Comments on: mud season

By: Kat

Kat — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:19:23 +0000

Maggie,
I bet you hiked right past my grandma on one of those walks. She loves the Audubon Canyon Ranch, and spent a lot of time there in her walking/hiking days. She I used to love looking through her Audubon book of all the birds…..

My watershed sounds so boring compared to the rest of y’all’s….San Pablo Bay

By: Maggie Jochild

Maggie Jochild — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:51:18 +0000

Hey Bodega Bay watershed, I used to go to the Audubon Canyon Ranch and hike up to look down into the great blue heron nesting sites atop trees next to the cliff, right there near where you are. I bet those owls cause headaches for great blue heron parents of fuzzy chicks.

By: Blushing Girl

Blushing Girl — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:51:37 +0000

In the Bodega Bay watershed,
peering into the San Andreas Fault,
surrounded by owls.

By: Heidi

Heidi — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:07:12 +0000

Alex, I’m a little disturbed to hear that you saw a crack deal go down right outside your door, since I live a mere two miles north of you. Actually, I used to live right there, too, in the apartments behind Dan’s Hamburgers. Still, I love this neighborhood, and it’s an easy bike ride to Bookwoman.

There was a great debate in one of my history classes as to whether Wizard of Oz was really meant to be an allegory about the gold standard, or if was just a simple children’s story that others reinterpreted to mean something more. From what I have read, Baum himself claimed that it was purely meant as fantasy and had no political meaning. I read the whole series of books when I was a kid, but now I don’t remember any of it.

I do enjoy Gregory Maguire’s Oz-related books, though.

By: Andrew B

Andrew B — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:02:37 +0000

you must all be getting sick of this

Alison, feel free to delete my screw ups if you wish. Is there any way the blog software could be configured to stop assuming URLs are local if no protocol is specified but a server is specified? Also, could it be configured to allow us to preview posts? That way we’d have a chance of catching our mistakes before we waste everybody’s time.

If I screw this up again I won’t try to correct it — I think most of you can figure out where I was trying to point you.

By: Andrew B

Andrew B — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:56:22 +0000

I am sorry. Baum editorials.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:55:48 +0000

@ Andrew B: These are truly horrific. Is there any chance that they were meant sarcastically, ala Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal”?

By: Andrew B

Andrew B — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:51:31 +0000

Try again: L. Frank Baum's heart of darkness.

By: Andrew B

Andrew B — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:49:36 +0000

Nuts, I screwed up that link. I’ll fix it in just a moment…

By: Andrew B

Andrew B — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:48:21 +0000

I’ve been holding off on this because I was feeling guilty about my shameless amplification of Ian’s shameless hijack of a post that had nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz or American prairie populism. But the many interesting versions of the worm song have given me courage.

People who are interested in populist politics and/or racism really should take a look at Baum’s infamous editorials. They’re very short. They are available here in pdf format. If your browser can’t handle pdf, google “Baum Sioux editorial”. The above page should be at the top of Google’s list. Click on “View as HTML” to have Google show you the page as a regular web page.

Acilius, thanks for telling us about this. I hadn’t known it before.