Dialogue between Benjamin Franklin and the Gout

     The Oxford Book of American Essays features works that have expired copyrights. I've been having great fun loading my birthday Kindle with free books. Benjamin Franklin wrote this piece at Midnight, 22 October, 1780.
     He prefers a sedentary life.
     Madame Gout, as he calls it, lists his infractions: ... your amusements, your recreation, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards.  . . . While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition.
     But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your perpetual recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary man, because, instead of accelerating the motion of fluids, the rigid attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions. Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course of living, but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I, the Gout, did not occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or dissipating them?
     If I was in some nook or alley in Paris, deprived of walks, that you played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive conversation; all which you might enjoy by frequenting the walks. But these are rejected for this abominable game of chess.
     Franklin. Oh! ehhh!- It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when I do very often, going out to dine and returning in my carriage.
     Gout. That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given ...
     You can find "the rest of the story" in The Great American Essays.

     And that, dear reader, is a tour of history.

2014 Red Convertible Travel Series

I'd rather be in France 7/7/17

Day break: 20 lb Madchen purrs atop my closed computer. Give her the "fish-eye." Computer still won't forward, reply or compose. Cuss cat and computer.

Let Schatzie in. Refuses dry food. "Eat it. It cleans your teeth, so they don't fall out." Rebuttal meows. Give him tuna.

JB on the couch with a cigarette. Morning news: large company refuses to hire anyone who smokes. Yeah! That doesn't work here. Make him coffee.

Commercial: Lula says donuts and a bucket of Church's Chicken are one remedy for stress. I need a donut. Maybe several. Chicken later.

Clean up body and attitude. Smear face with Origins Active Charcoal Mask to clear pores. Lie down. Compose self. Go deep. Find my center. Ahhh

A comfortable 73 degrees. Dewy in and out: typical semi-tropical Southern morning. No mosquitoes . . . yet. No need to move fast. Swerve to miss street lump: lost pillow. Muster gratitude we aren't flooded and it isn't snowing.

Donut Shop on #61: Raspberry filled for JB, chocolate filled for me, and a short Cappuccino.

Retrace route. Donut fragrance tickles nose and taste buds. Tempted to pull over and eat both. Spot tall, shaded tomatoes in a garden. Market hopefuls. Temperature rose three degrees, headed to high nineties with Ozone warning.

Give Johnny his donut. Nibble and sip at my French table by the kitchen window. Open plantation blinds a sliver. Filtered sunlight decorates and dances on my table. Parisian sidewalk cafe, sans swooping-in purse snatchers. Ah, accordion music, and a Citron horn, "Get out of my way!" A French girl giving the waiter "Merci!" for a bottle of water. This is the life.

Stroll along the Seine. Sidestep doggy-do. Artists out early for the light. Appreciate their work. Tell them so. Love French Berets. Ride the subway to the Louvre. Underground wall art, is art, not graffiti. Spending the day at the Louvre.

Along The Champs-Elysee: Catch a hint of rose in an exotic combination. Stick my wrist out for a sample. Clerk replies, "Chanel No. 9, of course." To die for.

8 am CST. Begin work sans jet lag. Try to write complete sentences. Take a short stroll through Monet's Garden at Giverny first: "It's my "happiest place on earth." Feeling inspired.

Write a few.

Mid-morning break. Read a little of Janet Evanovich's "Smokin' Seventeen." Stephanie Plum, I can't make up my mind whether it should be you and Morelli, or you and Ranger.

Get serious. Write!

©2017 Red Convertible Travel Series

Around the World on a Bowl of Stew

It's snowing out. Three to four inches expected. Dunking La Brea Pane Toscano in my homemade stewed tomato, cod and shrimp stew, I looked around my kitchen, the extent of my travels for the moment.

Framed hundred-year-old colored magazine prints from Hay-on-Wye, Wales, feature chickens. A pair of black and whites with hats hang opposite a pair of black and whites with feathered feet. I can hear the hen's gentle voice calling her chicks and the rooster's bellowing crow over his proud family.

The print of an outdoor Paris flower market at the end of the table fills my mind with scents of lillies and daises. I want to sit at the umbrella table, sip coffee and eat chocolate filled croissants - several. The horse drawing the buggy leaves its own aroma. The pigeons are drawn to the beauty and possibility of crumbs.

My Nantucket switchplate lookes like scrimshaw on whale bone. I think it's plastic. The whaling ship is standing still or I might get seasick just looking at it.

Three two-inch square Dutch tiles display windmills, a small sailing boat, typical miniature houses, marshes and water in shades of blue. The sky is musty grey. Nothing dries outside. We collapsed a clothesline trying. I appreciate the contribution the Dutch have made to the world through flowers.

There's a card on the table with Mississippi cardinals. Brandi says when you see a cardinal, make a secret wish.

I met Mae from Ireland in London at Harrod's fresh fish display. We marveled at the fresh fish nailed up in a sunburst pattern. She crocheted the tea cozy and sent it.

There's a miniature Mexican coastline mural on the wall complete with parasail reminding me of winter vacations spent in swim suit and caftan, cliff divers, table dancers, silver jewelry, too much fresh fruit, grilled seafood and lazy days. Aaaaaahhhhh.

The French espresso cups remind me of Paris - again. At every turn I found a warehouse of information. It was like coming home.

There's a Chinese calendar on the wall. I have yet to walk the Great Wall.

I lift my cup of Chai tea to travels of the past and those to come.

copyright 2008 Red Convertible Travel Series