Who Was Dr. Seuss

In this episode, Who Was Dr. Seuss . . .
I'm curious, have you ever wondered where the name Dr. Seuss came from? Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904. Today we celebrate his 118th birthday!

After reading The Cat in the Hat for the first time in a previous podcast episode (Tribute to Dr. Seuss), we decided to try our hand at his literary style. I'm here to say it wasn't easy.

Why Dr. Seuss? Well, remember that children's book series (The Who Was Series) we introduced you to? During a recent visit to Barnes and Noble, I picked up Who Was Dr. Seuss by Janet B. Pascal. After reading that book, I was compelled to order Oh, the Places You'll Go! What a marvelous book.

I'll admit I've become captivated with these books; why? If you look carefully, the attention to character detail is outstanding. The facial expressions, the use of colors, the carefully crafted words created to rhyme, and the scope of the implied meaning within the scenes. Yes, I can now see why Dr. Seuss was so beloved. By children and adults alike. From my readings, I've discovered that in 2001, Publishers Weekly drew up a list of the top 150 best-selling children's books of all time; 24 were by Dr. Seuss. During his career, he wrote over forty books.

After graduating from Dartmouth College (B.A., 1925), Geisel did postgraduate studies at Lincoln College, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. He subsequently began working for Life, Vanity Fair, and other publications as an illustrator and humorist. In addition, he found success in advertising, providing illustrations for several campaigns. Geisel was especially noted for his work on ads for Flit insect repellent. Some of his characters later appeared in his children's books.

While working for the magazine Judge, he began writing a column called "Boids and Beasties," introducing strange and playful creatures. At that time, he signed the column "Dr. Seuss" in honor of his father's hope that his son would earn his Ph.D. Seuss was his mother's maiden name and his given middle name. Ted Geisel had dropped out of the Ph.D. program at Oxford. He would, however, eventually earn several honorary doctorates throughout his career.

What I discovered is that Dr. Seuss is among the treasured Americans of history. A Dr. Seuss book is the first book given to one out of every four children born in the United States. And Oh, the Places You'll Go! remains one of the most popular gifts for high school and college graduates to this day.

Happy Birthday, Theodor Seuss Geisel.

I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for listening; see you in the next episode.

Comments

The Gopher Problem and the High Powered Solution

Vacationing in Maine this week, just a short drive down the coast from Freeport, it is hard not to think about the outsized impact one frustrated outdoorsman had on the gear we all use today. Bad equipment can ruin a perfectly good day on the water or the trail, but it takes a special kind of vision to turn cold feet into a century-old empire. This is the story of the company we now know as L.L.Bean, but more importantly, it is a masterclass in integrity, learning from failure, and standing behind your work. In 1912, Leon Leonwood Bean faced a persistent problem: returning from expeditions in the Maine woods with cold, wet feet. Instead of complaining, he got creative. He had a local shoemaker stitch waterproof rubber soles onto the flexible leather uppers of a hunting boot. He called it the Maine Hunting Shoe and mailed a flyer promising perfect satisfaction. Then reality arrived. Ninety of his first 100 pairs failed when the rubber separated from the leather. Not an effective product...

Beyond Facts-The Deep Dive

✨ In this episode, Beyond Facts: Reimagining School–in the Age of AI . . . This week's podcast is a bit different; it's another example of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can offer tools to creatively enhance your analytical presentation of information. We took this week's blog and copied it into Gemini with the question, “If a story is to work, it must, on some level, create an illusion of escape and also achieve a goal simultaneously. Does this apply to my blog post that follows?” What's created is not just an analysis of the writing, but an AI-generated discussion produced “On the Fly” - Enjoy! Did you know that the word "school" comes from the ancient Greek word scholē , which originally meant "leisure"? Not a rigid schedule or droning lectures filled with "facts," but free time for thinking and conversation. To the Greeks, learning happened best when life slowed down—when you had room to reflect, to ask questions, and to wrestle ...

On Becoming Real

Some things get better with wear: old shoes, old friendships, and old books. Especially old books. A new volume arrives with crisp corners and a spine that hasn’t yet learned to bend. An old one has been somewhere. It has traveled through time in the hands of people who may no longer be around to tell us what they found inside. The copy of The Velveteen Rabbit (first published in 1922) on my desk is one of those books. My friend Don Hanley gave it to me. This late-1950s Doubleday edition features William Nicholson’s original illustrations and cream paper boards softened by age. Worn corners, a split spine, and colored tabs mark passages worth revisiting. Don didn’t hand me a keepsake. He gave me homework. When we talked about the book recently, he pointed me straight to the nursery conversation between a young rabbit and an old Skin Horse. The rabbit had noticed the mechanical toys around him—the ones with internal gears, bright paint, and stick-out handles that seem terribly impressiv...

Stamps and Snow

In this episode, Stamps and Snow . . . You don’t usually walk into the local Post Office expecting a time warp . . . but here we are. All we wanted were stamps for this year's Christmas cards— yes, the old-fashioned paper ones that require licking, sticking, and hoping the Postal Service is feeling ambitious this week. But holiday errands have a talent for slowing you down, almost like the universe whispering, “Relax. You’re not getting out of this line any faster anyway.” So we waited. And while we waited, we talked (Are you surprised?). Because the Post Office is one of the few places where people still look up from their phones long enough to talk . . . Maybe it's because they're holding packages. It’s the modern town square: part civic duty, part free entertainment, part sociology experiment. The discussion began with holiday specials streaming on Netflix, Paramount+, and other services during this time of year. One gentleman who has lived in Vista since 1958 told us,...

On The Fly

Search This Blog