Barack Obama gave the nation's governors a stimulus they couldn't resist: Earth Wind & Fire.
The R&B act, entertaining the National Governors Association on Sunday after Obama's first formal White House dinner, had even the stodgiest state executives asserting: Yes, we can dance.
"The day before ... we were wondering who the music was going to be," Maryland first lady Katie O'Malley said.
"And when they said 'Earth Wind & Fire,' I said, 'Oh my God. We're not going to be able to sit at our tables.' "
Her suspicions were confirmed upon entering the East Room after dinner.
"There were no tables," said O'Malley, a District Court judge.
(The Washington Post reports that there were actually six small tables around the room, but we'll let the talking heads duke that one out on TV. The real point: There was a dance floor.)
"Yes!" O'Malley said to herself. "We're going to dance."
O'Malley's governor-husband leads an Irish rock band in his spare time. That doesn't mean Martin O'Malley is much of a dancer. Judge O'Malley assured me he is not. But they danced anyway.
"You couldn't help it," Katie O'Malley said. "You had to."
Last year, President George W. Bush treated the governors to an after-dinner concert by Amy Grant. Katie O'Malley said that was "really, really lovely, but just a completely different vibe."
A home out of a storm
The man who spent 12 years as Baltimore's mayor lives these days on waterfront property just outside the Annapolis city limits.
Kurt Schmoke did not wake up one day and say, "I'm outta here."
It took the force of Tropical Storm Isabel and the election of 2008 to turn Schmoke and his wife into full-fledged Annapolitans.
"We've had the place for many years," he said. "My wife's grandparents had a home down there. As a little girl, she went down and visited.
" 'One day, I hope to have my own place down there,' " Schmoke recalled his wife saying. "So she spotted a piece of land that had a not very attractive residence on it. We acquired it, and I think my wife was the only person who was happy to see a hurricane, because Isabel wiped out the original house."
The couple eventually built "a beautiful home" on the spot but kept their house in Ashburton.
"We were debating what would be the primary residence," he said.
"We just decided we're going to make this move, and we've become residents of Anne Arundel County."
