• No ordinary day to mourn no ordinary schoolteacher 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Students said you didn't leave the class, or the relationship, at Mrs. [Maurer-Knudson]'s door. Noah Mattio-Garcia mentioned he was reading the novel "Atlas Shrugged," so Mrs. M-K asked to borrow it so they could discuss it.  

• • Holiday books: Biography 

Pair [The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T.J. Stiles] with Ayn Rand and the World She Made, Anne Heller's impassioned novel-like biography of the apostle of individualism.  

• Paper trail 
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During her college years [Molly] Ivins thought of herself as part of an elite and had a lover, Henry Holland, scion of a wealthy Texas family, with whom she planned to conquer the world, Ayn Rand-like.  

• Mistress of the hunt 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Profile of real estate expert Laura Soelberg.
Just finished rereading: "Atlas Shrugged."  

• Kersten on atheism 
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When did Katherine Kersten become a liberal? Her June 7 column asks, with considerable sarcasm, why society should lavish care and resources on autistic children or Alzheimer's sufferers. She asks (rhetorically), "why should we act with charity toward the poorest and weakest among us?" Good for her! Why indeed. Ayn Rand would, in fact, advise in all seriousness that we not devote resources to the poorest and weakest, and it seems that Gov. Tim Pawlenty intends to cut funding for their care. I'm gratified to learn that Kersten does not agree with them.  

• The intelligent homosexual speaks out 
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[In a talk, playwright Tony] Kushner ranged from the complex politics of Afghanistan to "Medea," Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand, Bill Clinton, Stalinism, Arthur Miller, the oboe, "American Idol" (hates it) and Brahms (loves it).  

• Miami still has some catching up to do 
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The Fountainhead  | When it comes to the Twin Cities' global reputation, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, "It's not that I think of you badly. It's just that I don't think of you at all."  

• Movie houses 
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The Fountainhead  | Enjoy architecture for architecture's sake in “The Fountainhead” (1949).  

• Ex-neighbor is self-made Wright scholar 
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The Fountainhead  | Profile of Bert Goderstad.
[Goderstad] estimates he owns about 400 books and several thousand magazines with articles by or about [Frank Lloyd Wright]. The collection includes [....] a copy of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," which has an architect-hero whom some readers speculate was based on Wright.  

•When product placement seeps into TV programming 
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"Howard Roark laughed. Probably because he was watching the Comedy Channel." [....] Charles Dickens, Ayn Rand, Louisa May Alcott and Ernest Hemingway would never have sold out.  

• •The write stuff 
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"We asked some top television writers to name a piece of literature that was particularly inspiring to them."
Vivian Lee ("The Ghost Whisperer"): “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. "I did a book report on it when I was 12, and it was completely different than anything I had ever read. It told me to make your own choices, be selfish and believe in what you believe in, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. As someone growing up Asian, having to be humble, it had a big impact."  

•Editors, comics seem like a fit 
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"Backfence" column readers recount bad summer jobs.
I've had some truly crappy jobs, including working as a telephone solicitor. Hard to fall below that benchmark, but flag GIRL does just that.... One car about every day and a half, and the only time the boss insists you look up from your book is when they are moving the crane. What happened? I'm sure you haven't figured this one out. The crane is moving, and a car is coming -- do I notice? No, I'm engrossed in my book (probably Ayn Rand, for God's sake) and I didn't stop the car! ... I was a failure at a job so ridiculously easy that a trained monkey could do it -- except the monkey would probably have the sense to pick better reading material.  

•Talk: They were lovin’ it 
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Item on Politics in Minnesota: The Directory.
The sixth edition offers 724 pages of detailed information, ranging from fresh and authoritative biographies of all top political leaders and all 201 legislators, to exhaustive election statistics, to a detailed demographic analysis of each district, to political quotes from characters ranging from Ayn Rand to Paul Wellstone.  

•Bleeding blue in N.C. hoops country 
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Report on college basketball game.
Carolina is faster than WiFi and deeper than Ayn Rand.