Citizens, I’m proud to be able to make use of your newest ways to communicate and begin here a series of discussions about my life and times. I was told, by my 21st century business manager, Mr. Christopher Lowell of Colorado Springs, that one of the topics that seem to interest a great number of you today is those little witticisms and aphorisms that I developed for my almanac, back when I was a young businessman in Philadelphia in the early 1730’s. So I’ll begin my chats with you by telling you how that all came about.
When I was 26 and had decided to write and publish an almanac for the citizens of Philadelphia, it was for for both altruistic and selfish reasons. I wanted to live usefully, and I’ll write in the future more about this. But I also wanted to make a profit, and use my skills, such as they were, in both writing and printing to do so. I knew I had a rival in Philadelphia, whose almanac was, although to my mind boring in the extreme, well established. His name was Titan Leeds, and I mulled how my almanac could stand out and be different from his.