Mike O'Connell

Among other things celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026 is A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. (Jury’s still out on the hyphens, but more on that later.)

Pooh technically appeared in print for the first time Christmas Eve 1925 (in London’s Evening News), then appeared in his first collection of stories the following year. Pooh Bear would later appear in other written stories, stage productions, musical comedies, movies, vinyl records, and Disney souvenir shops worldwide. Pooh’s up there on the Mount Rushmore of anthropomorphic characters with Mickey Mouse and Tony the Tiger and like, recognized the world over.

It’s the stories, though, that have me hooked a century later. Lately I’ve been re-reading (or reading) the Milne originals and I’ve been, let’s be honest, pleasantly surprised at how good they are. Sure, there’s a formula; that’s the point. There are also recurring lines and themes that reward the careful and habitual reader, and allusions to human elements that still play a hundred years on. Similar to Peanuts in a way, it’s relatable to both children and adults.

I guess I never realized, as a kid, the structure of the Pooh stories. The narrator is Milne, as a father reading to his son. His son’s name is Christopher Robin, as the character in the story is also named. So it becomes a story within a story, sometimes written in the third person, sometimes in the first person, and sometimes actually in the second person, as the narrator/Milne describes Christopher (sometimes the character, sometimes the boy) and his actions. Christopher Robin the “real” boy can interrupt the narrator, kind of like Socrates and Plato, except here Socrates is documenting the story as he and Plato discuss.

It all adds up to great questions of life and relationships and the structure of storytelling. The structure of names as well, as I’m still trying to determine whether Winnie-the-Pooh includes hyphens or no. I’ve seen it both ways, and I suppose I could argue either (it’s a name, after all, and can be spelled and punctuated in any manner), but focusing too much on any one aspect I suppose takes away from the gestalt.

Cent’anni, Pooh, and Mr Milne. Hyphens or no, I do love what follows.

There’s a delicious irony, poking fun at pretty much everything the government does, all the while going to national parks and military band concerts.

Or both, like seeing The President’s Own at Wolf Trap as my son and I did last Sunday evening.

A full description on today’s episode of Math and Musings.

Enjoy.

This weekend I attended a wedding not too far from my hometown, seeing some people I hadn’t seen in quite a number of years. They needed an update. Explaining my current life is easy enough, though explaining how I got here is like giving someone really bad driving directions and saying “did that make sense?”

None of it makes any sense, and I’m not sure whether sifting through my content from the past 25 years makes it more clear or actually less clear. Eventually I settled on this link, 13 minutes of random quotes that, taken as a whole, kind of sum up everything somehow.

I’m going to publish as a book someday, working title Time Doesn’t Grow on Trees.

That probably doesn’t make any sense out of context, but that’s the whole point, right?

Makes sense?

The New York Knicks pulled off one of the greatest comebacks I’ve ever seen last night, something akin to the Vineland Thorns beating the Magma for the roarball Claw.

(Sorry, I watched Goat this weekend too and have such on the brain.)

Not only did the Knicks win the game, but because it went into overtime and they had a chance to pull away, actually ended up covering and helping bettors all over the tri-state area and beyond.

Gotta love this.

Today on Math and Musings my son and I discuss our recent trip to National Harbor, Maryland. It was a celebration of all things American, from merry-go-rounds and band concerts to that most American of eating establishments… Johnny Rockets.

Enjoy.