George Bush's Note for Barack Obama

I just found this on Yahoo News:

Keeping a White House tradition, US President George W. Bush left a confidential note in the Oval Office for successor Barack Obama to wish him well as his historic presidency begins.

Here's a copy of the note:

Letter from St. Nick

A couple of weeks before Christmas, my daughter gave me a letter to mail to Santa Claus. Here is the response she received on Christmas Day.

Friday Dec 12: Divided and Conquered

Friday morning, up at 9:30. Even so, we still didn’t make it to the Tower until 11:30. Our warder, the charmingly named Dickey Dell, relished his job, and especially liked telling the gory details of the hangings and beheadings that took place there. He mentioned the Norman invasion of 1066. He said it’s been hard, but they’re slowly getting over it. The Tower is the number one tourist attraction in London, and it is a great time. The building itself is awesome, and the beefeaters do a great job.

From there we split up; Amy and Ginny headed to the Cabinet War Rooms, Polly and the kids to Hamley’s Toy Store, and me to Banqueting House and possibly the Elgin marbles, if there was time.

Banqueting House is a wonderful place. It’s used for state dinners now, but it used to be part of the palace used by Charles I. It’s basically a large room, hardwood floors and lots of windows. But the ceiling is the great part. Rubens painted it in 1622. It depicts the connection between God and the King. When Cromwell’s Commonwealth briefly replaced the monarchy, the king walked through that room and led out of a window. There, in front of a huge crowd, they beheaded him. Fittingly enough, the restoration of the monarchy took place there also when both houses of Parliament watched the coronation of Charles II.

I passed by the Horse Guards and snapped a few pictures on my way to the British Museum.

As I walked, I realized I had a rock or something in my shoe. It was kind of big. I sat down in the Great Court and reached into my shoe. What a perfect specimen of the obnoxious American I must have been. I pulled the offending object out of my shoe. It was a one-pound coin. I have no idea how it got in there. It had to have been in there all day. I dropped my smelly pound into one of the museum’s donation boxes.

The British Museum is where they keep the Elgin Marbles, fragments of friezes and statues from the Parthenon. They are quite controversial because Lord Elgin went down to Athens and basically stole these pieces. He paid some paltry amount and then they loaded them all up on a ship and brought them to London. They don’t really feel too bad about it, a pamphlet from the museum said, because “experts agree, it would not be possible to reattach them to the original structure.”

They are quite cool. The friezes depict a procession of peasants and civic dignitaries approaching the Gods, who are seated on thrones. Lots of horses and livestock, too. The marbles inspired many British poets, including Keats and Casement, who mentioned the ox lowing to the moon.

I returned to the flat in time to shower and head out with Polly for dinner. We went to a French place called “Le Cercle.” It had no sign except for its name etched on the tiny sliding glass front door. We went down a twisting staircase to the warm dining room. I told Polly each dish was so good it almost made me cry. I had poached cod, beef tartare, and pate. Each course had wine with it; and they were all fantastic.

We stopped off for a pint at the Tea Clipper and called it a night. It was a great day, our last in Jolly Old England.

Thursday Dec. 11: A Matter of Moments

Up at 9:30, I headed out to do a little grocery shopping. I went to Jack O’Shea’s, fine butchers since 1790. I asked for bacon and the fellow behind the counter started grabbing some pork chops. I had to specify the strips of “streaky bacon” as it was labeled. One other crazy difference between them and us? They don’t refrigerate their eggs there. They just have the cardboard containers sitting stacked up on the counter. I fixed breakfast for the kids and we all lived, so maybe they're on to something over there.

After eating we headed out to catch a Big Bus Company hop-on/hop-off bus tour. It took us around town to all of the sites. It was a nice way to see all of the spots we might not have time to visit. A fellow named Ian was the live guide aboard the bus.
We sat up top where part of it was covered and the back half open. Ian was filled with fun facts and a few puns. He kept asking Virginia questions she was too shy to answer. At one point he asked Frank to sing London Bridge for the whole bus. He declined. He had the driver stop at an unscheduled spot so we could see the London Eye framing Big Ben. Despite Ian’s build up, it was slightly underwhelming.

Some people hopped off the bus and Virginia and I got the plum seat, right in the front row. It was a great vantage point from which to see a pedestrian come within one foot of being killed as he stepped right out in front of the bus. “Ah,” Ian said, “we’re just in time to kill this chap!” The guy spotted the big red bus bearing down on him at the last moment, just in time to leap back on the sidewalk. Guess it wasn’t his time to go.

In restrospect, I would have done the bus tour on the first full day we were in town. It is a great way to get your bearings on the first day whilest recovering from jet lag.

After two hours of Ian we arrived at the Tower of London and headed off the bus to go inside. We stopped at a restaurant called EAT. It took us forever to get our food ordered and get it eaten and get out of there. EAT was more like DAWDLE.

When we got to the ticket office, the woman told us that the last warder-led tour had already started out and the place was closing down. We had just missed our chance. So we got on the next bus and headed to Westminster Abbey, which we learned had just closed its doors to new visitors a matter of minutes earlier. Everything conspired against us and our touristy exploits!

We walked along the Thames at dusk, and got to see a nearly full moon emerge from the clouds right behind the London Eye. That was pretty cool.

We went to bed early, knowing we had just one more day to cram in everything else we wanted to do. We didn’t go to the Tea Clipper that night. We didn’t feel like we deserved it.

Wednesday Dec. 10: The French fries taste like blood.

Wednesday morning we got up at 9:45, continuing our trend to adjust to the time change. We had breakfast at the Brompton Quarter Café. I ordered the kids pain au chocolate, and you should have seen their faces when they got to the chocolate center. Frank could not have been happier. Chocolate for breakfast! But the rest proved a little too fancy for the kids. The pancakes were more like crepes, and they put honey on it instead of syrup. The kids did not like these changes to one of their favorite dishes. We grownups loved our food. I had a traditional English breakfast: eggs, sausages, bacon, a baked tomato, and baked beans; quite yummy.

After we left the International House of Eschewed Crepes, we headed back to Hyde Park for more fun at the Winter Wonderland. This time Virginia, Frank, and I did the Ferris wheel. Because the midweek crowds were light, they let us go around three times. It was an amazing view of the park and the London skyline from a different vantage point.

Graham and Frank partook of the bungee jump experience where they each got hooked up in a harness and bounced 15 feet in the air. They loved it. As usual we were running late, so we hopped on the tube and after a couple of train changes we headed to Camden in Regent’s Park. We grabbed some sandwiches at Fresh & Wild, the British incarnation of Whole Foods.

We headed to BADA, where Polly’s niece Ellen has been studying all term in the drama program. Her performance on the next Thursday night would be the culmination of her work, and was the impetus for us to take this trip. We were privileged to see a rehearsal, since the kids weren’t coming to the actual performance. The show was Shakespeare’s King Lear (a “real upper,” as Ellen described it), and they did the final act for us. Ellen’s director instructed my kids: if something’s funny, you can laugh; if something’s sad, you can cry; and if it’s boring, you can leave. It wasn’t boring. You may not have studied King Lear in a while, but it includes the gouging out of eyes, stabbings, and poisonings. This rehearsal included lots of fake blood in small plastic packets. It was really great. Frank watched it all with great interest except for when two of the characters kissed. For that he had to cover his eyes.

We had a look at Piccadilly Circus. The kids liked the lighted signs and all the hustle and bustle. We walked down to the Sherlock Holmes pub near the Embankment tube stop. The kids had sparkling apple juice and a bowl of chips. Graham said he liked the juice, but not the bubbles. Although Frank loves French fries, he didn’t eat the ones at the Sherlock Holmes because he said they tasted like blood, a reference to the ketchup, and King Lear, I assume.

That night we went back to the Tea Clipper, where we met a wonderful bartender who was quite amused to hear our tale of ruining the kettle, and told us where to buy it. But she really liked finding out that her colleague the night before had to clean out three taps. “That’s brilliant!” she kept saying. They let Polly ring the bell for last call at 23:00.