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Tuesday, October 15, 2002 - 9:20amSanction this postReply
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Ross, what a beautiful article! I could almost feel the wind in my face, imagine the vista you experienced! It even got my heart beating a bit faster! *grin*

It is wonderful to have had someone like that in your life, at that time. Thankfully, there are those individuals out there who can connect with kids in a positive way, though those people are hard to find.

Do you have any idea if your teacher is still around? It would be nice if he could see what you wrote and how well you wrote it. *smile*

I know that I would want to know if I've touched someone like that!

Joy :)

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Tuesday, October 15, 2002 - 4:10pmSanction this postReply
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Hey, Joy.

Thanks for your nice comments.

I don't know if Mr Bailey is still around. His old house was pulled down many years ago.

Thing is, I'm sure the effect Mr Bailey had on me was the same effect he had on many others. It was just who he was. I imagine that teachers like that are few and far between these days.

As we know, emotions are not baseless--they have a cause. My love (fetish?) for bridges, skyscrapers, roads, dams, tunnels, etc. was caused in the first instance by something. I can only trace it back to that one trip, and I was hooked. It's the same for many of us (I'm guessing) when we first grasped what Ayn Rand was saying. Perhaps, like myself, it was Atlas Shrugged (although Anthem has a raw emotional hold on me) that we can identify as a turning point in our lives.

Furthermore, as I related in my intro to SOLOF, I sought out Atlas Shrugged because of a book review in a science fiction magazine I had subscribed to when I was 15. Several years later when Miss Rand died, the editor of the magazine used his editorial to give her a eulogy. Now, there's a combination of strange events. I often wonder how many lives that editor, Kerry O'Quinn, changed with that simple, and somewhat out of place, editorial.

I've seen so many empty people, with vacant stares and cynical perspectives, that I can only come to the conclusion that they lacked those simple, positive influences at key times in their lives. I believe that if you miss out on that, your soul, your spirit, becomes hardened to the world and it's possibilities. You don't stop wanting beauty, but maybe, you just think it's a pipe dream. I know that during my darkest hours (and we've all had 'em) I could at least stand on a bridge or lose myself in a great book, and for a short time, see the world from the shoulders of giants.

Ross

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Saturday, July 11 - 1:21amSanction this postReply
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I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as a teenager. So, the worship of industry was easy to relate to. That being so, for me, one of the best experieces was many decades later, age 50, when my wife and I visited Hoover Dam.

 

RE: "The greatest moments were reserved for when we came across the constructions which would soon form the parts of a great hydroelectric power scheme. Canals, dams, powerstations, they were all visited and explored by Mr Bailey and his enthralled trio. Nirvana was attained when we stopped to look up at the skeleton of the Pukaki High Dam and were told that soon, our road and us would be drowned under 140 feet of water. Great machines, hundreds of times larger than my own toy trucks, gouged at the earth nearby. Men in hard hats with smiles on their faces waved to us. The magnificence of their endeavours and that of the landscape merged into one, and I'll never forget it. ... My love (fetish?) for bridges, skyscrapers, roads, dams, tunnels, etc. was caused in the first instance by something. I can only trace it back to that one trip, and I was hooked. It's the same for many of us (I'm guessing) when we first grasped what Ayn Rand was saying. Perhaps, like myself, it was Atlas Shrugged (although Anthem has a raw emotional hold on me) that we can identify as a turning point in our lives."



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