If you are in a group of peopleat Christmas time, have them all stand in a circle holding hands. Then start singing "Welcome Christmas" from "The Grinch that Stole Christmas" like all the Whos in Whoville and see if everybody doesn't smile.

"Fah who for-aze dah who dor-aze" is basically pseudo Latin that just sounds good, it brings out that we are in Suess's world, for my heart grew 3 sizes larger that day.

From Suess.com, hope this isn't tantamonting to copyright crime.

Welcome Christmas (both versions)

Author: Dr. Seuss

This is the song sung by the Whos of Whoville on Christmas. The first version is probably more suited for simple caroling, and the second for more choir oriented activities. The first is sung while the Grinch watches from on high, and the second is at the end (maybe during the closing credits - I don't recall off-hand).

Welcome Christmas		Welcome Christmas (Reprise)
Fah who for-aze!		Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!		Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,		Welcome Christmas,
Come this way!		Come this way!
Fah who for-aze!		Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!		Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,		Welcome Christmas,
Christmas Day.		Christmas Day.
Welcome, Welcome		Welcome, Welcome
Fah who rah-moose		Fah who rah-moose
Welcome, Welcome		Welcome, Welcome
Dah who dah-moose		Dah who dah-moose
Christmas day is in our grasp		Christmas day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp		So long as we have hands to clasp
Fah who for-aze!		Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!		Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome, welcome Christmas		Welcome Christmas
Welcome, welcome Christmas		Bring your cheer
Day		Fah who for-aze!
		Dah who dor-aze!
		Welcome all Who's
		Far and near
		Welcome Christmas, fah who rah-moose
		Welcome Christmas, dah who dah-moose
		Christmas day will always be
		Just so long as we have we
		Fah who for-aze
		Dah who dor-aze
		Welcome Christmas
		Bring your light
		(Bridge (about 65 sec))
		Welcome Christmas
		Fah who rah-moose!
		Welcome Christmas
		Dah who dah-moose!
		Welcome Christmas
		While we stand
		Heart to heart
		And hand in hand
		Fah who for-aze
		Dah who dor-aze
		Welcome welcome
		Christmas
		Christmas
		Day

Copyright © 1957, Dr. Seuss.

---

Return to the The Dr. Seuss Web Page. Or just send me some email.

Page maintained by David Bedno (drseuss@seuss.org).

Comprehensible geological strata? I live in Massachusetts a complex continental pressed-together fringe where the rocks are crushed and hard to figure, it is not easy for this totally amateur dilettante to discombobulate, unlike the flattened strata of upstate NY and other inland sendimental inland areas here in USA , but a the Helderburg exposure seen above Altamont, NY at Thatcher's Park, so classic Ordovician-Silurian Gondwana, Agassiz worked here in the day, it is exposed so well anybody can come and heck you may find a trilobite. If you want a trilobite fossil come to NY, we got plenty come here with digging tools and look.

Less than 50% of the real learning you can get comes from college, you have to get up into a library and really read, you have to follow an urge to know something, just following directions is no way to learn, you have to want to know about something, otherwise it's just a lacking career move.

Let us face the facts of historical economical geography, all of our historical narratives although souding dramatic like plays have been inevitable. If the Anerican Revolution hadn't happend in 1776 well it would have happened in 1777, because a little island like England could never control a big place like the American entity between Georiga and Maine, cuz it was big enough to struggle free of an island 2000+ miles away when sea-travel took weeks, and the American backwoods was impossible for the Brtish to control, they couldn't even subjicate the Iroquois, the colonial whities did that cuz they had a base here, they lived nearby, but it was not for the sake of the distant King George. it was to ruthlessly get land out in upstate New York and Ohio. Oh we destroyed a real nation during the American Revolurion with the campaign thru upstate New York that burnt out and stampeded the Iroquous. From 1619 to 1776 the Iroquois controlled the balance of power in this region, although really after the Seven Years War they had no leverage because the French were out of Canada, but it is fascinating how they controlled such a vast region in the 17th and 18th centuries, won and lost the Midwest, maintained the respect of the tribes and colonials, and their languages, directed related to that of the Cherokee which as we know (I say 'we' to be polite) has a syllabary created by Sequoyah (English is too convoluted to be spelt by syllabary, English needed an alphabet with strange spellings to accomodate the Greek, Latin, French, Norse, etc decesdent wordings), and is a noble set of languages; some say the best speakers (Mohawk, Seneca) had a cadence and speech not unlike Castillian; god bless the Iroquois, the native people of the region I myself grew up in, upstate NY, the gateway to the west, and a beautiful place. Go out to Cayuga Lake and you see what the Seneca saw. Or the Mohawk Valley, where the Mohawk and Oneida peoples lived and some still live, a classically glacially terraformed landscape. Hey go dig some quartz crystals while you're out there. That's where the best double-termnated ones come from. Anyway the Americans wanted this land so the second-sons of New England could have farms while the eldest scions held the stony little ancestoral properties back in useless non-profitable Massachusetts, where nowadays there are no more than 150 farms in the whole state, cuz who would want to farm in soil full of stones.

Why don't we think nothing of nudity? Because of weather, because we aren't all haired up like dogs and cats, we are for some reason a rather hairless species, which is odd since hominids have lived in the northern regions for a long time, although we are all descended from the African branch that found brains less than 100,000 years ago, but wouldn't you think Cro-Magnon or the proto-Asians developing during the Wisconsian Ice Age (the last one - until the next whichc is imminent) would have been selected for hairiness? Why, I ask myself during this New England winter, can't we have some kind of hair covering? Maybe their was a sexual selection preference, which is a strong factor in evolutions, (girls don't like the hairy? Guys don't like the hairy girls.) like the male peacock tail, which serves no other survival purpose. I'm not completely up to date on the thinking on this , but read 'Descent of Woman' by Ellen Morgan years and years ago and she spelled out the Aquatic Ape theory, the idea that there was a phase in the evolution of homo sapiens, during some awful hot arid stage in Africa, the last interglacial I suppose, when our ancestors dwelt only on the coastline and spent a real lot of time in the water, and thus lost hair in order to aid swimming, like other rather unhairy mammals like whales, and quadropeds like rhinos. And pigs. Pigs are a real analog to humans, rather unhairy, sweaty, pretty smart for a beast. Some other interesting ideas in 'Descent of Woman' was that women have bigger butts because they spent so much time sitting on the beach with kids in their laps, and that underarm hair is there cuz swimming is not negatively effected by it.





OK next post

Force everybody to take up a musical instrument as a requirement of citizenship, with weekly jams amongst the coerced, and I'm sure people would be nicer; it's for their own good.

The Big Easy is not easy or even that big anymore. Apparently it's not very important to restore this place. Now useless boring stupid dreadful suburbs with franchise restaurants and cookie cutter structures are being built all across the US, while the rebuilding of truly uniquely American New Orleans is stalled in perplexion. Now that N.O. has been wacked, the most vulnerable American unharmed city is ... Las Vegas? Or another sea level city, like NYC, Honolulu, or Miami?
Or crowded little Boston with its impossible traffic, no evacuation possible.

From the majik year 2003, back when I was young and backpacked all summer:

Sunday 7-13-03

A postmodern life.

Brooks babble in SQL

Foibles. fobbles, fubbles, enfoible, befoible,

follify, follyman, follymonger, defolliate,

follying, follier, folliest, refollify.

Retrospire, despire, misspire

Frog diplomacy, frog love, toadage.

I think a bird is alternating keys.

A 2-bar phrase, taking it up a fifth?

Mon 7-14-03

Today's theme: Broken (camera, diet, resolve, etc.)

This week, am I simply throwing myself at the mountains just to escape the city.

8pm Moss Pond - Doodlebugs, barflugias, foolish little circling flies.

Bird song - Questioning, changing volume, changing attitude, reversing phrases; communicating.

Little things bite and itch, nothing major.

Twilight, when changing light excites our chromatics, our light perception, hunger, our need for darkness.

No bushwhacking after 8pm.

AT ThruHikers have mechanistic notions, their goals must be Maine or Georgia.

They clink down the AT with 2 poles like mechanical spider from Johnny Quest.

Tribes send their young men out to the woods to "look for their vision", or as we would say, live out their psychosis.

My water source is Bear Wiz Creek.

Tues 7-15-03

Woodpeckers working their way up a tree, like Canada geese working across a lawn, looking for bits of food.

There's 3 together on one tree by Gentian Pond. I don't know species or genus. Bluejay-sized. Debris falls.

Smoking rhymes with coffee drinking.

Worrying rhymes with ignoring.

Anxiety tics rhymes with running away.

At the stream, this place is mine for now.

The stream is clothed in filters, gravel and moss.

Decaying leaf, doodlebugs, and mud.

I'm walking it to Wocket Ledge, the edge.

Staying high on the plateau today.

Hike but not exhaust, to the perspective.

Moss Pond - a little snake, dragonflies, pollywogs.

Not enough coffee to satisfy physical dependency.

A great boon and benefit I don't see as such.

Already thinking of first Dunkin Donuts

Ice coffee, probably the pseudo-hazelnut.

Tomorrow morning, it will help me descend boring

Austin Brook Tr., which is a timber road still

maintenanced. This is not as isolated as those boutique Wilderness Areas, Great Gulf and Pemi.

So many of the living trees have exposed roots.

Action of water on thin soils, where trees anchor on rock or rocks.

I attract flies at every step. New ones, I hope.

This is my softcore nature walk. I've already observed my furies so they need not follow.

Grass grows up here in distinct clumps, but sometimes there are stands, and it is lawn to me, to us.

I'm not crazy about the platforms at G. Pond.

Some flies like that I take my boots + socks off.

O yes, there is inexhaustible beauty for the eyes that can see it.

Silvery slivery sunned cobwebs.

Fluttery greenery, graceful woods, blue skies.

I'm walking through the woods like Thoreau, except I'm not thorough, I never do the whole 9 yards, I'm a "3-yards and a cloud of dust" performer.

Above Wocket Ledge - A dragonfly!

Bravo for things that can cling to an open summit.

In the swirl of my absurdity, sometimes I hit upon a pleasing novel insight. You can hike barefoot!

I took my water from a streampool with a frog looking out at me.

At Dream Lake I had a close encounter of the moose kind, a big female was taking a bath in the center. My camera is not working.

I can't totally hate my trips, because I always see new things.

Tuesday, 7:37PM - One last time to Moss Pond, a mere 25 minutes from my tentsite but guaranteed isolated.

Where the dragonflies and doodlebugs play. Dragonflies patrol the shoreline.

This is a real Craig trip, dreadfull, amusing, schizophrenic depressed whimsy.

'Because I can' may be an irresponsible reason.

I'm not hearing SQL on the wind anymore.

Not a lot of writing, story ideas, tales, pr rather not what I might have hoped.

It's not quiet - there is a white noise of mixed insect hum and buzz.

What is the mysterious ticking sound?

At Moss Pond there is a big cliff behind, and the Pond shore is a converted talus pile, trees on rock, holes between rocks, cascading duff and moss.

I'm too noisy to be a good nature watcher.

Now, at 8:20PM, at last I discovered the flat sitting rock the situation required.

As Mercury has turned direct, I guess earth caught up with it, it's a punk planet too hot too small, I will mercuriously create anew. Let us all stop, sit, think, and talk this stuff out. Okay we got a dust-storming, car-bombing, infrastructure-chancy, spirit-sucking updated version of Vietnam happening once again on our nightly TV. Witness the entropy of America's strength - we couldn't stand not exercising our powers, but in all the past there have been regrets over throwing the troops against a distant coast, what a sad example the Alcibades invasion of Sicily during the Peloponesian Ware obviously sets, the Vietnam analog is palpible, but now look at at us. Sure casualty levels are at manageable levels versus the 300-dead a week I saw every Thursday in my paper when I was a kid, but the end-result of this adventure is hardly defined, We opened a can of worm, a freaking can of jumbly wigglies, squiggling borders and messing relationships. We did Iraq but Iran was always more powerful and dangerous, and the invasion of Iraq put them on High Alert, and probably convinced them that they must have nukes in order to deter invasion. Whereas after the Gylf War Saddam was basically mad and there was no serious WMD's happening there cuz the underlings knew they mustn't implicate themselves aginst the US-UK-etc in any way or suffer. So we conquered a country we knew we could beat, for reaons of location location location, the so-called fertile crescent is a croosroads, but how to rule? - Saddam made the trains run on time, and smashed down separatism, but give them the vote and maybe federalism seems lousy.

If we withdraw now as my lib friends (I don't have conservative friends because I like people who can think, even if I disagree, and conservatives think from the gut and their talk by and large is uninteresting and they should all take Logic 101 and then reflect) urge, what happens - civil war? Something bad, Iraq goes psycho, the whole mideast blows up? Like leaving a toddler in charge of the cutlery. I defer to the Colin Powell Pottery Barn doctrine. And it's definitely broken, it's been in sad shape since the Gulf War, with the sanctions and the drift under the deluded killer mandarin.

Walking is a third-class exercise but has demonstrable benefits. After 15 minutes on a cold day's walk you begin to feel like your body had marshalled itself to resist the freeze.

Running, lifting, bicyling or swimming as hard as you can is first-class exercise. In first-class exercise your mind wraps around the activity and you think about breathing, and you feel the limits.

Normal bicycling or hiking is second-class exercise, I speak for myself here, these activities have a mental component of exploration that impels the curious to slow down and look around.

Walking is the most over-rated but also the most under-rated exercise. It is the minimum level of activity but is sufficient to continue fair health.

The Golden Rule should just be "Be nice!"

On Roatan Island, off the coast of Honduras, settled by peoples from Jamaica and Grand Cayman, there is an obeah practice of reciting certain Old Testament psalms while thinking about the person you wish to bring bad luck upon; this is the use of the Bible as a magical fetish. Of course with the full realization of the coded nature of the Torah, as popularized by the smash book "The Bible Code", and the widespread belief of many of our 21st century contemporaries of the literal truth of The King James's Version, including the mistranslations, and such famous contradictions as the conflicting genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, perhaps the belief in Bible magick is not so strange. Every unscientific culture knows the world is permeated by magic, in the most decentralized every mountain or spring or even tree has an associated spirit.
In the Homeric world, a world of city-states, a world with social roles and stratifications, with trades and guilds, there is a group of gods who have some independence of action, who exemplify some social modeling which would have been familiar to the people of that day.

The New England Patriots are a very fine organization, they seem to have mastered all the best organizational theory, all corporations can learn from them, Bill Belichick seems to be a master of organizational theory. Did I say 'organizational theory'? Yes. I did. I predict a 41-10 victory for the NE Patriots in the Super Bowl, because of the superior organizational ability.

The Iraqi elections were a success because they happened. The Shiite 'secular' slate will take power as expected. The power of democracy is a scary thing. In some countries in the region democracy would mean a scary government comes to control, because religious fundamentalism is so pervasive in the 'middle east'. In Egypt a free election might result in an Iran-style regime. In Saudi Arabia a free election would shock the West because the fundamentalists would easily win in the home of Islam. Would we be prepared for that? The introduction of free voting into the middle east raises these questions.

We are all waiting on the results of the Iraqi election. Of course Iraq has had elections before, just a couple years ago they had one and Saddam Hussien won 99.9% of the vote, it makes you wonder what kind of lunatics voted against him. It looks like the Shiite and Kurd vote may be heavy and the Sunni vote will be only extremely brave people. Very sad, such a chaotic situation, we can't protect our own embassy or green zone, 150000 troops are not hardly enough, remember in the 1991 Gulf War we had 400000 troops available, we even had a French armored division helping, if Bush Sr. had decided to occupy then we would have avoided the whole ugly decade of sanctions and the UN Oil-for-Food fiasco., saving many innocent lives.

Well, everybody complains about Iraq, I suppose that's not blogable news.

Why did we need to invade when we did? Not to avoid the sandstorms, since they hit during the invasion; to avoid the heat of summer, that's the most plausible answer. The UN inspectors had found nothing by February, 2003, and their judgement has proven all too true. But the Bush adminstration had faith in their instincts, they were sure Saddam was hiding things. Now we know that the Iraqi-omnipotent Saddam had entered into a phase of madness some absolute dictators fall into and was spending most of his time writing romantic novels during his final years. He may even have thought he was developing WMDs but it has been revealed that any such program was a corrupt sham his scientists were pulling, because corruption becomes the way of life in a degenerate regime.

Many people want us to pull out immediately from Iraq, what kind of country would result from that? It is an unknown unknown.

The invasion of Iraq ranks as a major roll of the dice with history; it seems to be a Pandora's Box of history, the whole consequences cannot be known. Great just what we want for our future, major uncertainties, after 9/11 we did not need to mess up our image which was highly sympathetic with unnecessary invasions of third party countries just because they had oil, or defied the father of the current president.

Is there a need for the United States to style itself as the active agent for the advancement of democracy in the world, and if so is the current administration to right team for the job; this is a loaded question, of course, for those of us dismayed at the inadequate, hopefully not too disastrous nation-building in Iraq. But the Iraq model of occupation cannot be the template because our military does not have flexibility anymore, it is tied down to the existing commitments. If it were possible to bomb a nation into democracy, we still have plenty of uncommitted naval and air force power to shine that torch, and before you laugh remember Afghanistan; success there involved leveraging alliances with groups that served as the boots on the ground.
However, the progress of the establishment of democratic institutions in this world has been steady and very encouraging for the last 20 years, since the remarkable and template-forging People Power revolution in The Phillipine overthrew the archetypical strong man Marcos regime. Without any American military deployments, there has been what you might call successful organic native democratic movements in a very significant number of countries, upending right wing power monopolies in South Korea, Argentina, Chile, Taiwan and South Africa; the transformation of the entire Soviet bloc with another famous people power revolution in Romania and the submission of the Communists to Yeltsin in Russia, and the formation of stable responsible governments in formerly no-hope places like Uganda and El Salvador. Spain and Portugal are completely Europeanized, Serbia and Croatia tired of their demogogues, Turkey is a model of Islamic democracy, and even Mexico elected an oppostion government. Three years ago Indonesia lost its dictatorship, two years ago Georgia had its Rose Revolution, and this year Ukraine decided it was a modern Europrean nation. Every nation that modernizes finds itself transforming into a democracy. The Communist Party of China has found a way to ride the wave, but really the clock is ticking on their extended control. That nation has loosened up quite a bit from the bad old days, the party that crushed the students in Tientamin Square 16 years ago will have their day of reckoning, I predict it will be no more than 16 years from now, and Vietnam too. Still there are many places where democracy is a dirty word, particularly in the areas of religious fundamentalism, and we all know what I'm talking about. Is this what George W. Bush is talking about? Well, President Tunnel Vision is envisioning Iran and Syria, but awkwardly for him that region also contains friends, yes even family friends, who rule with very few pretenses about humoring the democratic impulse. Actually in that region there are cases where the prospect of a free election raises the spector of elected fanatics who could carry a larger majority than Hitler's vote in 1933 (what was that, 34%?).

So with the world turning towards civil government, but with many stubborn cases in the Mideast and Africa, where is it profitable for interventions by the Bush administration, which the whole world knows as a group with simplistic hamfisted impulses backed up by fire power? The problem is provoking a backlash, and what is the insurgency in Iraq other than a backlash? Of course this coterie of American leadership has had opportunities in Haiti and Liberia to prove how much it loves democracy, without prompting much of a commitment from it. One must face the obvious conclusion that they just wanted to take out Iraq, and everything else has been postured around propping up this move, from The Roadmap to the recent bombastic second Inaugaral Address. The grand principles are just a show, a case of just say anything you have to in order to justify the invasion fo Iraq, either for Bush's father complex or Cheney's oil complex, probably both. Maybe the overall effect will be positive, with emerging democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the problem is maybe it won't, because the flaw is the unrevolsed conflicts in both of these places. Iraq seems to be a kind of Pandora's Box, the continuing consequences of this troubled occupation throwing all plans into doubt. Across the border in Iran there was a very promising democratic movement, currently hobbled, and the confrontational situation between the Bush crowd and the mullahs have probably done nothing but harm to the future of the once-strong Iranian democratic movement, just playing into the hands of those who thrive on facing down America. Well, that may be an unfair statement to the Bush people, the theocrats were never going to just let Iran go the way the people wanted, they are truly religious, and their God doesn't want democracy, and the flippant materialistic TV culture that always accompanies it. Yes, the problem with democracy is that most people have no taste. The more democratic America gets the less prestige is attached to acting classy, because the people are ruled by their guts and groins. Leveling and the least common denominator is a necessary phase of equalization, but as time passes we can hope for improvements in the general consciousness of the masses, with education it happens. A fatuous consumer culture is an improvement on tyranny and human rights abuses, because at least the people get the taste for thinking for themselves. If the people just want to enjoy life as they see fit they should be allowed to, without know-it-alls telling them what to do, that kind of treatment just leads to frustration and resentment, which isn't good for anybody.

But at this point are there benefits attached to the threatening Bush "doctrine" (geez is it a doctrine? That's kind of an educated word for the simple policies of the administration). It really seems to be just words addressed to Iran and Syria, it's hard to believe they care what goes on in Zimbabwe or Myanmar, they've never shown the slightest interest in places like that, the non-headline making oil-free corners of the world. Bush is from Texas and I'm sorry but the Texan attitude is frankly offensively simple, I've worked with Texans and the bad taste lingers, with their corny awful jokes and callous selfishness. So what we have is just rhetoric bent to a purpose, maybe if they're lucky it has some positive effect, but one look at the wonders they've worked in Iraq cures any person of the belief that Bush means what he says in any practical way.

Well, I don't feel confident predicting the future, maybe the hamfisted Bush approach will have some lasting positive effect; Jimmy Carter's ineffectual administration left a lasting impression because of the principles he put forth, though in practice he backed the Shah.

If a vote were held in Saudi Arabia tomorrow I wouldn't expect any result other than an intolerant theocracy, does anybody other than a Saudi want that for the world's most crucial oil reserve? Does anybody expect the best from a free election in Egypt or Jordan? Maybe this is unfair commentary but there is reason to fear the worst. Look at Algeria.

The simpletons will run America for another four years, I hope their God has mercy on the rest of us.

I live near Boston and have been following tonight's breaking red alert story about the dirty bomb terrorists who were smuggled over the Mexican border. The smuggler ratted them out? But why would such poeple reveal their plot to this guy and let him live? Are we seeing a feint to distract from another target?

On the John Batchelor radio show tonight he had a guest who said the Brownsville area smuggling king is connected with an East Boston gang of foul repute. Illegal aliens can't just drive to where they want to end up, somebody has to handle the domestic freight. This might make Boston a target of convenience.

Today is both Inaugaration Day and a Muslim Feast.