Once you're with the Wizard, no one thinks you're strange

"when you wear green spectacles, why of course everything you see looks green to you. The Emerald City was built a great many years ago, for I was a young man when the balloon brought me here, and I am a very old man now. But my people have worn green glasses on their eyes so long that most of them think it really is an Emerald City"

-- "The Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum

Oh, what a pair they'll be, the Wizard and It

For approximately the 268th time in the last decade Salemtown is being declared in media as the "newest hottest spot" in Nashville. The "newest hottest" gilding gets old after a while, but something else leaped at me from the latest Realtor® hype:

When Karl Dean, the Wizard of It, announced the nearby Germantown area as the location of the new baseball park – not a stadium, a ball park – he cast a spell upon the neighborhood.

I have to concede, while shoving such overstatement aside, that Hizzoner has indeed used a fair degree of Oz-like sleight of hand during his years in the Mayor's Office. However, there are those who choose to keep their It-City spectacles firmly over their eyes. That helps the illusion, too.