As a child growing up in the 1960’s, the airing of The Wizard of Oz was an annual event not to be missed. It was long before VCRs, DVDs, video stores and online streaming enabled you to watch this iconic film whenever you wanted to. If you weren’t in front of your television on the night of its broadcast, you missed out. I  anticipated watching The Wizard of Oz with equal amounts of excitement and dread, dread because eventually The Wicked Witch of the West would make her appearance in the film. The Wicked Witch, played by Margaret Hamilton, was an absolutely terrifying figure to me as a little boy and one of the most malevolent and sadistic villains ever to grace the silver screen. Hamilton found her second wind later in life as the grandmotherly TV salesperson for Folgers Coffee, but she’ll always be The Wicked Witch to me.

In the film’s climactic scene, Dorothy is being held captive in the witch’s castle. Her little band of fellow travelers is outside plotting her rescue. Once she is  freed from a locked room, Dorothy and her friends are then pursued through the castle by the witch and her gang of axe and spear wielding  soldiers. Suddenly, they find themselves cornered. The Wicked Witch sets the end of her broom on fire and uses it to ignite the Scarecrow. Horrified, Dorothy grabs a nearby bucket of water and throws it on her friend. The witch is in direct line of the water. Water of course turns out to be the witch’s undoing. She slowly sinks into the ground screaming, “I’m melting, I’m melting!” When the soldiers realize what Dorothy has done, they fall to their knees in thankful supplication and proclaim, “Hail Dorothy!” The menace has finally been vanquished.

When Joe Biden places his right hand on the Bible on January 20th to take the oath of office, myself along with tens of millions of others in the United States and around the world will all breathe a collective sigh of relief. This will be our “Hail Dorothy” moment. The evil and hate filled regime of Donald Trump will finally have come to an end. He leaves in disgrace as the only president to have been impeached twice. Trump’s lasting legacy will be his complicity in the murderous and violent assault on our nation’s capitol by an armed and angry mob of his supporters, many of whom are members of violent white supremacist groups. During his four years in office, Trump has sown the seeds of hatred and division that have torn our country apart. Sadly, many of those seeds have come to fruition in the likes of senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and countless other mini-Trumps like them. The Trump presidency has been an unimaginable national nightmare. Like all nightmares, we eventually wake up but their effects can linger with us for a long time to come. 

President Biden carries a heavy weight on his shoulders. He will have the Herculean task of trying to unite our country and heal our deep national wounds. The road ahead is daunting and fraught with peril. Being a father and teacher of young children, I have no choice but to hold out hope that he is up to the task. God bless you Joe and… Hail Dorothy!

After witnessing the horrific assault on our nation’s capitol by Donald Trump’s mob, I felt an urgent need to do something life affirming, so I visited one of my favorite spots in nature.

One of the things I love about visiting a favorite place in nature are the chimerical like changes that it undergoes throughout the seasons. Nowhere is this more evident than at Bullfrog Pond in Shiloh Regional Park. I’ve written about this place before but each time I return, it’s like I’m seeing it for the first time.

Huge oak trees dot the hillsides that ring the pond, they stand in stark contrast against the washed out and uniformly gray winter sky. The sun is a spectral disc trying in vain to break through the overcast. A delicate veil of fog clings to the tops of the oaks where a huge hawk is perched, barely visible through the mist. The parched brown hillsides of summer and fall have given way to a carpet of hopeful green, winter rains having finally awakened the grasses from their long slumber.

It is so still, so quiet here today. The trees and bushes are stoic. The pond is a perfect green mirror, it’s surface unmarred by even the slightest of breezes. I can hear the chatter of an acorn woodpecker, the shrill whistling call of a red shouldered hawk, the rhythmic rapping of a woodpecker, the chit and chatter of a Stellar’s Jay. The resident black phoebe announces its arrival with a “chip, chip” as it captures an insect in mid-air.

The sun briefly breaks through the cloud cover and illuminates a large heart shaped spider’s web bejeweled with droplets from this morning’s rain. The many willows that surround the pond are naked and bony, their brown and yellowed leaves cover the ground beneath my feet. I breathe deeply and fill my lungs with the perfumed air, it smells of mud and sage, decay and rebirth.

Out of nowhere a coyote appears. It trots casually through this scene no more than 30 yards from where I sit. It stops and we briefly lock eyes, then it continues on its way. Seeing one of these animals in its natural habitat is a special occurrence that never gets old. From its pointy snout through the many browns and grays of its body to its black tipped tail this coyote is a stunningly beautiful animal.

The overcast is beginning to break up, the sky now more blue than cloud. A slight breeze picks up cooling the sweat on my back from the hike in. I sit in the midst of all this wonder, grateful for the day, grateful to be alive.