ABOUT MY EDUCATION

My starting college at fifteen and earning six degrees does not mean I am smarter than you. Degrees and education are not necessarily correlated. If you are curious, have access to a library (and today, the Internet), and make the time––e.g., rise early––you can be better educated than I. There are big gaps in my knowledge. By my standards, I am not well-educated; in fact, the only persons that I suspect were, are now long gone.

I tried to get an education. I first wanted a brief course in every major field so that I would have an idea what was known, what interested me, and what I was good at. But the college wouldn’t let me take many “lower-level” courses. I had to choose a major without being given the opportunity of being fully informed.

The guidance office was no help: a girl who scored high in art was given only one career suggestion: be an art teacher.

From childhood, my strongest interest was architecture. An American Institute of Architects brochure explicitly discouraged girls from becoming architects. So did my father––he knew I would be relegated to making working drawings and models for men who got to do the designing. I took the Educational Testing Service (ETS) architectural aptitude test, which had three parts: (1) history of architecture, furniture design, and interior decoration, (2) engineering––I guesstimated by imagining my body subjected to the force, i.e., via proprioception and kinesthesia, and (3) spatial ability––finding all possible arrangements of a stack of bricks. Being systematic, I doubt I missed any.

The ETS showed one’s test scores only to architecture schools! No school told me my score. Dean Schlegel of the UNM Architecture School hinted that only lesbians became architects, and told me––apropos of nothing––that I wasn’t as smart as I thought.       I finally persuaded the ETS to tell me my score: I ranked above 99% of the 18,921 people who took the test.

My degrees were a handicap. The person hiring might fear that I wanted his job. I was “overqualified” or “would get bored.” I could earn a living only by hiding most of my education, listing on my resume only the details relevant to a particular job opening.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ABOUT AYN RAND’S SOCIAL CIRCLE

She apparently thought that if she won an argument, this proved that she was right. However, it might prove only that she was better at arguing. By failing to identify and question her premises––as we all do!––she made tragic mistakes.

She needed to continue her intellectual development by associating with bright people in many fieldsaround––but her “friends”––disciples––monopolized her social life.

They enabled her amphetamine habit that affected her emotions and judgment.

Worst of all, they placed a higher value on their relationship with her than they did on her peace of mind and happiness––betrayed her trust in them––hid the truth from her––lied to her––during tortured year after tortured year of her wondering and asking. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS ON THE Atlas Shrugged Index

The interview describes why and how I compiled the 1983 first edition with a blue cover and Winged Victory logo. The first copies I simply stapled, then went to black ring binding. In 2010, when I heard that Atlas Shrugged was about to be made into a movie, I made the index more attractive with a white ring binding.

The photo is of the 2012 second edition. My computer trouble-shooter, Daly Jessup, converted my typed pages into computer font, resulting in automatic typos, so I had to go carefully over every entry.  Foolishly, I let a self-styled “expert” talk me into a title longer than what I prefer: Atlas Shrugged Index. I sketched the cover design I wanted and showed it to Tampa computer artist Patty Henderson. My granddaughter, Rachel Allen Bradford, oversaw the printing.

MORE THOUGHTS ON AN Atlas Shrugged television miniseries

            Casting: Dagny and Frisco were teenage lovers; Hank, Frisco, and Ragnar were classmates, so the four actors must appear to be about the same age. At the end of the story, Dagny should still be of childbearing age, but at least a decade has passed since her teens. Therefore these four characters must be in their thirties or early forties at most.

Integrity is these four characters’ dominant trait. Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies shows what integrity looks like––in both protagonist and antagonist––persons who have contradictory, opposing desires––like Galt’s and Frisco’s at the end of Atlas Shrugged.

Music: Gershwin’s music evokes the idealized New York City that attracted Ayn Rand when she was a girl in Russia, the city where she chose to live and die; in the New York Taggart Transcontinental scenes, Gershwin music would suggest that world.

A haunting song similar to Tex Ritter’s and Dimitri Tiomkin’s “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling” (High Noon) could represent Galt’s and Dagny’s joint destiny, foreshadowing it by being played during Eddie Willers’ conversations with the unnamed Galt, and in the scene of the unnamed Galt pacing outside Dagny’s office window as she muses about the love she never met. After Dagny’s plane crash, the song would celebrate Galt’s finally meeting the woman he has always loved, and accompany their relationship.

Ennio Morricone’s music holds one’s rapt attention as Sergio Leone westerns slowly begin. His regal music would enhance the opening of the John Galt Line; his suspenseful music, the Taggart Tunnel disaster, Dagny’s following a plane through the Rockies, Galt’s reciting his power plant motto to Dagny, and Galt’s last scene: drawing a dollar-sign in the air over the collapsed world, blessing it before returning to revive it.

(1070 words for website)

The Stained-Glass Woman (draft of foreword)

“We are not afraid of predators, we’re transfixed by them,

prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them,

because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival.

In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.”

E. O. Wilson

In 1978, I outlined The Stained-Glass Woman, wrote it in one intense month, and nearly sold it, but the publisher had just bought a multigenerational family saga.  A decade ago I began to revise it and get feedback. It grew into a trilogy about twins reared apart but destined to love the same man, money, medical malpractice, Ayn Rand, abuse of relatives, Harvard, successful psychopaths, and Amish psychology.

Like the Jews, the Amish are haunted by centuries of persecution (none remain in Europe). Even in a family that long ago ceased to be Amish and appear to be mainstream Americans, thought patterns linger on, and reverberate down the generations. They are wary of strangers (gentiles or “English”), insular, aloof, stick together, distrust & fear of outsiders, uncomfortable socially with them, trust only own group––cultural PTSD.

​            The Stained-Glass Woman is a study of successful sociopaths, a subject I have the good fortune to be uniquely equipped to address, having lived with three. I saw them treat others as tools to manipulate, obstacles to remove, and prey to consume––alive.  I never saw evidence of a conscience, guilt, or remorse. Two became multimillionaires and lived into their nineties.​ One was honored as a Living Treasure.

​Revealing much about myself feels like undressing in public, so I can’t write a memoir.  Calling my story “fiction” won’t work either, because for fiction to work, it must be plausible. My life has been under no such constraint.  Therefore my story is a deck of truths shuffled with a pack of lies: about events, characters, traits, dialogue, settings, scientific articles, and documents (identifying details changed in the real ones).

In several cases, I split a real person into an array of characters:  one lives the real person’s life; the others, lives that I invented. One ends up like the real person; the other’s lives show what almost happened––or that I suspect happened––or wish happened––or just enjoy imagining.

My older characters remember the Titanic and the Great War, but my story begins during the Depression and ends in the 1960s. Readers with memories of those three decades tell me they enjoy the nostalgia that my story evokes.

My plot is a dark tapestry––interwoven with streaks of brilliant color––many crafts and arts––shot through with flashes of gold––irony, satire, and parody.

Architecture plans and sculpture are my own designs, as are homes, clothes, and jewelry. If asked to speak about SGW, I plan to wear an historic dress from the story.

​            I hope you like​ The Stained-Glass Woman. If you have had analogous experiences, I hope I have shown you that you are not alone. If you have needed words to express those experiences, I hope I have given them to you.

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak

to tell their story for them.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Polish poet

* * *

From the start, I envisioned the cover of SGW, and recently made a mockup and wrote a description to guide the artist.

When SGW is as good as I can make it, I want to see it in the formats that at that point are working best in the rapidly changing publishing world.

I see my thousand-page trilogy as an ebook and paperback. The hardback would be a signed limited edition on India paper, hand-sewn for durability.

The photo of me wearing my gold dollar-sign pin was taken for the 2012 index. I have let my hair go gray, and seek a skilled photographer for The Stained-Glass Woman who can make me look half as good as the woman I suspect was my namesake: Diana Mitford, at the time of my birth a celebrated beauty and madcap heiress. Her Youtube interview explores the subsequent notorious life of elderly––and elegant––Lady Moseley.

I created an account to publish and market SGW. I asked my daughter, Mary Williams, by far my best editor and a good businesswoman, to do most of the work.

She will need all the help she can get. Who wants to help her?

(724 words in SGW draft of foreword)