A Geek History of Time - Episode 171 - L Frank Baum, Accidental Allegorist and Prophet Part I

Episode Date: August 13, 2022

BELLS Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere. You are destroying the Constitution of the United States may God have mercy on your souls. Good day. Yes. It's a very sad word. We could be saying that we just elected the right white man to power. That's creepy but that's a different category of creepy. Zitsu, Zitsu, Zitsu, Zitsu.

Gary Gaggers. Of course he introduced zoning law. creepy but that's a different category of creepy. Z with most episodes I can bring him back to wrestling. Right, well he's got other people who work for him who also do things and they can use mutate, cut, human size into smaller worlds after all. Fuck you. I still don't give a shit about getting fake property in a fantasy game. 1.5-2-3-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4- This is a geek history of time. We connect the artery to the real world. My name is Ed Blu. I can be a world history and English teacher here in New York, California, currently on an

annual period of contractual unemployment. And as far as stuff I've gotten going on, I had the opportunity the other week to visit the home or one of the homes because it moved around a lot of Ulysses-esque grant. While we were visiting extended family back in Missouri, turns out that Grant spent a significant portion of his time in and around St. Louis, who was actually where he met his wife. And one of the things that I found most interesting about visiting the site was that after his presidency, he and his wife returned to the home that they had inherited from her father. And Mrs. Grant, who they had just come back from Europe, and Mrs. Grant insisted on repainting the house as a show of their

new status, having returned to town. In a shade of green that was all the rage at the time, it's called Paris Green, imported from Paris France. And to modernize, it is no ship. The ugliest color you could consider painting a house. Like it is this god-awful, like, sharp, true screen. Like, lime doesn't quite get you there in terms of the shade. I don't know really how to describe it, but it was it was remarkable to think that like back in that time period that was a sign of status and so it looked good. Where has to us? That's fugly. Like, so it was a reminder of how those things affect aesthetics and how the newness of something, because that pigment

was a brand new thing at the time and just how that affects. Like 100 years from now, 200 years from now, people are going to look at the colors we choose to paint stuff and the aesthetic that we have, they're going to be like, oh my god, that's muggly. You know, but to us, it's awesome. So anyway, just that's the realization that I made recently that I figured I'd share. What are you up to and who the hell are you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony.

I'm a US history and Latin teacher up here in Northern California. And what was it? Oh, I recently was at your house. Yes. And you have some strange people in your life because not a single one of them was on board with the idea of making your ceiling plaid. So. I don't have to tell you people in my life. I have. I have just one very strange person in my life.

Yes. Yeah. So. Hey, your kids getting to the age where you watch movies with them yet, right? Oh, yeah. Cool. There's a lot of stuff. He's still easily spooked. Okay. So like Pixar movies, there's almost an evidentably some point where something scary happens and he kind of flips out in brave the bear more do the gigantic evil black bear scared the daylights out of him and spoiler alert we tried to watch turning red and like you know it's red pandas. How can that possibly be scary?

Well, you wind up finding out that the mother's red panda form is a kaiju-sized red panda. And when I say kaiju, I mean, you know, multiple stories tall. Sure, sure. Yeah. And when she is transformed into that form, she is really furious with the protagonist, her daughter. And so it is a ragingly angry, kaiju-sized, you know, trying to bear. And I think the emotional loading of Mother being that angry was also part of it, but he started crying. And we had to stop watching the movies.

So there, yeah, with limits, there are films we do watch with him, but yeah, we're not up to the kind of stuff that I'd like to be watching yet. Right, right. I remember the first time we all watched Princess Bride, that was about seven years ago. Okay. So my daughter was three going on four. Okay.

Or she just turned three. Okay. I remember, and that worked, that was good. And then I'm trying to think I mean four years old as one my son got to start seeing Star Wars Okay and I Give you a hint here. Don't watch tombstone with your kids just because they know how to read Turns out they should be a little older Yeah, and I missed I I screwed that one up because I mean,

there's a lot of gun violence in it. It's tombstone. But I thought that because we'd watched so much Star Wars that there's blaster violence turns out, there's a difference qualitatively. That's a different thing. Yeah. Apparently didn't I didn't I missed that. So thatly, that's a different thing. Yeah, apparently didn't, I missed that. So that was a screw up on my part. Okay. We watched Jurassic Park recently, and that went pretty well,

although we had to stop it right about the time that the velociraptors were opening the kitchen doors. It was just a little too freaky. Yeah, no, I can't imagine. Nine-year-old. Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure Robert would be totally on board with the early parts of that movie. Oh, absolutely. Like, like, out of his mind.

The Barrett. The, absolutely. Like like out of this mind. I mean, frankly, everything until Nedry turned stuff off. Yeah, pretty much just like dream come true. Like, oh my gosh, yeah, transported. And honestly, you could just show them those part, you know, that those up to that. And it would be, it would be fine. It'd be fine. I don't know if I'm ready and it would be fine. I don't know if I'm ready to see Jeff Goldblum shirtless again. There was there was there was a little bit of uh bicariosity. A little bit a little bit of a little bit of you know slightly traumatic uncomfortable questions. I don't want to I don't want to ask myself. See, whereas I don't think that anybody has to be anything other than straight to enjoy Jeff Goldblum. It's just a natural part of being human to find him that attractive.

I really like he is. I will try to frame it that way. He is omnisexual. It's time. You know? All right. Okay. So, you know, in seriousness though, we haven't started that one.

And then there are certain movies that we watched before Robert came along who was old enough to be watching with us, like just because he was an infant, that we're just not watching again in this house. Okay. He does get a kick out of Encanto, like he loves Encanto. Sure. But Coco, we're never allowed to watch again in this house

because my wife was destroyed. Oh wow. By the ending, like it rector and ugly crying. Sure. This is a beautiful movie, but I'm never allowed to watch it again. Like anything. Okay. Oh yeah. again. Like, I kind of think, okay. Oh yeah.

See, my kids, like, they straight up, like when we watch episode seven of Star Wars, they will just reach their hand over and hold my hand when, uh, Ben and his father meet on the catwalk, because they know I'm going to cry. They just know, like forever. Cause you're not made of stone. Right. But every time, and they'll just reach, like forever. Because you're not made of stone. Right. But every time, and they'll just reach their handover. They're like, oh, this is a dad crying part.

Okay. You know, in my rush to get kids cinematically literate. Yeah. There are inevitably movies that I never actually bought on DVD. And I couldn't find that any streaming service. Until recently. And by recently, I mean, just a few weeks ago, my kids had never seen the Wizard of Oz.

Okay. And it was cool, because we were watching it. And my girlfriend came over and she watched it with us. Okay. And she and I kind of started discussing as it was going on, much to the shushing world. it and my girlfriend came over and she watched it with us. And she and I kind of started discussing as it was going on, much to the shushing of our kids of my kids of like, wow, there's some really

interesting stuff going on here and I realized this is a whole podcast. So, we're going to talk about the Wizard of Oz, or, El Frank Baum is a satirist and a prophet. Okay. So, all right. In 1856, in upstate New York, Cynthia Ann and Benjamin warm Baum, welcome to their seventh child into the world. Now, since contraception back then wasn't readily available in any substantive way, he was the seventh of nine children, which of course may be wonder if the character from Voyager was somehow a nod to him. And I went down several rabbit holes and could not find anything, but seven of nine.

I found nothing in my research to say that it was done consciously, but I'm not an expert on either the real person or the fictional character to make such a claim. So if there are any friends of the show who are experts on Voyager, feel free to weigh in. I'm going to leave that to any geek timers who know better than I about either. Anyway, this seventh of nine of whom five survived to adulthood, his name was Lyman Frank Baum. Okay. I, I, I, I just, I just have to interject nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood.

That was pretty good. That was pretty good. That was pretty good. And I cannot imagine the weight of lifelong grief. It would be, it would have to be, well, okay, no. It was so normalized. Well, yes, it was normalized, but still. Like, you know, That was a much more constant companion.

Like, I'm not saying it wasn't a cause for sadness, but there was already a get busy living. Well, yeah, I mean, yes, but like, okay, anyway. Yeah, yeah. There was a very significant conversation in Medieval Studies course I took in college about there is this perception, or there for a very long time, was this perception amongst medievalists that because we have all of these stories of, well, you know, child died

because they fell into the fire right home house. Drowned in the street. Drowned yeah, you know, and all of these, all of these terrible ways that children died, there was this kind of undercurrent of, well, you know, they didn't, they didn't feel the loss the way we do because it was just, it was just so common that like they didn't, you know, and, and, and there was very significant pushback. Good. Then I tend to buy into because we also see shrines and, and, you know, religious places where you know, it was very clear that people were leaving

votive offerings and spending resources on praying for the souls of the children that they had lost. This wasn't like, you know, this idea that people before our era didn't get as attached or they didn't feel the loss significantly. Like yes, there was, it was a more constant companion. There was normalization of, well, you know, this is what happens. Right. And these are the this is what happens. Right. And these are the ceremonies that you perform to help you cope.

And I think I hesitate to make an assumption. I feel like it's modernizing to, or it's a very modern lens that we assume that, well, it was so normalized and like, it was just, you know, get on and whatever, like the assumption that there was not some weight of grief carried by everybody. You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah, and we're gonna run into that down the line in the story. Yeah, I don't want to downplay the amount of grief that parents felt, but more that they couldn't stick in it. Yeah, oh yeah, that. And I'm not saying that they coped well either because we're like, Oh, God, you know, they, they, you know, they just had to go on and man, they should beat the shit out of their kids. And it's like, well, you know, these things are tied together, you know, and response. Yeah. Yeah. But, but regardless of I've made it. And he liked to go by Frank. His family were wealthy. His dad was successful at a number of different jobs and they had in a state called the Rose Lawn.

Frank went off to a military academy at the age of 12, but after two years he came back home because he was miserable and his parents were like, yeah, you don't need to stay. And they tutored him at home. Um, all right. When he was 16, maybe 17, his dad bought him a cheap printing press, which was to encourage Frank's love of writing. Uh, and pretty soon, Frank and his younger brother, Henry, were publishing the Rose Lawn Home Journal, which, pretty cool. By 17, he was publishing a pamphlet for, it's hard to say, a pamphlet, pamphlet for filatalists. See, if I don't say it properly, it's a very different kind of literature.

Filatalists are, of course, stamp collectors. But this was called Bombs Complete Stamp Dealers Directory. Oh, wow. All right. So he was doing that. That's a thing that he was doing. My kid, she's writing up different role-playing systems. He was publishing shit.

Now when he was 20, Frank in 1876 got into a weird craze that was sweeping the wealthy strata luxury, the wealthy strata is called luxury poultry. Okay, yeah. All right, you can't leave that lying there, luxury poultry. Yes, yes. Fancy chickens.

Yes, fancy chickens. Pet, pet, fancy chickens. Pet, fancy chickens. Yes, fancy chickens. Pat fancy chickens. Pat fancy chickens. All right. Yep. Okay. Yep. Big cock comparison, you know,

well, of course, I mean, I'm on that's the point of 90% of it. It's actually not that different than the luxury mutton craze of the 1840s amongst landlords in Ireland, which is what prompted a lot of them to kick poor families off their land. So, Baum personally was in fact at Baum, Baum, healthy fresh, and I'm going to probably go, I'm going to probably end up going back and forth. But he personally was in fact, you're with the Hamburg chicken, which is also called the hamburger, which is really confusing because it's a chicken.

Yeah. So, I'm really an hamburger. And the person, oh yeah, beef is good. No, it's poultry. Let's know it's chicken, man. That's hard. This of course prompted another journal, which started monthly in 1880, and it was a trade journal called the poultry record.

And he also wrote his first book at Age of 30 in 1886, called The Book of the Hamburgs, a brief treatise upon the mating, rearing and management of the different varieties of hamburgs. All right. So that's yet another person that by the age of 30 was far more successful than I. Um, yeah, yeah, by the way, I looked it up because it was bugging me and it is bomb. Bomb. Okay, bomb. I will do my best. Correct me as it goes. Yeah. Um, it's wild. You know what? No noise for just a second. Bomb. That way I can just edit it in. That'll be good.

There you go. Perfect. All right. L Frank bomb. But it's wild to me that this guy had such money that this was his life. Yeah. I mean, it's a different privilege going on. Yeah.

Yeah. Definitely. Not to be confused with his neighbor down the road who started a vocational trade school for Waterfowl, no matter what his neighbors thought, he had duck you money. Nice. Thank you. But seriously, likes and how to make them pay that what did ducks do? That was disappointed to find that this was a book about running a successful water fell business and not punish you dex for what they know they did.

But seriously, I do think that this buccolic luxurious live your weird fucking dreams kind of life is something worth noting. At no point in his life, did he not have the memory of or the existence in presence of joy in his life? He seems to have been, frankly, quite fulfilled by what he was doing, and he wanted for very little. And part of me really hates him for that, considering the time that we're talking about. This is the 1870s and 80s.

But part of me really hopes that this is true for everyone soon. Like how nice it must be to like make a stamp journal. Yeah. You know, now I know it won't be for everybody. We should all be so lucky as to write treatises on hamburgers. Truly, I want my children to know the beauty

that is luxury hamburgers that are chickens. I would like that. Wouldn't we all though? Yeah, true. Like really. Yeah. Here's what's really fucking wild though, right? He was born four years and about 11 months prior to the Civil War, which means when he's turning seven, the draft riots are happening down state in New York. Okay. So that means in upstate New York, the draft riots had to have been in some sort of discussions in the general zeitgeist. Now, he was only seven and keeping kids from such a traumatic occurrence would be relatively easy,

though I was making Arran Contra jokes when I was six and seven years old. But you grew up in an era where the mass media existed in a, you know, you couldn't get away from it on TV. I don't remember ever watching the news. Like the first news I remember watching quite frankly was Tiananmen Square. And that's because it broke into my cartoons. Yeah. But, but that didn't mean that adults around me weren't talking about it. Yeah. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of, kind of, I don't know if going on a limousine or a word here, but I think there was a different outlook, like based on everything anybody has, you know, especially in the upper echelons of society. There was this view amongst folks who had that level of duct you money that childhood should be this kind of idyllic period of innocence. And you know, it makes me think of the Roosevelt, TR and Second Wife. And their attitude, the way everybody talked about their

attitude toward their kids, which was pretty standard for the Dan, what made them exceptional was the fact that, you know, it was Teddy Roosevelt and his wife and so they had the money and the connections and whatever else to do what everybody else wanted to do to like 11 in terms of creating an Edenic kind of kind of environment for their children. And I think during the Victorian era, especially amongst the upper classes, I think it would have been a lot easier for a 70 year old like Frank Baum to be insulated from that. I don't I don't think social more is what have been like. We're not going to talk about this in front of the kids.

Yeah, I think there is. I know. There's also you had this development of the idea of like the cult of domesticity and this idea of separate spheres. And so that would, kids would get included in the mom's fear, not in the dad's fear. And the dad's fear is where you talk about politics and show like that. So it's entirely possible that he didn't do it. But if we look at when he was 12, so he might not have known about the draft rights in the same state that he lived. But when he was 12 in 1868, and going to military school for those two years, he had to have

learned about the Civil War. Well, yeah, it's a fucking military academy. And knowing the most recent history, the divisions of the country, et cetera, shouldn't that that had to have been basic studies, right? Like, you know, just just in general. And yet, he was so insulated from all of it. One kind of wonders. So he was, we were talking about between the ages of 14 and 16. It'd be interesting. Between 12 and 14. 12 and 14. Okay, 12 and 14.

I'd be interested in looking at the curriculum. Because, like private military, military, I'm going to put in scare quotes. Schools, I think it's entirely possible that he would have gotten a lot of drill, he would have gotten a lot of, you're gonna learn how to march, you're gonna learn how to, you know, behave in a soldierly way. Sure. And the military trappings of discipline, obedience, all of that were a big part of his daily experience at that academy. Mm-hmm.

But I don't know as a 12 to 14 year old, like how much he would have been studying anything like military science. I would imagine that. You know what I mean? Had to have been in their history classes though. Oh, yeah, well, I'm sure I mean, you're studying, you're going to be studying Caesar, you're going to be studying Napoleon. And you, you literally, I mean, your teachers are very likely veterans.

Yeah, you know, so it's, it's really hard for me to think that that shit was excluded. Oh, yeah, no, I'm, I no, I guess what I'm saying is, I'm sure he learned about it, but how much of it would have been like, okay, we're gonna talk about conservation of force and logistics and this thing, like he would have learned that it happened. And there certainly would have been, you know, it would have been taught in a way that was, you know, and grant was, you know, a genius who pulled this off.

Right. You know, et cetera, because it's close enough to the word that we're not running into lost cause stuff so much yet. But while he was in school. And so he would have been told that guys like Sherman and Grant were heroic leaders of the Army that saved the union, but how much of the nitty-gritty details of, okay, so Sherman decided, here's how I'm going to do this. I'm just going to cut myself loose from any kind of baggage train. We're all going to live off the land and make the South. How? You get what I mean by the difference. Yeah.

I think those lessons would have been those lessons would have been being taught at West Point. Sure. For guys that were 19, 2021. Right, right. You know, for guys that were 19, 20, 21, right, right. You know, but kids, you know, you know, you got to me. Yeah, would have, yeah. I could see that. You know, having said that though, I will say that there's, you know, your, your kid got scared of red panda getting big and angry. So you all turned it off. We grew up with the black cauldron and going in the barbarian.

The generation before us grew up with, I mean, your mom went to bed with nightmares of the reds. Yeah. Oh yeah, no, no. You know, the 1800s, go to sleep. Go to sleep. Yeah.

You know, I mean, go to sleep or monsters will fucking kill you and drink your mom's blood. Yeah. You know, so, but I see what you're saying, but I'm just saying the emphasis of the emphasis of the lessons he would have gotten. Right. I don't think they would have gotten an in depth one semester course on, you know, here's how surgeons worked three years ago.

I don't think he could have escaped the reality of the Civil War, and yet he was so insulated from all of it on some levels that he wrote fantasy and he did stamp collecting. He bred chickens for fun. Like he was 30 and he lived a life totally secularized away from the history of the world in which he lived. Elfranc Bomb loved theater and was gullible. And he was essentially a money mark.

And when he realized that he'd been taken advantage of, he abandoned that theater group. To be a clerk and a dry goods company in Syracuse that one of his brothers ran. And the thing is he's able to bounce from shit experience to shit experience and never really took the bitterness with him. He didn't stay away from theater long, by the way.

He found another inlet into acting. He wanted to be an actor. He was a dreamer. His father built him a theater and opera house in 1880 in Richburg, Richburg, New York, the population of which today is 450. Of course, back then it was a petroleum boom town being right near the border with Pennsylvania and the population was approaching a whopping 374. Well, you know, it was a place crying out for some culture anyway. Yeah.

So 30-year-old Frank Bomm. You've got to uplift the workers, right? You've got to give them some kind of, you know, enrichment. Absolutely. 30 year old Frank bomb, having lived through that time is like this focused on acting and shit that he wrote plays in which he starred and acted in and gathered a theater company to the venue. And then he continued to write melodramas. He even wrote a prototypical musical in which the

music actually sung pertained to the plot directly. This was called the Made of Iran, ARRAN. He was, by all accounts, having a grand time of things. He really was an upper-class twit. Yeah, but like, at no time as he's... Right. Exactly. And no time is he acting shitly. He's just living his dream. Badly, badly. And I love that.

I love that he had the luxury to not be good at this shit. Wow. I feel like I wish I'm trying to remember when Jay and Barry was was writing because I feel like, you know, the I wrote you. This is my muse. Yeah. Like, um, now I got to look this up because I got to figure out whether there's, whether there's any, any overlap here. Well, so in 1880, he's doing all that. In 1882, he marries Maude Gage at the end of 82. Now Maude Gage is the daughter of one of my intellectual heroes. Her name is Matilda Jocelyn Gage. Did you find out when your thing got up? Yeah, Barry was born in 1860 and lived until 1937. So they were in fact, they were in fact, contemporaries. So Matilda Jocelyn Gage,

very often she's one of those women who's mentioned in a group of suffragists who attended this thing or that thing, but rarely is she ever given any real space in the history of women's suffrage. Some of it is because Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, they absolutely are so iconic. So you can tell the whole story through them and have people surrounding them and kind of a dull haze. Another reason though is that she was a lot more than just a suffragist. So she's hard to kind of pigeonhole. She was a vanguard of feminism. She fought for Native American rights. She fought for abolition.

And specifically she fought for free thinking, which was anathema to most folks in the 1800s. Yeah. And I don't mean that sarcastically. I mean it like literally free thinking is in short, the belief that logic, reason, and empirical data should be what guides people to ideas instead of specifically tradition, authority, revelation, and dogma. Yeah, not a popular viewpoint. No.

Yeah. No, no. Yeah, she's someone who looks at religion and goes, well, let's do with all that miracle stuff and put that aside and then look at why it's still a good idea not to cover your neighbor's fine finance. You know, all right. Yeah. So Matilda Jocelyn Gage was the first woman to write about how women are erased from and excluded from the history of science and innovation.

It is now called the Matilda Effect because of her. No shit. Yeah. She wrote a track called Woman the Adventure in 1870. And then it ended up in the first American literary review journal ever published, which was the North American review in 1883. The best and easiest example to point to Rosalind Franklin and the double helix structure of DNA.

Yeah, oh yeah. Right. Watson and Creek Creek get the credit because it's more fun to think of a bicycle ride with LSD than it is to think of her efforts and having discovered things and then looking through her note. Yeah, somebody said what is it? What is it that wants to be a correct discovered. So I said Rosalind's notes. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but engages lifetime. The clearest example would probably have been the French botanist Jean Baray Who's I think is beray B a R E T Dead yeah, sounds right. We can go with that Her discoveries of different species were credited to Philbert Comerson whose name I love He was a really really big time botanist and naturalist actually at the time. Okay, so And she was on the same ship as him and she discovered a whole shit ton of stuff

and it all gets credited to him. And Matilda Jocelyn Gage is pointing this out. Now Matilda Jocelyn Gage to understand the woman whose daughter married L Frankbaum. Okay. This this upper class twit. His wife, her mother, this beatific upper class twit. This wonderful, this well-meaning, well-meaning doofus, the L. Wood doubt of his time.

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So his wife's mother is Matilda Josson Gage. She grew up, Matilda Josson Gage grew up with her own home being a stop along the way for the underground railroad. She even faced prison time over it because that fugitive slave law of 1850. By most accounts, she was far more radical than Stanton or Anthony. And remember, at the time, they were some of the most hated people in America. Oh, yeah. No, they were vilified as huge. Yeah. Yeah. I can't even figure out how to describe how vilified they were. Yeah. Yeah. She made Damshire that in Fayetteville, New York, women knew

that they were actually allowed to vote for school board candidates in 1870. So they were allowed municipal elections. This is why the Fabians about 30 years later were like, we've got a theory here. Let's just get on the municipal boards and we can make socialism happen that way. Some of this they're saying what's going on over here. So women in 1870 were allowed to work or to vote for the school board. That was it. Nothing else, no higher office, no nothing like that. Just for the elections, you know, children, exactly. It's part of that domestic sphere. Yeah. So she makes sure by writing letters to every woman in the area, informing them of such. And then by going and sitting at polling

places to make sure that those rights were upheld so that men wouldn't be like, I don't care what this says, you don't get to vote today. She was there, she's like, oh, sir, here's the law, here's the thing, the constables down there, you want me to get him or do you want to? She was doing that on election day. That was in 1970.

Yeah. She argued down police who claimed that women's assemblies were illegal. All right. She was the president of the NWSA, the National Women Suffrage Association. This is after the Suffrage Association's split over the 15th Amendment. Right. And she was the president of the National one. There was the National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association. The American one said we need to argue for all women's issues and also we need to continue

to argue for a black equality. The national said, no, and I might be mixing them up. And then the national said, we're a suffrage only organization. And God damn it, you were supposed to give us the vote. Okay. We're giving it to black men. And I might have, I think I flipped them around, but one of them has a designated hitter rule. The other one doesn't. Right.

Nice. But she actually defended Susan B. Anthony uh, publicly a very compelling legal argument as to why Susan B Anthony had the right to vote in New York in 1872. Um, I don't know if you know about this story. Susan B Anthony actually was arrested in 1872 for voting in the presidential election. Right. She claimed that the 14th Amendment gave her the right to vote as she is a citizen. And therefore, taking away her right would require due process. She claimed that the 14th Amendment gave her the right to vote as she is a citizen.

And therefore taking away her right would require due process. She did not have that. Therefore, she gets to vote. And the guy, the poor guy at the polling place, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. So they arrested her. There was a trial. And the judge found her guilty and Ulysses S. Grant stepped in. He's like, just just find her out of the dollars.

Call it good. Don't don't. Don't push this. Fuck, say don't he's like, just just find her $100, call it good, don't, don't, don't push this, don't, please, I don't, and excuse me, I think I can't handle the heat on this, please don't. Right. And the irony is, of course, that she voted for you, this is S Grant. Yeah.

Well, you know, and, and yeah, Grant, Grant was already dealing with enough heat for his stance on civil rights for black Americans at the time. And it's like, I can't, I like. America will only do one thing at a time. We can't, we really can't. Push this, like, yeah. Yeah, it's, there's this whole like

You have to you have to do a piecemeal. It's everything everything has to be incremental. Yeah, and not only incremental but modular Yeah, you you can have black men getting the right to vote, but no one else now we can give white women the right to vote But no one else. Yeah. Okay. Now Asians can be citizens, but no one else. You know, and it just piece by piece by piece. Yeah. So, but yeah, she wrote a lot of very compelling legal arguments as to why Anthony had the right to vote in 1872. Mithil's adjacent gauge refused the argument from morality when people tried to claim that women's inherent God-given morality was the reason that they should vote. She's like, no, that is not why, because the second you argue that, you can start creating divisions between men and women in other ways.

She said that women had the right to vote because it's simply a natural fucking right. Now stop coming up with qualifiers. Now this also helped her continue the support for black people. And this somewhat distances her from the Women Christian's Temperance Union because she's like, I don't give a shit what you think about armorality. Where are you going for things that are right because they're right? It also distanced her from white feminists at the time who argued from class against black people getting the right to vote over white women.

You know, basically, you know, and it's a very unfortunate chapter in history, but Susan Miantheni and Elizabeth Katie Stanton, especially her, um, she argued, uh, vociferlessly with, or against Frederick Douglass, they did this out of convention. And they had it out over, you know, why she thought that he shouldn't get the right to vote if that meant that she didn't get it. And I think honestly she missed a force for the trees, but anyway, I'm telling you, Justin Gage, also arguing in favor of a woman's autonomy. Now, what was interesting was that she actually argued against abortion because that was a way of letting men off the hook for impregnating women. An interesting take. You can kind of see how she gets from here to there.

With our present eyes, we certainly would say, A. E. A. missed a few things here. But also keep in mind what abortion was back then compared to now. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, but like she did it from a Hella smart spot. Anyway, Matilda Johnson Gage gave birth to Maud last and Maud Gage was the youngest by about 10 years. Maud Gage attended a boy's high school and after that Gage attended the same college prep school that BOM attended, although a few years after him, I actually didn't write down when Maud Gage was the same college prep school that bomb attended, although a few years after him. I actually didn't write down when Maud Gage was born. I think she's his younger by about six years. Okay.

Anyway, in 1880, Maud Gage goes to Cornell, which had been open to women since 1870. So Cornell is a university in New York. And Cornell had been housing women since 1872. Now, Maud's intent was to become the first woman graduate from college in her family. But the social structures of the Cornell University were such that she felt a tremendous amount of social pressure because much of it was due to the fact that the men in the university were late 19th century fuck boys who didn't like that that her mom was such a staunch and open feminist. So the result is they're all making fun of her because they don't like that her mom is speaking out

against the patriarchal system that they're benefiting from. Oh, hey, Ivy League white boys. Yeah, like is it? In 19th century fuck boys. So it also didn't help from a social pressure perspective at least that she was actually kind of a free spirit herself. You know, we talk about Alice Rose's ult, right? Maud was the prodo of that, not nearly to the extent,

but along the same vein. She danced, not according to the norms at the time, but that enough was enough to get her called lively. Right, which is a term that could be complimentary, enough to get her called lively. Right. Which is a term that could be complimentary, but it also could be a stand-in for a much more derogatory terms. And either way, it marked her as the target for gossip. Additionally, the fact that women were so few in Cornell in 1800 or in 1880, I think it was there were 19 out of 133 freshmen were women. Oh wow.

Yeah, so a little over 10% about 15%. So that also would make it so that it was easy to normalize bullying. If a girl was late to class, for instance, all the boys would clap at her as she took her seat. If a girl stood out as intelligent and not wilting, she'd be nominated for the class Marshall, which was essentially the social director for the class. And that position, they would nominate her for it

so that they could gossip about her. Maud was nominated just for that position. She took all that teasing to heart, it hurt her clearly. And keep in mind, her mom had not gotten to go to college and complete college. So her mom very much wanted mod to finish as well. The nasty rumors hurt mods feelings. And again, it was partly due to the fact that some of the boys saw feminism as a needless thing.

And others saw it as a sign of the end times. And the ones who supported it didn't stand up much against the other two groups. So it was also partly due to the fact that her mother is Matilda Jocelyn Gage. And I found this limerick about her that was included in the school's humor column of a school's newspaper. Like, people are really going in hard against her on the painting. It says, there is a gay, gay maiden at sage, sage is the name of the residence hall, who flies into a terrible rage. If one says in a crowd in a tone to loud, Matilda may ask your age. So they're calling her by her mom's name.

So like, said, yeah. Yeah. So this, yeah. So this is the shit that mod is growing up in, right? So she is around Dickheads. The award for meeting well, but missing the whole point of why we are here goes to the Cornell Sun editorial board,

which is the newspapers editorial board, which is the newspaper's editorial board, and all mail, of course, which they chastised these efforts by saying, quote, there's not the slightest reason to hold up the lady to hold the ladies up to ridicule. They have neither sought nor do they aspire to class politics, but have left politics to the more experienced sex. So leave those girls alone. Right. You know, headbutting it to make it run. The whole thing spoiled her on Cornell boys at the very least. And the emotional scarring may have weakened her resolve to become a lawyer or a doctor from Cornell. Her roommate was a sophomore. So in order to stay there and live on the

cheap, you take roommate. Her roommate was one year above her, a girl named Josie Bomm. Ah, Josie Bomm was a cousin of L Frank Bomm. And she invited Maud to come with her one evening to her other cousin's house, Harriet bomb Neil, whose husband was William Neil. Harriet was Frank's sister. Okay. Josie's mom, Frank's aunt, walked with Maude, holding her hand at a Christmas party in 1881, and just to touch down here, this is Christmas 1881.

James Garfield had been assassinated six to three months earlier. And I say six to three months earlier because it took three months of dying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that one of the one of the gruesomest chapters in American political history. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, like just like I kind of want to do an episode comparing presidential deaths, but that's not really what we do. It's not really pop culture. Like in any way, it's not, you know, it's just like really interesting history. But yeah, James Garfield had been assassinated that year. His vice president was from New York and became president. And none of this seemed to matter to these people. Okay, they're just kind of above it all. And that's, that's a thing I keep coming back to like they are not tied to the history

that they're living through at the time that I could find. Anyway, Aunt Josephine brought Mod to meet Frank specifically and the sweetest little exchange occurred. She said, quote, this comes from memoirs later. This is my nephew Frank. Frank, I want you to know Mod Gage. I'm sure you will love her. Consider yourself loved Miss Gage, says Frank.

Thank you, Mr. Baum. That's a promise. Please see that you live up to it," said mod. What kind of meat, you like holy crap, right? But that's, that's, they're just a couple of cinnamon rolls, like, it's just so sweet., at the same time, the fucking Haymarket Affairs four years from now. Well, like, it's a bad time. You know, Custard's last stand wasn't too long earlier.

You know, the KKK is burning through the same. Oh, yeah. Like, there's all kinds of horrible shit happening in New York. But yeah, these little, like, yeah, saccharin snow globe in a tiny little snow globe bubble. Yeah, yeah. And that's not even where their love story starts either. One of the reasons that Maud had been bullied was because she rather did enjoy the company of men. And that of course gets around quickly at Cornell. She had seven. And her only 19 women in the freshman class.

Yeah. I had a friend. But she's going to want to know who's it go her. Right. I had a friend who she went to Mizzou. And there was a boys engineering college up the road. I think there could be women that went to it by then, but they would come down for a social week and there was a saying in Mizzou that when the boys

from that engineering college came down. When they would come down, the saying was, The odds are good, but the goods are odd. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really do think going to Sac State and having been married at the time and then dating, you know, my second wife at the time, I really do think that I missed out on so much college

experience that everybody else has actually had. Well, yes and no. Yeah, I mean, I was single. Right. I was an undergrad. But you had the dorm experience, too. I did have the dorm experience. Right. So I mean, there's like different aspects that I missed all of them. And everybody had at least one of them. Oh, okay. Yeah, because I was going to say like, of them and everybody had at least one of them. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was going to say, like, you know, not all of us do a lot of data in college. No, no, no.

Like, you know, the other fun thing that I've noticed as well about my college experience compared to others, I did everything the rightest way in the wrongest way. Like I had the highest GPA in the history department. Like I graduated summa cum laude with the highest GPA out of there. Yeah. I didn't know what a Dean's list was. I didn't know what an honor society was.

I didn't know what any of that shit was. So I wasn't a part of any of the things that would have heaped honors and given me opportunities. I didn't know that there was a historical journal that I could have been writing for. Like I didn't know any of this shit. Yeah, it just completely missed me. Okay. journal that I could have been writing for. Like I didn't know any of this shit. Yeah, it just completely, you know, missed me. Okay. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, I know people now who gone through all that. I'm trying to figure out. Honestly, my, my, my head was down, doing my studies, doing my thing, learning my stuff, and then going home. So. So yeah, their love story doesn't start there. So like I said, she had several other

suitors, not all were seeking marriage, but they were certainly orbiting around her. Frank said his sights on her, but he was set one of several who had. And so she remained friends with him for a long time. During which Frank pursued her along with his love of theater. In May of 1882, she came to Syracuse to see his play. And actually the play she came to see was the maid of Iran, which is that proto musical that I talked about. Now, ARRAN. I forget what it was based on. It was based on some other story, a famous story at the time too. But from then on, Frank

made use of his dad's horse and buggy business to take frequent trips to visit her at her family home in Fayetteville. So again, I'm just going to borrow Dad's horse and buggy. Cool dad. Yeah, no problems on, you know, just, you know, well, yeah. And yeah, it just, you know, shit that he could do. He had literal mobility. By the way, yeah, made of Iran, an idyllic Irish drama written for the people irrespective of cast or nationality. That's the full title, which you have. Based on the novel, a princess of Thule by Louis Black. That's what it was. It was described as,

I love the 1800s, described as, I quote, a play to ensnare all hearts and leave an impress of beauty and nobility within the sorted mind of man. Yes. So he liked it. Anyway, so he's using his dad's horse and buggy business to take trips to visit her to family home. In the fall of 1882, he proposes to her and the two were wed in November of 1882. And then their honeymoon was that they went on tour with the maid of Iran players during which they were not in Richburg. They were

going all throughout like the Midwest Circuit because the newly created railroad. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the opera house burnt down in Rich in rich in richburg. And I think it burnt down doing a play that he'd written called match. Like it's like just like, are you a goddamn kidding me? It's okay. No, you know what? I figure I just know I figured something out. I like you you've been you've been saying all of these things about all of this shit that happened in his life. And I just, I figured out, bomb is garb. Oh, bomb is is garb. The world according

to garb. Right. He's a writer who meets the, wow, I gotta go find that movie. That's my favorite one of probably. By the way, a movie that a five year old shouldn't be watching. I watched it at five. That yeah, that I'm unsurprised. Yeah. We'll take it. Yeah.

We'll be safe here. I love that scene. I have talked about that scene so many times to so many people. I'm like, I'm pre-disastered. It's only up from here, baby. Yeah. Hey, you know, I'm listening to all this shit that happens to him. And I can't imagine that that bombs response coming back, you know, and finding out, oh, yeah, the opera house burned down would be anything other than, oh, all right, onward and upward. Like, you know, yeah. Yeah. Wow. All right. So about a charmed life, you know, in a weird strange way, yeah, genre-ving kind of way, but yeah, okay. So, all right. so when she marries Frank, it's also its own cute little story.

Her mom, Matilda, objected vehemently. Matilda had also wanted to be a doctor or lawyer and never got to be one. So, Maud's acceptance of Frank's proposal was the death of Matilda's own dream through Maud because if you got married back then, you weren't allowed to attend college fucking stupid. Yeah, well, yeah, desperately stupid, but in the 1980s.

And you're giving up a chance to be a doctor or a lawyer to marry, look at him out there. He's picking flowers. He's a dreamer. He's a man of means, but no practical ambition. You could do better. You should do better. You should get these. What are you doing? Like at it at his very core, according to Matilda, Frank was basically just a traveling actor of minimal capability to support a family. And she's like, you know, I will not have my daughter marrying such a man. And I loved Maud's response to her mom, her response was, all right, see ya.

Nice. And the sources that I found have the following quotes, Matilda refused to quote, have my daughter be a darn fool and marry an actor. Maud fired back with quote, all right, mother, if you feel that way about it, goodbye. Matilda, of course, is stunned by this and asked what that means.

She says, well, I'm going to marry Frank. So naturally, you don't want a darn fool around the house. So she was leaving. At this point, Matilda laughed, realizing that she'd raised her daughter to do this exact fucking thing, make her own decisions and not based on authority or tradition, but on volition. My favorite part of this was that in this house, there were two parlors, the front parlor

and the back parlor. They're in the back parlor. Frank is in the front parlor while this discussion is going on. And later he said that he couldn't help but over here what was happening in the back parlor. So there was some fiery ass yelling going on. In that same front parlor, they were both wed in November. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Now they didn't do the love on a row Bay part of the vows for the woman's part. Both were held to the exact same

vows, which this was true for Elizabeth Katie Stanton as well. Oh, well, yeah. So feminists in the 1800s would do this. Now by all accounts, she mod was every bit her mother's daughter. They didn't abide by the standard gender norms. He, Frank, was charming, yielding, and acquiescing. She was assertive decisive and maybe a bit too severe. They were both immensely passionate about each other. And it's this great story. And I truncated it like crazy. But essentially, he bought a Bismarck donut and she's like, why would you spend money on that? I could have made that. He's like, oh, but I like them from over here as he's got a mouthful. And so she basically, he bought like a dozen of them, but he only ate two. And so she kept them in the cabinet

and would force him to eat them for breakfast since he's not gonna eat her breakfast. And this goes on for like a fucking week. So they're moldy and stale. And so he takes them out and he buries them in the backyard. She exumes them and forces him to eat them for two. That's, oh. exumes them and forces him to eat them for time.

It's uh, and, and I mean, it really kind of puts her a bit on the, this is why we divorce side of things, but he also wasn't about to leave this woman over such an incident. And after that, he'd learned his lesson. Yeah. Yeah. Dude. And she was also much better with money than he was. And I think that absolutely is how they were raised. Well, it's how they were raised. And, you know, I just, I have this image of, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, this is such a a this is such a vivid relationship. I'm picture here. Yeah. I mean, you know, he is a himbo. Like, yeah, it's just, you know, yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, of course, babe. Yeah. Obviously. Right. Like, you know, her dad's money put her through college and she was aware of every penny of it. Yeah. His dad gave him a horse and buggy to go see a girl. The thing is, she loved being loved by him and loved following him.

There's still that cult of domesticity. This is what a wife does, but like there's also within the marriage, there were a lot loose or gender norms for the two of them. They stopped touring through the Midwest with his acting troop when she got pregnant. He hired another actor to come out and continue it. I don't know if he ever made money on this thing, by the way, but for the love of the art and who cares, right? But she wanted to settle down before their child was born.

What's that? Duck you money. Yeah, exactly. But she wanted to settle down before their child was born. They ended up in Syracuse. And a bit after that, they ended up bouncing around again, living with mom for a little bit. When they actually moved into another home again after her father's death, their second

son was born. And this actually laid mod up with parotonitis for a few months, which kills most people back then. Did it kill her? Frank and mod lived near his sisters at this point, who tended to her. And I mean, we're talking this is the days before antibiotics. So, yeah, mostly just laying there with a drainage tube in her while he's out selling axle grease that is older brotherhood invented. So, he is, you know, getting out there and making money. Well, he's, you know, he's doing what he needs to do in order to try to provide for his first wife, for example, wife and his kids, you know, right? So, I mean, he's a standup guy. He's just a twit. Yeah, you know, he's not, you know, he's not, he's not a dick.

Again, he's not a dick. El Frank bomb, not a dick. Not a dick. Yeah. Yeah. Now, after mod recovered, she wanted to be near her brother and sisters, all of whom lived in Aberdeen, South Dakota. So they moved to Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Frank was down. He's like, all right, I'll start a dry goods business, I guess. I used to do books for those kinds of people. And then he named it something that was such of Elf rank bomb name. It's called bombs bizarre. Well, yeah, because of the slip shot Persian bizarre manner with which he conducted his affairs. What else could he name it? Right. And of course, it went out of business in the most Elf rank bomb kind of way He extended too much credit to his customers and it collapsed about a month after his third son was born because he was too nice to his customers He was too much of a nice guy. Yeah

Therefore son is a year and a half after that. So they had four kids so No, yeah. I identify way too much with him. He's pointing his whole story because I'm like, yeah, that's how I'd fuck up too. Yeah, that's total. Right. You know, babe, he's having a hard time. Right. You know, he says, we'll be able to pay me next month. We can handle it. He can handle it. We owe rent next week. I'll talk to the guy. It'll be okay.

I'll, I'll figure out. It'll be okay. Yeah. Don't worry, you're pregnant. You, I don't want you to stress out. I've got this, babe. I've got this. I can handle.

Yeah. Honey, how come you're home so often? Well, the credit I extended. Yeah. So now you have a dreamer who never really had to work for much, who was living his dreams, married to an ambitious person who had to work for everything she ever had, and who'd given up her dreams to marry this man with four children to feed and not much in the way of prospects. They moved to Chicago and she became the breadwinner while he became a reporter continuing with the writing. Mod taught embroidery and she had about two dozen reliable students paying tuition which kept the entire family comfortable and fed enough.

Pretty cool. Yeah. Now Matilda would visit mod very frequently, which was good because often Frank was traveling for work. He was also writing children's books at this time, capitalizing on a relatively new market. And this kind of gets back to your thing about like, well, people did like their kids.

It was only fairly recently that kids books were a fucking thing. Well, yeah, because, because literacy during, well, one, public education literacy being a thing, but also the rapid expansion of the bourgeois class in American society after the Civil War, the industrial expansion that took place during the war meant that there was a whole new class of middle management, you know, middle class, white collar families, who not only were their kids getting educated in public schools to the extent that they could be readers but there was this drive for those people to provide for their kids everything that they hadn't had when they were children. This is also the same time,

or roughly the same time, during which we see Christmas becoming a huge big deal commercially. Yes. And department stores with storefronts. And so we have this cult of childhood within this burgeoning middle class. And so yeah, there is all of a sudden a market for children's books, not only books for children to read, but books for you to read to your children. Right. Because in order, because this new middle management, white collar, you know, clerk kind of class, that's a reason you want your children to be literate. You want your children to be fluent in the written word. And so you want them reading, you want to give them books, books are, books are a sign of status, books are a sign of middle class virtue. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, absolutely. And you start to have libraries being built by the

robber parents. Yes. So you got to stop them with something. Yeah. And the idea that like, well, if we kept the kids off the street, that's less crime. Like, there's all these things that are tied. Yeah, a whole bunch of factors on it once. Yeah. So he publishes his first book in 1897 after they'd been married for 15 years. He, 15 years of marriage. Okay. So he's in his 40s at the very least. Yeah. Because he was born in 1854. So yeah, he's in his 43. Yeah. So again, they've been married for 15 years and he finally publishes his first book. The thing that he's known for 15 years into their marriage. Yeah. Okay, his youngest son is about five years old.

In 1900, he publishes Father Goose, which was his first real success financially. And at this point, the family could breathe easier based on his income too. No idiot, he transferred all financial literary rights to Maud. And then she turned around and paid him a thousand dollars for it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, okay, again, himbo. Yes. Like, yes. I know, I know, I know who knows how to handle money. I grew up again, I grew up, you know, it just slips through my fingers. I don't know.

I can't, I can't keep any control on it. But I'm smart enough. I do have, well, I have enough. I have enough, yeah, humble enough, and I have a high enough wisdom score. Yeah, whatever my int is, I do have enough wisdom score to go, I'm a fuck this up. Like in a big way here. Exactly. No, no, here's a responsible one. I know I'm going to screw this up. Yeah. Yeah. So and at this point,

you have four boys living in Chicago home with a dad who is very tender and a mom who is very severe. And like, there are stories that I read about her disciplining her sons for the abuses of a cat. Like, she dangled a kid outside of their second story because her son had thrown the cat off the balcony. She's like, you fucking like that? You like that, you little shit. And he's screaming and the neighbors are hearing his screams. And she's like, you gonna do this shit again? I didn't think so.

And she pulls him back in. Another kid she threw into a barrel because they thrown a cat into the bed. Basically, whatever they did to the cat, she did a version of that to the kid. It was like, you will goddamn learn. And I see why. And at the same time, it's pretty extreme. But yeah, now the interesting thing is she would tell Frank that he needed to spank his kids and he would feel so hurt having spanked his kids.

Like, and there's this wonderful quote between the two of them. He said, quote, if I had my way, I would always have a young child in the house. And she responded with, if I had my way, I wouldn't. It's because he's fun dad. She's doing a lot of the discipline, shit. Yeah. So Frank frequently told his boys stories before bed, making them up as he went along.

He'd write went, he would go back when they would go to bed, he would go to writing and she'd work on embroidery in the same room. And I love this about them because his artistry was drifty, uncertain, and just kind of flowed from him. Her artistry, because it is artistry, was precise, literally hemmed in and formulaic as fuck. And yet they shared this space doing exactly that thing together.

And like in my studies, or my research, I really fell in love with these two despite their vast differences because of what I found about their relationship. Mm-hmm. So one night in 1900, Frank is telling a story to his children about a cyclone that threw a young boy

into a magical realm. His son asked what the magical realm was called and he did like a lot of dads do. He looked quickly through the room for inspiration and he found it on a filing cabinet. The bottom drawer marked O through Z. Oz. Bullshit, really? That's one of the stories.

Okay, that's awesome. That's, that's, yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's. There are a lot of other versions that come out after, but this is what he said. So I'm going to go with what he said. Now, when they went to bed, Maud encouraged him to continue the story. And this was the genesis of the wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was published in May of 1900 in 1901, the publishing company finished printing the first edition.

There were 10,000 of them. And they sold out. And by October of 1901, a second edition was printed. This time, 15,000 copies. That also sold out. Holy crap. Yeah. Now, I'm gonna stop it there because that is a great place to stop.

And I don't want to cut into some really interesting things that start to become themes. So you've said it from the jump. He's a hymnbo. I don't know if there's much else to glean from that. But like the man who wrote the Wizard of Oz, this is the world that he lived in. And by the way, in 1901, by October of 1901, it had sold out, right? Yeah. Isn't that right around the same time that McKinley gets shot and killed in Buffalo, New York.

Yeah. Now he's living in Chicago at the time. So he's further removed from it. But again, there's these incredible changes happening. There's these horrific violence is happening. Yeah. And he's living in this world of just like cyclone through the way. It's called Oz. You know. Yeah.

And he just, yeah. Like it's a charmed twist who's not a dick. Yeah. So just the sweetness of the man is amazing. Yeah. of the man is amazing. And I want somebody to make a movie about their relationship. That would be cool.

Like take all of my goddamn money. Like I would buy tickets for this just because I wanna see that courtship. I wanna watch, you know, I want to watch, you know, her being the, you know, go get him hard charger. And him, and him being the, go get him, babe, do it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, hey, I've had this windfall. I'm handing it all to you because I know I'm a fucking up. Yeah. You know, I remember the story of the biscuits.

Yeah. You know, um, and there was something else kind of profound. I was just love to hear the conversation of them walking through his aunt's garden and him talking about hamburgers. And her, like, just not, not like, like, like two laps around the garden because she's trying to understand how a fucking hamburger could be a chicken. I would just, I would love that. It's just a little, you know, a little aside into their store. It's just, it's, it's apocryphal, but it's based on a lot of like, hmm, you know, like, just, yeah.

Yeah. I, again, take my money. Yeah. Or just like, hey, tickets to that show. While we're, while we're traveling to Nebraska with, you know, with the, uh, maiden of Aaron, what show are you having back at the opera house? Oh, it's a little thing I wrote called match and then you just cut to the whole fucking

thing burning down and then back to them. You know, it's just these little moments, you know, meanwhile in New York state. Yeah, and it just, I mean, it's a two second cut. And that's all that's set about it. Yeah. You know, like you see the sign falling as the fires burning around it. You know, yeah. Yeah. And like what comes into the foreground is the burning embers of the play bill. And it says match on it as it burns. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would absolutely love to start to direct it. Oh nice, you know, yeah, I just I would I would absolutely love to direct it. Um, but yeah, um, I don't know. Do you want it to be funny and cute? Or do you want it to be I pictured being funny and unbearably

Tweet and I'm trying to think of who the white lady. Oh, no, Tiger, it wouldn't be Tweet. It'd just be fall out of your chair funny. With what he, I'm trying, oh my God, Moonlight, Moonlight, Paradise, Moonlight, something I'm trying to think, West Anderson. I'm thinking of the West Anderson film. You know, highly, highly stylized.

Sure. And just enough off-kilter to be sure. Yeah. But I'm gonna say because I mean the obvious go to would be um, Oh, what's his name? The guy directs did Beetlejuice. Oh Yeah, Tim Burton. Yeah Tim Burton could do it. I mean, he's very stylized. He's already done cost himing shit like that from could do it. I mean, he's very stylized. He's already done costuming shit like that from one of the. But yeah, there did be everybody to have bags under their eyes and it'd be kind of spooky, but yeah, I can do that too. But if he could like do a outdoors in the sunshine

version of it. Yeah. I mean, he did, he did, um, he did Edward Scissor hands and most people were not made up that way. That's true. But, yeah, I mean, have Tim Burton or like you said, Wes Anderson do. And absolutely she'd be Amy Adams because Amy Adams could absolutely play both sides of that. The hell out of that. Yeah. And then, I mean, um, um, John C. Riley.

Yeah. Actually, I totally see that. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like he might be a little old for it. Um, but, um, Spider-Man, newest Spider-Man. Oh, no, no, he'd be too young. He'd be too young. Right.

Yeah. Um, I'm thinking James Franco, maybe. Oh, I, I want to punch that man in the nose. There's no way I would ever. Okay. All right. I'm saying Ross Markwanda. Okay. I think he, I mean, he's got great voice chops to begin with.

I think he could really play the tender because he could do that. Yeah. And honestly, like, well, Farrell 10 years ago, would have been my choice. Oh, would have been, oh my God. Yeah, Will Farrell, that manchild. Yes. You know, total innocence kind of, kind of out. Like, yeah, no, he'd have been perfect.

Who directed Big Fish? I don't know if that was Burton or not, because I thought of Big Fish too. Yeah. As a, this is kind of an influence. Tim Burton. No, okay.

Yeah, see, he can do outdoors and have everybody be really. Yeah, and by the way, you and McGregor in that movie, I mean, when you and McGregor are family anyway, but that was absolutely fucking amazing. He could, you know what? You know, McGregor could conceivably. He might be a little now, but yeah, I'd still most of the stories starts with with him being like, I mean, yeah, okay, the younger part of his life, it's a little harder to do. Yeah, but the most of the story. Yeah. Like since he started writing Oz, that's him. That's you little harder to do. But the most of the story, like since he started writing

Oz, that's him, that's you and McGregor. Yeah. So, you know, the interesting thing is I find myself, you know, listening to the love story between, you know, bomb and mod. I think of the love story between Mr. and Mrs. Tolkien. I was wondering if you were going to... And there is a very interesting set of resonances. I don't want to say parallels because there are some notable differences. Tolkien suffered a significant amount of hardship in his child, having been orphaned and everything that he had to deal with. But the kind of class issues that were involved in Tolkien's upbringing

and bomb being in a precloste, in the American sense. And the love story element is a really strong parallel. And there's kind of a mirroring, because of course, in Tolkien's case, his adoptive father was the one who said, you're not, you are not to be consorting with this young woman. You know, you've got to finish your study. You've got to be above this age, whatever, whatever. And, you know, she waited for him and all of that.

Whereas with bomb, it was, you know, his eventual mother and law, by the way, living in the house with that mother and law would be comedy gold. But you know, the thing is to begin with. Yes, and no, though, because once her daughter was was like, no, I'm doing this, mom came around 100% and even invited some of the most incredible luminaries of the 1800s feminist circles to the fucking wedding. Like they said that actually the orchestra, not orchestra, the quartet that played the music musicians had to play upstairs because there wasn't enough room in the parlor because of how many people mom had invited. Oh, wow, she

was all in once her daughter was like, uh, uh, and she realized, Oh, you are the monster I've created. Okay, but she's proud of it. Yeah, well, well, however, that doesn't necessarily like she was proud of her daughter for making her own decision that doesn't necessarily mean that she didn't look at Frank and be like, my daughter loves you, but God almighty. You know, you might be projecting a little at, well, maybe, I don't know.

Maybe I am. It's like, you know, still, yeah. I, you know, the, I know I'm telling license there is too good to pass up like sure. I know, I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

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I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I me, I'm like, this doesn't really pertain to the book. Yeah, well, yeah, the story we're trying to tell.

Yeah. But like Henry Gage, or yeah, Henry Gage, I mean, very, very important fellow, you know, in abolition circles and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I just, the pedigree of amazing, and I can imagine there would be a conversation between, you know, Matilda and her husband and her, just like, I can't believe she did blah blah. He says, did you support her? Yes. Then what are you complaining about?

Yeah. You're right, honey. And then from then on, they both 100% adore this dreamer that married their daughter. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, clearly, he was besotted with her. Yes. So, because, you know, clearly he was besotted with her. Yes. So like, I mean, he was borrowing a buggy to go down to this. I was like, God. I want to not like you. Right. Like, there's an apartment that really wants to like, oh my God, you're insufferable.

This is what I said in the beginning. I really want to not like this, but at the same time, like, like, how did he not understand what was going on in the world and be absorbed by it? And at the same time, how did he not understand what was going on in the world and be not be absorbed by it? Yeah, that sounds wonderful.

I'd love to be able to pull that off. Right? Yeah. So, all right. Well, you know, obviously, I'm gonna recommend the wonderful world of the Wizard of Oz, or the Wizard of Oz. I'm going to recommend that I'm not going to recommend the movie this reading that one, that's the original, that's the OG, go read that. That's a good companion piece to this podcast. Okay.

So what are you going to recommend for folks? Well, it's kind of contemporary with all of this. I'm going to very strongly recommend the memoirs if you list these as grant. Oh, yeah, you recommended that last week too. Well, I know you're reading, and I'm gonna recommend it now. Partly kind of as a companion piece to bomb, simply because they're roughly contemporary,

the memoirs are several years before the Wizard of Oz. It's when bombs are writing about hamburgers that are... Yeah, yeah. But the recollections that Grant has are very lucid and very well described. And his prose is remarkably, it's like if Hemingway was writing a century before Hemingway wrote, like Hemingway was incredibly spare. And everything Hemingway writes is these very short sentences that are very unequivocal because, you know, he'd been a journalist and he had to pair everything down. Grant sounds like somebody who's writing in the 1800s, and so there's a certain level of verbosity that we just don't

do in the modern world. But there is a directness. Like he almost never uses the passive voice. And and it's not like you can tell he was working really hard to avoid it. It's just that's not the way he thought. If that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's really compelling reading. And of course, he's an amazing American who, I think got maligned unfairly by a lot of historians who had considered apologist access to ground. And so anyway, I highly recommend it as an artifact of the time and a companion piece. OK.

So cool. Let's see, working folks, find you. I can be found on the Tikki Talk at Mr. underscore play lock. I am on Twitter as EH play lock. We collectively can be found on Twitter at Geek History of Time. We can be found on the internet at www.meaghistorytime.com.

And if you are listening to this, which obviously you are, then you have found us either on the Apple Podcast app or on Stitcher. In either case, wherever it is that you found us, please subscribe. Please give us the five star review that you know we deserve for the way you put in here. And where can you be found? Let's see, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Doha Harmony, TikTok at Doha Harmony, one, two Hs in the middle for both of those. Let's say I'm not sure when this one's coming out so you may have already missed the August 5th and yeah you probably missed the August 5th show but the September 8th show should still be in your radar. Come see

it at Luna's and Sacramento, bring $10 and proof of vaccination because it will be the first time that just seen Lopez will be joining our crew. And that will be amazing. So come check that out. Yeah, I think that's about it. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s. you