"Oh, the places you'll go!
There is fun to be done!"
~ Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
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| Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry |
"There are points to be scored.
There are games to be won."
~ Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
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| Richard with his family of fans after North Central defeated Wheaton College |
"On you will go
though the weather be foul.
On you will go
though your enemies prowl."
~ Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
So, on we went, despite that disappointment, to squeeze as much fun into the weekend as we possibly could.Even though we started our weekend last Thursday, no one expected to find time to visit Chicago's famous museums. Still, a trip to the Museum of Science & Industry has been on my dad's bucket list since he was sixteen. That was the year his parents took him along with them on a trip to Chicago, but sadly that excursion was too short to pay a visit to this venerable exhibition hall, the only remaining building from Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition which Dad longed to see.
Thus, the two of us plotted a way to squeeze a visit to this museum into our already full schedule. Since my brother Jon's family made the 13-hour trek from Hutchinson, Kansas to Chicago's Union Station aboard AmTrak's Southwest Chief, they needed a way back to the station for their train ride home. Dad and I volunteered to drive them downtown, knowing that once we deposited them at the station, we'd have all of Sunday afternoon free to browse the museum. And browse it we did, from the farm technology on the lower level all the way to the "Take Flight" exhibit on top!
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| Willard McClure views the museum's United Airlines Boeing 727. |
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| Dad pointed out mechanical features that I would have missed. |
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| We marveled at the model train empire whose 30-plus trains run on 1,400 feet of winding track, replicating the trip from Seattle to downtown Chicago. |
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| My dad, a huge fan of the rails, was delighted to see the Pioneer Zephyr, nicknamed the Silver Streak, America's first diesel-electric streamlined passenger train. |
"I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do. And that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
~ Theodore Seuss Geisel
There I learned that Geisel's German immigrant father found work as a zookeeper in Springfield, Massachusetts and suddenly his book, If I Ran the Zoo, took on a whole new meaning for me. His father would bring home specimens such as gazelle antlers or tortoise shells from his job. Perhaps those artifacts inspired Geisel to later draw his whimsical characters comprised of parts and pieces from various animals.
Dr. Seuss credits his mother for inspiring his poetic bent; she ran a bakery and greeted her customers by listing the day's pie flavors in simple rhymes which she often repeated at bedtime to lull her children to sleep. Geisel's anapestic tetrameter consisting of two weak beats followed by one strong beat is a hallmark of his Dr. Seuss books.
"So be sure when you step
Step with care and great tact
and re-mem-ber that Life's
a Great Bal-anc-ing Act."
~ Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
Theodore Geisel attended Dartmouth College and wrote for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, the school's humor magazine. Upon graduation, he left for England where he studied and received his PhD in English literature from Oxford.
Returning to the United States, he submitted articles and essays to various publications, but he achieved national fame for the advertisements he created for an insecticide spray called Flit. In those ads, a man and wife find their quiet existence routinely invaded by outlandish insects, prompting the wife to say, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" Was his early promotion of this insecticide containing the highly detriemental DDT what led Geisel in 1971 to write what he claimed was his favorite book, The Lorax? That fable about the degradation of the environment galvanized the ecology movement as a generation of children who had learned to read, using Dr. Seuss books, reached their adulthood and sought to clean up the environment.
The start of World War II prompted Geisel to create political cartoons for the New York daily newspaper PM that denounced Hitler and Mussolini and were highly critical of Americans who opposed U.S. entry into the war. Later in 1942, Geisel drew posters for the U.S. Treasury Department and the War Production Board, urging Americans to support the war. He joined the U.S. Army as a Captain in 1943 and became commander of the Animation Department of the First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Forces, headed by Frank Capra. There Geisel produced a series of animated army training films using his main character, Private Snafu, to teach military personnel about various topics such as how to minimize the risk of contracting malaria in the Pacific.
Despite the 30 rejection letters Geisel received before he found a publisher in 1937 who would publish his first book, And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street, he persevered. Geisel wrote 44 children's books during his lifetime which were translated into 15 different languages.
"Just never forget
to be dexterous and deft
And never mix up your right
foot with your left."
~ Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
His books written for children launched a revolution in the way reading is taught, replacing insipid, moralistic beginning readers with his highly-engaging, zany stories founded upon Dolch's sight words, a list of 220 words most frequently found in printed material. In fact, the exhibit tells the story of a $50 bet his publisher, Bennett Cerf, made that Geisel could not write a cogent, entertaining book using only 50 words. But Geisel proved him wrong by writing The Cat In the Hat, a 62-page bestseller composed of 49 one-syllable words and the word anywhere. Forever after until his death in 1991, Geisel complained that Cerf never paid him the $50 prize from that bet.
In June 1977, Theodore Geisel was invited to Lake Forest College in Illinois by college president Eugene Hotchkiss III to receive an honorary degree. Hotchkiss also asked Geisel to present the commencement address, a request that Geisel politely declined. "I talk with people, not to people," Geisel wrote back. Nevertheless, the program that day listed Geisel as the speaker so he quickly composed and delivered the following poem entitled "My Uncle Terwilliger On the Art of Eating Popovers." (To read Hotchkiss' account of this invitation, click here.)
My uncle ordered popovers
from the restaurant's bill of fare.
And, when they were served
He regarded them
with a penetrating stare
Then, he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
"To eat these things,"
said my uncle,
"you must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what's solid
BUT
you must spit out the air!"
And
as you partake of the world's bill of fare,
that's darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.
There is something sure to please even the grumpiest visitor to this exhibit. Indeed, such visitors could take comfort in the conversion of Geisel's famously bitter green protagnonist. "Can't they understand that the Grinch in my story is the Hero of Christmas?" lamented Geisel about his misunderstood Grinch, "Sure, he starts out as a villain, but it's not how you start out that counts. It's what you are at the finish."
Did my father and I conclude that our visit to the Museum of Science & Industry was successful?
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
~ Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
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