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>> When Theodore Geisel came to Dartmouth in 1921,
his entire Springfield past had undergone devastation.
Prohibition had taken away his family business.
His dad was a brewer.
And World War I had resulted in antagonism
to the entire German immigrant community in Springfield.
Dartmouth was for Ted Geisel a green world, a rediscovery
of something like the world he needed and dreamt
of when he would go to zoo and park
as a little boy in Springfield.
While at Dartmouth, he became part
of the Dartmouth Outing Club,
which inaugurated the Winter Carnival in 1910.
If you think about the images in "The Lorax," the Barbaloots
who wear Barbaloot suits, the Swami-Swans, the Hummingfish,
these are all creatures who leave the wilderness
of Hanover during winter,
and there's always a fear they might not return.
If you think of the character he's invented called the Lorax,
who's a cross between a Paul Bunyan, a Yosemite Sam,
one of the munchkins from "The Wizard of Oz," that figure who
"speaks for the trees who have no tongues" is speaking the
language of the Dartmouth motto, Vox Clamantis in Deserto.
And he is, by way of that motto,
calling for the deepest instruction
of the next generation.
If Dartmouth, as a college, is a place that wants to plant seeds
in every student that can make the world they come with better
as a result of learning the Vox Clamantis in Deserto.
"The Lorax" is a Dartmouth tale.