Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (58 page)

8. Lyndon, Vermont, Time Capsule
. The capsule is an iron box containing proceedings of the town's centennial celebration in 1891, scheduled to be opened a century later. But when the time came, the townsfolk couldn't find it. They looked in the town vault, the bank, and the library for clues, to no avail. So they created a new one, which they vowed not to lose.

WANT TO CREATE YOUR OWN TIME CAPSULE?

It's not as easy as you might think. The ITCS has created a list of guidelines to follow:

1. Select a retrieval date
. A 50-year or less time capsule may be witnessed by your own generation. The longer the duration, the more difficult the task.

2. Choose an “archivist” or director
. Committees are good to share the workload, but one person should direct the project.

3. Select a container
. A safe is a good choice. As long as the interior is cool, dry, and dark, artifacts can be preserved. For more ambitious (century or more) projects, there are professional time capsule companies.

4. Find a secure indoor location
. It is recommended that time capsules not be “buried”—thousands have been lost in this way. Mark the location with a plaque describing the “mission” of the time capsule.

5. Secure items for time storage
. Many things your committee selects will have meaning into the future. Try to have a mix of items from the sublime to the trivial. The archivist should keep an inventory of all items sealed in the time capsule.

6. Have a solemn “sealing ceremony.”
Christen the time capsule with a name. Invite the media and keep a good photographic record of your efforts, including the inside of your completed project.

7. Don't forget your time capsule!
You would be surprised how often this happens, usually within a short time. Try to “renew” the tradition of memory with anniversaries and reunions.

8. Inform the ITCS of your completed time capsule project
. The ITCS will add your time capsule to its database in an attempt
to register all known time capsules. (They can be reached on the Web at
www.oglethorpe.edu/itcs/
.)

Deciding what to include is the most difficult part. There are the obvious choices: a cell phone, a
Bathroom Reader
. But what about things like barbed wire or a Twinkie (don't worry—it'll last). Need suggestions? Here are some of the items the
New York Times
put in their “Millennium” time capsule in 1999:

• a Purple Heart medal from the Vietnam War

• a Beanie Baby

• UPC bar codes

• a firearms registration form

• a pager

• a cellular phone

• a battery

• a friendship bracelet

• an advertisement for an SUV

• food stamps

• a copy of the
The New York Times Magazine

• an LP record containing sounds of the late 20th century

• a New York Yankees baseball

• greeting cards

• Post-It Notes

• a video rental card

• a phone card

• a David Letterman top 10 list

• a Y2K Bug stuffed toy

• wild apple seeds from Kazakhstan

• a Macintosh mouse

• St. John's Wort capsules

• the Holy Bible in multiple translations

• a
Weight Watchers Magazine

• a Butt Blaster instruction manual

• the
National Enquirer

• Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlets

• a Dr. Seuss book

• a
Dictionary of American Slang

•
The Guinness Book of World Records

• a reservation list for the Four Seasons restaurant

• an IRS 1040 tax form

• a hair sample from Dolly the cloned sheep

• a Garry Trudeau cartoon sketch

Here are yet more origins of some common phrases
.

Meaning:
Certain to succeed

Origin:
“This term refers to the container in which hunters placed small game, called a ‘bag' since the 15th century. It began to be used figuratively for a virtual certainty in the 20th century, at first in America. The
Emporia Gazette
used the phrase in describing Gene Tunney's victory over heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey in 1926: ‘After Tunney landed with that terrific right, the fight was in the bag.'” (From
Southpaws & Sunday Punches
, by Christine Ammer)

Meaning:
In the nude; to polish something

Origin:
“These expressions are rooted in the buffalo hide craze of the 19th century.
In the buff
is from the soft yellow skins made from buffalo hides, which looked a little like bare human skin.
To buff
comes from the strips of buffalo hide that were used to polish metals.” (From
Word and Phrase Origins
, by Robert Hendrickson)

Meaning:
To obtain something one way or another

Origin:
“In 1100 William Rufus, king of England, was slain by an arrow while out hunting in the New Forest. A charcoal burner named Purkiss found the king's body and took it by cart to Winchester. As a reward Purkiss was allowed to gather wood from the New Forest—all that could be reached by a shepherd's
crook
and cut down with a bill
hook
.” (From
Everyday Phrases
, by Neil Ewart)

Meaning:
Unreliable or untrustworthy (often a business)

Origin:
“Even as recently as a century and a half ago this meant a witch, one who actually mounted her broom at midnight and went off on her round of appointments, whatever they may have been, or to meet secretly the Old Boy himself.” (From
Heavens to Betsy!
, by Charles Earle Funk)

Benjamin Franklin: Founding Father, renaissance man, and…world-class hypocrite? His advice in the pages of Poor Richard's Almanack is timeless—but did Dr. Franklin always practice what he preached?

W
hat Poor Richard Said:
“God helps those who help themselves.”

What Franklin Did:
It probably wasn't what he meant, but Franklin wasn't above helping himself to the work of others. One of the things Franklin is best known for is
Poor Richard's Almanack
, which he wrote and published for 25 years. What's less well-known is the extent to which Franklin “borrowed” from the work of others: He appropriated his journal's title from his own brother James, publisher of
Poor Robin's Almanack
, and took the pen name Richard Saunders (“Poor Richard”) from a dead astrologer and doctor of the same name.

• Only a handful of Franklin's most famous quotes are truly his (“Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other” is one example); the rest he lifted without permission, compensation, or apology from
Lexicon Tetraglotton
,
Outlandish Proverbs
, and other popular journals of the day. “Why should I give my Readers bad lines of my own, when good ones of other People's are so plenty?” he liked to joke. And with no copyright laws in place to stop him, there was nothing the other writers could do.

• To his credit, whenever possible, Franklin tried to improve upon the writing he stole from others, either by making it more to the point (“God restoreth health and the physician hath the thanks” became “God heals and the doctor takes the fee”), or by adding coarse references to sex, flatulence, or bodily functions. (“He that lives upon hope, dies farting,” “The greatest monarch on the proudest throne is obliged to sit upon his own arse,” and “Force sh*ts upon reason's back.”)

What Poor Richard Said:
“Dally not with other folks' women or money.”

What Franklin Did:
Franklin had a lifelong habit of engaging in “foolish intrigues with low women,” as he put it, a tendency that began in his teenage years and continued through his married life. He amazed friends and associates with the number and variety of his conquests; it wasn't unusual for visitors to happen upon Franklin in a compromising state with a parlor maid, cleaning girl, or someone else who had consented to the great man's advances. According to legend, when he was young and short of funds, he got his rent lowered by taking his elderly landlady as a lover.

• Why settle for one woman at a time? When Franklin lived in London, he became close friends with the postmaster general of England, Sir Francis Dashwood, with whom he co-authored a revised edition of the
Book of Common Prayer
. But Sir Dashwood also had a naughty side—he was the founder of the Order of St. Francis, a society of orgiasts better known as the Hellfire Club. The club met regularly at Dashwood's country house in Bucking-hamshire, and its proceedings usually began with blasphemy, usually a black mass or some other obscene religious ceremony, before turning to fornication, which usually involved women dressed as nuns.

• To be fair, there's no proof that Franklin ever went to a single Hellfire Club orgy. But “it is certainly known that he was a frequent, not to say eager, visitor to Dashwood's house,” Bill Bryson writes in
Made in America
, “and it would take a generous spirit indeed to suppose that he ventured there repeatedly just to discuss postal regulations and the semantic nuances of the
Book of Common Prayer
.”

What Poor Richard Said:
“One good Husband is worth two good Wives; for the scarcer things are, the more they're valued.”

What Franklin Did:
Technically speaking, even Franklin's marriage was a form of adultery. He never officially married his “wife,” Deborah Read Franklin, who was still legally married to her first husband, a potter named John Rogers. Rogers had left her years earlier and run off to the West Indies, where it was rumored that he had died in a fight. But nobody knew for sure, and that presented a serious problem for Ben and Deborah when they decided
to marry: what if Rogers came back? In those days, even unintentional bigamy was punishable by 39 lashes for both husband and wife, along with life imprisonment doing hard labor. Even if Rogers really was dead, if Franklin married Deborah he risked becoming legally obligated to repay Rogers's substantial debts.

• For these reasons, Ben and Deborah never formally married; instead, on September 1, 1730, they simply began presenting themselves to the community as man and wife. Such a “common law” marriage, as it was called, was (barely) formal enough to satisfy community standards and Deborah's family, yet it spared Franklin the risk of being branded a bigamist or having to assume Rogers's debts.

What Poor Richard Said:
“He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.”

What Franklin Did:
Not long after he and Deborah were “married,” Franklin brought home an infant son, William, that he'd fathered by another woman. Out of that one indescretion would flow years of pain for the Franklin family: Deborah's relationship with her stepson was predictably strained; by the time he reached his twenties they barely spoke and she had taken to calling him “the greatest villain upon earth.” Years later William sided with the English during the revolutionary war, opening a breach between father and son that would never heal. When Ben Franklin died in 1790, he disinherited his son, “leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of.”

What Poor Richard Said:
“A good Wife and Health is a Man's best Wealth.”

What Franklin Did:
So what thanks did Deborah get for raising Franklin's illegitimate son as her own? Not much—in addition to cheating on her throughout their long “marriage,” Franklin virtually abandoned her in her old age, leaving her alone for five years while he went off to live in London from 1757 to 1762, and again in 1764, this time for more than a decade. He never returned home to visit, not even when Deborah suffered a stroke in the winter of 1768–69. When she died in 1774, she had not seen him in more than 10 years.