December 27, 2010
This entry explains a favorite topic of Seymour’s - how to write your address as a citizen of the Universe!
I was recently in San Angelo, Texas, where it was cold and raining and everyone was very happy about the weather. When you live in a drought-prone area like West Texas, I can understand why rain is a welcome event!
We (my wife Liz Nealon went with me) discovered that although San Angelo is a rather small city, there is a lot to see there. We visited the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, which is a gorgeous building with a permanent ceramics and silver collection that we enjoyed very much. We had lunch in historic San Angelo, at a restaurant called Miss Hattie’s Saloon, which had…let’s call it a "colorful" history in bygone days! And, we visited Fort Concho, where Pecos Bill was once the commander. The fort is a National Historic Landmark because it was the the home of the Buffalo Soldiers who were part of the 10th Cavalry, one of the two all-Black cavalry regiments who protected the Great Plains in the mid-1800s.
I was in San Angelo to speak at the 8th Annual Literacy Conference, held at Angelo State University. While I was there, I also spoke to a number of large groups of kids from the public schools in San Angelo. Here is a picture of me with a group of students from Holiman Elementary.
The kids were all bright, eager, and very smart. I told each group a story that is in one of my early books, THE LONG VIEW INTO SPACE, about the way I started writing my return address when I was their age. Here’s how I did it.
Name
Street Address
City
State
Zip Code
Planet Earth
Solar System
The Milky Way Galaxy
The Universe
Years ago, when this book first came out, I was on my way to visit a school in Ohio. I got a letter from a fifth grade boy who had been looking at this address, and told me that I forgot to put down the zip code for the universe. I asked the kids in San Angelo if they could guess what he thought the zip code for the universe should be. A student came up with the answer in every group I spoke to. They suggested that the zip code for the Universe should be ∞ - the symbol for infinity.
Try writing your complete address. You are truly a citizen of the universe (and make sure to include its zip code).
Posted by: Liz Nealon
