The White House glowed pumpkin orange on Saturday when the Obama family turned 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into Halloween central, complete with a giant stuffed spider dangling from a web above its front door.

More than 2,000 local area children and their families were invited for the traditional trick-or-treat event.  

The Obamas spent about 30 minutes handing out cellophane bagfulls of boxed red, white and blue M&M’s. The boxes bore the presidential seal. Also tucked in was a home-baked orange-glazed cookie and, in a nod to Michelle Obama’s efforts to promote healthy food, dried apricots and cranberries.

The president didn’t wear a costume for his first Halloween in the White House. Michelle Obama went as a cat woman, complete with leopard-print top and furry ears on a headband. Daughters Malia and Sasha were there for the fun, but were not stuck with any candy line duties. 

The scene was worthy of a Hollywood extravaganza. Bubble machines blanketed the North Portico, the ceremonial entrance to the White House. Pumpkins, some carved and candle lighted, lined the marble steps. Behind Obama stood a white-helmeted storm trooper character from “Star Wars,” along with the film’s Chewbacca, the hairy, apelike “wookie.”  

 Entertainers from the Chicago-based Redmoon Theater and other companies wove their own thrills and chills for those in line. A brass band clad in skeleton suits belted out a free jazz-style funeral stomp. Outsized figures on stilts simulated moving trees. Women in butterfly suits maneuvered inflatable, 10-foot (3-meter) snow-globe-like spheres on the White House lawn.

To heighten the Halloween effect, the White House was flood-lit through orange filters. Giant pumpkins weighing as much as 1,000 pounds (450-kg) dotted the 18-acre (7-hectare) grounds.  And the big, black spider hung hauntingly between the tall white columns framing the front door.

After handing out the treats, the president welcomed the children of military families chosen by the armed services along with the kids of White House staff in the East Room.

Then Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, caught his eye. She was decked out as the Disney character Goofy. “Can people please not take a picture of my ambassador to the United Nations,” Obama joshed photographers gathered to one side. He fretted aloud that U.S. diplomatic efforts might be spooked by the sight of her.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Halloween at the White House)

“Are you ready to work really hard?”

“Are you ready to get dirty?”

That was the rallying cry from first lady Michelle Obama Thursday as she invited local school children to help her pick crops from the White House garden.

The crops are the bounty from the garden that Obama started in the spring to promote healthy eating .

And it’s frugal eating too.

“Do you know how much food has come out of this garden so far? Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land,” Obama told the kids.  The whole thing — from start to harvest — came in under $200, she added.

Some of the youngsters at the harvest had been helping with the garden as it grew — along with Jim Adams, the chief horticulturist at the White House and the chefs at the executive mansion.

Everything harvested Thursday, including some gigantic sweet potatoes, was being donated to charity.

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Photo credit:Reuters/Larry Downing (Michelle Obama in the White House garden on the South Lawn)

President Barack Obama is letting it be known that he was not pleased with the way his trip to New York with wife Michelle last May became a political issue.

“Everything becomes political,” he told The New York Times Magazine in a story to be published this Sunday. “What I value most about my marriage is that it is separate and apart from a lot of the silliness of Washington, and Michelle is not part of that silliness.”

Republicans had criticized the trip as an expensive extravagance during hard economic times. Obama and Michelle flew Air Force One from Washington to New York for a night out on the town.

Obama told the magazine that the date-night flapdoodle was the one time that life in the White House annoyed him.

“If I weren’t president, I would be happy to catch the shuttle with my wife to take her to a Broadway show, as I had promised her during the campaign, and there would be no fuss and no muss and no photographers,” the president said.

“That would please me greatly.” He went on to say: “The notion that I just couldn’t take my wife out on a date without it being a political issue was not something I was happy with.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Obama and his wife Michelle return to Washington after visiting New York for dinner and a Broadway play in May)

The official portrait of the first family is in.

There’s Sasha, the youngest at 8 years old, casually draping her arm over the shoulder of the president of the United States.

Older sister Malia embraces her mom, first lady Michelle Obama, as they all sit for their first official first family portrait in the Green Room at the White House on Sept. 1.

It is the work of portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz, known for some of the most famous celebrity photographs of our time — Demi Moore pregnant and nude on the cover of Vanity Fair, and a nude John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono for the cover of Rolling Stone taken on the day of Lennon’s death.

But back to the first family’s portrait. Hold on, isn’t someone missing? Where’s Bo, the first dog? Is he already in the dog house?

“Bo didn’t make the cut,” the first lady’s spokeswoman tells us with a laugh. “He was upstairs at home.”

Maybe he hasn’t learned to say cheese yet…

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Photo credit: White House photo of first family portrait, Reuters/Larry Downing photo of Bo

A genealogist working with The New York Times has traced Michelle Obama’s family tree back five generations to a 6-year-old slave girl named Melvinia who was valued at $475.

The White House said first lady Michelle Obama had not known many of the details of her family history and enjoyed reading it. She had declined to comment on the story for The New York Times because of the personal nature of the subject.

“I don’t believe she knew or had known all of this, but enjoyed reading about her family history,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

The slave girl Melvinia initially appears in the documentary record in 1850, the property of South Carolina landowner David Patterson, who owned 21 slaves.

After Patterson died in 1852, Melvinia was sent to a smaller 200-acre farm in Georgia, the home of Patterson’s daughter and son-in-law, Christianne and Henry Shields. She was one of only three slaves on the farm near Atlanta.

Sometime when she was a teenager, possibly as young as 15, Melvinia became pregnant by a white male. The father is unknown, possibly Henry Shields, then in his 40s, or one of his four sons, aged 19 to 24.

Melvinia gave birth around 1859 to a boy, Dolphus. She and the father of her first-born son are Michelle Obama’s great-great-great-grandparents, genealogist Megan Smolenyak says.

Three of Melvinia’s four children are listed on the 1870 census as mulatto. One was born four years after emancipation, raising the possibility that the relationship with the original father continued even after the Civil War.

After being freed, she worked on a farm adjacent to that of Charles Shields, one of Henry Shields’ sons.

In her 30s or 40s, Melvinia reconnected with former slaves she had known as a child on the Patterson estate. She moved with the couple — Mariah and Bolus Easley — to a spot near the border with Alabama.

Dolphus married one of the Easleys’ daughters, Alice. The couple are Michelle Obama’s great-great-grandparents.

Melvinia, who took Shields as her last name, died in 1938 in her 90s.

Dolphus and Alice moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where he was a co-founder of First Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Trinity Baptist Church.

Dolphus, a carpenter, thrived in Birmingham, but he split up with Alice. She moved around, working as a seamstress and a maid.

Their son, Robert Lee Shields, married Annie Lawson in 1906 and worked as a laborer and railroad porter. Robert Lee disappeared from the public record when he was about 32 years old.

He was Michelle Obama’s great-grandfather.

Robert Lee’s son, Purnell Shields, was the first lady’s grandfather, her mother Marian Robinson’s father. He moved to Chicago as part of the great migration north and worked as a painter.

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Photo credit:Reuters/Larry Downing (Obama family, including Michelle Obama’s mother Marian Robinson, on White House balcony April 13.)

So. What happened?

President Barack Obama dashed overnight to Copenhagen, waved the flag, praised everyone in sight, and came home with Nothing, Nada, Naught, Zero, Zip, Zilch (couldn’t find the Danish word or would have thrown that in too).

The Olympics Oracle, after much fumbling with the envelope, read the winner and Rio de Janeiro scooped up the 2016 Summer Games.

Chicago — the hometown for Obama, his wife, and close advisers like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel — was left out in the cold, not even making it to the T2 (Top Two).

Was it the unbridled enthusiasm in Rio for bringing home the Olympics, compared with the protesters from Chicago who didn’t want the games anywhere near their town?

“I think that the city of Chicago would have welcomed having the Olympics in 2016,” said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, also a native of Chicago. “I don’t think this necessarily demonstrates that Chicago is not a welcoming place.”

Was it the warmer welcome from Brazil to international travelers, compared with the post-9/11 U.S. security consciousness?

“We recognize that we need to do more to make it easier for legitimate visa applicants to make it to the U.S. We understand we have an image problem about that process,” Kelly said.

Was it that the IOC liked the sound of  Duran Duran’s “Rio” and Tom Jobim’s “The Girl From Ipanema” rather than Frank Sinatra’s “My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)” or Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” ?

Did Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva outcharm Obama?

Now the question is whether the failure in Denmark will tarnish Obama’s image at home and abroad. What do you think? Should he have made the trip to Copenhagen at all? Is this a big failure or just a small bump?

Inevitably, Obama’s trip became fodder for Republican critics. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele: “While I am disappointed with the IOC’s decision, I look forward to the president returning stateside so that he can refocus his efforts on the growing unemployment crisis that was highlighted by today’s monthly jobs report.”

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Photo Credit: Reuters/pool (President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Chicago 2016 CEO Pat Ryan leave stage after presentation), Reuters/Sergio Moraes (surfer rides the waves in Rio), Reuters/Frank Polich (Lake Michigan in Chicago)

Olympics intrigue broke out in the middle of all the U.N., G20, world leader stuff with the rumor that perhaps President Barack Obama might go to Copenhagen after all to pitch his hometown Chicago as the site for the 2016 Summer Games.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs fanned the flames further when asked whether it was possible Obama may go. “Absolutely,” he told reporters on Air Force One headed to Pittsburgh for the G20.

In Washington speak that’s about as close to saying he’s going without announcing he’s going.

“I think it would be a very quick trip, yes,” Gibbs said.

So what happened since the announcement that First Lady Michelle Obama would be the one going to Copenhagen next week to push for Chicago against the competition: Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo?

We’re thinking perhaps the Chicago set at the White House — Michelle Obama, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod — did a little pushing of their own….

It might also mean that healthcare legislation is moving at such a snail’s pace that there’s no need for the president to forego the trip.

The other breaking news is that one of the gifts for foreign dignitaries in Pittsburgh was actually made by some very buzzzy workers at the White House.

We discovered this nugget while reading this very important summit document: “The G20 Pittsburgh Summit Spousal Program Addendum.” Among the gifts to visiting G20 dignitaries was White House honey produced from the first-ever beehive on White House property, located near the first lady’s vegetable garden.

Sweet…

Photo credit: Reuters/Ruben Sprich (International Olympic Committee president in June), Reuters/Toru Hanai (bee collecting pollen from flower in Tokyo)

President Obama deeply disappointed his hometown Chicago when he announced that he would not go to Copenhagen next month to personally make the city’s case for hosting the 2016 Olympics, so he and first lady Michelle Obama, who is going in his stead, on Wednesday brought the Olympics to the White House instead.

Former Olympic and paralympic athletes, Chicago officials and local schoolchildren attended the event on the White House lawn, where the president and first lady both spoke and watched judo and gymnastic demonstrations. The president even joined in with some of the athletes, earning a gentle jibe from his wife.

“You should have seen the president in there fencing,” she said. “It was pathetic, but he passed the baton really well.”

Obama said he was too busy working on healthcare reform to travel to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to lobby the International Olympic Committee, but offered an excuse.

“The good news is I’m sending a more compelling superstar to represent the city and country we love, and that is our first lady, Michelle Obama,” he said.

Michelle Obama is hugely popular — her approval ratings exceed her husband’s, which have sunk as he works to push through his sweeping healthcare plan — and it is speculated that she may make the trip to Copenhagen with Oprah WInfrey, the Chicago talk show host and media magnate who is consistently rated one of the most popular and admired Americans. But proponents of the city’s bid worry they will not be enough, as the other three finalists are all sending their heads of state to make their cases to the IOC.

King Juan Carlos of Spain is traveling to Denmark to argue on behalf of Madrid. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is making the case for Rio. Japan is sending its new prime minister and its royal family for Tokyo, backers of Chicago’s bid note bitterly.

“U.S. organizers have Michelle Obama and are working on Oprah Winfrey   — two of the most popular women on the planet,” the Chicago Tribune wrote in an editorial. “Still, it would escape no one’s notice if Barack Obama took a pass on securing the Olympics for his hometown.

“Mr. President, you need to be there,” the newspaper wrote.

PHOTO CREDITS: U.S. President Barack Obama is joined by first lady, Michelle Obama, and Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner Kersee (R) as they watch a Judo demonstration during an Olympic Games event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, September 16, 2009 and Obama uses a plastic saber to show his fencing stance. Both from REUTERS/Larry Downing

Washington awoke to a cool and rainy 9/11 today, so different from the brilliant sunshine that many recall from the day of the 2001 attacks at the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and in an open field in Pennsylvania.

To mark the anniversary, President Barack Obama, the first lady and White House staff observed a moment of silence on the South Lawn at 8:46 a.m., the time when the first hijacked plane hit the first tower in New York City. Next is a presidential wreath-laying and remarks at the Pentagon Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Obamas are slated to participate in a “service event” later in the day, part of a move to make the 9/11 anniversary a day of public service. Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a commemoration ceremony in lower Manhattan. Secretary of State speaks at the first Annual 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance in New York. The National Museum of the Marine Corps marks the anniversary with a new exhibit “dedicated to the historic day and the global war on terrorism.”

This year, 9/11 feels like an appropriate moment to pause, a break from the sturm and drang of politics and policy-making. Fights over healthcare reform, how to fix the economy and curb climate change can wait for at least a moment.

Somehow, it brings to mind the words of Carl Sandburg, writing about memory and healing in a poem about how battlefields recover. Sandburg wrote of the battles at Gettysburg and Waterloo, and how time and grass cover up the raw pain of these places. The sites of 9/11, grass-covered or not, could easily apply.

“Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.”

See the whole poem here.

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Photo credits: REUTERS/Molly Riley (A rose is laid at the Pentagon memorial, December 9, 2008)
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (Freedom Tower section of World Trade Center construction site, Sept 9, 2009)

First lady Michelle Obama should be able to strong-arm just about anyone with those sculpted biceps that have been the talk of the town.

Women’s Health magazine has let the cat out of the bag about how Obama achieved those upper arms that she confidently bares and are the envy of the scared-sleeveless set.

Cornell McClellan, Obama’s personal trainer, tells the magazine it took 1,872 workouts since 1997, most of them at 5:30 a.m. (hmm let’s weigh the options — sleep or muscles, sleep or muscles, sleep…)

And the workout might include lunges, bench presses, hip raises, rope-jumping, kickboxing, and calisthenics (we’re exhausted at the thought, time for a latte).

Perhaps President Barack Obama could use his wife’s well-toned arms in the weeks ahead to turn the tide his way — think headlocks on naysayers to healthcare reform.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Michelle Obama flexes arms in response to joke about her habit of wearing sleeveless dresses)