How do I display unicode value stored in a string variable using ord()

[Charles Jensen]

Everyone knows that the python command

     ord(u'…')

will output the number 8230 which is the unicode character for the horizontal ellipsis.

How would I use ord() to find the unicode value of a string stored in a variable?  

So the following 2 lines of code will give me the ascii value of the variable a.  How do I specify ord to give me the unicode value of a?

     a = '…'
     ord(a)