"Father, I Cannot Tell a Lie"

Happy President's Day! It didn't really feel like a holiday today because I had school, but I made the most of it by taking the yummy chocolate cherry sticks that Mom sent me to school and sharing the Taylor family tradition of eating cherry stuff on President's Day with my teachers and classmates. They all thought that was pretty awesome, and I was appalled to learn that no one had ever heard of cherry sticks before--or orange sticks, or raspberry sticks! Is the idea of fruit flavored jelly centers dipped in real milk chocolate just a Utah thing? I said, "You guys have never gotten orange sticks for Christmas??!!" My jaw hit the floor when they all said no. They think that cherry sticks are pretty amazing though. Of course somebody had to bring up the fact that the George Washington and the cherry tree story is just a myth--but that's what makes it extra cool! As the story goes, when George was about six years old, he got a new hatchet and found that he loved chopping things with it. One day he started whacking at a pretty English cherry tree in his family's garden. When his father questioned him about it, he said: "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut the tree with my hatchet." According to Parson Weems, the man who supposedly "invented" the story when he wrote the first biography of America's first president in 1809, George's dad replied: "Run to my arms, you dearest boy; glad am I, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son, is more worth than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold." It's kind of like the story of Santa Clause--by saying it's not true, you ruin all the fun! If the story was indeed invented by Parson Weems to honor Washington and teach kids values, then so be it. Historians say that there is no proof that the story is true. Well, I say, where's the proof that the story is false? :-)

Today I worked with Dr. Hardeman and read papers to him for a while. As usual, there were some crazy ones. They were critiquing a book about the origins of American slavery, and going along with today's President's Day theme, George Washington was the object of many of the students' papers. Unfortunately they kept calling him a hypocrite, saying that he professed "liberty and justice for all," but he held slaves. These students would probably also say that Columbus was an evil man. Hmmmm, they need to understand the first rule of being a real historian: don't impose today's standards on the past!! Try to picture things in the context of their time!!! I am not defending the fact that George Washington had slaves--I'm just saying that just because he did doesn't mean he was evil. Unfortunately slavery was a part of the lifestyle back then, and I believe that George Washington helped to put in place foundations for our country that were later able to be used to eradicate slavery--it just took time, as all history does. That's my little President's Day soap box. I'm a big George Washington fan.

Today was a good but very busy day. I had my architecture class this morning, then work for Dr. Hardeman, then 19th Century Social and Cultural History tonight. In that class we're reading a book called The Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837. It's basically all about the Second Great Awakening and religious revivals in upstate New York during the early 1800's. Hmmmm, sounds like a book that would at least mention Joseph Smith or the beginnings of Mormonism once!!! But it doesn't. The book talks about Palmyra a bit, but to mention a major American religion that was a product of the Second Great Awakening and that was founded by a young man who lived only 20 miles from Rochester would be an academic sin, I guess. I checked out the book's author, Paul E. Johnson, and discovered that he taught history at the University of Utah for about 12 years before moving to the University of South Carolina where he is currently teaching. That explains a lot--he's a U of U guy. Being the audacious person that I seem to be these days, I e-mailed Dr. Johnson and, trying to sound like an innocent, naive Illinois college student, asked him why, in his book about religious revivals in upstate New York, he never even mentioned the Mormons--the story of which epitomizes the social and religious turmoil of the Second Great Awakening. He hasn't written back :-) I'm kind of a smart aleck these days, aren't I?