I have begun a tear through biographies of the Founding Fathers. Some I have read already, some are new.<\/p>\n
Last year, I read David McCullough’s stupendous achievement, John Adams<\/i>. <\/p>\n
But after Presidents Day, I made up a list – and have been racing on through it.<\/p>\n
— I read a biography of Alexander Hamilton.<\/p>\n
— I re-read the correspondence of John and Abigail Adams. Never fails to take my breath away.<\/p>\n
— I read a biography of Thomas Jefferson (I know – there are so many out there – but I wanted a standard one – not a “let’s re-open the case of Thomas Jefferson” blah blah. I wanted your basic biography without any axes to grind. I found one. Finished that last week.)<\/p>\n
— This week, I started a biography of Ben Franklin. It is called The First American<\/i>. He is blowing me away. How he basically tripped over the discovery of wind-surfing, at, like, the age of 13, because he didn’t want to stop flying his kite while he was swimming. He wanted to be able to do BOTH activities, simultaneously. Right now, he just moved to London for the first time, in the 1720s, on the false promises of some lying governor, who told him he would set him up as a printer in London … It all turned out to be a lie, the governor had no connections in London – but of course Ben Franklin, after struggling a bit, landed on his feet. But now he’s heading back to Philadelphia. I’ll probably talk more about what I’m learning in this biography at a later date.<\/p>\n
After Ben?<\/p>\n
I need to “do” George Washington.<\/p>\n
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