Benjamin Franklin’s Blog

    Benjamin Franklin – Bound for Philadelphia and the future – Blog #9 Dear Readers, I have taken you, dear readers, in my musings, to the point where, at the age of seventeen, I was to break the contract of indentured servitude that my father had signed for me with my brother, James.  I was, by boarding the packet bound for New York, in violation of the law.  I was, in a split second, a runaway and subject to being caught, returned and punished by the law. You will recall that my plan for fleeing the city of my birth involved a ruse.  I had invented a yarn that I hoped would garner sympathy for me, even though there was not a jot of veracity in it.  I had told the captain of a packet boat running from Boston to New York that I had, “gotten a young maid …

Benjamin Franklin and Lessons from the Print Shop Part 2, Blog #8B To my dear, faithful readers, I beg your indulgence for the absence in these pages of an entry last week.  This lapse was not of my doing.  My erstwhile business manager had my words in hand, but having had a bit of an accident a few days earlier, thought that this gave him leave to be remiss in his duties. Pleading pain, following a hiking accident resulting in two broken ribs,  he failed to publish my pithy prose. I am quite cross with him.  His little misfortune I find no excuse for his failure to resolve to perform his duties i.e., the publication of the following, but we shall say no more on the subject for the nonce. You who follow these musings each week will be wondering what crime I committed and how it affected my future.  …

  Ben Franklin and the Real Lessons from the Print Shop – Part 1 Good Citizens, all, I indicated in my last chat with you that the subject of “Ben Franklin, Printer,” was one that had some unexpected lessons for me.  Yes, my half-brother James taught me a good deal about printing.  But he taught me something else that proved to be far more important. James was ten years older than I, and when I was sixteen and he twenty-six, he began beating me.  He did this regularly and without, might I say, much provocation on my part. Note from Christopher Lowell:  Well, it’s my feeling that when he was a lad, Ben was pretty arrogant and a bit full of himself.  This doesn’t excuse the beatings, but I can imagine James wanting to put Ben a bit more in his place. I recognized that James held all the power …

  Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 3: Silence Dogood’s Success – Blog #7C Good Citizens, I deliberately left you hanging until today to finish the story of my letter to the “New England Courant.”  My intent was to whet your appetite for more!  I am happy to complete this little chapter for you now. Well, in the morning (and if you are a bit lost, you should first refer to last week’s entry entitled “Ben Franklin, Printer’s Apprentice, Part 2”,) I stayed carefully in the back of the print shop as my brother and his friends opened my letter–the one signed “Silence Dogood,” and read it.  Would they throw it into the fire? Put it aside? Even enjoy it? I waited with a much more casual demeanor than my beating heart belied. Well, to my delight, they started chuckling and then even laughing!  James declared it worthy of publication and …

  Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 2: Silence Dogood Citizens, all, In my last musings, I began the story of my days as a printer’s apprentice–a splendid trade for me because even young, I loved books and being around them. As I indicated last week,  I admired good prose and often ran off a sheet or two on the press from one of my favorite authors–men like Addison, Swift, and some of the Roman orators–and I’d “play” with this writing.  For instance, I’d cut a page into sentences, put the pieces in a drawer for a few weeks, then take them out again and try to rearrange them in the “best” order.  Or I’d try putting a few lines into poetry and then back into prose without looking at the original.  It was here, in my brother’s shop, that I came to be curious as to whether I, myself, might …

  Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 1 Greetings again, Citizens, and thank you for your comments and questions.  Nothing is more pleasurable to me than to know that after all these years, many Americans are still interested in such topics as Ben Franklin’s quotes, Ben Franklin’s inventions, Ben Franklin and Electricity and so forth.  Very flattering.  Well today, as promised, I’ll begin the story of my life as an apprentice to my half-brother, James. In my times, apprenticeship was a legal agreement, a formal contract, and not at all a question of choice.  My father signed me over as an indentured servant, or apprentice to James, when I was eleven.  I was to stay with him learning the trade until age twenty.  I was an eager pupil, and, as a lad, strong, often running up and down the stairs carrying heavy trays of lead type with ease. James taught me …

Ben Franklin writes of how he became a printer, Part 2 Dear Readers, Note from Christopher Lowell:  Dr. Franklin will finish up this tale, but I’ll begin today by continuing from last week’s entry on just why his father thought him ill-suited to the serious contemplation required of a preacher. There is a rather delicious story that illustrates this, I think you’ll agree.  Ben, impatient with his father’s long, drawn-out prayers over each meal, suggested, at age 10, when gazing into the cellar where the winter’s supply of meats and fish were salted away, that his father should “say Grace over the whole lot”, as it would be “…a great savings of time.” Josiah, his father, was not amused and soon thereafter decided to end his schooling and have him learn a trade instead.  But what trade? Well, for once, dear readers, my annoying business manager, Mr. Lowell is accurate …

How Benjamin Franklin almost became a Minister I’m delighted to be speaking with you again, Citizens.  I’m often asked to talk about my life and times as I travel around different parts of the country, which I very much enjoy doing, except for the unpleasantness of that modern horror you call “air travel.”  Now I am no stranger to difficult conditions for traveling. Each of my eight transatlantic trips was made in very cramped quarters on ships with terrible food and other conditions and each voyage took a minimum of five weeks.  And I won’t begin to go into the horrors of that bumpy carriage ride from Nantes to Paris in December 1776.  But despite the rapidity of your modern transport via your “airplanes,” the difficulties abound. Now I guess you modern Americans would call me a “motivational speaker,” or a “keynoter,” as I’ve had the privilege of addressing many …

  Benjamin Franklin on Fitness and Health -  Blog #5B To my faithful readers of these reflections, Inasmuch as my last musings had to do with how some of my beliefs resulted in entries in my “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” I thought that this week, I’d give you an example.  And that example has to do with health. I had much to say about health and what you call today “wellness.” As a boy I became interested in many aspects of maintaining a hearty body, and, as a young printer’s apprentice, was at the height of my physical powers.  Running up and down stairs many times a day with heavy lead type in trays will do that rather quickly for a lad.   Later, I remembered those stairs and advocated that older people use staircases in the winter to increase their heart rates or lift dumbbells to keep fit. I became quite …

Ben Franklin on the Ideas Behind Poor Richard’s Humor, Blog #5A Again my greetings to you, Citizens.  You’ll recall I promised you a discussion of how some of my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” expressions were not fluff at all, but rooted in more serious and deeply held beliefs.   One of those beliefs I learned quite young–the importance in joining with others of a like mind to affect positive change. I learned this first in an essay on doing good by the Puritan orator and theologian Cotton Mather, a family friend.  The idea that working with others towards a common goal was more effective than the same number of people working individually was a relatively new one in the early 1730‘s, but I adopted it at once, later having Poor Richard echo the idea by saying, “he who drinks his Cyder alone, let him catch his horse alone.”  In this aphorism, …