The Baum and Bugle Corps

[vovat]

Today is my mom's birthday. It's also Terry Pratchett's birthday, and I believe Saddam Hussein's as well.

Yesterday, I checked my mail, and found that I had received my federal income tax refund, a mix CD from revme, and the latest issue of The Baum Bugle, the International Wizard of Oz Club's journal. Much of the issue was made up of tributes to the late Fred Meyer, who served as the Club's secretary for years. He was a charter member when the Club started in 1957. I first learned about the Oz Club in a book I had called Amazing Days, which identified a holiday or celebration for every day of the year. The book included both L. Frank's Baum's birthday (15 May) and Ozma's birthday (21 August), and I believe it was under Baum's birthday that they mentioned the Club, with Fred as secretary. I was kind of surprised to find that, when I finally joined the Club years later, Fred still held that position. I remember communicating with him on some of the quizzes that I wrote for the Munchkin Convention, as well as a few other Oz-related matters. He also ran the Oz Story Circle. The one article on Fred, written by Michael Patrick Hearn, mentions how he never got caught up in the Club's warring factions. Why a non-profit organization based on a series of children's books would even HAVE such factions is beyond me, but I guess that's the nature of organizations of people.

The Bugle issue also includes two reviews of Philip Lewin's The Witch Queen of Oz, one largely positive and one generally negative. That's a book I would like to read at some point, despite the one negative review (which mostly concentrates on the illustrations anyway). It's a small-press publication, but I know Books of Wonder distributes it. I wonder if they would have any copies at their Manhattan store. Not that I have plans to go to Manhattan anytime soon, but getting it there at some point would be preferable to paying the shipping fees.

One other thing worth mentioning about the Bugle is that it finally includes the second part of Kenneth Shepherd's "Imperial Oz" essay. The first part ran in the first Bugle I ever received, back in 1993. Better late than never for the second part, I guess. The kind of research that treats Oz as if it's a real place is my favorite kind, and something that hadn't really been appearing in the Bugle enough as of late.

Maybe I should share this kind of stuff with the Regalia list, where someone might actually care, rather than here, where I'll bet no one does. That reminds me that I should finish re-reading The Wicked Witch of Oz soon, so I can make some comments about it there.

The English Teacher You are 95% Verbose! Although you get bonus points just for finishing.

Okay, obviously you know a little too much about the English langauge. Do you wear a sweater vest, bemoan high school students' inability to write, and just generally act like a egotistical prick? If you said yes to one of the three, you might be an English teacher. In which case, it was unfair of you to take this test. (If you aren't an English teacher, maybe you should stop reading the thesaurus for sport.)

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 51% on Verbosity

Link: The Adjective Thesaurus Test written by mahte on Ok Cupid

I seem to be less adept at coming up with ideas for entries than I used to be. I usually do better when I have a jumping-off place than when I'm forced to work from scratch, and there haven't been all that many good things to jump off from as of late. (Okay, I guess I'm never FORCED to write anything, but I feel like I have somewhat of an obligation to post to this journal.)

Comments

[shadarko.livejournal.com]

How was part one of Imperial Oz? 93 was one of the 2 years the club was really bad at sending me my Bugles. Either they never came or they were missing pages or stapled upside down. I read part two a few days ago when the bugle came (its for winter 04 right) but havent gotten a chance to read anythng else besides the book reviews, I want to get the witch queen of oz too, I'm interested in their reasoning for why witches can be washed out. But I haven't seen my copy since I did my taxes, it got put in the file with paper work and have been lost since. then.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Part 1 was all about Ozma's dealings with the Nome Kingdom, and I thought it was interesting. It's sort of like David Hulan's "Are You a Good Ruler or a Bad Ruler?", in that it takes a somewhat negative look at Ozma's administration, while actually going by what it says in the books themselves. If you're interested, I might be able to send you a photocopy of the article. (It depends on whether I can hunt up my copy. {g})

[k1cup.livejournal.com]

On a related note, I've been trying to read Wicked, but for the life of me, I can't seem to get into it. I never saw the musical. The funny thing is that I bought the book for my mother-in-law, who is a retired children's librarian. She couldn't even get into it which is why it's on loan to me now.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I've read Wicked, but it took me a while to get through the whole thing. It really did drag in spots, although there were some good parts, too. I think it got a little better towards the end. It really doesn't have much to do with the original Oz books; it's based more on the MGM film, with a few elements from the books thrown in.

I haven't seen the musical either, but I understand it's really successful. I also understand that they made the story a lot lighter for the musical, giving it a happy ending and everything. I guess that's pretty typical for musicals, though.

[k1cup.livejournal.com]

I've never read "The Wizard of Oz". All I know about it aside from the movie was that it was a metaphor for, feel free to fill in the blanks, the Depression era affecting specifically farmers??? Which I was totally amazed at at the time.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

You're probably thinking of the "parable on populism" interpretation, which was thought up by a teacher named Henry Littlefield, and later accepted as fact by other literary over-interpreters. It's pretty much been conclusively proven that it isn't actually what Baum had in mind when writing the book, though.

The book was published in 1900, so it couldn't very well deal with the Great Depression. I believe the economy WAS in a recession at that point, but I could be wrong. Economic history isn't exactly my strong point.

[revme.livejournal.com]

Hooray! Hope you dig the discs!