![]() Peekskill, NY, is a little over an hour north of New York City, an industrial river town that fell on hard times and is now struggling back with the help of local artist and a few snazzy new watering holes. The yellow brick road is in Peekskill, N.Y. "Do we really believe she's going to be happy being a wife on the farm? She demonstrated wanderlust, and the journey's been thrilling."ģ. "But the real message is that Dorothy does go off on her own, and seek greener pastures," he added. "'Shut up and be quiet and go home, you're a little girl' is one." ![]() "There are lots of ways to read that," said MacLeod. The "duality" of the good witches and the bad witches, added Schwartz, is "a commentary on how people perceive something like the women's rights movement, depending which side of the fence you're on."Īnd then there's Dorothy, who at the end of her adventure returns home. ![]() She was also an expert on the medieval witch hunts." She lived with the Baums during the winter, and her husband, Henry, was "compliant, like Uncle Henry" in the book. ![]() "She was called the heretic, derided as a radical in her day. Anthony, Gage "was the fiercest of them all," said Schwartz. A contemporary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Maude Baum was the daughter of Matilda Joselyn Gage, an early suffragette in upstate New York, where the movement was in full swing when L. According to great-grandson Robert Baum, "Maude saw in Frank all the fun she didn't have, and Frank saw the businesswoman in her, someone who could get things done."Ģ. If the populist angle is off, that last comment is not. Plus, he added, "If Baum were so intelligent about politics and finance, he wouldn't have gone broke so many times. It's very hard to overcome the power of a conspiracy theory on the Internet."īesides, James Finn Garner, author of "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories," told, "The way to write a really boring story is to make a political allegory." "The theory's been debunked, but it still lives as a conspiracy theory on the internet. Baum was quoted as saying, 'I've always been a Republican when I dabble in politics, which is not often.' I found that Baum voted for and supported President William McKinley. "The whole parable of populism was based on the belief that Baum was a supporter of William Jennings Bryan, who wanted to topple the gold standard. If it were, "the plot would play out to enact some kind of point, and it really doesn't," said Schwartz. But in looking at the story itself, I don't get how this is a populist story." "It sounded so clean and neat when it first came out, and teachers still use it because it's one of those things that helps explain a concept - populism and the cross of gold and the idea of gold being a tool of liberation or oppression. "It was started in 1964 by a high school history teacher named Henry Littlefield, who was trying to get his kids interested in populism."ĭewar MacLeod, who teaches history at William Patterson University, in New Jersey, concurs. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story." "The whole parable of populism is a mistake," he told. The Wizard was the president, the tin man the industrial worker, the scarecrow the farmer. The yellow brick road symbolized the gold standard the silver slippers (ruby in the movie) looser money. Populist William Jennings Bryan, running for president in 18, was the Cowardly Lion. But it's good for keeping the man and story alive.ġ. Robert Baum, a retired schoolteacher from Los Angeles, sees all the interpretations and myths surrounding his great-grandfather's novel and 1939 movie as amusing, if misleading. Plus, there are visits from great-grandson of Robert Baum Caren Marsh-Doll, Judy Garland's stand-in and surviving Munchkins from the 1939 movie. The three-day festival, Oz-Stravaganza, will feature pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners a silent auction and a 5:30 a.m. These, and other questions, will no doubt come up this weekend in the tiny upstate New York town of Chittenango, where Baum was born in 1856. Finally, where did the real yellow brick road actually go?
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