Friday, September 30, 2005

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.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

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.

Monday, September 26, 2005

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!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

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?

Monday, September 19, 2005

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.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

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

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

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.

Friday, September 09, 2005

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.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

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.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

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."

Friday, September 02, 2005

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?

Thursday, September 01, 2005

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?