Generals and viziers always seem so unhappy unless they got a war

It's been unseasonably warm today. I'm glad of that, even if I AM spending pretty much the entire day inside.

Yesterday (or sometime this past week, anyway; I wasn't able to check my mail until yesterday), I received the 2005 Oziana, the annual short fiction collection from the International Wizard of Oz Club. I don't believe the issue is for sale yet, but it should be soon. The first story, "Jinjur's Journal," tells about how the former conqueror of the Emerald City settles into rural married life, and unwittingly makes enemies of her new neighbors. I think the author does a good job reflecting Jinjur's personality. She consistently refers to her husband as "Mr. Popp," and never by his first name. It took me a while to realize the pun here, but my knowledge of minor Oz characters immediately made me think of a different Mr. Popp, the corkscrew lawyer from Utensia in The Emerald City of Oz. I don't think the two Popps are related. {g} The second story is in verse, and tells of the Patchwork Girl's search for a pet. But the longest story in the volume, concerning an invasion by the deposed King of the Quadlings, is by some upstart newcomer named Nathan. Okay, enough with the corniness; it's MY story, and the first one I've ever had published, too. It's cool to see something I wrote in a professional publication (even a non-profit one), complete with illustrations. The last thing in the volume is a game that's said to "work the same way as the puzzles called 'sudoku' or 'number place,' except that they use nine Oz characters or letters instead of nine numerals." Several people on my friends list have mentioned doing sudoku puzzles, and I never had any idea what they were talking about. I guess now I will. {g}

Happy belated birthday to zaph, onib, and skylark_king. I really should start paying more attention to when people's birthdays are coming up.

I've almost finished reading Lies Across America (all I have left are the appendices), so I should have some comments on it soon.

On this site in 2006 nothing happened

I have now finished reading James W. Loewen's Lies Across America, which was sort of a follow-up to his earlier Lies My Teacher Told Me. I didn't like it as much as Teacher, but it was still very interesting. A lot of the main ideas were pretty similar, telling how historic monuments, like history textbooks, contain omissions, bigotry (both overt and covert), and sometimes outright fabrications. Some of the same myths, like the one about people in Columbus' time thinking the world was flat, were covered in both books, although America included some extra details. Incidentally, a similar biographer-created myth concerns George Washington praying at Valley Forge, a place I've been several times in my life. I don't remember the actual chapel that memorializes this apocryphal event, though. Maybe I should go there sometime, even though I remember being kind of bored by the place as a kid. Really, the whole book makes me want to check out more historical monuments and markers.

An interesting point brought up in the book is that a monument reflects two different times: the one in which the event being commemorated actually happened, and the one in which the monument itself was introduced. Loewen also talks about how some sites leave out important details, like how the marker describing the Beech Island Agricultural Club in South Carolina glosses over the fact that the main purpose of the club was to catch runaway slaves. Then there are markers that use passive voice to avoid placing the blame for an event, like the one in Utah that simply says, "Alexander Fancher was attacked while en route to California," without mentioning that the attack was led by the Mormons. Another favorite topic of Loewen's is racism. He talks about the positively slanted memorials to Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest found throughout the South, and twice mentions monuments showing Native Americans in stereotypical (and historically inaccurate) clothes. A statue near Lake Champlain and a bas relief in Manhattan both show a fully clothed European and a scantily clad Indian. As Loewen points out when describing the Manhattan monument, "If the transaction happened in August, the Dutchman is sweating; if in February, the Native is freezing."

A few particularly interesting sites covered in the book included:

• The stone slab in Almo, Idaho commemorating a massacre that most likely never actually happened. The descriptions of the event involved Indians circling wagons, something that actually originated with Buffalo Bill Cody. In Loewen's words, "Indians had to circle because they were riding in a circus ring!"
  
• The statue of John H. Morgan in front of the Fayette County Courthouse in Kentucky. His horse, Bess, was actually a mare, but was carved as a stallion, complete with the corresponding naughty bits. (colleenanne, if you're reading this, were you aware of this?)
  
• Abraham Lincoln's "birthplace," a log cabin that was actually built thirty years after Lincoln died. The fabricated cabin was also moved from place to place, and even got mixed up with another one that was said to be the birthplace of Jefferson Davis.
  
• James Buchanan's house in Lancaster, where the guides tell practically nothing about Buchanan's personal or political life. I mention this mainly because Loewen subscribes to the theory that James Buchanan was gay. I hadn't heard of this before, and I don't know whether the theory is common among historians. Loewen does present some interesting evidence for it, though.
  

And now, two tangents inspired by the book:

1. On p. 21, Loewen says, "Sites are also depicted favorably, I'm sure, when their bias matches my own--and my biases can be inferred from the list of heroes to whose memory this book is dedicated." I like that Loewen admits to being biased, which many people seem reluctant to do. But we're all somewhat biased simply due to the fact that we're all humans with opinions and emotions, right? I suppose the word "bias" has a negative connotation to it, but still. I think it's better to admit that you have certain biases than to, say, claim that your show is the "No-Spin Zone." :P

2. When discussing a Downieville, California mermorial to a woman named Juanita, Loewen writes that "the women's movement of the 1970s correctly taught our society that women have been disadvantaged in politics, most occupations, and many different parts of our culture. The lack of a men's movement has kept us from seeing that men have been disadvantaged in other areas of our culture." He's right in a way, although I'm not sure that a "men's movement" would be the best way to deal with this. The thing is, the dictionary definition of "feminism" defines it as: "Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes." In other words, dictionary-accurate feminism is in favor of both women AND men. While traditional sexism holds that men are superior, it's also AGAINST men in many ways. For instance, subscribers to "traditional gender roles" would probably be against stay-at-home dads, or men working at "women's jobs." My general belief is that (barring obvious physical impossibilities), women can do anything men can do, AND vice versa. But there are still so many people around today who seem to think that, if old-fashioned gender roles aren't maintained, women will take over the world and force men into slavery.