Franklin's life was more than just flying a kite
Don't expect weather forecasts to improve with government cuts
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Benjamin Franklin was much more than just a man with a kite.
As the oldest of the Founding Fathers, the 70-year-old Franklin is often portrayed as the wise father figure to youngsters like 33-year-old Virginian Thomas Jefferson. What the two had in common was they both owned slaves and a life-long contradiction about all men being created equal.
Franklin's life of achievement is a marvel.
By the time he considered joining the revolution, he was already an established printer, writer, journalist and inventor who established institutions such as lending libraries, universities, firefighting and fire insurance companies and a school for enslaved children.
His innovations included better street lamp design, the "Franklin stove" and bifocals. His life was one of striving for constant improvement.
We all should have such focus.
What riveted me most in visiting the Ben Franklin Museum in Philadelphia was Franklin's role as a muck-raking journalist who dared to expose the Massachusetts governor's attempt to reduce the influence of colonial governments two years before the founders put quill to parchment.
While residing in London in 1772 as an agent for the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, Franklin received a package containing 13 letters of correspondence between Massachusetts Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver with English authorities.
This was the Pentagon Papers Revolutionary War-style.
Gov. Hutchinson explained in the letters to England that the colonial revolt should be taken seriously and recommended that colonial government should be reduced gradually and that more troops should be sent to keep the rebels under control.
Franklin passed the letters on to Samuel Adams, the head of the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence.
That angered the British, even though Franklin was considered a reluctant revolutionary. For sharing those letters to the committee, the British prosecuted Franklin for treason.
Franklin was called before the British Privy Council where he stood silently for more than an hour while undergoing an abusive attack by British Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn.
Franklin never said a word.
Franklin showed his wit later when he wrote of the experience:
“Spots of Dirt thrown upon my Character, I suffered while fresh remain; I . . . rely'd on the vulgar Adage, that they would all rub off when they were dry.”
It was at that point Franklin began to realize that compromise would not end the dispute between the colonies and England.
Franklin added his voice to the American revolution a year later by helping to write and eventually sign the Declaration of Independence, even though he had a lot more to lose than the average signer.
Just days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, British naval commander offered pardons to all the American political leaders.
Remember, Franklin was 70 at the time.
He had a lot more to lose than most.
He wrote this rebuke:
It is impossible we should think of Submission to a Government” that has inflicted “atrocious Injuries” on Americans.
His life is an impressive body of work. It's hard to imagine Franklin ever had time to fly a kite.
Honestly, why isn't Ben Franklin on Mount Rushmore?
Going international
My first book The Last American Editor (a collection of my columns from The Post-Star), has gone international with Something or Other Publishing's Jesus Bracho promoting it at a book festival in Madrid this week. We'll see if the stories of Hometown, USA play in Spain.
You can still pick up The Last American Editor collection and The Last American Newspaper at Ace Hardware (Queensbury), Chapman Museum (Glens Falls) and Battenkill Books (Cambridge).
Never too early to get a start on those summer reads.
Weather cuts
Substack columnist Heather Cox Richardson reported on cuts to the National Weather Service on Tuesday.
She wrote:
Cuts to the NWS have already meant fewer weather balloons and thus less data, leaving gaps in information for a March ice storm in Northern Michigan and for storms and floods in Oklahoma in April. Oliver Milman of The Guardian reported today that 15 NWS offices on the Gulf of Mexico, a region vulnerable to hurricanes, are understaffed after losing more than 600 employees. Miami’s National Hurricane Center is short five specialists. Thirty of the 122 NWS stations no longer have a meteorologist in charge, and as of June 1, seven of those 122 stations will not have enough staff to operate around the clock. On May 5, the five living former NWS leaders, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote a letter to the American people warning that the cuts threaten to bring “needless loss of life.
June 1 was the first day of hurricane season and on June 2, a weather system was identified off the North Carolina coast as having hurricane potential - on the second day of hurricane season.
Heather Cox Richardson also reported that the new head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), David Richardson, said he plans on having states handle their own disaster recovery.
Staff members were "baffled" that the head of the agency in charge of disaster relief was unaware there is a hurricane season. David Richardson has no experience with disaster response.
Name game
When you think of the Pentagon, the Defense Department, you think of military readiness, missiles and tanks.
But Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, seems to believe changing the names of various ships in the United States fleet is a national defense priority.
In a memo from Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, instructed that ships honoring such people as Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, Medgar Evers and Cesar Chavez should be changed.
All are minorities or women.
Kennedy center
Since President Trump made himself chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, subscription revenue has plummeted.
The New York Times got the information from Kennedy Center employees who said single-ticket sales were down 50 percent in April and May and subscriptions have also declined significantly.
Overall revenue for theater was down 82 percent and 57 percent for dance.
Revenue was projected to be $2.7 million this year compared with $4.4 million last year.
FEMA changes
Fortunately, we have not had any instances where we needed FEMA in Glens Falls, but that is not true of many places.
Whenever a catastrophic event occurs - hurricane, flood, tornado - it has become almost routine to have a federal disaster declared so communities can receive aid from the fedferal government. That has changed under the Trump administration.
Several states have been shocked to see their disaster requests ignored or delayed.
The New York Times reported that in Arkansas FEMA rejected the state's disaster declaration after tornadoes destroyed homes and businesses and killed three in March. This means FEMA was deferring to state and local officials to handle the disaster. The decision was reversed after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders - she used to work for Trump - appealed to the president directly.
At other times, FEMA has taken months to approve disaster declarations, delaying the arrival of aid to fix things like roads and schools.
Last week, FEMA's second in command, MaryAnn Tierney resigned.
“I will not be complicit in the dismantling of this agency, and while I would implement change — even radical change — the current approach lacks a clear end state or plan, and has been done recklessly without regard to our current statutory or moral obligations to the American people,” Tierney told staff in a memo that was shared with the Times.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
Ben is my favorite of the founding fathers, by far.
“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
Good Morning! Interesting that with all the sabotage of federal aid and research, I haven't heard of a single administration official or politician for that matter, who has volunteered to cut their salaries and benefits, including and especially the richest man on earth or the chief of "budget cutters". Perhaps concentrating on perceived racial and class privileges and denying minority representation is more satisfying than reducing their income and comforts.
Thank you for highlighting the contradictions in our society. Many of us may pass them off as things that will NEVER change, until it hurts us personally. Change is worth fighting for, in whatever form we can muster.