Johanna Spyri was born July 12, 1827 at Hirzel, Switzerland. She wrote the children’s classic, Heidi. Does anyone else remember reading Heidi Grows Up and Heidi’s Children, sequels to Heidi? I read both sequels as a child, and I remember that Heidi marries Peter the goatherd and that they have twins. I think there was some kind of mystery associated with Heidi’s ancestry, too, and something hidden under some tiles on the floor. I’d enjoy reading all three books again, just to see if they’re as good as I thought they were.
Other birthdays today:
Bill Cosby, b. 1938. “In dealing with kids, no matter how little we understand their explanations, we must always remember that we’re the adults. What this means I have no idea. It certainly means nothing to the kids, who instinctively seem to know that adults are merely strange people who have dopey ideas like “Stop throwing peas at your sister.”
Pablo Neruda, b. 1904. Chilean poet whose real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Il Postino, an Italian movie that won a couple of Oscars in 1996, features the story of a postman who learns to appreciate poetry while delivering the mail to Pablo Neruda’s country home. Unfortunately, both the real Pablo Neruda and the fictional postman in the movie ended up embracing Communism as a cure for all the world’s problems.