8:08 PM >> Ben Franklin


People always ask if you could have dinner with any dead celeb who would it be. Mine would be Ben Franklin. He'd also be a candidate for the founding father that I'd like to have email correspondence with. If BF blogged I'd be there. He's a really great guy. Somewhat of a trickster. Very funny. Very entertaining. Ben and Kermit the Frog. They are my two. They are the guys I'd have over for dinner and stimulating conversation.

I don't often give toasts but if I am called upon to give one in the near I've been inspired by Ben's writings and would toast a bit of this following bit that Ben wrote while staying at Passy as a US ambassador in France. He wrote a lot of tiny little bits called bagatelles. Here's a bagatelle “On Wine” that he wrote . In French a bagatelle is like a short little piece of music, a ditty. Ben wrote literary bagatelles which were short little bits often with a moral lesson, quip, or humorous slant to them.

Truth is in wine.

NOTE: I drew this picture of BF on a plane over the plain states. It's based on a famous portrait made by Siffred Duplessis in 1978. Duplessis was not in an airplane when he crafted his original portrait.