January 15 - Happy Birthday, Dad!

 Today, January 15, is my late father’s birthday. He was born on this day in 1925 and died December 28 2009. 

I miss him terribly! He was funny, sweet and amazingly gifted in a lot of areas. He built me floor to ceiling book cases. He turned an old desk from an ugly, shabby piece of office furniture into something people would pay thousands of dollars to own. He could make silver jewellery, including a necklace with an open book pendant he made for me when I qualified as a librarian. He drew delightful cartoons of himself, which he left at my home when he dropped off stuff for me. He had a beautiful baritone singing voice, which he passed on to his male descendants (my brother and all my nephews). He was a “silver surfer” who discovered the Internet in his later years and loved it.

To me, he was the head of my fan club. That Shakespeare? Nowhere near as good as his daughter! He argued with bookshop owners to put my books in the window and pestered his friends to buy my children’s books for their grandchildren. When one of them said his grandchild was only a year old, Dad said, “So? Is it going to go off?” And he read my books, he really did. I’m not sure any of my other family members did, though my sister did beta read an early version of my novel.

I wish he could have lived long enough to see my novel Wolfborn published. I did dedicate it to him. 

Anyway, here are some people and events he shared a birthday with.

The most famous, of course, is civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jnr., born on this day in 1929, who gets a public holiday in the US

. I’ve just read that he was in a black church children’s choir that sang for a bunch of white guests(Black ones not welcome) celebrating the release of the film Gone With The Wind. 

In 1927 Phyllis Coates was born. She was in the first season of The Adventures Of Superman, with George Reeves(who played a minor role in Gone With The Wind)as Lois Lane. She isn’t as well known as Noel Neill, who came after her, but she was very good. 

Children’s writer Jenny Nimmo was born in 1944. I have only read a couple of her books, but they were amazing and one of them, fantasy novel The Snow Spider, was turned into a TV mini series - twice! One was produced in 1988, the other in 2020. Dad would like that - I’m a children’s writer.

Science fiction novelist Robert Silverberg is another January 15 baby, born in 1935. I have only read a few of his books, but my favourite is Gilgamesh The King, based, of course, on The Epic Of Gilgamesh, which was about a king of Uruk who goes in search of immortality after losing his best friend to death. In the novel, he first becomes aware of death as a child, at his father’s funeral, the burial found by archaeologist Leonard Woolley and written about in his book Ur Of The Chaldees(I have read that book too). Woolley had a theory that the many courtiers buried with the king went voluntarily. In Silverberg’s novel, young Gilgamesh watches as a lady in waiting who looks like his mother and a slave boy dressed in his clothes go into the grave. 

I heard Silverberg speak at a Worldcon, at which  he said that if he spent a lot of time plotting and researching before writing a book, he’d never get it done! I agree with him in one way, you can always go back and fix your story afterwards, but I have been known to read entire books while researching an article. 

There are more authors born on this day, but these are the ones I have read.

Just a few events:

On this day in 1559, Queen Elizabeth I was crowned Queen of England and Ireland at Westminster Abbey - not Scotland, of course, that became a part of the kingdom after her death. 

1759 - the British Museum opened to the public. That was a very special occasion. I’ve only visited once, but the collection is amazing! 

2001 - Wikipedia first goes on line. My Dad would have loved to know that, because he adored looking up stuff on line. I never asked, but I bet he used Wikipedia. I think it’s better than people give it credit for. Yes, it can be edited by whoever, but I believe it is at least as accurate as quite a few other encyclopaedias. The only thing I used to tell my students was that my issue with it, as far as they were concerned, was that entries tend to be too long for their needs, and the language is too complicated for some students. 

It’s getting a bit late, so I will end this post here. 

Do you share your birthday with anyone interesting, or with an exciting event?