Large Bathtubs

Having lived and vacationed, to my olfactory distress, in several countries that are not as devoted to personal hygiene as we Americans, I am one who greatly appreciates our religiously frequent application of bathing water.

I cannot but be bemused, however, by the appearance in the same issue of The Times (Feb. 17) of an article on outsize bathtubs implying increased use of water in Orange County and another article on the great storm of that week, including a statement that even that noble deluge was not enough to prevent drought this year.

Is that the sound of running water I hear or the faint echo of Nero’s fiddle?

MARK SHIER

Fullerton