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Posts Tagged ‘hoaxes’

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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I Hunger for a Kinder World

Posted in Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2013| 5 Comments »

            “Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.” —  Joseph Addison

This photo calms my soul. I needed it today. -- Photo by Pat Bean

This photo calms my soul. I needed it today. — Photo by Pat Bean

Too Bad We Do Not Learn From History

            I’m reading May Sarton’s “House by the Sea,” a journal of a year she spent in Maine with a view of the ocean in the 1970s. In it she talks about the landscape, gardening, writing and simply her thoughts, which include those on how cruel the world has become.

I needed a bit of beauty, too. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I needed a bit of beauty, too. — Photo by Pat Bean

Being of an age, like me, these thoughts included the Vietnam era, and the Mai Lai massacre. If she were writing today, she would, I am sure, have mentioned how history repeated itself with the torture of Iraqi prisoners and all the other horrible events as the world continues too much in the butt-ugly ways of war.            What she might have missed, however, is the butt-ugliness of jokes being played on people for the benefit of the TV viewing audience these days. I watched my grandsons laugh at one of these cruel pranks the other day, one in which I found absolutely nothing amusing. The goal of the hoax was nothing but humiliation of the victim.

How different is this from the bullying that is allowed to go on in schools to the point that victims have committed suicide?

And then two days ago, I picked up the young adult book, “The Hunger Games.” It was a gripping piece of writing that I admit I couldn’t put down. But when I finished it, I had a very bad taste in my soul. For one thing, a book that is all about children killing other children should never be labeled a kids’ book; and for another, the sheepish way in which the fictional population so callously allowed this to happen, even going so far as to bet on the outcome.

I kept waiting for someone to do something. Hopefully the sequels answer this wish, although I’m not sure I will read them to find out. My soul can only stand so much brutality.

The book put me in the mind of the Holocaust, when all that was needed for evil to triumph was for the good to turn their backs and do nothing.

The Pollyanna in me believes, no KNOWS, that the good people in this world outnumber the bad. So when are we going to stand up and holler enough is enough? A good place to start is simply for adults to tell children that there is nothing funny in cruel jokes. You can bet on my grandchildren hearing this from me.

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Words of Wisdom http://tinyurl.com/a4s78pp This just seemed like an appropriate blog to accompany today’s soap-box rant.

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