I have an unusual connection with “The Wizard of Oz,” the stage musical that begins an eight-performance run at the Des Moines Civic Center on Dec. 15.

This particular show premiered at the London Palladium in 2011, with new songs by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber and modern references that help connect the story’s Kansas characters with their counterparts in Oz.

More than 100 books, stage shows and film adaptations have spun off L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” It began with the original stage version in 1902, in which a cow named Imogene replaced Toto the dog as Dorothy’s traveling companion. 

There was also a newspaper comic strip and, of course, the 1939 movie with Judy Garland, which changed Dorothy’s footwear from silver to ruby slippers and replaced the 1902 stage show music with “Over the Rainbow” and other tunes we now associate with the Oz franchise.  

My connection with all of this began during a vacation visit to an Oregon bookstore sometime in the early- to mid-1980s. For some reason, I bought a used copy of a reprint of Baum’s original book and began reading it to my preschool son, Craig. 

He was so awestruck by the story that when we came across copies of other Oz books, we bought them and read them too. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Baum wrote 14 Oz books, and after he died in 1919, a writer named Ruth Plumly Thompson wrote 19 more. Over the course of three or four years, we managed to find 26 of those books and read at least 20 of them. 

By the time we quit reading, we had begun joking about how all the plots were the same. 

A bunch of odd characters set off down a road where a bunch of bad stuff happens, followed by some good stuff, and then they go home. 

By the time Craig was reading on his own, his tastes had moved beyond Oz. Over the years, though, we both felt a strong connection to those stories, and I’ve often wondered why he was so drawn to them.

Recently, I stumbled upon an Oz reference in Wikipedia that argued that the original book was an allegory of late-19th-century bimetallism monetary policy, with the yellow brick road representing the gold standard and Dorothy’s silver slippers representing rural America’s effort to expand the money supply by adding silver.  

I’m not sure about that, but I do like Wikipedia’s Baum quotation about the importance of stimulating a child’s imagination: “The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent and therefore to foster civilization.” 

It worked for Craig.

New revenue collection videos:

The Iowa Legislative Services Agency is launching a new access portal for its monthly online videos about state revenue collections. 

The videos feature the agency’s Jeff Robinson explaining which tax collections were up or down during the previous month and the current fiscal year. 

They’re easy to understand and a great way to follow Iowa’s economy.

Beginning Dec. 4, the most recent memo can be accessed from smartphones with the accompanying QR code. If your mobile phone does not have a QR code reader, just Google “Free QR Code” and download the software. Then, center your phone over the QR image and the video will begin playing.

In the future, we will link to the videos from our twice-daily e-newsletters at the appropriate time each month to alert you when a new video memo is available. The -four- to five-minute videos are also available on the agency’s website, www.legis.iowa.gov under Audio/Video Presentations. Click here for a look back at November.