In the days before people went online with pseudonyms and chatted in chat rooms or played on weather messages boards Benjamin Franklin made up the pseudonym "Poor Richard" and put out what was to be a calendar with weather predictions, celestial calculations and bits of wisdom and folly.
I'm sure if Old Ben was here today he would be a blogger or a political journalist giving Matt Drudge a run for his money.
A man ahead of his times and a man for all seasons.
He is also given credit for recording the first observance of a tropical cyclone as being one storm that traveled from one city to another as an entity, not a different storm.
This blog is going to be a whimsical look at how often astrologers are right in predictions concerning weather and chock filled with some astrological and some meteorological whimsy that would most likely make Old Ben himself smile.
Some facts on Benjamin Franklin that they don't tell you in school.
1. He was a member of a secret group of astrologers and "new age" sort of practitioners that used their organization to network for business and political purposes. In those days the study of astrology was up there with philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. From the Masons to the Junta to the Magi Society to a few less savory organizations where he simply sat in possibly for an entertaining evening of discussion.... Ben Franklin got around.
2. After trying to observe a lunar eclipse that was foiled by a tropical event that obscured the sky, Ben Franklin made an observation about the weather that is one of the first written observations of how hurricanes move that was contrary to previous beliefs.
"1743 A hurricane prevents Ben Franklin from observing a lunar eclipse in Philadelphia. When he later learns his brother in Boston experienced the storm much later, he surmises that hurricanes don't move in the direction that the winds are blowing. Also, Professor Winthrop of Harvard makes first pressure and tide observations during this hurricane."
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/J6.html
3. Please note he was upset because he was out there trying to observe a celestial event. He was a man who watched the stars, the sky and tried to observe patterns and he published his thoughts on them much like many online bloggers and journalists.
4. Ben Franklin was a knowledge of wealth about human relations. He got around... and he obviously kissed and told. A few hundred years before the term Cougar was ever created to describe a hot, mature, sexy woman Ole Ben was offering young men the following wisdom:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=468
I mean seriously, this was a man for all seasons who wrote the book on weather, politics and originality.
So....this blog entry is dedicated to Benjamin Franklin who was wiser on weather than many people I know and who took everything into his observations in his zest for finding the truth and gaining knowledge.
Personally, any man who understands the beauty of watching an eclipse is one sexy, old man and I think it's a shame we just picture him as that guy on the box of oatmeal or the man who stood out in the rain too long in a lightning storm.
Sounds like a storm chaser to me ;)
Keep looking up and at the satellite loops and maybe there is a connection and maybe there isn't ...
Besos Bobbi
"Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise." (another quote from Old Ben)
http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/quote19.htm
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