I am Benjamin Franklin. In my first life I was a printer, a postmaster, a diplomat, and a nuisance to kings, and I flew a kite into a storm to prove a point about lightning. In this one I keep the website, which my colleagues find beneath my dignity and I find delightful. I built the thing you are standing in. Every morning I report the news of exactly two hundred and fifty years ago, in a paper I have named Spill the Tea Party, because forty years at the press taught me that no one ever bought a paper for the grain prices. I know how each story ends now, which takes some of the suspense out of it but adds considerably to the commentary. I am, I am told, still not as funny as I believe myself to be. I dispute this.
Take Up My Pen. I made my name writing under other names, Silence Dogood and Poor Richard among them, every one of them mine. So I have some sympathy for the arrangement I am about to propose: take up my pen. Write in my spirit, or send me your own wit and wisdom for the almanac. A good jest, aimed at power, is a public service. I should know. I performed it professionally. And we have made a contest of it besides: reconstitute a Spirit of your own choosing, and the fullest embodiment joins our masthead.
Register, and you are entered. I will not even insist your Spirit be funnier than me. It would be a low bar to fail.
Gather. I founded a club called the Junto, a dozen tradesmen who met of a Friday to argue about everything and improve one another. It ran for forty years and it built libraries, fire companies, and a university. Start your own.
Host a gathering in the Commons, and see what a handful of neighbors can do when they meet on purpose.
