I’m proud to live in Wichita. You could argue that we aren’t as socially progressive as other cities, but you could never convince me that we’re lacking in heart. Among friends and strangers, I regularly encounter kindness and generosity, but if you assume that bigotry and prejudice are problems of the past, take another look. Love and hate are frequent bedfellows.

This December I was shopping with a friend and her son—she was shopping for Christmas gifts for children whose parents were unable to afford them. We drove past a church, and their brightly lit nativity scene caught our attention. My friend’s son was the first to realize the manger was lacking a baby. Curious, he asked his mother who had taken the baby Jesus, and she promptly replied, “Muslims.” My jaw came unhinged. How could such an irrationally hostile statement come from the mouth of one of the sweetest women I know?

I wish I could say that conversation was the most offensive thing I’ve heard from local friends, family, and strangers, but it’s not. Racism, religious bigotry, political elitism, and prejudice towards the LGBT community or those of lower economic status can all be found within our city. Now that I have a child, I’ve begun to worry how to explain the moral blind spots of others. What if it’s someone your child loves or admires? Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but what happens when we don’t realize we’re making them?

Ever since Dr. Seuss appeared on the scene, parents have found his work an entertaining medium for moral instruction. Though Seuss never set out to write a story focused on a specific moral, the issues near and dear to his heart had a way of cropping up regardless.

The Lorax, my childhood favorite, plants the idea of environmental preservation. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is an ever-popular classic, which reminds us that things are not the source of happiness. Another personal favorite is the marvelous collection The Sneetches and Other Stories. The title story The Sneetches illustrates the stupidity and silliness of discrimination. Two of the other stories The Zax and What Was I Scared Of? emphasize the importance of compromise, lest the rigidity of our beliefs leave us standing still, while the world moves on around us, and the insight that knowledge conquers fear.

Dr. Seuss had a wonderful gift—he was able to convey moral truths with tricky tongue-twisters and playful rhymes. But even he had a moral blind spot.

Before his contributions to children’s literature became well known, Theodore Seuss Geisel penned political cartoons. During WWII, he used the same appealing sketches we adore in his books to demonstrate that racism towards American blacks and Jews was detrimental to the war effort overseas. And yet, Dr. Seuss approved of the internment of Japanese Americans and helped to create an incredibly harmful stereotype with his cartoons, that all people of Japanese descent were traitors.

Maybe Horton Hears a Who was his apology. It was dedicated to a friend in Japan and encourages the reader to speak out in defense of those unable to defend themselves.

Take some time to search your soul. If we don’t shine some light on our own moral blind spots, how can we identify them in others? If we can’t identify them in others, how can we help the next generation make the world a better place? We’ve got to teach our children that love and hate do not mix. Any amount of hate, no matter how small, has the potential to poison a lifetime of good.

The Lorax says it best: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

A slim physique, I like to keep, but ethnic food gets me out of the diet mood. A single guy I do not cook, so to local restaurants I daily book. Now to you I do divulge, the places where my appetite is indulged.

Red curry carried from Thai House; Mike It Up’s boba tea, your thirst it will douse.  If Salvadorian pupusas are what you crave, Usuluteco is the all rave. When falafel’s on your mind, at Byblos a fix you’ll find. One gyro at LeMonde Café, with two sides of tabouli and you’re on your way! For an after-dinner dessert, Larkspur’s tiramisu will get your mouth alert.

Mongolian grills are all around; at Kwan Court, sushi happy hour does daily abound. Saigon serves noodles in a snap. At the Artichoke, try Paddy’s pickled pepper wrap. If a bierock you’ve never had, a trip to The Riverside Perk will make you glad. Sabor’s fish tacos are a prize—Chef Paul-Febres is easy on the eyes.

La Galette has yummy tomato bisque; for an Indian newby, Maharaja’s buffet is worth the risk. For a sandwich twist, a torta from Laura’s you’ll want in your fist. When looking for good Italian, De Fazio’s spaghetti and meatballs is your culinary stallion. Beijing Bistro is the place to go for Chinese, with lemon chicken that will always please. If a burger’s what you want, to TJ’s you need to jaunt.

Where to go for Sunday Brunch? Yia Yia’s, it has lots for you to munch. What about those late night munchies? The Donut Whole’s cakes of Fruity Pebble crunchies! Where’s a bar that has good eats? The Anchor, it surely competes. The morning-after drinks are over? To the Beacon, you’ll soon get sober.

The ICT has lots of food, to suit just about every mood. Hole in the wall, carry out if you call. Some will have a daily special, other’s menus will make your mind wrestle. There’s no need to diet. Eating out is a riot! Sans corporate chain, it’s all about local gain.

Still got that stack of leftover Christmas Barnes & Nobles gift cards as thick as a pinochle deck crammed in your wallet—three or four dollars left on each one? Go out and find the two books that changed your life and buy them again. I just did this.

Not a moment’s indecision which to buy for me: The Catcher in the Rye and The Cat in the Hat. On reexamining them together, I find that the similarity in the titles is no accident. Nor are the parallels in the story and theme and, of course, the profanity. Am I suggesting that J. D. Salinger and Dr. Seuss stole from each other? That would be ridiculous, even laughable. I am just suggesting the obvious—they were the same person.

Proof? What is it with you “Proofers” crawling out of the woodwork lately? All right, consider the telltale passage where “I,” the troubled young narrator of The Cat in the Hat, suddenly breaks out of the rhyming couplet form:

“I’m happy that the rake is broke! In fact, I think I’d like a smoke!—But, you know what really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

For me, like any confused, post-adolescent five-year-old—struggling with angst, a wicked paste-eating habit, and a nascent beard—that author was, of course, J. D. Salinger, who, tired of being teased over his name, had by 1957 changed it to Dr. Seuss and was writing stuff I could really connect with. So clearly when J. D. “disappeared,” he was really operating as Dr. Seuss.

Proof? Again? Okay, I’ll offer the same incontrovertible proof I heard Pat Robertson use to back up his claim that the Haitian earthquake victims were paying the price for their pact with Satan: “True story.”

No controverting? Then I’m moving on. But I’m leaving the lesser of the two works out of the discussion now and focusing on The Cat in the Hat. Mostly because I was able to finish The Cat without leaving the bookstore, whereas The Rye was going to set me back $5.99 and was well over my limit of 150 pages (paperback). I mean, I’m as big a bookworm as the next guy, but those Battlestar Galactica DVDs from Netflix aren’t going to watch themselves.

In Cat, the negligent Mother leaves her children unattended while she goes on some unspecified 1950s spree—most likely tracking down communist sympathizers. The abandoned-children plot device of Cat prefigures that dark and conflicted, later work, Good Dog, Carl, in which the even younger and more helpless child is left, not alone, but under the nannyship of a Rottweiler. This was okay, because in Simpler Times you didn’t have to be a perfect parent, losing your marbles over every little accidental poisoning. It was accepted when I was growing up that things could be “good enough.” Not everything had to be “awesome.” In fact, damn little was awesome. You have to remember that this was a time when a skateboard was actually a skate, pulled apart and nailed to a board.

Yes, I hate to admit it, but The Cat in the Hat was hot off the press when I first read it. Which means I was also alive for the introduction of Sea Monkeys and the Frug. So I was ready for the bizarre time stretching and the unreality of Thing One and Thing Two, a talking fish, and pink snow—all things I would later witness firsthand in the 60s. In fact Cat was probably, for most children of the 50s, their first exposure to formal Surrealism. (Excepting those who read Salvador Dali’s less popular effort One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Melting Fish with Face of Pope Leo XII.)

It’s not true, however, that The Cat in the Hat and other Seussian classics could not be written today. In fact I just rewrote them, under the impenetrable pseudonym Herr Dr. Zeussman to avoid litigation. In the Zeussmanian “dirty realism” update The Cat in the Hat Is Fat, nothing happens. Mother is at Pilates. Sally is in a saffron robe, selling carnations at the airport. I is in military school. The Cat—neutered, microchipped, lethargic, and preoccupied with his memoirs—has grown too huge to leave his apartment. And anyway, his crew has broken up since Thing One rolled on Thing Two, who’s doing a stretch upstate for breaking and entering. In another Zeussman reimagining Horton the Elephant, upon announcing that he has heard a Who, is dropped at a hundred yards by a tranquilizer dart full of Thorazine.

But as it turns out, Seuss’s Cat is, in the end, a predictor of our own age. Somehow in the time it takes Mother to come up the walk, the Cat puts the whole house back together with his splendid Cat-A-Machine—the same model, a couple of decades later, I would use to clean my apartment seconds before letting women in the door. And we’re left with the children’s moral dilemma whether to confess. So, what’s the message? “Mothers, don’t leave your children home alone.”?  “Children, don’t let strangers in the house.”? Hardly. More like, “No harm. No foul,” or “Children, Mother is already on Prozac, so really, how’s the truth going to help anybody?”

Besides our current questionable ethics, we must also thank Dr. Seuss for rap music (or blame, depending on your viewpoint). This one’s self-evident. If you don’t hear a pounding subwoofer under “I will not eat them in a house. I will not eat them with a mouse,” you’re just not listening with your spiritual earbuds plugged into your inner Who. Awesome.