Dear Bill, As the second richest man in the world, I know you are not short of people giving you advice, but I thought I'd pen a quick letter to you to fill you in on a recent round table I sat in on with some vaccine scientists, journalists and a few of your people from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As I reached his round table, I saw Mr. Z., the man who punched sharks... in shorts and a t-shirt.
Paradoxically, even at this economic Round Table, I was defending liberal solutions against some populist trends in the Solidarity camp, like Ryszard Bugaj, who wanted some properties held collectively by workers rather than being made tradable.
I see him also during underground meetings of Solidarity and during the 1989 Round Table negotiations; I see him in our parliament declaring the end of the Polish People's Republic, and on CNN announcing that Poland had joined Nato.
So it must have been, Kempton went on to reflect, for Tristan, of the Round Table, who "I suppose would have been like that when he met young men in the fit of first love and swearing that they would live no other way".
Julie Delpy was talking about that at this round table that I did.
The participants of Round Table No. 6 recommend: (i) that modelling be systematically employed; (ii) that all the required professional personnel be involved, at all phases; (iii) that all data needed are made accessible; (iv) that clinicians be trained; (v) that specialists develop training tool kits; and (vi) that universities provide appropriate training.
So every last pair of shoes I own is member and minion of the fantastical round table over which I still reign.
A literary round table in September titled "Is Literature a Provocation?" had the writers Sorokin and Viktor Yerofeyev, among others, throwing around references to Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dante, Flaubert, Céline, Hitler, Mel Gibson and Salman Rushdie, and inevitable ruminations on the nature of Russia.
The European Round Table of Industrialists, which I also chair, and whose members include Rolls-Royce, BP, Rio Tinto, Vodafone, Ericsson and Air Liquide, will continue to push for the creation of that single market.
I did have a brief fling imagining myself part of the Algonquin Round Table, but that ended when I learned that in real time Dorothy Parker was not actually all that much fun to have around.
