Objectivists should come off as charming and charismatic

[Brant Gaede]

In the early 1970s at the Ford Hall Forum a bunch of nuns were seated on the stage with her--they put some overflow seating up there. I don't recall if they were stage right or right behind her but the contrast was something else--to see her deliver her address with those nuns up there.

--Brant

The talk Rand gave on that occasion was the one against the Papal Encyclical, titled, as I recall it, "Of Living Death." I felt sorry for the nuns. How awkward a place for them to be seated! They managed to maintain mildly pleasant countenances. They were all - seems to me there were three, but maybe only two - in the modern-style habit. Also, as I recall it, they were left of the podium, same side I was seated on in the audience facing the stage. I think they'd have been partly blocked from my view if they'd been on stage right. Would be fun to have a film so the details could be checked.

Ellen

Stage right is the left as you view from the audience. It's a theatrical term and one command to move them [actors] around he stage during rehearsal. So you the director tell an actor stage right he'll move to the right side of the stage as he sees it looking out to the audience.

If it was "Of Living Death" I think it was 1968 then. 1969 was Apollo 13. Both dates seem much too early to me. In 1968 she was all alone on the stage, as I recall, the first talk there since the break with NB.

--Brant

I was seated on the stage once too--from the other side of the stage (stage left ) a cute little girl asked Rand a rhetorical question about excellence in education for students and Rand applauded her--those were the only two times--the girl and the nuns--I recall audience on the stage with her, though there may have been another or even others, earlier in the 1960s when I wasn't there

Thanks for the clarification re "stage right."

I was there also the time when the cute little girl asked the question.

The nuns and the little girl time were the only two I recall audience being on stage.

1968 is the first time I went - I'd moved to the NYC area that fall. There wasn't audience on stage that time. So if "Of Living Death" was in 1968, it wasn't that talk when the nuns were sitting on stage. It was something wherein negative remarks about religion were made.

Ellen

Strange that '68 was the first time I went too. Nunnery-time might have been the night Rand said she liked what people seemed to mean when they said "God bless you" and as far as she was concerned, "God bless America!" (These quotes and this story are not authoritative enough for anyone's research. I imagine there are tapes available.)

--Brant

[caroljane]

That is kind of thrilling. She knew about worship and awe, for sure. Touched by some god, and forever seeking to know its nature.