June 12th Thoughts

My husband suggested that we head downtown for a bit today, with our computers, have some lunch, coffee {decaf for me, please}, and spend some time reading and writing.  This is a perfect way to spend today, thank you very much, Mister Wolf!  With all the noise in my head, I wanted to pick just one thing to focus on to write about and that wasn't happening.

So I decided to google "June 12" and see what there was to see!  I opened the first ten links and read about what this date meant in various wars, battles, and political arenas {Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted, for instance}.  In 1942, Anne Frank received a diary for her thirteenth birthday, which most school children during the fifties, sixties, seventies, and into the eighties went on to read.  Not sure if it is still required or recommended for reading in the education curricula now or not.

Who knows how many diaries began due to kids reading Frank's own writings from those tumultuous

years?  It's been awhile since I read a translation, but I do recall that she wrote from where she was in her life, she wrote of her possible future, she wrote of the petty, the wistful, the anger, the hurt, the confusion, the dreams, the beginnings of teen angst, and the mature insights of human nature in general.  We all have similar insights, regardless of age, socio~economic status, ethnicity, or locale.  It's how we share them, even with ourselves, taking notice of our selves, our thoughts, those around us, the world's current events, and so forth.  Frank was able to record such things, in large part because she had to have hours of stillness, of quiet contemplation, of inactivity, of being with her own thoughts.  Circumstances were such that she could not run about, play with friends, turn to others.  She had herself for company, and altho there were others present, she didn't have peers to chat with.  Her socialization was extremely altered from the world she had known and from the world we know today.

There are many of us who have written pen pals, diaries, blogs, etc.  We start them with good intentions to continue them, to write regularly, to record significant steps.  But most of us don't.  How many baby~books have you seen that are actually written in, let alone finished?  I think most of us might have good intentions, but life occurs and things happen and priorities take place and there are only so many hours in the day, so much time we have to devote, and so forth.

Some folks are internally conflicted, because their intentions was good, but the other stuff sounds like excuses.  I believe tho, that those other things that arose were important to ourselves too, and we did them because we can and because we are LIVING.  And those things are good for us too.

Johanna Spyri authored Heidi,  When I was a child, I read my mother's copy of that book from when she was a child.  That copy is long since gone, it was ruined in the fire during the early eighties, when I was twelve or so.  I loved the book, the story.  When I first saw the movie, I fell in love with Shirly Temple and wanted to sleep in a hay filled loft, eating goats' milk cheese and drinking milk straight from the cow.

In 2010, a professor came across a book that was written by Hermann Adam von Kamp before Spyri's Heidi.  In fact, it might have been Spyri's familiarity with that story that led to her own.  Adelaide:  Das Madchen vom Alpengebirge {Adelaide, the girl from the Alps} and Heidi share similar plot and imagery.

Not having read Adelaide, I cannot address the matter in particular; except to say that there are many versions of the common plot lines, rags to riches, ill fated lovers, overcoming some obstacle to reach goal, and so forth.  And there are many times ideas will form to various folks simultaneously, just ask anyone who works with the patent, trademark, and registration offices.  So while I do NOT support plagiarism, I do support the expression of your own creativity, as odd or as similar as it might be to anything already in existence.

Very very few of us are completely unique.  We build upon what has come before us, what we know the world to be, and take it a step further.  We are all of us individuals in the combination of elements that make us who we are, yes.  But we are all star stuff, just like everyone else.