This staid, stately and reverentially historic city on the Delaware is dedicating this entire year to what can only be called going gooney over Benjamin Franklin.
April 17 is the 200th anniversary of the death of the wise, witty and surpassingly consequential old gentleman, and the city fathers have gleefully seized upon the occasion as the centerpiece for a year-long extravaganza celebrating his remarkable long life and contributions to civilization. Franklin lived to the ripe old age of 84 at a time when life expectancy in the U.S. was, roughly, 40 years.
How extravagant will the celebration be? There will be at least five major festivals during the year, including one-the Electrical Matter Video Arts Festival-which will see a bizarre assemblage of video, audio and other electronic art installations set up in public places all over the city.
How gooney? The civic madness began last week with a Ben`s Birthday Bash at the Benjamin Franklin House celebrating his Jan. 17 natal day with a mass singalong of ”Happy Birthday,” the signing of the world`s largest birthday card and, yes, Betsy Ross and Ben (or facsimiles thereof) jumping out of a giant birthday cake.
This is nothing new. Fifteen years ago, Philadelphia area school children, harkening to Franklin`s aphorism, ”a penny saved is a penny earned,” saved up and donated 80,000 pennies, which were melted down and cast into a 16-foot bust of Ben, which stands at 4th and Arch Streets near his home.
Lest historians tsk-tsk, there will be some august occasions later. April 17-19, for example, Franklin scholars from all over the world will gather for a very cerebral three-day, bicentennial symposium called ”Reappraising Benjamin Franklin.” (Ben was considered one of the most learned men of his century, not only in America but in Europe, too.)
And there will be solemn events as well, including especially a 20,000-strong re-enactment of the great man`s 1790 funeral procession in April.
The Ben Franklin jazz and blues festivals will likely be a little less solemn.
If you`re going to turn an entire city upside down like this, you couldn`t pick a better man to so honor. This entirely self-educated one-time apprentice soap maker from Boston was and is Philadelphia`s First Citizen, and-nudging Gen. Washington aside, a little-probably deserves that accolade as concerns the entire nation.
A signer of the Declaration of Independence (a hanging offense), member of the Continental Congress and a guiding genius of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was one of the chief architects of the peace that successfully concluded the colonies` armed struggle against Britain.
His brilliant and charming diplomacy as minister (ambassador) to France won that country`s support to the American cause and brought about the French intercession that made the American victory possible.
Many accomplishments
Author (”Poor Richard`s Almanac” and numerous essays and books)
publisher (the Pennsylvania Gazette), politician (governor of Pennsylvania), philospher (”The Art of Virtue”), linguist, scholar and scientist
(discoverer of electricity), he was a far more inventive inventor than even Edison or Bell (bifocals, the Franklin stove, the armonica (a glass harmonica), the four-musician music stand, etc.). He never took out a patent on any of his inventions, feeling they should be used to improve the human condition rather than simply gain him personal profit.
He was by far the most interesting of the Founding Fathers-a roguishly charming ladies man who was still making conquests as a bald, old man. He had an illegitimate son, and the son had an illegitimate child as well, who grew up to assist Franklin ably in his diplomatic endeavors.
Ben`s famous letter setting forth advice on acquiring a mistress-”in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones”-will be the centerpiece of the wryly named exhibition ”The All-Embracing Dr. Franklin”
at Philadelphia`s prestigious and delightfully musty Rosenbach Museum and Library 2010 Delancy Pl., Feb. 14-May 27.
It is perhaps apocraphyl that Franklin seriously urged the adoption of the Wild Turkey as the national bird and German as a second official language, but he did propose that the Congress be made a one-house legislature. The idea was rejected, probably because he also suggested that the lawmakers not be paid.
It`ll be a full year
There is not space here-or even in a book the size of the Philadelphia telephone directory-to list all the events and happenings that will comprise the Ben Franklin Bicentennial. Suffice to say that it will be impossible to avoid them.
According to R.C. Staab of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Franklin extravaganza was dreamed up as a logical next step after the success of the city`s recently concluded Bicentennial of the Constitutional Convention (they decided not to wait for the 2006 Tricentennial of Ben`s birth, so seized upon his death, instead).
Thus, unlike the staid Constitutional Convention ceremonial, Ben will be remembered Feb. 16-18 with a jazz festival (one can readily imagine the Modern Jazz Quartet, among others, using the harmonica he invented). Jazz will be heard all over the city literally around the clock over those three days-at three major jazz concerts, at assorted jazz workshops, at ”jazz brunches”
and ”jazz nightcaps” in city hotels and in neighborhood churches.
The blues festival, Aug. 3-5 on Philadelphia`s waterfront, will rattle the cobblestone streets with two days of continuous music from three stages, plus indoor concerts and blues workshops and blues cruises on the river.
Offbeat music
During the Sept. 8-9 Music in Museums event, concerts of a more rarefied sort will be performed at the city`s various cultural institutions and historic sites, with performers ranging from the armonica players to bell choirs to orchestras to something called a ”robot band.”
If not quite a New Orleans, Philadelphia is a city celebrated for its good eats-and not just the cheese steaks made famous in the ”Rocky” films or the soup ladeled out in such copious quantities at the perhaps too legendary
(and tourist trappy) Bookbinders Restaurant.
Thus, March 22-25, ”Eat, Drink and B. Franklin,” (groan) including the city`s sixth annual The Book and the Cook eating marathons, as well as cookbook fairs and cooking demonstrations. More to Franklin`s taste, there will also be pub crawls and tavern debates as well as beer, wine and Madeira tastings.
On April 17, the funeral procession will be re-enacted as part of a 1790 Colonial Festival on the city`s Independence Mall concluding April 22.
That`s a backward look. May 4 to 29, as Franklin always did, Philadelphia will be looking ahead with Ben Looks to the Future and the opening of the Franklin Institute Science Museum`s new $65 million Futures Center.
Hands-on gadgetry
Disney`s EPCOT Center is justly famous, but features mostly buildings, movies and restaurants. The Franklin Institute`s Futures Center, like the Institute`s present museum, will be filled with lots of hands-on gadgetry, button-activated video equipment and user-friendly computers and gizmos.
The new Center will have sections on careers of the future, personal life in the future, visual wonders of the future, space and earth environment, futuristic materials such as computer-designed jewels, energy, computers of the future and health in the future, the latter display including a walk-through human cell (the existing museum is home to a world-famous walk-through human heart).
The Futures Center will also include an outdoor science garden, a Cutting Edge Theater in which scientists will demonstrate their latest experiments and breakthroughs and a curved Omniverse Theater more exciting even than IMAX.
The Institute`s Fels Planetarium already has new computerized projection equipment that can transport audiences into distant galaxies, as well as move close in on neighboring planets.
For some reason, Ben`s Look to the Future will also include a Memorial Day weekend Jambalaya Jam Festival at Penn`s Landing on the Delaware riverfront, which for the last five year`s has become Philadelphia`s way of welcoming the summer.
The city has always loved art, books and history, and these will be a major part of the Franklin celebration.
Original works
In addition to the rather salacious letter on mistresses, the Rosenbach Museum will display an original copy of ”Poor Richard`s Almanac,” a letter
(in French) from Franklin to one of his French ladyfriends and an extraordinary book (also in French) containing the Declaration of
Independence, the constitutions of the original 13 states and other important documents which Franklin had printed to be sent to the 100 most influential men in Europe at the time, including Prussia`s Frederick the Great, patron of Voltaire. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania will have on permanent display 450 objects, including Charles Willson Peale`s memorable portrait of Franklin.
A number of his books, essays and other artifacts will be displayed at the Arthur Ross Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania through May 20, and the massive Free Library of Philadelphia will exhibit children`s books portraying the great man.
The venerable Philadelphia Museum of Art will have a major Franklin exhibition June 3-Sept. 16, including not only the famous Benjamin West painting of Ben but some of his kites and medical experiments.
Franklin, like Washington and other Founding Fathers, was a Mason, and artifacts from his Masonic activities and pursuits will be displayed throughout the year at the Philadelphia Masonic Temple.
On April 4, the Philadelphia Maritime Museum will open a permanent hands- on exhibit illustrating Franklin`s arrival in Philadelphia as a 17-year-old tradesman, and the Franklin Mint, April 17-May 27, will display all manner of two and three dimensional images of Franklin from its remarkable private collection.
June 30-July 8 will be the height of the frenzy. The June 30-July 1 Festival of Firsts will include a mammoth parade and city-wide events commemorating such Philadelphia inventions as the first zoo and the first stock exchange. The July 4 Freedom Festival will be marked with several parades, the requisite fireworks, ceremonies at Independence Hall and, of course, a balloon race.
Maps, brochures, schedules and other data can be obtained from the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, Suite 2020, 1515 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa., 19102; 215-636-1666, 215-636-3300 or 800-321-WKND
(800-321-9563).
No matter when you choose to visit the city during the year, there will be something worth your while. The two ”musts” are the area near the Schuylkill River around Fairmont Park-including the Franklin Institute, the Museum of Art and the Free Library-and the historic Independence Park, centering on Chestnut and 5th Streets on the Delaware River side of town.
Within the park are Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and all of that. Adjacent, on Market Street between 3rd and 4th Streets, is Franklin Court, a re-creation and restoration complex which includes Franklin`s print shop, a post office and book store and the National Park Service`s unique Franklin Museum.
In the latter, you`ll find an array of Ben`s inventions, family portraits (including the illegitimate son and grandson), a bizarre room of mirrors and neon signs intended to illustrate Franklin`s multi-faceted career and a large exhibit hall complete with movie theater and three-dimensional moving display.
Franklin`s house was torn down long ago, but, having acquired data on its dimensions, the Park Service built a full-scale, steel-beam frame to show its outlines. One wishes it hadn`t.
Penn`s Landing is the berth of a number of historic ships, including the cruiser on which Adm. George Dewey said, ”Make fire when ready, Gridley,” in commencing the Battle of Manilla Bay in the Spanish-American War.
Certainly, this has as much to do with Ben as the jazz festival.
The SEPTA public transportation will operate special bus service linking the sides of the city. It will be called, (what else?) the Ben Frankline.
