The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet Read Free Page A

why some words, names, ideas, or objects penetrate culture, while others fade to insignificance. In straw polls that I persistently take of elementary school children, their favorite planet is Pluto, with Earth and Saturn a distant second. At some level of cognition, the simple sound of a word on the ear or an exotic meaning can make or break a word’s popularity and prevalence. Among all planet names, for example, Pluto sounds the most like a punch line to a hilarious joke: “…he thought he was on Pluto!” And while the names of all other planets are traceable to mythical gods whose talents or powers one might envy, Pluto is, of course, named for the god of a dark and dank residence for the dead. That’s just funny.

    Figure 1.8. The cultural juxtaposition of Pluto the dog and Pluto the planet makes irresistible content for cartoonists. Top: Cartoonist Bill Day, of the Commercial Appeal , parodies America’s ongoing scientific illiteracy. Bottom: Pluto, the most misbehaved of all planets, gets sent to the interstellar doghouse in a comic by Dick Locher, of the Chicago Tribune .
    In most times and at most places throughout history, the greatest measure of cultural penetration comes not from what sociologists discuss but what artists draw. It may be a while, if ever, before we see a Pluto exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but that doesn’t stop the creative urges of comic strip illustrators from comingling the affairs of Pluto with the affairs of state.
    Maybe we shouldn’t stand in denial of the provinciality of it all. Disney is an American company. Mickey Mouse is cartoon royalty. Pluto is Mickey’s dog. Pluto the planet was discovered by a farm boy from middle America, on a search conducted from the mountains of Arizona, initiated and funded by a descendant of blue-blooded Bostonians.
    We have further made a cottage industry of memorizing the sequence of planets from the Sun.
    My Very Easy Method Just Simplifies Us Naming Planets.
    My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles.
    My Very Educated Mother Just Stirred Us Nine Pies.
    My Very Excellent Man Just Showed Us Nine Planets.
    My Very Easy Memory Jingle Seems Useful Naming Planets.
    My Very Excellent Monkey Just Sat Under Noah’s Porch.
    My Very Early Mother Just Saw Nine Unusual Pies.
    Mary’s Velvet Eyes Makes John Sit Up Nice and Pretty.
    Mary’s Violet Eyes Makes John Stay Up Nights Pondering.
    Many Very Eager Men are Just Sissies Under Normal Pressure.
    Man Very Early Made Jars Stand Up Nearly Perpendicular.
    My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines.
    For most of these mnemonics, the word substituted for Pluto represents the principal subject of the sentence, leaving the sentence vulnerable to collapse if the P-word ever disappeared.
    From the late 1980s onward, the most popular planet mnemonic has been “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas,” associating Pluto with pizza, a favorite food in America, 7 especially among schoolchildren. No other mnemonic has come close to its popularity, in spite of the many clever ones that circulate.
    On reflection, I may have strongly influenced the choice of the word pizza for the planet mnemonic. In my early years of graduate school (begun at the University of Texas at Austin, but finished at Columbia University, in New York City), I had only ever heard Pluto associated with prunes in the mnemonic, which is surely what your educated mother, who is interested in your gastrointestinal well-being, would serve you, not to mention the distant connection prunes have with Pluto Water as a laxative. I dislike prunes but love pizza. Given that Americans eat 100 acres of pizza a day, I am not alone in that sentiment, and I did not worry about how absurd a serving of nine pizzas would be, compared with being served nine prunes. And so, while I was a teaching assistant in Texas, I remember changing “Prunes” to “Pizza” beginning in 1980 for all the large introductory