that she produced or directed called "Charlie Says" about Charlie Manson that came out "May 10th" in 2019.

It always comes down to the sex, doesn't it?

I thought this thread is about Lyman, Washington, a town in Skagit County;

my bad...

And I thought it would be about the Lyman family in Utah, who produced some VERY interesting characters.

I just did an Amazon search using the name "Lyman" and nothing else.

I SWEAR all the titles that came out were about religion -- Christian, LDS, FLDS, you name it. Whatever else those Lymans did they sure did a lot of writing about religion. There were LOTS of books about just plain Christian religion, but a respectable number of LDS books too.

Some notable LDS Lymans come to mind.

Amasa Lyman was an LDS zealot, a polygamists whose wives went starving (of course) who eventually left the LDS church to pursue spiritism -- seances, table rapping and all the rest of it.

Albert R. Lyman was a prolific writer about Hole In the Rock and San Juan County. For a while he was the editor of the San Juan Record.

Richard Lyman was a GA in the '30s and '40s. He was also a secret polygamist -- like for THIRTY YEARS. Come on, dontcha think anybody had a CLUE????

His (legitimate) wife was a leader in Relief Society. Her name was Amy Lyman.

There are other notable Lymans, but those are the ones that come to mind.


I think the "L" in Frank L. Baum's name, creator of the Wizard of Oz, stands for Lyman.

Lymans, Lymans everywhere.

loislane Wrote:
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> I think the "L" in Frank L. Baum's name, creator
> of the Wizard of Oz, stands for Lyman.

I looked it up. His name was Lyman Frank Baum (L. Frank Baum) and he was called Frank.

I found a very interesting article about him and his smash hit The Wizard of Oz in the Smithsonian Magazine. It gives a lot of details about his life and the book but doesn't further mention Lyman.

There is an interesting comment about Baum's "skepticism towards god".

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/frank-baum-the-man-behind-the-curtain-32476330/

Excerpt:

"When The Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 with illustrations by the Chicago-based artist William Wallace Denslow, Baum became not only the best-selling children’s book author in the country, but also the founder of a genre. Until this point, American children read European literature; there had never been a successful American children’s book author. Unlike other books for children, The Wizard of Oz was pleasingly informal; characters were defined by their actions rather than authorial discourse; and morality was a subtext rather than a juggernaut rolling through the text. The New York Times wrote that children would be “pleased with dashes of color and something new in the place of the old, familiar, and winged fairies of Grimm and Anderson.”

"But the book was much more than a fairy tale unshackled from moralistic imperatives and tired fantastical creatures. With his skepticism toward God—or men posing as gods--Baum affirmed the idea of human fallibility, but also the idea of human divinity. The Wizard may be a huckster—a short bald man born in Omaha rather than an all-powerful being—but meek and mild Dorothy, also a mere mortal, has the power within herself to carry out her desires. The story, says Schwartz, is less a “coming-of-age story … and more a transformation of consciousness story.” With The Wizard of Oz, the power of self-reliance was colorfully illustrated."

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Wouldn't it be amazing to found a genre? Or even to write a story with such wide-ranging appeal and longevity.

In my dreams.

Thanks Susan, that was fascinating (and chilling...). Superbly written, too. That backstory is quite an obstacle to overcome, so she should be congratulated for succeeding in having a life - and for clearly being a very talented writer.

Yet another cult in which young, underaged females were sexually abused by older men.