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Today, one of the heroes of my youth (and of my whole life) would have been 100, had she lived to see the day.

Astrid Lindgren.

The woman who invented Pippi Longstocking and Emil, Lotta, Mardie, the Tomten and the children of the noisy village. She won the German Publishing Peace Prize for her creation and engagement, and even that was, imho, not enough honor.

She was an exceptional writer who chose to dedicate all her talent to children. She wrote about a little anarchical rebel girl at a time where children were still beaten at schools. She wrote a whole book about the long voyage after death – a book so revolutionary that the Swedish parliament discussed censoring it. She wrote for children, but she touched all of us to an extent that changed her time, her world, her century.

I read everything she wrote, every single line, and I still do. Her books accompanied me through my childhood, and she has influenced my life almost as much as my parents did. I still read and re-read what she wrote, and some of her books grow with time, and open to a depth of wisdom few people ever achieve.

I won’t recount you her life here, or list the books she wrote, this information can be found everywhere. I cannot find words enough to say how much I loved her, and still love her.

Thank you, thank you so much, Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren.

I recently was inspired (by Worth1000, of course) to turn new photos into old ones. As I really had fun doing this (and as it earned me a silver trophy *g*), I will share the artwork with you here.

First, I turned this picture here:

into this “old” photo:

It was quite a challenge, because the kids are wearing modern clothes, of course, and that seemed to be a  change in style that might not work out. The worst were the soles of the shoes – modern running shoes. So I decided to go for scratches over the most obvious part, and for the coffee stain to distract attention from it.

I had so much fun doing it that I wanted to try a new approach. So I chose this photo:

And turned it into this one:

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The touching thing about it is that, if the photo was this old, the Cologne skyline in it would be scarred by war. The whole area around the cathedral was turned into ashes. Strangely and thankfully, the cathedral itself remained unscathed.

I personally think that this second picture is far better than the first one. But the ways of the voters are wondrous – the first picture brought me a silver trophy, the second came in fourth. I am happy with both scores, though, and I had loads of fun making them. I’ll surely make some more “old photos”. I gotta thank Worth again for inspiring me to try something new.