Love it! If you want me to get academic on you, I'd say this one sits in the gray area between personal essay and journalism. I really like the connections you draw between the weird museum, curation, and your own monthly variety show. Terrific descriptive language; I'm right with you as you're observing and reporting. So, the journalism? Maybe just a bit more pinning down about why you're in Wichita or Wichita itself as a place or those Wizard of Oz books. A bit of quick checking would show that Dorothy and Auntie Em are from Kansas and (I think) Frank Baum grew up near Wichita: https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/1989spring_averill.pdf
Don't I sound like professor? Ugh. Maybe in 2023, I need to sound more authentically invincible. And humble. Except I'm not humble. Kind of like the curator who put his quip on the wine-jug placard. After all, a sense of invincibility often accompanies a big chunk of indigestible exposition :-)
Love it! If you want me to get academic on you, I'd say this one sits in the gray area between personal essay and journalism. I really like the connections you draw between the weird museum, curation, and your own monthly variety show. Terrific descriptive language; I'm right with you as you're observing and reporting. So, the journalism? Maybe just a bit more pinning down about why you're in Wichita or Wichita itself as a place or those Wizard of Oz books. A bit of quick checking would show that Dorothy and Auntie Em are from Kansas and (I think) Frank Baum grew up near Wichita: https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/1989spring_averill.pdf
Don't I sound like professor? Ugh. Maybe in 2023, I need to sound more authentically invincible. And humble. Except I'm not humble. Kind of like the curator who put his quip on the wine-jug placard. After all, a sense of invincibility often accompanies a big chunk of indigestible exposition :-)