We could do with an ambassador like you in Paris, Jim. I sent a request through to the Embassy here to use a corner of their place for a booklaunch and they said it wasn't "appropriate". Well what is, if NZ writing isn't? I fear the embassies are too focussed on the big trading buck -- too afraid to stepping out of line. Like you say, "These financial institutions are full of people picking money like it was candy and one day it will all come unstuck. It must." Great stuff! Ah Kerouac! I think I got the driving bug from reading him, and still have it -- and all those colourful characters had their equivalents in 70s NZ, for sure. A great epoch which we (tho I'm younger) almost share (also, almost with Stephen). As for immigration, I'm looking at the spine of a book by John F. Kennedy right now, 'A Nation of Immigrants'. Peoples have to keep in flux, immigration keeps 'em healthy, fresh and hopeful (not forgetting the mana of the music) -- (hey, it even refreshes the gene pool, for those fasco-geneticists out there!) Cheers, Bill D. (PS thanks a million for slapping (stapling?) one of my poems on the street. That's just the coolest place for a poem.