THE ART OF LIVING CONSCIOUSLY, by

Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D.

A WORLD LIT ONLY BY FIRE, by William Manchester,

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, by Victor Hugo

NINETY-THREE, by Victor Hugo

UNDAUNTED COURAGE, by Stephen Ambrose

THE JOURNALS OF LEWIS & CLARK, by Bernard  DeVoto

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, by Richard Henry Dana  

LONGITUDE, by Dava Sobel, True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time.

FIRE-HUNTER, by Jim Kjelgaard

THE SECRET GARDEN, by Frances Burnett

O. HENRY, The Gift of the Magi, The Cop and the Anthem, The Ransom of Red Chief, and The Last Leaf

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICS, about the world and far off places 

I am currently reading THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNSS, by Ayn Rand.  It is complex and I have to refer often to THE AYN RAND LEXICON, by Harry Binswanger, for definitions and clarifications of non-selfsacrificial terms.  It is a wonderful book on being an individual in a collectivist culture which is rapidly becoming a police state.                                                                

To My Dear Teacher

 How great to find you at last. I have been trying to find you for a long time.

My name is Louie Carter and many years ago in 1950, I had the wonderful good fortune to cross your life’s path when you were teaching sixth grade at Desha Central. It may have been your first teaching position; you were unmarried then and I knew you as Miss Goodwin. There is no reason for you to remember me. I was one of the many hundreds of children that passed through that school system. However, I do have many fond memories of you. I enjoyed school very much and the lessons were always interesting and challenging. But the lessons I remembered most were the ones of kindness that you showed toward me during those troubled days of my young life.

My parents were irresponsible, angry people who were unable to care for children.  I dressed poorly and some of my classmates had begun to tease me about my (lack of) personal hygiene. Many times you interceded and gave me clothes that you said would no longer fit your younger brother. They were colorful, clean and warm. I was happy to have them. This had a lasting affect on me that I did not understand until some years later after I grew up.

I did not know it at the time, but your kindness provided me with a “standard of measure” that I used during those lonely, horrible days to  compared my parent's view of the world with that of my teacher. No matter how intense the abuse became at home I never lost sight of the fact that there was goodness in the world; there was an alternative to my parent's malevolence, and that I had first hand knowledge of it - from you. You helped me to see the difference between the irrational actions of my parents and your gracious concern for me at school.

I hope that you will see by the content of this letter that the path I chose was one you helped me to see and to appreciate. This is what I have wanted to tell you, and to thank you for, all these years.

I realize that we live in a time when kneeling or bowing is associated with subjugation. But I believe that there are still things that happen in this world that make a man want to kneel, bareheaded. Your gracious kindness is one of them.

Honorably Yours,

Louie Carter