Owl Farm Blog

Posted by Anita Thompson at 12:54 PM | Permalink

Hello.  The warm snap is over and the bitter cold is here! It finally feels like winter in Manhattan rather than a weird tropical city. Now that the temperature has plummeted, the gyms are packed with people getting their endorphin fix.  Seeing all the white tennis shoes and bare legs running vigorously on treadmills through the big windows at the W. 80^th & Broadway Gym tonight, made me think of some HST wisdom about the Human Body. It’s good HST wisdom to start the week.

Yup, the human body is a temple.  Hunter often liked to point out one unique and beautiful aspect of the human body:  It’s powerful ability to heal itself, given the chance.  Some people abuse their bodies for years and years but, when they decide to start taking care of it, even later in life, it responds like a finely tuned Ferrari – well, maybe a finely tuned minivan in some cases, or a finely tuned Mac-truck, or a finely tuned Subaru, et cetera…

Although Hunter had an unusual constitution which gave him the ability to ingest quantities of substances that would down an elephant, Hunter was no fool; he paid attention to his body’s needs.  The following is from one of Hunter’s last interviews with Tim Mohr from Playboy Magazine. 

Grapefruit is vital to my lifestyle. I eat grapefruits, oranges, lemons, kiwis. I also need something green with every meal — some vegetables on the plate. Even if it’s just some sliced tomatoes and green onions in a pinch. It’s both aesthetic and healthy. If I take a look at a plate and see brown, gray, white, I can’t eat it. I want to see some red and green.

Drink six to eight glasses of water a day. When you don’t drink enough water you lose your taste for it. When you’re chronically dehydrated the body misses it, but it has a self-fooling mechanism where you don’t think about it. Then you have to reeducate your taste buds for it. At first you can’t drink much pure water. I’ve worked up to five or six glasses a day. At first I could barely do one.

I had started the hydration process before I broke my leg in Hawaii at Christmastime in 2003. Everybody had been telling me. I was going into the Aspen Club — to the sports medicine department — to learn to walk after my spinal surgery earlier that same year. I wasn’t supposed to recover from that.

I’ve really enjoyed my body. I’ve used it. One of the things I’ve been most impressed with in my life is the resiliency of the human body: They did both my spinal surgery and my leg surgery without putting any metal in me. No metal, Bubba.

–Hunter S. Thompson, Playboy Magazine Dec 2004

I’m in a melancholy mood tonight and want to add something to the above wisdom. Meals were very important to Hunter, and aside from watching him at his typewriter, perhaps it is watching him enjoy his food that I miss most.  I took great pleasure in cooking for Hunter on a daily basis, and recommend, if you are lucky enough to have someone in your  life who eats, to cook a great meal tonight  and enjoy each other’s company: It’s good for you. 

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 06:08 PM | Permalink

Here is an email from a blog reader, Matt, I’m not sure where you’re from, but hopefully you wont mind me sharing your email and article. I like that you keep up with Hunter’s world. Although they are often very sweet, I don’t typically post blog emails,  but this one has a great link and I have to wake up in a few hours to get ready for an early class.  But I will check in later in the afternoon with some HST wisdom.

Your friend, Anita Thompson

Hello Anita, and all of the people who handle the Owl Farm Blog…

Since I know you like to keep in the true Hunter spirit of keeping up with/posting about politics, I thought I’d send you this CNN article if you’ve not seen it yet. At least Bush admits mistakes in 11th hour when it’s not useful to do so. This article is absolutely astonishing, even for Cheney. Pour yourself a bourbon before you read it. Much love for all of Woody Creek, and all that you do for us fans,

Matt Brough

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/24/cheney/index.html

Dick Cheney link above:

Posted by Anita Thompson at 11:10 PM | Permalink

I’m sitting here at my computer waiting for Hillary’s live webcast to check it out.

Here is a bit from an interview from Rolling Stone.  I published the unpublished parts in the Woody Creeker last year.  It’s about the truth:  P.J. O’Rourke interviewed Hunter for this in 1987:

HST: I’m a great fan of Reality

P.J. Well, it’s all right as far as it goes.

HST: Truth is easier

P.J. Than making up stuff?

HST: Yeah.

P.J. I suppose it is, how do you say, more truthful.

H.S.T: And weirder.  And funnier.  Not all the time, but you can fall back on the truth.  You can’t fall back on a story you made up because, by the time you’ve done it, you’re starting to wonder if it is good or funny or right.  But if it’s the fucking truth…

P.J. …it is the truth

H.S.T.  Yeah.  And that’s why I like it.  I’m lazy.

Hillary is on now.  Her answers so far are a little longer winded than Bill Clinton’s.  But it is good so far in that she is showing her tough, intelligent senator side —  I have already been thinking about supporting her.  It will be interesting to see what her poll numbers will be tomorrow. Tomorrow her webcast continues at 7pm EST www.hillaryclinton.com

Okay.

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 05:11 PM | Permalink

  Hi.  The Woody Creeker Celtic Magician, Linda Luke, sent me a list of bumper sticker quotes about our president. Thought you might like to read them, if you haven’t already. My favorite is “The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century” 

Posted by Anita Thompson at 04:56 PM | Permalink

Hi. I arrived to New York a few days ago to warm balmy weather — a weird contrast to the 4 feet of snow I left behind at Owl Farm.  It’s finally cold today, thank god. We had our first snow yesterday.  The weather bureau promised that the historically warm weather that East coast people are experiencing is not due to Global Warming, but rather, El Nino.  They didn’t mention what caused El Nino.
 

At the moment, I’m sitting at Columbia University’s Butler Library, the huge stone building facing the green fields in front of the Alma Mater statue and the dome of Lowell Library. It’s the first building that greets me every day with the massive carved names of Homer, Heredotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Vergil… (when I first arrived on campus last September, I barely knew the works of half of them — but I’m leaning.) 

Anyway, I realized I hadn’t posted  for several days and ran to Butler for a copy of The Great Shark Hunt, which is shelved between the titles The Presidency of Richard Nixon (University of Kansas Press) and The Nixon-Kissinger Years (Paragon House).  So, I decided to go ahead and post a nice little HST/NIXON quote about Watergate.  enjoy:

The slow-rising central horror of "Watergate" is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.

it goes on about how public opionion at the time (August 1973) was that Nixon was no worse than other politicians…

Anybody who really believes this is a fool — but a lot of people seem to, and that evidence is hard to ignore.  What almost happened here — and what was only avoided because the men who made Nixon President and who were running the country in his name knew in their hearts that they were all mean, hollow little bastards who couldn’t dare turn their backs on each other — was a takeover and total perversion of the American political process by a gang of cold-blooded fixers so incompetent that they couldn’t even pull off a simple burlary… which tends to explain, among other things, why 25,000 young Americans died for no reason in Vietnam while Nixon and his brain trust were trying to figure out how to admit the whole thing was a mistake from the start.

—Hunter S. Thompson The Great Shark Hunt.

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson 

Posted by Anita Thompson at 03:57 PM | Permalink

Hi. As promised, I will be posting the readers from gonzostore.com quotes. Here is an HST quote that a reader, Joshua Beckler picked:  One of my favorites too.

 

Indeed.  If the greatest mania of all is passion: and if I am a natural slave to passion: and if the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase –
            Well, that explains a lot of things, doesn’t it?  We need look no further.  Yes sir, and people wonder why I seem makeshift and contradictory, even clinically insane… Hell, I don’t miss those whispers, those soft groans of fear when I enter a civilized room.  I know what they’re thinking, and I know exactly why.  They are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that I am a teenage girl trapped in the body of a sixty-five-year-old career criminal who has already died sixteen times.  Sixteen, all documented.  I have been crushed and beaten and shocked and drowned and poisoned and stabbed and shot and smothered and set on fire by my own bombs…
            All these things have happened, and probably they will happen again.  I have learned a few tricks along the way,  a few random skills and simple avoidance techniques – but mainly it has been luck, I think, and a keen attention to Karma, along with my natural girlish charm.

 

–Hunter S. Thompson , Kingdom of Fear.

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 11:42 PM | Permalink

Goodmorning, I’m leaving in a few minutes to drive to Denver today to the Denver Public Library Today, downtown, as part of a month long Jack Kerouac exhibit of the On the Road scroll.  David Amram and Dr. Audrey Sprenger are teaching a fascinating class, (the class itself is on the road) traveling where Jack Kerouac wrote. This is very exiting for me, as I just finished studying On the Road  at Columbia this semester, which is a slightly different experience than reading it at Owl Farm, both offering a unique perspective!

I will be reading a piece about FEAR from Kingdom of Fear. And I will explain the significance of Hunter’s The Lion and the Cadillac in response to the work of Jack Kerouac. That story holds a special place in my heart as it was one of the first stories Hunter and I completed together. So, it will be a pleasure to read today.  It should be fun. 

And now, as I shifted the junker into second, I heard a terrible snarling and realized that the cat was running right behind me and gaining…(I was in fact, Terrified at that moment.)… And I think I must have gone temporarily insane when the goddamn thing came up beside me and jumped right into the car through the passenger-side window like a bomb.
 It bounced against the dashboard and somehow turned the radio volume all the way up.  Then it clawed me badly on my arm and one leg.  That is why I shudder every time I hear a Chuck Berry tune….

Hunter, as always, prevailed in the end, and, he was no longer confused.

 I’ll check in with you when I return from the Denver Public Library.  Hope to see you there!

Your Friend,

Anita Thompson

p.s. A special congratulations is in order to the Indianapolis Colts for their win against the Chiefs yersterday.   Owner James Irsay, is also the owner of the On The Road scroll and is responsible to sharing it with the public. Thank you James!

 FYI:

From Kentucky to Colorado
The Literary and Journalistic Legacy of Hunter S. Thompson
Sunday, January 7, 2:30-4 p.m.
Denver Central Library, Level B2 Conference Center
10 West 14th Avenue Parkway

Posted by Anita Thompson at 08:31 AM | Permalink

Hi.  As promised, here is what Ralph had to say about the hanging of Saddam Hussein excerpted from an email he sent to me the day of the hanging – I haven’t read anything quite as loud and clear and on the mark — using, as always, his artist’s eye to observe the nut of a situation:

I am so glad this time of the year is over and the filthy crown of it all was the wretched ‘… lynching’ of Saddam Hussein. I feel ashamed to belong to the human race. It was the most disgusting display of bestial triumphalism I have ever seen in recent times and the US and UK administrations hid behind the ‘democratically elected’ BaghKKKdad cartel to silence someone who knew more than they could get him to tell. I wish Hunter was here for all our personal reasons of course but also for the perspective that was always his to give. He never shirked the harsh reality of our outrageous behaviour and said it as it is. We have assumed a right we have not earned. I am sorry about this outward display of despair. I always believed that we would change when we saw the error of our ways, but now I know it cannot be true. 

I emailed him back and asked permission to post his comments for you, he agreed and continued on: 

It is just that I am so disgusted to see such scrofulous, mean and dirty activity by what seemed like a gang of armed masturbators(as Hunter would probably have said)! Taking pictures on a cheap phone is about as bad as it gets. The lousy, crippled skylight of their minds dripped with the scum of depravity that had absolutely nothing to do with any rule of law. It stunk of acrid revenge and the mess that is now Iraq. I see no way out……..

 

— Ralph Steadman, Kent England, January, 2007.

Thank you Ralph.And send our love to Anna too.

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 08:17 PM | Permalink

Sorry I missed you yesterday. I sprained my ankle running downhill in the snow too fast with my German Shepherd and have been in pain ever since. I can’t really walk and it’s a huge hassle and everything takes longer than necessary. Anyway,  for today’s HST quote, I want to give you one about Gerald Ford – it’s not terribly flattering, but it is true, & despite the lovely ferver around   Ford, I need to quote what Hunter said about the man.  But I do think Hunter would be pleased that  Ford did denounce Bush and the stupidity of the war, even if he was a TAD late…       

Ford learned the hard way indeed how to recognize a bungled war. So today’s quote is from a note to Jann Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stone Magazine. Hunter was late on a deadline and was explaining to Jann his memories after the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War when a London Sunday Times Correspondent, Murray Sayle was trying to explaining how the South Vietnamese government of then-president Ngyuyen Van Thieu had managed to lose half the country and a billion dollars worth of U.S weaponry in less than three weeks, after the “widely advertised ’massive Hanoi offensive’ that had  suddenly narrowed the whole war down to a nervous ring around Saigon, less than fifty miles in diameter…”  and that during those final days of Saigon, as a million or more refugees streamed into Saigon from the panic zones up north around Hue and Da Nang;

it had become painfully and ominously clear to us all that Hanoi had never really launched any “massive offensive’ at all, but that the flower of the finely U.S, trained and heavily U.S. equipped South Vietnamese Army had simply panicked and run amok. The films of whole ARVN divisions fleeing desperately through the streets of Da Nang had apparently shocked the NVA generals in Hanoi almost as badly as they jolted that bone-head ward-heeler that Nixon put in the White House in exchange for the pardon that kept him out of prison.

            Ford denies this, but what the hell?  It hardly matters anymore, because not even a criminal geek like Nixon would have been stupid enough to hold a nationally-televised press conference in the wake of a disaster like Da Nang and compound the horror of what millions of U.S, viewers had been seeing on TV all week by refusing to deny, on camera, that the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam had died in vain.  Even arch-establishment commentators like James Reston and Eric Savereid were horrified by Ford’s inept and almost cruelly stupid performance at that press conference. In addition to the wives, parents, sons, daughters, and other relatives and friends of the 58,000 American dead, he was also talking to more than 150,000 veterans who were wounded, maimed, and crippled in Vietnam…and the net effect of what he said might just as well have been to quote Ernest Hemmingway’s description of men who had died in another war, many years ago – where were “shot down and killed like dogs, for no good reason at all.”

— Hunter S. Thompson, May 1, 1975

Until next time, your limping friend,

Anita Thompson

p.s. Tomorrow I will post what Ralph Steadman emailed me from Kent about the hanging of Saddam Hussein.  I haven’t read anything quite as dead on as Ralph’s thoughts on it.    

Posted by Anita Thompson at 01:04 AM | Permalink

Cuddling up with my animals and some good books and manuscript by the fire is the way I spent the new Year. And it was great.

You’ll be happy to know I finally found the massive binder of the HST quotes that you sent to the gonzostore.com site. I’ll be posting them as often as possible. Here’s the first from Martin Corbin who lives in Merna IL (thanks Martin for the sweet greetings too.)

  "I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. it should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed." — Hunter S. Thompson

 

Until tomorrow, your friend,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 08:00 PM | Permalink