In This Issue....
Happy Father's Day!!! I hope you dads/grandfather's did something really cool today. My mom and I took Phillip to Tony Roma's for some ribs and then brought him home for a fun afternoon of weed-eating and lawn mowing. He's outside now having the time of his life!
Articles and Links....
The History Of The Toilet
Holy Cow (the Wilkinson Chronicles)
Phillip The Fireman
Father's Day Lunch
Weekly Paul Picture
Grossest Food Poll
Aquarium Jello!
Back issues
The toilet was used in a lot of ancient civilizations such as: Babylonia, Egypt, Crete, Greece, Jerusalem, Pompeii, and Herculaneum. Some ancient toilets were even found in pyramids in Egypt. The first person to own the first flushing water closet was King Minos of Crete over 2,800 years ago. No one else used the invention until 1594 when Sir John Harrington built a “Privy in perfection” for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth. After that, it took 200 years before the idea resurfaced again.
A Bathroom Timeline
Ancient Rome: The Ancient Romans built latrines over running water to carry all waste to the Tiber River. When they developed the art of plumbing, they constructed underground sewers made of lead, earthenware, or stone.
Middle Ages: People in the British Isles used chamber pots (made of glass or metal) during the night, and emptied the chamber pots out of a window in the morning.
1596: Sir John Harrington invented a flush toilet for his godmother Queen Elizabeth I. Before that, she used a portable toilet shaped like a box covered with red velvet and trimmed with lace with a lid and carrying handles.
1832: When millions of people in Europe died of cholera, Parisians rioted and Napoleon III had old sewers cleaned and new one installed after people realized poor sanitary conditions caused the disease to spread. The government in Britain passed laws requiring houses to have some kind of flushing toilet or privy.
1872: Thomas Crapper, a British developed a type of flushing toilet. He perfected the cistern (the tank that holds the water for flushing and made flushing quieter)
1829: Architect Isaiah Rogers designed the Tremont Hotel in Boston, it was the first hotel to have indoor plumbing, on the ground floor he installed eight water closets.
1860: Many wealthy Americans had indoor flush toilets imported from England. The tanks had pull chains and were mounted high on the wall above the bowls.
1910 to 1920’s: the elevated water was gradually lowered until tank and bowl were finally one unit.
1981: NASA developed an advanced Waste Management System (WMS) for use on the space shuttle orbiter.
Interesting Facts
Do you remember Thomas Crapper? The American soldiers stationed in England during WW1 who returned to the US used his name as a euphemism for the toilet.
The Victorians regarded the toilet as a status symbol and made the of fine glazed earthenware and hand painted them with flowers or sculpted them as lions and swans holding the basin on their backs.
Thomas Jefferson devised an indoor privy at Monticello by rigging up a system of pulleys. Servants used the device to haul away chamber pots in his earth closet, which was a wooden box enclosing a pan of wood ashes below, and a seat with a hole cut out at the top.
For a description of some bathrooms in Mexico, check out the article on Aunt Rock, entitled “Holy Cow!”
Here is a letter from Aunt Rocky to me. I received a few days ago. It has a few links which are quite interesting. (Copy and paste the url to your browswer; mom is having a hard time getting the hyperlink HTML codes to work)
Hi Cara,
How have you been? I bet you are happy to be out of school. Well, some info about all of us. We have been living here in Oaxaca for just over a month. We live a little bit outside the city in a place called Pueblo Nuevo. We eat a lot of tortillas, beans, avocados, chiles, and chocolate, just like they have down here since ancient times. Rowan has been learning a lot of Spanish. Last night he said Vamos Alcala! He also says all sorts of things like Adios, Hasta Luego, Hola, Gracias, Más, Salud, peligroso, etc. Alcala is a street in Oaxaca that is open only for pedestrians and has lots of shops and touristy stuff. Rowan loves to walk on that street and in the Zocalo, the cental plaza of the city. We were there last night and it was like a huge party. There were at least five mariachi bands and maybe another five other types of bands and people everywhere and kids playing with giant balloons and blowing bubbles.
Our friend Ritch is here visiting, so we are doing tourist stuff. Earlier this week, we went to Monte Alban to see the ruins of the ancient Zapotec city that overlooks the modern city of Oaxaca. It is definitely an awesome place. Here is a link with pictures and more info:
Monte Alban
We have been to the Abastos market also. The market is incredible and I am not even sure I can describe it properly. Basically, they have anything that you want there, from underwear to machetes and pineapples, hammocks, pottery, chiles, chocolate, live pigs, lumber, etc. It is so big that it is very difficult not to get lost. Here is a picture of a few stalls.
Abastos Market
Imagine this multiplied by a thousand or more.
We are also going to visit the tree in El Tule. It supposed to be the largest living thing on the planet and maybe the oldest, but no one is sure. These sites have pictures of the tree.
El Tule 1
El Tule 2
Soon, we are going to the coast. It is about a six hour drive. We will mostly be staying in Puerto Escondido. Puerto is famous because the International Surf Championships are held here every year. There are huge very dangerous waves at the Playa Zicatela that they call the Mexican pipeline. There are also other beaches that are more safe and tranquil. Here are some sites that have more info on Puerto Escondido:
Puerto Escondido 1
Puerto Escondido 2
Well, bathrooms. Bathrooms in most public places are very, very clean. In fact, there is almost always someone in the bathroom cleaning it. Ryan said that the two gas station bathrooms that he has used were very clean, with someone cleaning them! There are, however, some really awful bathrooms too. I had to use a bathroom the other day. It was in the basement of a store. There was no door (at all! anyone could have walked down the hall and seen me!), no light, and no seat. There was a hose running from the sink, (the sink was broken off the wall and laying sideways on the ground) to the tank in the back and if you wanted to flush you had to turn on the hose and fill the tank. Despite this, I could not get the toilet to flush. The other thing is that you are not supposed to flush your toilet paper here, the plumbing is not really good enough to handle toilet paper. So, you put the used toilet paper in a trash can by the toilet. Sometimes there is no can or it is full, so people just sort of throw it in the corner of the stall. Pretty gross, huh?
Well, I better go. I hope this helps.
Love
Aunt Rocky
ps. Earlier this week we ate chapulines, a favorite snack here in Oaxaca. They are crickets. We had them in tacos. Also, we had some ant salsa that our neighbors made. They gather these giant ants in our yard after it rains, When I say giant, I mean like four times the size of the biggest ant you have ever seen. They were both tasty.
Also, there are really huge bugs here. There are these beetles that are so big and ugly that the fisrt time I saw one I pointed at it and shouted Holy Cow! Now, Rowan calls them holy cows whenever he see one.
Note from Cara to newsletter recipients: Now you know why I entitled this article “Holy Cow!”. I don’t know about you guys, but eating bugs seems kind of gross.
Well, nothing too big has happened really since the last newsletter except for two calls on Sunday (6/08).
The first call was a medical call, a 15 month old was suffering from heat exhaustion down by the river. The second call was motor vehicle accident, two vehicles (one carrying 8 people, the other carrying 5) hit each other, no one was seriously hurt.
By this time last year Phillip had been on several wild land fires. He is getting very anxious.
You take blue jello, make it in a clean glass aquarium bowl. Float gummy fish and plastic people for swimmers and plastic plants and stuff.
Well, for a Halloween party make a Toxic Aquarium. Mix orange and blue jello to get a sickly shade of green. Lifesavers make old tires and you can toss in other junky things for trash on the bottom of the sea. Something barrel-shaped for that illegally dumped toxic waste. Float your fish upsidedown on top, and add a plastic skeleton or two.
