Ben Franklin and War

Today, I will walk the dog then put on my costume to do volunteer tour guiding at the James and Ann Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield, National Park along the Delaware River. Coincidentally, this week on Monday and Tuesday, pbs showed the Ken Burns Documentary on Ben Franklin, so the Revolutionary War is much on my mind.

Needless to say the horror in Ukraine is with all of us everyday and each time I view the Judy Woodruff pbs News Hour, I end up crying over the suffering of the people in the Ukraine, most recently when a missile was shot at and struck hundreds of refugees, mostly women and children (Oh the children!) trying to flee from the violence. If you have raised a child, or remember being a child, or have children as relatives, you cannot help but have heartbreak at the thought of those frightened and vulnerable little beings getting killed and injured so an insane madman can push forward his criminal scheme to take over someone else's country. Over and over I ask myself why, in this time of history, we don't have more ways to stop insane men from inflicting such pain and destruction on others. There should be some way he could be arrested the same way we arrest a criminal head of a mob family, or the fraudulent head of a company. Our international body must somehow be made stronger to stop these kinds of eruptions in humanity.

Today, get to James and Ann Whitall House I will shadow one of the tour guides giving tours of the house. I am shadowing because I am returning to tour duty after a ten year hiatus that I took after my father died and some of my own health issues arose - a ruptured disk in my spine and knee problems. Anyhow, watching the Ben Franklin documentary helped to get me back into the atmosphere of those times of struggle and suffering. War!

I must say, I do respect and enjoy the Ken Burns style of documentary, the slow build up of detail and commentary into a rich body of biographical material to make some one or some event come to life. Ben Franklin really was such a magnificent and varied human being - so many gifts: diplomacy, scientific inquiry, writing, keeping and building a business, a civic service (the postal service). And he seemed to have a gift for enjoyment as well. And all from a poor uneducated escaped indentured boy. He didn't have a gift for husbandry or fatherhood though, Maybe that was asking too much. Anyhow, he was a great knight for our republic and we owe him honor and remembrance.

By the way, I have come home after my day at the Whitall House during Spring Festival and it was glorious! We had 700 people and what patient, polite, interested and delighful visitors. The families all brought lots of kids (good for the future) and the kids behaved remarkably well! All the people seemed so happy and grateful for all we had to share. It was a wonderful experience for me. I hope it was for them as well. It was free, sunny, a beautiful landscape and altogether and excellent outing for everyone.

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com