Benjamin Franklin

Monday

Bill Kauffman

The controversy of Daylight Savings Time

Batavia, New York I bear no ill will against golfers — I triple-bogey easy holes and miss gimme putts with the worst of them — but President Trump’s demand that we eliminate Daylight Saving Time (DST) is a double eagle out of the blue, especially as Trump had earlier advocated a move to year-round DST. Although Benjamin Franklin is often credited as its progenitor, the real father of Daylight Saving Time, according to Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward, was the golfing British architect William Willett, who deplored “the waste of daylight.” The British Royal Astronomer dismissed Willett’s idea with the counterproposal that “between the months of October and March the thermometer should be put up ten degrees.

daylight

Monday

Alexander Larman

Michael Douglas dazzles in Franklin

In one of his always entertaining books about Hollywood, screenwriter William Goldman offered a candid insight into why one picture he wrote, 1996’s The Ghost and The Darkness, didn’t work. He blamed its failure on the casting of Michael Douglas in a prominent role as a nineteenth-century big game hunter, describing Douglas the epitome of the “flawed, contemporary American male.” Certainly, compared to his peers, Douglas has taken on remarkably few costume drama roles. Instead, he became best known for icy performances in psychosexual thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, in which he played alpha males slowly dismantled by powerful and intellectually superior women, to say nothing of his iconic and deservedly Oscar-winning performance as Gordon “Greed is good!

franklin

Sunday

Elle Gyges

A love letter to Philadelphia

In the run up to the Super Bowl, writers were tripping over themselves trying to capture the essence of the Philadelphia Eagles Fan™. Most of these observations focused on the degenerate behavior of a few diehards after key games, or the nonsensical yet diverse array of superstitious traditions (looking at you, guy who runs into the underground pillars on the Broad Street Line on purpose). Some dug up the old chestnut about Santa Claus getting pelted by snowballs at an Eagles game — ignoring that many of the fans responsible for that misadventure died without ever seeing the Birds win a ring.

Saturday

Matt Purple

American celebrity culture has become exhausting

How was your Super Bowl party? I spent mine investing all my money in crypto and then blowing it on Peacock subscriptions. For once it was the commercials that were the most memorable part of the game — not Matthew Stafford's lightning arm, not even 50 Cent entering the halftime show upside-down like a bat. And that was because every ad was a broadside of celebrities. Not a fan of Bud Light Seltzer? Wait until it's pitched to you by Guy Fieri and a race of Eloi-like doppelgangers (spoiler: you still won't be a fan of Bud Light Seltzer). And how can I not order Uber Eats after watching Gwyneth Paltrow smell her own vagina candle while Trevor Noah eats deodorant? I'm old enough to remember when movie stars starred in movies; now they're hawking Doritos and cheap flights to Istanbul.

celebrity

Thursday

Calla Jones Corner

I’m back for the Almanac

Growing up in Weston, Connecticut I remember well a little pamphlet that hung over the shelf in the garden shed, attached to a nail by a string threaded through its conveniently predrilled hole. The pamphlet was well-worn and covered with my father’s dirty fingerprints as he often consulted it. A new one replaced the old one every year. The cover always had a cameo of Benjamin Franklin, its first publisher. The title was The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and my father swore by it. As did several million other Americans, who wanted to be guided in the ways of gardening, know what to expect weather-wise for the year and find out about new seeds and ways to get better harvests of existing crops.

almanac