] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, JANUARY 1 - 3, 1999 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] Hi, and Happy New Year! I apologize for the squalidness of today's Digest, but there is a bug in my Digest-creating program so that it is refusing to generate any Digests for 1999! So here is your posts in "raw" form. I'm working on the bug, and praying that it isn't a Y2K (or rather Y1.999K) problem... :) -- Dave ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 15:54:58 -0500 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: GLINDA OF OZ and much more Sender: "J. L. Bell" To: "Dave L. Hardenbrook" Content-Disposition: inline Steve Teller wrote of his new purchase: <> One of the benefits of having a common first name! [Poor Atticus.] Scott Hutchins wrote: <> Unfortunately for this derivation, the $ symbol predates the founding of the U.S. About PETER PAN, Ruth Berman wrote: <> I agree that Peter's defiant cry resonates with kids. His situation is similar to that of kids in Oz: few responsibilities but lots of autonomy. For the contrast with Oz, I was thinking of the final scene in PETER PAN (which may also have been in Barrie's play), in which Wendy is grown up, responding with some regret and some superiority as Peter urges her to return. Those seem to be exclusively adult feelings, and there's no corresponding scene in the Oz series. (Dorothy's temporary aging in LOST KING and Speedy's in YELLOW KNIGHT seem to be totally physical, not touching on the psychological.) David Hulan wrote: <> My guide isn't Sagan; it's Baum himself. As I've said in many ways, I think a basic appeal of his fairy adventures is that they take place in the same reality his readers know. There are many indications in Baum's books that Oz is on his readers' Earth. I agree there are also many implications that it's not, mostly journeys which would be impossible according to what we've learned about our planet. Baum says over and over, however, that there are aspects of the world that we mortals can't perceive and don't know about. Without being able to state the physical limits of this Earth as Baum depicts it, we can't say anything is impossible on it. That's indeed a non-falsifiable system, but it's the system Baum left us. (Any fairyland, including an extra-dimensional Oz, is a non-falsifiable system if we don't want to let Tinkerbell die.) As I see it, Baum's books present me with choices. I could say, "By golly, I know so much about this universe that I can disregard what Baum says about its contents and mysteries and decide Oz is somewhere else." I could even go on to say, "Baum didn't understand something fundamental about Oz, but I understand it better than he did." Or I can make an analogy to Sagan's dictum that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and say, "In order to decide that--contrary to a basic tenet of the books--Oz is in a different reality, I must see Baum making a clear statement to that effect, or at least undercutting his 'invisible forces' explanation of whatever may seem impossible." Since I see no such statement, I'll live with the horror of admitting I don't completely understand Earth as Baum depicts it. Science, as much as history, involves recognizing the limits of certainty and living with the unknown beyond them. Sagan was both a leading skeptic about UFO tales and a leading proponent of the existence of extraterrestrial life--in forms he reminded us we wouldn't necessarily understand. Being open to new discoveries is how Baum asks readers to approach his stories. For that reason, I don't see my view of Oz's placement as antithetical to the principles of science or history [or, it seems, to SALLY FORTH]. That doesn't mean there aren't equally legitimate ways of approaching the question of Oz's locale. One can decide the land's most important quality is not that it's part of the young readers' world, but that it's part of an internally consistent reality with connections to our world. One can decide that we need to reconcile all of Thompson's statements with Baum's; that requirement strains even my tolerance for ambiguity [though I don't dismiss her books as Gehan Cooray does]. I see no statement by Baum forcing us to adopt those other approaches, however, and several statements excusing us from that fate. David Hulan wrote: <> Most clearly, in TIN WOODMAN Dorothy is "tired of her embroidery" when she decides to look in the Magic Picture for her friends. She's comfortable enough with needle and thread to carry them on her adventure in PATCHWORK GIRL. Jellia is sewing when Ozma is found missing in LOST PRINCESS. And in MAGIC and GLINDA, Glinda oversees her ladies in spinning, weaving, and embroidery. David Godwin wrote: <> I see two ways this paradox may have come about: 1) Analogous to Ozga on the rose bush in TIK-TOK, Ozma was a fairy in an infant state, without full consciousness or power, when Lurline gave her to Pastoria. 2) Ozma took (voluntarily or not) the form of a human baby, as Baum shows fairies taking human form in ENCHANTED ISLAND OF YEW and QUEEN ZIXI. While those fairies took adult shapes and remained aware of their fairy powers, Ozma as infant didn't. LOST PRINCESS and TIN WOODMAN tell us fairies can be enchanted by powerful magicians when caught unaware. If baby Ozma was as helpless as other babies, she could thus have been kidnapped and transformed. Why would Lurline have endangered her fairy follower and her favored land by doing either of those things? Having Pastoria adopt and raise Ozma would confer royal authority on a fairy ruler--forestalling accusations of a coup. And having Ozma grow up as an Ozian would give her more understanding and sympathy for her subjects. It's also fairly easy to see in Ozma an analogy to the Christ legend: an immortal being made/making himself human to benefit humans. Turning to GLINDA, Robin Olderman wrote: <> Ozma sends herself into that situation, it seems clear. Glinda knows the princess is "the only one in all the land that Glinda bowed to" [14]--indeed, the sorceress placed Ozma in that high position. Therefore, Glinda has only a few options: a) advise Ozma as best she can and create a contingency plan, as she does. b) address the problem at a distance, which she did with the Oogaboo army (a "solution" Ozma eventually undid). c) go with Ozma to help--as if Glinda would leave her castle, her ladies, and her Magic Book to spend time in the jungle when it wasn't absolutely necessary! Turning to a broader question, what do you mean by "Glinda's primary purpose"? Thinking of that either as Glinda's self-appointed mission in life, as a job she's been given by some higher power [Lurline?], or as Baum's view of her role in Oz, I can't help but think of such a formulation as limiting. I see Glinda as a full-bodied personality with various motivations, occasionally pointing in different directions if not opposite ones. One of those motivations is indeed the preservation of order in Oz, as embodied by Ozma on the throne. But another seems to be to know more than anybody else. And having peace in Oz also gives Glinda more uninterrupted time to continue absorbing knowledge, so who can tell which motive is stronger? I find it interesting that Glinda has forgotten about the alarm bell when she first hears it [151]. Ozma wouldn't have been so complacent had their places been reversed, I suspect. But then Glinda would never have gone to Flathead Mountain. David Hulan wrote: <> I think this lady is, as the words below the art say, "Glinda of Oz." But, like the picture labeled "Princess Dorothy" on page 10, I bet Neill recycled a drawing from an earlier project. I had trouble identifying the female figure on page 33 because of the drawing's mismatched scales and because I had to recognize that, as you point out, Ozma doesn't wear poppies in her hair through most of GLINDA. She seems to do so at the start [13], and definitely does so at the end [280], so perhaps she reserves poppies for the Emerald City, where she's sure to have a supply. She may wear poppies in the drawing on page 116; its framing is unlike other full-page art in this book, so it may have been drawn at a different time. Baum seems to differentiate Ozma's "silver wand--tipped at one end with a great sparkling emerald" [55] from the non-magical O-Z scepter he's mentioned in earlier books. Neill seems to draw them alternately, however. Ruth Berman wrote: <> Good eye. Ruth Berman wrote: <> I think the GLINDA portrayal of war is more in tune with the Wilsonian attitude *before* 1917: that war was a foolish drain on nations instigated by ambitious leaders, but that a third party stepping in (as Ozma does) can be swept up into the conflict. If GLINDA had closely reflected American attitudes during late 1917 and 1918, one side of the war would clearly be wrong and Ozma would be justified in allying with the other. A number of phrases or images hint that Baum wrote MAGIC and GLINDA around the same time. Flathead Mountain, with its saucer-shaped living area on top, is much like Mount Munch as Baum describes it in MAGIC (though not in TIN WOODMAN). Both MAGIC and GLINDA have a "Magic Isle" [85]. In addition, there are some parallels with LOST PRINCESS: Ozma held prisoner, a large search party going after her, a room that moves to enclose people (Ugu's domed chamber and Coo-ee-oh's island), a magician turned into a bird and loving it. However, in LOST PRINCESS Baum wrote about (and Neill pictured) Glinda's swan chariot, while in GLINDA Baum twice refers to her stork chariot [153]. (Near this reference Neill draws a sort of stork [149].) On the other hand, both GLINDA and TIN WOODMAN show us an invisible wall, a Yookoohoo, and a monkey wearing a lace apron [208]. One big shift between those books is the value GLINDA places on Nick Chopper's heart, calling it "not of much account" [158]. If we accept that GLINDA wasn't the last manuscript Baum drafted, at some point he made a choice about which would be the last Oz book he presented to the world. It strikes me that MAGIC is a better culmination of his series: Ruggedo brought to heal at last, everyone gathered at Ozma's palace for a party. But the theme of GLINDA (discussed below) seems stronger. What do others think? Ruth Berman wrote of: <> These fine double-page chapter openers were a benefit of Reilly & Lee having the complete manuscript of GLINDA well before publication. The printers had time to create galleys of text they knew was final, measure how much space each chapter's text took up, and assign space for illustrations so each chapter ended on a right-hand page. As a result, some chapters have more art than others: chapter 8 has six illustrations on 14 pages, chapter 9 two on 12 pages. [I recall Neill and the book designers playing similar games with later books like SPEEDY and JACK PUMPKINHEAD. I wonder if those manuscripts also came in unusually early.] Some of Neill's drawings, especially on double-page spreads, strike me as having graphite or crayon elements as well as ink lines. The picture of Coo-ee-oh as a swan on pp. 128-9 is especially notable in this way. One book-mechanics element I can't figure out is why the top line on certain pages [e.g., 91, 114, 178, 222, 267] is unnecessarily spread out. David Hulan wrote: <> From Glinda's point of view, Button-Bright was largely unaffected by criticism from her and the Glass Cat, so she might realize another lesson would be a waste of words. More importantly, it appears that in Oz trying to eat a person (especially a favorite of Princess Ozma) removes you from the benefits of polite society, such as being protected from mischievous boys. It seems to be acceptable for animals, even "civilized" beasts like the Cowardly Lion, to eat other animals as long as they don't talk about it. Those who prey on humans, however, can without regret suffer plunges into canyons, beheadings [WIZARD], stakes through their chests [MAGIC], and so on. David Hulan wrote: <> Not to mention a telescoping bridge and torpedo boats! Notably, Baum has all these effects created by one powerful youthful woman (Coo-ee-oh), using magic taught by three others (the Adepts)--no male members of this group. Baum also says Coo-ee-oh had "a rare genius for mechanics" [264], a trait stereotypically assigned to men. Which brings us to a mystery of the Skeezers' dome. Lady Aurex states, "the three Adepts...built for us this wonderful dome of glass" [112], but also, "The dome was built so that the island could disappear" [123]. Yet Aujah and the other Adepts have only cursory knowledge of the mechanism that raised and lowered the island [264]. Perhaps they built the dome to let the Skeezers hide from the elements, and Coo-ee-oh added the sub-sub-submerging part. Or perhaps Coo-ee-oh tricked the Adepts into building the glass dome in a way that fit her secret plan. After my drive along the Erie Canal this summer, I noted how Baum may have derived the idea for raising and lowering the lake from growing up near the canal in Chittenango. The description of launching the submarine boats on page 259 is even more similar to how canal locks work. David Hulan wrote: <> Yet another sign of how Coo-ee-oh's despotic rule has made most Skeezers unable to act for themselves--even when left alone in the boat, they don't even try swimming or paddling the boat with their arms [183]. Yet another portrayal of citizens--even soldiers--not wanting their leaders' war. And yet more phallic symbols rendered impotent when their female creator vanishes [leaving them in the hands of men]. Miscellaneous GLINDA comments: I've long disliked the conveniently dropped handkerchief on page 39. Baum gave both Glinda and the Flatheads alarm bells, and Neill depicts them in three different chapter-openers [70, 85, 149]. If Baum had had more time to revise the manuscript, he might have made one of those a different sort of noise-maker, so as not to repeat himself. Twice Baum ends chapters with cliff-hangers, a technique he didn't always employ: 83, 189. In the latter, Ervic literally poses the question, "What next?" Useful key to personalities on page 114: "This story filled Ozma's heart with sorrow and Dorothy's heart with indignation." On page 151 Baum has Glinda asking a question of some oracle he calls "the Record"; it replies "No." This may be the Great Book of Records, but he refers to that on this page spread as "the Great Book," not "the Record," and I don't recall any other example of it responding to a reader's question like the Magic Picture. We know Glinda prefers to keep her magic room secret [19]. Therefore, I conclude that Baum the historian never had a clear picture of how Glinda learned about the limit on Ozma's power. Page-164-renders-Tik-Tok's-speech-in-an-unusual-style. The Tin Woodman's right hand has an odd grip on his ax in the drawing on page 193. I believe Neill was right-handed. Artists often have trouble drawing the hand they use to draw; it's easier to pose the other one. Looking at Coo-ee-oh as a swan, Trot says, "It doesn't seem like much of a punishment. The Flathead Su-dic ought to have made her a toad." [194] Too bad Neill didn't show us the Frogman's expression on hearing that. The Wizard is dubious that Glinda has brought enough rope for him to climb down [255, with apologies to Dorothy], yet on the next page he "discovered that the rope was long enough to reach from the top of the Dome to the ground when doubled." Glinda, the Adepts, and/or Ervic must have helped him improvise a pulley from the top of the Dome, though Baum says nothing about that. The Adepts warn against extending the Skeezers' bridge before raising their island, yet the party takes no precautions before they "experiment" with Coo-ee-oh's name [268]. Their chance of making that mistake was 50%, both before and after "Coo" sent out all boats. (Incidentally, now that David Hulan has noted the seemingly prescient use of "dictator" on Flathead Mountain, I'll point out how "Coo-ee-oh" echoes the title of that most powerful modern ruler, the CEO.) I was struck by how many different types of magic GLINDA portrays, and how clearly it shows or states that each is limited. In chapter 1 the Great Book of Records's shortcomings are as evident as its power. On the way north Ozma tells Dorothy, "I am not as powerful as Glinda the Sorceress. . . . Even the little Wizard can do some things I am unable to accomplish, while I can accomplish things unknown to the Wizard" [58]. Glinda can't raise an island [152], though with recipe 1163 she can "make inanimate objects move at my command" [232]. The golden pig "couldn't do any witchcraft [because] a witch has to use her fingers" [80]. Baum even introduces three new types of magic-workers: a Krumbic Witch [103], Adepts [112], and a Yookoohoo [206--if we assume he drafted this part of GLINDA before TIN WOODMAN]. All of these magic-workers can overcome part of the others' powers, but not all. Where do these limitations leave us, or lead us? Glinda explains: "Ozma's magic is fairy magic, while you are a Wizard and I am a Sorceress. In this way the three of us have a great variety of magic to work with" [239]. The Adepts add yet more power--and, it seems, another type of power--as they help to lower Skeezer Lake and figure out Coo-ee-oh's spells. (Their arrival is possible only because of Reera's magic, of course.) But even a range of magic isn't a complete solution. As early as the giant spiders, Baum shows us that Dorothy's inspiration and Ozma's magic are both necessary for escape [43]. Ozma even jokes, "you have at least one magical art, Dorothy: you know the trick of winning all hearts." (Like fairy powers, Dorothy's charm is a natural quality, not acquired: "I am sure I don't know *how* I do it," she replies [62-3].) Magicians' occasional dependence on intelligent ordinary people is also a big theme in Ervic's subplot. Understandably, Baum shows children as crucial participants in solving the book's problems--Glinda can't do it all alone, even in her own book, as Robin Olderman noted. Dorothy finds Coo-ee-oh's Gaulau and sees her name as a likely key to using it. Her value is underscored when Baum shows the Wizard as skeptical at first [265-7]. The need to be open for contributions from all quarters is most clear in Scraps's suggestion to lower the lake. Baum shows the Adepts convinced that "If the Great Sorceress and the famous Wizard and the three talented Adepts at Magic [note how he piles on adjectives] were unable as yet to solve the important problem of the sunken isle, there was little chance for a patched girl stuffed with cotton to succeed" [247]. It's up to Trot and Betsy--two kids--to recognize the value of the Patchwork Girl's idea. Their enthusiasm convinces Glinda to listen. (But we shouldn't forget that the first time Scraps asked, "Why not pump the water out of the lake?"--back on page 163--Glinda snapped, "Do be sensible!") All that leads to a lesson that has floated through most of Baum's Oz books since WIZARD, but never more prominently than in GLINDA: "None of us is as smart as all of us." David Hulan wrote: <> The commercial market for children's fiction demands much shorter short stories than the small set of Oz magazines. OZ-STORY and OZIANA will publish tales 5,000+ words long, while most large-circulation children's magazines top out at 1,000-1,500. That allows very little character development, scene-setting, or plot twisting, alas. I indeed find my Oz short stories involve bumping established characters (usually in the Emerald City) against each other in new ways, with few or no new characters. My novels and novel plans introduce more people and places, largely because that form allows more exploration of them. Scott Hutchins asked: <> Try the reference department at a library, or the careers office at your college. Dave Hardenbrook wrote: <> The last Congress passed two important copyright laws. One, discussed at length on this mailing list, involved terms of copyright. The other dealt mostly with copyright in electronic formats. I don't know as much about the latter law, but my impression is that it gives copyright holders more authority to crack down on people who appropriate images, scripts, and other copyrighted material and say, "It's the Web; it's not really publication; so copyright doesn't apply." I don't think the new law cut back harshly on fair use as it had existed for print media, which allowed some leeway for fan fiction (as long as credit was given, no money sought, and no copyright proprietors yelling) and much more for parody. Do you have RED DWARF IN OZ posted on your Web page? If so, you may need more copyright acknowledgment. But keep your eyes open for experts on this law. Late last night on my screen I saw letters appear: <> Spam, spam, spam. J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ================= From: Tyler Jones To: "Dave Hardenbrook (E-mail)" Subject: Oz Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 15:39:39 -0700 Thoughts on _Glinda_: Ozma's encounter with Queen Coo-Ee-Oh gives an insight into Ozma's sovereignty. Really, by what right does she rule the entire area contained in the Deadly Desert? Her birth into an existing royal line may give her legitimate authority over much of the central area, but what of the outlying areas? They never swore allegiance to Ozma. In fact, many of them have never even heard of the Land of Oz (although the Su-Dic apparantly knows all about it). Ozma claims that her authority comes from Lurline. Of course, all Lurline did was to fly over the land and declare that it was hers. I can see it now. A gigantic spaceship lands outside of Washington, DC. Alien: "Sorry, humans, but 10,000 years ago, my ancestor the great Nagorjarogo flew by and declared this planet for himself and his descendants. He never told anyone and never returned, but it's mine, so all of you are now my obedient subjects". However, I say join the crowd. I hereby declare myself Emperor of all Africa. :-) Tyler Jones ================= X-Authentication-Warning: mail.minn.net: Host dialup-pm1-2.minn.net [208.16.89.12] claimed to be [208.16.89.158] Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 20:08:56 -0600 To: DaveH47@mindspring.com From: d.godwin@minn.net (David Frank Godwin) Subject: Oz chimneys Chimneys in Oz: Since it never gets very cold in Oz (except for local anomalies such as Icetown), why does every house have two chimneys? a. For purely decorative purposes. b. One for cooking, one for incineration. c. They aren't chimneys, they're ears. d. It really gets as cold as Minnesota in Oz, but all of the adventures we're told about take place in spring and summer. e. They aren't chimneys, they're ham radio antennae. f. To provide ingress and egress for Santa Claus. g. To symbolize the duality of the universe. h. Because Neill drew them that way. - David G. ================= X-Authentication-Warning: mail.minn.net: Host dialup-pm2-26.minn.net [208.16.89.66] claimed to be [208.16.89.158] Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 20:53:41 -0600 To: DaveH47@mindspring.com From: d.godwin@minn.net (David Frank Godwin) Subject: Copyrights and Oz Dave H. writes: >I am very distressed... I have just heard on another forum that >under the new copyright laws, all fan-fiction is *ILLEGAL* and >*not* considered to be "Fair Use"! Is this true?? Could I get clapped >in irons for _Red Dwarf in Oz_ or any other of the Oz-crossovers >I've contemplated like _Rumpole in Oz_??!! The short answer is "yes." And it isn't just the new laws; it's always been that way. I recall that Isaac Asimov once got really hot under the collar because someone wanted to use his Foundation series as the basis for a role-playing game among friends. He emphatically denied permission for them to misuse his "intellectual property" in this fashion. Had they persisted, one may assume that FBI agents would have crashed into the poor sap's RPG party, scattered the pizza, and marched them all off to the hoosegow. The realistic answer is "no." Why? Because no one's paying attention, and countless copyright violations pass unnoticed. But if the copyright owners _do_ notice, they can get very nasty. The bigger they are, the nastier they get. Whatever you do, don't even _think_ about _Mickey Mouse in Oz._ There were a couple of women in Texas a few years ago who got the pants sued off of them for manufacturing Lardasche jeans for overweight women. On the other hand, it seems to have some importance as to whether you intended to make a profit or not. I've never known anyone to be prosecuted for a copyright violation in fan fiction. You'd probably get by with it in a newsletter, but it would be dangerous to put the same piece in _The Baum Bugle._ (OTOH, you'd probably get by with a lot more extensive quotation of copyrighted Oz works in the _Bugle_ because it would fall under the category of a review. But be careful with _Red Dwarf in Oz_.) In other words, as far as fan fiction is concerned, the law _does_ apply, but it's seldom enforced. It's just one step more sinful than copying a videotape for your private collection. "This posting does not constitute valid legal advice and should not be used as a defense in a court of law. I am not an attorney." - David G. ================= X-Authentication-Warning: mail.minn.net: Host dialup-pm6-24.minn.net [208.16.89.184] claimed to be [208.16.89.158] Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 21:15:29 -0600 To: DaveH47@mindspring.com From: d.godwin@minn.net (David Frank Godwin) Subject: Mindless blurbs in Oz Dave - I am fairly ignorant about some things (i.e., computer things), but I assume that all this super-annoying trash about parasites and exciting lives and Lily Tomlin and so on is an ineradicable part and parcel of all messages sent via e-mail through certain servers. I know we are all poor, and no one more than I, but it bothers me enough that I would like to recommend that everyone start paying for their e-mail service or change servers or whatever it takes to rid the world of these endlessly repeated "witticisms." Is there a term for them? Must be. How about "cockroaches"? - David G. ================= X-Sender: atty242@mail.utexas.edu Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 23:06:25 -0600 To: "Dave L. Hardenbrook" From: "R. M. Atticus Gannaway" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 12-29-98 DAVID HULAN: Thanks for the suggestions on what to do in NYC; unfortunately, they arrived too late for me to read them before I left for the Big Apple. I had a great time! If anyone gets the chance, see _Rent_; I saw that musical as well as _Titanic_ (not based on the film) and _Ragtime_. As for your other suggestions, David, I did do the Met but not Natural History. I dropped by Books of Wonder, too. Unfortunately (although not surprisingly), Peter Glassman wasn't in. I did buy a few things, though. It's been a long day of traveling, so I won't bore everyone with all the details. Hope everyone had a great holiday. Happy '99. Atticus * * * "...[T]here is something else: the faith of those despised and endangered that they are not merely the sum of damages done to them." Visit my webpage at http://members.aol.com/atty993 ================= From: Tyler Jones To: "Dave Hardenbrook (E-mail)" Subject: Oz Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 11:15:16 -0700 My web page: This has been down for a while due to some concern over some reviews. I have gone over them with a fine-toothed comb, and I believe that there are no reviews on my page that could be construed as libelous or contain misinformation. The reviews still go for the throat, but they are now no more than honest opinions of the works in question. http://tyler1@apprentice.com More thoughts on _Glinda_: Another interesting tidbit in this story is a discussion between Dorothy and Ozma about the nature of magic. Ozma mentions that if everybody could do everything, the quality of life would decline. I'm writing this from the office, so I'm relying on memory. Perhaps somebody else could comment more thoroughly. Also, Ozma says that no one person can perform all types of magic at the highest ability. In a way, Baum was foreshadowing RPTs Oz, where this became a realiy. Ozma had so much power at the end of RPT's run, that she could indeed do just about everything with little or no effort. I always liked the idea of an underwater glass city (assuming the dome is fairly strong). At night, when the lights went on, it must have sparkled in great beauty. Upon remembering that the Flatheads were allocated one can of brains each, some questions came to mind (no pun intended). 1. If a child is born, where do it's brains come from? 2. Death and/or destruction could still happen. Would the deceased's can of brains be rendered unto Ceaser? (in this case the Su-Dic). Perhaps the population was relatively constant. With a population of 100 in an isolated area with no danger, the death rate (and birth rate) would be exceedingly low, so that there would always be about 100 people anyway. 3. What was life like for the Flatheads who had their cans of brains taken away from them? Before, when nobpy had brains, they probably just milled around, but now they would be living in a society where everybody else had a leg (or a brain) up on them. In a way, the cans of brains echo a Dilbert Comic Strip, wherein Dogbert's consultants were so intelligent, they had to have their excess brains strapped to their torsos. Okay, it was actually liver, but how many PHB's would know the difference? :-) Tyler Jones ================= From: LionCoward@aol.com Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1999 14:39:10 EST To: CBa5838178@aol.com, daveh47@MINDSPRING.COM Subject: Re: Classic Wizzard Books, excellent condition Thanks for the note. I am more of a reader than a collector, so any unabridged edition is fine for me. Thus, I haven't a lot of info on the values of the old copies. I will pass your letter along to the Ozzy Digest. I suspect that someone there can advise you better than I can. In a message dated 1/1/99 12:56:58 AM, CBa5838178@aol.com wrote: <> ================= X-Authentication-Warning: mail.minn.net: Host dialup-pm3-21.minn.net [208.16.89.91] claimed to be [208.16.89.91] Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1999 16:49:31 -0600 To: DaveH47@mindspring.com From: d.godwin@minn.net (David Frank Godwin) Subject: Oz I recently saw a video of _Fairy Tale: A True Story_. The first thing that occurred to me was that the younger of the two girls would make a good Trot. Only later did it dawn on me that the character she was playing was named Frances Griffiths. I had a nice theory going about LFB's sources, until I realized that _The Sea Fairies_ (featuring Mayre Griffiths) was published in 1911, six years _before_ the business with the _Cottingley_ fairies in which the real Frances Griffiths was involved. LFB was, of course, a member of the Theosophical Society, which was heavily involved with the Cottingley affair. Hauntingly strange. Life imitates art. - David G. ================= X-Sender: calamity@eureka.lk Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999 08:43:14 +1100 To: DaveH47@mindspring.com From: Gehan Cooray Subject: The Good Witch of Oz Anyone have a synopsis of March Laumers:" The Good Witch of Oz"? Thanks, --Gehan **************************************************************************** ******** Mummy may I go to swim Yes my Darling Daughter Hang your clothes on a hickory limb But dont go near the water. **************************************************************************** ******** ================= From: Kiex@aol.com Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1999 12:57:41 EST To: daveh47@mindspring.com Subject: Ozzy Digest, catchup notes Hello, all. I've just been away for a week--in Florida, visiting relatives, all that fun stuff. No Internet access ;-( . So that's why I've been so quiet! Playing catchup (mustarding my strength to go on...) DIGEST OF 12/23-- <> Are you claiming software engineers aren't mortal? <> Hear, hear! I could not have put it better. Well, I have to go now, but I'll finish catching up some time later... Jeremy Steadman ================= Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999 16:52:43 -0800 From: Bill Wright Reply-To: transxinc@earthlink.net Organization: Trans-X Inc. To: "Dave L. Hardenbrook" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 12-29-98 Dave L. Hardenbrook wrote: > ATTENTION ALL LEGAL EXPERTS ON THE DIGEST: > I am very distressed... I have just heard on another forum that > under the new copyright laws, all fan-fiction is *ILLEGAL* and > *not* considered to be "Fair Use"! Is this true?? Could I get clapped > in irons for _Red Dwarf in Oz_ or any other of the Oz-crossovers > I've contemplated like _Rumpole in Oz_??!! > > -- Dave > Dave,I don't think this is true in my limited opinion. That would wipe out half the internet websites. Fair use is extremely broad. As long as the Ozzy Digest is not making money and merely servering as a venue to exchanges views, etc, etc, the Fair Use Doctrine should apply. And anyway, since theere is no money to be made by sueing the Digest, no sane lawyer would take on such a quest. And if they did, all they could really do is ask us to make some changes. By the way. I haven't received a digest since the 29th. I'm guessing that none have been issued since that date. But if they have, please let me know so I can sort out why I haven't received them. Thanks, Bill in Ozlo ====================================================================== -- Dave Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@mindspring.com, http://www.mindspring.net/~daveh47/ Castles, Castles in the air Take a paper plane through the rain and you'll be floating free Through those castles growing everywhere Won't you let your mind just unwind; Go upstream toward a dream You can ride on a laugh you can glide on; Behind every cloud is a star To light your way -- The Bugaloos, "Castles In the Air" ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, JANUARY 4, 1999 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 16:03:33 -0800 From: Barbara Johnson Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 12-31-98 Tyler--- Re your comment: >>>>>"By the same token, you could argue that all "real" Oz books should only mention characters and places mentioned in the very first book. _The Land of Oz_ could be considered heretical, since Baum never mentioned Mombi, Tip, Jinjur or Ozma in the first book.>>>>> Like many authors whose works are of a "serial" nature... I'm not sure Baum had an overall plan for Oz when he started... In fact.. there may be some evidence that he is drawing on events in his life that happened after the first book was published... The author's foreward in "The Land of Oz" is especially interesting...as Baum says he is finally getting around to writing a sequel after being begged to do so by "thousands" of little kids... Maybe Baum had to sort through/digest some of his life's experiences to mine them for adventures he could "fantasize"... Does anyone know if the character Pumpkinhead is modelled after anyone Baum knew in his life time?? I spent last summer reading Baum's newspaper that he published while he was here in Aberdeen... and Pumpkinhead seems to resemble one of the young men mentioned in the social column written by Baum... Also.. the "Take over" of the Emerald City by General Jinjur and her girls also ressembles some events involving the "Girl Guard's of Aberdeen" during the "Indian scare" here in Aberdeen in 1890-91... The escape by King Scarecrow, Pumpkinhead and friends in Land of Oz also seems to ressemble the "timely escape" made by the "young gentlemen" of Aberdeen who did not wish to fight the Indians during that same Indian crisis.. Also.. does anyone know if the "Wooden Saw Horse" might be a metaphor for the "Iron Horse" steam trains of Baum's day.??? Have any literary critics made that connection?? in either Land of Oz... or other works???? ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 17:53:46 -0600 From: "R. M. Atticus Gannaway" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 12-31-98 >Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 21:14:18 GMT >From: David Hulan >Subject: Re: RPT's Oz >Cc: tnj@compuserve.com, d.godwin@minn.net > >>*I* certainly have no reason to love RPT...She killed off the GWN >>and asserted Ozma's "little girlness"... Odd innit, in the Baum >>years Ozma was a teenager and no one seemed interested in her the >>way Dan is interested in her; then RPT comes along and says, "Ozma >>is a little girl!" more persistantly than orthodox herpetologists say >>"Dinosaurs are cold-blooded reptilians and _Jurassic Park_ is full >>of hippikaloric!", and suddenly everyone and his brother seeks Ozma's >>hand in marriage! ("Dyna-Irony, Electra Woman!") So one can't really >>blame me (though people do anyway) for my ideas that Ozma is grown-up >>now, but RPT had to say otherwise to protect Ozma from the other fairy >>queens who say she must remain girlishly innocent. > >When did RPT say that Ozma was "a little girl," with the implication that >she wasn't marriageable, other than in _Kabumpo_? And when, other than in >_Jack Pumpkinhead_, did RPT say anyone wanted to marry Ozma? (As I said in >an earlier post, Pompa didn't want to marry Ozma; he thought he needed to >to save his country.) Am I forgetting something? Bear in mind that "little >girl" was commonly used a generation or so before my time - meaning a >couple or three before yours, of course, since you're younger than my >daughter - for women up into their thirties in some contexts. My mother, >for instance, frequently referred to people as "little girls" who were >married and had kids. And my mother was about 20 years younger than RPT. >Baum himself refers to Ozma as a "little girl" in _Glinda_, and when >Dorothy first sees Ozma in _Ozma_ she thinks that Ozma is no bigger or >older than herself. > >I feel as if I have to come to RPT's defense; I read her books interspersed >with Baum's when I first encountered Oz, and my Visualization of the Ozmic >All was more or less equally influenced by both authors. If I'd read the >books in order I might feel differently, but a rough order of my early Oz >reading was _Wizard_, _Wishing Horse_, _Lost Princess_, _Lucky Bucky_, >_Magic_, _Kabumpo_, _Speedy_, _Tin Woodman_, _Silver Princess_, >_Ozoplaning_...I know those were the first few; after that I was mostly >reading borrowed books, and can't remember the order. I never had a >distinctive feeling for a "Baumian" Oz that Thompson made changes to, >though as an adult I can certainly perceive differences. While the average >quality of Baum's books is higher than Thompson's, I think Thompson's best >books are right up there with Baum's best. Nice evidence re: Ozma, David Hulan. I think a myopic focus on Thompson's alleged offenses ignores her writing's many good qualities and makes for lackluster criticism. Her books are often faster-paced than Baum's and display a remarkable imagination. Both Baum and Thompson have their strengths and weaknesses and each may be appreciated in different ways. Baum was good, not God. Thompson diverged, not destroyed. Atticus * * * "...[T]here is something else: the faith of those despised and endangered that they are not merely the sum of damages done to them." Visit my webpage at http://members.aol.com/atty993 ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 18:45:18 -0600 From: "R. M. Atticus Gannaway" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 01-03-98 JOHN BELL: >Steve Teller wrote of his new purchase: ><From >Ray Bolger.>> > >One of the benefits of having a common first name! [Poor Atticus.] Actually, my *first* name IS rather common. Not that I particularly want Ray Bolger's sig anyway. But it was thoughtful of you to realize my semi-predicament, nonetheless. By the way, I must say that, one, I share your opinion that Oz is in This World somewhere, and two, I am always impressed with the scope and erudition of your comments. DAVID GODWIN: >Chimneys in Oz: >Since it never gets very cold in Oz (except for local anomalies such as >Icetown), why does every house have two chimneys? > a. For purely decorative purposes. > b. One for cooking, one for incineration. > c. They aren't chimneys, they're ears. > d. It really gets as cold as Minnesota in Oz, but all of the adventures >we're told about take place in spring and summer. > e. They aren't chimneys, they're ham radio antennae. > f. To provide ingress and egress for Santa Claus. > g. To symbolize the duality of the universe. > h. Because Neill drew them that way. I personally incline towards h., although the non-FF _Mysterious Chronicles of Oz_ suggests that Oz houses are powered by UV rays and that the two chimneys somehow act as negative and positive poles towards that end, apart from their use in cooking and heating. JEREMY STEADMAN (QUOTING NOTORIOUSLY ICONOCLASTIC GRAMMARIAN GEHAN COORAY): (WARNING: QUOTATION CONTAINS _GIANT HORSE_ ***SPOILER***) ><himself.(The Good Witch of the North).I mean,Baum obvioulsy wanted her to be >a Witch right along,and rule the Gilikin Kingdom.What right does Thompson >have to destroy the character and say that she was actually a princess all >along,under one of Mombi's spells.Ridiculous. >And Besides,I think Baum's books should be considered as the "Officail >Books" ,since he was the creator of Oz.He may not have aproved Thompsons >stories IF he were alive.I mean ,if some other author was appointed "Royal >Historian",he could have done whatever he wanted,used his >imagination,written a story,and it would still be considered "An Officail >Book".Does anyone know what I mean? >But I guess its too late now.Still,the Baum books can be called "Famous >Fourteen".>> > >Hear, hear! I could not have put it better. Actually, you might have put it better with a SPOILER for those who haven't yet read _Giant Horse_ (a book which, in fact, I enjoyed). Atticus * * * "...[T]here is something else: the faith of those despised and endangered that they are not merely the sum of damages done to them." Visit my webpage at http://members.aol.com/atty993 ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 21:03:49 -0600 From: d.godwin@minn.net (David Frank Godwin) Subject: Oz & RPT Gehan wrote: >I STRONGLY disagree with RPT for many reasons.She has cahnI don't see that >as being any more difficult than how the Son of God, who >existed before the creation of the world, could become a neonate who was >raised by a Galilean carpenter. Not saying that I believe the latter, >either, but billions of people have; Ozma could have had a very similar >transition in her life. ged the World of >Oz which Baum created. My idea is that RPT's books have to be approached as a separate body of work from Baum's. That is, RPT's Oz is only loosely LFB's Oz. That doesn't mean that her books aren't worth reading. I really enjoyed many of them. But my chief complaints against her (other than Notta Bit More, whom I place in the same shoot-on-sight category with Barney) is that she "Europeanized" Baum's unique American fairyland, and sometimes she just gets too silly for my tastes. I can't quite shake the feeling that, after all, Oz is in the Great American Desert (on a different plane of reality, if you like), the Pacific is the Nonestic, and California is Ev (on a _very_ different plane of reality). The Nome King is lurking under Mt. Shasta. Well, that's the _feel_ of the Baum books anyway, and RPT threw in countless little dukedoms and principalities to make Oz into a Grimm-style version of the Holy Roman Empire. This approach finally reached its climax in the Neill books with dragons roaming the EC. I heartily disliked _Royal Book_ (except for the cover), which I consider outrageously non-canonical (not to mention the fact that it harshly stereotypes the Chinese). _Cowardly Lion_ was a bad trip. But I really liked some of the others, including _Silver Princess_ (despite its absurd put-down-the-slave-revolt-'cause-ole-massa-is-a-good-guy scenario toward the end). Nevertheless, this is RPT's Oz, not Baum's. I think the work of almost all the FF authors - and non-FF authors as well, for that matter - has to be read as being strictly self-referential and _not_ as a logical development of LFB's works. Snow is the most faithful to Baum, but even he committed the howler of emptying out the Nome King's tunnel. In other words, non-Baum Oz books have to be appreciated (if at all) on their own, not with reference to how well they align with LFB's vision. This is especially true, IMHO, of Neill's books, which are almost OK on their own, but can only cause prolonged shrieks of horror if you expect him to conform to anything that has gone before. (Has anyone but me detected a strange bathing-suit fetish in Neill's written work?) Incidentally, I like Jenny Jump, but I hate her turn-style. As far as canonicity is concerned, don't forget that the first few LFB books contain enough contradictions to keep apologists (us) busy for years. FWIW, I really did not like _Hidden Valley_, and I found Percy contrived and obnoxious. The main effort at characterization seems to be to have him address everyone as "kiddo" or "pal." But just think - a giant rat. Ish. I had to ignore him as much as possible in order to appreciate _Wicked Witch_. OTOH, I did like _Forbidden Fountain_ pretty well. The McGraws have to be the best writers/novelists of the post-LFB Royal Historians. I didn't much like the basic concept of _Merry Go Round_, and I didn't care much for View Halloo, but the book was very well written and the ending was superb. Royal Historians. Reminds me of the Poets Laureate of England. Some of them wren't really very good poets. Same thing. David Hulan wrote: >I don't see that as being any more difficult than how the Son of God, who >existed before the creation of the world, could become a neonate who was >raised by a Galilean carpenter. Not saying that I believe the latter, >either, but billions of people have; Ozma could have had a very similar >transition in her life. What do you mean, "either"? Dangerous heresy lurking here. :) And J.L. Bell wrote: >It's also fairly easy to see in Ozma an analogy to the Christ legend: an >immortal being made/making himself human to benefit humans. So now Ozma is a Christ figure. Oi veh! Did Baum have this in mind, at least unconsciously? I doubt it. But a woman as a "type" of Christ predates LFB by quite a stretch. Although she didn't incarnate as human (so far as I know), the Sumerian goddess Inanna went through a crucifixion and resurrection scenario on behalf of another. - David G. ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 22:49:54 -0500 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Gehan: There never has been any explanation for Eureka's color change in the FF, although March Laumer came up with one. I forgot what it was, though. Steve Teller would probably remember. Gehan on Glinda and GWN: We don't know for sure that Glinda had transportation power until recently. It wasn't until RPT's Oz came about that the powers of the Oz characters were virtually infinite. In all likelihood, Glinda could not just snap her fingers and teleport anywhere she liked, at least in the time of Baum. You don't believe the Tattypoo-Orin thing because you do not accept Thompsonian Oz. I do accept her stories, though, so I have no problem with the generally accepted belief that the GWN did not have as much power as the other witches. Since you only accept Baum, though, let's look at an Oz-as-history explanation given only the Baum 14. She simply may not have been poltiically motivated, despite being designated as the ruler of the north. In and out of Ozzy literature, most magic-workers (except the super-villains) wish only to be left alone to work magic. Tattypoo might have been as disinterested as possible. As long as there were no major problems, she left people alone. IN the Baum 14, there is no evidence that there was any turmoil in the Gilikin country at all, prior to the very last Baum book. Given only the Baum 14, it is reasonable to assume that all aging stopped permanently after Ozma ascended the throne. The only comment to the contrary is Dr. Pipt's mention that Ojo would someday grow into a man. If your theory is correct, the un-aging would have only been in effect for a few years, and Dr. Pipt may not have realized it, isolated as he was. SInce you don't accept RPT's Oz, then the evidence of Pajonia would not affect your belief. Bob Spark and David Hulan: Definitely no need to branch of into Barsoom-as-history, but I'll just mention that John Carter's favorite weapon was the long-sword, and apparantly this belief was shared by most of the Red and Green races, so this is likely the weapon that would be drawn first, and it is unlikely that someone would in turn meet this with a lesser weapon. Davids (Hulan and Hardenbrook) In _Jack Pumpkinhead_ Mogodore wanted to marry Ozma. I don't count Strut of the Strat in _Ozoplaning_, since his knowledge of Ozma was only heresy. John Bell: What you said is the whole crux of David Hulan's arguement (and myself). Your basis for the location of Oz is based on what Baum wanted and how Baum envisioned it. Using this, and this alone, it would seem that Oz is indeed on our world. Oz-as-History, however, must go beyond Baum, since in this perspective, Baum is not the ultimate authority, but rather Oz itself. For the record, while I believe that Oz is in a different Universe, I do not believe that it is nearly as big as our own. MOPPET is that this Universe is tied intimately to Earth and is reachable only from there, and that it is probably at most as big as our solar system, so in a way, I agree with you that it is part of earth, just not directly. John Bell again: We've discussed the political implications of eating animals before, especially during the BCF discussion of _DotWiz_. My example was that it was OK for the Lion to go off into the forest and find his own supper, but not OK for Eureka to eat a Piglet, a special pet of Ozma/Wizard. Dorothy's heart of indignation: IMHO, Dorothy seems more upset that the Skeezers and the Flatheads do not acknowledge Ozma's rule than the trivial aspect of war. Of course, the Su-Dic knew of Ozma, but ignored that knowledge. Glinda's Oracle indicates that she has other methods of finding out information that the Great Book. This may be used to get specific info about events that are only hinted at in the Record Book. Bill Wright: There was a digest recieved on the 27th, 29th 31st and the 3rd. DId you get all of these? Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 23:10:11 -0500 From: "Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman" X-Accept-Language: en Subject: _American Fairy Tales_ Does anyone know where on the Net _American Fairy Tales_ can be found? I'm going to put an Oz page on my site soon, and I'd like to have a link to it. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide. Note: If it's really not available on the Net, I'm going to post the copy on my portable's hard drive. -- Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman adelmaas@musc.edu http://www.musc.edu/~adelmaas Pioneer Aviation Attachment Converted: "K:\adelmaas.vcf" ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 13:42:24 +1100 From: Gehan Cooray Subject: Ozzy Things In -Shaggy Man-, Shaggy claims to have found the love magnet from an eskimo. Yet, in -Road- he says he lied about this, and he actually stole it from a girl in Butterfeild. He can't lie after drinking from the Truth Pond. Why did he lie to Conjo? Did Jack Snow make a mistake? What is shaggy's real name? In -Wizard- the GWN says that there were only four witches in all of Oz. What about Mombi and all the other witches? (Ozma says in Patchwrok girl that there are lots of Witches in Oz) Infact, there are zillions of bloopers in the books. --Gehan Cooray **************************************************************************** ******** Mummy may I go to swim Yes my Darling Daughter Hang your clothes on a hickory limb But dont go near the water. **************************************************************************** ******** ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 13:42:22 +1100 From: Gehan Cooray Subject: The Forbidden Fountain Ozma says that Glinda placed the Forbidden Fountain in the EC centuries ago. But the EC wasn't even built then. It was probably done in Morrow, where I beleive the EC was built later. The wizard may not hve destroyed the Forbidden Fountain, hoping to make use of it, when he destroyed the rest of Morrow to build the EC.Do you think Glinda would habve been a royal Adviser to the king?If she was, she would have stopped Mombi from stealing Ozroar and Pastoria. But she aslo knew that Pastoria had a daughter in -Land-.Maybe she lived in another fairy country and saw by means of her magic that King Ozcar (As I call him) was mistreeting the Ozites. So she built the Forbidden Fountain by means of magic and placed it in Morrow which was later turned into the Emerald City.Doesn't that make scense? BTW, regarding my new MOPPET on Ozma, which you probably read a little while ago, I mentioned that the wizard DID hand her over to Mombi. He may have tried to hide the fact in -DotWiz- and Ozma may also have stated that Mombi herself kidnapped her to protect him, for she very well knew the truth through -Land-. Also, she may have repeated a rumor knowing it wasn't true.I have some very good proof to show that Mombi DIDNT kidnap ozma, but the Wizard left her in her custody. If Mombi told a lie about the wizard handing Ozma to her, Glinda's white pearl would have turned black. See? --Gehan **************************************************************************** ******** Mummy may I go to swim Yes my Darling Daughter Hang your clothes on a hickory limb But dont go near the water. **************************************************************************** ******** ====================================================================== Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 20:05:10 -0800 From: "Dave L. Hardenbrook" Subject: Ozzy Things *** ALERT! NEW DIGEST ADDRESS! ***: Well, I just made a mega-boo-boo... I posted a message that was meant to be private publically on the Digest! No harm done, but I'd like to provide a cover for errors by the "human element" (i.e. me) in case something more serious slips by in future. To this end, I have set up a special E-mail address just for the Digest. So henceforth, please send all messages for public posting on the Digest to: . Any mail to will now be assumed to be private. And since the Digest now has its own address, the requirement to include the string "Oz" in the Subject field is hereby lifted. Sorry for the inconvenience to everybody! -- Dave ====================================================================== -- Dave Dave Hardenbrook, DaveH47@mindspring.com, http://www.mindspring.net/~daveh47/ Castles, Castles in the air Take a paper plane through the rain and you'll be floating free Through those castles growing everywhere Won't you let your mind just unwind; Go upstream toward a dream You can ride on a laugh you can glide on; Behind every cloud is a star To light your way -- The Bugaloos, "Castles In the Air" ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, JANUARY 5 - 6, 1999 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 17:43:53 +1100 From: Gehan Cooray Subject: Children in Oz There are several things which puzzles me when reading Oz books. *.As -David Hulan- said, I'm surprised how Button-bright and Trot can just leave their parents and dissapear. Won't their parents get worried? How can they be so heartless? *.Dont folk such as The Wizard, Shaggy Man, Aunt Em, Uncle henry, Dorothy, Betsy, Trot, Button-bright and Cap'n Bill worry about Church? It seems to me that there really ARE Churches in Oz. Dorothy and her friends see one in the China Country. In -Handy-mandy- (Even though I don't consider it official) Mandy hears the church bells ring. Maybe while passing another country. We know that Cap'n Bill seems to be a good christian through -Magic-........... BTW, my earlier questions regarding Nimmie's gaurdian, could have another explanation: In -Wizard- Nick says that Nimmie lived with an old woman who asked the WWE to stop her marraige. Yet in -Tinwoodman- he tells Woot that she lived with the Witch herself. Here are the could be solutions. *Baum forgot his statement in -Wizard- being very ill. *. My own MOPPET is this: Nimmie lived with an old woman in a little cottage in the woods and did all her house-work. The old woman went to the WWE and asked her to stop her marraige with Nick Chopper and promised her two sheep and a cow. (Or was it two cows and one sheep? Anyway....) the old Woman was afraid thinking that Nick Chopper might force Nimmie to elope, so she handed her over to the wicked Witch. Doesn't that make scense? Still, Tinman would have given Woot a brief explanation in -Tinwoodman- and tried to shorten the tale. Because he tells Dorothy in -Wizard- :"She still may be living with the old woman". He must have thought that she would have gone back to the woman, since the WWE died. But instead, she ran away with Chopfyte to Mt.Munch. That is my theory anyway. Dont know wheather its true though...................... --Gehan Cooray **************************************************************************** ****** Mummy may I go to swim Yes my Darling Daughter Hang your clothes on a hickory limb But dont go near the water. **************************************************************************** ****** ====================================================================== From: "Nathan Mulac DeHoff" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 01-04-99 Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 10:10:31 PST Barbara: >Does anyone know if the character Pumpkinhead is modelled after >anyone Baum knew in his life time?? Perhaps, although Nathaniel Hawthorne's Feathertop is often cited as a more likely influence. David Godwin: >My idea is that RPT's books have to be approached as a separate body >of >work from Baum's. That is, RPT's Oz is only loosely LFB's Oz. That >doesn't >mean that her books aren't worth reading. I really enjoyed many of >them. >But my chief complaints against her (other than Notta Bit More, whom >I >place in the same shoot-on-sight category with Barney) is that she >"Europeanized" Baum's unique American fairyland, and sometimes she >just >gets too silly for my tastes. I can't quite shake the feeling that, >after >all, Oz is in the Great American Desert (on a different plane of >reality, >if you like), the Pacific is the Nonestic, and California is Ev (on a >_very_ different plane of reality). The Nome King is lurking under >Mt. >Shasta. Well, that's the _feel_ of the Baum books anyway, and RPT >threw in >countless little dukedoms and principalities to make Oz into a >Grimm-style >version of the Holy Roman Empire. Perhaps it's because I did not travel very much as a child (and I still don't, for that matter), but Baum's Oz being an "American fairyland" was never an especially important consideration for me. This might be among the reasons why Thompson's vision of Oz does not bother me as much as it does some readers. >This approach finally reached its climax >in the Neill books with dragons roaming the EC. Well, Baum also introduced dragons into Oz (in _Tin Woodman_, at least). True, there weren't any in Baum's Emerald City, but they still existed in the country. Gehan: >In -Wizard- the GWN says that there were only four witches in all of >Oz. >What about Mombi and all the other witches? (Ozma says in Patchwrok >girl >that there are lots of Witches in Oz) At the beginning of _Land_, it is stated that Mombi was not technically a witch, but merely a wizardess or a sorceress (due to the GWN's restriction on witches in the Gillikin Country). Therefore, the GWN might not have considered Mombi to be a witch. As for the other witches, the GWN might not have known about them. (This is from an Oz-as-history stanpoint, of course. From an Oz-as-literature standpoint, Baum had only created four witchy inhabitants of Oz at the time of _Wizard_.) >Ozma says that Glinda placed the Forbidden Fountain in the EC >centuries ago. >But the EC wasn't even built then. It was probably done in Morrow, >where I >beleive the EC was built later. For someone who does not support Thompson's books, you place a lot of emphasis on Morrow. _Lost King_ does not really suggest that Morrow was any more than a hunting lodge and hiding place. In Marcus Mebes's _Lurline and the White Ravens of Oz_, Morrow is the kingdom of Ozma's grandfather, but, if you disregard Thompson because of her deviation from the spirit of Baum's work, accepting Mebes strikes me as an odd thing to do. (Of course, Mebes might have gotten the idea from someone else; I don't know.) I do think that the old capital of Oz was in the center of the country, though. Pajuka states that it was there in _Lost King_, and it would seem to be a reasonable place for a capital city anyway. Nathan ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 09:35:02 -0800 From: Barbara Johnson Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 01-04-99 J.L. Bell and Tyler and David G...... In response to: >>>>>And J.L. Bell wrote: >It's also fairly easy to see in Ozma an analogy to the Christ legend: an >immortal being made/making himself human to benefit humans. So now Ozma is a Christ figure. Oi veh! Did Baum have this in mind, at least unconsciously? I doubt it. But a woman as a "type" of Christ predates LFB by quite a stretch. Although she didn't incarnate as human (so far as I know), the Sumerian goddess Inanna went through a crucifixion and resurrection scenario on behalf of another. - David G.>>>> Any evidence that Baum read anything that would have given him the Sumarian Goddess myth??? I know he refers to Grimm and others... perhaps it comes into his work via that route?? AT this point... I'm tending to read Ozma as representative of the women suffragettes who were so instrumental and prevalent in Baum's life (i.e. his mother in law, wife and sister in law).... Sort of a compliation of them... sort of an "ideal girl.woman".... And now... Tyler and John Bell Re: >>>John Bell again: We've discussed the political implications of eating animals before, especially during the BCF discussion of _DotWiz_. My example was that it was OK for the Lion to go off into the forest and find his own supper, but not OK for Eureka to eat a Piglet, a special pet of Ozma/Wizard.>>>> There seems to be some pretty strong statements against cannibalism in Land of Oz... when Jack Pumpkinhead feels threatened...Jinjur wants to make pies out of him... and.. when the characters are marooned in the Jackdaws nest... the subject of eating Jack comes up again... It seems to be brushed aside fairly briskly...friends don't eat their friends! B ====================================================================== From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 10:47:09 -0700 Web: Now that my web site is turned back on, The Ozzy Digest Archive is now available again. Currently, all of the digests are there through October 1998. If I can remember, November and December will be there tomorrow. _Glinda_ and magic: For me, the use and discussion of magic in _Glinda_ has always been a benchmark for my view of magic in general in the Ozzy Universe, the idea that nobody could do everything and that there are many different aspects of magic. This was turned on it's head by RPT, of course, when their magical power became all but limitless. Ozma's rule on who can or cannot practice magic seems to be stretched a little in this story. The Adepts apparantly are granted an exception to this rule and Reera is not prevented from her own practice. Gehan: Your discussion of RPT changing the GWN led me to an interesting question: Did Baum ever specifically say that she was the ruler of the Gilikins? I dug around and the answer is yes. Baum says so in chapter 1 of _Land_ and he has the Wizard mention it in chapter 15 of _DotWiz_. Changing her character in and of itself is not really a major shakeup to the Oz continuum, though. She is at best a minor character in the Baum 14, only appearing twice and having almost no mention outside of that. If RPT had changed Dorothy (making her twins, for example), that might have been a more extreme example. Still, your objections seem to be based on an Oz-as-literature POV. Baum created Oz, so nobody should be able to change it in any major way except him. From an Oz-as-history POV (which is my usual view) Baum is demoted to simply the first person who knew about Oz. It is unlikely that he was able to discover all of its secrets and it is also unlikely that Oz somehow froze itself into a constant model in 1919. Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 4 Jan 99 13:01:32 CST From: "Ruth Berman" Subject: ozzy digest [these are some comments from a bit earlier that don't seem to have got through.] Publication note: I have an article just out, "No Joe Marches," in the December 1998 (Vol. 29 #4) issue of "Children's Literature in Education," on the absence of books for bookish little boys about the joys of growing up a reader/writer compared to the wealth of such books for girls. It has some peripheral discussion of the Oz books. (Thanks, Robin Olderman, for help with the article -- I'm sending you a copy.) The magazine isn't one that would show up on a news-stand, but quite a few libraries take it. The article is too long to put into the digest, but if people want to ask me for copies, I could provide them by mail. Lisa Mastroberte: If you go on with thinking about an Oz-Monopoly, you might want to use Emerald City street-names Neill gives in his Oz books (Banana Blvd, etc.). Judy Pike, in an early "Bugle," had an article on the geography of the Emerald City (building from notes by Bob Pattrick), and provided some additional street-names on the model of the ones Neill gave. David Godwin: Are you planning to go to the "Wizard" when it tours through the Twin Cities in January? I can't quite decide if I want to go and if I do, if I want to spend the money for a good seat (gets to be kind of pricey). David Hulan: Rather than assuming that both Omby Amby and Wantowin Battles are Soldiers With (or in Omby's case, occasionally Without) Green Whiskers, perhaps both names could be accepted by assuming that he went by more than one name. For instance, if both Amby and Wantowin were nicknames for some such name as Ambrose, he might have been an Ambrose Battles who was nicknamed Wantowin as a pun, and perhaps also Omby Amby in the same spirit that produced the word nambypamby from the nickname Namby Pamby for the little-regarded poet Ambrose Phillips. My niece Harriet, when she was about five years old, had a habit of asking if characters were boys or girls and demanding to have the reader change some of the boys to girls if it seemed to her the story didn't have enough girls. When I started to read her "Land," she asked me if Tip was a boy or a girl and was delighted when I told her that Tip thought he was a boy, but was going to discover at the end that he was a girl. She demanded to be shown the illustrations of the girl, and spent the rest of the day draping a long scarf around her head for "Land"-Ozma-style-veiling and playing at being Ozma. (About that time, I had bought her a "white-cover" edition of "Dorothy and the Wizard," and she was disappointed to find no illustration of the Mangaboo Princess. Shortly after, Books of Wonder brought out their facsimile edition, so I was careful to get that for her to replace the other, as one of the color plates is of the Princess.) I'm not sure which way Baum's joke cuts in the portrayal of the sports-loving students at the Wogglebug's college, but it seems to express contempt for competitive sports. I think the references to a pink kitten and a purple kitten may represent an idea of a pinkish-purplish color and uncertainty as to what to call it, rather than multiple kittens in separate colors. (Could well be a typo, though.) [A p.s. based on more recent comments -- on the Oz-as-fiction level, I suspect that Lisa Mastroberte is right in thinking that the purple kitten started out as a confusion of memory between Eureka and the Ev Prince so enchanted. Gehan Cooray asks how Eureka came to be pink outside the lights of the Mangaboo suns anyway -- in connection with the "Magic" discussion, I suggested that Eureka might have enjoyed being pink and might have asked Ozma to make her pink permanently once she managed to get herself into Oz as a permanent resident. David Hulan, by the way, has suggested in his Oz-writings that she got back into Oz by tagging along but staying out of sight in "Dorothy and the Wizard."] [end of re-sent comments] Tyler Jones: You could even lower the title character = protagonist count by omitting "Rinkitink." Inga is probably more the main character than Rinkitink himself? What fan-fiction is -- fiction written by a fan. Sometimes, this means general fiction written by people who don't think they are writing at pro level yet, but want to get some feedback, or fiction written by fans about fandom is like. These don't usually involve any copyright problems -- in fact, if the story turns out to be strong enough, there may be a professional market for it (Anthony Boucher's murder mystery "Rocket to the Morgue," was fan-fiction in the sense of being fiction about sciencefiction fans, for instance). Nowadays, though, fan- fiction usually means stories written within the specific universe of a series of stories (or, more often, dramas) by fans, and such stories do usually violate copyright. Nevertheless, such stories do usually interest other fans of the series, so there's a built-in audience for them (not enough to generate much income, usually, but enough to generate a lot of egoboo -- egoboo, a term coined by sf fans, is whatever boosts your ego, such as praise for a good piece of writing), and a corresponding desire on the part of the writers to share their stories with those other fans. I don't think there's ever been a case that went as far as going to court over copyright-violation-in-fan-fiction, so there have been no precedents set as to whether fan fiction might in some cases be considered "fair use." Most of the lawyers who have offered educated guesses on the subject have been guessing that fan fiction would not be considered "fair use." But there aren't any precedents, so it remains an open question. And there probably aren't going to be any precedents set, because going to court is such a burdensome activity that the copyright holders would rather avoid it, if they can get what they want with cease-and-desist letters, as they've been able to do. With the Internet, there's a new form of publication available, making definitions of terms more complicated, but the basic problem remains the same: an area of conflict between fans' desire to have more stories than the copyright holders can churn out, and copyright holders' desire to protect their financial and artistic interests. With a little luck and fannish courtesy, it should be possible to keep the whole question unprecedented. Ozma's right to rule the whole of Oz -- we don't really know enough about Oz history to know to what extent Pastoria-and-forebears claimed jurisdiction over all the territory inside the desert and to what extent other groups granted it. She might have a good deal of precedent for the claim, or might have very little (apparently she has enough to satisfy her own conscience, and she has a generally scrupulous conscience, after all). Where canned brains come from and go to -- maybe we should assume that the spell includes delivery of a can (by stork? hanging on the umbilical cord?), and that destroying the owner produces spoilage of the brains? J.L. Bell: You're probably right that the portrayal of Wendy as an adult doesn't have an equivalent scene in the Oz books. The scene, by the way, wasn't in the play as such, but Barrie kept changing the ending of the play (sometimes stopping with the victory on the pirate ship and leaving the return home implicit, sometimes stopping with the return home and the Lost Boys retrieved by their mothers, and settling eventually on the published version of having the Lost Boys adopted by the Darlings, and sometimes including or not including the business of letting Wendy return to Neverland on visits). At one point, he wrote a version of the ending with the extra scene showing the grown-up Wendy and her daughter Jane (performed only once, IIRC), and he included that extra bit when he novelized the play. "Glinda" warfare as reflecting stage of WWI while US is still neutral and not later than US entry into the war on Allies' side -- you're probably right. But the "Magic" portrayal of war as an easily-quelled revolution sounds like something still earlier. (David Hulan suggested the monkey soldiers may perhaps not even reflect WWI at all, as the description of them sounds more like operetta-soldiers -- Neill's illo, and the "Magic" dedication would have to be later than that, but, as he pointed out, the illos necessarily and the dedication quite possibly would come later than the text.) Your suggestion that Baum might have been working on both concurrently (and on "Tin Woodman," assuming its lack of WWI references is a matter of theme and not of date) for most of the way sounds a reasonable possibility, though. Interesting point on Ozma's sorrow and Dorothy's indignation as a mark of character difference. I think the Frogman might feel serenely unconcerned in discussions of ugliness of toads. Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 20:21:27 GMT From: David Hulan Subject: Re: Ozzy Digests, 12-31-98 thru 01-04-99 I guess it was my ISP somehow; I didn't receive the 12-31 Digest until late on 1-3, although other people seem to have gotten it earlier than that. Maybe it had something to do with our big snowstorm here (biggest single day snowfall in Chicago since they've been keeping records; second biggest snowstorm over the two calendar days it fell), or more likely with the turn of the year. Whatever, by the time I'm getting around to responding I also got one for 1-4. So, to comments: 12/31: Gehan: There are various speculations as to when and how Eureka became pink; she was white in _DotWiz_, but is described as pink in _Patchwork Girl_ and all the other references to her except possibly the "purple" one in _Glinda_. March Laumer had one; Chris Dulabone had one; I have one in an unpublished MS that may eventually see print if I can revise it to Peter Glassman's satisfaction. There are probably others that I haven't heard of. In addition to the color change there's the question of how Eureka got back to Oz in the first place; she was sent to Kansas with Dorothy at the end of _DotWiz_ and isn't mentioned in the next two books. Then in PG she's in Oz again. Again, various writers have explained it in different ways. >But what >annoys nme is, why Ozma and Glinda never use their powers of transport to >get to places. Transportation seems to be relatively difficult magic, except maybe for the Magic Belt. MOPPeT is that a transportation spell requires the use of some rare ingredient - maybe six-leaved clovers, or Gaulau, or something like that - that is consumed in the spell, so that Glinda and the Wizard don't perform such spells lightly. The only instances I can think of in the Baum 14 where transportation magic is done by any means other than the Magic Belt are when the Wizard transports Dr. Pipt and the statues of Unc Nunkie and Margalotte to the EC in _Patchwork Girl_ and when he transports the Oogaboos home and Shaggy, his brother, Betsy, and Hank to the EC in _Tik-Tok_. Otherwise, even when magical transport would have simplified matters considerably, it isn't used. (E.g., transporting the Scarecrow to Jinxland, or the Scarecrow, Trot, and Cap'n Bill from Jinxland, or Dorothy and the Wizard to the Nome Kingdom, or those plus Rinkitink and the royal family of Pingaree from the Nome Kingdom, or Ozma and Dorothy to Jinjur's house, or Dorothy and the Wizard to Gugu's forest and then to the Magic Isle, or the various instances you cite in _Glinda_.) Either they were out of the necessary ingredient during those times or were low enough in it that they thought it best to save it for more important uses. Possibly the concentration of use at the end of PG and in _Tik-Tok_ reflected a "find" of a quantity of the substance that made the Wizard feel free to use it more casually. Jane: >Bill -- Lyman was an uncles name. Don't know why he didn't like it, but I >wouldn't either! I don't see "Lyman" as being a particularly bad name. It's not one you hear that much these days, but it was the name of the father of my best friend in college, and I've known a couple of other people with the name as well. It seems to have lost popularity after 1920 or so. Fashions in names come and go - 50 years ago nobody named their kids Emily or Emma or Joshua or Adam, but they were all popular back in the late 19th century and are popular again today. Me: My second post in this Digest is the one that was intended to be a private communication (mentioned by Dave in the 1/4 Digest). No particular harm done, but some bits of it might have seemed to lack referents in the Digest proper. Tyler: >Robin and Lisa: >For the most part, the title character of Baum's book was rarely the main >character. Here's the breakdown. > >_Wizard_ - Dorothy >_Ozma_ - Dorothy >_Dorothy and the Wizard_ - Dorothy and the Wizard >_Patchwork Girl_ - Ojo >_Tik-Tok_ - Betsy Bobbin and/or Shaggy Man >_Sacrecrow_ - Trot >_Rinkitink_ - Rinkitink >_Lost Princess_ - Wizard and Dorothy >_TIn Woodman_ - Tin Woodman >_Glinda_ - Ozma > >Three out of ten. Even that is stretching it; I consider Inga, not Rinkitink, to be the main character of _Rinkitink_ Though Rinkitink plays a larger role in his eponymous book than most of the others in theirs, except for the Patchwork Girl in hers. >Dave: >Uh-Oh. Could you explain a little more clearly just what fan-fiction is? Fan-fiction is fiction set in an existing fictional universe, written by a fan of that fictional universe but not authorized by whoever owns the copyright on it. In one sense Oz fiction is fan-fiction, but since so much of the Oz universe is now PD, it's possible to write pretty extensively in it without a legal problem. Fan-fiction based on "Star Trek" is pretty common, though, for instance. Nathan: >Turning someone to stone is probably one of the most >common deeds done by evil magicians. It goes back at least to the legend of Medusa (written down ca. 700 BCE, and most likely considerably older in oral form), and probably farther back than that. 1/3: J.L.: We're just going to have to agree to disagree about where Oz is. You insist that Baum has many indications that Oz is part of our physical world, but don't cite any that I can recall. I see many indications in his books that aren't consistent with Oz being part of our physical world, and you invoke miracles to explain them. Since miracles can explain anything, there's no point in arguing about it any more. It seems to me that a continent that's part of our physical world, but that has different laws of physics, different astronomical bodies, and is inaccessible by any means other than a miracle might as well be on another vibrational plane. You have an illustration of Princess Dorothy on page 10 of your copy? In mine, that's the second page of the introduction and there's no illustration at all. What edition do you have? (Mine's an R&L from, I would guess, the mid-'40s; no color plates, but with the old-style thick paper that went out with the editions of the '50s.) > One book-mechanics element I can't figure out is why the top line on >certain pages [e.g., 91, 114, 178, 222, 267] is unnecessarily spread out. I checked several, though not all, of those, and in each case the line is a "widow" (or possibly an "orphan"; I think the former is what it's called when the last line of a paragraph is on a different page from the rest, and the latter when the first line of a paragraph is on a different page, but I might have those backwards). And for whatever reason the typesetter justified the line rather than leaving it ragged right, as is normal for the last line of a paragraph. I don't know enough about typesetting in 1920 to know why that sort of thing would happen, but the basic cause is clear. Leaving widows is considered bad practice in books I've read on typography; it's normal to either do something to squeeze the last line onto the previous page, or to push a second line onto the following page. The typesetter of _Glinda_ may have thought that justifying the widow so you don't see a short line at the top of a page was an acceptable alternative, even though it left wide spaces between words. > Which brings us to a mystery of the Skeezers' dome. Lady Aurex states, >"the three Adepts...built for us this wonderful dome of glass" [112], but >also, "The dome was built so that the island could disappear" [123]. Yet >Aujah and the other Adepts have only cursory knowledge of the mechanism >that raised and lowered the island [264]. I think it most likely that the Adepts built the dome very shortly before Coo-ee-oh enchanted them. Coo-ee-oh probably had already invented the raising and lowering mechanism for the city, but found that making a good watertight dome wasn't the sort of thing a Krumbic Witch did well. So she somehow tricked the Adepts into making it for her, and once she'd done that she got rid of them because presumably they could have removed the dome as easily as they'd created it. I agree with you about the conveniently dropped handkerchief on page 39. Baum handled it better in _Lost Princess_ when they circled Thi; they started and ended at a natural feature of the landscape. Ozma and Dorothy could have done the same with a distinctive tree, for instance. Or at least Dorothy's dropping the handkerchief could have been described, rather than being brought up only when it was found again. > The Adepts warn against extending the Skeezers' bridge before raising >their island, yet the party takes no precautions before they "experiment" >with Coo-ee-oh's name [268]. Well, what precautions could they have taken? I suppose they could have temporarily evacuated the dome via the rope, etc., so that if something happened there'd only be the few magic-workers to get out if the dome sprang a leak. But there wasn't any way to test what word did what except to try one and see. You're right that the magazine market for children's fiction demands very short stories, but there's a fairly decent market for longer stories in book anthologies, or single-author collections. Bruce Coville (a friend of mine) has edited about ten anthologies in the last 3-4 years, and I have another 3-4 anthologies edited by others from the same general period. (I have several friends who write for children, and I try to buy the books where their stories appear.) And I'm sure that I haven't bought every anthology of children's fiction that's appeared recently. David G.: I think the answer to your "chimneys" question is "h" - Neill decided to draw them that way. There's no mention of dual chimneys - nor, as best I recall, of any chimneys at all - in any of the FF except for _Wonder City_. And even in that book I don't think he mentioned dual chimneys. Some of those repetitive items are part of a "signature" - this would include, for example, the tags at the ends of Scott H's and Dave H's posts. It would be nice if these were changed a bit more frequently, but they're not ads. On the other hand, the ones talking about how you get free e-mail are ads. I can skip over all of them without much difficulty, once I recognize them. Tyler: Ozma's assertion that people need to have to work hard for things in order to be happy is certainly an idea that has been put forward many times through history. Whether it's true or not is a separate thing, like the idea that pain builds character. I'm skeptical, myself, but don't have any concrete proof one way or the other. The picture of the child of wealthy parents who is miserable even though he has everything he wants without having to work for it is certainly a popular one in fiction, but from my personal observations it's not all that common in real life. It happens, yes - I could cite a few specific cases I know of - but it seems to me that it's the exception rather than the rule. However, I don't know of any serious study of the issue. 1/4: David G.: I dunno, I've heard this argument about Thompson "Europeanizing" Oz before, but I'm not sure I buy it. Yes, she did make more use of little kingdoms and principalities and such than Baum did, but she hardly invented the idea. Baum had the Dainty China Country, the Cuttenclips, Utensia, Bunnybury, the Horners, Oogaboo, Jinxland, Thi, Herku, Bear Center, Loonville, the Forest of Gugu, the Spiders, the Flatheads, and the Skeezers - all monarchies within Oz. In addition there were Fuddlecumjig, Bunbury, the Tottenhots, and the Hoppers as non-monarchical but oddball little independent realms in Oz. The difference between Baum and Thompson in this respect is one of degree, not of kind; Thompson picked up on these aspects of Baum and used them much more extensively than he did, but she didn't invent a type of country in Oz. What she did do was have the inhabitants of some of her little kingdoms want to make the travelers who encountered them become members of their community, which Baum never did - though he came close in Loonville. But this isn't "Europeanization." It's also true that most of Baum's little communities are incidental to the action of the story, whereas Thompson made one central in a number of cases (Pumperdink, Ragbad, Perhaps City, the Ozure Islands, Keretaria, Regalia, etc.). But again, this is a difference in emphasis, not a radical turnabout. Tyler: _Was_ the GWN designated as the ruler of the North in Baum books after Ozma's accession to the throne? In _Road_, which I think is her only appearance after _Wizard_, she (and Glinda) march separately in the parade from the rulers of the four quadrants. She may have been mentioned as the ruler of the North in another book, but I don't recall it. Gehan: >In -Shaggy Man-, Shaggy claims to have found the love magnet from an eskimo. >Yet, in -Road- he says he lied about this, and he actually stole it from a >girl in Butterfeild. He can't lie after drinking from the Truth Pond. Why >did he lie to Conjo? Did Jack Snow make a mistake? What is shaggy's real name? MOPPeT is that Shaggy had told the story about the Eskimo so often in earlier days that by the time of _Shaggy Man_, when he hadn't told any story about it for a long time, he had forgotten that it wasn't true, and therefore wasn't lying but simply mistaken when he told Conjo the same thing. There's no FF evidence as to what Shaggy's real name is, but in the non-canonical but excellent _Queen Ann of Oz_ he says that it's Shagrick Mann. >In -Wizard- the GWN says that there were only four witches in all of Oz. >What about Mombi and all the other witches? (Ozma says in Patchwrok girl >that there are lots of Witches in Oz) Early in _Land_ Baum says that Mombi isn't a witch, but a sorceress or at most a wizardess. I think we can explain the discrepancies you mention easily enough by postulating two definitions of "witch," either of which may be used depending on context. One definition is "a woman with a high degree of magical power, strong enough that she can make herself ruler of a quadrant of Oz"; the other is simply "a female magic-worker." Mombi, Blinkie, Coo-ee-oh, Gloma, and others are witches only by the latter definition; only four witches - Glinda, the GWN, the WWW, and the WWE - qualify by the former, which the GWN was using. Alternatively, the GWN may not have known of the other witches (except for Mombi, obviously). We know the Wizard had the EC built in its present form, but there may well have been a royal palace with a surrounding village or small town at that location long before his arrival. Glinda certainly says in _Land_ that Pastoria had been the ruler of the Emerald City before the Wizard's time. David Hulan ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 16:09:55 -0500 From: "J. L. Bell" Subject: Oz mysteries and histories I received three digests (12/31/98-1/4/99) on one day, which may be related to Dave Hardenbrook's Y99 troubles. I hope everyone else is up-to-date. Of course, if you're reading this, you are! Scott Hutchins wrote: <> There is a difference, but copyright covers *all* uses of an author's creations, not just commercial ones. You as an author can legally protest non-commercial works derived from yours if you feel they're cheapening the value of your output, distorting your creations, or just annoying you--you don't have to show those works are meant to make money. Incidentally, folks, OZIANA has permission from Reilly & Lee to publish stories using characters from all the Oz books published by that firm. The BAUM BUGLE publishes non-fiction, usually scholarly or close to it, so its quotations from the books fall under fair use. The Ozzy Digest occasionally includes brief quotations from copyrighted books or jokes put in the mouths of copyrighted characters, but those are fair uses. None of those outlets are affected by the change in copyright law. Nor are OZ-STORY or Books of Wonder affected--they still face the same restrictions as before. However, some members of this digest have stories on their Web sites that use characters still protected by copyright (e.g., Jenny Jump); those are vulnerable under the new law if the copyright-holders or their publishers choose to act. (They were probably actionable before, too, but now it's undeniable.) Gehan Cooray wrote: <> In TIK-TOK Glinda shifts the *path* on which the Oogabooans are marching. Implications are (a) if they'd turned around and gone home, they'd never have left Oz, and (b) if they hadn't been at the edge of Oz already, Glinda would have done something else. Tyler Jones listed Baum's main characters: <<_Rinkitink_ - Rinkitink>> Not Inga? For a couple of chapters Rinkitink is center stage without Inga, but more often the boy is driving the action, and we see the action over his shoulder. Nathan DeHoff wrote: <> Baum's magicians seem to have a specific liking for marble statues: Mombi threatens to turn Tip into one, Unc Nunkie and Margolotte become one, and Kiki plans to make Ruggedo one in MAGIC [49]. Tyler Jones wrote of Ozma: <> Many outlying Ozians accept Ozma's rule (Glinda, Bini Aru), or at least know they should (Pipt, Su-dic, Ann Soforth). To me that's one of the strongest pieces of evidence that Oz was in fact once unified, and that most Ozians were brought up to hope for restoration of the legitimate line of rulers. But your questions do cut to the paradox hanging over inherited monarchs: their authority is based on a combination of divine right and raw power. You're probably right that <> She does tend to jump to emotionally-based conclusions, especially when her friends are threatened. David Godwin wrote: <> Because three would be too many! Even in temperate zones, nights can become too cool for comfort. One chimney might be for the bedroom, the other for the kitchen. Tyler Jones wrote: <> As with the Skeezers, the Flatheads have limited living space, so they may well not reproduce. I recall no children in either society. With destruction rare--especially during the Adepts' peaceful rule--there would thus be no need to address the first two questions. The rise of Rora Flathead and the Su-dic changed that, of course. Based on Baum's depictions of other characters with no or very little brains, I expect the brainless Flatheads functioned at a low level, but not a comatose one. Here's a related question: When Rora was turned into a pig, where did her brains go? Jeremy Steadman wrote to me (I believe): <> I claim they'll all break down in exactly 361 days! (From overwork.) My statement about a certain unpublished Oz manuscript was that as a non-programmer I can't help but dislike any implication that one must know code to break into Ozma's heart--if she grows up to fall in love with anyone, why not someone like me? Barbara Johnson wrote: <> I see the Sawhorse as quite different from the "iron horse"--symbolically opposed, in fact. Before being brought to life, the sawhorse was the rough-hewn tool of a woodcutter. Baum probably viewed it as a sign of a disappearing time in America, when wood (not coal or petroleum) was the major fuel, and a lone worker (not octopus-like corporations) supplied it. Woodsmen like Nick Chopper and Nikobob in RINKITINK had largely vanished from America by 1900, but in Baum's stories they still worked the forests. One could argue that the indefatigable Sawhorse's race against Jim in DOROTHY & WIZARD is like John Henry's fatal contest with the steam shovel. But that would mean making the Sawhorse stand for technology. Instead, he seems to be an earthy amalgam of animal and magic. When Baum wanted to discuss technology, he created Tik-Tok. David Godwin wrote: <> I don't think Baum made a deliberate analogy between Ozma and Christ. Yet the latter figure is so prominent in Western culture that it seems impossible for him to have missed the similarity of their incarnations, consciously or not. Tyler Jones wrote: <> I agree that Oz-as-history must go beyond Baum and his successors *in reconciling contradictions within the Oz books*. But I also made my case that there's no necessary contradiction in Baum's statements about Oz's location and about our mysterious world. Applying an Oz-as-history approach to what is merely a *mystery* of Baum's fairyland, not a clear contradiction, can produce a slippery slope down to saying the Oz books were written by a guy from Chicago who needed money. Furthermore, given that Oz-as-history must still rely on evidence, finding evidence about "Oz itself" outside the books is, at the least, very difficult. In America-as-history, the situation is different because there was an objective reality in past events. For instance, I've been researching a citizen of Revolutionary Boston named David Bradlee. What's been written about him is brief: he participated in the Tea Party with his brothers in 1773, joined an artillery regiment in 1776 as a captain, married his son to his colonel's daughter, and became a respectable wine merchant. Underneath that history-as-written is an objective reality--what Bradlee actually did--which can give rise to additional evidence. In this case, I've found a summons accusing "David Bradley" of participating in a tar-and-feathering in 1769, his court testimony about a protest in February 1770 when a boy was killed, and a deposition saying he carried Crispus Attucks's body away from the Boston Massacre in March 1770. So in his youth that respectable merchant seems to have gone to three riots in six months. The objective reality of the past thus challenges what's been written by producing more evidence. Where do we find additional evidence about Oz's history besides Baum's books? * We can add more canonical books--if everyone agrees on what they are, and how much we trust each author. Gehan Cooray seems to reject Thompson but accept Ozroar and Ozette after seeing them mentioned on people's Web sites. Melody Grandy's essay on Ozma's palace relies on all 46 novels by canonical authors. I doubt Jinjur's appearance in OZMA but accept Bucky Jones living on Lake Quad. Will we ever all agree? * We can rely on biological and physical laws, such as Dorothy's likely rate of growth and the difficulty of making a continent on Earth invisible--but the books say magic can break those laws. * We can make inferences about how people would logically behave. Yet people don't always behave logically, or agree on what's logical. David Hulan is a smarter problem-solver than Ozma, so he often sees possible actions she doesn't take. * We can even apply events seemingly unrelated to Oz--for instance, the "evidence" of a Bermuda triangle--to the mysteries of where Oz is and how one reaches it. In this case, the vanishing of six planes in 1945 could be additional, outside-the-books evidence created by the "objective reality" of a hidden land/alternate universe. Any other sources for info? Two related questions: What are the chances that Gini Wickwar's HIDDEN PRINCE will be accepted (sight unseen) as canonical? Does reading certain books or authors in early childhood irrevocably affect what one accepts about Oz? (Thanks, Atticus, for your kind words about my musings on this interesting, if insoluble, topic.) Gehan Cooray wrote: <> SHAGGY MAN makes clear that Shaggy suspects Conjo is lying to *him*. Perhaps the Truth Pond's spell allows a lie in such a situation when one's goal is strategic, not to build oneself up. [Similarly, in SKY ISLAND Button-Bright lies to a Blueskin guard to gain entrance to a room, despite having bathed in the Truth Pond.] But can we assume the girl in Butterfield wasn't an Eskimo? David Godwin wrote: <> I recall this same episode causes problems in calculating the size of Oz--could Mombi and the Sawhorse run from the Emerald City to the very edge of the country in an hour [and without bumping into any communities of cranky oddballs]? Both contradictions may be erased if we assume "the desert" Baum described in this part of LAND wasn't the Deadly Desert [as he seems to think]. It might be a smaller desert *within* the land of Oz, its climate as odd as Icetown's, where Bedouins bed down and sandmen sleep. J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com ====================================================================== From: Kiex@aol.com Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 13:49:27 EST Subject: Ozzy Digests past All right, continuing catching up-- DIGEST OF 12-26-- Robin, David Hulan, others: Age is in the mind. And remember, in Oz age has little if any meaning. So don't be overly concerned with numbers. (Or talk to my 103 year-old grandmother, that'd work too.) Purple/pink kitten: Maybe Eureka can change color--as an effect of being painted . . . just a MOPPeT. DIGEST OF 12-29-- Gehan: Your theory sounds reasonable. David Godwin: That graphic novel can't be right, since both the Sawhorse AND the Scarecrow are made of something that was once living (wood and hay, respectively), so that the Desert WOULD have power over them. David Hulan: Please tell me more about _Oz-Story Magazine_ (in a private post if you like, or print it here for all). That is, address, publication info, etc. DIGEST OF 1-3-- Ozma's reluctance to use the belt: Perhaps she is required by some fairy law we don't know about to use the least magic to do the most work--that is, to use magic only when absolutely necessary. I've just been rereading Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION series, and a MOPPeT I refuse to really believe is that she is a robot like Daneel (see FOUNDATION AND EARTH) that must do as little adjusting of things--i.e. magic--as possible to manipulate events. No, I don't really think that, it's just an ANALOGY, nothing more! Desert: Boy, I never thought about it not really being deadly at all--just a belief one adheres to unthinkingly . -------SPOILER FOR MY OWN BOOK-------- In my book, THE EMERALD RING OF OZ, two people end up getting "dusted", but one is recovered. The other one--well, read the book! --------END SPOILER--------- Copyright: No offense, but I sure hope you're all wrong, and fan fiction can be published on the web. What I'd do without being able to read Doctor Who fanfics I don't know . . . Chris Dulabone's Oz: I feel I have to come to Chris's defense here. I think that he has taken the FF and _interpreted_ it, looked through the contradictions and picked what he thinks Oz really is as best he can tell. This is just interpretation, in my opinion. Obviously he is no longer on the Digest to explain, so I'm doing the best I can. <> The only Oz characters invented at the time were those of Baum and herself, so I don't think that's much of a compliment. <> Perhaps. DIGEST OF 1-4:-- Ozma as a Christ figure: If you consider her transformation to a male as death, I guess you could make an analogy to that effect. Eureka! I've changed from pink to purple!: I like an effort of will explanation. (As I said above.) Dave: The idea of a new address is nice, but I notice you posted from the old address . . . just an observation. ;-) Now I'm caught up! For the moment . . . Until next time, Jeremy Steadman ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 21:51:29 -0500 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Gehan: Shaggy also repeats his lie in _Road_, although we may have to explain that as an error from Baum, even from an Oz-as-History perspective. We can speculate that the water from the Truth Pond eventually wears out, much like the water from the Fountain of Oblivion. When the GWN mentioned that there were only four witches left in Oz, she was probably referring to herself, Mombi, Glinda and the WWW. She may not have known of Gloma, Mrs. Yoop, Reera, etc. You're falling into the trap of assuming that the powers that be in Oz know everything. They don't. Even I don't know everything :-) The EC as we know it may not have existed, but the gren area certainly was there, and those 57,000 people had to live somewhere. Pajuka says that there was a small establishment there in _Lost King_, although you don't accept Thompsonian Oz.. I assume that the green area was a collection of small settlements before the Wizard built EC. Dave: The new address should help the situation. Just to be safe, I'll keep the "OZ" in the message string for the Digest and I'll keep the "private" in the subject heading for personal stuff, not that I ever send anything all that embarassing to you anyway, except that cherries-and-whipped-cream thing :-) Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 18:04:57 -0500 From: Jim Reale [Non-Digest member] Subject: what type of dog? X-Accept-Language: en What type of dog is Toto? Reply to zahran@foto.infi.net ====================================================================== Date: Tue, 5 Jan 99 09:04:31 CST From: "Ruth Berman" Subject: ozzy digest ps Oops -- that was idea of Eureka tagging along in "Road" I meant, not in "Dorothy and the Wizard," where she's part of the main character team. Ruth Berman ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 01:20:34 -0600 From: d.godwin@minn.net (David Frank Godwin) Subject: Oz Eureka: Regardless of what color she is, when and how did Eureka come to live in Oz? At the end of DotWiz, she is in disgrace and no one is speaking to her and she returns to Kansas with Dorothy. That is the last we hear of her until she suddenly pops up in the EC in some later book. I guess that's a cat for you. Consistency: Peter Glassman remarks in his afterward to DotWiz that "One of the interesting things about L. Frank Baum's writings is that he was never overly troubled by a need for consistency." Apparently the same thing applies to John R. Neill. Compare the color plate on page 197 of DotWiz, where Ozma looks like an adult to Dorothy's child (Ozma has aged and Dorothy has not?) and the one facing page 292 of the later ECOz, where Dorothy and Ozma are the same size, both dwarfed by Glinda. (Page numbers are from the BOW editions.) Marvelous Land of Oz: Recently saw a video of this Children's Theater production. I didn't really care too much for the tunes (or the singing) - certainly no competition for MGMWiz. But the characters were all made up to look exactly like the Neill drawings, which was very nice, and it followed the book fairly closely. I always thought Ozma looked a lot younger than Tip in the drawings, but the boy who played both parts in this musical adaptation somehow managed to look just like the drawings of _both_. Also, Glinda wore her tall, impossible crown (evidently made of thin cardboard) without its falling off. Dust Jacket of ECOz: The BOW edition reproduces the original dust jacket of ECOz, and the afterward states that the design was simplified in later editions. When I was a kid, I had most of the LFB Oz books in R&L editions published during the late '40s. None of them had color plates. Whenever I see a reproduction of the cover of one of these books, it resonates strongly in my memory. But this one doesn't; I don't remember it at all. What did the dust jacket illustration look like on ECOz as published by R&L during the 1940s? Barbara Johnson: _Very_ interesting post concerning _Land_ and Aberdeen. Thanks. - David G. ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 Jan 99 13:07:43 (PST) From: Dave Hardenbrook Subject: Ozzy Things NEW DIGEST ADDRESS: As some people have asked for a repeat, and others are still sending Digest posts to my private address, here is the message again: From now on please send all messages for public posting on the Digest to: . Any mail to will now be assumed to be private to moi. And since the Digest now has its own address, the requirement to include the string "Oz" in the Subject field is hereby lifted. OZMA'S HEART 95: J.L. Bell wrote: >I claim they'll all break down in exactly 361 days! (From overwork.) >My statement about a certain unpublished Oz manuscript was that as a >non-programmer I can't help but dislike any implication that one must know >code to break into Ozma's heart--if she grows up to fall in love with >anyone, why not someone like me? I'm afraid you've lost me...I still don't understand what programming has to do with the "heresy quotient" of aforementioned unpublished Oz manuscript... SIGS: David H. wrote: >Some of those repetitive items are part of a "signature" - this would >include, for example, the tags at the ends of Scott H's and Dave H's posts. >It would be nice if these were changed a bit more frequently, but they're >not ads. What I'd really like is for Eudora to allow you to maintain a library of sigs so that I could make them more varied instead of having just a "Standard" and "Alternate". (Does EudoraPro do this by any chance?) NOT TO FISH FOR SYMPATHY, BUT...: Your "fearless leader" isn't feeling fearless at the moment...My Zip Drive has just contracted the dreaded "Click of Death" (Thanks, Ruggedo!), so that drive is shot and my archived data on my Zip disks is inaccessable. I need another Ozade...! -- Dave ====================================================================== ] c/ \ /___\ *** THE OZZY DIGEST, JANUARY 7 - 8, 1999 *** |@ @| | V | \\\ |\_/| | ;;; \-/ \ ;/ >< ] ====================================================================== From: "Nathan Mulac DeHoff" Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 01-06-99 Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1999 18:45:45 PST J. L. Bell: > However, some members of this digest have stories on their Web >sites that >use characters still protected by copyright (e.g., Jenny Jump); those >are >vulnerable under the new law if the copyright-holders or their >publishers >choose to act. (They were probably actionable before, too, but now >it's >undeniable.) I'm wondering whether or not to keep my Oz stories that contain copyrighted characters up on my web page. On the one hand, I want people to be able to read them. I don't want to have my website terminated because of their presence, though. Any advice? >What are the chances that Gini Wickwar's HIDDEN >PRINCE will be accepted (sight unseen) as canonical? I suppose it depends on how consistent it is with the rest of the canon. It might well gain canonical preference over books published by Buckethead and the like, simply because of its wide availability. If people don't have access to a book, they're probably more likely to ignore it (even if this is unintentional). Jeremy: >That graphic novel can't be right, since both the Sawhorse AND the >Scarecrow >are made of something that was once living (wood and hay, >respectively), so >that the Desert WOULD have power over them. Yes, but neither wood nor hay counts as flesh, and (at least according to _Forgotten Forest_) it is only flesh that is affected by the desert. Under this theory, Carter Green or a Mangaboo would probably be able to walk on the desert without being "dusted." -- May you live in interesting times, Nathan DinnerBell@tmbg.org http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/5447/ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ====================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1999 20:18:54 -0800 From: bspark@pacbell.net Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 01-06-99 ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 00:18:03 -0500 From: Tyler Jones Subject: Oz Gehan: Actually, we're not sure of the reaction of the parents of Button-Bright and Trot (Trot has only one at the time). For all we know, they may have been frantic at their loss, although the two kids never seemed all that concerned. From hints in _Scarecrow_, we gather that the parents may not be very worried. Church attendance depends on faith. White Americans at the turn of the century, which is the profile of most of the people we're talking about, would tend to be very devout Christians and attendance would be important to them. This was especially true of Roman Catholics prior to the 1960s. However, people adapt, and I'm sure that our friends would find a way to worship without the edifice itself. For example, I am a devout Christian and member of the Religious Right, yet I do not attend church. You already mentioned that you do not consider the church scene in _Handy Mandy_ valid, or I would have harped on it more than I am now. :-) Ruth, David Hulan and John Bell: Well, this borders on a top secret project that I'm working on, but I'll just say that although Inga is probably the character of main focus in _Rinkitink_, it is Rinkitink himself who says the most and does the most in the story. It's interesting that three people caught Inga as the main character. He probably is, in a sense, and most of the story is from his POV, but still Rinkitink played a larger part than Inga. I dare not say any more. David Hulan alone: A "widow" is the first line of a paragraph that is on the bottom of one page while the rest is on the next. An "orphan" is the last line of a paragraph that made it to the top of one page while the first part is on the previous page. Some Word Processors have options to eliminate these automatically by adding carriage returns. While Baum specifically mentions the GWN as the ruler of the north (or at least a part of the Gilikin country) in _Land_, the only time that Baum ever mentioned her as ruler after Ozma's ascension was in a conversation in _DotWiz_. The Wizard commented that she was the ruler at that time. SHe probably would, though. The Tin Woodman and Glinda were allowed to continue their rulerships, so she must have as well. JOhn Bell: I'll jump on the David Hulan bandwagon and say that we'll have to agree to disagree. I'll also agree with you that the specific books we read when we were young have a great affect on how we see Oz. I read the FF more or less in order, and some people read them in a much more mixed fashion, and tend to depress Baum's individual importance. Jeremy: Regarding Ozma's level of intervention and your recent reading of the Foundation series, remember one of the highest laws of the Second Foundation: "Do nothing except when you must, and when you must act, hesitate". David Godwin: IN the FF, Eureka goes home at the end of _DotWiz_ in disgrace, as you said. THe next we hear of her, she is a respected character in _Patchwork Girl_. That last part may just have been propaganda from the Shaggy Man. However, there is no indication in the FF about how she got back to Oz. Someone (I forgot who) postulated that Eureka secretly followed Dorothy in _Road_, and then when she was found out, nobody had the heart to send her back to Kansas alone, since her people were already in Oz. March Laumer has written an extremely complicated plotline about Eureka getting to Oz. Tyler Jones ====================================================================== Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 00:15:59 -0600 From: d.godwin@minn.net (David Frank Godwin) Subject: Oz David Hulan wrote: >I dunno, I've heard this argument about Thompson "Europeanizing" Oz before, >but I'm not sure I buy it. Yes, she did make more use of little kingdoms >and principalities and such than Baum did, but she hardly invented the >idea. Baum had the Dainty China Country, the Cuttenclips, Utensia, >Bunnybury, the Horners, Oogaboo, Jinxland, Thi, Herku, Bear Center, >Loonville, the Forest of Gugu, the Spiders, the Flatheads, and the Skeezers >- all monarchies within Oz. In addition there were Fuddlecumjig, Bunbury, >the Tottenhots, and the Hoppers as non-monarchical but oddball little >independent realms in Oz. The difference between Baum and Thompson in this >respect is one of degree, not of kind; Thompson picked up on these aspects >of Baum and used them much more extensively than he did, but she didn't >invent a type of country in Oz. What she did do was have the inhabitants of >some of her little kingdoms want to make the travelers who encountered them >become members of their community, which Baum never did - though he came >close in Loonville. But this isn't "Europeanization." It's also true that >most of Baum's little communities are incidental to the action of the >story, whereas Thompson made one central in a number of cases (Pumperdink, >Ragbad, Perhaps City, the Ozure Islands, Keretaria, Regalia, etc.). But >again, this is a difference in emphasis, not a radical turnabout. > The difference between the places you mention from Baum's books and those from Thompson's books tends to make my point, I think. There is a definite distinction between a locally governed village or encampment (which may not even be aware of anything much beyond its borders) and some little country with a castle, a hereditary king, a queen, a grand vizier (perhaps a minor wizard), a court jester, and assorted courtiers all hanging around the throne room. Seems to me you don't find that in Baum much except for countries outside Oz, such as Ev. The major exception I can think of is the Emerald City itself! Also Jinxland, which is completely isolated. (Oogaboo is somewhere in between.) It's the difference between a tribal village ruled by a chieftain and a medieval dukedom with a court straight out of King Arthur or comic opera, the men wearing tights and capes - the difference between Dodge City and Poictesme. What makes the first instance "American," I don't know, other than the fact that Aberdeen in Baum's time may have been "a locally governed village that may not have even been aware of anything much beyond its borders." (Hmm, I suppose that's also true of New York City today.) Baum had scattered villages, or in some cases entire regions, that were self-governing and that may or may not have acknowledged the central authority in the EC, but the local ruler was likely to be an ordinary citizen. Thompson's principalities were also self-governing and owed ultimate allegiance to Ozma, but RPT's arrangement is much more feudal than Baum's. She had plenty and to spare of the village-chieftain type of community as well, but they are all just IE fodder. Once again, I'm not objecting to this, merely observing that it is definitely different. It may amount to nothing more than a difference in emphasis, as you say. but that difference seems to me a big one - between modern America and medieval Europe. Another difference - neither better nor worse, IMHO - is that Baum used girls as protagonists while Thompson used boys. Nothing American vs. European about that, just another difference between the two authors. I suppose this says something about my sexual identify or something, but I always liked the girls better and wasn't able to identify with RPT's boy heroes. At the time, however, I was more of a fan of Rick Brant (anyone remember him?) than RPT's Oz. As for the Shaggy Man - Shagrick Mann, eh? I assume his middle name was Edward - Shag E. Mann. J.L. Bell wrote: >But can we assume the girl in Butterfield wasn't an Eskimo? Yes, if we believe that the Eskimo was, as Shaggy says, in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) when Shaggy got the love magnet from him. I hate to keep bringing up stuff like this, but I think "Eskimo" is now considered a prejudicial term, at least by some of the Inuit. In fact, the term "Eskimo" isn't used by the Canadian government. Gehan wrote: >.Dont folk such as The Wizard, Shaggy Man, Aunt Em, Uncle henry, Dorothy, >Betsy, Trot, Button-bright and Cap'n Bill worry about Church? It seems to me >that there really ARE Churches in Oz. Dorothy and her friends see one in the >China Country. In -Handy-mandy- (Even though I don't consider it official) >Mandy hears the church bells ring. Maybe while passing another country. We >know that Cap'n Bill seems to be a good christian through -Magic-........... I wouldn't say that Cap'n Bill's comments in _Magic_ are necessarily Christian. Could even be Muslim. They _are_ religious, however. If there are churches in Oz, the Royal Historians seem to have been unanimous in ig