Poet Robert Bly has translated the work of numerous South American poets, including Pablo Neruda of Chile who liked to fly kites on the beach. Bly is also the author of a number of nonfiction books; I highly recommend his allegorical work Iron John: A Book about Men (1990).

For more about Robert Bly, visit Questia —the online library for research.

Here is an excerpt from The Incorporative Consciousness of Robert Bly

by Victoria Frenkel Harris

MORE...

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

—Ayn Rand, Novelist-Philosopher

I like Ayn Rand’s vision and steadfastness. She was a remarkable individual and proponent of Objectivism.

Her philosophy is unfettered by nonsense. She avoids the trap of second guessing existence by realizing that there is only one reality—which is limitless and in a state of perpetual creation.

See The Ayn Rand Institute for more about her and Objectivism.

It was a dismal gray northeastern day in late November, and not particularly inviting weather for flying kites. Nevertheless, I packed my pinstripe delta that morning and drove several miles to a wooded park that had a large field. When I arrived at the upwind edge of the field, all was strangely quiet.

The touch football games that usually monopolized the park this time of year were conspicuously absent. No doubt the combination of the cold weather and the preparations for the imminent annual turkey fete were keeping people at home that day.

I began unrolling the kite, which was as drab as the day I had chosen to fly it.

For more on how a kite flight changed my life, read Window in the Sky inside the main site gallery.

Some years ago in my Los Angeles days, I had met a number of well-know writers—from Harold Robbins to Theodore Sturgeon to drop a couple of names.

Ted, an icon in the science fiction world, used to visit me once a month. As I recall, he was living in Northern California or up in Oregon. He would come into my office with his Amazonian wife who looked after him.

At the time, I was the managing editor of a magazine. Ted was writing a monthly column for the publication. Ted smoked a pipe, his long hair fell onto his beard, and he looked like Johnny Appleseed to me.

MORE...

I first heard Ruby: The Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe on audio cassettes over twenty years ago—and I never forgot her. The series is produced by the nonprofit ZBS Foundation and a special team of artists.

If you want to treat your ears, get the complete Ruby 1 series on CD, shut off the lights, and enter a special world.

The following description is from ZBS:

Ruby is fast-paced and funny intergalactic entertainment the Marx Brothers would be proud of, with slick, splashy high-tech music and effects created by Tim Clark. The music and sound effects are stunning.

On the planet Summa Nulla— the “high point of nothing” —someone is manipulating the media. And Ruby, our hip, tough-talking detective is hired to track down the malefactors.

MORE...