We have many fond memories of Arizona Opera, especially the think-outside-the-box Mariachi Opera, Janet Napolitano and our front row seat on her political rise.
Janet was a US Attorney when we met. She was the perennial opera date of the chairman of my wife's company. Back then nobody knew Janet so the four of us were never interrupted when we chatted between acts. Mostly my wife and Monseigneur talked about health care. Janet wasn't curious and we never got around to talking about what my schoolmate Clarence Thomas was like. Not that that would have been a long conversation -- he never said anything. I guess I could have explained how Thomas and another schoolmate, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the Phantom of Wheeler 5, are connected and the counterfactuals of their intersection. Never got around to it.
After the opera, we'd walk Janet and Monseigneur back to the diocese parking lot on the other side of Van Buren Street, Phoenix. Van Buren was known for its ladies ladies of the evening, but near the church it was just dark and lonely. One night, Janet was walking at the head of the column beside me. Without looking both ways, and before I could grab her, Janet stepped into the street. A bicyclist rocketed from out of the dark and narrowly missed running down the future head of Homeland Security. I was very disappointed in my performance -- some bodyguard. The biker looked over his shoulder and yelled .... sorrrrry ... as he disappeared back into the dark.
As the years passed and Janet rose through the ranks to governor, our opportunities to chat became less frequent. They ended when Janet got a car, driver and a detail of burly DPS bodyguards ... who wears a bulletproof vest to an opera. We didn't get near Janet again until one day waiting at an airport gate in Boston I looked up and there's Janet sitting right in front of us in the seats perpendicular to ours. Janet didn't remember us or was just too busy to kiss the baby. If she'd been Bruce Babbitt, she wouldn't have missed the opportunity to chat up a constituent ... like Bruce did one day when I found myself sitting next to him and McCain. I was a baby back then ... thank God he didn't kiss me.
