All Due Respect for Art's Sake

From my earliest days as a short-pants, no romance little kid, I read National Geographic Magazine. 

I could be transported anywhere and everywhere in the world, and beyond, just by opening its pages. I can even recall a spring vacation trip to Washington DC where we visited the National Geographic building. I'm not even sure if it still exists. 

As much as I love the BBC's "Blue Planet" series, NatGeoTV is and will always be my first love when it comes to what I call reality TV. (Real Housewives of the Antarctic, anyone?). No one can do what they can do. And here's what I'm talking about. 

Breathtakingly brilliant!
-bill kenny    

A Thought that Bears Repeating

Happy Earth Day 2024! I would have gotten you a card but I always worry about where it might end up, recycling bin or landfill, and saw no need to take that risk. Anyway. 

In terms of protecting Spaceship Earth, it seems to me that about all we can do is talk about it because if we're looking to the Fed to set the tone it'll be a little like trying to keep the deck chairs from going over the side of the Titanic (but with the even less actual success, I fear).

This is all the planet there is, as near as I can tell (though I've not made an exhaustive study, admittedly) but I have some history, literally with Earth Day observances. I was almost eighteen when I and a contingent of classmates from the Carteret Academy in West Orange, New Jersey, marched down NYC's Fifth Avenue in the first Earth Day celebration in 1970. 

Okay, we'd gotten lost while in The City for the day (a senior trip of sorts, class not citizens). Not quite sure who it was, but someone figured the parade would be a great chance to meet girls. Who cares why we were there! Still.

I thought then and still think if we work to make the place on the planet upon which we stand and live the very best we can, each of us can rescue all of us. So not just today, but every day, when you see something, environmental or otherwise that causes you to say 'Somebody should do something!' please remember you are that somebody. 

Me, I just bear up my bewildered best and some folks even see the bear in me.

-bill kenny  

Deficit of Thousands of Words

I love and overuse expressions like 'a picture is worth a thousand words,' and 'a photograph can last a lifetime.' I have a dear friend since our days together on the banks of the Olde Raritan (and our evenings in places my memory can no longer recall) as well as a Facebook friend who both are gifted photographers and visual artists. 

I am in awe of their expertise and expressiveness and am somewhat chagrined as I grab happy snaps with my cellphone camera as I wander the hills and dales of The Rose of New England. But I do appreciate gorgeous visuals and have been gorging myself on a news release showcasing the winners of the Sony World Photography Awards 2024.    

To see an image before you and then use your time and talent (and whatever equipment you have on hand) to capture it for the world to see, is, if I may say so, a superpower. And deserving of far more and far better words than I could ever create.
-bill kenny

A Quarter of a Century On...

Maybe it's a phenomenon of age and the aging process but I'm always surprised to discover something I think of as 'not that long ago' was, in terms of the time-space continuum, very much long ago.

I've lost track of the number of shootings and ensuing carnage and trauma from mass shootings/gun violence here in the Star-Spangled Land of the Round Doorknobs just for this calendar year and we're only one hundred and ten days into it. How fortunate (sarcasm sold separately) that someone else does keep track, eh? Talk about over-achievers, eh?  

There are so many shootings, and they are so frequent we are perilously close to experiencing a national shortage of thoughts and prayers. Oh dear.

Meanwhile, lost in the churn, on this date in 1999, what we didn't know at the time, was the catalyst to the uncontrollable senseless epidemic of school shootings and violence we are just barely living through to this day, Columbine.

Cassie Bernall, 17; Steven Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matthew Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; William "Dave" Sanders, 47; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; Lauren Townsend, 18, and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

I imagine by now more than one of them might have had kids of their own and would have worried about them the same way their parents worried. To no avail. April 20, 1999.

Don't tell me we 'can't do anything to stop' this when what you mean is 'we won't do anything.' -bill kenny

Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella

At seven-plus decades here on the Big Blue Marble, I am perhaps inordinately proud of having very nearly all my own teeth and hardly any cavities. If you know me even in passing you will realize I have very little else to which I can point with pride, so thank you for letting me have my teeth.  

I have a daily routine to which I adhere, no matter what, no matter where. I floss, then I brush (with my electric toothbrush) my teeth for two minutes with Sensodyne Mint toothpaste (the others taste awful) followed by two minutes with Crest Pro Health Advanced Gum toothpaste (my dentist has advised me I have receding gums that could be in a race with my hairline but I know better than to ask) and then after waiting ten minutes or so, a quick mouthwash dental rinse. 

Actually, I chose the wrong word in the preceding paragraph, I meant ritual rather than routine. Perhaps it's that level of devotion that caused me to recoil when I came across an article reporting on the growing apostasy (at least to me) that toothpaste is unnecessary.

Pshaw! I say and fiddlesticks! Besides, what I'm trying to understand is why it's not called teethpaste.
-bill kenny

Not Unlike Teen Spirit

When I lived in Germany, most motorists had nationality stickers on their vehicles. West Germans co-opted their socialist brethren claiming the "D" for Deutschland, leaving the East Germans to use "DDR", Deutsche Demokratische Republik. 

Poland was "PL", France was "F", and Great Britain (pre-Brexit) was "GB". Switzerland was "SUI" and Austria was "OS" as I recall. My favorite sticker was "NL", often appearing like a murmuration of swallows on the autobahn during the summer holiday periods for The Netherlands, or Holland as so many Americans called it, 

The Germans took the "NL" to mean Nur Limonade, as Dutch drivers were notorious for driving nonstop through Germany, using the high-speed highways to get them to destinations bordering Germany, rarely stopping to eat or to stay overnight, pausing only to purchase a soda, the limonade the "L" referred to before resuming their drive.

The Netherlands is quite lovely. We tend to think of it in the spring as the Tulip Kingdom and Tulip Tourism is certainly a part of the appeal of a stay there but now the fine folks of McDonald's have come up with perhaps another reason to come to call and I can only hope their latest creation doesn't overwhelm the delicate fragrance of the tulips. But I think the tulips may find themselves at a disadvantage. 

Take a deep breath and hold it. Exhale slowly. Repeat as needed.
-bill kenny

Rite of Spring

The Friends of Otis Library Book Sale starts this Friday and I’d like to offer some words about it that I feel bear repeating.

According to a survey I just created children who are raised with books in their homes have 75% fewer misspellings on their visible tattoos. If you had difficulty finding the humor in that sentence, maybe the problem isn't related to tattoos. But if you did smile even wanly, thank a teacher and a librarian.

I and my siblings were fortunate growing up to have a houseful of books, and my wife and I did very much the same in the household in which we raised our two children. Literacy is not a lost art, but in the not-too-distant future when Carmen San Diego finds Waldo, he'll probably be reading a book, about striped shirts but holding it upside down (oh! the humanity!).

In the world today it's not just television, video games, computers, or smartphones that are changing our relationship with the written word, it's the tendency to regard books as a rationed resource or a luxury we feel we can't afford.

That is NOT the case, especially this weekend in Norwich. Starting this Friday, at 9 in the morning with an Early Bird preview hour (ten dollars gets you first crack at some delectables and collectibles), the Friends of Otis Library unlock the basement doors for their Annual Spring Sale.

Aside from that Early Bird business, the entire three days are free and whatever your heart, mind, and eyes desire can be found. All winter long, the Friends have been sorting and organizing for this Bookanalia. Sports, history, biography, gardening (since Spring seems to finally be here), mystery, classics of traditional and modern literature, and categories invented since I started writing this sentence are all sorted, stacked, and shelved throughout the subterranean recesses at bargain basement prices.

Maggy Rudy's Mouse Houses

And it's not just books. There are CDs, DVDs BVDs (I could be making this up, tread lightly) and prices are so low you'll buy twice as much as you planned at a fraction of the cost. On any of the days you stop by the library, and free admission is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday and from noon to 3 on Sunday, you'll learn there are all kinds of free parking downtown, despite what so many people people who never go downtown keep saying.

After your book-buying binge, follow your nose and sate your ravenous hunger and check out one of the restaurants as close to Otis Library as Dewey is to Decimal. You can work up quite an appetite book shopping, a lot of people don't know that; don't be one of them. Because you haven't been downtown in a while you may not have noticed, but we have terrific places for a quick bite or to savor a full meal.

And isn't it strange how many people you'll see on the sidewalks and crosswalks downtown that those no-parking experts insist aren't even there? And if the weather is even close to the spring we feel we are entitled to, it'll be a perfect time to break out one of those purchases and enjoy a sidewalk scene and a coffee. 

Perhaps you'll be inspired to write the next Great American Novel. I believe I know a library where people will enjoy it.
-bill kenny