I have just finished composing and saving a series of posts for later this month and early next month.  I hope to be a little more active now.

I'm still working on a short story, but I had mis-read the instructions about it and I noticed that the deadline is the end of March instead of the end of February, as I at first thought.  This gives me a lot more breathing room so I should be able to do more blogging than in the last couple of weeks.

...that I've been in the mood for this week.

One for me...


And one for that other popular cartridge...

Denslow was a humor and political cartoonist for a magazine called Philistine.  He was born in Philadelphia but by 1890 was living in Chicago, where he met L. Frank Baum.  Baum was impressed enough by Denslow's work that Denslow eventually provided illustrations for several of Baum's books, among them The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

He and Baum had a falling out over royalties from the 1902 stage version of The Wizard of Oz, for which Denslow designed the sets and costumes.  Nevertheless, Denslow became quite wealthy from royalties from the books and the play.  He purchased himself a small island off the coast of Bermuda where he lived out the rest of his days, dying in obscurity due to pneumonia and probably the effects of alcoholism.

He had a characteristic signature which included a stylized representation of a seahorse, as show in the autographed photo above.

Denslow was said to have preferred the corncob pipe because it was so light that it rarely required a hand to hold it, which kept both hands free for his work.

The Free Wayne Webring has increased by six new sites since last Saturday, bringing the total to 28.

The site generating the most hits for the ring was once again The War On Guns.  Two sites tied for receiving the most traffic from the ring:  The War On Guns and this site, Blogonomicon.