With Oz in the news these days, (not the doctor nor the Australian slang – just the new Disney), the connection I have with all things Oz reappears to bite my ankle.

There are over 70 Oz books. The first 14 by old L. (Lyman) Frank Baum, reverently called, ‘the canon,’ were oversized like physics textbooks. The remainders are by a variety of authors picking up on the Oz theme including Stephen King and Philip ‘Jose Farmer the science fiction writer. Baum’s daughter wrote the most, (19), his son and great grandson wrote some, even his illustrator, John R. Neil wrote three all of which were vastly animated including talking houses that ran about here and there.

There is a body called The Baum Trust that authorizes those they think stick closest to the tradition of the original. Then of course there are the movies, Broadway plays, video games and even a line of Oz comic books.

What the Oz books really were best at for me, was serving as metaphor. All the books have a real sense of community. Problems are faced and solved together. The wonderful wizard is often along. He has attained real magic but finds it seldom helps.

In The Lost Princess, he goes along with Dorothy to find Ozma who is missing. (Spoiler Alert: She has been stashed in a peach pit in an immense orchard). The as-always odd collection consisting of the animated like the scarecrow and the patchwork girl, the animal like the cowardly lion and the hungry tiger, (and of course Toto not to mention Dorothy and the wizard, have all been forced into an increasingly narrow route till suddenly they can go no further.

Ahead of them lie a vast series of sharp peaks called The Merry-Go-Round Mountains, like a perpetual motion machine, spinning madly in every direction. But behind them are the series of monsters and pitfalls which they have previously defeated. A lot like life.

As the scarecrow now has that new brain, (I seem to remember a large component of it was raisin bran), he decides the only thing to do is for him to fling himself into the mountains and trust that he will come out okay. If he can, he will yell back to the others how it is going. Since he is animated cotton, he may be immediately shredded but at least it will not be painful.

Before they can stop him, the scarecrow darts to the edge of the mountain-filled chasm and launches himself at the sharpest peaks. At once his straw-filled body is tossed from peak to peak. Though he is yelling something, no one can make out what he is saying. Finally he disappears from view and a silence descends.

The patchwork girl, who is an animated stuffed quilt with button eyes and a temper, immediately rushes to the cliff and is similarly bounced. As she has a permanently stitched smile, they cannot decide whether or not it hurts her and soon she is gone from their view.

Since it seems the only thing to do and due to the reassuring tone of the scarecrow’s yells, even though they could not make out his message, one by one the others go too, including the wizard (who, unlike the new movie, is entirely bald with Diefenbaker tangled eyebrows that seem to have a life of their own).

Dorothy is the last to go and she throws herself at the mountains with trepidation, only to find they are made of rubber, bounce her around like a ping pong ball and suddenly throw her off where she lands in a sunny meadow where all her friends are lying in the grass laughing from the great ride.

I told Judy Russell, that star of a Kingston actress/writer/bookseller/traveler, about this story when, struggling with breast cancer, she asked what I thought about death. This particular Oz story is a metaphor for how things like that work, I told her. We go forward bravely into the unknown, the trip of a lifetime. We are flung among the sharp peaks, from diagnosis through chemo and other treatments (depending on our bodies, what we’re made of), till suddenly the wild ride is over and we emerge into a meadow. There all our friends are waiting, smiling and laughing. The Elysian fields, the Greeks called them. But it is really just coming home.

Judy died not long after. But the last time I saw her, it was evident that the metaphor held. Mental bags packed, she was prepared to set out on that final great adventure.

Growing up with a prospector father and grandfather in isolated regions of Alaska, the survivalist nature of that life was not conducive to good parenting. Clear and present danger was a accurate description of my childhood. It was the Oz books that made me look beyond frightening circumstances; dragged down into abandoned mines, stuck into leaky skin boats on an icy arctic sea in a frozen environment, I determinedly lived in that enchanted fairy kingdom in my head as the horror unraveled that was my life.

I knew I’d be taken in and loved in Oz, being a child and knowing that the other tenants of the green crystal palace were such a motley crew: the Gump, the Wogglebug, Jack Pumpkinhead and the Shaggyman to name only a few. Baum was big on communities made up of outsiders.

Oz itself kept me safe in my head until I could make it on my own.

Jan’s Family and Not Just Another Wrinkled Face are two novels that reflect the social culture of our times while being full of personalities you will recognize. Just as Barbara Pym always had an anthropologist lurking somewhere in the woodwork, Barbara McIntyre will have an apartment complex.

Barbara is interested in how people live – their conversations, the small decisions in their lives that lead them to crossroads they never expect to encounter. Her characters do laundry and all the mundane errands while contemplating the kinds of questions we all have about what our lives are worth and where we are going with them.

Not deeply philosophical but often funny, always gentle and unexpected, Jan’s Family and Not Just Another Wrinkled Face are vintage McIntyre; thoughtful, relevant and contemporary.

I shall now go review them on Amazon.

This is my ‘Before’ picture. Before I lost 100 lbs. Needless to say I got rid of the homemade hat. The coat is Lands End’s Rose-Violet and I get compliments on it everyday as though I had designed and painted it myself. 

Tune: Swanee River (Old Folks At Home)

Way down upon the Detroit River

Bankers got more

Made all of them a major bundle

Foreclosing on the poor

All around, bereft and weary

Houses swindled, lost

Robbery and stealing – legal?

O what a human cost

V2)All up and down the whole creation

Sadly they roam

Wondering how it was the law allowed this?

Grief for their long lost homes

All the world sees what went wrong here

Detroit’s a spectacle

Fraud, robbery, misinformation

O what a debacle

V3)Restore to every single victim

Houses gone away

Right here beside the Detroit River

Let’s put things right today

Let there once more be the old folks

Back where they should be

Change laws, protect and serve all people

Bring justice home to me

UPSIDE OF SNOW

I’ve seen snow. Born and raised in Alaska, I never wanted to see snow again. Both my sisters went to warm; one to Arizona, the other to Florida. Somehow I thought Canada was far enough but oh no. The past snowfall was like the celestial hockey rinks of heaven all scraped ice and dumped the result on Kingston. Three feet on my corner of Barrie and Colborne.
At 9AM Colborne wasn’t plowed. A Lincoln town car was spinning its wheels and letting the white stuff fly. A pickup pulled over on Barrie which was plowed like a geometry exam and a guy jumped out with a shovel. “TAKE YOUR FOOT OFF THE GAS!” he yelled as he started for the car. A guy in an overcoat pulled up behind him and an Asian student with a shovel came out of a Colborne street house and started digging.
The flustered woman in the Lincoln climbed out from behind the wheel and fluttered back and forth like a moth spotting a porch light, unsure what to do next. “Get back in and wait till we tell you to drive,” the student hollered, shoulder to the shovel. So she did and they did and suddenly the Lincoln went flying out of the ruts she’d made on the drifted street and onto salvation on nice clean Barrie. She waved and honked as she quickly turned right headed for Princess. Lots of drivers use Colborne as a quick route downtown. Lots of drivers were no doubt going to visit those ruts she’d left behind.
I got into our 94′ jeep with my husband, thankful that our plow guy was coming and that we had four wheel drive. I was going to the Credit Union on Market Street where I work as a welcome two days a week. My New Year’s outfit was a long black velvet dress with a silver sequined wrap and disco ball earrings. It dragged rather, in the snow. We went down Queen to Sydenham where we saw a driverless car blocking the left hand lane and someone lying in the snow, face first. Before we could stop and get out, three passersby had hands under his arms and were hoisting a somewhat dazed individual to his feet while another brushed him off with reassurance that the world was still with him under the snow.
Down on a nicely-plowed Market, skaters of all skills were waltzing on the ice looking like an overdue Christmas card. At work a few members trickled in here and there, making little forays in the face of a ticked-off nature.
Mindful of wells dried up in the township and on Wolfe Island, I knew this snow could only be A Good Thing despite the stories of those who made it in to do their business, considerately stamping their feet before hitting the indoor carpet.
By 1:30 I’d put in my hours. I called my husband. “We’re plowed in,” he sputtered. “Does the city care about the elderly and disabled when they send out these bulldozing fiends to stash snow in the yards of hapless humanity? The house looks like something out of Whistler!”
“So I should call a cab then?”
“I can’t get out. I may never get out again.”
“So that’s a yes?” He sounded distraught but then he drove, I didn’t. Still it didn’t seem likely the city was fulfilling a personal vendetta. I called Modern and they said it would be five to ten minutes but it was less than that when a native Kingstonian pulled up and regaled me with the old days when Big Snows were something to get excited about, not this piddly stuff today. But when I got back to our corner at Barrie and Colborne, I could see what my husband meant.
Piles, drifts, obscuring any glimpse of sidewalk. Ski hills to right and left. Not just us but what ever yard was handy. I couldn”t see any path to the house from the road. Not even bootprints breasted the pristine thigh-high banks around Colborne. So I stuck a tentative pink boot into the bank in front of me and sank right past my knees. Then the next foot but I couldn’t pull the first foot out and now I was about waist high. O how I remembered Alaska. My sisters were right. Undoubtedly they would phone and gloat as usual if this got out.
As I was wondering if I’d just freeze like this as a reminder to others not to venture out, a white car pulled up on Barrie and an angel sprang out. Wings covered by his ski jacket, he bounded over the drifts to my side, took my bag with one hand and held out his arm. “Going my way?” he said in a Bing Crosby voice with a heavenly smile. Then he more or less flew me over the worst of it till I was at my front door, handed over my bag and wafted away to continue to do some good to frozen others.
I was glad the day had happened, even the piles of unwanted white, when it allowed me to see such behaviour on every hand like some kind of Christmas movie special where decent ordinary folks look around for someone they can help out. In this case, it was someone like me.

Today the vine that appears to be eating my house is full of red, dark green, light green, yellow and orange. This leaf has strayed from a nearby maple as the October winds close in. More pics as soon as I download them from my camera.

This is a view of the wall hanging by Laurene King -McGill that took my breath away when I saw it. Below is the press release sent out at the time the piece was hung back in October, 2002. Originally hung in the Departures lounge with a bronze plaque explaining the work and crediting the artist, FOREVER has been moved to the Arrivals lounge where Laurene fears that light from the windows have already damaged this work of art beyond repair. The plaque is also missing. Coming into the soulless vacuum of an airport and looking up to see a work of this magnificence is a wonderful gift to the city of Kingston. It is sad that something of such skill and beauty should suffer such a fate. Can it not be moved and a new plaque attached?  Write the City of Kingston if you feel as I do that such painstaking and amazing work should be given its proper due.

This is a closeup of the hundreds of tiny pieces that make up this beautiful work of art. Inspiring and moving are just a few of the adjectives I have heard from those who saw it with me.  Below is the press release when Laurene speaks about making FOREVER:

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Ten days after I was commissioned by Brad Finch to design and make this wall hanging I was diagnosed with an uncommon, inoperable lung cancer. I believed, no matter what the outcome, that I would have time to complete this project but understood that there was a possibility that I would never be able to finish. I notified Brad that, although I would really like to do this project, it was only fair to bow out, due to my uncertain future, and let him search for another artist. He told me (and I quote) “Put my name on your calendar for three months from today. Call me on that day and let me know then how you feel about it.”

During the three-month period starting in February through radiation and chemo I played with some designs when I felt able. Of all the designs I did, I kept coming back to this one. I called Brad on the agreed date and told him I wanted to do the wallhanging. We met so he could view the design. He approved and let me set the deadline based on my upcoming treatment. This project became very significant to me.

Through the marvels of modern medicine and the support and prayers of family and friends, I was now a candidate for extensive surgery, which was done in June. Prior to the surgery I had chosen the fabrics and cut out all the blocks necessary since I knew I would be unable to do this after.

During the months of post-surgery I was able to work on assembling the blocks for very short periods at a time. In October the panels were sewn together. This required the assistance of my husband since the pieces were getting heavy and hard to manage. He helped me lay them out and patiently held the pieces while I sewed.

The geese were appliquéd. The binding applied. The day finally came ? October 26th ? it was done! ?Forever? had become a testament to faith, perseverance and life.

As one doctor put it, “You had a better chance of winning the lottery two weeks in a row than having this type of cancer.” The odds of surviving were minute. Although I will have some permanent damage from the treatment and surgery, I am alive and no cancer can be found. My profound thanks go to Brad for his support, encouragement and faith in the face of great odds. Words cannot express my gratitude to my husband, Bob McGill, for his unwavering love and support. He was by my side every minute of this challenging year and made all the difference in the outcome. I love you, hon.

I am also touched and humbled by the outpouring of love and support from my family, friends and acquaintances. Thank you all.

It doesn’t look big enough to hold 102 persons all at once but nobody seems to think it will come to that. My group doing individual exercise therapy, most of us with notes from our doctors, are scathingly referred to as the ‘waddlers’ by snorkel boy. There are many divergent needs to be met in this much smaller size pool, especially after having come from the luxury of the university complex but here we’ll be, those of us who stuck together, for about a year and a half till the city finishes renovating our beloved Artillery Park.

Community dispersed is a painful thing but there will be good memories when we reunite. In the meantime, the adjustment will be a thing of wonder.

I was sitting here minding my own business in the beautiful handknit shawl made for me by a friend of Lynn McCauley when on the window behind me appeared this fellow inhabitant of the planet:

A praying mantis (non-member) looking for a way into the old limestone building on Market Square that houses our beautiful downtown credit union.

Fortunately for her (I knew it was not a him as its head was still attached), I picked her up and dropped her carefully into this handy potted plant which we have outside as decorative foliage. That seemed to satisfy her (though she may have been looking for our ATM which is around back). But at any rate, (and we have very nice rates), no more was seen of this spiritual bug.