There is No Place Like Home
By Cheryl Berzanskis
Hello, my name is Cheryl Berzanskis and I live in Amarillo. I'm a southern girl transplanted to the plains where I learned to love the big sky, the mighty wind, and dramatic weather in all its forms.
When I arrived in Pampa, Texas, tornadoes became a springtime ritual I knew little about except they send one racing to the cellar with the neighbors. The tornado, a wildly spinning column of air touching both land and sky, wreaks havoc in its wake. Often called a funnel, a cyclone, or twister, this weather phenomenon has historically been most prominent in the Midwest, including states covered by High Plains Public Radio: Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and neighbors Nebraska and South Dakota.
Tornadoes, their kin, hurricanes, and blizzards, and their ability to change lives
are the focus of the 2026 Fall Read - Wind and Weather. In our book bite selection,
The Wizard of Oz, a little girl's life was forever altered by the action of a mighty cyclone that flew her from the gray plains and drab existence of Kansas to colorful munchkin country with its variety and sizes of folk, both good and bad.
Dorothy Gale, an orphan living with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em on the Great Plains in a small wooden house, learned the answers to life's dilemmas were often found inside oneself after the most unusual quests. You probably know the outlines of the 198-page
illustrated story.
Dorothy, her cairn terrier pup Toto, and her home swooped up by the wind
and dropped onto the Wicked Witch of the East. earning her a pair of magic silver shoes and a blessing kiss from the Good Witch of the North. From there, Dorothy and her later companions, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, seek help from the mighty but mortal Wizard of Oz. Each of them has a need for home, brains, heart, and courage that they find they already possess in their quest to earn the favor from the Wizard.
The Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and became the most famous of the 14 Oz-centered children's books authored by L. Frank Baum, a journalist and playwright. He wrote that The Wizard of Oz was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the headaches and nightmares are left out.
The Wizard of Oz is shelved in public libraries with juvenile fiction. While it is quite readable and digestible by children, the message of hardship traveling the yellow brick road, the demonstration of courage required to defend the burning scarecrow and thereby kill the Wicked Witch of the West, and Dorothy's exposure of the wizard for what he really is, a con man from Omaha, are lessons anyone can learn.
But all this is precipitated by the mighty cyclone that served as the change agent in The Wizard of Oz. Were it not for the whirling wind, the lessons would not be ours to learn. If by now you are thinking of the 1939 musical starring the late Judy Garland, I'm right there with you. In fact, the memory has permeated all that I've thought about this book. Sure, it's a cinema adaptation, but the allegorical truths are the same.
We can all grow and mature and face life head-on, no matter our age or situation. The final and most powerful truth comes from young Dorothy.
There's no place like home.
For the Radio Readers Book Club on High Plains Public Radio, this has been Cheryl Berzanskis.
