Herewith a summary of a friend's recent wry note in defense of nicotine :

"New Medication : US scientists have discovered a non-addictive pain medicine that is just as potent as morphine, according to research set to appear in Friday's edition of the weekly journal Science.

Nicotine has long been known to dull pain....."

Then this guy started attacking the hypocrisy inherent in America's eating habits, with a religious fervor targeting the high fat content of so much of the junk food and snacks consumed, concluding with the admonition: "Ban Butter! Fatty foods kill 1 million people a year......"

Then jumped into an historical analogy illuminating our Political Correctness : "The anti-smoking hysteria is reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy's persecution of alleged communists."

And then right on into medical research and cover ups used to hinder America's millenium revolutionary zeal : "Little known secret. What most doctors won't tell you : Smoking relieves pain. It relieves colitis, it relieves ulcers, it is excellent for controlling weight, and it doesn't lead to more cancer than pollution from auto emissions or deaths from eating meat. Smokers have a lower risk from Alzheimer's. That there are claims that it causes cancer and is carcinogenic is all part of the hysteria and has become a cause celebre by propagandists and today's witch hunt mentality. The truth is smoking is an excellent palliative for pain and this hysteria is divisive and tends to focus outrage away from the real causes of social unrest."

Next came a rhetorical question, "What is One Billionth of a Carcinogen Worth?"

Leading into a Socratic exposition on State propaganda and the false education of our young, "A recent rash of newspaper articles proclaimed the discovery of the carcinogen Benzo(a)pyrene, (BaP), in cigarettes, and implied this is the cause of all lung cancer.

"Human beings absorb between 1000 and 5000 nanograms of Benzopyrene every day. It is in our water, it is released whenever an organic product is burned and if you have a grilled burger or steak add another 2500 nanograms to your daily intake. Unfortunately leafy vegetables like spinach and lettuce are also carriers. (From - 'Smoke and Mirrors' by Dr. Huber. et. al.)"

He ended with a summary of why Americans are being killed by Laissez Faire capitalism's three largest, most profitable and favorite, industries : automobiles, petroleum and processed foods, "We believe the continued growth of cancer cases in the U.S. is due to the concentration of automobile exhausts in our major cities and our choices of diets."

While duly applauding Hank's honestly unfashionable, yet radical, statements on the present degradation of America's Free Market ethos, this writer, a patriotic citizen, had to step back from his friendship with hank and mount a defense of certain well-proven paternal prerogatives of Western cultural heritage. He, therefore, sent the following expository note to his friend, entitled, tentatively,

BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!

But, my hazy friend, are you naive enough to hope that pointing out only one of the evils spun by the Detroit Corporate Monsters and their lifeblood, the Violent World of Petroleum - and those other asset-strippers mining Third World resources to maintain a cheap American fat fare - is enough to awake slovenly America? Enough to even begin dispelling our long-term ignorance, that media accumulated narcotized buying spree invented by that Great American Hero and CIA inventor of Public Relations, that promoter par excellence of Laissez Faire Market Economies, Mr. Bernays of Cambridge???

Come on, be realistic Hank! Remember your history, and Freudian psychology : there's always a scary dream waking us to the sweaty realities of the nurtured values passed down from leaders smoking buttered cigars.

Most sincerely yours,

richard

But later, further reflections on this subject, led Richard to realize this reply was superficial, too minimalist for such a profound subject - and, as well, he awoke to the fact that he had become annoyed with Hank's support of nicotine by condemning fatty substances. So he added some spicy history to the dialectic pot :

Hold on!! Now you're going too far. Butter? Leave it alone, will yuh? Try another Americanesque path to long fearful lives.

Some worldly advice : instead of loving people, who so often prove unreliable, just love olive oil, lots of garlic and robust red wine. All of whom I learned to love (not "fell" in love with, mind you) during 15 years in France and Spain. There, then, one never worries either about longevity or a fatty smear of rich butter on fresh crusty peasant bread alongside his rich Colombian coffee.

Or as I once told another traditionalist, I still love dependencies, being an addict, like savoring the tastes of any rich Cuban-influenced cigar, specially those approved by Senor Castro from revolutionary ardor, and Armangnac warmed by and for and of revolutionary women hotly partaking of both, and I.

Or, as Marie Antoinette said, "Give them butter! That'll smooth over sensuous bodily discontents."

"Who told you that?", said Louis as he sat grunting and red-faced on the bidet sensually proofreading a fistful of Tom Paine's robust gallows, outlines for a new Gaelic Age of Reason.

Before Marie could answer, a servant burst through the large English patio doors facing the Le Jardin de Tuileries, buttoning his waist coat while adjusting his pantaloons and straightening his wig, a little powder flying here and there, rightly down to blanched feet, all the while choking, garbling in tongues, argot bits amid salivated spurts, all adding up to, "All is lost! France is done!"

Unflustered, his queen softly inquired "What has transpired today, dear M. Feste?" (this is not the queen on the bidet, still struggling, but the one in the bed. She who gobbles up bread and butter, heavy Austrian accents mixing strong female appetites with all French intentions, which, though quite sensual from a distance, was an act often crudely misinterpreted, even by lovers. Thusly her reputation for humidly lurid elocution).

"Several hundred more gay clergy!", sputtered out the gallantly coiffeured, well-buffeted sycophant in an emotional falsetto even safer than his normal soprano exclamations of dismay.

"Well, that, at least, will make for more varied third-party confessions, as well as easier novice recruitment into more exciting convents. And, within the year, more French cannon fodder for future use against the English..., when their boredom rises its ugly head once again, as it must, over the sterile ramparts of Anglo beds and Saxon tables."

"But, Madame," objected queen Lou, "for once, pray your Lord, get thee serious!"

"Serious, say thee gentle master? Keep still, Louis!. Rather, Butt out!, as said in the Vienna Woods, when nymphs and elves play Springtime rhapsodies. Or, closer to home, as Victoria will, one day, order her Public School boys."

The King remained confused, as always, by Germanic romantics, answering the best he could manage under such strained, unmoving conditions, "Mais oui, Ma Cherie, but your one-track mind befuddles us. We are enlightened - so Richelieu told Louis upon forming the Academy - but, nevertheless, be kind enough to ask our Court Jester herewith the exact nature of that which has inseminated his excitement."

"My forever sweet, plumb-like dauphin, your 'buts' are better addressed to your fool here, your message carrier, your very own clown Feste. Excited into infirmity at the very sight of your exalted bidet sitting, your gloriously fragile form, he languishes so, entwining himself around my bedpost, transformed, eyes wide, salivating at you, babbling to the world."

"Yes, yes, I see. But what sayeth he, my loyal servant and wise-fool, Jeste, through all his machinations of love?"

"First, I say, Mon cher Lou, that dear Feste has misunderstood my question, "What' has transpired"?, interpreting it as 'who' has transpired?

The King huffed and puffed with the greatest energy, breathed deeply one last time, so to take command, with all his authority, "Mon Cher Feste, calm yourself! Just enough to say what has occasioned your florid state here, within our Kingdom, this good morn."

And Jeste replied with all sweet accord, with the fatalism he long had lived as love protector and messenger to King Louis, "Oh, yes, Sire, for which, alas, I may yet lose head. My Queen - rather your Queen, Cher King Louis - yes, she has reason, as always, while abed. And now duly I remember, why I came. Came here from yonder garden, that is, to inform your most gracious highnesses, that your last, most loyal, protector, the most honorable Thomas Paine, has been arrested by that anti-Christ, M. Robespierre."

"Paine? That same escaped felon, he avidly sought by our English peers for the Tower of London? What charge they he? Sticking unholy tracts on Rome's blessed portals, once again?"

"Dear me, no! Such acts doth verily please the too learned avocat Robespierre. This instance Poor Tom has not only caste the Reign of Terror in public disrepute, for taking heads glibly, but also is accused of High Treason."

"One with us is he, again, my Tom. But had for treason, as well? Unbelievable! What worse offense did the Assembly catch him at, then?"

"He was charged with smoking during Coitus Interruptus with Madame de Bonneville, within La Cremerie de la Bastille."

"Mary, Jesus and Joseph, doing it with that bitch? Why she's a married woman! He's been had by her, on top of all that pomp, n'est pas?

"Oui, Madame."

"Sacre bleu!, in the royal butter factory?, taking his pleasure there, is that the crime? Or is it interrupting her, in the middle, making her wait, just partaking of a loving cigarette. 'Tis now that, as well, a crime against La Revolution?"

"No, neither, dear heart! Robespierre charges our good friend Thomas with sabotaging La Revolution. Being a spy for the English Cartel du Butter, charged with smoking in the La Cremerie expressly to add carcinogens to our famous creams. So to weaken the revolution, so to drive the people away from bread and into eating cake."

"Was Robespierre up to his usual rhetorical flourishes?", asked the bedded queen.

"Oh, quite so, yes!", replied 'Specially eating Austrian tarts', Robespierre testified, he himself, lambasted before packed crowds listening, deliberately, before the Committee of Public Safety."

"And what sayeth the Commissioner of Public Safety, M. Giuliani?"

"Rodolfo jumped to the salute, raised his fist and shouted, 'Approved! On with all orders keeping the streets free of tarts. Call out the troops! Take me to my bunker! Man the barricades!"

"And, what passed next for democratic debate?"

"Rodolfo continued, 'We shall defend all the consuming privileged. My officers will give our, their, every life defending our best Parisian butters. Our very system is under Siege by unwashed Americans.'"

"Unwashed Americans? Were all present at the Assembly, de la Ville de Paris, too faint of heart to temper such rhetoric, to chastise such kingly ambition to rule?"

"Non, Madame."

"Was no publican ready to sedate M. Giuliani with libations, to open him to education on America?"

"Non, Madame."

"Apparently he does not yet appreciate that the only Americans remaining unwashed are those working in the sun too long. Not one courage citizen spoke up for poor Tom?"

"No, my queen, no man of such courage exists, to speak so, not when Robespierreian policies are being executed by the Commissioner of Public Morals."

"Fool! Giuliani is charged with Public Safety, not Public Morals."

"Oh, so it is. Excusez-moi! My mind is clouded with visions of his smiling countenance, his mumbling 'Moral discipline', over and over, as the reports came in of the demise of the clergy, those good young men, loving each other as Our Lord commanded, sweetly leaving the deflowering of cousins and sisters to others."

"Mein godt! Even the politique Giuliani has caught La Rage. Of mortal sins he now speaks, in others, that most common of bureaucrats, flailing at peoples' maladies, planning his lawyerly revolution, looking always downwards, marching always against anti-Christs. Yet, I wonder, hath there reason, behind this evil reign? Hath Tom Paine possible mortal guilt, sanctioning, nay committing, biblical thrusts in La Cremerie against both Mme. De Bonneville and all the butter of his betters?", said the Queen.

"What do you talk of, Ma Chere Tonette. Tom has saved our lives with his eloquence against unethical capital, punishment that is to say", the Kingly queen shot back as his well-stuffed guts sank further into gouted legs.

"Yes, but in dangerous times one Quaker friend in the frying pan is not as valuable as keeping our own butter flowing. Smoking and stroking rancid pleasures, the nicotine of Virginia and Madame de Bonneville, deflowers pure French butter, is cultural suicide. Look to the Italian lessons at poor Avignon, not long past. Besides, if they remove his English head, I'll see to it that they save his American heart. It will taste so sweet sautéed in fresh butter and olive oil, large pinches of garlic, washed down with a good Cote du Rhone."

"Mon dieu, albeit a fructification of The Holy Roman Emperor, you are now truly une femme Franchise." sadly moaned the king. Then, suddenly, he bolted straight up on the edges of his throne, backbone hardened, his temper rigid, a mind tumescent for the first time since he married sweet-flowing Antoinette, "Feste..., tell me! Think you not my imported wife to be much infirmed speaking so of poor Tom, our friend, ink still under his nails, of his humanistic heart being roasted in butter?"

"Yes, Mon Liege, and shall she do, till the pangs of death shake her. Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool."

"Ha! Debauched French holism. Plagiarizing English bards, are you? I say you : God send thee, my two dainty sirs, a speedy infirmity. For the better increasing your folly!

As the King fumed and flustered, playing with his locks, on the gilded throne, Jeste skipped over to his aid, lending all weight to clearing his monarch's distressed gastronomic obstructions, whispering in the royal ear, "What our lovely queen needs is not a Captain of the Royal Guard satiating her Mongolian musk whining but rather a fat little Provencal with a whip to discipline her Teutonic pride."

"Care thee well thy kingly machinations, dear Feste, for wheedling royal suppositories for frustrated children of the Sun King be not far removed from wielding tea caddies for pubescent boys of rainy England. "

As Feste grimaced and massaged, his king tightened and strained, all muscles concentrated to relieve the godly Paines wrought by reasoned prose, the last mutterings heard from the throne were, "Will not someone rid me of this wretched Prussian?"

The long lost Virgin Marie heard not this imprecation, for once again the Patio doors facing the Seine banged open, this occasion by the queens' Royal Garde du Corps rushing in where powered ministers feared to tread. "My queen, I have herewith come, not yet but once again, herewith served by my vigorous Little Corporal, here in tow and towing a milkmaid who, as you ordered, has not washed in three weeks." The capitan passed a stout liter tankard to the queen and promptly filled it, and all others, from a full goatskin slung over his shoulder.

"What occasions this interruption of my private presence, Capitan?", barely asked the sweating king.

"Why it is October, good King Louis, which we always celebrate with your queen in our traditional northern fashion." And with that the Capitan and his maid jumped into the double queenly bed of the king, disappearing with giggling Marie under a four meter wide eiderdown. The beginning chords of Marie's favorite chanson, 'Gruppensex Uber alles' came floating out from beneath the tumbling hill along with numerous vestments, soon rising up to cover the knees of the rotund little Corporal smiling sheepishly as he doffed his capote and bowed graciously to Jeste as he still struggled with his largest suppository attempting to relieve good Louis' clouded thinking.

Yet the king was bereft of all vision in royal intrigues, as he starred and stuttered, "Jeste, is not that rotund little corporal actually the valiant officer who threw the English out of Toulon and went against his Corsican ancestry to join with the Jacobeans here in Paris?"

As Jeste began to nod, they watched the corporal doffed his clothes as well, approach them with finger to lips, whispering to them, "Soit patient!. La France va gagner!", just before diving into the queen's play chamber with a cry, "Voila, j'arrive!"

"What make you of these strange words amidst such normal intrusions, Jeste?"

"The Corsican's valet told me earlier that is busy collecting intelligence for invasions, first of Italy and then of Austria. Said he is studying Teutonic cultural habits, to learn all strengths so his spies will know where to look for weaknesses before the invasion."

"Think you then this a wise approach to my imported wife?"

Jeste was frowning, thinking, what to reply?, when the eiderdown exploded in song from the little corporal, his first several words clear before drowned out in a gurgle of October new beer, "Je comprend, maintenant. DeutcherZeist UberAlles!"

"What did he say he understood, dear Jeste? Quick, tell me!"

"His speech was somewhat guttural, my queen, but it sounded like tactical revelation. He said that he now understands the best of the Teutonic culture.

Best regards,

richard

Postscript : Tom Paine was saved by his wise influences upon the working class, specially his favorite maid, la cremiere, Mme de Bonneville. Released, he returned to America where he was soon condemned - and nearly assassinated through his parlour window, within his farmhouse in New Rochelle - where even his friends the Huguenots could not long protect him for preferring butter to God. But the King and all his Queens lost their heads for just such sins, of using too much butter over and in their bodies. Naturally, as the diminished clergy were afraid to give them rites, Lou and Marie were buried in unconsecrated grounds, amongst the corpses of many unnamed and disposed of, yet baptized, babies, in an unmarked cemetery on a slope descending from the kitchen of an old convent opposite to, and once serving, La Palais de Papes, Avignon. Located on a sister hill to the French Popes' Palace, on the opposite bank of a tributary to the Rhone River, a river so well navigated by numerous priests via the secret, fully enclosed passageway forming the lowest level of the now well-chanson'ed, 'Pont de Avignon'.

Duly scribed by the undersigned upon twelve night reflections in the year of my Lord William Shakespeare, 382 AD.

And his friend duly replied, "Excellent prose Richard. Did you write it? Good story too." Hank

And Richard expressed cognitive appreciation :

Hank,

Yes, it was written as one of my passing creative fancies; adding to a manuscript in progress for nearly twenty years, "Expatriate Letters". Thanks for the acknowledgement, and for your contribution catalyzing this artistic sortie. I'm sending a copy to my 2 American mentors, Noam Chomsky and Harold Bloom.

It needs a bit more honing, sharpening it somewhat, but I add the following for now :

Other than the obvious, or maybe less than obvious, parodies, the history is all true on Tom Paine (one of my few, perhaps the greatest, American heroes); and nuanced true on Lou and Marie, the last veritable jack-boot rulers, along with El Vaticano, of France.

As is clear, I hope, those latter two aristocrats were buried where I chose to bury them. And yet the site should be appropriate, being a truly historic one, an unmarked cemetery rediscovered upon excavating an 11th century convent in Avignon (where I have lived aboard my boat, on the quai just below Le Palais de Pape). Said cemetery was where the conceptions visited upon the docile sisters serving the priests during the Avignon Papacies (called The Babylonian Captivity & The Great Schism, 1309-1417), and continuing, were disposed of after covert abortions or births. Those frequent conceptions were consummated during visits between hot priests and possibly somewhat less than fervid nuns, usually secretly carried out via a small, completely enclosed, pedestrian walkway built at the 3rd (lowest) level of the Pont de Avignon, the 12th century bridge connecting the 14th century Gothic Palais de Pape with said convent on an island in a tributary of the Rhone River.

The site is now mostly used as an amusement park, active during the lengthy Rhone Valley warm weather, passive during the months when the Mistral blows stronger over river waters made cold stolidly accumulating in Lac Leman, Calvin's secure Geneva. The river is always silty, but clean, though too cold in those latter months for most to bath in (as I used to do at dusk as the sun went down over that cemetery; using a fishermen's ancient stairway between quai and river to dive in nude, to scrub down on the steps with mariner's sea soap, before plunging in again to off the soap, finished with a bucket of equally cold water from the nearby tap used by the barge pilots to fill their tanks. After 10-14 hours of hard repairs on my 44 foot mahogany twin-screw, then up on chocks on that quai, it was the best bath ever, the best aperitif come appetizer to four simple courses washed down with a Cote du Rhone Vin Ordinaire.

In those above vibrant old days of Papal pageantry in massive stone-built Avignon, the cold blowing winter days also could be quite lonely if one was not safely within the medieval town walls, if one was on the wind-swept island in an austere convent, gaining points for later, maybe becoming neurotic with the constant windy solitude, paining away for god, maybe becoming depressed when Geneva's overcast skies spread south for weeks on end, specially if you were a naive country girl, newly pregnant, parentless, shamed and hidden away in those damp walls on the hill between the river and estuary..., then the stories tell how the cold Rhone received her depression and shame and loneliness in such an efficient fashion, removing Papal evidences straight down to Port Saint Louis, in Les Bouches du Rhone, her young body then ritually washed into the Mediterranean, on passed Marseilles, gone as cleanly away as were the stains she had ritually washed from ritual vestments..., all those pressures making for two less complaints in that cemetery, no fetus to mourn over, no one to cry for, or even remember.

History + imagination = truths we've forgotten, sometimes old accepted wisdom, hopefully such.

Best regards, and keep up the good work,

richard

Hank's final reply :

Richard, you have really lived an interesting life. I'm delighted with your contributions. And, having a Horowitz or someone like him to challenge some of the others is exactly what is needed on occasion also to keep the kind of introspection and level of tension needed for these questions to remain interesting [and fun]. Otherwise, what would we talk about if we all agreed with each other about everything?

Hank

Denouement :

Richard decided to submit this exchange to a philosophical journal to open these questions to serious public debate. We await turgid, and other, responses from any revolutionary-minded citizen, or not minded. Even though the exposure of final truths may lead to a public demand for a new perspective on their leader's head, and whether he should put on and take off his trousers as ordinary men do...., or demands that all their gouted leaders, sitting on cigar buttered thrones, be exposed, and held accountable for every act, undemocratic or not, private or public while sucking on the body politick.