Four difficult childhoods

… all fictional, unimaginably different, each one moving in its own way; welcome to the queen of the months, here in the northern hemisphere, where, on this celebratory day, the rabbits — — come to play Ir starts with a burlesque of the nursery rhyme “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” in yesterday’s posting “The server’s absurd attentions”, which led Benita Bendon Campbell to Kipling’s heartbreaking short story with that title. That led me to Saki’s black-comic short story “Sredni Vashtar”. And that to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s novel of healing and the overcoming of adversity, The Secret Garden. Finally, Bergman’s long masterpiece movie, Fanny and Alexander, which pretty much has everything, including some early luminous scenes of family joy, then wrenching scenes of abuse, and finally horrific dream death made real, freeing the children. (There are two versions, a shorter one made for tv, then the full, epically long, theatrical release. Watching the long version is like packing up…