Closing the Gate

This is the last summer Sunday of 2025. Back when I was a wee slip of a lad, summers seemed to go on forever. We used to spring out of bed to better get a head start on doing absolutely nothing until late in the afternoon, when, with a little luck, a marathon baseball game would break out on the dirt field up the street from the Girard's house. 

No one kept score, and nobody cared who won or lost. Players would come and go for hours, heading home for dinner or to go shopping with Mom, and then return hours later, sometimes having to be on the other team.

Usually, what we did, depending on how good the player returning really was, he would have to wait to rejoin the game until another player showed up to balance him out. Mid-inning trades were also not unknown. The games went on until the daylight was dying or, more correctly, had died, and then Mr. Girard would back his car out of the carport and turn the headlights on to wash over the field so we could wrap it finally (until tomorrow when it began again).

We did this for years until someone bought the lot and built a house on it. We all hated the people who moved in to live there. And, much later, when the house burned down, I felt a twinge of guilt even though I had nothing to do with what happened-the power of wishing and its consequences, I guess.

As I got older, the summers got shorter, and when our Pat and Mike were smaller, it was fun to watch the cycle begin again with them. We're nearing the 'leaf peeping' that everyone associates with New England weekends in the fall. But for me, it's already too late. 

I hate autumn-I can smell the scent of all things dying even before they actually do, and I'm left with memories of the summer to get me through the winter into the following spring. Enjoy what you have, while you have it.
-bill kenny

An Evergreen...

 ...of a bad joke.

A recession is when you have difficulty finding a job.

A depression is when I do.

Wall Street versus Main Street.
You don't need a dime to call someone who cares; the payphones are all gone.
-bill kenny

Maybe Too Inside Baseball

When I arrived at the American Forces Network Europe Headquarters at Bertramstrasse 6, 6000 Frankfurt am Main, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, as a skeeter wing (Airman with one chevron) in the early autumn of 1976, I had the good fortune of working for a very kind, somewhat eccentric but entirely brilliant former commercial ad executive and US Army band musician, Bob M. 

The latter point is integral to today's tangent. I worked for Bob in Radio Command Information, the in-house production operation responsible for creating the public service announcements (PSAs) instead of commercials that were broadcast on our radio and TV airwaves.      

Many times, one of us on the staff would produce from whole cloth a campaign at the request of one of the plethora of Department of Defense activities we supported. Many other times, Bob would invent the campaign himself, and one of us would supply the voice.

Our audience and client list numbered, I'm guessing, almost fifty years on, into the hundreds of thousands, not counting the local national listeners (whom we knew were out there but we called the 'shadow audience'). There was never a dull moment, no matter how yearned for that might have been. 

Our days were spent, if not happily, then at least dry and warm, cranking out PSA's on everything from shopping in the Stars & Stripes bookstore, through booking a day trip with Information, Tours, & Travel, to seat belt safety and anything/everything in between. 

For me, the most memorable was the annual reunion of (usually US Army officer) graduates of Texas Agriculture and Mining, better known as Texas A & M. Rik Delisle, even then Der alte Ami, and our section leader, was tapped by Bob for what was called 'The Aggie Roundup,' which of course (?) had to include their fight song. To this day, I suspect Rik can hear it in his sleep.   

I thought of all that because of this. And, yeah, Ay Ziggy Zoomba is a close second to the Aggie War Hymn. I know, "today was a long walk," but you had a beautiful view, right?
-bill kenny

Blinders Optional

I wandered down Saturday afternoon from near Chelsea Parade, where we live, to Howard Brown Park for the return of the Taste of Italy. Thanks to the organizers, sponsors, volunteers, vendors, and everyone else who worked so hard to make it all happen. It was a lot of fun, a day where the weather threatened but never delivered, and a delicious experience. 

Its success helps underscore a fundamental point I strive to the point of irritation of others to make: offer people a reason to come to downtown Norwich and they will, because they did on Saturday in droves.

We spend a lot of time in Norwich waiting for 'them' to do something (the something seems to vary from person to person, but is rarely the same across any segment of our population). And then we wonder why it's hard to get anything accomplished. 

Walking from Chelsea Parade down Washington Street towards Brown Park, the litter along the curb runs almost the length of the street. As a matter of fact, almost anywhere you look in Norwich, there's trash at the curb, on the sidewalks and front lawns, or in the streets. 

Some of it happens because when the trash and recycling boxes are emptied and detritus falls on the ground, no one picks it up. We don't need a 'them' to put trash in its place, but if each of us picked up one piece of junk every day, we'd soon have a handle on the litter.

And good luck walking on the sidewalks across from the former Buckingham School all the way to the Sweeney Bridge because they are a nightmare and a safety hazard. All the broken concrete allows weeds and other flora and fauna to grow wild, adding that 'untamed' flavor that urban planners say is so important in modern downtowns these days. 

Actually, there are portions of sidewalk on both sides of Washington that are practically impassable. Berserk bushes, overgrown shrubbery, household garbage, broken glass, discarded fast food containers, dirty diapers, the flotsam and jetsam of life in the 21st Century, strewn like so much junk all across the horizon.

And we don't even see it anymore.
We've become inured to the thousands of discarded cigarette butts near the pedestrian islands across from the Flat Iron building. The next time you're out walking downtown, check them out for yourself. I'm sure they will still be there. 

Squaring away our sidewalks and side streets would take thirty minutes, probably less, out of our week, but we've decided it's not our job to make where we live a better and nicer place to be. We'd rather complain about what we don't have rather than conserve and preserve what we do. Maybe we're afraid we're just not worth the effort. And maybe we're right.

-bill kenny

Like a River Full of Gravity

I wear a lot of T-shirts with a pocket. I don't understand shirts, or any article of outer clothing, that doesn't have pockets (perhaps socks could be the exception). Where else am I to keep all of the fun otherwise?

I have some spiffy sport shirts, and at least one with the guy on the horse, in my wardrobe at the moment. I don't have any of the shirts that feature an alligator, or one with an alligator eating a guy on a horse (I think we'd both remember that one). And while I used to have a lot of rock and roll T-shirts, most of the folks I used to listen to are disbanded or deceased (making me the winner, I think).

I'm not a fan of the 'clever sayings' T-shirts, though I suspect they have a more official-sounding name than that. I find very few of the things folks have on their chest, or lower, and/or back to be thigh-slappingly funny. I see a lot of people of both sexes (or should I say 'of all sexes'?) at the gym in shirts and outfits that really make me feel every day of my seven-plus decades. And one of the reasons I've stopped going.

I recall two guys wandering into the facility while I was cursing the treadmill in the kind of clothes that lead you to believe their households are governed by that 'first one up is best one dressed' rule, and they are late sleepers. On the front of the one guy's black tee shirt in white letters was "Weakness is for Tussies" but with a P instead of a T. On the back was "Balls to the Wall" (without a second S for wall).

The other fellow's shirt back had "Train Like a Maniac," and when he turned around, he had what appeared to be a self-portrait of himself on the front, under his chin. And people wonder why I insist on earpieces and listening to music on my cell phone. I am now so rude that when people speak to me, I NEVER remove the earpieces, but just repeat over and over again, 'I won't hear you, I won't hear you.' Some think I should say can't, but I've chosen that verb deliberately.

I actually do have a shirt with a slogan. I got it years ago, and it's still true. People smile when they read it, though they shouldn't. It says, "I probably don't like you either." In light of how my curmudgeon reputation is spreading, it might be useful to get a shirt with my name and address on one side and 'other side up' to go with it. And then hope all those folks from the Literacy Volunteers keep their funding.
-bill kenny

Brainworms and Billionaires

Congratulations, Bobby Junior. NOW you have my attention. 

Ruining our Health and Human Services with outlandish tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracies and management philosophies borrowed from the Q-Anon playbook. Vaccines for childhood diseases. Tylenol causes  autism (but was developed after autism was first identified). Cutbacks in cancer research. 

When did we make "How Stupid Are You?" into a 'Hold My Beer' contest? 

On every single issue of public health, you manage to come down on the wrong side. Why not let what's left of that worm in your brain have some equal time? It can't be any more stupid and ignorant than you already are. 

As for your lies about 'we were lied to about COVID,' my wife now has COVID. Guess who I'm holding accountable, Scumbag?
-bill kenny

Even the Birds Are Chained to the Sky

We have a forsythia bush in our side yard, near our kitchen, that we planted long ago. It tends to get wildly overgrown in the summer months. My wife is planning to trim it short, back, and sides in the coming weeks. When I'm having my morning coffee during the spring and summer, I can watch sparrows who shelter in it.

I don't know where they nest, and I've never seen sparrow eggs. I have seen their chicks as the parents, probably the mother, I'm guessing, feed them, and I marvel at how insatiable they are. And so confident! They expect to be fed as if it were the most normal thing in nature, and they are. 

This time of year, the leaves on the forsythia turn brown and fall off, leaving more and more bare branches. I watched as a lone sparrow hopped from branch to branch, trying to bury itself in the remaining leaves to little avail.

There's a host of sparrows (I had to look that up) who live in the ivy growing up the outside of the chimney of the house on the other side of the deteriorating brick wall that separates my property from theirs. It, too, is losing its leaves so the birds will need more permanent protection from the elements as the fall gives way, inexorably, to winter.

I don't know if the sparrows 'know' winter is coming or just sense it, so I'm not clear if they can reason their way to realizing spring follows winter. To be honest, some days I'm not sure if I realize it. I know they don't migrate and brave the blasts and snow just like the rest of us. 

I wonder if they know who Bob Dylan is and that he sang of them long ago. Maybe that's why they stick around.
-bill kenny