A Vacation to Make All Other Vacations Envious (except that I'm doing almost nothing; some people get bored doing nothing)

The sport of curling, win or lose, male or female, whatever the conditions or circumstances, seems less intriguing than watching ants while they're slogging their way through that Terro substance that they supposedly take back to their headquarters and share with their fellow ants until it kills all of them. I've seen no evidence that it works unless a person uses the heavy-grade version that you can't buy at Home Depot but have to get from your pest control company.

I'm having an awe-inspiring break from the usual grind of medical school.  An esteemed concert pianist had to cancel a concert and a series of master classes all geographically accessible each night to a particular hotel. The guy was a bit of a prima donna if his demands for lodging are any indication. He canceled too late for the hotel to find anyone else to rent it for anywhere near what the pianist was going to pay. I'm paying roughly a quarter of what he would have been charged (the hotel will presumably bill him for the difference between what he would have paid and what I'm paying), which is still an entirely ridiculous amount of money for me to be paying for a hotel suite, but I have only one life, and it may as well be an enjoyable life. Money isn't something any of us can take with us when we make our final departures. While I plan to live to a reasonably old age, I don't plan to leave an excessive sum of money sitting in banks or various other investment funds. I do not wish merely to live, but to live!!!, and doing so is going to cost me a few dollars on occasion.

The hotel suite has, of all things, a Steinway baby grand which, due to the thickness of the walls and the placement of the piano within the suite, may be played at any hour of the day or night without complaints from neighbors or management.  I woke up a couple of hours ago with a mild attack of insomnia, and chose to deal with it by playing the piano. I've seldom if ever had the luxury of playing the piano at 4:00 a.m. without having a Nerf football thrown at my head as a result.

A few friends are flying in for the weekend. I had originally said that no one could sleep in my hotel suite if they visited, but I'm waffling and allowing six friends to scramble for couches, recliners, or the one extra bed in the suite. My stay is here going to be longer than originally planned, so solitude during this break is of less importance than i originally thought it would be. Besides, part of the fun of this vacation is having my peers be envious of me.

I even have a bodyguard who comes as part of the package, I'll need to tip him, but otherwise he is included in the flat rate I'm paying for almost everything.  I have no real use for him for the most part during the daytime. I have him hang around at night just because there are predators in the world, some of whom seek young and single women whom they consider to be vulnerable. Once the guy leaves, there is still reasonably tight security at the hotel itself, so it's not like I'm fair game for every sick puppy who might desire to make a leather coat from my hide.

I chose the study of medicine because I find it interesting, so even when I'm on break, I can't leave my field of study alone entirely. Yesterday, with an invitation, I went to  a hospital affiliated with a medical school near the hotel at which I'm staying. I scrubbed in for one pediatric abdominal surgery, talked to a few other specialists, then left. That's the nice thing about this being a vacation. There's no such thing as a shift. I can come and go as I please at any nearby hospital that will have me on its premises.

Breakfast will arrive soon. I'm having pancakes and fruit. I would probably gain weight on this trip were it not for one small issue: I cannot gain weight. My mom has issues with that as well, so it's presumably genetic. If she eats an amount that is roughly equal to what the average  sumo wrestler probably consumes, she can look good.  If I didn't wish to get myself killed, I could show you all a picture that proves my mom can beef up enough to be sexy.  I'm probably years away from that, though, plus I have a colon condition that makes it impossible for me to retain food long enough to absorb enough nutrients to look the way my mom looked in the particular picture in question. It's getting better, though, in the sense that fewer people accuse me of having an eating disorder. I'm less skinny and am starting to look my age, I consider it a very good thing.

I have no solid plans for today. After breakfast, I'll probably go back to sleep. When or if i wake up, I'll call and ask for a snowmobile to ride. I will need my bodyguard for that activity if no students are on break with whom I can tag along. Snowmobiling anywhere  interesting isn't particularly safe as a solo activity.

I watched a bit of the Olympic sport curling on TV. I don't get anything about it, as in exactly how it works or exactly why anyone would choose to do it. To me, as either a participation sport or a spectator sport, it seems roughly as compelling as is playing marbles. I haven't seen many televised marble competitions lately. they're probably around, though. Chances are that I'm simply not looking at the right channels. 

Theodore Seuss Geisel

I don't think I've ever shared before just how deeply I am in love with the works of Dr. Seuss. I own  fairly large collection of his books. My parents still get me one I don't yet own for every Christmas and birthday. I also purchase them on my own on occasion, but not near Christmases or birthdays because I want to avoid duplication.   I keep them neatly stacked in a bookcase in alphabetical order in my bedroom. My parents have repeatedly offered to make room for the Dr. Seuss volumes in their own library, but I want them in my own room.

 Someday, assuming nothing else goes out of print and becomes ridiculously expensive before I've collected it, I hope to own every book ever written by him, including the ones written under other pseudonyms. Ones that he has written but not illustrated are published under Theo LeSieg, which is, of course, the backward spelling of his actual last name, Geisel.  Suess, his middle name, was his mother's maiden name. Interestingly enough, the correct pronunciation  of is is /soiss/. He original labored to have his number one pseudonym pronounced correctly, but eventually gave up in his effort.

Sr. Seuss first began using Seuss as a synonym because  he was for some reason banned from writing for a publication at Dartmouth, where he earned his undergraduate degree. He continued to contribute to the publication, though under a synonym.

Dr. Seuss went to Oxford University in England to earn his doctorate, but met and fell in love with a woman, so instead returned to the United States and married her. he never officially earned a doctorate, though he must have possessed a truckload of honorary doctorates by the time of his death, which was, I believe, in 1991.

While Dr. Seuss professed liberal political leanings and was a registered democrat (he once rewrote
Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now with the name Richard M. Nixon inserted in each place where "Marvin K Mooney" had been. That alone would make me love the guy as an author even if he had written nothing else of significance.

While his political ideology may have been liberal, I suspect the agenda of Dr. Seuss with most of his books was more about getting people -- children in particular -- to think than to persuade them to believe one way or another. A couple notable exceptions to this, are The Butter Battle Book, which is clearly anti-war and especially a treatise against nuclear power and [my personal favorite] The Lorax, which clearly has an environmental message. For the most part, though, I think he was deliberately open-ended.

Not everyone likes the works of Dr. Seuss. Some people find  the rhyme scheme and the meter usually employed -- anapestic tetrameter --  to be monotonous.  Some elementary school teachers have told me they dislike many of the works because the language is unnatural. They're slightly missing the point in my opinion. The language of poetry is, by nature, unnatural. Anyone who disagrees should compose a lengthy rhyming poem. We'll all dissect it afterward to determine the natural flow of the poem's language.

Furthermore, the natural flow of language should matter only in the Dr. Seuss books for the very earliest readers. (After the earliest stage, the readers should have sufficient vocabulary and reading skills not to require extremely heavy context in order either to decode or to comprehend literature.) Books for early readers should have built-in cues on which young readers can pick up. One such method of creating such cues is making the language very predictable and adding pictures that practically give the words away. Another method of making text predictable is to  employ the technique of rhyme. It's difficult to use both methods simultaneously on a very large scale. Again, anyone who thinks otherwise should give it a try. I'd love to see it done well.

A friend of mine teaches preschool for children with special needs. A mother of one of her students complained about  The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in The Hat Comes Back being read aloud to her child.  The mother felt that Thing 1 and Thing 2 plus Little Cats A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., in addition to the cat himself,  were destructive to the extent it encouraged her child to be naughty. my friend explained to the mother that it was not the children behaving badly -- in fact, they, along with the fish, were appalled at the antics of the cat ant the little creatures.  It was intruders misbehaving. My friend explained both that she always made the point whenever she read the books that one should never let strangers into the house when their parents were not home -- that Sally and the boy (he had no name in the book, but in the movie was called Conrad) were very lucky something much worse didn't happen. It's a good opportunity to remind children that it's dangerous to answer the door when mommy is in the bathroom or wherever.

Furthermore, my friend explained to the mother, the sorts of things the cat, the things, and the little cats did -- standing on a ball while holding a rake and balancing a fishbowl on top of it, or flying kites inside a house, for example, were things that would be difficult for young children to manage if they were under any responsible supervision whatsoever. If a parent goes into his or her bedroom, closes the door, and sleeps for three hours while her two- and four-year-olds have the run of the house,  it's conceivable they might attempt some of the cat's feats, but any parent who would provide such incompetent supervision could hardly blame a book for what destruction his or her toddlers might create in a parent's virtual absence.  And any child legitimately old enough to be left alone who would try such things belongs either in a psych ward or in juvey.

My friend's experience is a reminder that whatever profession one chooses, one will inevitably deal with either batshit crazy or highly ignorant people. but, as my friend pointed out, it's better to deal with one of them than to be one of them.

I digressed in a major way. my point is that if you haven't picked up a Dr. Seuss book recently, find one and read it to a child. It will be time well-spent.