1/19/2004 04:22:20 PM|||Amy|||Last night I tried to trim Monkey's bangs. Sweet, impish Monkey. She now looks like she has a modified mullett.

Bear and I spent some time yesterday looking up information about Benjamin Franklin on the internet. It's an interesting thing about Ben Franklin. He had a son out of wedlock. The mother was never named, but some people think the mother was actually Ben Franklin's wife, who if it was her, he would have married after she became pregnant. That son, who shares Bear's name, went on to support England during the Revolutionary War. This, as you can imagine, created a huge divide between son and father.

Another thing I realized about Ben Franklin, and this is kind of silly, but he looks nothing in his portraits the way he is portrayed on television. In commercials, movies, 1776 (the film version of the musical, one of my favorite movies) he is made to look like a kindly, portly man imbued with great wisdom... In his portraits he looks kind of scary, sort of like a redneck with a grudge - if you can imagine what I mean. I can't think of the right words to describe what I mean. Anyway, I think Benjamin Franklin was a truly great man, perhaps one of this country's best.

I hope Bear continues to be interested in the presidents, and planets and the other things which are interesting him as off shoots of these two things. Yesterday he asked me if he could go up into the stars and take pictures of the planets when he grows up. I told him that he is entirely capable of doing that and anything else which he strives to do. And so he is. Maybe he will become an astronaut or a scientist or a great politician. I just hope he never feels that he is only capable of doing what needs to be done in order to make it from one day to the next.|||107455094018095831|||Monkey and Bear Report