[GCFL-discuss] [GCFL.net] Neat Quotes from TFTD

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

There is at least some truth to at least some of those 16th century
references, no matter what Snopes has to say about them.

Most well established, it was the custom among all but the wealthiest in
America, and especially on the frontier, to take a bath in May or early
June. According to museum tour guides at restored cabin sites in West
Virginia, baths were taken twice a year, but weddings were generally
performed after the May bath, not the December one. Faces may have been
scrubbed or hands washed from time to time more often, dips in rivers no
doubt provided some relief more often, but a full bath was simply too
much trouble to haul the water for, heat it up, etc. 

Those who owned large numbers of slaves of course (a very tiny percent of
the population) could take baths more often and not worry about it. Then
they could feel superior because they smelled so much better than their
slaves, and for that matter, than the "poor white trash" who eked out a
living on the worst soil surrounding the plantations, which held all the
most fertile land. (Shades of my great-great-grandfather from east
Tennessee who fought for the union because people in that part of the
state despised the plantation owners). But you can find references to the
nobility having baths prepared for them by slaves back to the Trojan War.

It was not universally true among all cultures that baths were avoided,
but it was especially true of northern Europeans. Let's be real, without
central heating, taking a bath was a very unattractive prospect for the
colder parts of the year. And again, it was too much trouble to haul and
heat the water.

Also, the word honeymoon is universal among many families of languages
precisely because it WAS the custom in a variety of cultures to provide
the newlyweds with honey mead or honey wine for a month. In Spanish, the
translation is "lunes de miele" -- which means exactly what it means in
English.

And, while I had some doubts that anyone went to the trouble to tie a
string to a dead person's hand before burial, and connect it to a bell,
it IS true that on the occasions when someone was exhumed, scratches were
sometimes found inside the coffin, because coma was often mistaken for
death.

I must be more skeptical in the future about taking snopes word for it
that a report it reviews is indeed false. The more detail they can
provide as to the truth, and the more verifiable their own report is, the
more credible I will take it to be. (Of course we may have been misled by
a false report that snopes says these colloquials are false.)

Then, I must take issue with the statement "The best defense against
logic is ignorance." Logic is often the best defense of ignorance against
manifest truth. Logic has been defined as "an internally consistent
construct which allows you to go wrong with confidence." Logic begins
with a premise. If the premise is false, logic nevertheless allows one to
proceed through an elegant and entirely consistent proof to a false
conclusion.

For example, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts began its decision that
the state must offer marriage licenses to same-sex couples with the
premise that it had before it two classes of people, one denominated
homosexuals, the other heterosexuals, each desiring the benefits of a
status called marriage. From this premise, its decision that "equal
protection of the laws" required a decision for the plaintiffs was
entirely logical, and almost unavoidable. However, if they had started by
defining their terms, e.g., what marriage IS is the union of one man and
one woman, then recognized that the only rational distinction among the
people concerned is that each one is either a man, or a woman, they would
with equal logic have arrived at the opposite conclusion and upheld the
state law as it then existed.

But the Abraham Lincoln quote was excellent, and I too plan to live
forever or die trying. Actually, I am a little more realistic. I plan to
die in my sleep four days before my 101st birthday, and if I die sooner,
I won't have to spend much time worrying about it.

Siarlys