May 9th, Thursday

A short-statured author, the creator of Wonder Woman, and a librarian-turned-civil-rights activist share a birthday. Wordsworth closes things out with a ‘flowery’ poem.

The date is May 9^th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.

Today is the birthday of Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scottish writer of stories and plays, better known as J.M. Barrie. When Barrie was just 6 years old, his 13-year-old brother David died in a skating accident. David was thier mother’s favorite and she completely despondent for her favorite child. Little Jimmy would carry on whistling tunes his brother had, but nothing he did seemed to attract the attention of his mother away from the child she had lost. Her only consolation was that David would always remain a boy. It’s surmised that Barrie’s unusually short stature of 5’3.5” was due to the intense stress he felt as a young child, starved for attention by his mother’s preoccupation with her dead son.

I know, said, but, Barrie did grow up. And his early love of reading and telling stories turned into a passion for writing. His play and then novel about a boy who could fly and was always a boy became an instant hit. The title of the work was Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up. Peter Pan and Wendy became household names, and Wendy became an increasingly popular name for girls. The Darling family was largely inspired by the Llewelyn Davies family. The Darling family dog NaNa was likely inspired by Barrie’s own Saint Bernard dog named Porthos.

Barrie was a contemporary of George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, P.G. Wodenhouse, Walter Raleigh, H.G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, and Arthur Conant Doyle, to name a few. Some made appearances on Barrie’s recreational cricket field and Arthur Conant Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, agreed to re-write a play of Barrie’s which had flopped at the theater.

Today is the birthday of William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman. In a time dominated by super-masculine and forceful heroes, Marston wanted to create one that would also be able to fight evil with “love.” When he talked to his wife Elizabeth about the idea she said the “superhero had better be a woman.”

And today is the birthday of Patricia Swift Blalock, an activist-librarian in Selma, Alabama. She was asked to work part-time at the Selma Library, also known as the Dallas County Public Library, by a friend in 1951. She ended up staying and assumed the position of Director of the Library by 1961.

In other larger townships, there were two libraries, one for whites and one for blacks. Selma was small though, so there was only one library, and the minority community was served out of the back door of the library. Almost as soon as she became Director, Blalock began to advocate that the library be integrated. She received intense pushback from the Board of directors, most of whom were white. However, she persevered going so far as to make house calls to the board members to have discussions about the matter. By 1963 she had made it appear urgent that the board take action before the state or federal government forced the matter. They finally all agreed to go along with Blalock’s desegregation plan. Things didn’t change overnight, but by the end of the summer, people of all colors were used to entering the front doors of the library.

[I wandered lonely as a Cloud]
William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening!