store on 5th St., NE, Friday, where a father and son were killed by thieves Wednesday afternoon. Customers came from all around today expressing sadness and outrage over the murders of Ming-Kun Chih, 59, and his son, Li-Jen Chih, 32....Mayor Fenty and Chief Lanier went door to door among merchants trying to assure them that police will do more. And they.both emphasized the importance of surveillance cameras inside businesses. In a similar shooting of a father and son in another Northeast store last week, police arrested two men, one Wednesday and the other Thursday. In that crime, the son, Prabjhot Singh, was killed. Police have announced that the team that investigated that shooting will now be assigned to investigate the double murder of the Chihs."

FENTY BOOED: Again.

WEEKEND CRIME: Three people are killed this weekend in the District, reports NBC4.

PROF. MARTIN GINSBURG: Supreme Court Justice's husband passes away, reports NC8. More coverage via WaPo.

PEDESTRIAN STRUCK BY CAB ON MALL: The injuries are serious, reports NC8. More coverage via DCist.

OUTSIDE: It's still hot. More coverage via WTOP.

MAYOR'S SCHEDULE: No public events today.

D.C. COUNCIL'S SCHEDULE:

1 p.m. Committee on Housing and Workforce Development (Hearing)
B18-0734 the "Subsidized Nonprofit Rental Unit Tax Exemption Amendment Act of 2010"
Location: John A. Wilson Building, Room 412

2 p.m. Public Works and Transportation (Round Table)
PR18-999, the "Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Capital Funding Agreement Emergency Approval Resolution of 2010"
Location: John A. Wilson Building, Room 500

Can you imagine a highway running down U Street? Can you imagine another highway cutting up most of Dupont Circle? Both were possible. Both were planned. And both never happened because District residents stood up, organized, and protested.

When was the last time District residents stood up for something?

There are plenty of issues worth organizing around. The AIDS rate is still really bad. The District's unemployment rate reached 12.1 percent in December. The DeOnte Rawlings case still stinks. And we have a mayor who won't hold weekly press conferences (that's for journalists to protest).

The other big event from yesterday....Prince of Petworth's reporting that Polly's has closed. The bar will be missed.

And a lot of people have been stabbed inside the D.C. Jail.

"Our rates are higher than West Africa....They’re on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya."

—Dr. Shannon Hader, city AIDS czar, March 16

Prior to this year, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty had called HIV and AIDS in the city is his No. 1 public health priority. But while he made key changes in the background—appointing Hader, for one, and placing a new emphasis on testing—Mr. Meaningless Press Conference has rarely done high-profile AIDS-awareness events. He even forgot to mention the epidemic in his yearly State of the District address. That behavior's been put in sharper focus by the release of new testing results in March, which came packaged in the Washington Post with the above quote. The juxtaposition of the national capital with the Third World prompted an avalanche of hand-wringing and attention to the issue, not that that worked out for Fenty. As the year ended, he saw his valuable behind-the-scenes work go almost wholly unheeded as the Post set its sights on the city's AIDS epidemic (and a Pulitzer Prize). A series of articles by reporter Debbie Cenziper uncovered shocking instances of mismanagement and poor spending—virtually all of which predated the Fenty administration.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

More from LL's Quotes of 2009

This morning’s roundup is dedicated to those barking underdogs: the tyrannized standing up to the tyranny, the teens throwing pumpkin pies at the teachers, and, um, the yogis fighting for freedom of speech? Three yoga teachers in Virginia are filing a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of  imposing license requirements on teacher-training programs. They argue that their karmic teaching qualifies as free speech. But the yogis also appear to be up in arms about a more earthly problem: the hefty state-issued $2,500 licensing fee.

Are you a Blade Man or a Metro Weekly Man? Who cares! You beat the man 11-2! Get married!

What? You have a wedding ring and still can’t figure out what kind of man you are? Maybe you are a Brightest Young Gay! The D.C. blog Brightest Young Thing is expanding its LGBT coverage and looking for “writers, photographers, editors, artists, event planners, and fornicators.”

An unlucky dude who T-boned a cop car wrote to Prince of Petworth looking for a shoulder to cry on. Read the comments: Looks like half of D.C. has hit a po-po too. Support group?

Two AIDS activists fed up with the three-year-long wait list for housing for those with HIV/AIDS, tried to stick it to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty yesterday afternoon by squatting outside the bullpen of City Hall. They were arrested on a misdemeanor.

Those sneaky underdogs Michaele and Tareq Salahi—the White House Crashers—said on the Today Show: “We did not party crash…there isn’t anyone who would have the audacity or the poor behavior to do that.” I am so using that line.

And finally, there’s a George Washington University student roaming my campus after spending 10 years in prison and juvenile detention after a first-degree murder conviction—which was overturned after he was proved innocent. This scholarly underdog is now off acing Intro to Criminal Justice.

Photo of yogi on thin ice by Sami Taipale, Creative Commons Attribution License

The protesters, Larry Bryant and Matthew Kavanaugh, were among about a dozen members of the D.C. Fights Back coalition that entered the John A. Wilson Building after 2 p.m. today as part of an protest tied to World AIDS Day.

"Fenty, Fenty, can't you see? Fund the fight for HIV," they chanted.

They picked a good day to do it. Numerous reporters covering today's D.C. Council votes on gay marriage and other matters were gathered up in the fifth-floor press room. After the chants echoed through the Wilson Building atrium, many rushed down to the hubbub.

Karyn Pomerantz, an D.C. Fights Back organizer, said the demonstration inside the building followed a rally outside that attracted about 200. The object of coming inside the building was to get a meeting with Fenty; it's unclear if he was in the office at the time.

"He's never had a meeting with any of us," says Pomerantz, who criticizes the District's official AIDS-fighting strategy. "There's never any action."

UPDATE, 5:35 P.M.: Will they get their meeting? Possibly, says Fenty spokesperson Mafara Hobson. Their request has been passed to a scheduler.

A little more than a week ago, news broke that at least three percent of District residents have AIDS or HIV. This provoked Shannon L. Hader, director of the city's HIV/AIDS Administration to now-famously compare D.C. to West Africa. When pressed by Loose Lips at a press conference, Hader stated that our rates of infection were twice as high as New York City and five times that of Detroit.

As LL pointed out, the bigwigs at the press conference—Mayor Adrian Fenty, Councilmember David Catania, et al.—defensively argued that the part of the reason for the high infection rates is that the city is just testing more people. Case in point: testing is now routine at the D.C. Jail.

But this epidemic is not a new epidemic. In fact, it's been called an epidemic too many times to count. Perhaps the reason this story didn't provoke serious outrage and more press conferences and men in white coats discussing infection trend patterns is that this is an old story.

"This is the number one [public health] priority of this government," Fenty told the Washington Post. That quote was from an April 5, 2007, story headlined: "Fenty Renews Fight Against HIV-AIDS; Mayor Promises Strong Effort, Plans To Pick New Agency Chief." In the story's first graph, the mayor "pledged" to "put an end to this crisis."

While Fenty has recently received high marks from local watchdogs DC Appleseed, you don't get to a more than three percent infection rate by accident. Along the way, there have been screw-ups, questions about funding, and more than enough declarations to do better. A quick Nexis search reveals just a little bit in how we got to this point:

• A Jan. 4, 2007, Post story reports that the city's AIDS/HIV Administration chief was stepping down after 16 months. The city would be forced to find a new chief—its third in two years—to head up the agency. The Post wrote: "The HIV-AIDS administration has had almost a dozen directors in its 21-year history. [Marsha Martin]'s predecessor, who held the job just 11 months, was fired after D.C. Appleseed issued a report critical of the city's response to the epidemic."
• In the same April 5, 2007, story quoted above, the Post notes: "The mayor's promise of momentum follows a year of ups and downs for the agency, which leads the city's response. It launched a testing campaign last summer, drawing national attention with its goal to encourage all District residents between 14 and 84 to find out their HIV status." The campaign netted a huge increase in people getting tested but it also fell well short of testing several hundred thousand residents (total tested: about 48,000). And "the data collected at the test sites were not complete enough to provide the demographic breakdowns needed for the best prevention and treatment planning."
• In a March 10, 2007, story, the Post wrote about funding to nonprofit groups who deal with AIDS/HIV prevention. It reported that in 2005, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray had noticed a "disparity" in funding—of the 121 nonprofit groups and agencies who received city dollars, not one cent had gone to a nonprofit based in Ward 7. Two years later, Gray was able to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to nonprofits who would target Ward 7 and Ward 8. But why did it take Gray two years after he realized this disparity to get funding? Where were other councilmembers on this issue? The Post story noted that these wards had the highest rates of infection in the city. And then there's this little nugget: The District would shell out an additional $300,000 to help these organizations "to implement training and help with writing grants." That's a lot of money to teach a nonprofit Grant Writing 101. That's a lot of money for "training." Effi Barry—who's expertise on the issue was what?—had been assigned to coordinate the Ward 7 part of the initiative.
• In late June 2007, the District government announces that it will launch a massive outreach effort aimed at teenagers and young adults. "We want to push the envelope....We have to be aggressive," Fenty says in a June 28 Post story.
• In late September 2007, the District pulled out of the condom producing business. The Post reported in a Sept. 29 piece that "as many as 70,000" government condoms were returned due to complaints related to the "mustard-yellow packets' durability and appearance." The District's outsourced condom producer agreed to replace the mustard-yellow packets with name-brand Trojans. The Post noted that "in addition to the inventories sent back in the past several days, the department's HIV/AIDS Administration still had 350,000 condoms that were never distributed....The Health Department has promised to retool the entire condom distribution program."
• A Nov. 26, 2007, Post article cites a District report calling the city's infection rates "a modern epidemic." The report was the first of its kind since 2000. "District health officials have long been faulted for the lack of HIV information and lagging AIDS data," the Post wrote. "Not until forced by federal funding requirements did the health department start tracking HIV." The city report found that more than 80 percent of the HIV cases were among black men, women and adolescents. Among women, nine in 10 were African American. The article quotes a letter Fenty had written that accompanied the report's release. He wrote: "We must take advantage of this information with the sense of urgency that this epidemic deserves."

The new report released last week revealed a 22 percent increase in the number of infected individuals from this 2006 study.

Those comparisons came from Dr. Shannon Hader, head of the city's HIV/AIDS Administration and a former public health officer who did extensive work in Africa. But LL and LL's boss had the thought: Is this just another example of the District suffering in an apples-to-oranges comparison—you know, where the District is compared to a state or country encompassing both urban, rural, and suburban areas rather than to its peer cities?

So after today's press conference on the numbers, LL asked Hader to put the numbers in context of American cities: "Our rates are twice as high as New York City and five times as high as Detroit," she said, adding she wasn't aware of a city with a higher infection rate.

Hader added this thought: "What I'm most concerned with is...southern cities are starting to have the same complexity of epidemic that we have, where you have every risk factor contributing. I hope that in a sense we can be a cautionary tale to some of our other southern urban centers who if they don't take the opportunity to know they're data and intervene now, they could evolve to matching us, and we don't want anyone to evolve further."

Hader and her boss, health director Dr. Pierre Vigilance, both made the point that D.C. in recent years has developed one of the most comprehensive testing regimes in the country. Vigilance, in his slight British accent, pointed to a "surveillance bias," where "doing a better job of testing people means more people actually get tested and more people get results. And you may find that there are more people with disease than you knew beforehand."

The unspoken subtext, of course, is that if New York or Detroit or Uganda or Kenya tested as thoroughly and reported their data as thoroughly as the District does, the District might not look so bad.

In any case, the four folks behind the mic at this morning's presser—Hader, Vigilance, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, and Councilmember David A. Catania—urged District residents to get tested regularly for HIV.

So LL asked each of them when their last test was. Said Hader, "I've been tested as recently as I access heath care, so i guess I'm a few months behind in my annual checkup." Vigilance said, "I was tested last year and need to get tested again this year." Fenty said he'd been tested "within the last year," and Catania said, "It has been some time," citing his now seven-year-long committed relationship as reason for his delinquency. (For the record, LL was tested when he had a checkup in fall 2007.)

"The Celebrity Solution," as the New York Times recently called it, has become an industry in itself in the decades since Geldof first lambasted television viewers to "just give us the fucking money." There are more than twice as many charities today, all competing for shrinking pots of money, and desperate for ways to put their cause ahead of the rest. There are online databases of celebrities and the charities they represent, and at least one nonprofit dedicated to helping celebrities hook up with the right charity. Some groups, including YouthAIDS, have had to turn away stars calling to offer their services.

YouthAIDS's founder Kate Roberts, a British-born marketer who got her start selling cigarettes in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, has fully realized the potential of using other peoples' fame to promote a good cause. Her organization, which serves as the promotional arm of the charity Population Services International, has raised millions of dollars, generated billions of media impressions (they counted) and made Roberts into something of a celebrity herself. But her biggest accomplishment is her relationship with Ashley Judd, YouthAIDS's Global Ambassador and all around oddball.

Judd's has a reputation for her vocabulary–she reportedly learns a  new word a day–and space-cadet tangents. Her keynote address at Friday's gala did not disappoint. Judd explained how traveling with YouthAIDS changed her life (and rocked her soul). She'd made a "sacred commitment" to "speak truth to power...It is my pact with the god of my understanding." Sweet and self-deprecating, the star admitted she had worked late into the night  trying to compose her speech. Sitting in her farmhouse, "with the first autumnal fire crackling," she agonized over how to talk about her most recent travels as YouthAIDS global ambassador. Then inspiration hit. "I couldn't tell you about Rwanda or the DRC," she said. The experience was too awful. She realized she had to begin at the end, with "The Calamity of Coming Home," as she titled the entry in her diary.

It all began at JFK airport, where an attendant took issue with the way Judd handed over her baggage slip, or some such piece of paper. "Are you the Ashley Judd?" the woman sneered. Judd says she was only able to contain her fury by looking for somewhere to go lay her head and sob. The suffering in Africa was still to fresh for her to care about a rude American. Later, walking along the path to her home, Judd says the dogs greeted her one by one  because, "They knew my tender heart couldn't stand to see them all at once."

She stumbled into her house and was overwhelmed with the terrible contrast between life in America, a life "untouched by civil strife," and the misery she had witnessed in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She counted her faucets, all six with hot and cold running water, and obsessed guiltily over a plastic cereal dispenser her housekeeper had purchased to hide the cornflakes from those "pesky pantry pets." The contrast was too much.

""I thought about Astrid, a tiny starving toddler whose dress hung slack from her frame." she said. Astird was "grasping" a feeding bottle from UNICEF "with the fury and rage that only the starving can understand."

Judd's fugue persisted for days. Finally, she sought the advice her family doctor, who diagnosed a case of "reverse culture shock." But Judd still suffered. "I knew I did have some trauma," she says. So she went to a psychiatrist who specialized in something called EMDR. They decided her trauma came from seeing genocide memorials. A few tears and rounds of treatment later, Judd said it will still take time for her to heal.

Meanwhile, MSNBC's Chris Matthews had his closed his eyes, either concentrating or napping, I wouldn't want to say. Around him, other guests were finishing a meal that included a beet and goat cheese napoleon, fillet Mignon and something called "Chocolate Graffiti." There was a silent auction, and a loud live auction, and a performance by John Mellencamp.

After collecting rather light swag bags (mini Luna energy bars, Kiehl's products, airplane bottles of Jim Beam), guests trudged downstairs for an after party in "The Band's Suit," a smallish hall made up like a trashed hotel room, with a few too many electric guitars, empty pizza boxes and, hanging from the chandeliers, fancy lingerie. A tiny young model in a French maid costume pushed an ancient vacuum cleaner while the band, several skinny models in chains and tight black denim, wandered around looking cool. I met one of them earlier in the hallway—he's an undergrad studying engineering at Virginia Tech—and he told me they were trying to figure out what to do with the guitars, since none of them knew how to play.

I approached a paunchy man holding two white paper shopping bags. I asked him what he won at the auction, and he opened a bag to reveal what looked like a vinyl record melted into the shape of a giant taco salad bowl. "Some vase my wife bought," he said. She paid several hundred dollars. Just then, his wife wandered over, grinning over a plate of tiny hot dogs scored from the steam trays by the door. She never eats during the day before  a gala– they attend two or three a month from fall through spring–so she can fill up on all the fancy food.

I asked if they attended the parties to stay in the in-crowd and they agreed the galas are a social obligation, but one they enjoy. They also make good financial sense. Like many wealthy couples, the husband and wife, who did not want their names used, put their "excess income" in a trust. They have to spend 5 percent of the total each year "or the IRS will snatch it," the wife said. "You can either give it away, or give it away and go to parties."

This year's gala raised $1.2 million, down a bit from the $1.5 million raised last year.  Kate Roberts told the audience the money would save 120,000 young lives. "Everyone can get involved to save lives," she said, transforming the room full of diners into a room full of healers. When I asked a communications staffer what metric they used to convert dollars into lives, she explained that $10 could educate and protect a child for a whole year.

I took many terrible photos. This is a very meta shot of Anna Kournikova taking a photo of celebrities on the stage.