In this letter from 1983, Kurt addresses the remarkable attention received by food and wine in California. "The most civilized conversation these days, with incisive intelligence, a sense of the poetic and theatrical, delicate perceptions, and robust innovations, is all about food (not music, not painting, not architecture)." Yet, as with all things, Kurt was looking at the topic of food at a deeper level, concerned about the loss of indigenous traditional cultures and starving nations. "We live in a time when many of the surviving traditional cultures are threatened with extinction, and their lessons must be recorded or lost." Never one to shy away from difficult matters, his letter is polite while pointed. No reply has been found in his archives.
