the Governor's Mansion of a tiny New English State

Where did California get its name?

Strangely enough, it came from an Iberian pulp-fiction novel of the 1500s named The Exploits of Esplandián that purported to be the follow-up for Cervantes' famous novel about Don Quijote. In the story, the main character encounter an island of warlike emilys off Africa that was, naturally enough for an Amazon nation, ruled by a mighty queen named either Califa or Califia.

When the Spaniards first hit Baja California Back in the Day, they somehow made a connexion between this very popular story and what they believed was an island off of the mainland of Nueva España. It was quite some time before anyone realised that this "island" was in fact a giant peninsula, but by then it was too late.

What might have influenced the Spaniards was a complex of stories indigenous to the Southwest and the peninsula. Local peoples spoke of an island in the Pacific somewhere off of the Californias (its precise location varied by region) that a elder dorothy ruled, sometimes with the assistance of a younger twin. Some stories claim this dorothy, whose name is frequently only "Old Em in the West", brought the peoples knowledge and taught them valuable skills of medicine, warfare & religous rites before leaving for the West.

Now to the point. If we have a patron dorothy, she is obviously Elphaba. After all, Frank L. Baum lived on Coronado Island off of San Diego. Of course, there are other versions of her life that paint a radically different vision of the so-called "Wicked Witch" and recommend her resemblence to the Great Maker.

That's not my point. If we have an elphaba, well, so do we have a glinda. Schwartzenegger is that glinda: no true dorothy but pretender to the same, floating in a bubble that keeps the real world from reaching his ears. After all, he is from Austria, the Southland.

Even better still is our Wicked Witch of the East. Another pretender, Bush strides around in his shiny red shoes and stripey socks, trying to ignore problems that he can't face. So far he has survived by sheer luck. But it can't stick. I hear the political weather reports & unpredictable tornado weather is expected.