Benjamin Franklin ‘s Accomplishments – A Life of Service, Part 1

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

 Benjamin Franklin ‘s Accomplishments – A Life of Service, Part 1 Blog #15A

To the good Readers of these Reflections,

I like not those who talk much of themselves. I wrote once that “a man in love with himself will never lack for a suitor,” and it became one of my favorite aphorisms from the “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” Therefore, to describe in any detail the various projects I initiated for the betterment of my countrymen, would be unbecoming. But inasmuch as I did promise you a discussion of some of these accomplishments, I will reluctantly do so.

It seems appropriate that I first make you aware of how the idea of helping others came to me.

I decided early on to live as useful a life as I could. I thought, as I later wrote, that the “noblest question in the world is what good can I do in it?” I wanted to leave the world having made a positive difference in the lives of my countrymen, and, summing up that position, wrote that I’d “rather have it said that I lived usefully than that I died rich.”

This idea came from a most unlikely source; the Reverend Cotton Mather, a well-known Puritan clergyman and a friend of my father. His book, a series of essays on doing good, influenced me profoundly. These essays were among the most influential writings of my life, and their principles formed the core of the ethic by which I tried to live from the very moment I read them. I am often asked, as I give talks around the country in your time, about the books that I read that helped in my formation. Well, in addition to the Bible, Plutarch’s “Lives,” Jonathan Swift and Aristotle, I can think of no more influential volume than that of the good Rev. Mather. He was a Puritan and a rather severe one at that. He and I shared very few common ideas about theology, and certainly, I was in no position at sixteen, when I read his essays, to debate him on that subject. But the essays transcended theology. And in my entry next week, I shall go into the details of his message–the message that was, and still is–so very powerful to me. Read more... (396 words, 1 image, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

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Ben Franklin on Fitness and Health – Blog #5B

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

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 interested in diet, recommending in my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” for instance that, “To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals,” (I had trouble in following that one, actually, but it was good advice even so!), and “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” By the way, I’ve heard an insidious but TOTALLY FALSE rumor that I had said originally that… “an apple a day keeps the doctor away…if aimed right!” Slanderous! I had no such animosity towards doctors; in fact, one of my closest friends, Benjamin Rush, was a doctor. But I admit enjoying poking my physician friends with a bit of humor from time to time. “God heals, and the doctor takes the fee!”, as Poor Richard says! But all in all, I rarely called for the doctor, for his methods often involved blood-letting and leeches, which I didn’t think all that highly of. Read more... (424 words, 1 image, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

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Ben Franklin and some ideas behind Poor Richard’s humor – Blog #5A

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

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, I combined the human instinct for enjoying others’ company with the necessity of working together. Rev. Mather and I had very different points of view on religion, but on this matter we were in absolute agreement.

Note from Christopher Lowell: Ben really invented the concept of the professional association and I’ll get him to talk of the “Junto,” the association he founded, in future blogs. He is in great demand to speak before associations of all kinds today and to affirm their worth and effectiveness. He greatly enjoys doing so. Read more... (452 words, 1 image, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

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Titan Leeds and the Great Almanac Hoax, Part 2, Blog#4B

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

Benjamin Franklin on Titan Leeds and the Great Almanac Hoax, Part 2, Blog #4B

To my faithful readers,

I must admit to you that when I finished writing the entry to last week’s blog, concerning the hoax I played on Mr. Titan Leeds regarding his Almanac, I was overcome with chuckling for full on five minutes. There’s little that an old man so appreciates as the memory of his own wit and cleverness.

To continue the story, Mr. Leeds having excoriated me in the basest of terms for having suggested the precise day, date, and time of his demise, and having published said excoriation in his own almanac, it was my turn to respond. And I did.

In the next issue of my “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” I had every reason to state, or so I contended, that Mr. Leeds’s attack actually proved that he had indeed expired as I had predicted. Let me explain by quoting my thoughts on this subject from my own Almanac for 1734:

“There is however, (and I cannot speak it without Sorrow) the strongest Probability that my dear Friend is no more; for there appears in his Name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the Year 1734, in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome Manner; in which I am called a false Predicter, an Ignorant, a conceited Scribbler, a Fool, and a Lyar. Mr. Leeds was too well bred to use any Man so indecently and so scurrilously, and moreover his Esteem and Affection for me was extraordinary: So that it is to be feared, that Pamphlet may be only a Contrivance of somebody or other, who hopes perhaps to sell two or three Year’s Almanacks still, by the sole Force and Virtue of Mr. Leeds’s Name…(this is)…an unpardonable Injury to his Memory, and an Imposition upon the Publick.” Read more... (457 words, 1 image, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

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Titan Leeds and the Great Almanac Hoax – Blog #4A

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

Titan Leeds and the Great Almanac Hoax – Blog #4A

Greetings, Citizens, and thank you for your continued interest in my adventures. I present you my humblest apologies for having failed to get to this delicious story last week, and do hope you’ll find it enjoyable now. It concerns my rivalry with a certain Titan Leeds, an almanac writer like myself and my biggest competitor in Philadelphia for readers. I wrote of Mr. Leeds in the previous two entries should you be curious and wish to refer to them. The period in question is 1732, when I was 26 years of age.

Now Mr. Leeds was, as I knew, a very serious and self-important man. I was certainly thinking of him when I made one of my “Ben Franklin Quotations,” “A man who falls in love with himself shall never lack for a suitor,” and made sure that this quote got into an edition of my “Poor Richard’s Almanac.”

In that first issue of “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” I decided to poke and provoke the good Mr. Leeds. Therefore, I printed the rather startling and unexpected prediction that Titan Leeds was going to die at a very exact time on a very specific day – October 17, 1733, at 3:29 pm! Well he was so horrified by this perceived impertinence that he counter-blasted me in his own almanac in the most outraged terms conceivable. I was, he said, “a Fool and a Lyar” and a scoundrel for having made such statements; a disgrace to the printing trade. He called my statement an outrageous, unsupportable attack and an indefensible breech of good taste and sputtered on, saying that nobody should buy my newspapers or my almanacs forthwith, and etc, ad infinitum. Read more... (372 words, 1 image, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

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Blog #3B – Benjamin Franklin on the Origin of the “Poor Richard’s Almanac” Part 2

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

Citizens, a splendid day to you this February 17 !

I deliberately left you in suspense last week, with the fate of my career as an almanac writer hanging in the air, and one reader has already asked, presumably with baited breath, for the “next installment” of this affair. You may recall that I was trying to outdo my rival, Mr. Titan Leeds, by using witty sayings supposedly written by Richard Saunders, the original “poor Richard” of my imagination, as the means. The public was not used to humor in their almanacs and it was a business gamble not entirely without arrogance for a young man such as myself to compete thusly with an older and more experienced almanac publisher like Titan Leeds.

Well, not to mince words, the technique worked! And far better than I had dared hope. To my delight, it was these expressions, some adapted from other sources and some which I invented, that made my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” the best selling publication in all the colonies—and for over twenty years. That’s right! It sold even better than the Bible!

Note from Christopher Lowell: Ben proved an astute businessman in this instance. Homes in his time often had one or, at the most, two Bibles, but his almanac they had to buy every year! He created the demand, then met it. Read more... (437 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)

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Blog #3A – Benjamin Franklin on the Origin of the “Poor Richard’s Almanac” Part 1

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

Ben Franklin’s Reflections – #3A – How “Poor Richard’s Almanac” came to be Part 1

Citizens, good day to you! In this space last week, I promised you that I’d tell you how my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” got its name. Many seem interested in the subject, and ever your faithful servant, I am happy to oblige beginning this day, 10 February 2012.

I had been in business as a printer for almost five years when, at 26 , I made the decision to write and publish an almanac for the citizens of Philadelphia, my adopted home town. Almanacs were useful and I certainly wanted to print useful things for my readers. An almanac, I thought, would be just the thing. Almanacs helped farmers know when to plant and reap, they helped sailors and shippers know when the tides were high or low, and they helped travelers know when there might be a full moon to light their journeys, for a good almanac always provided accurate astronomical information on the phases of the moon. Well, I knew I had a rival in Philadelphia, Mr.Titan Leeds, whose almanac was well established, but it was a dull little tome in the extreme. I knew I could write a more interesting almanac than his. I considered long and hard as to how my almanac could stand out and be competitive.

I had already had success in publishing letters under a false name. In fact, I’ll talk with you about all that on another occasion and tell more about how “Silence Dogood,” my first pseudonym, came into being. “Silence” had been a great success and so I decided to invent another false personage for my new almanac. And so, as you may know, I invented a character I called Richard Saunders, and decided that “Poor Richard,” as I called him, was a hen-pecked little man, whose wife made him work constantly in order to provide her with the finery to which she thought herself entitled! And to make my “Poor Richard’s” almanac more enjoyable than that of my competitor, I decided to fill it with useful and, I hoped, witty phrases, supposedly from the pen of poor Richard Saunders. Read more... (412 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

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The Origins of Benjamin Franklin’s Favorite Quotations

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

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. Read more... (707 words, estimated 2:50 mins reading time)

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