JANUARY 17: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S BIRTHDAY
Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706. During the next 84 years he engaged in so many activities, it’s difficult to decide what to call him. One thing I haven’t heard him called is a naturalist, but he actually spent quite a bit of time observing the natural world.
The most sensational of his observations involved flying a kite in a thunderstorm, but he wasn’t always so foolhardy. One of his safer interests was astronomy. In a journal he kept while he was sailing across the Atlantic at age 20, he describes a night rainbow caused by the moon, a partial solar eclipse, and a partial lunar eclipse.
Seventeen years later Franklin was still paying attention to eclipses. At 9:00 p.m. on November 2, 1743, he went outside his home in Philadelphia to observe a lunar eclipse, but he missed it because of a storm. Soon the storm itself began to interest him.
Shortly after he missed the eclipse, Franklin read an account of clear viewings in Boston. He decided to write to fellow observers throughout the Northeast to determine the path of the storm, its speed, and its direction. Franklin was the first to describe the typical track of northeastern storms.
In addition to astronomy and meteorology, Franklin was also interested in botany. He shared his observations of plants with his friend John Bartram, who had established the first botanical garden in the colonies. Franklin eventually became a botanical middleman, procuring seeds of rhubarb, oats, barley, peas, cabbage and kohlrabi for Bartram to experiment with in his garden.
Franklin crossed the Atlantic six times between 1757 and 1785, which got him paying close attention to the ocean. He spent much of his last three voyages observing the Gulf Stream, which he had earlier named and mapped. He kept detailed records of air temperature, water temperature, and wind direction, and also noted the weed content and color of the water.
Calling Franklin a naturalist would be stretching it, but perhaps we could call him a polymath—a lover of learning—which is what he called himself during the twenty-five years he published Poor Richard’s Almanack. Benjamin Franklin was indeed a polymath—a polymath with a special fondness for learning about the natural world.
MORE INFORMATION
Franklin Institute
http://www.fi.edu/franklin/rotten.html
The Franklin Institute offers a wealth of information on Benjamin Franklin. They have separate pages devoted to his contributions as a scientist, inventor, statesman, printer philosopher, musician, and economist. They also answer a long list of Frequently asked Questions.
Thinkquest – Benjamin Franklin
http://library.thinkquest.org/22254/mainframe.htm
This award-winning, student-created site is full of well-researched information about Benjamin Franklin. It includes a biography, a discussion of his inventions, a list of quotations, a page of interesting facts, and other information.
Benajmin Franklin – Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
Wikipedia’s long article includes some good graphics including several famous portraits of Benjamin Franklin, a statue of him, his autograph, the one hundred dollar bill, and his grave. The article is followed by a list of sources and references plus numerous external links.
ROD’S PLANE CRASH
He was moved back to icu, but is doing well. He seems to have his color back and is breathing easier. Will keep you posted. Below is a link about the crash from the local news:
http://www.facebook.com/l/f3c68;cbs11tv.com/video/?id=47230@ktvt.dayport.com”
UNDOING A STATIC PAGE
I managed to do it but it was tricky. First I had to cut and paste what I wanted to be my home page to a safe place (i.e. here — see below), then I had to cut and paste it back to what was presently serving as my Home page, which was two entries is what I had intended to be a blog attached to a blog with a static front page. Then I had to cut and paste the two entries to a new page I called My Progress, which I may yet delete, but I didn’t want to lose them right now. Then I went to SETTINGS and chose READING, which brought me to the place where I had created the STATIC FRONT PAGE. There I unchose the STATIC FRONT PAGE and returned both the dropdowns that appear below the STATIC FRONT PAGE option to “Select.” I’m exhausted….
Here’s the home page of the blog I was working on:
Welcome!
I am a retired English teacher, freelance writer, and self-taught/self-teaching naturalist who lives on an old hill farm in a small Vermont town called Huntington. I’m a native Vermonter, but I didn’t grow up here. I spent most of my childhood in various American suburbs outside the cities where my father worked. It took me thirty years to find my way back to Vermont, but once I got here I knew I was home.
My first year back — 1975 — I decided I needed to make up for lost time. I began exploring the natural world with all the mid-life energy and enthusiasm that had motivated my return to Vermont. Around the edges of my job at the University of Vermont, where I taught English off and on for 20 years, I began my self-education as a naturalist. I started by volunteering at a local nature center.
To enforce my learning — and to demonstrate to my University of Vermont students that writing had its uses in the real world — I started writing a weekly natural history column for several Vermont newspapers. These columns led to four books:
THE BEGINNING NATURALIST Shelburne, VT: New England Press, 1979
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE FAMILIAR Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1998
A NATURALIST INDOORS Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.com, 2000
THE VERMONT LIFE GUIDE TO FALL FOLIAGE Montpelier, VT: Vermont Life, 2001
I DISCOVER THE WEB
I have retired from teaching English and from writing a weekly column, but I still research and write about subjects that interest me. It’s these miscellaneous subjects that led to my first Web site called a NATURALIST’S ALMANAC AND BOOK OF DAYS. As a retirement project I decided that I would like to post various of my natural history writings on a popular interest Web site where more people could read them and make use of the materials I’ve unearthed for my own edification. My goal is ambitious: 367 units of date-based natural history information — yes, 367 with leap day and a one-time-only February 30, which is a long story…. I am also searching out the best natural history Web sites and am constantly looking for new and better reference books. I will be adding Web links and recommended readings as I discover them.
THE WEB GROWS ON ME
After launching my first Web site late in the year 2000 with the humble recognition that completing it as I envisioned it would most likely take me the rest of my life, I conceptualized a second Web site called the VERMONT ALMANAC. This second almanac includes information specific to Vermont for every month and every day of the year.
AND NOW I’M BLOGGING …
As I’ve been developing my Web sites, I’ve also been taking my customary nature walks. Since 1978 I’ve been keeping dated records of what I see and hear on these walks, and it occurred to me that what I call my “Naturalist’s Journal” should be available online too. About then I discovered the world of blogs and decided a blog would would be perfect for my Naturalist’s Journal. So I explored the Blogosphere for a blogging site that would enable me to create a searchable archive of all my journal entries. It took me a while — and numerous disappointments and setbacks — but I’ve finally settled on Word Press, which will accomodate all my journal entries. To visit my journal, click here: NATURALIST’S JOURNAL. I started blogging my NATURALIST’S JOURNAL the summer of 2005, and it’s growing both backward and forward as fast as I can find the time to post journal entries. And wouldn’t you know, once I discovered blogs, I had to have more than one. See My Other Blogs for an annotated list….
NOT PINGBACKS OR TRACKBACKS
My problem wasn’t pingbacks or trackbacks (whatever they are), so I guess I need to go back to my DISCUSSION SETTINGS and allow them….
When I finally tried support, I found out what I needed to know on the RELATED POSTS forum. WordPress is the automatic generator, and who knows where they get the totally unrelated posts? Anyhow, I got rid of them by going to Appearance, clicking on Extras, and checking the box that says “Hide related links on this blog” to turn it off. So, I think I’ve solved my problem, but I’m really irritated that I had to waste so much time on something WordPress did because I hadn’t checked the box that told them not to. I wish they’d list intrusive features like this one as an option not a default.
LINKS, PINGBACKS, AND TRACKBACKS
All of a sudden a NATURALIST’S ALMANAC post I was working on started getting a “Possibly related posts: (automatically generated) message with a list of links that had absolutely no relevance to my post. I mean, I was working on JANUARY 1: THE NEW YEAR and got links to “Glenn Beck loves Judaism to Pieces” and “Sawyer to Anchor World News.” I think these things are pingbacks or trackbacks so I’ve changed my settings to diasllow them, but they still show up on my permalink, which ruins my printout. So how do I get rid of them? First I’m going to cut and paste my links to this post and delete them from my real post to see if the automatically generated list will go away. Or will they show up on this post?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year
This Wikipedia entry for the New Year has lots of information and lots of links. Wikipedia materialized after I had been working on my Naturalist’s Almanac for several years, and I considered changing my title to A Naturalist’s Guide to Wikipedia. But that would have been too cop-out. I wanted my Almanac to be based on my own reading and research because it’s my retirement project, and it continues to be a major part of my continuing education. I also take pride in finding bits of information and occasional links that Wikipedia missed.
New Year Traditions Around the World at Father Time’s Net
http://www.fathertimes.net/traditions.htm
This is an Australian Web site and it has ads, but it offers a bit of information on just about every New Year that is celebrated around the world.
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Well, the links are are now here, not there, but the dumb list of links is still there. I may need to delete and re-post the whole post, which is exasperating……
TARSKI
TARSKI has the best printout for my purposes. the first page is just text — no sidebar stuff. The second page is the same — no sidebar stuff and no ARchive Page 2 title. So I guess I’ll try TARSKI with my NATURALIST’S ALMANAC.
FIRST PAGE
This will be the first page for my test of the themes and how they print.
SECOND PAGE
I need two pages to test the themes on how they print a page-by-page blog, so this is a short page two.
FRUSTRATIONS WITH K-2 LITE
I thought I had found the perfect theme for my NATURALIST’S ALMANAC in K-2 Lite. I deleted the day-of-the-month part of the dates, reversed the order of my chosen year so January 1 (which is dated as if I posted it on December 31) will appear first, set the Reading option at one post per page, and discovered that January 1 prints out perfectly with no sidebar material and no comment box. BUT when I went to the next entry (currently January 15), I discovered that it had a big “ARCHIVE PAGE 2″ in bold print above the title of my post. I may just have to live with it because my other experiments, some of which will persist in this blog as a post and a page about Benjamin Franklin, didn’t pan out. Oh well….
DATES AND PRINTOUTS
I spent a long time this afternoon exploring different themes and what I could do to tweak and manage them for my own purposes. I discovered that I could get rid of the dates on my posts, which is key for my NATURALIST’S ALMANAC blog. I want this almanac to run from January 1 to December 31, and the only way I can make that happen is by reversing the dates of the year (January 1 has to be posted as December 31), which means I need the posting dates to be invisible. I discovered that if I go to SETTINGS and scroll down to the Date Format, I can delete the “F j,” leaving just the Y in the format box, and only the year will show. I’ve chosen the year 2000 for my invisible reversed dates because it was a leap year, and I have a post for FEBRUARY 29: LEAP YEAR.
After I got the date business figured out, I decided to see how my posts print out in different themes. REGULUS, which I actually like best, prints only one page worth of my post and quits. WORD PRESS CLASSIC took three pages to print my whole post plus the entire sidebar. K-2 does the best job of printing. It did the whole post in two clean pages with no sidebar materials. So K-2 wins the honor of being the theme for my new and improved NATURALIST’S ALMANAC.
