Like it or not, the collector is just below the surface in everything I do. When making kites, I’m influenced by historical examples from East to West; when watching kites, I’m drawn to those I’d like to own; and when reading about kites I’m struck by images and articles that I’d love to have original copies of. Having a day to myself in Salt Lake City, recently, I was hoping to make a trek down to Provo to an Oriental antiques store that I had heard good things about. In calling for directions however, I found that their number had …

Fano 1999 had the best weather in the 15 year history of the kitefliers’ meeting. Only one day was washed out by the showers, so typical on this small Danish island, and what a pleasant coincidence that it was the same afternoon that the scheduled Alexander Graham Bell Symposium was to be held. Over 65 enthusiasts sought shelter and information in Fano’s elementary school, and, as showers pelted the island, were treated to lectures by Ralf Schroder and Achim Kinter. (For a sample of Ralf Schroder’s design work, see "Drachen Sport und Design" May 1999.)

There’s so much to say about eBay, the online auction site, that I have to sit and think about where to start. If you follow the financial new about internet stocks, there is little doubt that you have heard of eBay. It has shown huge stock price gains, followed by pretty wild fluctuations, and it has done it all with few traditional measures of value. (A view of it’s financial history just in 1999 shows an increase from just under $100 a share on Jan.1, to more than $200 a share in May, to around $90 in August.)

The names of the places where Wilbur and Orville Wright made history are familiar to people everywhere who know and cherish the story of the invention of the airplane. The brothers tested their first kite/glider at Kitty Hawk. North Carolina in 1900, then shifted their seasonal camp four miles south to the Kill Devil Hills, where they flew from 1901 to 1903. They perfected their invention at Huffman Prairie, eight miles east of Dayton, in 1904 and 1905, and opened their flying field there in 1910.

The inimitable Shakib Gunn is a fixture in the kite community. His famous kitefliers passports are found throughout the worlds, and the large festivals he organized in Singapore in the 1980’s were the beginning of the international kite scene in Southeast Asia. In a series of talks with Shakib in Singapore, where we both live, he explained his philosophy toward kites, festivals and life in general.

Because the Alexander Graham Bell tetrahedral kite is completely modular, you can change the shape every time you put one together. That’s what makes it such a fascinating kite.

Taking advantage of the electronic communications age, the Alexander Graham Bell Institute at University College of Cape Breton, in Sydney, Nova Scotia, several years ago decided to make available on a worldwide basis the vast trove of Bell material on file at the Bell Museum in nearby Baddeck. Baddeck is where Bell had his estate and laboratories. Ron MacNeil, an engineering instructor, received the assignment and promptly set up a project to index 20,000 of the Bell papers, using students to scan the pages and create an index to be placed on-line.

In the late 19th century, dozens of clever scientist around the world sensed that the invention of the airplane was approaching and that kites would be a key element on the road to discovery. Among them was Alexander Graham Bell, rich and famous since the age of 29, after inventing the telephone in 1876.

George Peters puts on such an imaginative, memorable performance at kite festivals, he is invited to them all around the world. Within an hour of arriving at a flying field, he will have so many kites flying, banners waving and odd fabric creations mounted in the sand or grass, the observer assumes a team of six people is at work, hardly a lone kiteflier. Peters arrives early and stays later, active all the time.

What is almost certainly the first extended English-language essay on Cambodia kites ever written has recently been published by Sim Sarak, director of the Department of Cultural Development of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Sarak presented a signed copy of the unique document to the Drachen Foundation at a recent meeting with a free-lance representative of the institution, Ben Ruhe, in Phnom Penh. He also presented the foundation with a prize Kleng Ek kite, the royal kite of his country associated with the ancient Khmer culture.