Alaskan Range: De-whelming Oz
Greg Hill tells what it took to help a young daughter to settle down in a new home town thousands of miles away from where she had been living.
"Whelm," according to the Oxford American Dictionary, is an old term meaning "engulf, submerge, or bury … an act or instance of flowing or heaping up abundantly." It came from the Old English word "hwelfan," meaning "overturn a vessel."
I've been emotionally whelmed lately, following a week with two of my closest friends. These are two gents from Austin with whom I played men's soccer thirty years ago, which led to a decade of singing together in an a cappella doo-wop group, the Lone Tones. We're as close as brothers, having shared many aspects of life together: marriages, births, hundreds of soccer matches, thousands of songs, and a rabid love of wordplay.
So when the Tones blew into Fairbanks last week to sing at the library, there ensued much hurried rehearsing, cracking wise, catching up, and generally marveling at how old pals can pick up right where they left off. Our excuse for gathering – heightening awareness of the challenges facing the old Noel Wien Library facility, whose structural problems extend from roof to plumbing to siding to electrical wiring – turned out to be a delightful evening of vocal harmonizing.
Surprisingly so for my Texas friends, who previously doubted my contention that, pound-for-pound, no place matches Fairbanks for pure talent. The Fireweed Madrigal Singers led off the library concert, followed by the Oh Tallulah country-folk trio, the delightful Musical Rumors Singers, and the Lone Tones, all performing gratis and adroitly amplified by Alaska Universal Productions.
The Tones and I rehearsed while driving around Interior Alaska, and at one point one of them insisted that we all memorize the six parts of listening. He's tried this stunt of teaching us a mnemonic device to help remember how to listen properly before, with little effect. However, the long drive to fogged-in Circle provided a better opportunity. Now I know "Hanky Panky Outside Under the Rail Road" stands for "Hear, Pay attention, Organize what you've heard, Understand it, Remember it, and Reply." Later the conversation turned to how inventor Nikola Tesla and the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago are connected to "The Wizard of Oz."
On the way back to town I told my pals that when my family and I arrived in Fairbanks twenty years ago this month, the hardest adjustment was the one our oldest child, Hannah, had to make. She was very aware of having left friends, family, and home 4,000 miles behind, and she was entering 4th grade in a new school in a strange land, so where better to find solace than in Frank Baum's Oz books?
Baum wrote sixteen Oz books before he died in 1919, and Hanna and I laughed and wondered our ways through most of them that first year in Fairbanks. The books are marvelously illustrated, and though seemingly trite while reading them to oneself, when reading them aloud, especially to children with active imaginations and strong vocabularies, they fairly sparkle with amazing happenings, funny characters, silly jokes, and puns. "The Patchwork Girl of Oz" remains a personal favorite.
So how does Oz connect to Tesla, one of the greatest electrical engineers and inventors in American history? Tesla emigrated from his native Serbia to New York in 1884, went to work for Thomas Edison, but soon grew to despise and mistrust the overly-ambitious inventor. They especially disagreed over how to deliver electrical currents. Edison was heavily invested in direct current (DC) that flows only in one direction, while Tesla had invented the more efficient alternating current (AC), which switches its flow of electrons 50-to-60 times per second, and allows much stronger currents to travel long distances without losing as much energy along the way.
Tesla and his new employer, George Westinghouse, beat Edison's bid to electrify the Chicago World Exposition, which was noted for its use of electric lights. The 200,000 light-bulbs amazed visitors (only 8% of American homes had electricity a decade later) and inspired both Walt Disney, whose father worked on constructing the exposition, and Frank Baum, who was living in Chicago at that time, to model Disneyland and the Emerald City after it.
The Golden Heart City remains the beloved domicile of Hannah and me, who both firmly agree with Baum, that "There's no place like home."
