Proust Questionnaire: Hern's answers

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On Tue, 12 Jan 16 13:49:21 UTC Hern (39) answered the Proust Questionnaire (click on a question to read other answers):

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?: Losing a loved one, particularly a child.
Where would you like to live?: In the country, the mountains.
What is your idea of earthly happiness?: Good food, good drink, music!
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?: Gluttony.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?: Han Solo - a rogue with a good moral compass.
Who are your favorite characters in history?: Jesus, Alexander Hamilton, Enlightenment Philosophers
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?: My wife.
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?: There are so few, really, and mostly very recent and in sci fi and fantasy novels.
Your favorite painter?: I don't really have one.
Your favorite musician?: Trey Anastasio
The quality you most admire in a man?: Integrity
The quality you most admire in a woman?: Also integrity.
Your favorite virtue?: Integrity, again! It's the virtue from which all others spring.
Your favorite occupation?: Seeing music performed live. Reading a good book. Playing with my children.
Who would you have liked to be?: Someone who made a concrete difference in the world, perhaps to have built or created something.
Your most marked characteristic?: A sense of humor, but I'm also sensitive and easily hurt and offended, which I hide behind humor.
What do you most value in your friends?: Loyalty and reliability.
What is your principle defect?: Lack of patience and easy frustration at what I see are others failings. Judgementalism.
What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?: Losing my son.
What would you like to be?: Happy and content with where I am. Ceasing to struggle against myself.
What is your favorite color?: Grey. It's a mixture of none (black) and all (white) and I think represents reality well.
What is your favorite flower?: Wildflowers. They're not artfully cultivated but just as beautiful as roses.
What is your favorite bird?: A cardinal, especially in winter.
Who are your favorite prose writers?: Stephen King, JRR Tolkien. I prefer flights of fancy to realist literature.
Who are your favorite poets?: Yeats
Who are your heroes in real life?: Malcolm X, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt
Who are your favorite heroines of history?: Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great
What are your favorite names?: For a girl Elanor (from Tolkien). I don't have a favorite male name.
What is it you most dislike?: My own sense of self inadequacy. My allergy to being successful and self defeat/destcuction.
What historical figures do you most despise?: Those who stand by and allow horror to go unchallenged. It's easy to pick a titan like Hitler but it's small people allowing despicable acts who are the true villains in history.
What event in military history do you most admire?: The invasion of Normandy. The Trojan Horse. Washington Crossing the Delaware.
What natural gift would you most like to possess?: The ability to play an instrument.
How would you like to die?: In my sleep, at an advanced age, after a nice meal with my family and friends.
What is your present state of mind?: A mixture of contentment with my life and disappointment with my life.
What is your motto?: Always take the high road.

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