Lucia's Symposium

2008-09-03T09:02:00.002-04:00

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2008-04-01T15:33:00.001-04:00

America Slept, like Old Rip, for 20 years and at the wheel were the drug companies, the corporations, the defense establishment, ad infinitum, and the people were somatized by the boob tube. Can you believe the depradations of the FDA? Symposia can.

A propos of thugs we recently saw ye olde Godfather trilogy and noted how comical that Coppola did not see the disconnect between Michael in I and II and the totally different existential character in III --who bore no resemblance at all to the earlier Michael.

2008-03-17T14:18:00.002-04:00

Symposia was prescient about the contamination of our food, water, air. It is so omnipresent from meds in H2O to dirty baby bottles it barely is worth mentioning anymore. Just assume the globe is dirty and the chinook salmon
and the bees know more than we do. Will get another soapbox.

Years ago it was CEO salaries and corporate corruption. Then the above. Wonder if Conrad Black is blogging from the Big House.

2007-08-05T08:24:00.000-04:00

We finally figured out how to switch to Google. I am a Luddite deep down since these machines and this technology are irritating. For example we decided to return un peu to photography then realized some diabolical entrepreneurs created a digital system where a $10,000 investment is necessary--cameras, Photoshop ad nauseum. The photos no more important than with a Brownie. Symposia's father Richard Lee Adams was a master photographer and died before the electronic revolution made fools of us all.

Bird's Custard Island was published; it is my culinary memoir of life in Northern England in the 60s and 70s. It is POD and you can buy at the big chains. It is probably incomprehensible to those born after 1955. If you would like a smart memoir shoot us an email.

2007-04-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

For all of you old enough to remember the "conservation" movement of a half century or so ago -- then as now just a smokescreen to obscure what really matters -- rapacious political instinct. Rachel Carson (another ineffectual writer) admonished us and voila now the devolution of the planet is utterly irreversible. Hope has vanished. I mean poisoning cats n' pigs! C'mon.

When Symposia underwent 'menopause', two doctors refused to continue to see her because she refused to take hormone pills. Well one is still breathing with both modified sweat glands in place.

2007-02-25T10:45:00.000-05:00

Symposia recently completed a 10,000 word dramatic monologue in the words (for the most part) of Princess Diana, that strange, delusional borderline personality. If anyone would like to read it give me a shout. Of course unless you write the usual dreary biopics the "theater"is not interested.

One has an uneasy feeling about second son Harry going to Iraq. Hmmmmmmmmm.

2006-10-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

Blogs are Tres Yesterday but for the record the reason I like Prince Charles is that I believe we represent the last generation that had any education and taste -- you know the last NOT to have had a TV as a child.

2006-10-29T08:05:00.001-05:00

For some raison this entry was printed twice. Oh well, have you ever seen a more comical version of Charles with terminal lockjaw as in this High Comedy?

2006-10-29T08:05:00.000-05:00

We saw The Queen. Hammy Mirrin but the Cheri Blair depiction so wonderfully grotesque it redeemed the picture about which I remember little. "Tony Blair" drag-queenish, but of course we adored anything that tries to remove one from the mundane lives we lead. If anyone reads this you must log on at least weekly to the Prince of Wales's website for photos of Camilla's hats and uncomfortable grins. What a refreshing contrast to, speaking of grotesqueries, "Princess" Diana.

2006-09-12T06:45:00.000-04:00

We always note (such a rare occurrence) when Academia serves up something germane to life on this planet. Thus Norwegian Prof. Erik Lie in an obscure Iowa tower of learning shakes up Wall Street by exposing the backdating in executive stock options, you know falsifying documents to earn even more money, the greedy bastards.

2006-08-17T06:56:00.000-04:00

Whenever Symposia thinks about the quality of life's deterioration over the past decades, demographics comes to mind. Well, here's a fact: in 1915 the population of the USA was 100 million; in 1967 it was 200 million; in 2006 it is 300 million. Everywhere one goes today it is too crowded for comfort.

2006-07-23T08:22:00.000-04:00

Charming little header: "Meds now daily part of summer camp ritual". You know when 1984 passed by I thought Orwell and his apocalyptic buddy Aldous Huxley were probably just crazy writers. They were actually seers.

And the City Council here in Chicago is worried about trans fats. Sorry to mix metaphors but it is just a red herring probably dished up by the drug companies.

2006-07-05T07:58:00.000-04:00

Now that we are supposedly winding down Iraq sights are set on North Korea. What gives this imperial nation the right to have any say at all in the affairs of another country? Washington is as out of touch with reality as Tiberius Caesar was, but then again those in power would have never read Suetonius.

2006-06-08T07:36:00.000-04:00

OK you get the picture about food contamination and drug contamination and the vagaries of mindless money grubbing capitalism (such a recherche word) affecting what we consume. Much as Symposia deplores men blowing one another up you have to cheer the demise of a vicious tyrant. War stirs up complex emotions that thoroughly confuse homo sapiens.

After all this let's vote Hillary Clinton into office and fix the bloody national health system.

2006-06-06T09:40:00.000-04:00

Well, you can scrap canned tuna, American lobster, Spanish mackerel and good old halibut from your tables. We always knew the mercury contamination was excessive and a problem denied by the food establishment wherever and whoever they are. Add this to the soy factor in the increasing autism of newborns, not to mention whatever other problems they are going to have. I grew up on cod liver oil, oj and Cheerios and never missed school in 12 years but the 50s was just the beginning of the Industrialization of the Food Chain.

2006-05-01T09:08:00.000-04:00

In under a year we have been prescribed two potentially lethal drugs by our family physician, one called Levaquin for bronchitis partly caused by a filthy workplace and another Ketek for a cough (see today's WSJ regarding this monster!) Our reaction to both drugs was immediate; after a pill or two a pounding heart reminded us of Voltaire's quip about doctors so we threw them in the garbage where they belong.

2006-04-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Joe Moore, an Alderman here in Chicago, there is a restaurant ban on foie gras obtained through the most inhumane torture of helpless geese. Even small steps in the progress of humanity are cheering.

2006-04-26T08:59:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately it is impossible to make a career out of culinary journalism even though Symposia was nominated for an M.F.K.Fisher award by the James Beard Foundation. Nor does she have any hopes of earning a living when her book Bird's Custard Island, a culinary memoir of life in England is published. M.F.K., Julia and Elizabeth David all had independent incomes, from family, husbands, and so forth.

One sees Carlo Petrini finally getting some recognition for Slow Food to which we belong. If anyone has an idea how to make a career promoting sustainable agriculture please inform. The article we wrote received no attention which is typical of the importance of the written word these days.

2006-03-16T08:54:00.000-05:00

The NIH finally getting around to placing soy products under the microscope. And we feed this to babies in formula then wonder why there is so much autism. According to today's WSJ there is a steroid genistein in soy which mimicks the effect of estrogen and is potentially toxic.

2006-03-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

Frank Bruni gave Del Posto three stars yet his review of this Gargantua sounded far more like a one star. What possessed Mario and Joe, son of Lidia, to do something so Wal-Martish? Anyway it makes Symposia miss the madness of New York.

2006-03-03T07:29:00.000-05:00

Not to belittle the culture of the grape one must admit winespeak is necromancy as in medieval scholasticism. The minutiae of distinctions is meaningless and really just provides careers for strange one-dimensional people. Thus at a wine tasting yesterday Symposia sipped and spit (what a disgusting ritual) 20 Italian wines and after three or four glasses could barely tell the difference between them; by 1o glasses it was impossible.

2006-02-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

Instead of bedeviling poor souls a million miles away we should be weeding out the phony balony drug companies who advertise snake oil. Thus, sigh, today, we read glucosamine and sulfate something or other does nothing to relieve arthritis.

2006-02-22T08:53:00.000-05:00

Note to Symposia from Symposia: the only way a blog attracts readers is by offering them something-- a job listing, a free trip, good gossip, and in the case of food blogs a recipe and some easy escape mechanism, if only for a minute.

2006-02-20T15:44:00.000-05:00

Symposia has been back in Chicago for a month and has consumed more beef in that time than in the three years in New York. It is a strange craving that overcomes one under the big empty skies. Besides there is no fresh fish right from Montauk and the shrimp usually tastes like iodine.

2006-02-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

Symposia believes almost nothing about claims of the therapeutic powers of food; such hokum. Thus today we learn in the "news" that calcium and Vitamin D have negligible impact on bone loss. And the FDA grappling with percentages of what constitutes whole grain; 10?, 100? What's the difference? My Grandmother Adams died at 100 and never saw a whole grain or a vegetable that she liked.

I loved David Hockney's interview in TIME; at 68 he smokes because "death awaits us all" and the modern world is all about little Esther with asthma.

2005-12-08T11:01:00.000-05:00

Symposia dislikes the War in Iraq as much as she did the Vietnam War. On the other hand look at the alternatives. Take a walk over to Ground Zero. It is so easy for journalists to Have Opinions. Pinter claims Tony Blair is a war criminal. How absurd!

2005-11-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

The power of sustainability applies to humans as much as produce. Thus Camilla Person of the Year because she endured, and because the media loves a winner. They are such hypocrites!

2005-10-17T13:25:00.000-04:00

Did you know that Monsanto tried to patent basmati rice and an ancient Indian wheat with low gluten -- pirates! Even if the garbage they produce were not garbage we would despise them for the outrecuidance, the staggering presumption.

2005-10-13T08:08:00.000-04:00

On Page Six today (OK Symposia is still a gossip columnist at heart) an "item"about how the Esquire food critic John Mariani has questionable journalistic ethics. We remember him and the plump Mrs. at an AIWF event in Chicago --demanding, haughty, and very newyorkaise. The word always gets out about bad behavior.

Harold Pinter won a Nobel for literature. If you like the theater (so passe, so 19th century) he is the best!

2005-10-11T09:09:00.000-04:00

The entire literary world emoting ad nauseum about one of their own, viz., the sorrow of Joan Didion. The over exposure makes us squeamish. Didion has had a good life but one guesses expected to defy the laws of Nature with her quivering egotism. Symposia much preferred Simone de Beauvoir's ruminations after Sartre's Death.

2005-10-07T11:54:00.000-04:00

In the midst of terror threats Symposia emailed dozens about the importance of banning foie gras. Last night we made a perfect porcini risotto, learned at a cooking class some weeks ago. How we longed for the light basmati and wondered how the Italians could love this glutinous mess of a dish. Pas encore!

2005-10-06T15:18:00.000-04:00

Thank God for Science before which all the culture in the world can take a flying leap into total nonsense.Today a Nobel prize shared by three whose research in metathesis recognizes that the best science is green and does not harm the planet. Tell that to the Monsantos and ConAgras and innane profitmongers!

2005-10-03T13:22:00.000-04:00

The universality of politics: at yesterday's Slow Food Urban Harvest the biodynamic people casting aspersion at the organic people, something about bad manure from the Midwest. Like all fringe groups they really have to band together to get anything done.

Transgenic Update: 80% of soy products in USA are genetically modified and 40% of corn.

2005-09-30T08:03:00.000-04:00

Prince Charles has avoided suggesting that all farmers should go organic but he has provided some clarification of the muddy term "sustainable". He has evidence that, at least in Merry Olde, organic farming is the most sustainable system in the long term and believes it is "the most effective system of applying what I thought to be principles of sustainable agriculture."

Here's a nice quote to ponder from one of his speeches this month: "Slow Food, as you well know, is traditional local food. Needless to say, it is also crucially important that this food is grown sustainably and, very often, this will mean that it is grown organically."We like that -- very often.

2005-09-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

The real food or slow food movement is literally a visceral reaction against advanced industrial society and the continued encroachment on what is left of the natural world. So hail to the heirloom tomato, whose seeds are identical to those of its parent plant, passed from generation to generation. How's that for a miniaturization of Symposia's horizons? Really must reread Candide.

2005-09-26T08:46:00.000-04:00

Symposia stopped by Green Thumb in the Hamptons this weekend; it was founded and still run by the Halsey family in 1640! And organic. I bought an $8 bottle of orange juice and it did not resemble anything like the orange juice, always freshly squeezed, we drink daily. What an experience!

2005-09-21T14:51:00.000-04:00

Here's to your BLT: iceberg lettuce is a member of the opium family, a poppy opiate created by a radiation experiment. Tomatoes are genetically engineered with bacteria derived antibiotic marker genes, viruses and the DNA of flounder. The bacon: smoked salted pork fat--Heaven help you! Baby foods are full of fluorides. Hey whoever said the Adamses were a cheerful bunch?

2005-09-19T11:27:00.000-04:00

Monday morning charmer: In New York State the EPA announced that factory farms will be exempted from the Clean Air Act and Superfund hazardous waste laws.

Symposia emailed Chicago aldermen to support a resturant ban on foie gras. Charlie Trotter doesn't serve it so why should anyone else? Now je suppose we will be listed in the Crank File.

Because we are not perfect in our serious stance: Martha looked demented on her new TV program. She hailed the beauty of a ghastly lopsided cake with carrot strips that would never have appeared anywhere near her other show; she tried to wrap a package and the camera had to zoom away. Like Diana she is probably mad.

2005-09-14T13:38:00.000-04:00

Last year the government found toxic levels of rocket fuel in California lettuce, contaminated by missile plants along the Colorado River.

2005-09-13T13:28:00.000-04:00

Received a magazine Orion in the mail, beautifully produced and exemplifying why the environmental movement has no appeal for the masses -- too arty--too much bad poetry in the Hail Brother Ass (in this case Hello Mosquito) variety-- too many ugly paintings--they have to get serious is they want to stop the butchery of animals in abbatoirs, the force feeding of poor geese, the poisoning of our produce.

Rereading Two Mrs. Grenvilles and the Ann Woodward character excoriated by a Sublimely Bitchy Dominick Dunne who like most gay men loves tough old broads like Alice. (Why is that?)

Top produce to AVOID since they are most heavily sprayed, with up to 9 separate chemicals on a single sample: potatoes, spinach, green peppers, celery, and those tasteless peaches, strawberries, raspberries, apples, pears, nectarines, cherries, imported grapes. That's enough for the day. These are crucial to buy organic.

2005-09-09T08:35:00.000-04:00

Symposia never -- ever-- wanted to visit New Orleans but it is hard to believe it will probably just end up as a Bourbon Street theme park. The infrastructure was decayed and obsolete like New York's or Chicago's, always just a day away from disaster.

2005-09-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

Komedy Klub: the hiring-clout investigation in Chicago. I worked in goverment for 20 years and in the words of Alderman Vito Marzullo: we don't want nobody nobody sent. It was naturellement pure rococo patronage profiled in my MS "Nine to Four Thirty" which nobody wanted to publish in New York because nobody sent me. Pas de difference except publishers think they are moral.

2005-09-06T13:10:00.000-04:00

Symposia and three friends from St.Louis in for the Open managed to secure a table at MoMA's Modern and went away as hungry as we did from Home on Cornelia last week. The 3 ounces of salmon and its acrid cabbage chiffonade created a poor combination of flavors. Afterwards we made the mistake of walking down 6th Avenue right into the Heart of Darkness, the Brazilian something or other street fair. Grotesque and frightening mass of ...oh never mind...we have never been "of the people."

2005-09-02T07:55:00.000-04:00

Symposia has not felt this sense of outrage since Vietnam. We live in an immoral country and an immoral civilization here in the United States. How did it get so debased? Bush must step down, but of course he is too stupid to have any reflective powers. Remember how he ran away during 9/11?

2005-09-01T07:45:00.000-04:00

Katrina must be a patron saint (if they have those) in the Middle East. Indeed reports are the Arabs are rejoicing enlisting a storm into their ranks. Speak of a pathetic fallacy.

The New York Times editorial chastizes Bush for not breaking down into emotional excess in his aid speech to the victims. The more important question is why the hell is it taking so long to get aid to the city?

2005-08-29T08:41:00.000-04:00

Now there is news of a chemical compound in french fries and chips that causes cancer. I have always believed our food supply was profoundly contaminated and now with all the exposes of corporate depradations more than ever convinced the FDA and EPA are sloppy organizations that could give a ........you know the rest.

A take on what happened to environmentalism: it became Eco this and Eco that and wishy washy hemp face cloths and so drippy --right up there with organic this and organic that. Media saturation made them lose cujones.

2005-08-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

Symposia took a friend to lunch yesterday at Michael's on 55th, the place to be seen if you have any literary associations, a clubby sort of place, like the infinitely more charming Riccardo's used to be in Chicago when Studs and Royko and Clarence Page and Basil Talbot and a million Pulitzer winners lunched and drank daily. Michael's is 2005 New York--soulless, pretentious, with overpriced food (the nicoise contained blood red slabs of utterly tasteless tuna and rock hard haricots verts).

We all know tuna is laced with toxic mercury so the Tuna People are spending 25 million this year to create a campaign to neutralize the truth.

2005-08-23T08:54:00.000-04:00

Tina Brown writing a book about Diana's real father. Years ago right after the crash we had the same hunch because she looked so different from her siblings; some publishers showed an interest but none jumped on it. Bet they're sorry now. The difference between Symposia and Brown is that we did not follow straight line 'career path' but moseyed around too much and found the life of a writer deadly tedious. Eh bien!

2005-08-22T09:31:00.000-04:00

Symposia really hates not being rich; it was only in advanced middle age did the quality of life seem to become a concept. Much as one sneers at the Takis of this world he has a point.

2005-08-19T16:10:00.000-04:00

They remove the peanut oil from peanut butter and add a cheaper oil such as canola, soy or cottonseed. Why? Don't ask! In the case of canola it is as greasy and slippery and petrol like as any good GM food should be. Canola is genetically engineered to kill pests and was developed by that Monster (OK Goliath) Monsanto. Prince Charles was and always is right about these matters.

Good old NYTimes' editorial How to Poison a River today: The Marks Farm near Lowville NY -- well as luck would have it in this vail of tears their reservoir blew and with it three million gallons of liquid manure flowed into the Black River, thence to Lake Ontario thence to the tuna in the great oceans thence to.........

2005-08-18T10:40:00.000-04:00

News Flash Today 8/18 : girls who eat french fries get breast cancer. They are blaming partially hydrogenated trans fats and pundits recommend manufacturers and restaurants switch to canola oil. The Worst! As bad as cottonseed oil. Rapeseed not meant for human or animal consumption.

2005-08-17T16:11:00.000-04:00

Just what we didn't need: another bio of sourpuss Edmund Wilson. He was a writer, a prolific one, ergo he sat in front of a typewriter most of his life and occasionally had odd trysts with the opposite sex. Symposia has always claimed to adore his work but if truth be told we have never enjoyed them because there were so many words, so densely packed it all was very headachy.

We remember our ex Lee Beier calling him from New York in the 1960s and asking to meet him; of course the answer was negative, but he was such an icon of the time. Today a 23 year old would ..oh never mind.....

2005-08-12T10:20:00.000-04:00

We just finished MFK's Gastronomical Me which was mesmerizing and dreamlike, where food and wine was cosmically united with fate, experience, etc. Amazing writing, though the person who emerges is a hyper-sensitive, self-absorbed sparrow.

2005-08-09T16:30:00.000-04:00

Another jaunt to the North Fork; the wine was better this time and there is a vibrant farm and vineyard scene peopled with refugees from California. Commercialization, ever mushrooming, threatens even the most beautiful of places. Symposia is glad she 'did' Napa in the 1960s.

2005-08-04T09:05:00.000-04:00

To make more intellectually interesting my decision to pursue la vie culinaire as a late life career I have read much about the 'real food' movement, slow food, sustainable food, organic food. There are a million think tanks and interest groups and alternative organizations that have made little jabs at the agribusiness giants like ConAgra,Monsanto, DuPont; if they are serious however they need to organize something more comprehensive.

Everyone cheerfully eating those bags of potato chips fried in pesticide-laden cottonseed oil; and since when were we meant to eat cotton? And so on and so forth.

2005-07-19T07:22:00.000-04:00

We spent several days on the North Fork of Long Island tasting the sulphuric wines and visiting organic farms while reading Sherri Vinton's book The Real Food Revival. Rather depressing but a window to a new world and a new career; we eschew writing and sitting in front of one of these glaring screens so anything espousing the out of doors seems just fine with Symposia.

By the by, we are convinced that growing up in the 1950s was qualitatively finer than it must be for children today. There was a breath of freedom and possibility that was intoxicating; today competition exists for what we just took for granted and discarded.

2005-07-07T09:15:00.000-04:00

In a demographically dense world you have to specialize like a worker ant; it is against my nature choosing just one thing at which to be proficient or knowledgeable.

2005-07-06T15:00:00.000-04:00

Symposia is trying to figure out what daily commenting will be riveting enough to lure some readers. It will probably come down to culinary marginalia since it has an audience. Part of me winces when I read Theroux's words about how boring food is ...and another part thinks this makes marketing sense. The divine thing about food, recipes, restaurants, the whole chef 'thing' is that it is so easy, so undemanding.

2005-06-20T14:47:00.000-04:00

A year or so ago there were comments from the social press agreeing with Butler Burrell that Charles was a horrible person; this week shows a change of heart when they actually meet Les Royals, becoming tradesman tugging a forelock etc.etc. Mon Dieu!

2005-06-15T10:12:00.000-04:00

Symposia just spent five days in Daleyville, i.e. Chicago, wondering how in the world she endured it for so many years. It must have been the Man at the Time Syndrome since it is so ineluctably dull and provincial. The good thing is that it makes Irritating New York look rather better.

2005-06-07T16:11:00.000-04:00

Maybe Symposia is clairvoyant, but she just learned of the hilarious frisson between Theroux and the "cheapskate and sourpuss" Naipaul who are so much alike no wonder they hate each other. Two cats vying for the same spot in the alley.

2005-06-06T09:36:00.000-04:00

Paul Theroux and V.S.Naipaul and perhaps Carl Icahn would be Symposia's wish list for An Evening to Remember. We adore biting, brilliant men. Chanel was rather masculine in her attitudes as we saw in the quotations festooning the Met show so maybe we would include her.

Comment: Lagerfeld really vulgarizes her spirit. What a travesty of style.

2005-06-03T15:34:00.000-04:00

The night before last we saw Bill Clinton being interviewed by that smug whatisname? Brian Roberts?, the male equivalent of Paula Zahn. Anyway poor Bill looked like a beaten dog, kicked and starved and thoroughly miserable. Maybe he is sicker than he lets on. Speak of Shakespearean tragedy and the Wheel of Fortune!

2005-06-01T07:53:00.000-04:00

As a refugee from 20 years in politics Symposia would be inclined to think of Mark Felt aka Deep Throat as little more than a vengeful rat. He wanted to be Number One after another creepo, Hoover, died.

2005-05-25T16:05:00.000-04:00

The only way anyone is ever going to read this is to include a daily recipe or culinary observation since Who Needs Another Opinion in New York? This place has drained all my literary aspirations because everyone you meet writes and writes and appears in all the right places.......regardless of how ultimately conformist and pedestrian they are.

2005-05-19T08:57:00.000-04:00

Speaking of the obvious the NY Times has a long series on "class" in America...and the fact that it matters! Whizzers! Major revelation. Does anyone care? We wage slaves know we can't do anything about our state in life in our medieval society. Symposia always knew that all those people who are the company presidents are the company presidents because their fathers put them there. 99% of success is inherited, rather like good looks are.

2005-05-17T09:01:00.000-04:00

There is a new book from Princeton University Press called Bullshit (excusez moi) that is the darling of the media half wits. They do not realize that BS is the glue that holds society together. We have to lie to keep from killing each other. Symposia is so proud, for today at least, of having a firm grasp of the obvious.

2005-05-16T07:32:00.000-04:00

Symposia can say that unlike most royal watchers she is no social climber but definitely feels that with so-called royalty human life is "writ inordinately large", and becomes an object of fascination in a humdrum world. It actually reflects a sort of novelist's attitude.

In Virginia Woolf's review of the Queen of Roumania's autobiography she wrote of her own irrational fascination with royal animals living in cages noting that one should "take common sense for a walk through the streets of London on the Duke of Kent's wedding-day". More later from her golden pen about the subject.

2005-05-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

At least Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits is staying in this country and of all things is going to Arkansas, where my branch of the Adamses made a mark (including first Governor Sam). Malheureusement the state has become synonymous with the Mongrel Clintons.

2005-05-11T06:50:00.000-04:00

Well, Symposia must be the oldest blogger out there and probably the only one who has just read Flora Fraser's dense Princesses about the six daughters of crazed George III, a thoroughly ghastly human being. The book is of the card catalogue school of writing, a dizzying array of chronological facts and borrrrrrrrrrring quotes from letters.

A propos of ghastly people Baker and Meese praise John Bolton today which is shocking. We were on the receiving end of an abusive boss and had utterly no defense because he was powerful. Bolton is a salaud and should get a job at McDonald's. Period.

2005-05-09T09:42:00.000-04:00

Generational Dissonance: a photo of famous (baby) bloggers in Times yesterday. No wonder no one understands this in the greater blogosphere. These are illiterate children for the most part, raised on electronic media. Symposia grew up without television, reading Cervantes and Flaubert at the pre-teen age these impoverished persons were watching All in the Family or some other trash.

En tout cas Sneed had a meeting with Butler Burrell which she recounts. Very funny. Like Fergie, like the Albermarles if you're broke in England you come to New York and try to make it. There are 28,000 Brits in New York here for one reason or another.

2005-05-05T08:43:00.000-04:00

Christopher Hitchens makes judgments that are incomplete or irresponsible. (Eh bien: just another ecrivain!) Thus, as Linda Nochlin points out in the New York Times, he totally disregards the only thing that makes that old brigand Malraux worth reading-- his art criticism. God how we disliked his Eurocentrism in the 60s.

Excellent article on Blair by Tina Brown in the Sun today. Since England has to ally itself with someone it may as well be the strongest and most powerful, however misguided the Iraq policy is.

2005-05-02T10:36:00.000-04:00

It is frightening to even think about what the Bushes had in mind with Laura's thoroughly innane skit. It was worse than corny and ranks right up there with Diana's stage routine--only Charles a lot smarter than to think it was cute. Eh bien-- a painful reminder there is a parallel universe aux Etats Unis.

2005-04-29T09:25:00.000-04:00

Art never moves one to tears, but Nature is another story; the first sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker since 1944 a case in point. So much for Symposia's arch comments about The Nature Conservancy's preserving land for their own rich heirs.

There is not one single plus about getting older. Not even one. I envy everyone even a year younger.

2005-04-29T06:36:00.000-04:00

Broadway is definitely worse than television. Spamalot as gruesome as Hairspray....for hicks from Kalamazoo or Amarillo.......that lumpy old MP troup must have a lot of debts or ex-wives. Tres affreux!

2005-04-28T08:24:00.000-04:00

Had the good sense to read latest NY Review of Books, the best $60 I ever spent. Updike's essay on an anonymous screenwriter rather graceful, so much better than his art crit. I wonder why the writer's life never interested me, (I can sound as smart as the next man) mainly because I like to move around and the prospect of sitting in front of a blank piece of paper almost every day impossible. The claustrophobia of the studio and the even worse oppression of one's own thoughts.

2005-04-27T12:30:00.000-04:00

Symposia is experiencing an uncharacteristic dearth of opinions lately. Imagine if you had to cough up something regularly for a column. How brain addled you would soon become.

Like Jane Fonda Michael Jackson is too easy a target to hit spot on so anything one says smacks of bullying. Actually why does one even write that sentence it is so stupid?

2005-04-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

New York is all about the abacus and the counting house in the dank basement. For the young and ambitious and fiercely focused it can be satisfying but for the rest of us, the visual ugliness cannot be ignored. Ownership and more ownership the alpha and omega of New York philosophy is such an illusion. Then again I am a Duchampian who never wanted to be tied down with that country house.

2005-04-21T11:16:00.000-04:00

According to most recent Forbes there is a certain art called P & C (pampering and coddling) which certain companies specialize in, such as Papamarkou whose CEO is ditzy Deborah Norville's husband. Can you imagine anything more demeaning than making a career out of being a paid sychophant?

2005-04-19T09:24:00.000-04:00

Greenberg-Ebbers-Stewart and all that ilk should be exiled to a sort of Modern Elba where they could cheat each other. Symposia was recently the victim of a securities fraud where we lost considerable money to unscrupulous parasites who preferred private aircraft to ....oh phooey on it all.

They elect a German Pope and the Greek chorus chants, "Nazi." The curse lives on into the 21st Century.

2005-04-14T13:46:00.000-04:00

When the serious becomes Monty Pythonesque: at lunch today shadow of himself Henry Kissinger and Harold Evans (Eric Idle-like) in Grand Central discussing "Middle East Peace".Platitudes and half truths but Christopher Walken, Jerry Rivers aka Geraldo Rivera and Robert Vaughn and ubiquitous Richard Meier tried to look like smart listeners. Oh God why did I leave Academia where you could bank on a few brains?

2005-04-13T09:33:00.000-04:00

We read in the Sun Times that Mike Royko's son tried to hold up a bank yesterday.No surprise. We knew Royko in the 80s and he was a nasty abusive person. Malheureusement he came to symbolize Chicago the way Capone did, Sandburgian, innanely blue collar, kind of crooked.

Studs Terkel an altogether different story, a charmer, though rather simple-minded and halcyonic about "mankind" (shudder) in an entre deux guerres kind of way.

2005-04-12T08:54:00.000-04:00

I cannot understand why We Should Be Smarter Civic Groups want to encourage poor kids to take up art as a career. Arts in Education! Glory! It is The Worst choice the desole could possibly make. We, in fact, need less bloody art except as soma.

Have I said it before? New York is like a banquet to which you are not invited. The table is laden with riches but you cannot attain it. Rent. Rich Euro trash, cosmetics moguls, Trump and his entourage of Philistines.........who would want to dine with them anyway?

2005-04-11T08:34:00.000-04:00

A major unpleasantness: The NY Public Library is selling my favorite painting, Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits. This is truly Lazlitt's The World We Have Lost, an art form that no longer exists and an America, once fresh and verdant and now34th and 7th Avenue at 8. a.m. Mon Dieu!

2005-04-10T08:10:00.000-04:00

You cannot underestimate the snobbery of the Royals.......Joan Rivers, a Windsormobile, a rock star's wife, all those seedy actors. OK if democracy is what you want we'll give it to you in spades. Tres amusant! Only the non royals were "introduced" to the public viewer.

2005-04-08T09:02:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth II is a replica of her grandmother Mary. The dignity, self-importance, sense of history (how could you not have it with that background) and refreshing aloofness all learned from this delightful and dutiful woman.

Not one journalist has mentioned the morganatic implications of Camilla.

2005-04-06T14:28:00.000-04:00

Saul Bellow died. He was the icon of all Eng Lit classes at Wisconsin but I could never understand a single word he wrote. Depressing books, depressing guy. Who needs That?

RE: The Pope. They had to close down Rome because all those desperate to believe that we are more than organic entities have the atavistic need to believe. The brave ones are those who soldier on without fairy tales.

and RE: Monaco et al. Ten years ago I was up late one night and flipped on the TV. It was before it was homogenized and sanitized to the degree it is today and quite by chance a program on Grace Kelly aired. It was a shocker: bizarre secret societies, odd ritualistic sexual practices (to say the least), deep unhappiness to the point of madness. Oleg Cassini is right: she should have married him and stayed in pictures.

2005-04-04T08:40:00.000-04:00

Because I was entertaining a Catholic friend for the weekend I went to mass at St. Patrick's yesterday. The building a High Gothic 14th century pastiche and everything about the entire scenario very late Medieval. They should have kept the Latin mass for maximum dramatic effect. And the incense. And more of the organ. Carmina Burana!

2005-03-31T15:19:00.000-05:00

A Trifecta for Symposia: Monaco, Fonda and the Windsors all in one day. All irresistibly appeal to the me, nurtured on a subscription to Photoplay in the 50s.

By the by did you ever notice how mentally unbalanced people always blame their parents for their misery well into old age?

2005-03-31T09:20:00.000-05:00

Nothing is more demeaning than being a gossip or society columnist--if you're not as rich as the subjects you write about. Believe me they only view you as an hors d'oeuvre. The same observation can apply to journalists like Tina Brown who feel they are "the elite" but actually have absolutely no power...except to attack their own profession. I know -- I was there for 20 years.

2005-03-28T11:42:00.000-05:00

I spent a busy weekend with Queen Mary and George V thanks to Jas. Pope-Hennessy who was in total cahoots with the Royals when researching his book. Guess there are worse cahoots to be in. I rather adored the non child centeredness of the times; the stifling infantilism of our own culture largely created by capitalism's realization early on in the information age that children, dogs and sex sell. Shudder.

Alors-- the press has discovered that universities harbor 70% left wingers. In my experience it was a bit higher. Thank goodness the Churchill Affair has brought this to light!Good old Berkeley ever the progressive is allowing him to speak. When something like this occurs I revert back to my social awareness of the 70s, which in the last decades meant nothing in this country.

2005-03-25T08:58:00.000-05:00

William Grimes discusses in the Times today the dull proliferation of contemporary memoirs....these ordinary jamocks (A Chicago word) are not Saint Simons but only celebrate their defects: uglyness, fatness, abusededness, etc. Speak about niche marketing! There are enough reading homo sapiens around to buy these "I know whatcha mean" books.

2005-03-22T15:23:00.000-05:00

Adorable Bobby Short just died. He was a wee bit of a lappish-dog of extremely rich New Yorkers and would probably have dissolved into anonymity had he ever stopped playing the piano. He undoubtedly knew this and probably had a sort of reverse snobbery about those he entertained.

2005-03-22T15:16:00.002-05:00

Regarding that pull the plug case that is all over the papers, I say if there is even the most infinitesimal amount of doubt regarding consciousness then don't bloody do it.

Back to something less relevant merci: I actually saw a crinoline in a dress store the other day which led me to reflect that all these Women in the Arts or Women of Achievement Awards are conceptually rather like Chimps as Artists or .....oh you get the point!

2005-03-22T15:16:00.001-05:00

I have just started to read the heavy tome Queen Mary by James Pope-Hennessy. Before attaining page 1 of the narrative we were made sadly aware of the fact that in the past, yay right up to 1955 when the author started researching his subject, letters, daily journals, diaries, memoirs were an integral part of life. Today the only record we will have of 2005 will not be so much a reflection of refined sensibility as what those thugs in Hollywood choose to feed to the upper classes (who are no longer patricians) as well as the plebes.

2005-03-22T15:16:00.000-05:00

The comedy of wine snobbery or oenophilism is summed up in a ridiculous film Mondovino. Wine is wine and there are gradations in quality but from my first tasting in a Cambridge college in 1966 until my sales stint at Sherry-Lehman in 2002 I have always known that most of it is "in the head" and that after two glasses it all basically tastes the same.

2005-03-18T06:36:00.001-05:00

Just when you think you're alone in the universe of thought someone like Bloomberg comes along and buries religion where it belongs -- with all the other relics of tribal crap.

2005-03-18T06:36:00.000-05:00

I have always suspected that the Bushes and Clintons and all those characters in politics only paid ridiculous lip service to the idea of a white bearded father figure sitting in clouds. Only emotionally disturbed actors like Jane Fonda actually believe this....no wonder Turner divorced her.

2005-03-17T10:19:00.000-05:00

How much easier it is to have nonsensical cultural opinions.No wonder no one reads this. Thus I should comment on Kofi Annan's bowing at Arafat's grave but there is enough impotent scribbler's outrage at this. What is interesting is how he has metamorphosed from a beloved Barbara Walter's Hamptons Houseguest to an outcast because he doesn't have the correct ideas.

2005-03-16T09:38:00.000-05:00

Sartre's 100th birthday. He was the hero of my youth and I have always loved the old wall-eyed misanthrope (who can ever forget Simone's description of him huddled in a fuzzy orange fur coat writing, always writing, during the War?) . His autobiography the absolute ne plus ultra best in all literature -- Les Mots-- brief, comical, and ultimately an admonition that all self assessments should run under 100 pages. Someone please tell that to all those memoirists who are always from ignorant families from Texas. God!