Annual Christmas celebration at Naples' Palm Cottage

A record mix of 184 Neapolitans and newcomers mingled upstairs, downstairs and outside Palm Cottage, the house museum built in 1895 and long home to the Naples Historical Society for its annual fundraiser Dec. 7.

Tucked away, yet holding forth in a cozy corner of the home's study, were Laverne Norris Gaynor — the adjacent Norris Garden recognizes her family's contributions — with Olga Hirschhorn and Stella Thomas. Co-chairwomen Mary S. Smith — who is also board president — and Diane Koestner circulated all evening, measuring success for the black-tie gala.

Of special note in the dining room was a cabinet display of pieces from Barbara Meek's personal collection of turn-of-the-century American cut glass. Her husband, art dealer Bill Meek, was, as he said, "thrilled to have successfully facilitated" the donation of paintings by area artist William Henry that were originally commissioned in the early 1970s by banker Mamie Tooke.

On display over the 2012-13 season, one hangs over the dining room sideboard, the other over the fireplace. Henry murals are also featured at the Port Royal Club and, at one time, a painting on one's wall signaled entry into the society of Port Royal, according to Meek.

Following the indoor reception, energized by an open bar and passed hors d'oeuvres including lemon and dill marinated grilled shrimp, the hungry throng dined in the white-canopied Norris Garden at tables dominated dramatic centerpieces created by floral designer Mia McKee. Design throughout the treasured Old Naples residence was installed by Brimmer's Custom Decor.

Broadway hits and Christmas tunes were provided over the dinner period by the Peter Duchin Duo of the Amodeas: Jean on synthesizer and Ron on guitar.

Diners enjoyed Caprese salads and Parmesan cheese straws; beef tenderloin served with twice-baked Duchess potatoes topped with shaved Gruyere; and chocolate Kahlua torte, designed, created and served by You've Got It Coming.

Five "Angel Tables" of eight were purchased in toto by generous donors. Among familiar attendees were Mary Watkins and daughter-in-law Ellin Goetz, landscape architect who designed the Norris Garden and wife of Michael Watkins. The Watkins family owns and operates the longtime Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club.

Executive Director Elaine Reed, who wrote in her welcoming statement, "It takes a community to preserve one," provided an early estimate of $88,600 in net income from ticket sales beginning at $300 per person. All proceeds benefit operations and programs of the Naples Historical Society.

The problem with the Toucher part of the story is that he got the nickname for having touched Edward, the Prince of Wales, for a fiver at a race meeting at Punchestown in 1865. Whatever about the Toucher Doyle's age, Alfie Byrne, who was so fond of meeting people as Lord Mayor that he was known as "the shaking hand of Dublin", was born in 1882.

There is no doubt, though, that Kernoff knew Delia Murphy, the Queen of the Irish ballad, or as Kevin O'Connor describes her, "a handsome woman whose cheerful renderings enthralled both salon and music hall".

He painted a glamorous portrait of her, reproduced here, and her colleen features can be seen in many of his pictures of ideal young women, including the charming Turf Girl Of Ardee that is now in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Delia and Harry's affair was bedevilled by the fact not just that she was a married woman with four children but that her husband, Thomas Kiernan, was variously Irish ambassador to the Vatican, Australia, Germany and Canada. According to O'Connor, when Delia was in Ottawa with her husband, she "signalled to Harry her loneliness for his company", whereupon Kernoff set off for Canada.

The story in the book gets a little complicated here. Kernoff could afford to make the trip because he met a visitor from Nova Scotia called Albro Ettinger in the Bailey pub "in the early spring of 1957". The "primary reason" for Albro being in Dublin "was to tease out with premier Eamon de Valera constitutional issues of the British Commonwealth as Nova Scotia was an early colony to become self-governing in the 19th Century".

This is a bit peculiar because not only was Dev not bothered by Nova Scotia in early 1957, he wasn't even Taoiseach.

Anyway, Albro was apparently so taken with Harry and "the conviviality of the Bailey" that "he lobbied de Valera the following day to sit for a portrait by his new-found Dublin friend. Not only was a sitting agreed and a charcoal portrait of de Valera bought by Ettinger, but in its aftermath he invited Kernoff to an expenses-paid sojourn in Nova Scotia".

Harry definitely went to Nova Scotia: he painted a series of lovely pictures in Halifax, the capital city of the province. But if he was romancing his beloved – according to Kevin O'Connor, "his personal meetings with Delia are shrouded in family discretion" – he must have been doing it at a distance: Halifax is almost 1,000 miles from Ottawa.

Kevin O'Connor's 125-page biography is woefully short on facts, but what makes it a guaranteed stocking-filler for Christmas and of lasting value is the large number of colour and black and white reproductions of Kernoff's wonderful work.

When Bryant left the container that day, he stepped directly into America: dry grasslands stretching to the horizon, fields and the smell of liquid manure. Every few seconds, a light on the radar tower at the Cannon Air Force Base flashed in the twilight. There was no war going on there.

Modern warfare is as invisible as a thought, deprived of its meaning by distance. It is no unfettered war, but one that is controlled from small high-tech centers in various places in the world. The new (way of conducting) war is supposed to be more precise than the old one, which is why some call it “more humane.” It’s the war of an intellectual, a war United States President Barack Obama has promoted more than any of his predecessors.

In a corridor at the Pentagon where the planning for this war takes place, the walls are covered with dark wood paneling. The men from the Air Force have their offices here. A painting of a Predator, a drone on canvas, hangs next to portraits of military leaders. From the military’s perspective, no other invention has been as successful in the “war on terror” in recent years as the Predator.

The US military guides its drones from seven air bases in the United States, as well as locations abroad, including one in the East African nation of Djibouti. From its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the CIA controls operations in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.