I believe that I have answered my own question. If anyone else is interested in what I did ... using iPython's code completion (. then hit tab tab) I noticed that msg had a _request attribute. I set that attribute to "<GetEventList><Month>1</Month></GetEventList>" and that sent the message that I needed!
Hope everyone has a great day! Doug -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list