Yes. He’s dead…by his own admission. I heard him say he was born in 1735 when addressing his tour subjects. He was pleased that I wished to photograph him. I guess the lantern adds to the spookiness.
The town I live in is haunted…in some places. It’s pretty common knowledge. It is an old town. During the summer, there are ghost tours. I’m not kidding. I might take a tour one day. ~Vic
These beauties have their own timetable. They bloom early, even when it is still cold…or snowing, no less. They are quite happy underneath Mr. Sugar Maple. ~Vic
I climbed into a guy’s car for a road test and met his little friend. I asked him if he minded me taking a picture of it. He posed her a little bit for me. Then, I asked him “Favorite past-time?” “Nah.” was his response. “It was gift from a friend…a female friend, no less.”
This comes under the heading of “Things You Don’t See Everyday.” I DO miss this job sometimes. ~Vic
The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their Kansas home by a cyclone.
The book is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The Library of Congress has declared it “America’s greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale.” Its groundbreaking success and the success of the Broadway musical adapted from the novel led Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story.
Baum dedicated the book “to my good friend & comrade, My Wife,” Maud Gage Baum. In January 1901, George M. Hill Company completed printing the first edition, a total of 10,000 copies, which quickly sold out. It sold three million copies by the time it entered the public domain in 1956.
Image Credit: wikipedia.org
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is considered the first American fairy tale because of its references to clear American locations such as Kansas and Omaha. Baum agreed with authors such as Carroll that fantasy literature was important for children, along with numerous illustrations but, he also wanted to create a story that had recognizable American elements in it such as farming and industrialization. Baum did not offer any conclusive proof that he intended his novel to be a political allegory.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has become an established part of multiple cultures, spreading from its early young American readership to becoming known throughout the world. It has been translated or adapted into well over fifty languages, at times being modified in local variations. For instance, in some abridged Indian editions, the Tin Woodman was replaced with a horse. In Russia, a translation by Alexander Melentyevich Volkov produced six books, The Wizard of the Emerald City series, which became progressively distanced from the Baum version, as Ellie and her dog Totoshka travel throughout the Magic Land. More recently, the story has become an American stage production (The Wiz) with an all-black cast, set in the context of modern African-American culture.
Here in North Carolina, we have the Land of Oz at Beech Mountain. I went there in 1973 with my parents and, again, in 2017. ~Vic
