Michael and Ed Thanks a million for you posts about Barbara. It was quite a shock to learn of her death and to see photos of her in her last years. She was such a beautiful woman and I hadn't seen photos of her lately. Since learning of her passing I have been fishing around the Internet for news and some of the comments make me want vomit. Luckily, I saw your forum, your posts, and of what I can see, you love and admiration for Barbara. I wish I could say I was a great friend of hers but I knew her only through Internet forums although I knew Nathaniel through his workshops, and had experienced most of the other main members of Objectivism in person in seventies in New York. I first experienced Barbara at NBI in 1968 listening to her tape recorded course on Efficient Thinking. In 1986, living in Florida and estranged from Objectivism, I saw her book, brought it, and devoured it like a parched and stranded desert traveler. I wonder if Barbara ever realized her importance and what her book meant to so many people. I always thought she wrote it out of love, and that was her overwhelming feeling for Ayn Rand. Anyway, the book and Barbara were an intimate part of my life, and I wanted to praise her life and courage. Without a doubt, it could not have been easy being the "children" of Ayn Rand. We all know she was an extremely demanding personality and she wanted the world from her adherents. No doubt Barbara had a lot of mountains to climb to free herself and I always wondered how she dealt with that. Michael and Ed, thanks again for your comments about her life, and I enjoyed Ed's video with William Thomas. I wrote a strong evaluation of her book on Amazon for the new E-book edition if you care to read it, you will probably appreciate what I said. I read Anne Heller's biography several times and felt she really didn't know or understand Ayn Rand, and why would she want to undertake a project of that scope without more intimate knowledge of the subject? Anyway, Barbara will go down in Objectivist history as the one who brought Ayn Rand to public vision and notoriety, and in my book, no one even approaches her.
