Whenever Aberdonians hear Dorothy tell Toto "We're not in Kansas anymore" they know that she never was in Kansas, and meant to say South Dakota — because they know that her character was inspired by writer Frank Baum's years as a shopkeeper and journalist in the Hub City.

Today, Garrison Keillor's daily "Writer's Almanac" reminds us that it's Baum's birthday, and that's noteworthy because he was an interesting character who lived here at a formative time in our history.

Baum arrived in 1888 at age 32, enamored with the Wild West and eager to make a living as a businessman. When his shop, Baum's Bazaar, failed he wrangled a job as a writer for the Dakota Pioneer. Though a bit of a know-it-all (he admonished farmers for failing to foresee hard times), the urbane Baum clearly loved the pioneer and rural experience. Literary scholars say it inspired his creation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was first written as a play and then became a series of 16 books before reaching the silver screen and becoming one of Hollywood's all-time great movies.

Though Kansas got the movie role, Baum's influence is still boosting Aberdeen, where a storybook Land has been developed at Wylie Park, complete with a yellow brick road that leads to magical places. Every June the city celebrates its literary heritage with an Oz Festival. And the Aberdeen public library has a good collection of Baum's books and memorabiia.

So if Dorothy and her friends were patterned after South Dakotans, who among us was the cowardly lion, the timid scarecrow, the heartless tin man?

Surely the witch was from North Dakota.

A nicely-dressed crowd gathered at the foot of a hill in 1914 to pose for photographer F.W. Byerly. A beautiful gothic building stands behind them at the top of the hill. That's all we really know.

The picture — which is about 3 feet wide and a foot deep — came to our attention when my brother Brian found it at an antique shop by Chamberlain. The shopkeeper labeled it as Yankton 1914 so Brian brought it home, but nobody in Yankton can place the building or the event. One of the old men in the 1914 photo looks like me but I wasn't so old then.

Has anyone heard of F.W. Byerly? Can anyone recognize the building? The entire panoramic picture also shows other houses and several other very nice buildings within a block or so. If we can find the location, perhaps we can find a proper home for the Byerly photo.

Tumbleweeds are an icon of the West. And like most icons — coyotes or lutefisk, for example — a little is all you really need. A herd of the t'weeds rolling across a lonely prairie road is a sight that can cause even the most hardened Dakota sourpuss to pause and reflect on the vagaries of life. (Yes, I did enjoy a shot of Maker's Mark this afternoon.)

This "tumbleweeds" photo by Greg Latza in our May/June issue prompted Barney Hroza of Apple Valley, Calif., to send us some information on how tumbleweeds (which generally are the skeletal remains of a Russian thistle) happened to arrive in the Americas.

Believe it or not, the origin of the tumbleweed has been traced to some poor, scrappy Bohemian farmer in Bon Homme County who in the year 1877 apparently ordered some wheat seed from the Ukraine. Unbeknown to him, the wheat was infected. That was a ghastly mistake, and if we knew the man's name we would publlsh it to publically punish and embarrass all his descendants.

According to the report sent to us by Barney, who also hails from Bon Homme County but has no connection to that dastardly wheat farmer, the Russian thistle (aka tumbleweed) spread to a dozen states within 20 years. It reached the Pacific Ocean by the turn of the century, and now thanks to American wheat exports it grows in far corners of the world.

Farmers and ranchers spend time every May trying to eradicate the thistle, but every adult plant has about 250,000 seeds. And you know how they like to ramble across the country. Still, they're an icon, immortalized in song by the Sons of the Pioneers.

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I'll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

We continue to send magazines free of charge to our men and women serving overseas in the military. If you have a relative or friend in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere around the world, just email us his or her APO address and we'll them the magazine for a few issues. Tell us if you know about how long they'll be at that address, because that will help us determine how long to send magazines.

We've had heart-warming letters from soldiers who've received the magazines. They enjoy the taste of home — and they share them with non-Dakotans, who also enjoy learning about prairie life.

Send the requests to Ruth Steil at this email address: books@iw.net.

Did you see the news article a few days ago about the quality of some of our food imports, including an anecdote about some tainted catfish from China that inspectors determined was not catfish ... but they couldn't decide exactly what they were?

That came days after the Pew Foundation made public their findings on factory farms and the amounts of anti-biotics being absorbed by unknowing consumers.

Meanwhile, we constantly hear of new efforts to organize "fresh and local" food networks — even here in South Dakota where l) you might think we don't have the population to support such ventures, and 2) you might think our agriculture backgrounds might make us less suspicious of the chemicals, nitrates, hormones and medicines used to raise livestock in confinement.

But yesterday, while driving to Sioux Falls, I stopped to visit Tom and Ruth Neuberger of Canistota. They are true pioneers in the "fresh and local" foods movement, and they say the demand has never been better for their foods. In fact, Tom said South Dakota is actually lacking in farmers with the skills to grow chickens, vegetables and other foods the natural way. Some people have told us that they don't think today's generation has the work ethic to raise foods on a small scale.

"I think the young people are willing to work hard enough," Tom said, "but they need to learn the skills." He said even farm kids aren't raised today with the know-how to raise free-range poultry, grass-fed cattle and small plots of vegetables.

Tom said he just heard about a man who grosses $140,000 on seven acres by selling his produce locally, and he thinks the rewards are going to grow as fuel costs rise and consumers continue to wonder what they ate when they thought they were eating catfish. "Consumers appreciate the economy," he said. "They wonder how it makes sense to ship our grain and livestock a thousand miles away to be processed, and then ship it back across the country again on trucks that get three or four miles per gallon. It doesn't make any sense."

As he talked, his chickens were running free around the farmyard, eating insects and grit and grain.

We are preparing a major article on South Dakota's "local foods" movement for our July/August issue. It has been an eye-opener.

The only negative thing I can recall about the Sioux Falls Canaries is that the fans booed me in 1998 when I was invited to throw out the first pitch at a ballgame. But I harbor no hard feelings, because I was later told that crowd boos most of the people who throw the ball in the dirt.

Beyond that personal grudge, I think the Canaries have been great for Sioux Falls and South Dakota. I've gone to several games, disguised in sunglasses and a seed corn cap. Did you know the Birds are undefeated thus far in the season (though we've only gone through the exhibition games).

Mike Veeck, the colorful owner of the Canaries, is instituting a new program to encourage young artists in South Dakota. He did so because his sister Marya is a career artist in Chicago and he recognizes the importance of community support for the arts.

A young artist will be invited to paint a design on second base for every home game. The artist and his/her family will be recognized prior to the game — and I think we can trust the fans to treat them better than they did me 10 years ago.

Youth artists can apply for the opportunity by contacting Deb Klebanoff of the Sioux Empire Arts Council in Sioux Falls. Photos of the "second base art" will be exhibited in the concourse.

A lot of weird and poetic phrases have been used to describe the South Dakota Badlands. Custer called it "a part of hell with the fires burnt out..." Young Man Afraid of His Horses called it holy: "I pray here because of the sound in the pines and because of the cedar, which is sacred. Here is mother earth. Here is life."

American Photo magazine asked seven renowned nature photographers to describe their favorite American national park, and Virginia's Annie Griffiths Belt chose Badlands National Park in southwest South Dakota. Here's what she had to say:

For me there is something about touching down in Rapid City, South Dakota, that makes my heart soar. Badlands National Park is like an upside down mountain range ... erosion at its most beautiful. It is a soft, dynamic landscape which changes slightly with every rainfall or sandstorm. And although the formations seem huge at times, they are completely dwarfed by the dramatic prairie sky, especially during a summer storm."

Photo: South Dakota Tourism

When we visited Eureka last year, Rose Hargrove told us how the town helps people in need through a non-profit thrift shop. She said they even sent money to a woman from another state who once lived in Eureka, and the woman was moved to tears because nobody in her own hometown had done anything to help.

Of course I'm not suggesting that generosity and charity stops at the South Dakota border. But I doubt that anybody practices those gifts any better than us. The latest evidence is a Sioux Falls fundraiser for Doug Lee and his family, and Greg Latza tells about it in his blog. You want to read it.