Rachel Cosgrove Payes in "Oz: The American Fairyland"

In June, 2008, I got a message from a YouTube user. They've since closed their account, so there's no point in saying their screen name, the only name I knew. By this time, my Wonders of Oz and other Oz videos had kind of made me a go-to-Oz guy on YouTube. I've more or less relaxed since.

Anyway, this is what they said:

A cousin and I have been researching or family tree and we just found out that we are related to Rachel C. Payes. I thought let me give it a shot and type the name in youtube...this is great...do you have any other info on her?
Also do you know where I can find the film OZ: The American Fairyland? 

 Unfortunately, I didn't know more about Rachel Cosgrove Payes at the time. I do now, however. And I didn't own Oz: The American Fairyland, either. However, I looked for the videotape and eventually purchased it.

Oz: The American Fairyland was an excellent (if a little dull) documentary about the origins of Oz and a look at the phenomenon as a whole. There was an odd focus on Oz dolls in the second half, and I've spotted one factual inaccuracy.

Since it was 2008 and VHS was getting harder to use, I needed to convert it to a digital version quickly. Fortunately, I had a couple other Oz transfers I needed to do so I already had most of the stuff I needed. I needed to upgrade my system, which I did in early 2009, and finally got a transfer finished.

The user contacted me again and I said I could try to get a DVD to them, but they never contacted me with their address.

Well, instead of putting it on a regular DVD myself, I burned the video file to a DVD-R as a data disc with some other things and then put it away.

However, as my family will tell you, I have THOUSANDS of DVD-Rs of data on them. And I'm VERY bad at labeling. (In fact, my brother says that is "extraordinarily true.") So, when I was re-reading Rachel Cosgrove Payes' Oz stuff for my FF+ blogs, I did want to see her interview again, but I couldn't find my video transfer. I had the VHS, but I'd upgraded my computer again and my old transfer hardware was incompatible.

Finally I managed to recover the file earlier this week and watched it again. I don't know if that person who'd contacted me is still looking for this, even if they were for real. I edited the clips of Rachel into a single video, though cutting it with VirtualDub was a little rough.



The factual inaccuracy was in that clip. John R. Neill's last Oz book was Lucky Bucky in Oz, not The Scalawagons of Oz.