A day seldom goes by that I don't read at least a few pages from some history book. And yes, like everyone else with an interest in history, I love reading about the great battles and super deeds that could only have been accomplished by that one in a million individual who had been predestined by the gods for a life with them on Mt. Olympus but, what I find equally as interesting is the little, humorous things that make these people human.

At present I'm reading "William Howard Taft" by Jeffrey Rosen. This is a pretty good book and I learned that on the day of his inauguration, the weather was so bad that the ceremony was held in the Senate Chamber. Taft's son Charles was there and according to page 51 of the book, "Taft released his inaugural address to the press but mercifully did not read it in its entirety. (The spoken excerpts were sufficiently brief that his son Charles didn't feel the need to open the copy of Treasure Island that he had brought for diversion in case his father's address bored him.)

All of a sudden, Taft became a human just like you and me.