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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Two Travel Books

Posted in Art, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , on January 25, 2015| 6 Comments »

             “The best travel is a leap in the dark. If the destination were familiar and friendly, what would be the point of going there?” – Paul Theroux

Recent art: Just as writers see through different eyes, so do artists. I call this recent pieces, with it wrong-way leaning trees, Runoff. The scene reminds me of the mountain backdrop in my former Ogden, Utah, home.

Recent art: Just as writers see through different eyes, so do artists. I call this recent piece, with it wrong-way leaning trees, Runoff. The scene reminds me of the mountain backdrop in my former Ogden, Utah, home.

            “There are still too many places to go, too many people to meet, too many good stories to hear, and they all tug at my imagination. Home and away, I see now, are the yin and yang of travel. Both are part of the same journey.” – Catherine Watson One is Not Like the Other I’m not sure how it came to be, because while I’m always reading five or more books at the same time, only one of them is usually a travel book. However, there are currently two in this genre on my reading table, “Dark Star Safari” by Paul Theroux, and “Home on the Road,” by Catherine Watson. Theroux, whom I once heard speak at a writer’s conference, has written over 35 books, his best known being “The Great Railway Bazaar first published in 1975. It’s about a 1973 four-month journey by train from London through Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and a return trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is considered a classic in the travel-writing genre.

I had this scrap of good art paper, 6X11 inches, and decided to do a quick watercolor of some flowers from a photo I posted a week or so ago. I added the cat as s surprise.

I had this scrap of good art paper, 6X11 inches, and decided to do a quick watercolor of some flowers from a photo I posted a week or so ago. I added the cat as s surprise.

“Home on the Road” is just Watson’s second book, her first being ”The Road Less Traveled,” which was first published in 2005 –  during the second of my nine years traveling full-time across country in my RV. I’m not sure where I was when I bought the book, but I did so without a second thought. Its title perfectly matched my goal of traveling only backroads and avoiding interstates and freeways as if their paths were flowing lava. Theroux’s writing constantly sends me to an atlas, a dictionary or Wikipedia. I love it, because I’m always learning something new. But the reading is slow; I’m sure the deliciously exotic “Dark Star Safari” will be stuck on my reading table long after “Home on the Road”  is back on my bookshelf or passed along to another reader. Watson’s writing, meanwhile, has a quite familiar flavor to it. Not only are the author and I of the same gender – there is no doubt in my mind but that men and women see and think differently – we also share journalism backgrounds. We’ve learned to seldom use a word readers don’t understand, and we both have the knack of letting a reader stand beside us and see what we are seeing. It’s easy reading — even when the setting is foreign. Both authors are writing award winners, and reading them together and having a prime opportunity to compare their writing styles, is a fantastic writer’s dinner. Like most things in life, it is not that one writing style, or book, is better than the other, just different. I Bean Pat: Gray plovers and ruddy turnstones http://tinyurl.com/ovtg3m9 This blog and photos remind me of the wonderful walks I take with my son Lewis when I visit the Texas Gulf Coast and we walk out on the Quintana Jetty. It is where I saw my first purple sandpiper, plus lots of ruddy turnstones.

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Reading Habits of a Book Addict

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , on January 14, 2015| 6 Comments »

“The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.” – Pablo Neruda

I'm addicted to books like butterflies are addicted to flowers ... -- Photo by Pat Bean

I’m addicted to books like butterflies are addicted to flowers … — Photo by Pat Bean

Books are like a Road Trip for this Non-Wandering Wanderer

            I’m addicted to books. But then you probably already know that if you read my blog even infrequently.  I should have an “I Brake for Bookstores” sticker on my vehicle’s bumper – because I do.

Walking up and down aisles filled with the work of beloved authors, smelling the crispness of paper and ink, and reading first pages of books with exotic titles, gives me a John Denver high without the Rocky Mountains.  My purse is always lighter after such an experience. While I allow myself the luxury of buying one book each time I visit a bookstore, the plan doesn’t always work.

... and lizards are addicted to rocks. -- Photo by Pat Bean

… and lizards are addicted to rocks. — Photo by Pat Bean

On one recent visit, the treasures I couldn’t live without included “The Creative License,” an art instruction book by Danny Greggory that I found on a sale rack; “Living on the Wind,” a book about bird migration by Scott Weidensaul; and a mystery by Sara Peretsky, whose heroine V. I. Warshawski brings Chicago alive to the reader better than most travel writers.

When I later tried to balance my limited budget, I chastised myself and promised I would go to the public Library more. It’s easier to do now that I’m not wandering the countryside in my RV, Gypsy Lee, on a daily basis. But not foolproof, as my Amazon purchases can attest. .

I use Amazon – couldn’t live without my Kindle – for any specific book I simply must have within the next 60 seconds.

A better plan, when I can wait a few days, is to put the book I want on an online Pima County Library request list. My branch library then notifies me when they have the book ready for me to pick up.

It’s a marvelous service.

But I also like to lazily browse the library bookshelves when I have the time, and pick out a few books I wouldn’t otherwise read. I usually always leave with a fantasy, a mystery, a travel book and an art book.

I also like to begin at the first shelf in a library room and peruse it down the line until I come across a book that looks interesting. On the next visit, I pick up where I left off and repeat.

It’s a fascinating trick that helps me learn something new each day.

My library habits, however, pale to those of Ray Bradbury, who spent three days a week for 10 years reading every book in a library. He said it was better than any college education he could have received.

Blog pick of the day. Check it out.

Blog pick of the day. Check it out.

Bean Pat: Writers will understand http://tinyurl.com/lusjka6 This blog gave me my first laugh of the day.

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Lunch in Smiley Creek, Idaho

Posted in Books, Journeys, tagged , , , , , on December 8, 2014| 6 Comments »

“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.” – Leonardo da Vinci

            “Don’t live the same life 75 ties and call it a life.” – Robin Sharma

The Smiley Creek airport with the scenic Sawtooth Mountains in the background.

The Smiley Creek airport with the scenic Sawtooth Mountains in the background.

Stephen Coonts Inspired Memories

            I’m addicted to travel books, and nothing pleases me more than finding one I haven’t read. So it was with quite a bit of delight that I came across suspense and thriller author Stephen Coonts’ book, “The Cannibal Queen.” I found it in the used book section of the Golden Goose Thrift Store in Catalina, Arizona, just 20 miles up the road on Highway 77 from my apartment. I felt as if I had found a golden egg.

The book’s subtitle “An Aerial Odyssey Across America” is the topic of Coonts’ book, which follows his plane travels with a teenage son in the summer of 1991. The Cannibal Queen is a rejuvenated 1942 Stearman open cockpit biplane. Coont’s tales of flying it reminded me off how much I love flying in small planes.

The Smiley Creek Lodge on a snowy winter day.

The Smiley Creek Lodge on a snowy winter day.

The first time was in a four sitter that took off on a sunny day from Logan, Utah, which took me and a music professor from Utah State University to Roosevelt, Utah, where he was to teach an extension class. I was along as a reporter doing a story on the professor.

The flight back to Logan that night was a windy, rainy one, and the professor clung to me for comfort. I was elated (by the adventure, not the professor), loving every moment of that wild, dark ride through the sky.

Another time, another story I was writing, found me buckled into a Pitts Special aerobatic biplane flown by an F-16 pilot who let me handle the controls for a couple of show-off rolls over Great Salt Lake. This was one of those bucket list check-offs that had my head spinning for days afterward. I was loving my life.

Looking toward the Sawtooths from the lodge on a sunny day.

Looking toward the Sawtooths from the lodge on a sunny day.

But the flight that Coonts’ stories most brought to mind was a more mild-mannered flight in the back seat of a four-sitter Cessna of a friend’s uncle who took me and his niece to lunch in Smiley Creek, Idaho. We took off from an airport in Twin Falls, Idaho, for the 125-mile or so flight, and landed on a grass runway across Highway 75 from the Smiley Creek Lodge. If I remember right, I had the lodge’s famous chili.

I think what made me remember this fine day was Coonts’ description of setting his plane down on a grass runway. I guess there are still several like the one in Smiley Creek that exist.  But the Sawtooth Mountains that provide the backdrop for the Smiley Creek primitive airport still make it the most scenic landing spot, I suspect.

Thanks Stephen for jogging my little gray cells back to this magical day.

Bean Pat: Janaline’s World http://tinyurl.com/nxsww4f Great armchair travel piece on Babylonstorem, a place I never knew existed before.

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One Who Believed in Me

Posted in Books, Journeys, tagged , , , on October 6, 2014| 9 Comments »

   “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Zigler           “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” Theodore Roosevelt

Yesterday's Art: I think the reason I'm always sticking butterflies in my paintings is because I see them as an image of transformation -- and connect. -- Art by Pat Bean

Yesterday’s Art: I think the reason I’m always sticking butterflies in my paintings is because I see them as an image of transformation — and connect. — Art by Pat Bean

We All Need That Someone When I look back at the things I have accomplished during the three-quarters of a century I have lived on this planet, I am truly amazed. Most of these things – like interviewing three presidents and writers such as John Irving, Terry Tempest Williams and Maya Angelou, to leading my newspaper’s coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics, relate to my career as a journalist. .           And the first step on that journey began at the age of 25 when I suddenly wanted to become a writer. Such a thought was so audacious for a high-school dropout with five still quite young children, one still in diapers, that I hid my dream from everyone for two years. I wonder now where I would be if the first person I had told my dream to had been anyone but a statuesque, silver-haired woman, whose sureness of herself scared me — and whom I never called anything but Sister Bright.

Snowbasin, where the 2002 Winter Olympics downhill events were held, during a fall drive up Ogden Canyon in Northern Utah. In one of those the-world-is-small coincidences, Sister Bright ended up living for a while with her daughter in Roy, Utah, just 15 minutes from my Ogden, Utah, home. Occasionally I would pick her up and we would take a scenic drive up the canyon. She was frail by this time, and the outings cheered her up. It was my turn to pass it on.

A peek at Snowbasin, where the 2002 Winter Olympics downhill events were held, during a fall drive up Ogden Canyon in Northern Utah. In one of those the-world-is-small coincidences, Sister Bright ended up living for a while with her daughter in Roy, Utah, just 15 minutes from my Ogden, Utah, home. Occasionally I would pick her up and we would take a scenic drive up the canyon. She was frail by this time, and the outings cheered her up. It was my turn to pass it on.

Instead of laughing at my dream, she nourished and encouraged it, and in doing so gave a tiny bit of her own self-confidence to me. It was all I needed to step out of the closet and to apply for a reporter’s job at a local Texas Gulf Coast newspaper. What I got instead was a position, at the grand hourly salary of $1.40, as a darkroom flunky – and a promise I could perhaps write if all my own tasks had been completed. That happened in March of 1967, and in August of that same year I was promoted to the position of reporter – and given a 25-cent an hour raise. It was a start. Until her death, Sister Bright and I kept in sporadic touch with each other from wherever we were. Lorine Zylks Bright, who had hidden desires of her own to become a writer, and whom I finally realized fought her own battles of insecurity, finally achieved her own dream when her book, “New London, 1937: One Woman’s Memory of Orange and Green,” was published in 1977. The book is about the explosion at the New London School in Tyler, Texas, which killed 300 school children and teachers before I was born. Lorine’s children were attending the school at the time, but thankfully escaped unharmed.

I think Sister Bright would be pleased to think that her book is now selling for $75 -- or more -- even if it's because the book is rare.

I think Sister Bright would be pleased to think that her book is now selling for $75 — or more — even if it’s because the book is rare.

In an odd coincidence, my granddaughter, Heidi, was teaching at this very same school back in 2006 when I visited Tyler during my RV travels. Together we toured the museum commemorating the explosion and watched a video of my beloved Sister Bright speaking about the event. I had major tears in my eyes Isn’t it amazing how small is the world in which we live in? Amazon has one used copy of the book available for $75. I gave my own autographed copy of the book to my oldest daughter, Deborah, when I took to the road.  Like me, she was encouraged by this remarkable woman whose enlightened spirit, I would like to believe, is looking down on us from somewhere peaceful. I wonder how many other women she inspired? And I sincerely hope that everyone has a Sister Bright in their lives.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Say’s Phoebe http://tinyurl.com/oyoklck Nature is all around us when we just take the time to look.

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Not Much to Say

Posted in Art, Books, Journeys, tagged , , on September 25, 2014| 7 Comments »

Yesterday's art

Yesterday’s art

      I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero

Until I Thought about my Favorite Books

I think I have writer’s block. I’ve spent the past half hour writing opening sentences for three potential blog topics, then deleted all the words because I didn’t seem to have anything else to add to the first sentences.

Sky and water study from the past. It's interesting to compare my art. I think my current work needs more freedom from my earlier work when I really didn't know what I was doing.

Sky and water study from the past. It’s interesting to compare my art. I think my current work needs more freedom from my earlier work when I really didn’t know what I was doing.

 

What seemed like brilliant ideas at first simply went nowhere.

.          In desperation, I came up with the idea to share the titles of my 10 favorite books. I actually continued on until I had 63 titles, but these were the first 10 that popped into my head.  .

They were:

“Gone with the Wind,” by Margaret Mitchell.

“The Farseer Trilogy” by Robin Hobb.

“The Help,” BY Katheryn Stockett.

“Pillars of the Earth,” by Ken Follett.

“The Great Santini” by Pat Conroy.

“Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” by Rebecca Wells.

“Road Fever” by Tim Cahill.

“Wild America” by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher.

The World According to Garp” by John Irving.

“I Married Adventure” by Osa Johnson.

What 10 books would you name off the top of your head?

Bean Pat: Mom, We Did It http://tinyurl.com/pxp25yx An amazing story when so much chaos is going on in this world. It gives me hope for a better future.

 

 

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Wild America and Return to Wild America

Posted in Birds, Books, Nature, Travel on August 20, 2014| 9 Comments »

“Not all is doom and gloom. We are beginning to understand the natural world and are gaining a reverence for life – all life.” – Roger Tory Peterson

            “We will need action and vigilance in the years to come, and Wild America’s defenders will have their work cut out for them. But the despoilers should not gloat, for history is against them. If you doubt that, just look back a few decades.” – Scott Weidensaul  

Some of my favorite parts of Wild America was reading James Fisher's comments about America's many wonders, including his awe at his first sight of the Grand Canyon. Actually, I'm awed every time I stand on its rim. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Some of my favorite parts of Wild America was reading James Fisher’s comments about America’s many wonders, including his awe at his first sight of the Grand Canyon. Actually, I’m awed every time I stand on its rim. — Photo by Pat Bean

Bookish Wednesday

            I just finished rereading Scott Weidensaul’s “Return to Wild America,” after rereading Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher’s “Wild America,” which was first published in 1955, and continues to be a popular classic today.

 

If I had to name one bird that I saw everywhere there was a wetlands area during my own journeys around North America, it would be the great blue heron. While I never saw more than one or two at a time, they did seem to be everywhere there was water. -- Photo by Pat Bean

re If I had to name one bird that I saw everywhere there was a wetlands area during my own journeys around North America, it would be the great blue heron. While I never saw more than one or two at a time, they did seem to be everywhere there was water. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Wild America” is about Roger and James’ 100-day, 30,000 mile, journey across the continent, mostly in search of birds. Scott’s book, published 50 years later in 2005, is a year-long retracing of the two naturalist’s journey, which was arranged by Roger for his English birding colleague, James.

I reread these books slowly, over the period of two months, just a few pages at a time, so I could fully comprehend and enjoy seeing the birds and the landscapes through these men’s eyes. I highly recommend these books for anyone who loves this beautiful country of ours as much as I do.

The half-century contrasts between the two book are part doom and gloom, but also part joy and cheer. In some ways the wildlife and land are healthier and in some ways not.

Rereading the books was awesome, and well worth my time.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Green Herons at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge  http://tinyurl.com/ms8fkdx I love watching these birds; and since I couldn’t make up my mind today a Bean Pat also to Shroom Shroom http://tinyurl.com/m5pl4aj Tolkien and mushrooms

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Sara and Nevada

Posted in Books, Journeys, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , on June 19, 2014| 1 Comment »

“A book is a magical thing that lets you travel to far-away places without ever leaving your chair.” – Katrina Mayer

Yosemite's Half Dome, which Nevada Barr wrote about in "High Country."

Yosemite’s Half Dome, which Nevada Barr wrote about in “High Country.” — Photo by Pat Bean

When a Travel Book is Not about Travel

As a person with wanderlust in her soul, I find that on any list – and there are many – of the best travel books, I’ve read almost every one. And if I haven’t, give me a year and I usually will have.

Sara Peretsky's Chicago. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Sara Peretsky’s Chicago. — Photo by Pat Bean

But this avid traveler has also discovered that a travel book isn’t always found on the travel book shelves. Two of my favorite authors, Nevada Barr and Sara Peretsky, write mysteries, which I love to read as much as I do travel books.

Barr’s character, Anna Pigeon, is a park ranger; and each of this author’s books increases my knowledge of one national park or another. Since I visit national parks as often as I can, reading Barr’s books has let me look at such parks as Yosemite, Guadalupe Mountains, Big Bend and Isle Royal through more knowledgeable eyes.

Peretsky’s character, V. I. Warshawski, meanwhile, gives me an insider’s look at Chicago.  What Sara has written about Chicago makes other travel books about the Windy City seem dull in comparison. Thankfully I get to visit Chicago more often than not because I have a son who lives there.

Isn’t it great when you can find two passions, like mine of reading mystery books and traveling,  that fit together so perfectly?

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Canoe Communications http://tinyurl.com/n9wvdx6  I loved this blog quote because it reminded me how connected we are to every living thing on this planet.

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My Grandfather’s Book Cabinet

Posted in Books, Journeys, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »

“Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‘Well Maya Anglou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.’ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.” – Maya Angelou

Words That Sing

If I remember right, Treasure Island was the first book I read from my grandfather's book cabinet.

If I remember right, Treasure Island was the first book I read from my grandfather’s book cabinet.

“Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

This quote from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” sang to me when I was a young girl who had claimed her dead grandfather’s stuffed book cabinet.  As did the final words of Lord Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon:”

These heavy walls to me had grown
 A hermitage – and all my own!
 And half I felt as they were come
 To tear me from a second home:
 With spiders I had friendship made,
 And watch’d them in their sullen trade,
 Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
 And why should I feel less than they?
 We were all inmates of one place,
 And I, the monarch of each race,
 Had power to kill – yet, strange to tell!
 In quiet we had learn’d to dwell;
 My very chains and I grew friends,
 So much a long communion tends
 To make us what we are: – even I
 Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.

Jack London's books encourage my love of animals; and it was a big thrill when I got to see his Yukon cabin.

Jack London’s books encouraged my love of animals; and it was a big thrill when I got to see his cabin in the Yukon.

Even as a 10-year-old girl, I understood the words of Lord Byron’s sonnet, and even memorized it. It was simply something this girl did growing up, and occasionally still does although the memorizing doesn’t come as easy.

I also memorized Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky:” which I didn’t understand, but whose language enchanted me; “ and Alfred Noyes’ “The Admiral’s Ghost,” whose opening lines “I tell you a tale tonight, which a seaman told to me, with eyes that gleamed in the lantern light, and a voice as low as the sea”  gave me goose bumps.

            I can still recite Jabberwocky from memory, and much of the other two pieces. Their words sang to me. Also in my grandfather’s book cabinet were the works of Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Jack London and many other classic authors, along with some not so classic.  But not having television, video games or a cell phone, I read them all at a very young age.

While Jack London’s books encouraged my friendship with animals as a young girl,  I didn’t know I was meant to be a writer until I was 25. I wonder if I ever would have known if it hadn’t been for my dead grandfather’s book cabinet.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Get Your Own Coffee http://tinyurl.com/o7spuxw As a woman fighting for job equality back when females were breaking into good-old-boy worker conclaves, I was fortunate to never be asked by a male colleague, or a boss, to get them coffee, or I might have responded much the same. But just to emphasize my equality, I never brought home-baked goodies to the office, as some of the other women did, or volunteer to be the social organizer for office events. Perhaps this is why I really liked this blog

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Writing for Writers

Posted in African Safari, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , on June 12, 2014| 7 Comments »

I learned to identify birds, like this lilac-breasted roller, one bird at a time, which is the same approach Anne Lamott suggests we use for writing. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I learned to identify birds, like this lilac-breasted roller, one bird at a time, which is the same approach Anne Lamott suggests we use for writing. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.” – Anne Lamott

Who Gives the Best Advice?

My favorite book about writing is Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” which by the way is also a good book for how to live your life.

Anne-Lamott-2013-San-Francisco

Anne Lawmott — Wikimedia photo

In it, Anne quotes E.L. Doctorow, who once said that “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

She thought it was right up there with the best advice on writing she had ever heard. So do I.

I also identify with this quote by Anne:” “Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstance, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who you are.”

As I said, “Bird by Bird,” is about living as much as writing.

As for her advice that perfectionism isn’t a good thing, I find myself fighting this battle each time I’m about half way through a writing project, and start thinking my writing is not good enough.

Then I find it’s time to take advice from a Nike slogan: “Just do it.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: A Recorder and Puberty  http://tinyurl.com/lhkptek This blog took me back to my parenting days, and I laughed because I got through them.

Bean Pat: Yellow-crowned heron http://tinyurl.com/ow8xjyu You can even find them in Queens New York.

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Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , on June 5, 2014| 1 Comment »

“I noticed every time I spent a lot of time in the bathtub, I would just get fantastic realizations about myself, and they were so valuable and liberating.” – Leonard Orr

I don't care who invented it, but of all the bathtubs out there the best is the claw-footed, whose shape invites one to soak and read at the same time. I can't tell you how many books I've read over the years that ended up waterlogged. A bathtub was the only thing I truly missed in my nine years of living on the road in Gypsy Lee. -- Wikimedia photo

I don’t care who invented it, but of all the bathtubs out there the best is the claw-footed, whose shape invites one to soak and read at the same time. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read over the years that ended up waterlogged. A bathtub was the only thing I truly missed in my nine years of living on the road in Gypsy Lee. — Wikimedia photo

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

One of the blogs I follow is called Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/  I thought it an odd name for a blog, but that’s as far as the little gray cells went – until I read “The Crocodile’s Last Embrace,” a Jade de Cameron mystery by Suzanne Arruda.

Jade is constantly using odd phrases as a substitute for cursing, and in this particular book, one of those phrases is Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. My little gray cells lit up like a neon Las Vegas Strip sign on coming across a second reference to the phrase. It was a sure sign that I was going to learn something new this day.

But I don't think I would have missed this early version of the bathtub. -- Wikimedia photo

But I don’t think I would have missed this early version of the bathtub. — Wikimedia photo

It seems that in 1917 (Arruda’s book takes place in the 1930s in Africa), H. L. Mencken wrote an article about the introduction of the bathtub to America, saying it was opposed until President Millard Fillmore had a bathtub installed in the White House in 1850,  which made it more acceptable.

The article was entirely false. Not only had an earlier president had a bathtub installed in the White House, but the tub’s invention was much earlier than 1842, which is when Mencken said it was invented.

Mencken fessed up in 1949, saying: “the success of this idle hoax, done in time of war, when more serious writing was impossible, vastly astonished me. It was taken gravely by a great many other newspapers, and presently made its way into medical literature and into standard reference books. It had, of course, no truth in it whatsoever, and I more than once confessed publicly that it was only a jocosity … Scarcely a month goes by that I do not find the substance of it reprinted, not as foolishness but as fact, and not only in newspapers but in official documents and other works of the highest pretensions.”

The story still won’t die. Even today there are sources that quote Mencken’s story as fact. Now I ask you, in this enlightened age of the Internet, how many other stories do you read that are fabrications of the truth?

Too Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub many for sure.

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: A Mixed Bag http://tinyurl.com/prdkb6c If you want it, then make it happen. Lots of good advice on how to do it.

Bean Pat: Antelope horns and gray hairstreak butterfly  http://tinyurl.com/kqdhgxm If you like nature, you can’t help but love this blog. I had never seen a gray hairstreak butterfly before. It’s beautiful.

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