Bronson, Louisa, and Jack

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship."

                               Louisa May Alcott, b. this day in 1832.

hardworking Louisa May Alcott

"To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age."


"A government for protecting business only is but a carcass and soon fails by its own corruption & decay."

                Amos Bronson Alcott, Louisa's dad, b. this day in 1799

improvident, idealistic Bronson Alcott

So, this famous daughter and her father, known for their words and their conflicted relationship, share a birthday with another wordsmith, one whose books, whose Narnia, gave me far more pleasure than those dense, wordy works of Louisa. Sorry, but it's true. I admire her, but the works of Clive Staples 'C.S.' Lewis are a heckuva lot more fun. [don't even want to fool with the works of Louisa's dad. it's incurious, unforgiving, and bullheaded of me, but I'm still mad at him for being such a head-in-the-clouds lousy provider for his wife and daughters, who struggled so hard to keep things together.  Anyway, "Jack" Lewis came into the world of Victoria's England on 29 Nov, 1898. He left it, not so very incidentally, through the celestial door marked 22 Nov in the year 1963. So imagine Jack Lewis and President Jack Kennedy side by side in Heaven Orientation.
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."  C.S. Lewis