“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” - RuPaul - - - - - - - - - - - “if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.” - John F. Kennedy - - - - - - - - - - - - “Imagine finding someone you love more than anything in the world, who you would risk your life for but couldn’t marry. And you couldn’t have that special day the way your friends do – you know, wear the ring on your finger and have it mean the same thing as everybody else. Just put yourself in that person’s shoes. It makes me feel sick to my stomach …. When I shared a picture of my tattoo on my Twitter page and said, ‘ALL LOVE is equal,’ a lot of people mocked me – they said, ‘What happened to you? You used to be a Christian girl!’ And I said, ‘Well, if you were a true Christian, you would have your facts straight. Christianity is about love.’ The debate resulted in a lot of threats and hate mail to people who agreed and disagreed with me. At one point I had to say, ‘Dude, everyone lay off.’ Can’t people have friendly debates about sensitive topics without it turning into unnecessary threats?” - Pop star Miley Cyrus on her marriage equality tattoo - - - - - - - - - - -
Loading

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Oz - The Great and Powerful

Since we're on the subject of The Great and Powerful Oz.

The name for Oz in "The Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz." Hmmm...

You can take Baum's word for it, or you can take his wive's.  Your choice.

We don't have to rely upon whatever Baum's children may have been told for verification, however, as Baum himself had offered essentially the same story many years earlier in a press release drafted to announce the reissue of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1903:
I have a little cabinet letter file on my desk that is just in front of me. I was thinking and wondering about a title for the story, and had settled on the "Wizard" as part of it. My gaze was caught by the gilt letters on the three drawers of the cabinet. The first was A-G; the next drawer was labeled H-N; and on the last were the letters O-Z. And "Oz" it at once became.
This evidence wouldn't seem to leave much room for doubt, as Baum himself is undeniably the one person who knows how he came to choose the name, and this explanation comes straight from the horse's pen, so to speak. Baum's version does differ from the one offered by his son in that the latter places him in a roomful of children rather than alone in his study, but that difference might be dismissed as a mere literary embellishment on his son's part. Even Baum's version contains its own discrepancies, though, as various pre-publication references and copyright registrations reveal that Baum considered several titles for his book using the word "Oz" but not the word "Wizard" (e.g., "The City of the Great Oz," "The Fairyland of Oz," "The Land of Oz"), so clearly he had not "settled on the 'Wizard' as part of it" before coming up with the name 'Oz.'2 Moreover, Baum's wife Maud wrote to a friend in 1943 that:
The word Oz came out of Mr. Baum's mind, just as did his queer characters. No one or anything suggested the word — or any person. This is a fact.
snopes.com

1 comment:

Ryan said...

I know the word "queer" had a different meaning back then, but I just think it's hilarious how right his wife really was about those friends of Dorothy. The cartoon above was hilarious too.

I have organized my blogs with 3 days worth of postings, so if you wish to continue reading the days before that, and so forth and so forth, you can click the "Older Posts" button /\ /\ /\ right /\ up there.

There are 3 other ways you can find interesting topics to read as well.

*Clicking on any of the links under my "Favorite Categories" section on the left hand side of your screen

*Using the Google Search bar under the scrolling text.

*By choosing a date from the drop down list on the right hand side of your screen.


Hope you enjoy my daily posts, and hope to hear from you soon.

- Blade 7184 aka Peter