"Kiss Him! Kiss Him!"

The life-sized bronze "Benjamin Franklin On Campus" (1987) by George Wayne Lundeen probably is photographed 1,000 times a day. It's a very charming sculpture that everyone likes and poses on. He's the founder of the university, reading the Pennsylvania Gazette with a bird perching near him on the bench.

So much for tourism. I was trying to get a reasonably interesting version of the image as a response to Kendall's St. Francis on a bench with giant crows, when some foreign students (Japanese I think) came by and waited for me to finish. Then they all took turns posing with Ben. One young fellow started clowning a bit, and the others yelled for him to give the old sage a kiss. This made blip-grade for me when the girl covered her blushing face. It was charming because I felt sure that this would never occur in the minds of American students. They might horse around with the statue of course, but never in such an innocent way.

Rain has been drenching this already-drenched region and will continue to do so till Saturday. All the rivers have overflowed and terrible damage is happening as I write. Again I'm out of harm's way, but again Nature gives me pause for thought.