One day a couple of weeks ago, City Hall, the Rocket Lady and I were
grabbing a bite to eat at City Hall's house after a particularly long day
of work in Whyville. We had just published a new issue over at the Times,
and City Hall had just finished helping the Rocket Lady launch the new
program at WASA.
As we were digging into our food, the TV was showing the evening news. We
watched in silence, except for some munching noises, a report on Dennis
Tito. In case you haven't heard of him, Dennis Tito is the man who wanted to go to space so much that he paid 20 million dollars to visit the International Space Station.
All of a sudden, City Hall jumped out of her chair, pointed excitedly at
the TV with her fork and yelled, "MWO SHOUW MGEI AH OAH WHAAAWIOL!!!!"
The Rocket Lady and I stared at her in surprise. I don't know what the
Rocket Lady was thinking, but I immediately thought that all the worrying
about funding for Whyville had finally gotten the best of City Hall.
Luckily, I was soon proved wrong. Confronted with our bewildered faces,
City Hall swallowed hard and clarified, "WE SHOULD GET DENNIS TITO
TO COME AND VISIT WHYVILLE!" As a person not unskilled in the power of
news and media, I immediately grasped the excellence of this idea.
Dennis Tito, a scientist, a businessman, and most of all a daring
adventurer would LOVE our town! We feel sure that Dennis Tito would be able to relate to Whyville and its citizens, and our spirit of exploration and discovery. Maybe he would even want to visit the Whyville Space Station!
By the end of dinner that night, we decided to try and invite Mr. Tito
to come to Whyville and meet our citizens. Perhaps we could even have a town hall meeting where Whyvillians can ask Mr. Tito questions! City Hall thinks that invitations written by Whyvillians will be a lot nicer and more effective than just the Whyville staff bugging him. So, I offered to put up an announcement in the
Times asking you whether you??d like to have Mr. Tito come and
visit us, and if so, to write a personal invitation to him. Tell Mr.
Tito why you think he should come and visit Whyville!
If you send me your invitations, my staff here will put them together in a
letter to send to Mr. Tito. You can also find out more about this real
life space traveler from the following
CNN.com article.
Mr. Tito has even set up a special email address, in case you want to write him
directly yourself: titoinquiries\@wilshire.com
We've had Operation Oprah. We are now launching Operation Tito. Join us!
Times Editor
