Worlds Are Colliding, part two

I've gotten used to seeing my own name in The Baum Bugle, the journal of the International Wizard of Oz Club, without quite knowing why. The editor, Sean P. Duffley, is very kind about crediting people for uncovering Oz-related news. I think that in the latest issue Sean picked up word of the Library of Congress's online reading promotion, which I wrote about in October.

But I was startled many pages later to come across the name of my uncle, who has no connection to Oz fandom besides putting me up/putting up with me in recent years as I attended the Munchkin Convention near his home. His station wagon's been to an Oz event, with me at the wheel, but I don't think he has.

Yet there in an article on one of L. Frank Baum's lesser-known books for young people, Annabel, was the name of historian Daniel T. Rodgers. Sean Duffley himself cited Uncle Dan's early book, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-1920, and what it says about the standard model of Horatio Alger's novels.

I'll say more about this issue of The Baum Bugle after I recover from the mild shock.