October 15 -- what a day for the births of authors!

I'm a huge fan of The Writer's Almanac, a daily blog and email written by a group led by Garrison Keillor, host of public radio's A Prairie Home Companion.

Each issue includes a poem and capsule biographies of authors born on the issue's publication date. I just read the October 15 issue and was struck by the stature and variety of authors born on that date. They include P. G. Wodehouse, creator of the books about Jeeves and his employer, Bertie Wooster; the Roman poet Virgil; novelist Mario Puzo, who wrote The Godfather; Italo Calvino, whom I don't know but I envy for his lyrical name, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose works I've never read but is referred to more than once in Mel Brooks's movie, Blazing Saddles, which I found hilarious when I was an undergraduate long ago.