Lovely Owl Farm Intern
Hi. If you didn’t see yesterday’s New York Times front cover, grab it. You’ll see, in full color, what’s at the center of the Supreme Court’s shift to the Right: Justice Kennedy. He has been in the majority of every ruling. He seems to be the most powerful man in the country right now. Too bad he isn’t a real Kennedy. He is more like a Kennedy with a small k. Very depressing. But he’s there and causing trouble. This reminds me of the constitutional revolution of 1937, only the opposite. I just learned about the constitutional revolution of 1937 last semester, and it made me realize just how important the Supreme Court can be — and just how dangerous it is now.
In the meantime, I want to introduce you to the lovely Owl Farm intern, Natalia Detko. I invited her to try out as an intern after a recommendation from bright young professor, Audrey Sprenger. She’s doing a great job already. In addition to making sure we get daily wisdom posted for you, she will be helping me with a collection of interviews spanning 40 years of Hunter’s life (following the good work of another Owl Farm intern named Brandon Wennerd, who is now writing a story for the Woody Creeker). She’ll be helping me with that and several other projects as well. I’ll keep you posted.
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Hello! As a new arrival to Owl Farm and the blog of the same name, I thought I’d write a few sentences introducing myself and include a quote of Hunter’s that has stayed with me and influenced the choices that I believe have inadvertently led me here. I’m a Politics major going into my senior year at the State University of New York at Potsdam, where professor Audrey Sprenger first approached me about the possibility of coming here for the Summer. I arrived in Denver on the 29th, gladder than hell to be done with the turbulent plane ride, and was picked up by senior intern Liz. The drive to Woody Creek was one of the most scenic in my experience and I was again floored by the landscape surrounding the Farm. I can definitely get used to this.
Now for the quote:
A friend of Hunter’s wrote him asking for career advice, and after explaining that asking someone for such counsel is a dangerous thing and that he can only explain his own philosophy, Hunter summarized his views as follows:
As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal) he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).
-Hunter S. Thompson, April 22, 1958, Proud Highway.
