Owl Farm Blog

Wherever you are, Hunter,  there is music! We still hear it in every page…

Here’s a piece from “Kingdom of Fear.”

Music has always been a matter of energy for me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel.

I have always needed fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. A new high-end Cadillac will go ten or fifteen miles faster if you give it a full dose of “Carmelita.”

…It happens over and over, and sooner or later you get hooked on it, you get addicted. Every time I hear “White Rabbit” I am back on the greasy midnight streets of San Francisco, looking for music, riding a fast red motorcycle downhill into The Presidio, leaning desperately into the curves through the eucalyptus trees, trying  to get  to the Matrix in time to hear Grace Slick play the flute.

There was no piped-in music on those nights, no headphones or Walkmans or even a plastic windscreen to keep off the rain. But I could hear the music anyway, even when it was five miles away. Once you heard the music done right, you could pack it into yr. brain & take it anywhere, forever.

Yessir, That is my wisdom and that is my song. It is Sunday and I am making new rules for myself. I will open my heart to spirits and pay more attention to animals. I will take some harp music and drive down to the Texaco station, where I can get a pork taco and read a New York Times. After that, I will walk across the street to the Post Office and slip my letter into her mailbox.

Posted by Anita Thompson at 07:06 AM | Permalink Post a Comment:

"Genius round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round." Herman Melville, winter of 1914… — one of Hunter’s favorite quotes.

I can’t say that I stand hand in hand with Genius, but I am lucky enough to have access to it via my library card!…we all do.

Here is an excerpt from Ralph Steadman’s intro to the 1986 edition of Lewis Carroll’s "Alice In Wonderland"

It was all so familiar when I picked it up and read it for the first time in 1967. For the first time, as I thought, but don’t you ever get that strange sensation that what you are reading or watching is something you already know? Something that is in your mind already? Bells of recognition ring as you welcome an old friend. All good ideas are like that. You already know them. The familiarity is part of the enjoyment. The words someone has taken the trouble to write down merely reveal the contents of your own mind. The picture someone has struggled to create is something you have already seen, otherwise how would you ever recognize its content?

You have already experienced the sum of its parts. You have lived them, or maybe you have dreamed them. They are the vocabulary of a vast collective consciousness which it is your everyday choice to delve into or ignore at will. What we choose to emphasize forms the structure of our lives, and what an artist chooses to depict forms the basis of his work — but of course not the sum total, for in an artist’s world two and two make five. And what an artist says three times is true! Familiarity breeds acceptance. The greater the artist, the greater number of reference points are offered for the rest of us to recognize. The more we recognize, the better we feel. We experience a greater satisfaction because we have contributed to the whole.

 — Ralph Steadman — intro to "Alice In Wonderland"

 

Posted by Anita Thompson at 06:59 AM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Apparently some members of the media actually asked (surely after polishing off a bottle of Vicodin and a pan of hash brownies) if they could film Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 3D.

The royal family took the question seriously. In an email to the BBC, ITV and Sky News, Patrick Harrison, the press secretary to the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall said, "the decision was a regretful one, but had been made in consultation with the couple and with the officials at Westminster Abbey…." link here.

Don’t ask me why I’m posting about this — couldn’t help it. It’s a cute story of it can’t hurt to ask.

Cheers,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 03:51 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

My good friend Jerri Merritt, (Hunter also shushed the room when she appeared on the TV screen), a year ago, wrote about the instability of Yemen. I’ve pointed to her blog so many times, but now is a great time to read as she tracks the situation in Cairo and domino effect. A year ago she wrote

"Yemen will become a failed state without aid. Between the rebel tribes in the north, the secessionists in the south and al-Qaida, the Government is out-matched. Add to that its dwindling oil reserves, critical lack of water and horrendous prison system that just breeds more terrorists, and it’s a certainty Yemen can’t fix its problems on its own."

Jerri was right about Yemen, and now Cairo. Last week she wrote: It sounds like a series of domino effects is in play: Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and now Yemen. What’s next? Sudan?

South Sudan becomes a the world’s newest country in July of this year. One of the questions is if As south Sudan prepares for full independence after last month’s referendum that saw almost 99 percent of the mostly African Christian south vote to break from historical domination by the Arab-Muslim north, work is going on to preserve its past. But how will the two sides get along now? One hope is that the focus can now move to preserving the South’s heritage (along with redrawing the oil-rich boarder) via preserving old documents. AFP news reporting the historic document-preserving mission that has been underway since 2007:

That sense of nation-building will be crucial to ensure a peaceful future of the south, warns Jok Madut Jok, a southern Sudanese academic.

"The euphoria of independence will be accompanied by challenges of building a new nation, a project that will have to go beyond the usual temptation in new states to focus on material, infrastructural development, and delivery of basic social services.

"As a new state, south Sudan also needs to become a nation," added Jok, a history professor at Loyola Marymount University in California.

— By Peter Martell (AFP)

BBC News just aired an interview with the state governor, Paul Malong Awan how he would deal with the fact that the border with neighboring Southern Kordofan state had not been officially demarcated and something along the lines of When the cattle herders cross into the new state, will they be carrying Kalashnikovs. Awan said it won’t be a problem. hmm. let’s hope he’s right… 

And here’s a shout out to Arianna Huffington and congrats to her and AOL… Don’t like corporate mergers? They make me nervous too. But Arianna notes in her post that

Far from changing our editorial approach, our culture, or our mission, this moment will be for HuffPost like stepping off a fast-moving train and onto a supersonic jet. We’re still traveling toward the same destination, with the same people at the wheel, and with the same goals, but we’re now going to get there much, much faster.

— Arianna Huffington — blog post

In her interview last night with CNN’s new Piers Morgan , she said she would replay the interview a year from now to see if the business model of free content/paid andvertising with editorial principles also untouched would be successful despite Rupert Murdoch’s view that it’s impossible. With Arianna at the wheel, anything is possible. Morgan made the astute that AOL just became a lot sexier, and Arianna just became a lot wealthier.  We wish them the best.

Gotta Run. Will click back to Amy Goodman when I get home to check on people in Cairo…

your friend,

Anita Thompson

Posted by Anita Thompson at 02:55 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Thank the lord that the military in Cairo did indeed play a role in this morning’s peaceful show of an ocean of people in Tahrir Square. Whether  there were behind the scenes talks, show of peaceful human force despite no visible media or a combination of the 21st century of Revolution ingredients. The day starting happily at 6am Owl Farm before a seminar to see waves of people instead of blood. The news throughout the day via blackberry was encouraging.

Tonight, sitting with remote flashing between linkTV where Al Jazeera and Democracy Now! air, it was a stop in the track, hush hush around the room to see Christiane Amanpour — as Hunter would alsways do when she entered the screen from around the word — interviewed on CNN  (where she spent 27 years as reporter) by Anderson Cooper. In a few elegant paragraphs, she brought the situation in Cairo to understandable, breathable and human understanding into perspective about her times with Hosni Mubarak, first time with vice pres Omar Suleiman and THE CURRENT RULES FOR CHANGE OF POWER UNDER THE CURRENT CONSTITUTION OF EGYPT.

sorry I have to run. Please check out our heroes Chritiane Amanpour, Amy Goodman’s reporters etc, reporting

best to you,

Anita 

Posted by Anita Thompson at 08:47 PM | Permalink Post a Comment:

Al Jazeera has just reported that sources from NYTimes have confirmed that Obama administration is indeed making the move via the leverage of US funding of Egyptian military to remove  President Hosni Mubarak and replace him with vice president Omar Suleiman  — along with Commander and Army Field Marshal — running a "transitional government." The situation has spun out of control so quickly that the US was caught like a deer in headlights.

Hossam Baghat, a Human Rights activist reported on Democracy Now today that Mubarak’s military police raided Human Rights group today and seized all sim cards from cell phones, computers, cameras etc. It’s doesn’t appear to be two groups of citizens fighting, it state funded systematic brutality.

It doesn’t make sense that US will support a man, Vice President Omar Suleiman who just named journalists as targets, saying it is them, along with the Muslim Brotherhood that are causing the violence. What am I saying? we’ve supported dictators before, why would our policies change now? And even if they do change, what power does the current administration have over the crisis in Cairo.

The fact that the all journalists, cameras and media outlets have been systematically attacked and removed from Tahrir Square and entrances manned by Mubarak miltary police and hired thugs.  What they are cabable of now that cameras can’t cover their actions?

We saw the images of Tiananmen Square massacre in 198 but now the blackout is in place, we can only hope that an American funded military will be controlled by its funder. 

The images coming out of the square after day 5 were chilling, but the balckout after day 10 is infuriating…

Anita Thompson — glued to the TV 

Posted by Anita Thompson at 06:57 PM | Permalink Post a Comment: