Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. And right now we are approaching the place in our yearly orbit where we were when Ben Franklin was born. This place is called January 17th. Our annual return to this place is an opportunity to remember Ben Franklin for helping to create our democracy, for being so inventive, and for his skill at riding the waves of natural time.

Even though we have a democratically elected government, we are slaves to our clocks. But Ben Franklin was a free man; he needed no clock to tell him the time. He could see that noon is when the sun is as high in the sky as it ever gets on this day of the year. He could feel the excitement of sunrise - and he could feel slumber gathering him into her arms at sunset. When he thought about time, he thought about the swelling of the river in spring - and the freezing of the river in autumn. To him, time wasn't something to tell; it was something to smell. It was the sweet scent of fruit ripening in the spring - and the putrid stench of this same fruit rotting on the ground in the fall. He understood (and is famous for saying) that, "Fish and visitors stink after three days."

Yes, Franklin knew that time is about cycles, rhythms, waves. He knew that the good life is about good timing - so he published a farmer's almanac. In it the cycles of sun, moon and sky are charted out in tables. Almanacs help us ride the waves of natural time. And when we're doing this, we get more done with less effort. This natural productivity is evident in the long list of Franklin's accomplishments - including the odometer, a cure for scurvy, and the fire department. Yes, he understood that the seeds of our ideas have much in common with the seeds of our peas and carrots: all seeds germinate and root more easily at certain periods than they do at others.

Today we view Ben Franklin's almanac as a quaint antiquity because we are slaves to an image. According to this image, time is an arrow, a line - like a long, straight, factory-assembly line. If this view of time had any validity, then a day in January would be no different than a day in July.

Last month, while leafing through my new Farmer's Almanac, I learned that January 17th is Ben Franklin's birthday. This month, as we actually return to this place in our orbit where Franklin was born, I'm helping him to blow out the 300-plus candles on his birthday cake, knowing that each candle represents another a journey around the sun. Since I'm helping to blow out the candles, I'm also making a wish. I wish that by remembering Franklin we are declaring our independence of an-image-of-time that is draining us of life. I wish that we learn from Ben Franklin how to ride the waves of natural time. Because living in sync with the spinning, orbiting blue-green planet that you live on really does make a world of difference.

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


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