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A-List Guide to the Inauguration Parties

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The Obamas at the Commander-in-Chief’s Ball, Jan. 20, 2009.

WHEN aides to President Obama announced that there would be only two official inaugural balls this weekend — the fewest in recent memory — Washington insiders and veteran partygoers shrugged.

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An adoring crowd with the Obamas at the Youth Ball, Jan. 20, 2009.

And it wasn’t because the first couple remain relatively detached from the social life of the nation’s capital.

Everyone knows that the best inauguration parties aren’t the government balls but the private fetes that fill museums and restaurants, tie up car services, throw caterers and celebrity wranglers into high gear, and turn Washington into something like Fashion Week or the Oscars for the style challenged.

“The official balls are for people coming in from out of town,” said Kevin Chaffee, an editor of Washington Life, the society magazine. “Visitors have to go home and say they attended one. But old Washington hands know to go to smaller parties that will be well done.”

Or as Diana McLellan, the retired society columnist put it, “People spend a lot of money and time getting dressed to go, but even the best official balls are enormous scrums.” In particular, she remembers the one (and only one) given by Jimmy Carter, which was called a “party” rather than a “ball” to assuage recessionary guilt. It was in Union Station before it was renovated.

“And all there was to eat were peanuts,” she said. “It was like going to hell.”

Well, nobody ever said Washington was an easy town. That’s especially true during fiscally tricky times, which may explain the difficulties that the president’s inaugural committee had raising $50 million for festivities, after the most expensive presidential race in history.

Nor is the capital in a particularly jolly mood — what with all the fiscal drama, contested appointments and a Congress so embittered that it makes the one depicted in “Lincoln” look like a garden club. And let’s not overlook the fact that second inaugurations should be more subdued, “a little bit like a second wedding” according to The Washington Post Magazine.

But never mind. Even with fewer attendees expected, and the news this week that the Washington power couple Tony and Heather Podesta are divorcing, it’s still a festive week for all kinds of party animals, especially of the Democratic persuasion. Here’s a selective and highly curated list.

1. HOT LIST

The power brokers atop the invitation should be a tip off — Buffy and Bill Cafritz, Ann and Vernon Jordan, Vicki and Roger Sant — for one of the most coveted tickets in town. Their 2009 edition was so star-studded — Tim Geithner here, Tom Brokaw, Ben Bradlee and Eli Broad there — that the Clintons couldn’t make it 10 feet past the door. And at least one movie star, an organizer claimed, was turned away. It wasn’t Glenn Close. She was inside.

Dolley Madison Ballroom at the Madison, 1177 15th Street, NW; Sunday, 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Invitation only.

2. BIG TICKET

With tickets starting at $10,000 a pair, expect the Creative Coalition’s Inaugural Ball to attract high-rollers and notable names, even if not quite like in 2009. The Goo Goo Dolls play this time for guests including Paula Abdul, Eric Stonestreet, John Leguizamo, Giancarlo Esposito and Johnny Galecki. Oh, and Tim Daly, too. He’s the president — of the Creative Coalition, that is.

Harman Center for the Arts, 610 F Street, NW; Monday from 9 p.m. Tickets from $10,000 a pair.

3. BOY BAND ALERT

Michelle Obama and Jill Biden headline the Kid’s Inaugural concert, hosted by the presidential inauguration committee and held in honor of military families. Expected guests include Alicia Keys, the cast of “Glee,” Katy Perry and Marc Anthony. Mindless Behavior (the boy band) is also on the roster. A prediction of the days to follow?

Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Place, NW; Saturday from TBD. Invitation only.

4. DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

While there are only two official balls, there’s no shortage of state society balls.And veterans know that these state balls have more food, drink and chances to hobnob with members of Congress. The standout is the Black Tie & Boots Inaugural Ball, sponsored by the Texas State Society of Washington, which promises six stages with performers, and truckloads of Texan food and drink. Gowns for women and tuxedos and boots for men suggested. Cowboy hats optional.

Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center (National Harbor, Maryland); Saturday, 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. $250 members; $275 for nonmembers (texasstatesociety.org).

5. LADIES WHO BRUNCH?

Google is toning things down from its 2009 inaugural bash, which featured dancing, a game room and big names like Ben Affleck, John Cusack and Craig Newmark (of Craigslist). This time, the search engine (which has a big legislative agenda) is partnering with Elle and the Center for American Progress for a Leading Women in Washington brunch, toasting the record number of new congresswomen, many of whom are expected to attend. No binders full of women here, just the real thing.

National Portrait Gallery, Eighth and F Streets, NW; Sunday, noon to 3 p.m.: Invitation only.

6. LATINO VOTES AND VOICES

Last fall, activists took the Kennedy Center to task for only including two Hispanics — Plácido Domingo and Chita Rivera — among its 186 honorees since 1978. Now a committee has been formed to address the issue. By happy coincidence (or is it?), Latinos take center stage for “ In Performance at the Kennedy Center,” hosted by Eva Longoria and others. Lineup includes Antonio Banderas, Rosario Dawson, Raúl Esparza, José Feliciano, Melanie Griffith, George Lopez, Rita Moreno and Ms. Rivera. Picante!

Kennedy Center Opera House, 2700 F Street, NW; Sunday from 7 p.m. Tickets, $150 to $300.

7. LIBERAL LIST

At the 2009 Peace Ball, Joan Baez sang “Forever Young.” This time around, sentiments may not be as hopeful. Still the ball, which is organized by Busboys and Poets, a much-loved Washington community bookstore and cafe, offers this cynical and compromising town a progressive and idealistic vision of tomorrow. Guests include Angela Davis, Amy Goodman, Ralph Nader, Alice Walker, Marian Wright Edelman and Danny Glover. Moby spins, too.

Arena Stage at the Mead Center, 1101 6th Street, SW; Sunday, 7:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tickets, $135, sold out.

8. DEMS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN

Nancy Pelosi, always gracious at parties, will be the main attraction at the 2013 Speaker’s Cabinet Inauguration Luncheon and Concert, hosted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But Cyndi Lauper, in town to perform at the Human Rights Campaign LGBT celebration the following night as well, will be the entertainment (along with John Legend).

Italian Embassy, 3000 Whitehaven Street, NW; Sunday at 12:30 p.m. Invitation only

9. STRETCHY GOWNS ANYONE?

Even yogis are getting into the spirit of things with the Yoga Ball, sponsored by Off the Mat Into the World, and Yoga Votes, which promotes voting between oms and sun salutations. The evening includes asana yoga, a vegetarian dinner, music and meditation. Dress: spiritual.

St. Francis Hall, 1340 Quincy Street, NE; Sunday from 4 p.m.; $50 in advance, $60 at the door.

10. MAYOR ALERT

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be out and about, and no doubt at the Illinois Society State Ball on Saturday night. Mr. Emanuel is also hosting a Chicago-style after-party at the Hamilton (600 14th Street, NW). Co-hosts include Matthew Barzun (former United States ambassador to Sweden), Eva Longoria, Jim Messina and Julianna Smoot. Around the corner at the W hotel (515 15th Street NW), Electronic Arts is hosting an after party to promote an organization called Learn. Build.Create. It’s with Pharrell Williams, John Legend and Malin Akerman, along with Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles. Both are invitation only, with doors opening at 11 p.m – unimaginably late – by D.C. standards.

I Was Misinformed

Sexual Myopia

Every once in a while a male friend in his 60s tells me that try as he might, he just cannot get turned on by women his own age and naturally I channel Cher in “Moonstruck” and let him have it: Snap out of it, I say! Look in the mirror! We all age! What’s more important to you, a woman 30 years younger whom you can show off on the beach or someone who doesn’t draw a blank when you talk about Bullwinkle and Boris Badenov? Not that I have that many conversations in which I need to reference Bullwinkle and Boris Badenov, but when I do I don’t want to have to get bogged down in the whole back story. This is why I know this whole cougar thing is a myth. I do not know any women in their 60s who want a 30-year-old boyfriend because what would they talk about?

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So you will imagine my horror, when talking with some very nice, accomplished and thoughtful men in their mid-60s, to hear in my head the voice of a deeply superficial woman, saying exactly the sorts of things my male friends have said.

“Boy, he’s old,” the voice said. “His hair is entirely white. I am trying to picture him naked and I am not sure I want to go there. Could I really spend a dirty weekend with this guy?”

It was obvious, as I am a woman of too much depth for this to be the real me, that I had been possessed by an evil spirit, some sort of vapid dybbuk with a hideous sense of values, but, I suspected, extremely nice shoes. It’s not like you can go to anyone these days and talk demonic possession so I went home, lowered the blinds and tried to summon the vile creature:

“Oh, vapid dybbuk,” I said, “I command you to leave my body so I can hook up with a good guy my own age already, who will know whereof I speak when I invoke Dion and the Belmonts.”

You know that scene in “Peter Pan” where Peter is pretending to be a beautiful lady and running behind trees and enticing Captain Hook as Hook sings, “Oh you mysterious lady, where can you be?” The Broadway show with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard, which was televised in 1955? Of course you do. This dybbuk was behaving like that, tee hee heeing, hiding in hard-to-get spots in my brain, taunting me in a high-pitched voice: “Who me? What dybbuk? No, I couldn’t possibly leave your body and come out. There’s not a thing in this house to drink. What do you say we go to a sports bar and trawl for a 29-year-old? “

“There’s vodka in the freezer,” I said. “Why don’t you go get yourself some.”

“Please,” the vapid dybbuk said, “Mrs. Dybbuk didn’t raise any stupid demons. I’m staying put, while you throw away one opportunity after another.”

This is the thing with dybbuks, they know how to get under your skin.

I would have told you, before I was possessed, that I was fine with men my own age. The last guy I dated, after all, was someone who had been a friend when we were teenagers, a guy who, in his youth, looked like the blond ski instructors you would see on the Swiss tourist poster: “Come to Gstaad! Ski the Alps! Sleep with Rolf!” When we ran into each other again, 40 years later, we were both fatter, wrinklier and literally scarred from run-ins with serious illness. But none of that mattered. I looked at Rolf of the Mountains and I saw the face and body of the guy I had hung out with in school. Which, I now understood, was the problem. I was fine with aging when it came to old friends or people I had known for years, because I looked at them and saw the people they used to look like. Meeting men my age for the first time, I realized with a dreadful shock of self-recognition, I saw men who were too old.

“And that’s with their clothes on, " the vapid dybbuk said. “Wait till you get a look at them in the morning when they head into the shower. You know those cute little butts even screenwriters who lay on the couch all day have in their 40s? You ain’t gonna be seeing that moving across the skid-free tiles. And their necks? If you think chicken necks are limited to women, wait till you get a load of one of these old kockers. You zone it to give it a bite, the skin will be so loose you won’t be able to breathe. You know how cats dive under the sheets when you toss the laundry on the bed to be folded? It’ll be like that. Only the cats are having fun.”

In the Garden

Ready for Their Cold Snap

Carolyn Walker

Camellias were once thought of as darlings of the Southern garden, but hardier varieties are making their way north. Here, the shockingly pink Autumn Spirit. More Photos »

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Camellias That Can Take the Chill

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I’M not just a bark man,” Charles Cresson said this month, as we stood by one of his towering camellias, covered with deep red blooms. “I’ve always loved winter flowers.”

And maybe he loves camellias the most. Their blooms, from white or pink to deep red, some as simple as a wild rose, others as full blown as a peony, are set against glossy dark green leaves. They have the same startling color as those white roses painted red for the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Mr. Cresson, 58, grows about 60 kinds of hardy camellias in his two-acre garden here, a vestige of a family estate that goes back three generations. He has spent his life as a horticulturist, working in public gardens, teaching and writing about gardening — and breeding camellias.

These woody plants, which can be rounded shrubs or rangy 20-foot trees, grow wild in Asia, from the cool Himalayas down to the subtropics. When they first caught on in America in the 1800s, they were thought of as hothouse bloomers or the darlings of the Southern garden. But now, after decades of breeding with species from South Korea and Japan, hardier varieties are making their way north.

Mr. Cresson’s garden, for example, lies in U.S.D.A. Hardiness Zone 6b, where winter temperatures can fall to 5 below zero. New York City, Long Island and southern New Jersey are a slightly warmer Zones 7a and 7b, where they can dip to zero.

Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay, N.Y., has about 100 hardy camellias flourishing around its Camellia Greenhouse, where several hundred less-hardy varieties bloom under glass. Many of the hardy camellias there are survivors of crosses made in the 1960s by Clifford R. Parks, a renowned breeder who developed many spring-blooming varieties and farmed them out to public gardens to test their ability to thrive in different regions.

Perhaps the hardiest known camellia available is Korean Fire, a selection made from plants grown from seed collected by Barry Yinger, an intrepid plant explorer, on the islands off the Korean coast in the early 1980s.

On the phone from his farm near York, Pa., Mr. Yinger recalled: “The islands were military outposts, and there was no legitimate way to go. We bribed our way onto a military ferry and supply boat.”

Mr. Yinger, who has many plants grown from seed, added, “The camellias here have gone through minus 28 Fahrenheit.”

Korean Fire has beautiful evergreen foliage and funnel-shaped deep red flowers, with yellow stamens that open in April and early May.

Down in South Carolina and Georgia, camellias will bloom from fall straight through winter to spring. But farther north, fall-blooming varieties start flowering in October, peak in November and continue only through December. A few hang on through January, if winter is mild. Some spring-blooming camellias start to flower in late February; others open in April and flower through May.

MR. CRESSON, who has been gardening since he was in first grade, fell in love with camellias in the 1960s, when warm winters allowed a neighbor’s to bloom like mad, with “big pink blooms, four inches wide, hanging all over them,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wow, you can’t have anything more beautiful than this.’ ”

By his teens, he was growing his own camellias, many from cuttings of the hardiest species and varieties known at the time. He was also visiting the test sites at Longwood Gardens, near Philadelphia, which later worked with Mr. Parks on spring-bloomers, and the National Arboretum, where William L. Ackerman developed many hardy fall-blooming varieties.

He pointed to a bank of tall, handsome shrubs on the edge of his yard with a few single pink flowers still on them. “Ackerman sent me about 40 seedlings to trial in the mid-’80s, but not all were winter-hardy, which was the point,” he said. “About eight did well.”

Mr. Cresson has a degree in horticulture from the University of Vermont, and he has interned at some of the world’s most spectacular gardens: Wisley, the Royal Horticultural Society garden in Surrey, England; Kalmthout Arboretum in Belgium; and Longwood Gardens. He has also worked at the best public gardens around here, including Winterthur and Chanticleer. So when he talks about camellias — or any other plant, for that matter — I pay attention.

Jobs in Malaysia

Jobs in Malaysia

Over 6.5 lakh applied so far

Over 6.51 lakh people from five divisions of the country have so far registered for jobs in Malaysia.

The aspirants for jobs from Dhaka, Barisal, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet divisions registered with the information service centres at local union parishads, said the expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry.

Registration of the job seekers from Dhaka and Barisal divisions closed on Tuesday and it continued for the second day yesterday for those from three other divisions.

In Dhaka, 3,21,945 people and in Barisal 73,298 registered for jobs. Of them, 9,300 from Dhaka and 1,500 from Barisal were primarily selected on Wednesday through lotteries.

Registration of the aspirants for jobs from Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet divisions ends today. Then they will be primarily selected for jobs through lottery and the names those selected will be announced tomorrow at the offices of the local deputy commissioners.

Meanwhile, job seekers gathering at the information service centres for registration are facing problems due to technical troubles at many of the centres.

Reports from different districts of Sylhet Division said power disruption and low speed of internet caused suffering to those seeking registration. Only two persons could register at Rahimpur union centre in Kamolganj upazila under Moulvibazar and only 50 to 60 people at eight other centres in the upazila.

A report from Rangpur said staffs at the information centres in some areas were charging charged extra money from those gathering for registration while the government-fixed rate is Tk 50.

Hasmat Ali, who came to Gojoghanta Union Parishad information centre under Gangachara upazila in the district, alleged that he had to pay Tk 125 for registration.

But Chairman of the union Liyakot Ali denied the allegation and said, “We have taken extra Tk 50 from them as taxes of the union parishad.”

Contacted, Mafruha Sultana, additional director general of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training, said they have received allegations of slow pace of registration from some 0districts.

“We have asked the candidates to get registered at neighbouring information service centres if the registration process is hampered due to any reason at their respective centres,” she added.

Algerian Troops Attack Site to End Hostage Standoff

Without warning other governments, Algeria mounted an assault on Thursday on the heavily armed fighters holding American and other hostages at a remote Sahara gas field facility, freeing captives and killing kidnappers but leaving some hostages dead and foreign leaders scrambling to find out the fates of their citizens.

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Satellite Image by Cnes/Spot Image, via Google Earth

A satellite photograph showing the gas field project at In Amenas, Algeria.

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Map

Profile of Suspect in Hostage Seizure

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed smuggler and jihadist, has been a notorious kingpin of the Sahara for more than a decade.

A New Line in the Sand Against Terror?

How can northern Africa avoid fostering terrorism and becoming the next Afghanistan?

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Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign hostages on Wednesday.

Hours after the raid, there was no official word on the number of hostages who had been freed, killed or still held captive. Estimates of the foreign casualties ranged from 4 to 35, though one Algerian official said the high figure was “exaggerated.”

Despite requests for communication and pleas to consider the safety of their abducted citizens, the United States, Britain and Japan said they had not been told in advance about the military assault, stirring frustration that the Algerians might have been overly aggressive and caused needless casualties.

But the Algerian government, which has a history of violent suppression of Islamist militancy, stood by its decision to deal forcefully with the kidnappers, who were holding Algerians and citizens of nine other countries.

“Those who think we will negotiate with terrorists are delusional,” the communications minister, Mohand Saïd Oublaïd, said in an announcement about the assault on the facility near In Amenas, in eastern Algeria, close to the Libya border. “Those who think we will surrender to their blackmail are delusional.”