Blog 3671 – 11.22.2025
The Best Birthday Gift of All
My loving and infinite source, my higher best self, the Universe, awoke me this morning with the best birthday gift of all, the sound of rain on the roof. I love rain and we have not had much of it in south east Texas for sometime. Many prefer sunshine to rain and rain often gets a bad rap, but not from me.
Snow, rain’s cooler cousin, is a much more rare occurrence in the Southland and I do not recall it ever snowing on my birthday in either Chattanooga or Houston, the two cities where I have lived the most. I did however spend several birthdays working up north and recall having snowy birthdays in Indiana, Wyoming, and Wisconsin. A dear friend that I met while working in Wisconsin still texts me “Happy Birthday” every time it snows there. I have already received several such birthday greetings from her this fall.
A few days ago I streamed a Lifetime Movie about the life of author J.K. Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter books. It was fascinating and I highly recommend it to all. The movie points out where many of the ideas for the first book came from and so I have watched the first movie a couple of times in the last couple of days to refresh my memory of the book that started it all, originally published in Great Britain as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and later published in the States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
My wife and I read all of the Harry Potter books and with our son looked forward eagerly to the release of each new book and movie. Our son and many children became avid readers because of J.K. Rowling’ imaginary world of Hogwarts and went on to read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin.
I found it especially interesting in the Lifetime Movie about Joanne Rowing becoming a best selling author that her agent advised her to change her name because boys would not read a book written by a woman. He suggested that she might use her initials as other authors have. Since her mother had not given her a middle name she briefly considered J.R.R. Rowlings before in the end deciding to use her paternal grandmother’s name Kathleen for her middle initial hence J.K. Rowling.
All writers dream about becoming as widely read as the authors I mentioned in this piece and of publishing that “rain maker” novel as J. K. Rowling did that made her chief character a household name – Harry Potter. A line from a favorite rain song comes to mind on this my seventy-fifth birthday, “I wish it would rain.”
Your friend and fellow traveler,
D.J. White
The Temptations – I wish it would rain
The Temptations – I wish it would rain
Author’s Note:
The first time I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. there was a torrential rain as I stood there crying my eyes out over that terrible loss that touched so many lives, my tears hidden in an ocean of raindrops. Over fifty thousand Americans soldiers and some say as many as two and a half million Vietnamese never had another birthday because of that terrible war and I have had fifty-five since I celebrated my twentieth in South Vietnam in 1970. I am so glad and grateful for every one and am hoping to have at least twenty-five more filled with rainy days and sunshine, star-filled nights and dark rainy skies.
theencouragingword 