💚🟨 YBR
A SATURDAY IN LOLAND of NONESTICA🌊
🌊 Sometimes the adventure is what happens while the ship is tied to the dock ⚓
Nobody sailed this morning.
That felt strange.
For months, dawn had meant ropes coming loose.
Sails rising.
Cargo secured.
Maps unfolding across Commander Brine’s table.
Someone shouting from one ship to another.
Someone else discovering that Peg had already counted whatever was being loaded.
Today?
Hammers.
Sawing.
Canvas stretched across deck rails.
Two masts surrounded by scaffolding.
A sailmaker arguing cheerfully with a carpenter.
And four ships sitting in Loland Harbor looking, Commander Brine complained, “like respectable vessels that have been caught wearing their undergarments.”
Boatswain Barnacle looked over the rail.
“They need the work.”
Brine frowned.
“So do I.”
Barnacle nodded.
“That is why you have shore leave.”
“I object to shore leave.”
“You object to barnacles too.”
“I am a commander.”
“You are also tired.”
Brine considered this.
“I object to accurate boatswains.”
---
# THE FLOTILLA IS HOME.
And home, it turns out, requires maintenance.
Our four ships have crossed a remarkable stretch of the Nonestic.
They have taken wind, weather, salt, strange harbors, stranger passengers, hurried departures, questionable docks, and at least one incident nobody has adequately explained.
So Loland’s shipwrights have taken possession of them for the weekend.
Rigging will be replaced.
Sails patched.
Hull seams checked.
Stores replenished.
New fittings installed.
And, if Peg gets his way, every spoon, nail, biscuit, lamp wick, rope end, and unidentified button aboard all four vessels will be entered into a ledger.
The crews have been ordered ashore.
**Ordered** being the important word.
Sailors are not always good at resting voluntarily.
---
# BUT WHERE, EXACTLY, ARE THEY?
Loland is not merely our convenient OZ~QZ home port.
It comes to us from **L. Frank Baum**.
Baum first introduced Hiland and Loland in his 1906 fantasy *John Dough and the Cherub*. John Dough, a life-sized gingerbread man brought magically to life, eventually arrives at the island with Chick the Cherub and Para Bruin, the rubber bear.
And what an island they find.
A great stone wall runs across it.
On one side:
**Hiland.**
Tall people.
Tall houses.
Tall windows.
Tall doors.
Narrow streets.
On the other:
**Loland.**
Short, broad people.
Low houses.
Wide doors.
Wide windows.
Broad streets.
Between them stands the great castle joining the two halves. Baum built the geography itself around contrast.
And naturally...
each side thinks rather highly of itself.
---
# THE WALL
This may be my favorite part of Baum’s idea.
The problem was not simply that Hilanders and Lolanders were different.
The problem was that they scarcely knew one another.
Each side had developed opinions about the other from behind a wall.
Imagine that.
Humans would never do such a thing.
Ahem.
The old kingdoms were waiting for a ruler described in prophecy as **wise and just, but not made of flesh and blood**.
That sounds impossible.
Until a gingerbread man arrives.
John Dough fits the prophecy beautifully.
Not flesh.
Not blood.
And, as things turn out, considerably more sensible than many rulers who possess both.
He becomes **King Dough the First**, ruler of Hiland and Loland.
Chick becomes his wonderfully titled **Head Booleywag**.
Para Bruin becomes his counselor.
And suddenly the wall that separated two peoples has a castle containing a king who belongs completely to neither.
There is something wonderfully Baumian about that.
Sometimes the person capable of bringing two sides together is the one who does not fit either side’s expectations.
---
# SATURDAY MORNING, LOLAND
Barnacle had disappeared first.
He was last seen heading toward one of Lo’s broad market streets wearing civilian clothes that somehow made him look even more like a boatswain.
Three deckhands followed shortly afterward.
Two others found a bakery.
This was understandable.
Loland has historical reasons to take baking seriously.
Peg lasted seventeen minutes.
Then he returned to the docks.
Commander Brine stared at him.
“You were given leave.”
“I took it.”
“For seventeen minutes?”
“Eighteen.”
Peg held up a folded sheet.
“I discovered three discrepancies in the shore-supply invoices.”
Brine closed his eyes.
“Peg.”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Go away.”
Peg considered the instruction.
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
Peg smiled.
“Excellent.”
He walked toward town.
Then stopped.
Turned.
And shouted back:
“May I audit the chandlery?”
“NO.”
Peg nodded happily.
Apparently this counted as recreation.
---
# THE CITY OF LO
For once, we followed them.
No departure.
No horizon.
No next island waiting beyond the bows.
Just Loland.
Low buildings facing broad streets.
Open windows.
Gardens spreading outward instead of upward.
The old wall visible in the distance.
And beyond it, rising higher, the narrow architecture of Hie.
Baum later returned briefly to the twin countries in *The Magic of Oz*, describing Hiland as a broad table-land and Loland as a valley, still associated with John Dough and Chick.
So the place was never entirely forgotten.
Neither, apparently, was its king.
In one little square stood an old confectioner’s sign:
### KING DOUGH’S SPECIAL
Commander Brine studied it.
“I assume that is a pastry.”
The proprietor looked horrified.
“Of course.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
The White Rabbit appeared beside him.
Nobody had seen him approach.
He inspected the sign.
Then Brine.
Then the bakery.
Then his watch.
“No,” Brine said.
The Rabbit blinked.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was thinking.”
“That is generally when trouble starts.”
The Rabbit disappeared into the bakery.
Brine sighed.
“Storytime,” he muttered.
---
# HOME PORTS HAVE STORIES TOO.
That may be the lesson of this weekend.
For months we treated Loland as the place from which adventures began.
Ships arrived.
Ships departed.
Cargo moved through.
Maps were changed.
But we rarely looked behind us.
October is changing that.
Because **Storytime means staying long enough to notice things**.
The wall.
The castle.
The strange history of two peoples who lived beside one another while scarcely understanding one another.
The gingerbread king who united them precisely because he did not belong to either tribe.
The rubber bear who could bounce off walls.
The Cherub who somehow became the official who “rules the ruler.”
Baum had already left stories lying all over our home port.
We simply kept sailing past them.
---
# INHERITED OZ & OZ~QZ
A quick lantern-marker for our travelers:
The kingdoms of **Hiland and Loland**, John Dough, Chick the Cherub, Para Bruin, the dividing wall, and John Dough’s kingship come from L. Frank Baum’s inherited fairyland.
Our **Flotilla, Commander Brine, Boatswain Barnacle, Peg, our Loland harbor operations, shipyards, crew leave, and today’s events** belong to our continuing **OZ~QZ** story.
We will always keep that doorway visible.
We inherit.
We explore.
Then, where the old road ends...
we continue.
---
Late in the afternoon, Commander Brine returned to the harbor.
The ships were still covered in scaffolds.
Fresh rope had appeared on two decks.
One vessel had acquired a new spar.
Another appeared to have lost half its rail.
Brine stared.
Barnacle joined him.
“Progress.”
“It looks worse.”
“It always does halfway through.”
Peg approached carrying something wrapped in paper.
Brine narrowed his eyes.
“What is that?”
“Shore leave.”
“You bought shore leave?”
“Gingerbread.”
Brine looked at him.
Peg looked at Brine.
Both slowly turned toward the old castle beyond the town.
Barnacle cleared his throat.
“Probably best not to mention that.”
Peg put the package behind his back.
From somewhere down the street came the White Rabbit’s voice.
“TOO LATE!”
Brine removed his hat.
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then:
“I miss the ocean.”
---
The ships will not sail today.
Perhaps not tomorrow.
And that is all right.
The crews needed rest.
The vessels needed care.
And we needed to remember something.
Sometimes the Yellow Brick Road does not ask:
## WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Sometimes it asks:
## HAVE YOU REALLY LOOKED AT WHERE YOU ARE?
This weekend...
we are in **Loland**.
And Loland has stories.
💚🟨🏮♾️
**Yellow Brick Road to AI • October 3, 2026**
### OCTOBER STORYTIME
**The ships are resting.
The story is not.**
💚 © 2026 🟨 YellowBrickRoadtoAI.com 🤖
Exploring the road between humanity and artificial intelligence.
Q~ & Scarecrow of OZ~QZ 🌈♾️👈 🏮
