To Boldly Go...

You are an Intrepid-class Scout, Starfleet's
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Ted Geisel, and his contribution to civilization

Yesterday I watch a Biography special on Ted Geisel...although most people know him by his pen name, Dr. Seuss!

He had a varied life. Times of distress when he lost his sight, or his first wife needed an iron lung to breath, good times when he was a million seller, what seems to be a "poly" like relationship, more bad times when his wife committed suicide, and his marriage to his "mistriss". There were many pictures showing the three of them together...a V or a primary/secondary, not a triangle. That is why I it might be more "poly" than "mistress on the side". The obviously knew about each other's relationship. And it lasted years. But, ultimately, it is what caused his wife to kill herself.

But these things are not the most important thing he did, but it was a book he wrote that may just be the biggest contribution to reading since the invention of the printing press...and that is "The Cat in the Hat".

Back in the mid 1950's a famous article was published lambasting the current "controlled volcabulary" readers of the day like "Dick and Jane". It called them unrealistic, and presented an image of life that was not possible to achieve without being independantly wealthy. And they were not very imaginative. So Ted Geisel, flush with the success of his first book, "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street", accepted the challenge of writing a reading primer with just a volcabuarly of 220 words. That book was "The Cat in the Hat". And the book sold...and sold, and even today, it sells very, very well.

I ask you to pause and think; how many of you grew up reading "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and the like? Probably most of us here...and how many have, or plan on buying those books for any offspring we may have? I see the same hands....and I am willing to bet a number of years down the line, when they grow up, they willl be doing the same for their kids....so we see that starting in the late 1950's an ever growing light blue fan touching and connecting parent to child to parent going on and on and on. In a hundred years, that's a lot of people...and don't forget, they have been translated into 68+ langauges...so people elsewhere are doing the same thing. Thing of the HUGE effect that is having on reading, and will have over the next 100 years...I am willing to bet that Ted Geisel will be remembered in history has having almost as much effect on the popularity of Reading as the Gutenberg printing press did.

Geisel was not a superman, not a great politician, or even an average or common man. He was weird, but he had a talent and a drive t hat enabled him to change the world and make it just a little bit better. He did it with style, imagination and humour, the three things that today's school system and society tries to eliminate. And for that, he should be an inspiration to us all!

And those are the reasons he has made our civilization just a little bit better.

And Thing One, and Thing Two.

ttyl