So Many Questions....

It's a reflection of her curiosity and her calculation. My wife has a lethal set-up for getting what she wants merely by asking for it. It makes no difference if you and she have met just for the first time in this life or if you've known her for all the years I've made her know me. 

Simple, direct, seemingly without artifice (but with much deliberation and delivery), she opens her eyes just a little wider, tilting her head slightly to her left as she leans forward and offers with a soft Hessicher dialekt, 'I haf a kwestion.'

At least, that's what it sounds like to me. And she always gets an answer and assistance-from the hardware store guy, the shelf-stocker in the refrigerator case at the market, or from one of the swarm of white-coated jargon-spewing health care professionals she fences with on the phone as part of her one woman crusade to understand and overcome the complexities and contradictions of the American health care industry.

She raised two children to adulthood for the most part in a culture and society thousands of miles from where she, herself, had been raised, with the barest of assistance from a man whose heroes, he told her the night they met, were Peter Pan and Yossarian. She heard me clearly but decided to not make an issue of it.

Forty-eight years ago today I asked her to marry me. Both Pete and Yo-Yo would be pleased. She and I find it difficult to believe that it's been that length of time. I still can't believe she said yes. She says 'it feels longer'. I'm thinking that's because the Germans use the metric system. At least, that's why I'm hoping she says that.

My recollection is, after her assent, I asked her if she was sure. Which, come to think of it, sounds exactly like something I'd say. As has happened so often ever since, she assures my recollection is entirely inaccurate. Wie du meinst my dear.

I do remember promising her a marvelous adventure with large amounts of laughter and, I believe, elaborately big dance numbers with Busby Berkley choreography. I may have oversold, ever so slightly, the upside of the matrimonial state with me, but she's never complained at how the movie's turned out, even now when we're closer to the last reel and the closing credits than the previews.

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. Another reason why I love her; she's experienced all of me there is and still loves me. Yay!

-bill kenny

Time to Care if You Dare

I realize I sound a lot like one of those curmudgeons who complains about all 'those punks on my lawn,' but that's only because I am. 

I can remember in past decades when annual City Council hearings on the school's budget requests were shifted to a middle school gymnasium because so many people wanted to attend, and you'd have thought the governor was speaking.

Those days are over, and, not surprisingly, no one is expecting them to return. The expression 'think globally, act locally' works only if we are willing to act and accept the responsibilities of our actions locally. Let's face it, when we look to Hartford and Washington D.C., there's a lot more confrontation and much less collaboration on almost every issue we can imagine.

At the state and federal level, the attitude has become 'for me to look good, you (the other side) need to look bad', always forgetting the dangerous part of the phrase 'zero-sum' is the former. 

To acknowledge we can't afford to continue to do business in Norwich the way we always have is a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but based absence of encouragement or even feigned interest for so many issues ranging from the City's Plan of Conservation and Development, through suggestions on improving the downtown revitalization programs to department work-ups on the annual budget, we have to do better at owning our future.

We must accept the realization that we are the ones who make the final choices on our future and the paths we walk to get there. These are our children, our downtown, our neighborhoods, with our businesses, schools, police, streets and sidewalks (and the thousands of other moving parts that make Norwich, Norwich). 

No one else will care about any of this the way we should. We must stop waiting for someone to step up and, instead, become the someone who does. 
-bill kenny

Thanks for the Pranks

Today, April Fool's is observed around the world and has been with us for the better part of a millennium (Falcon by Ford; to say nothing of Harrison). The origins stretch back to the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, and Canterbury Tales. 

Based on headlines across the globe this week, we've been practicing for today, except no one was aware we were supposed to only be practicing. On every page in every paper and on every screen that flickers are stories that it's reasonable to assume are simply made up, except they aren't. 

It feels like a nightmare at times, from which we should awaken and ask how we are here instead of why. We're even more lost because "if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." And to some extent, that's become the modus operandi. 

Years ago, I abandoned the phrase 'that's the most f*cking stupid thing I've ever heard' because I was saying/thinking it practically non-stop. Today, you can stand the world on its head, and by tomorrow, no one will remember because nothing you did today will seem out of place in a vulgar and venal vale of perdition. 

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. Except now.

-bill kenny

For Pete's Sake

It wasn't a 'hoax,' or a 'nothing-burger, or a 'no big deal.' 

It was a security violation, an exercise in arrogance from people who were/are manifestly unqualified-for-their-positions they hold. The most disquieting aspect of all of this for me is how much and quickly this has become just another day in the Trump White House. 

There are lots of opinions on the WiskiLeaks Houthi Small Group Signal Chat and Cat Rodeo. Most of them are badly mis and uninformed.

As someone who worked in and for the Department of Defense for over forty-three years, we have some serious issues to confront as a nation, and quickly.

IYKYK

SUBJECT: Unauthorized Disclosure by Pete Hegseth via Signal Chat

DATE OF ASSESSMENT: March 26, 2025

REFERENCE GUIDE:

 • Department of Defense Manual 5200.01 Volume 1 (DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1): Outlines protection of classified operational information.

 • 18 U.S. Code § 798: Criminalizes unauthorized disclosure of classified information related to national defense and intelligence activities.

 1. CLASSIFICATION VIOLATIONS ANALYSIS:

A. Hegseth Text: “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(a): “Information shall be classified if it pertains to military plans, weapons systems, or operations.”

Explanation: Mentioning the precise confirmation by CENTCOM directly exposes real-time military decision-making processes. This disclosure significantly compromises the security of operational timing, enabling adversaries to anticipate and counter U.S. military actions.

B. Hegseth Text: “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”

Violation Reference: DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, Enclosure 3: “Specific timelines of military operational deployment and weapon system engagement are classified to protect operational effectiveness.”

Explanation: Mentioning F-18s explicitly reveals precise aircraft types and exact launch schedules, thereby providing adversaries essential information needed to prepare defenses or evade U.S. military strikes, critically undermining operational security.

C. Hegseth Text: “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s))”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(c): “Information related to intelligence activities, intelligence sources, or methods must be protected from unauthorized disclosure.”

Explanation: Revealing specific details about the target’s known location and mentioning the deployment of MQ-9 strike drones exposes critical intelligence gathering and targeting methods. This jeopardizes sensitive intelligence capabilities and sources.

D. Hegseth Text: “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”

Violation Reference: DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, Enclosure 3: “Detailed operational sequences including specific timing for follow-up military actions are considered classified.”

Explanation: Mentioning additional F-18 strike packages and their precise launch times discloses classified tactical sequences, providing adversaries with clear operational patterns that can be exploited strategically to counter or mitigate U.S. strikes.

E. Hegseth Text: “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(g): “Classify information revealing vulnerabilities or specific capabilities of military systems, installations, or infrastructures.”

Explanation: Disclosing the exact moment when drone bombs will definitely drop explicitly reveals critical operational capabilities, timelines, and vulnerabilities, enabling adversaries to prepare countermeasures and potentially neutralize strike effectiveness.

F. Hegseth Text: “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”

Violation Reference: DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, Enclosure 3: “Deployment details of strategic weapon systems, including cruise missiles, are classified.”

Explanation: Announcing the precise timing and use of strategic Tomahawk missiles from sea-based platforms explicitly reveals classified strategic assets and operational timelines. Such information significantly undermines mission security and operational surprise.

G. Hegseth Text: “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(a): “Military plans, operational schedules, and subsequent actions are classified.”

Explanation: Mentioning the existence of additional classified operational details explicitly acknowledges further strategic planning. This information allows adversaries to anticipate further classified activities, thereby enhancing their defensive posture.

H. Hegseth Text: “We are currently clean on OPSEC”

Explanation: This statement falsely claims compliance with operational security despite evident breaches, indicating either misunderstanding or intentional misrepresentation of actual security posture.

I. Hegseth Text: “Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Explanation: Non-sensitive statement expressing support; no violation.

 2. CONCLUSION AND DETAILED ARGUMENT:

The detailed disclosure by Pete Hegseth constitutes classified war plans due to explicit revelations of operational timings, aircraft types, targeting intelligence, weapon system deployments, and strategic sequencing. Each element directly aligns with categories protected by EO 13526 and DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, designed specifically to prevent enemy anticipation and operational compromise. The comprehensive nature of these disclosures significantly threatens mission integrity, operational surprise, and national security.

 3. RECOMMENDATIONS:

Immediate investigation, comprehensive training, and potential legal accountability should be pursued under the guidelines of EO 13526, DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, and 18 U.S. Code § 798.
-bill kenny

Tuning Up.....

We are about to enter everyone's least favorite time of the year (and NOT coincidentally why we elect a City Council every two years): the creation of the City of Norwich Annual Budget. The only numbers higher than the ones in any proposed budget usually are the blood pressure readings of so many of our residents and homeowners when they see the budget's impact on their property taxes.

For years I attended all the Department hearings that are scheduled so that the City Council members have some idea as to what tax dollars buy and what they are worth in terms of goods and services. 

Far too often, I was one of about four folks who showed up in chambers to watch the presentations to the Council. Now, I can view them all from the comfort of my own home via the city's website. Here's the schedule for this year's and they're starting sooner than you might think.   

However, and I know this because I've watched this movie FOR DECADES, no one pays any attention to the presentations that the City Manager, Mayor, and City Council use to develop a budget. Instead, they wait until the first public hearing on the proposed budget and howl loud and long, making up in volume for what they lack in knowledge and understanding.

Maybe, just maybe, I can persuade you to try something a little different this time around? Here goes: Not a cheat sheet, not a magic wand, but a serious read that will help make you better informed as a shareholder in this 160-million-dollar enterprise we call Norwich.

Get comfortable with Sustainability, Flexibility, and Vulnerability.
Without understanding the relationship of all three to one another, all we're going to do again this budget season is 'stab it with our steely knives but we just can't kill the beast.'  Are you ready? Here goes nothing, or hopefully, something.
-bill kenny

 

When It Comes to Blame

One of my favorite expressions is "He who abandons a sinking ship that doesn't sink, needs to be a very good swimmer." Or, at least, look presentable in a pair of Speed-O's and a bathing cap. 

I'm also fond of citing The Six Phases of a Project: Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Panic, Search for the Guilty, Punishment of the Innocent, and Award/Honors for the Non-Participants. We use this model of dynamic interaction every day in our interpersonal relationships (how quickly do couples go from 'we're thrilled we're having a baby' to 's/he forced me into this child' all the way to how the child, once born, is treated within the family).

Whatever we do for a living and wherever we do it, the same pattern holds true. We all cheered Digby when he volunteered to lead the team that would turn peanut oil into jet fuel, but once it was demonstrated that it absolutely, positively couldn't be done, all we could do was shake our heads and roll our eyes when Digby's name was mentioned ('I coulda told ya...').

Look to our nation's capital if you want to see a collection of people dedicated to the proposition that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people should go chase itself, Lincoln be damned. 

But, if you watch only one minute of C-Span it'll prove my point, all of them are so publicly polite to one another while privately being disagreeable in the most egregious way imaginable. Thank goodness for The Loyal Opposition and My Distinguished Opponent. Who else would we, currently in charge, blame for all manners of awfulness and illness if we didn't have The Other Guys and Gals?

All, or nearly all, of the 'issues' and 'hot buttons' that have driven our national discourse over the last decade and longer, are still with us like Banquo's Ghost and have actually gained a few pounds and some fellow travelers. We have more wars, less money, more anger, and fewer reasons to be hopeful (to say nothing of frying cheaper eggs) than at any point in my almost seventy-three years here on The Big Blue Marble (I'm not suggesting cause and effect).

I'm sad and more than a little angry not so much that we seem to have lost our way (an unoriginal thought we've often had throughout our history as a nation), but that we're not inclined to want to find our way back to who we are. We've decided, it seems to me, to settle instead of to continue to strive to succeed. It's as if we got to the Mississippi and said to one another, 'y'know, California and The West are fine ideas, but who really needs 'em?'

We don't even hear the cognitive dissonance as the gap between what we say and what we do grows wider. Vox Populi has been replaced with STFU and e pluribus unum is now rendered as nolo contendere and is usually part of a plea bargain for time served coupled with a weepy-eyed televised apology where we 'accept 'full responsibility' whatever the f*ck that means.

If our children ever find out what we allowed to their dreams, they'll murder us in our beds and they'll be right but everything will still be wrong. You can break things only so often and only so badly before they cannot be made whole again. We may be nearing that moment, Armageddon, End Times, Oops!, whatever it's to be called.

But cheer up! We won't have to worry about what the day after that is called because we will not be here to experience it. Instead, we'll blame somebody (just not ourselves) because that's how we're wired.
-bill kenny

That Familiar Feeling

We're fond of history around here and preparations are already underway by the Norwich Historical Society, to celebrate and commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the Founding of the United States, but I think we're at risk of allowing who we once were to prevent us from becoming who we need to be. 

I've lived here in Norwich for over three decades ('feels a LOT longer,' say many of my neighbors), which, for many people I meet, is no more than an eye blink, or so it seems. I've heard a lot of those 'back in the day' stories about Franklin Square, the sea captains who built houses on Laurel Hill, the Sears and Roebuck store that was downtown, and Thursday nights so hectic in the center of The Rose City that small children clung tightly to a parent's hand lest they find themselves in the street and lost in the throng.

These stories, if you will, always have a sepia tinge to them, at least to me, and a soft focus in terms of detail. They make me smile because they always bring a smile to the face of the person telling me the tale. And then, of course, we end up in the present day and no one seems to know what happened, how, or why to Norwich. 

Apparently, people woke up, and downtown was a ghost town; the stores were all gone and so, too, were the people who shopped in them. Might I suggest that evolution and growth involve progress and planning; one of which is relentless and inexorable and the other conspicuous in its absence.

My Norwich history starts (and stays) a little more black and white, with extreme contrast and hard shadows, coming over the Laurel Hill Bridge into a downtown with plywood for windows and not a soul on the sidewalks in the middle of October of 1991. 

That was the year of the petition drives at the local supermarkets to 'Keep the Boat Afloat' as Electric Boat faced massive layoffs after the Seawolf submarine construction cutbacks. The same region that had no plan for the post-World War II migration of the textile mills to the Deep South had no clue what to do with the Peace Dividend either. 

And three-plus-decades later, what are we still discussing? The same old, same old.
We all realize, or should, that Eisenhower isn't still the President and that your father's advice about never paying more than $15,000 for a house without a basement won't even get you a good used car but we're hobbled by our past, even when we weren't here to live it or remember it. Instead of it being a step on the ladder to tomorrow, it's a hurdle on the steeple chase we've made of our lives.

Experience is what we get when we don't get what we want. By now, in terms of rebuilding and redeveloping Norwich, we should have all the experience anyone could ever need but we still dally and refuse to take the situation in which we find ourselves (and which we created) seriously. We think offering excuses and playing the blame game is some kind of a solution. Nope, not even close

Let's be honest with ourselves: Like (too) many of our neighbors, Norwich doesn't suffer from Future Shock. We are smothered by Present Shock and the fear of taking action and owning the consequences of that action. Maybe tomorrow will be better we sigh. Unless and until it's not, then still we sit and wait because if we do nothing, we can't do anything wrong. 

Nothing ever happens if we don't make it happen. Silence is NOT agreement and we've been too quiet for too long.

-bill kenny