What's Truman Capote Got To Do With It?

On the road again....

Starting at 220 pounds in mid May, with a goal of reaching 185 pounds, this morning I find myself at 208.5, close to the best weight I have achieved (207.5) on this journey to date.


Dr. Mehmet Oz says your body WANTS to reach it's ideal weight.

But I've seen paintings of fat burghers in Germany whose ideal apparently was to be fat--as a sign of prosperity.

Civilization (or at least the Euro-American part of it) turned a very strange corner when someone said, and most agreed, that you can't be too rich or too thin.

Apparently no one checked with the starving children about that--you know, the starving children, usually in China, of whom you were constantly reminded by your mother if you didn't finish the food on your plate.

This is not a joke, of course. For one thing, it encouraged you to eat more than you needed to eat.

And there WERE millions of starving children, and there still are.

It is obscene that millions of starving children today could be saved by:

1. Using the money Americans spend on weight loss programs,

2. Using the value of the food Americans (and other rich people) throw away or otherwise waste,

3. Using the money that would be saved by millions of people if they simply ate only the amount and kinds of food they truly need,

4. Using the money that would be saved if it were not spent on medical care for illnesses caused or exacerbated by overeating, or

5. Using the value of the productivity and quaiity of the years of additional life fat people would have if they were not fat.


The best story I have heard about the origin of the "can't be too rich/thin" saying is reported by Ralph Keyes in his 2006 book, "The Quote Verifier," in which he says Truman Capote said HE made the observation on the David Susskind Show in the late 1950s, probably 1959. Capote was close to Babe Paley, and may have fed her the line; she and the Duchess of Windsor are the persons most often said to have uttered it first.

I like the Capote account because I can just HEAR him saying it, he was bright enough to think it, he observed many very wealthy women who doubtless believed it and lived it, and, perhaps most important, in this account Capote CLAIMED to have said it, which also is internally consistent.

It's almost like those sayings attributed to Oscar Wilde: if he didn't say them all, he should have.

Remember, less is more...

(More or less)

Small(er) is beautiful....