After reading the Writer's Almanac for today, I discovered it is A.A. Milne's birthday. Winnie-the Pooh was and is one of my most favorite children's books, right up there with Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins Comes Back, the whole Borrowers series and the whole Little House on the Prairie series.
I vaguely remember my mother reading me Winnie-the-Pooh when I was a little girl. I do remember reading the books to myself as an older child and had the great fun of reading the same old copies of those books that my mother read to me to my own children when they were young. Now they sit on a bookcase in the back room, waiting for the day when my grandchildren come to visit and I can read them outloud once again. I do miss Winnie and Piglet and Kanga and Roo and who can forget grumpy old Eeyore and the sad day when his balloon popped. But at least he had an empty honey pot to put it in, so all was not lost.
Heffalumps are still one of the great mysteries of the world; I wonder if they ever caught one in their traps...
For me, these books bring back fond memories of when life was slower and simpler. A time before the world went on alert 24/7, before computers, cell phones, ipads and ipods and all things technological that consume our time, energy, and lives... before shootings, assasinations, terrible earthquakes and tsunamis destroyed vast populations of the world... just once in a while, it'd be nice to turn the clocks back and have life return to those simpler days when people believed in heffalumps and talking teddy bears and little boys in their wellingtons.
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