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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.