Cheese!

In 1980 I won the Munchkin Convention's Oz quiz. The quiz had been prepared by John Bell. Both of us were in our mid-teens. This was the first time I won a convention quiz and I was eagerly looking forward to the glory that came attached to such a win. And I had much anticipation for the Ozzy prize that was sure to come with it.

At my first Oz convention a few years earlier, the quiz prize had been a first edition of The Giant Horse of Oz, and I had gotten it into my head that quiz prizes should be substantive. Well, my prize for winning the Munchkin Quiz was a small cheese board, hand-made by John Bell himself. In all likelihood it had been made in John's high school "wood shop" class. It came with this "Certificate of Authenticity."

At the time, I was a bit disappointed in the little cheese board. Perhaps, John, too, thought it was a trifle too little as he augmented the cheese board with an inexpensive Whitman edition of The Wizard of Oz, which he had autographed by Margaret Hamilton, who was the special guest of the Munchkin Convention.

Margaret Hamilton's "Congratulations!" on winning the quiz.

Now, in hindsight a copy of The Wizard of Oz signed by the Wicked Witch of the West sounds very nice, but at the time she was in the same room with me and I'd just had lunch with her and had her sign several other books I'd brought with me.

But over the years this once disappointingly cheesy prize has come to mean much more to me than some book or Ozian collectible would have. John and I are still friends and blogging colleagues. (John writes the Oz and Ends blog as well as the American Revolution blog Boston 1775.) And now, thirty-five years later, I really enjoy knowing that John made that stupid little cheese board for me back when we were both teenagers. And you know, for decades now it's actually been really useful for serving cheese!

[Update] You can read John's version of the story by clicking here!

Bjo Trimble in Oz!

One of the best times I had in my tenure running Winkie Con/OzCon was the chance to become much better friends with John and Bjo Trimble. They were names I'd known since my early teen years when I was a burgeoning Star Trek fan. Back then I had no idea that the Trimbles were also Oz fans. But they were, and they even attended the Winkie Convention in its early years!

I got the chance to meet them when they and Eric Shanower and I were all guests at Westercon 66. Soon after that great weekend, I invited them to be special guests at Winkie Con 50 in 2014. They were absolute hits! They even participated in the Oz Costume Contest dressed an Aunt Em and Uncle Henry!

Bjo & John Trimble as Aunt Em & Uncle Henry with David Maxine.

Bjo (which is pronounced Bee-jo) also presented me with her old copy of The Wizard of Oz Waddle Book in dust jacket, which I treasure because it was once Bjo's.  Below is an interview (somewhat expanded here) that I did with the Trimbles in 2014 for OzCon.

Both John and Bjo  Trimble say they have found all aspects of fandom, from fantasy to science fiction, to be vexing, disappointing, and loads of fun. They each found their best friends in fandom and married them. Through the next five decades, John supported most of Bjo’s hair-brained schemes (her phrasing!), from chairing conventions, to publishing fanzines, to organizing the “Save Star Trek” letter campaign.

Most of fandom knows Bjo as the woman that saved Star Trek. Bjo explains:

Star Trek was to be cancelled at the end of the second season and Gene Roddenberry was trying to find a way to ask the fans for support. The Trimbles knew how to contact the fans, and the rest is History. Nobody knew in 1967 what an impact that campaign would have; if the show had not had that third season, it wouldn’t have been syndicated (not back then), and if it hadn’t gone into syndication . . .

In 1976, Bjo assembled and wrote the legendary Star Trek Concordance for Ballantine Books. She also wrote On the Good Ship Enterprise: My 15 Years with Star Trek (1983).

But what many people don’t know is that John and Bjo are also big Oz fans - involved in the earliest days of Oz fandom in California - including the earliest Winkie Cons. “We have an eclectic interest in fandom,” say Bjo, “dabbling for awhile in such groups as the Mythopoeic Society, a local Sherlock Holmes group, and Oz, of course!”

John and Bjo both served in the Korean War, John with the Air Force, Bjo with the U. S. Navy WAVES. They were married in 1960 and they have three daughters: Kathryn, Lora, and Jennifer. They eventually started their own natural dye and pigment business. The couple says, “People wonder what we still have to talk about, but since we both enjoy books, travel, and each other’s company, our life together has never been boring.”

John and Bjo were co-organizers of the World Science Fiction Convention Art Shows for seventeen years, they co-chaired Equicon Star Trek Conventions and Filmcon Media Conventions, and both are long-time members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society and the Society for Creative Anachronism. Bjo received an “Inkpot Award” for setting up the San Diego Comic Con Art Show and helping set up the Comic Con Masquerade.

Bjo remembers reading her first Oz book around 1940. “I was given a bedraggled copy of The Wizard of Oz by a thrift shop, because it was too damaged to sell. There were no colored pictures left. I had no idea that some books came in sets, so I never looked for any others until I’d seen the movie.” But Bjo well remembers seeing the MGM film for the first time. Her family had to drive twenty-two miles to the nearest theatre, usually to see John Wayne or Randolph Scott westerns. “Only occasionally would we see something like The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland. I had no idea that books could become movies and was absolutely spellbound.” Bjo soon found there were more Oz books, her favorite being The Emerald City of Oz. Her favorite character is the Scarecrow.
John didn’t discover Oz until a few years later: “I read my first Oz book, The Land of Oz, before I’d seen the movie, probably about 1947 or ’48.” The Land of Oz is still John’s favorite Oz book and the Woggle-Bug is still his favorite character.

In time, the Trimble daughters were introduced to Oz, too. “Our whole family liked Oz books,” says Bjo. “And we had enough people to make up a small Wizard of Oz costume group for a Westercon (West Coast Science-Fantasy Conference) being held in the San Francisco area sometime in the mid-’60s. Blake Maxam (one of the co-founders of Winkie Con) was the Wizard, Lora Trimble was Dorothy, John Trimble was the Scarecrow, and I was Glinda the Good (the John R. Neill version of course).” John adds: “About that time, our younger daughter, Lora, was trying to get us to give her a dog. So she suggested the Oz group, with her little self as Dorothy. ‘Of course,’ she said slyly, ‘I’ll need a dog . . .’”

At that costume contest, the Trimbles met a Scraps the Patchwork Girl and invited her to join them. Underneath that costume was their friend, Felice Rolfe. “She was our hostess, as our family was not staying at the convention hotel,” says John. “It was entirely coincidental. We’d not spoken of our costumes, so no one knew until we met just before the costume parade.”

Bjo remembers attending the 1965 Winkie Con:

Most of Baum’s relatives left before or soon after we arrived; they seemed to feel that in showing up at all, they had done their family duty. I tried to talk to one man, who was so bored with the group that he made no secret of it. So far as I can remember, most of the Oz fans made attempts to talk to the relatives, then gave up.

After most of the others had left, Mrs. Baum [this is L. Frank Baum's daughter-in-law, Edna] showed us around the house, and Kat loved all the little nooks and crannies that were just perfect for someone to sit and read. Kat also liked the large kitchen, as did I. Katwen is our mentally handicapped daughter, Kathryn Arwen Trimble. Kat’s innocent 8-year-old enthusiasm is always a hit; people are charmed by her. She loved - still does - the Oz stories, which I read to our daughters whenever I could.

While Oz has not been in the forefront of the Trimbles’ lives in fandom, it has always been there. On the “original series” Star Trek DVDs there is an interview with Bjo. She talks of her part in helping save Star Trek, but in the background behind her during her interview are her Oz books.

Bjo and some of her Oz collection.

Of their lives today, Bjo says, “We are now discovering new delights in old interests, such as Oz fandom. We look forward to many more years with Winkie Con and the wonderful people organizing it.”

I am very pleased to have welcomed the Trimbles back to the Land of Oz.

Dick Martin and Me

Dick Martin at 1980 Ozmapolitan Con auction.

In the late 1970s I was in a sort of teenage overdrive to build up my Oz collection. And with a desire to feel important, perhaps, I began a concerted effort to get most any book that I could autographed by its author or illustrator. Whether this compulsion to get these books autographed was simply about improving my collection, or was a chance to feel special (or was it grown up?) it allowed me to make contact with the likes of Russell MacFall, Margaret Hamilton, Edward Wagenknecht, and Philip José Farmer among others - not to mention Rachel Cosgrove and Eloise Jarvis McGraw.

I had assumed I would meet Dick Martin when I went to my first Oz convention, Winkies 1977, but I found that Dick was not in attendance. He only rarely traveled to Winkies. But in 1979 I finally got a copy of Dick’s Visitors from Oz and sent him a fan letter asking if I might send him my copy of Visitors to get it autographed. A few days later I got a postcard in the mail!

Not only was it a postcard from an actual “Royal Illustrator,” but it was an Ozzy postcard. Dick gave a very friendly go ahead to sending my copy of Visitors to him. A week or so later it arrived back to me, all nicely signed with an Ozzy inscription and a little drawing of a moon. 

Inscription by Dick Martin in THE VISITORS FROM OZ.

As an extra little present, Dick also included one of the very rare Reilly & Lee advertising Gumps for me! We exchanged letters, I told him about my collection, he told me about his Oz projects. Not only was he in the midst of illustrating the new McGraw Oz book, The Forbidden Fountain of Oz, but he was also just starting his series of cut-and assemble Oz activity books for Dover. From 1979 through the mid-1980s Dick was in a kind of Oz illustrating renaissance.

When I asked if he ever sold any of his original art, he wrote that it was all gone, as he’d given it away to friends. A few months into our correspondence I found a box of unused greeting cards at Goodwill—the cards featured his little “DM” as a signature. I sent him one and he wrote back confirming it was his work. He also included several other examples of his greeting cards, all from the mid-1950s.

We finally met at the 1980 Ozmapolitan Convention. He was cordial but very quiet and reserved. But after dinner on Friday evening before the programming began, Dick came over to me and asked me to come up to his room. I must admit I tensed a bit. Even though in 1980 I was not out (even to myself) I somehow knew that Dick was gay. Perhaps it was his rakish photo in The Oz Scrapbook? Perhaps it was because he reminded me of Tony Randall in a sort of dapper way? We went up to his room and he shut the door. He pulled an envelope from his suitcase and from it all of the original art from The Forbidden Fountain of Oz spilled onto his bed. He said: “Pick one you like—I’m letting you have first choice!”

Original drawing by Dick Martin for THE FORBIDDEN FOUNTAIN OF OZ (1980).

I chose the drawing above. Then he asked me to please not tell anyone at the convention about the gift or they’d all be bothering him. I thanked him. Before we left his room he said, “I often have a few quiet friends up to my room to talk and have a drink after the programming is over. If you’d like to join us, you would be most welcome.”

I did go to Dick’s room for a while that night and several other nights at later Ozmapolitan Conventions, too. Dick was very quiet at his parties. He was always the center of attention, drinking a good deal, telling complicated jokes, performing magic tricks; he was quite simply holding court!

I’m still unsure why he pulled me into his inner circle so quickly - perhaps he just saw some of himself in a quiet (eventually-gonna-be-gay) teenage boy Oz collector. Who knows? In any event he made me feel very special at my first Ozmapolitan Convention.

Dick Martin and Jean Brockway having breakfast at Ozmapolitan Con 1985.

Drink Your Juice!

Happy February! We have an especially attractive TIGER TALE this month over on the main website - it's  Duffy's Apple Juice Imp, by W. W. Denslow - a rollicking poem with a half dozen fine drawings by Denslow in color! Come check it out!

I also wanted to share the news that the incredible and extremely over-sized edition of Eric Shanower's Forgotten Forest of Oz is now out of print. We shared the news on our Facebook page last week and every copy we had left sold in a couple hours.  We do still have copies of the two Little Adventures in Oz Volumes though - and Forgotten Forest is available in Volume two. Click here to order a copy

Lastly, I know a good many of you are still planning on coming to this summer's Winkie Convention and I urge you to get your registrations in as soon as possible - especially if you want to stay on-grounds at Asilomar. We have a lot of new people coming this year and we have a limited opportunity to request more rooms for Winkies. You can learn more about this year's con from our WINKIE page and you can download info and registrations forms via the link below.

Click here for downloadable registration forms.

Getting It All Together

The 2013 South Winkie Get-Together is scheduled for 10 am to 5 pm, January 12, 2013. This is a one-day gathering of Oz enthusiasts in Irvine, California, south of Los Angeles. Everyone is welcome to attend. Speakers will include Kirk Kushin, writer and publisher of the comic series OZopolis; Freddy Fogarty who will speak on Oz collecting; Robert Baum, great-grandson of L. Frank Baum, and others. The $25 registration fee includes lunch. Please register by January 6 so that the organizers can get the total number of attendees for lunch. The Get-Together will take place at the Back Bay Convention Center. Click on the link below for the PDF registration form:

2013 South Winkie Get-Together Registration Form

Winkie Con Collectibles

This week the Winkie Con has been auctioning off a couple dozen Oz collectibles on eBay. all of the proceeds from the auctions will go to the Winkie Con Programming Fund.

Isn't that neat? Here's a chance to add something cool to your collection and support the the Winkie COn at the same time. Click here to see a list of the items being offered. The auctions end on Sunday afternoon at 5:30 PM Pacific time.

All of the items were donated by the family of the late Rik Thompson - a long-time Winkie who passed away earlier this year. Our thanks go out to his wife Haven, and daughter Melissa for their thoughtful generosity.

The many items date from the mid 1970s through the mid 1990s. There are many Ozzy Christmas ornaments, little dolls, stuffed Oz figures, Ozzy Russian nesting dolls - items celebrating the MGM Wizard of Oz film as well as Disney's Return to Oz.

So come on - go check out the auctions and show your support for the Winkie Con! If these auctions are successful we'll do our best to do this kind of thing again!

Click here to see all the Oz goodies up for bid!

Get with the Program!

One of the things that has kept me from blogging as much as I'd like is the Winkie Con Program Book. I started doing them in 2009. For those that haven't seen one yet, the Program Book is a 7"x 10" square-bound trade paperback. This year's edition is 160 pages long.

The cover painting of Kabumpo and the Runaway Country was created by illustrator Maurine Starkey just for the Winkie Convention. In addition to the schedule of events, maps, profiles on our special guests Caren Marsh-Doll and Susan Morse, and all the information one needs to get the most out of their Winkie Con, the book also features articles on Sky Island by Judy Bieber, Frederick Wiegand, Dick Martin, Jared Davis, and  J. L. Bell. Robin Hess provides a complex analysis of the travels in Kabumpo in Oz and Eric Shanower has written a pictorial essay on "The Elephants of Oz."

The program also contains a gallery and profile of cover artist Maurine Starkey and our usual section of Winkie artwork. And the entire book is rich with wonderful drawings by John R. Neill, too. And since we're celebrating Ruth Plumly Thompson's Pumperdink Oz books we have a whole section of all her short writings on Pumperdink from the days before she became a Royal Historian. Peter Hanff has continued his "History of the Winkie Convention," and I am very pleased to have acquired a fascinating piece of fiction written by Bob Baum called "Dinner at the Del."

It's a very full 160 pages - and needless to say it took up a lot of my blogging energies! I had thought my job was done when I sent the program files off to the printer, but several people expressed interest in a limited edition hardcover like we did last year, so . . . we are doing it again!

Eric Shanower has drawn a special illustration for the limitation leaf and he has agreed to sign each of the twenty numbered copies. There is also an additional double-page illustration by John R. Neill not included in the paperback version. The hardcover also has a different and exclusive cover design, featuring art from the extremely rare dust jacket of the first edition of Sky Island.

Cover of the LIMITED EDITION hardcover.

If you would like to reserve a copy of this limited edition hardcover please let me know of your interest by emailing me at chair@winkies.org.

Copies are available at $50.00 each. All proceeds go to the Winkie Convention. Several are already spoken for, so if you’re interested don’t delay in reserving your copy!

John R. Neill and the Winkie Convention

Most of you know that in addition to writing this blog I am also the Programming Director for the Winkie Convention, which will be holding it's 48th annual celebration of the Baum and Oz books this July (click here for details).

I am delighted to announce that the family of Oz illustrator John R. Neill has donated an original drawing to the Winkie Con. This drawing will be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the Winkie Program Fund on Saturday evening July 28, 2012.

This wonderful and important piece of artwork was one of the last Oz drawings John R.Neill ever did. It is the best of the cover roughs for Neill's final Oz book The Runaway in Oz and also includes multiple character sketches and illustration ideas on both sides of the same sheet. Neill died in 1943 before completing the illustrations, and the book remained unpublished until 1995 when Eric Shanower picked up the baton - revising the manuscript and preparing his own new illustrations.These wonderful sketches are John R. Neill's vision for his final Oz book. So let's take a look at Neill's drawing.

Click to Enlarge!

The piece we are offering is drawn in pencil on both sides of a sheet of paper measuring 10 - 1/2" x 7 - 7/8". This side of the paper features the most detailed of Neill's cover studies for the book, showing placements for the cover lettering, indications of color: note the word "blue" at the top of the image and Neill's scribble indicating "orange" for the title lettering. Neill has indicated the position of the "credits" by drawing simple boxes at the bottom of the image - though Neill has scribbled in "L. Frank Baum" at the lower right corner. The right-hand side of the image shows Scraps and the spoolicle in another position, as well as what's likely Neill's only portrayal of his character Captain Battery-Bat. The woman drawn on the bottom edge may be Fanny the Weather Witch, although it's hard to tell since her description in Neill's original draft is vague - maybe it's the Queen of the Conse-quinces.

Click to Enlarge!

The back of the sheet of paper is jam-packed with other sketches! The left-side shows multiple facial expressions for the Friendly Cloud. You can see the Patchwork Girl and her spoolicle (very tiny) sitting on top of the uppermost cloud. The right side shows several more views of Scraps and the spoolicle - the central one is especially interesting as it shows Neill experimenting with how he would get multiple characters onto the contraption. Popla the Power Plant is holding on at back and a character who's possibly Fanny the Weather Witch is leading the parade. Scraps has her legs extended over the handlebars. At the bottom of the page are two more small sketches. I'm unsure who the character at the left is - maybe the Twinkler. The boy on the bottom right is almost certainly Alexample.

You have no doubt noticed the mathematical figuring. Neill did this a lot on his sketches. Not quite sure what he was doing, but many of Neill's sketches and the backs of his illustration boards have mathematical doodling all over them.

As I said, this is the most detailed of Neill's several cover roughs for the book, and it was this image that Eric Shanower used as inspiration for the 1995 publication of the book.

Below is another example of how Shanower incorporated Neill's roughs into the final book.

Neill's 1943 sketch at left - Shanower's 1995 drawing at right.

You can see what a truly fine and interesting piece of Oz history this is. While lots of John R. Neill artwork survives, his Oz work is still quite rare. And these preparatory studies are rarer still and perhaps most fascianting of all, as they let us into Neill's mind to see his design process. This really is a marvelous piece featuring one of Baum's most beloved characters, the Patchwork Girl.

Please note, too, that the proceeds from the sale of this drawing will go to benefit the Winkie Convention Programming Fund. The drawing was donated as a memorial to their mother by the children of Joan Neill Farnsworth, the youngest of John R. Neill's three daughters, who passed away early last year.

Portrait by John R. Neill of his daughter Joan.

The Winkie Convention is very grateful to the Neill family for this generous gift, and the monies raised through its sale will, I hope, bring Ozzy pleasure to people at the Winkie Convention for years to come.

For information on attending this year's Winkie Con click here for more details and links to download the info pack and registration forms.  I hope you'll join us!

Life as an Oz Boy

Back in the early-mid 1980s I was just starting to have an Oz collection that I was semi-proud of. I was also a bit of a closet-case, with zero social life and I had pretty much gone to live in Oz.  

Sigh . . .

Anyway, one of the ways I felt comfortable reaching out of my little oblong fairyland was by showing off my Ozzy treasures to anyone who cared to look at them. Sometimes this meant dragging house guests into the so-called  "Oz museum," but I also used the collection as a social crutch of sorts by hosting the occasional Oz party or offering to show my collection at local libraries and things.

I recently found a little stash of photos from one of the better library displays I set up. These are from a display at the Golden Valley Public Library in Minneapolis - part of the Minneapolis Public Library System. I must say that I think my collection wasn't so shabby, considering I was only nineteen years old.

I had all forty Oz books by this time and several fairly nice first editions. The Hill Wizard above is a little beat-up and is a second-state copy, but I'd gotten it at my first Winkie Convention when I was fourteen for $56, so who's complaining? The seemingly very nice copy of Ozma of Oz was great for displays - sadly there is a bullet hole right through the middle of all the pages. I guess someone set the book up on a fence - covers open - and used it for target practice. The copy of Little Wizard Stories of Oz was one of the few ultra-bargains I ever found. I got it from a local woman for fifteen bucks at a book show.

My first edition copies of Emerald City and Marvelous Land were a bit on the shabby side.

I liked mixing up the displays with a little of everything. So we get a copy of Patchwork Girl, my playing pieces for the 1921 Parker Brothers Oz game, and a miniature version I had made of the game.

I found Dick Martin's Cut-and-Assemble the Emerald City great for displays. The little buildings could always fill a dull niche. The original drawing from Forbidden Fountain of Oz was a gift from Dick Martin at my first Ozmapolitan Con.

Another mixed shelf of Oz stuff. The blue thing is a yo-yo from the Banner Elk Land of Oz theme park.

From my mid-teen years I had a strong interest in foreign editions - at last count I had about three hundred and fifty. The hard-to-see map in the background is also from the Banner Elk theme park, which I'd visited when I was thirteen.

I made the little Oz flag when I was fourteen. You can read a blog about it by clicking here, if you like. I always found pop-up books worked well in displays, too. The paper Gump (another present from Dick Martin) is a favorite, though I don't have him set up anywhere at the moment. He lives flat these days.

So here I sit - decades later - and Oz still plays a huge part in my social life. 

Sigh ...

Rachel and the Scarecrow - BLOG 400!

Oz book author Rachel Cosgrove Payes was famous for being "anti-collectible" and trumpeting her motto "Oz is for kids." Yet this same Royal Historian would eventually show up at the Munchkin Con in a Wicked Witch of the South Costume she'd made herself. She happily showed off her "Silver Slippers," a pair of silver leather sling-back pumps, with a girlish grin and twist of her ankle, and she even made a few Oz collectibles! One such was the Scarecrow shown below.

Rachel had either knit or crocheted him and brought him to the convention and donated him to the auction. Several people bid on him, but in the end the person that wanted it most was Eric Shanower. So now he lives with us.His tag (which I didn't scan) was made by Rachel and explains that she made him (I believe from a kit or pattern). I think Rachel thought the Scarecrow would be bought by a kid - but she seemed to be pleased Eric got him. I've no doubt if any other adult had gotten him Rachel would have had quite a chuckle.

I remember once Rachel and Eric and I were sitting around discussing "the collector mentality." She just couldn't believe adults were paying so much money for such odd and Ozzy things - like MGM-inspired plastic tea sets that were selling for hundreds of dollars. I started joking around that maybe she should cash in quick. Perhaps she could put her "Silver Slippers" in the auction? She looked confused and said, "But I've worn them!" I replied, "Oh, Rachel, you just don't understand - that's WHY they'd sell! Can't you just see Fred Meyer happily traveling home with his new shoes, once worn by an actual Royal Historian?" Rachel laughed - but for a millionth of a second I think she might have considered selling her shoes.

Anyway -  this is indeed the 400th blog post on Hungry Tiger Talk. On the whole I am enjoying myself and I hope the blog will continue for years to come. I started the blog to attract people to our on-line store and encourage the sale of our Oz books. It's not been terribly effective thus far. However, if you'd like to support the blog you can click here and go right to our store where you'll find a fine selection of Baum and Oz material, Eric Shanower's Oz comics, and much more. And to celebrate this 400th blog we are offering FREE Media Mail shipping for the next week. Simply enter the coupon code TIGERSHIP during checkout. The coupon is good thru next Thursday. Come buy a book!

Patrick Maund 1955 - 2012

I'm quite saddened to report that the world of Oz and Baum scholarship and The International Wizard of Oz Club have lost a dear friend. Patrick Maund died suddenly after a brief illness on February 22, 2012. He was only fifty-six years old. Patrick is survived by his wife and three children - their loss must be unimaginable.

Patrick Maund (right) in deep Ozzy conversation at a late-night Oz party - mid 1980s.

I became acquainted with Patrick only a couple months after I first joined the International Wizard of Oz Club back in 1977. I was a young teenager and Patrick was twenty-one. I had seen an ad he'd placed in the old Oz Trading Post and sent for his sale list. He was selling off his entire Oz collection - something he deeply came to regret in later years. I don't recall the specifics, but he needed money - perhaps he thought he'd outgrown Oz. We exchanged several long phone calls talking about books, what I might expect at my first Winkie Convention later that month - he was so warm and friendly I felt like we'd been friends for years. His voice on the telephone was deep and rich - a radio announcer's voice - he sounded much more mature than a mere twenty-one. Patrick had made his first (and at that time only) appearance at an Oz convention in 1975 at the Winkie Con in Yosemite, California at the Wawona Hotel. He was nineteen and his mother had made the arrangements. Patrick talked fondly to me of his experience at Winkies and assured me I'd have a great time - though he had not returned to the convention, and as I mentioned, in 1977 he was on his way out of Oz. I bought a couple small things from him (most of his collection was already sold), and then Patrick disappeared.

But he came back! In late 1981 he reemerged into the world of Oz. I think I saw a "want list" he was running in the Oz Trading Post and sent him a letter to say hello and asked where he'd been for the last four years. We immediately began our friendship again and were soon talking on the phone for hours a week. My mom was going crazy with the phone bills I was running up. We talked about our collections, we talked about bibliography, we spent hours discussing odd things like whether Dr. Nikidik and Dr. Pipt were the same person, trying to rationalize exactly what happened with the east/west reversal on the Oz maps. Maps and Ozian geography were deep interests of us both. We could nit-pick the Clubs Oz maps for hours at a time! We even tried to chart orbital patterns for Sky Island to try and explain how it might rotate, spin, or tilt away from the sun so that the Sunrise Tribe, Sunset Tribe, and the Blue Country could all make sense from a scientific point of view. [Blogger's note: this neurosis is spelled G-E-E-K].

Patrick really wanted to go back to an Oz convention, but for some reason the idea terrified him. It seemed to me like he was embarrassed for having left Oz for awhile or not stayed in closer contact with friends he'd made back in 1975. I told him to go and stop worrying. He did. He made a triumphant return to the Winkie Convention in 1982 - alas, I wasn't going west that year so we had yet to meet face-to-face. Well, Patrick fell in love with the Oz Club and the Oz Club fell in love with him. He could hardly wait for another convention! He and a few others began organizing small Oz parties in the San Francisco area, and Patrick decided to journey to the Ozmapolitan Convention in Castle Park, Michigan, in 1983 at least partly so we could meet at long last. It was to be my first time at an Oz Con without my family, so Patrick and I decided to room together.

Patrick Maund (right) with Fred Meyer at the 1983 Ozmapolitan Convention.

It was great to meet Patrick in person, but I was very nervous! I was still deeply closeted, not even out to myself at the time, and, well, frankly Patrick was this somewhat older, extremely hot, beautiful man with a big "clone" mustache, and he was from "San Francisco." Well, it made me very nervous! And to top it all off, Patrick slept in the buff and seemed to have no inhibitions whatsoever, yet I was ... uhm ... inhibited. Of course in hind sight it's silly because I'm the one who turned out to be gay and Patrick was straight as an arrow.

We continued to write and call for the next several years and saw each other at Oz conventions pretty much yearly from then on. Patrick rather quickly built up a new (and very fine) Baum and Oz collection. Slowly our high intensity friendship faded as I got too busy in college and graduate school. And soon he was married and had three children. Time was flying by so quickly!

Sadly Patrick and I hadn't talked much in the last few years - we'd had a bit of a falling out over some trivial bit of Oz Club nonsense. I tried hard to get him to return to the Winkie Convention last year - I knew it was just his sort of convention - but it didn't work out that way.

It is very hard to believe a man with so much energy and life, who loved his family so deeply, could be taken from the world in a wink of the eye. I am only one of many who will greatly miss him.

 Patrick Maund (devoted dad) with the twins in 2007.

Newsies in Oz!

Back in the very early 1980s three teenage boys went to Oz. . . . Well, they each started Oz newsletters, anyway.

Eric Gjovaag - David Maxine - Scott Cummings (circa early 1980s)

In those days the Oz Club's journal, The Baum Bugle, was being published very sporadically, yet the Oz Club was heading into its biggest decade. Oz fans were simply itching for contact with each other, to learn of local Oz news and activities.

Click to Enlarge

The Seattle area was especially rich with Oz interest and club members, and the local group had begun holding a regular mini-Oz convention called The Oogaboo Rendezvous.

The group was becoming so active that Eric Gjovaag was the first to address the need for a regional Oz newsletter. In January 1980 he produced the first issue of The Oogaboo Review. The newsletter was published quarterly.

In addition to local news, Eric filled the issue with book reviews, mini-essays, short fiction, profiles of local Oz folk, and of course announcements and reports on the Oogaboo Rendezvous.

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In 1981 my family had just recently moved to Minneapolis and there was a large Oz community waiting to be organized. I started hosting local Oz parties, showing my collection at local libraries, and Fred Meyer mentioned The Oogaboo Review to me. I was immediately smitten with the idea of starting my own newsletter and in the Spring of 1981 I produced the first issue of The Pumperdink Press.

Like Eric's Seattle newsletter, The Pumperdink Press included a good deal more than local Oz news. I shared new treasures from my collection,  reviewed books and movies, and was pleased to include some really neat things, including Oz fiction by Philip José Farmer and previously unpublished artwork by W. W. Denslow, Dick Martin, and Eloise Jarvis McGraw. Each issue also contained an advice and gossip column written by Kabumpo, the Elegant Elephant.

The Pumperdink Press was published for three years. I  tried to make each issue more elaborate than the last, absorbing new layout techniques, printing on colored paper, exploring dry-transfer lettering and decorative layout tape, and having photographs screened. By the third issue I had switched from photocopying to off-set printing. All these regional newsletters were typed on typewriters. Affordable home computers and laser printers were still several years away.

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At exactly the same time, Scott Cummings of upstate New York began The Munchkin Monthly. Yes, a monthly! Though in actuality it was only supposed to be published ten times per year, the daunting schedule forced the closure of the paper after only six issues. It was soon reborn as a quarterly called The Munchkin Times.

Scott was the youngest of the three of us - his youthful enthusiasm was evident in his taking the time to hand decorate many of the issues (note the Ozmite wings under the masthead), and Scott would send personal notes and valentines. I even have a Munchkin Times pendant Scott made with Shrinky Dinks!

I don't know if Scott did this for everyone, but some of my envelopes came very elaborately decorated.

If memory serves me right, all three newsletters ceased publication sometime in 1985. I completed three volumes (twelve issues) of The Pumperdink Press. The final four issues were spread over almost two years. My first full-time theatre job was sapping all my creative energy. Eric Gjovaag eventually turned the reins of The Oogaboo Review over to his Assistant Editor, Glenn Ingersoll, after volume five, and Glenn produced another couple issues. The last partial issue I have of The Munchkin Times dates from August 1985 and I think that was the final one.

What I find most interesting is that we Oz boys were about the same age, each of us built our little Oz journals at about the same time, and each journal ended as our lives became too "grown up" for us to manage the headaches of editorship. Yet we each also went on to fairly high-profile lives in the Oz community. Eric Gjovaag developed the earliest (and best) major website devoted to L. Frank Baum and Oz; I went on to found Hungry Tiger Press and edit Oz-story Magazine (not to mention this time-sap of a blog); and Scott Cummings is currently the editor of The Baum Bugle - one of the best Bugle editors that journal has had.

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I can't finish this blog without mentioning one other Ozzy newsletter, The Quadling Quarterly. It was founded by a young kid named John Plummer from Tennessee. He prepared three or four issues and disappeared. Maybe he'll read this blog and say hello! [Note: Just reconnected with John Plummer on Facebook!]

The 1970s and early 1980s produced a very large and very engaged group of young Oz fans. I wish I saw more of that happening today. Kids, teenagers, and families seem to be disappearing from organized Oz life. I know kids still love Oz, but although I've seen a special few, I haven't seen a whole new generation of Ozzies chomping at the bit since the early 1990s - certainly not in the Oz Club anyway - but here's hoping!

Eric Gjovaag - David Maxine - Scott Cummings  -  (these days)

Pondering the Program

Program Book for 2009

It's time for me to start giving some serious thought to my plans for the 2012 Winkie Convention Program Book. This year will be our fourth edition of the expanded convention guide.

If you've seen the Program Book you know that in addition to all the basic contents like the schedule and map and meal information, it also contains essays and articles about the books we are honoring at each convention. This year we are celebrating the centennial of one of L. Frank Baum's finest books, Sky Island. If you would like to write an essay or article on Sky Island or on Trot and Cap'n Bill, I'd be delighted to have it.

We are also celebrating Ruth Plumly Thompson's birthday with a special focus on her two Pumperdink books, Kabumpo in Oz and The Purple Prince of Oz, and I'd be happy to have an article or essay on RPT or her Pumperdink books.

The Winkie Convention can not pay for your submission, but we will make sure you get a copy of the Program Book - this can be especially nice to have if you aren't otherwise attending the convention. The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2012, though I'd appreciate them before then if possible.

If you would like to submit an original illustration or artwork, that is great, too! Images must be in black and white or grayscale and should measure proportionally  5 1/2" x  8 1/2".

For information on attending this year's Winkie Convention click here or click the Winkie Convention tab at the top of this blog. You may send submissions or submission questions to me at chair@winkies.org

Dickin' Around

Dick Martin circa 1980

No doubt you are all familiar with the work of Oz illustrator Dick Martin. He was the last "official" illustrator for the Reilly and Lee Oz books and created the pictures for The Visitors from Oz (1960) and Merry Go Round in Oz (1963.) He also illustrated picture-book abridgements of the first four Oz books and he designed the ever popular "white editions" of the Oz series that dominated bookshelves in the 1960s and '70s.

Dick also played a huge part in the early days of the International Wizard of Oz Club, doing research, editing and laying out The Baum Bugle, working on bibliography, and much else including illustrating Ruth Plumly Thompson's final two Oz books, illustrating the McGraws' Forbidden Fountain of Oz (1980), and finally writing an Oz book of his own, The Ozmapolitan of Oz (1986). And at the time of his death in 1990 he had the finest Baum and Oz collection in the world.

Dick was a very private man, very reserved and quiet (he was very hard-of-hearing), and he hated fandom of any kind, despite being a fanatical Oz collector, comic collector, and toy collector himself. I am sure, too, that some of Dick Martin's reserve was because he was gay (but pretty firmly in the closet). It wasn't exactly a secret (at least to other gay people). I suspected Dick was gay the first time I got a letter from him. His tone, his quirky sense of humor, his ultra-dapper author's photo in The Oz Scrapbook (1978) all set my Gaydar off, even though I was a sixteen-year-old closeted gay boy myself.

I'll share more Dick Martin stories in the future, but in today's blog I'm gonna discuss Dick's mischievous side. Dick's illustrations were fairly cartoony, always light-hearted and fun. But he also liked to work in quaint references, little in-jokes for his friends. Sometimes these were Baum or Oz collecting references, sometimes bits of sly innuendo like in this charming illustration from Merry Go Round in Oz showing two cute little boys holding hands in the Land of Good Children. In Oz it seems everyone is a Friend of Dorothy.

Two Ozzy boys holding hands in MERRY GO ROUND IN OZ

Or in the illustration of Prince Gules below. Note the placement of the big Easter egg and Gules's excitement at finding that big ring. And if it's not obvious enough what's going on, Gules's right hand signals it quite blatantly.

 
This "after dark" in Oz streak is most evident in a short bit of Oz fiction Dick wrote for friends in the mid-1960s called Oz ad Nauseum. It was later printed in a fanzine called No, no.10 (June 1972), edited by charter Oz Club member Ruth Berman, and it was included as a premium broadsheet in our own Oz-story No. 6 (2000).

But for your reading pleasure it is also available as this month's free on-line Tiger Tale. I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this very irreverent Oz tale, and you'll get to spend a few minutes with a more private Dick Martin than you get to know from only his illustrations. Go read it!

Sad Little Oz Boy

My parents divorced in the summer of 1977, and within a few weeks of that, our house burned down. The family badly needed an escape. So my mom and sister and I went to the Winkie Convention in Yosemite, California. It was a life-changing experience.

I returned home full of courage and very Ozzed up. My childhood love of Oz shifted into high-gear. I began to eat, sleep, and breathe Oz - whether it was pleading for an advance on my allowance to buy a another first edition or requesting an Oz map on my birthday cake. And it wasn't enough to buy every Oz book in sight and turn my bedroom into the Royal Oz Museum of Greater Albuquerque, I wanted the entire family to be Ozzy. I suggested to Mom we needed a custom license plate for our car. For some reason mom agreed.

As you can see, I picked my favorite character's name. But also because I knew the custom plates in New Mexico were blue and of course were rectangle-shaped. The day it arrived I rushed out to the car to bolt it on. It got a lot of attention! People would honk and wave, they'd also give our car a wide berth. It took several weeks for us to realize that "Woozy" had a very different meaning to the average schmo on the streets of Albuquerque than it did to me (and my Ozzy family). But the car remained Woozy until we sold it several years later.

In 1978 we returned to the Winkie Convention with our Woozy mobile. And to make it even Ozzier, I made an Oz flag to go on the radio antenna. It came out exactly as I'd wanted except that I didn't know how to embroider an "Oz" in the center - so I left it off. When it was finished I carefully folded it and put it in the glove compartment so we wouldn't forget it. After we entered Yosemite and were about five miles from the Wawona Hotel where the Winkies met back then I had mom pull the car over. I got out, attached the flag to the antenna, and we sailed on in to the Wawona, Oz colors flying.

Mom is gone now; but I still have the license plate and Oz flag. I don't like to admit it, but it seems pretty obvious to me now that I used Oz to replace the family that was dissolving before my eyes. It quite probably saved my life.