An Update on My Ozzy Wanderings

The past few days have been busy but boring, as both Erica and I had to work much of the last three days. The nice thing, with remote jobs like we have, is that we can be anywhere and still work with our colleagues and students in Washington state. But today we left Beech Mountain at last and headed back to Charlotte. But first, we stopped in Statesville to encounter the "Twist of Oz" escape room at Keys to Escape. That was a lot of fun, frankly, and I hope Oz fans can come and try this out—but with what's going on right now, I can understand not wanting to leave Charlotte. We're on the northern fringes of Hurricane Helene, and while it looks unlikely we'll get hit by the center of the storm, we are definitely feeling the effects. Much of the state is on a tornado watch, and all this rain proves it. Already, most schools around here have been closed for tomorrow, including UNC Charlotte, which is hosting most of the events for both CharlOz and Oz: The National Convention. I suspect we're going to have a huge shake-up in the schedule. Fortunately, at least at the moment, it looks like we'll get a break in the weather on Saturday. I will keep you posted!

Back from Oz

Saturday was travel day, as we flew from Seattle to Charlotte with a layover in Dallas. Well, there were mechanical issues with the plane we were supposed to get on in Dallas, and we ended up getting a new plane, which meant an exodus to another terminal, and an overall four hour delay. It was about 10:30 at night by the time we landed in Charlotte, and what with deplaning, baggage claim, getting our rental car, going back and getting another rental car when the one we were first assigned wasn't there, and getting some food, it was nearly midnight by the time we hit the road. And hit it we did, because our condo for this first part of our week was another two hours away! But Erica had had plenty of rest and caffeine, and we made it at about 2:00 and crashed. All in all, from leaving Sunnyside to getting to Beech Mountain, I was on the road for just about twenty-four hours straight.

We set the alarms for 7:00, and got going right away. We had a big breakfast, and then we were off to Oz! Our timing was impeccable, as we pulled into the parking lot at about 9:30, and our entry tickets were for 10:00. I think I'm going to save the big report for later in the week, when I have a little time to properly write it up and access all the photos (from three sources!), but the weather was spectacular, if maybe a little on the warm side, and the so-called mountains* of western North Carolina are gorgeous. We got back to our condo, decompressed, went out for some amazing barbecue for dinner (checking off another item on this week's bucket list), bought some groceries, and called it a night. Thanks to the all-day travel and sleeping on the plane on Saturday, my body's rhythms seem to have already adjusted to a new time zone, as I woke up this morning at my usual time. The problem with this is that my workday still has to synch with Washington time, so I'll be officially working from 11:00 to 7:00! And we can both work remotely, which is what allows us to take this trip and see both The Land of Oz Park and attend the combined CharlOz/Oz: The National Convention this coming weekend. We may have to make some accommodations when we have meetings that overlap (this condo is definitely set up for leisure travel, not business), but it should be fine.

Okay, I think I've nattered on long enough for now. My top priorities the next few days are work, getting ready for my presentations in Charlotte, and posting my Land of Oz report here. I hope I can do it justice!

* See, they claim to be mountains, as the Blue Ridge Mountains, where we are, are in the High Country here, and include some of the highest elevations in the eastern United States. But back home, these would be called foothills.

Celebrating Fifty Years of Being an Oz Fan

My life has been crazy busy the last few years, dealing with both Laura's health and my career finally taking off in a very good way. This poor blog has been neglected, being little more than a repository for the latest Oz cartoons.

That changes now—at least temporarily. This has been in the works for well over a year, and the time has finally come. It all started with an invitation by Dina Schiff Massachi to pitch some panels for CharlOz, a big interdisciplinary conference about The Wizard of Oz. I figured nothing ventured nothing gained, and sent in about a half dozen proposals. I knew Dina was aiming at a more general crowd than the usual Oz convention, and especially wanted material that would appeal to teachers, so I sent in a few ideas, and two were accepted.

Oh, shoot! Now I have to go! And since it's in September, that means going during the school year! But my bosses not only told me to go for it, they gave me their blessing and even got the company publicity department involved. (More on that later, I suspect.) I also crunched the numbers, and found that my new job gave me enough room in the budget to do something wild like this. So I was going to North Carolina! My first trip to the east coast! (Sadly, too far away to actually see the Atlantic Ocean.) And hey, I thought to myself, I can probably even go to the old Land of Oz Park in North Carolina for one of their Autumn in Oz weekends.

But a problem arose: The Land of Oz wasn't going to be open that weekend. CharlOz was a week later than their last weekend! But this was too good of a chance to pass up. Why would I go that close, in both time and location, and not go to the park? So I did some more number crunching and figuring things out. Yes, I could make it that last weekend, spend a few days in North Carolina (I work remotely, so I can do my job anywhere), and even miss one day less of work. I went for it, and got a ticket for the final Sunday of Autumn in Oz, which is now in only two days. The Oz trip of my lifetime (so far) was on!

There are a few other surprises coming up this week, and I will do my best to tell you about them as the come up. But tonight I'm heading to Seattle to get my flight to Charlotte, via Dallas-Fort Worth (incidenally, my first ever trip to Texas). But a few weeks ago, I realized that this was an especially appropriate year for me to go on this trip. It was in 1974 when my third grade teacher, Mrs. Hanford, read The Wizard of Oz to us in class, and I got interested in the collection of Oz books in her room. I picked up the Rand McNally paperback for myself, and got a bunch of the rest of the books at Christmas. So 1974 was the year I became an official full-fledged Oz fan, which means I have now been an Oz fan for fifty years.

You get to celebrate with me! I am going to be busy this coming week, but I will do my best to share what I'm doing. I am really excited, and I don't have to wait much longer!

This Week's Classy Oz Comic

The Great Ruth Berman alerted me to this cartoon by Ali Solomon in the most recent issue of The New Yorker. A friend suggested that Dorothy should have left a fake name, so I suggested Betsy Bobbin!

Yesterday's Oz Comic

Ooh, look, according to The Argyle Sweater, Dorothy is famous!

Today's Oz Comic

Today in Between Friends, you can even make housework Ozzy!

This Week's Other Oz Comic

I've seen variations on this before, but yesterday's Strange Brew is still a fun take on an Oz trope.

Today's Oz Comic

Today in Mother Goose and Grimm, Grimmy has a close encounter of the Ozzy kind.

This Week's Oz Political Cartoon

It's probably a little premature, but someone in the Daily Kos community submitted this cartoon on the current Presidential candidates.

Today's Oz Comic

I can't recall if this is a rerun or not, but today CowTown trots out another of its frequent Oz comics. Well it is based in Kansas City.

Today's Oz Comic

Normally, I tell you what comic has an Oz reference. But this one really took me off guard, so I'll just let you click here and discover which one it is for yourself.

Today's Oz Comic

Today, Red and Rover go on a backyard adventure. A familiar refrain begins...

This Week's Oz Comics Roundup

I'm back at work, so updates may be less frequent. Case in point, this past week in Oz comics:

• Friday, The Far Side had this classic cartoon on its website.
• Also last Friday, my favorite political cartoonist, David Horsey, had this to say about the current state of the Presidantial race. (This is especially appropriate for Horsey, as he works out of Seattle, AKA The Emerald City!)
• Finally, Sunday's edition of Bizarro gave us the greatest crossover you never knew you needed! Thankfully, no cringey stereotyping in this portrayal.

Today's Oz Comic

Frank and Ernest get elemental, which means a mention of one favorite Oz character.

This Week's Oz Comic

Naturally I've seen variants of the joke in yesterday's Grand Avenue before. But this is the first time I can recall it hitting so close to home! (Yes, we're having a heat wave this summer in my neck of the woods.)

Today's Oz Comic

It's ironic that today's edition of The Argyle Sweater has to be printed in black and white to get the joke across, even though Sunday strips are generally prented in color. But maybe that's the paint! (One commentor pointed out that maybe the card should have been printed in color, just to make the point even plainer.)

The Latest Oz Comic

I'm pretty sure this is a rerun, but today's edition of CowTown is pretty Ozzy!

The Latest Reading

My reread of the works of Eloise Jarvis McGraw continues!

• A Really Weird Summer is, well, weird, and Eloise's firsht brush with the supernatural. Nels' parents are getting a divorce and both working far away for the summer, so the kids are shuffled off to an aunt's place in rural eastern Oregon that used to be an inn. It's weird enough dealing with not having either parent, and dealing with their aunt and uncle's quirky ways, but when Nels spots a mysterious figure in a mirror, it just gets weirder. Alan befriends Nels and gives him something to focus on for the summer, but before long he realizes that there's something weird about Alan. How come Alan can't leave his rooms in the inn? Why does he never see Alan's mother, or any evidence of his father? But it takes Nels' brother, Stevie, to figure out that something is seriously wrong with Nels, and Stevie decides it's up to him to do something about it. Eloise has a great sense of knowing what's important in a kid's world, and uses that knowledge to give her stories depth and heft — three-dimensionality, as the late Warren Hollister put it. The weird stuff is never explicitly stated or explained, which just adds to the weirdness, but it is definitely there, adding a layer to at least Nels' experiences in the book. Although not the kind of book that usually has pictures, Eloise also contributed two drawings of the inn, before and after Nels' experineces, just to show how weird things are. Even though I doubt you could call this a mystery, I can see why the Mystery Writers of America gave its Edgar Award for Best Juvenile to this book.
• Normally I only read one of Eloise's books at a time, but I know that Joel and the Great Merlini, her only book for very young readers, would be a quick read, so I added it. Joel loves doing magic tricks, but is frustrated that he can't always get them right, even with practice. So he wishes on the evening star, and the Great Merlini is there to help him out. Only trouble is, Merlini's idea of magic doesn't jibe with Joel's. Merlini practically takes over Joel's act and has Joel performing real magic, like pulling a St. Bernard out af a hat! At first, though, Joel doesn't mind, and he's a smash at the school's talent night. But Merlini's tricks are so good that Joel is suddenly doing shows several nights a week, and his schoolwork is suffering. Not only that, he becomes more and more uneasy that Merlini's doing most of the work. This leads Joel to have to make some very tough decisions, and dealing with Merlini. It's a fun little romp about integrity and persistence without getting preachy. Joel is definitely a good kid, even if it takes him a while to figure out the right thing to do.

The Latest Oz Reading

Yup, catching up on some more Oz and Oz-adjacent reading I've done lately (for certain nebulous definitions of the word "lately"):

• "Heart of Tin", the first novella in Dorothy Must Die Stories Volume 2 by Danielle Paige. Yeah, besides the main Dorothy Must Die series, Paige wrote a bunch of interrelated novellas, each from the viewpoint of a different character. As you can probably guess from the title, this one is about the Tin Woodman. It seems the heart the Wizard gave him worked a little too well, as he decides that he has fallen in love with Dorothy, and is sad that he'll probably never see her again. You can imagine his delight when she comes back to Oz, but he's confused and disappointed when she doesn't return that love. But his feelings become even more befuddled when Dorothy and Glinda use him and his love for Dorothy to carry out their agenda, and turn Tin into something even he doesn't understand. All I'm going to say about this one is, I think I'm going to need a complete Dorothy Must Die timeline once I finish the final novella (and there are five more to go)!
• The Silver Shoes of Oz by Marin Elizabeth Xiques. This is both a reread and a new book, as this was originally published by Tails of the Cowardly Lion and Friends oer thirty years ago, and became one of their most requested reprints once it went out of print. Not long before he died, publisher Chris Dulabone finally put out a new, print-on-demand edition, which is what I read recently, even though I also have the first edition. Coming back across the Deadly Desert from a diplomatic mission to Foxville and Dunkiton, Ozma finds the long-missing Silver Shoes and brings them back to the Emerald City. Betsy Bobbin wants to investigate all the powers of the shoes, so she is allowed to take them out on an adventure with Scraps to test them out. Together, Betsy and Scraps find new Ozian villages, find out more about the shoes, and foil yet another attempt to conquer Oz. It's fun, if not particularly earth-shattering. The illustrations are by the late Chris Sterling, and I forgot just how good of an Oz illustrator he was.
• Death Sleeps Lightly by Rachel C. Payes, the writer first published as Rachel C. Cosgrove. Yes, I'm still trying to acquire all the works of this Royal Historian, and this is one of her earliest after her foray into Oz. It's a murder mystery, in which young secretary Jill Haynes takes up a position on an isolated island assisting Mrs. Weber. Soon after she starts the job, Mrs. Weber dies under mysterious circumstances. Naturally murder is suspected, and as the most recent arrival to the household Jill is about the only one not suspected of the crime. Her curious nature leads to her snooping around and uncovering all kinds of clues, which eventually leads to the killer's identity. It's not a groundbreaking example of the genre, but Rachel plays the cards well and keeps everyone on their toes. She even throws in a little romance with Jill's attraction to the dashing chauffeur.
• The Umbrellaphant in Oz by Carol P. Silva and Marin Elizabeth Xiques. Another latter-day offering from Tails of the Cowardly Lion and Friends. It's been a little while, and I don't remember much about it. But the star is Umbo, the flying umbrellaphant seen in Captain Salt in Oz, and he ends up saving the animals of the Springbok Forest (visited in many Tails books) from a three-eyed witch. I may have to reread this one sooner than anticipated.
• Pick Your Own Quest: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Connor Hoover. Remember the old Choose Your Own Adventure Books? Yeah, this is in the same vein. You take the role of Dorothy and have to make choices along the way that can veer the story off in all kinds of directions you never anticipated. You may end up going home alone, or with one of your new Ozian friends. You may help an army of Scarecrows overrun the Emerald City. You may end up living in Oz, or stranded on a desert island. This was a lot of fun, and some of the storylines were very imaginative. But at only 135 pages and over thirty different endings, they tended to go very quickly! I'd love to see someone try to tackle a bigger, richer version of this, with more to do and even more ways to explore Oz.
• Green by Alex Gino. I got this to take part in Down the Yellow Brick Pod's book club. I got it about a week before the meeting, so I had to put aside another book and tear through it! Fortunately, it's a short enough read that I got it done in plenty of time. Green is a non-binary middle school student with a supportive family and friends. Lately, they've been having odd feelings around another student, Ronnie. Green's not sure if Ronnie, who is definitely a cis male, would be interested in a non-binary person like them. But when the school puts on a less-than-traditional version of The Wizard of Oz, Green and Ronnie are thrown into a lot of work together as they both try to figure out their feelings. This was a fun read, and an eye-opener for this old cis guy. Green is a great kid, but they have to go through all the same angst that all the rest of us have to go through in middle school, and it all feels very raw and authentic to me. Now I want to compile a list of stories that revolve around putting on a stage production of The Wizard of Oz, as I now have at least a half dozen of them in my collection.
• Finally, a book I may never quite get around to reading, but I've wanted to get El Mago de Oz: Edición Anotada for years now, but the few times I ever saw it for sale it was way out of my range. But I recently tried to find it again and discovered Buscalibre not only had it, it was on sale, so I snatched it up. I've been studying and learning Spanish for some time now, and this may be the ultimate test (well, before I try Don Quixote, at least). It's a translation of the 2000 edition of The Annotated Wizard of Oz by Michael Patrick Hearn, but this one is even bigger than that book because the text of The Wizard of Oz is in both the original English and a Spanish translation. This may be one to wait on until I'm retired.

The Latest Oz Reading

Yes, I'm reading a lot of Oz stuff again. Not only that, I also have a pile of stuff I've read but not discussed here yet, some going back two or three years now! Yes, it's been a crazy time for me, but I'm on my summer break right now and I'm trying to deal with a lot of the clutter in my life right now, while I have the chance, before my summer gets extremely crazy in a few weeks. But more on that as things get closer, although there may be some hints in what I've been reading. Let's start with some books I've reread:

• The Lost Princess of oz by L. Frank Baum. My slow progression through the Oz books, in order, has reached 1917. Lost Princess is particularly important to me because it was the last of the Baum books I owned as a kid, although I'd read the library's copy first. I then got it for Christmas from my always-supportivg grandparents. Looking in that original Reilly & Lee white edition, I noted the the inscription read 1975. This was a little over a year after I started collecting the books, so this year marks my fiftieth year as an Oz fan! Getting back to the story itself, it does hold up as an exciting adventure. It might seem overwhelming to keep track of as many characters as Baum put into this book, but they're all distinctive (well, except maybe for Betsy Bobbin and Trot), and it's plot is tight. Perhaps Baum should have introduced Ugu a little earlier, but the shock opening of so much Oz magic missing all at once certainly grabs the reader.
• Kabumbo in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson. No, I'm not jumping ahead in my FF reading, it's just that the long-delayed Clover Press edition, with new illustartions by Sara Richard, arrived. Richard's style is a lot different from John R. Neill's, but her work is still gloriously Ozzy. Naturally she had to draw Ruggedo as a giant with the palace on his head, and it has the same impact as Neill's version. My biggest complaint is that there aren't enough illustrations. Come on, Clover Press, Oz is such a vivid place, let's see more of what it looks like! If you can't spring for more full-page color illustrations, put some black-and-white line drawings in the text.
• Grampa in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson. Since it turns one hundred this year, and I needed some information from it for something coming up, I thought I'd also reread another Thompson book. I've always said that the basic stories of both Kabumpo and Grampa are the same, and reading them back to back just cemented that for me. These are archtypical Thompson, with a prince going out into Oz to save the kingdom and find a wife, only to find that their future bride was already traveling with them under an enchantment. That doesn't make Grampa any less fun, as it also has unusual locations and characters. Grampa didn't strike me as being quite as strong as Kabumpo, but it was still a fun read.
• Visitors from Oz by Martin Gardner. Did I mention my busy summer coming up? I wanted to reread this for another project that's coming up. For a book about Dorothy traveling back to modern-day America, she takes an awfully long time to get there. And when Gardner takes unnecessary side plots, he doesn't mess around! On their way to the remote part of Oz where they can visit America, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Sawhorse end up visiting the old Greek gods of Olympus and Wonderland! But after these diversions, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman finally make it to modern-day New York to help a movie mogul publicize his upcoming Oz movie. It goes about as well as you'd expect, with the tabloid press accusing them of being actors (and the Tin Woodman a robot), a rival studio sending mobsters to go after them, you know, the usual sort of thing. It is pretty clover, though, and Dorothy has much to contemplate about how much America has changed since she last lived there. This being Gardner, mathematics is used in a clever way to travel between Oz and New York. I think Gardner was much more successful writing articles and essays about Oz, but an a one-time experiment, this is a fun one.
• Master Cornhill by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. My reread of the works of Eloise Jarvis Mcraw has hit the '70s, and this is one of my favorites. Michael Cornhill is eleven and finds himself on his own in London during the Plague and must figure out how to survive. He taken under the wing of Tom Godfrey, a balladeer, but his friend Susanna keeps reminding him that it's not the only, or best, way to make ones lot in life. Then the Great Fire of London strikes, and everyone does all that they can to survive. McGraw had written historicals about ancient Egypt and the Old West, but this is her first one about Great Britian, and it's clear she's done her research. The little details and Michael's reactions feel so genuine and give a real sense of what seventeenth century London must have been like.
• One new book I recently read seems to be the second of a series of non-Oz books by L. Frank Baum, after The Maid of Arran. The new reprint edition of The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors makes one of Baum's rarest books available again. This is for Baum completists only, as it's exactly what the title says. It's an interesting time capsule of the early days of department stores and how they attracted customers. Baum compiled many clever ways for stores to display their wares and draw people in. Had his fiction writing career not taken off the way it did, this kind of work may have supported Baum instead. Since I've now read some new Baum reprints, I'm now adding Baum's non-Oz books into my regular readings, but most of them I already have and they'll be rereadings.