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hello. It’s late here at Owl Farm. But I happened to be awake during the announcement of BP’s press release out of CNN World News and had to follow the thread to BBC, Bloomberg, NPR etc. Here is my short post on Huffpo. Will check in with you tomorrow. Let’s see how the story will develop while we sleep..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anita-thompson/bps-tony-hayward-gets-mon_b_660260.html
Anita Thompson
Good morning. It’s early here at Owl Farm. Oscar, the alpha peacock decided to spend the night on a low branch in the front yard instead of his pen. So he had t to a radio blaring under him. Npw he’s walking around the other peacock pen acting macho. I’ll give him another few hours of this until I have to snatch him and bring him back to his own pen. geesh. even blueberries didn’t work this morning.
Meanwhile, The Goldman Sachs scandal is dominating news sites. Although I’m irked at Matt Taibbi for his sophomoric trashing of Lara Logan, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez aired an good interview with Taibbi outlining some of the history of how this happened — $550 mil settlement.
you can watch it here: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/16/goldman_sachs_settles_civil_fraud_case.
I’m no economist, and am just learning to balance my own checkbook. But i can say it is indeed stunning that the firm actually laughed all the way to the bank? Of course new reports claim the opposite. Lord knows.
Hunter wrote in Kingdom of Fear:
The real power in America is held by a fast emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 year war.
— Hunter S. Thompson
but why be so negative, Anita… Hunter also wrote a great piece in same Kingdom Of Fear about his time spent with his father when he taught him about Fear and Paranoia:
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. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting. … There is no such thing as Paranoia," he said once. "Even your Worst fears will come true if you chase them long enough…."
–HST Kingdom of Fear
So, Hunter, isn’t the opposite also true? If you chase ANYTHiNG long enough, you’ll get it…
why not?
Anita Thompson
All comments are subject to review before being published.
sometimes we think that the loss of someone close to us will become easier each year. that isn’t always the case. I had a long beautiful hike with Athena to get away from a troubled Owl Farm situation. you see, Hunter made it such in his Gonzo Trust, that i don’t have to sell Owl Farm unless I want to, or until I die. But you can imagine the family and lawyers who would prefer that I sell and split up the cash. 40 acres outside of Aspen is more valuable to some people as a lump of cash than the beautiful cliffs and valley that it is. This was all made possible by George Stranahan. But I’ve been holding on, and as Nancy Reagan would say "Just say no."
So, as I hike up the back of Owl Farm, i thank Hunter every day for his document that makes the land where Elk and Deer roam free, protected for me to NOT to have to sell, no matter the sugar-coated pressure. even if money isn’t flowing all the time, Hunter’s spirit is — and that’s what is most important to me now. And i know the best birthday present Hunter would want.
Hope to have better vibes for you tomorrow.
Your friend,
Anita Thompson
All comments are subject to review before being published.
After a lovely fried green tomatoes lunch with beautiful Nancy and Pamela and then dinner with Lynn Goldsmith of margaritas (hmmm, no wonder I didn’t get any work done today!), a fine box of the newly released Film by Emmy award winning Gonzo film Wayne Ewing: "Animals, Whores, and Dialogue."was waiting for me at Owl Farm when my when I pulled in. My dear friend and guardian Cameron Leonard are watching it now.
I’ve seen it once before with Wayne and Jennifer Erskine during production at Wayne’s Polo Ranch, sharing a box of tissues. But watching it now, here in the kitchen, where the heart of Hunter lives and the story takes place — with Hunter’s typewriter that has our handwritten label across his typewriter: "Animals, Whores and Dialogue" sitting in front of me under a protective cover, brings it home in a way I can’t quite explain right now.
So I called Wayne to thank him for sticking with Hunter for those decades on behalf of all of us and you, who learn from and cherish his work, and being on that same strange wavelength. More on that later. if you watch the film you’ll understand more of what it was to BE IN THE KITCHEN, not for the ride, but for the work. You will also understand what Hunter meant by "Politics is the art of controlling your environment….. and especially why "We is the most important word in politics…"
Friends.
Selah! Thank you Wayne. and thank you our sweet Hunter.
lots of love from Owl Farm,
Anita Thompson
Hello. How are you doing? Here, I’m taking quite the beating from readers on Huffington post, which I usually don’t mind. At first I just shrugged and made a comment or two, but lord, my bitchiness toward Rolling Stone for trying to trash my husband when he couldn’t defend himself pissed me off even more when I saw people actually celebrating Rolling Stone’s dangerous gotcha tactics. And by the way, Thank you Jim Caruso.
I should have just followed the lead of Christiane Amanpour who deferred to David Brooks on the topic: Journalism is the last buttress against lies and propaganda, or it can quickly into tabloidism and distractions. But, you already knew that.
But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.
By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.
The reticent ethos had its flaws. But the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.
Another scalp is on the wall. Government officials will erect even higher walls between themselves and the outside world. The honest and freewheeling will continue to flee public life, and the cautious and calculating will remain.
The culture of exposure has triumphed, with results for all to see.
–David Brooks, NYtimes
see entire article from earlier this week at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/opinion/25brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks
Walter Chronkite and Hunter were interviewed by Mick O’Regan on the media report about complaints about lack of access to troops in the first wave of the Bush War. Walter Chronkite responded in one section about the days when a journalist could write anything for the record, without hurting the stategy of war:
Walter Chronkite: This is contrary to every other war we’ve fought in this country, where in World War II for instance, we war correspondents were given credentials, we went out with the troops. All we had to do was bum a ride in a jeep and we could go anywhere we wanted. Our copy was censored, but that’s the way it should be. I believe that the copy of military reporters must be censored, we can’t give away secrets of the disposition of our forces, our losses in combat and that sort of thing, to the enemy. But the censorship has worked very well in World War II. Our copy was held by the censors until those stories could be told, so that they were written at the time and they were living history of the war, so that the American people had a history of how their troops performed in action, whether they got it the next day or the next week or the next year, it was preserved and it was there.
— The late Walter Chronkite, on the Media Report.
But let’s go to happier thoughts. Jim Caruso of Flying Dog Beer who is more focused than ever on the Gonzo Foundation’s need to make a contributuion to excellence in journalism and literature posted a Kipling Poem on his site, which I love, and will post as well. Takes the sting out of all of this: Thank You Jimmy…
IF
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
—Rudyard Kipling
thanks Jim!
Yours, Anita Thompson
All comments are subject to review before being published.
After reading Matt Taibbi’s jackass remarks about Lara Logan, I had to say something. Posted on HuffingtonPost a few minutes ago. i’m already taking a beating from readers — which is fine with me.
Rolling Stone’s Hastings article provided us with no news. REPEAT: This blown up piece that ended the career of a decorated general contained NO NEWS. It simply went viral and gave the President no way to retain McChrystal. If you read the article, there is no news about the war — only drunken conflated slurs by dumb underlings. Rolling Stone is not what it used to be. But at least they have now hired Ozzy Osborne to be the health columnist.
Anita Thompson
My phone has been ringing all morning — at this unusual hour — with the news that Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Needless to say, his book tour — Hitch -22, is suspended, as he will take time to undergo treatment. I know him as a strong-willed brilliant writer who influenced me on many subjects, the most obvious, a reason to question everything. I’m also grateful that he did indeed write a forward to book I published with Da Capo of Hunter’s interviews last year — Ancient Gonzo Wisdom.
That is the reason for my friends calling me so early. At any hour, I wish Christopher, his partner and family, and famous brother all the strength and good humor necessary to get them through the treatment. This is NOT an obituary! I can say the Gonzo Family wishes you all the best, Hitch.
Sincerely,
Anita Thompson
