A Small Celebration

I don't know why the story caught my eye. The absence has certainly not kept me awake, nor have I ever given much thought to who, by contrast, was included. But somehow the news that the Munchkins -- of Wizard of Oz fame -- were finally, after all these years, getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has welled within me a contented, smiling sigh. According to the story, only nine of the original 125 actors who portrayed the citizens of Munchkinland are still alive, which should come as no surprise. What came as a surprise to me was the fact that the movie premiered some 68 years ago.

Of those surviving nine, Jerry Maren, part of the Lollipop Guild; Mickey Carroll, the Town Crier; Karl Slover, the Main Trumpeter; Ruth Duccini, a Munchkin villager; Margaret Pelligrini, the "sleepyhead" Munchkin and Meinhardt Raabe, the coroner, all attended the ceremony yesterday, along with Clarence Swensen, a Munchkin soldier who now lives in Pflugerville, Texas.

Maybe that last is part of the intrigue -- that in my very own Texas, the land of everything big and tall, resides one of the Munchkins. Perfect!

Or perhaps it is simply the common satisfaction of seeing the commonly forgotten get a little share of the spotlight. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Munchkins "made" the Wizard of Oz -- Dorothy and Toto, the Cowardly Lion and Tinman and Scarecrow, after all, had something to do with that -- but it sure would have been a smaller movie without them (no pun intended). Their winsome, exhuberant, hospitable presence made crashing down somewhere over the rainbow a magical delight.

But maybe it also has to do with my mounting disaffection for our culture's celebration of the bloated -- the deification of all things bigger, louder, and brighter. We have all become enchanted with -- if not addicted to -- powerful engines, bold tastes, high definition, mega-bandwidth, and vehicles with more cup holders and "electrical accessory ports" than gas mileage. Life on steroids.

It's nice, for a change, for something small to be celebrated, commemorated, honored. The actors who played the Munchkins earned it not because they overwhelmed us with horsepower and decibels, but because they simply enchanted us...

...with less, rather than with more.

That wouldn't be a bad thing to consider this week as I sit down with family and friends around the table and ruminate on the shape and size of gratitude, and the legacy I hope to leave.

Congratulations, Munchkins! Enjoy your star. And keep singing...
...at least to me.