Oh my my my… while perus­ing the book shelves yes­ter­day, I came across a very old copy of The Lit­tle Lame Prince. This was one of my very favorite books as a child and most of it mem­o­rized over 45 years ago. Read­ing it again, now with inter­net access to the author infor­ma­tion and wikipedia arti­cles, brings it even more firmly into my mind.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. She of the Vic­to­rian era, was a pro­lific and com­pelling writer. My research will soon reveal more — as in how Mrs. Craik and her hus­band,  George Craik, influ­ence today’s Steam­Punk move­ment. Isn’t it odd how when you become obsessed with knowl­edge and form of a cer­tain topic, it is often obscured by cur­rent trends and fan­cies and then… just as you become com­pletely enam­ored, the topic becomes pop cul­ture and is some­how dimin­ished in your eyes? Please, I beg of you all, do not let the spec­tac­u­lar movie “9” destroy the abil­ity of steam­punk to amuse and enrap­ture me. Long live the Soci­ety for the Dif­fu­sion of Use­ful Knowl­edge. And one quick note here — watch­ing HBO last night, we came upon Hell­boy II The Golden Army and who’d a thunk it Steam­punk? Sur­prise genius in that movie, I tell you.

But oh! the bless­ing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fear­lessly on any sub­ject; with whom one’s deep­est as well as one’s most fool­ish thoughts come out sim­ply and safely. Oh, the com­fort — the inex­press­ible com­fort of feel­ing safe with a per­son — hav­ing nei­ther to weigh thoughts nor mea­sure words, but pour­ing them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; cer­tain that a faith­ful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keep­ing, and then with the breath of kind­ness blow the rest away. –Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

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