If you could have a private dinner with any five presidents, whom would you pick.

We played this game last year, remember? In fact, we started the game on February 18, 2013. Here’s the game board I made the next day. It still sits in the dining room.

Here’s a snippet of conversation from near the end of the right side of Table 1:

Sam Colt (Mr. Big Food): The good people in this world are very far from being satisfied with each other and my arms are the best peacemaker. [Samuel Colt, 1852]

John Ford (Mr. Big Food): Be careful or you’ll blow yer brains out. [from Ford’s Wagon Master (1950), spoken by character Travis Blue (played by Ben Johnson)]

Robert E. Lee (A. Leland) I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (Marica): … and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?” [Letter form a Birmingham Jail]

Thomas Jefferson (Marica): All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. [Thomas Jefferson letter to Roger C. Weightman dated June 24, 1826]

C.S. Lewis (Daughter C): If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Ayn Rand (Marica): We made it. We created it. We brought it forth from the night of the ages. We alone. Our hands. Our mind. Ours alone and only. We know not what we are saying. Our head is reeling. We look upon the light which we have made. We shall be forgiven for anything we say tonight. . . . [written by “Equality 7-2521,” the main character of Rand’s novella Anthem (1938)]