Home
Politics
The opening duo gave a glowing, humorous and sometimes tearful introduction to the keynote speaker -- their mother.
"Turquoise" and "Twinkle" were the names the Secret Service gave to Jenna and Barbara Bush, the twins who spent eight years of their lives in the White House.
The two young women, now 29, spoke lovingly of their "family of nerds" and their mother, a qualified librarian and teacher.
"In our 20s, our mom's idea of a really good time was naming her cat Dewey, after the Dewey Decimal system," which is used to classify books on the shelves of libraries, Jenna said.
The twins told how they "tore into" Laura Bush's autobiography "Spoken from the Heart" when it was published last year in the hope of finding their mother's secret garden of vice.
Instead, recounted Barbara, they found a "fixation with school supplies" that had been with their mother since she was a little girl.
In her speech, Laura Bush praised CARE for 65 years of work to improve the lot of women and children worldwide.
She called for greater access to education for girls and for an effort to bring the same progress that has been made in fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS to reducing maternal mortality, a leading cause of death among women and girls in the developing world.
President George W. Bush's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) is credited with helping 15 countries, mainly in Africa but also Vietnam and Guyana, that have been hard hit by HIV/AIDS, to roll out lifesaving programs by providing them with funding.
Widely seen as one of the greatest legacies of Bush's presidency, PEPFAR is in danger of being rolled back itself as US lawmakers mull making sweeping cuts to the government's budget, including to foreign aid programs.
CARE's meeting coincided with the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day and with a fierce debate in the US Congress over how much funding to cut from government programs to rein in spending and shrink the deficit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Turquoise" and "Twinkle" were the names the Secret Service gave to Jenna and Barbara Bush, the twins who spent eight years of their lives in the White House.
The two young women, now 29, spoke lovingly of their "family of nerds" and their mother, a qualified librarian and teacher.
"In our 20s, our mom's idea of a really good time was naming her cat Dewey, after the Dewey Decimal system," which is used to classify books on the shelves of libraries, Jenna said.
The twins told how they "tore into" Laura Bush's autobiography "Spoken from the Heart" when it was published last year in the hope of finding their mother's secret garden of vice.
Instead, recounted Barbara, they found a "fixation with school supplies" that had been with their mother since she was a little girl.
In her speech, Laura Bush praised CARE for 65 years of work to improve the lot of women and children worldwide.
She called for greater access to education for girls and for an effort to bring the same progress that has been made in fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS to reducing maternal mortality, a leading cause of death among women and girls in the developing world.
President George W. Bush's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) is credited with helping 15 countries, mainly in Africa but also Vietnam and Guyana, that have been hard hit by HIV/AIDS, to roll out lifesaving programs by providing them with funding.
Widely seen as one of the greatest legacies of Bush's presidency, PEPFAR is in danger of being rolled back itself as US lawmakers mull making sweeping cuts to the government's budget, including to foreign aid programs.
CARE's meeting coincided with the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day and with a fierce debate in the US Congress over how much funding to cut from government programs to rein in spending and shrink the deficit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
