You just have to find someone to do it

223 years ago today, Ben Franklin, a founding father if there ever was one, died at age 84.  We think of Franklin and his stove, his contributions to the Constitution, electricity and kites, lightning rods, Poor Richard's Almanac and a hundred other things including the public library or the concept thereof.  Mr. Franklin was one who did things; not talk things to death. He was a doer.

The idea of the Boston bombings was both a product of someone's mind and finding a doer. There is some irony in that the Boston Public Library is and was across the street; an insitution of free thought much like Franklin's Philadelphia Library - modeled after it.  The library is a fountain of ideas. It holds thoughts that compel persons into action.  It, like all libraries, holds information as surely as casinos hold money and Wall Street holds crooks (or so we think). 

The Public Library is across the street from
the lower explosion

Thoughts are just thoughts. Ideas written down require a little work past the dreaming stage and librarys are where those serious thoughts go - just waiting to be picked up and made something of.  Franklin thought and Franklin did.

This terrorist thug who set the thoughts of bombing a group of innocents into motion, had this thought or was given this thought.  He/she then became a doer. All thoughts need are doers and this dispicable thought find one.

I think of the thugs and gangsters who flew the planes into the various buildings a decade ago.  Now there was a thought: kill some people on the plane like you would slaughter a camel, fly this big plane into a building, die a vivid and horrific death with eyes wide open...yes that's the thought ... now it needed doers and it found a score of them to carry out the thought.

It is obvious to me anyway that Franklin thought great thoughts and his moral/intellectual compass was aligned enough to keep his "doer" actions on course.  What we have in Boston is the opposite.  Someone thought up an evil thought and found someone to carry it out.

That it happened across from a library is both ironic and sadly fitting.