The Infinite Clock

This time today was yesterday when it was already yesterday. This morning in the wee, dark early hours, we fell back an hour (I've always liked how we keep that straight, 'spring ahead' and 'fall back' all across most, though not all of the country.

I've never been clear how much of the rest of the world does this time-travel-but-standing-very-still-stuff, although daylight saving is utilized across significant portions of the Earth's Northern Hemisphere. 

I've always wondered about hourly employees working overnight shifts when the clocks change directions....do they work seven and get paid for eight in the Spring and then work nine and get paid for eight in the fall? 

Is there a law or a workplace practice that covers this, and why on earth is a seventy-three-year-old guy, pecking away at a keyboard in Norwich, Connecticut, worrying about stuff like this? When you have no life, interest in the obscure becomes a crusade.

The reason why we move clocks forward and back is the part I will NEVER understand, no matter how erudite the explanation.  We share the planet with a nearly infinite number of other life forms from single-celled amino acids to a full scale of the abiogenesis catalog (now available for only three easy payments, and if use your credit card right now...), and none of them have watches much less the concern for time and its division and measurement that we, Homo sapiens, have.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day/Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way. And then we look up in surprise and dismay at the time and wonder where it's gone when it hasn't gone anywhere. The end of a television program, a movie, a radio serial, or other entertainment, a relationship with another person, or a business relationship or political alliance.

You don't have to be Richard to have misgivings about time and what we do with it. Merely being human will qualify. 

-bill kenny

Thinking of the Faithfully Departed

When I was very young, and despite your snicker, I actually was young, going through the primary grades of St Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, tomorrow, aside from Good Friday, was the saddest day of the year. 

You may think today is the day after Halloween and you're right, but also you're kind of a pagan. Today is All Saints' Day, and in some circles, a day of solemn celebration, in the liturgical sense. Tomorrow is not so happy; it's All Souls' Day. 

When you're nine and have transferred to 'the Catholic School' from Pine Grove Manor in Franklin Township because there was finally room in the class near the start of the fall for you and Neil, your next door neighbor who is now suddenly promoted to best friend, the more you think about the implications of All Souls' Day, the sadder it gets.

As I've aged (badly) I've developed quarrels with the Catholic Church in which I was raised, but most of that churn is what I've taken to calling middle-level management. With all due respect to the priests, bishops, and even His Holiness, the Pope, I'm not sure how much of the edifice the one true church (as it calls itself when it finds/feels itself under attack) has created since Jesus Christ founded it, Petrus, would pass the 'R U Serious?' test with the Lord.

We're not grading on a curve, either, guys. Wanted to pass that along. But one of the things I still believe, regardless of my exact grid coordinates in the theological hemisphere, is that there can be nothing more tragic than to be forever forgotten. 

As a primary grader on All Souls night, I used to fall asleep trying to remember every single person I had met in my life-a tough enough job when you're nine but when you're seventy-three, it borders on the impossible.

But maybe that's what 'heaven' actually is-the memory of you and your life by another person. Look at history-much of it is a tale told by an---well, never mind who's doing the telling, but pay close attention to who's doing the remembering. 

Is forgotten the opposite of famous? And who prays for the souls of the faithfully departed when no one remains who recalls who they were? When facts fade, faith must suffice.  
-bill kenny

When Something Wicked This Way Comes

It's amazing how a religious devotion, a commemoration, and remembrance, really, evolved into an all-the-candy-you-can-eat-without-barfing exercise all the way to an adult party hearty event. Greetings and salutations, nevertheless. 

There was an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain that some sociologists theorize 19th-century Irish immigrants brought with them, which supposedly helped create our current observance/holiday/day on which to go gluttonous on chocolate. It certainly caught on in the United States, but we are no longer alone. Far from it. 

Halloween is celebrated in about a dozen countries around the world, gladdening the hearts, I'm sure, of candy manufacturers in the days leading up to it as well as the bottom lines of dentists in the days and weeks following it. Alas, poor Linus, I knew him well. We can always console ourselves that Strongbad doesn't do candy, I guess. Did you have Trick or Treat for UNICEF in your neighborhood? Sign of the times now, I fear, I haven't seen or heard about it in years and years.

Remember how our Moms used to go through the goodies, making sure that the apples didn't have unpleasant surprises and throwing away all the unwrapped candy 'just to be safe?' Would it have killed them to pretend the Mary Janes were unwrapped (talk about a dentist delight-it could take fillings out)--a candy that I don't think I even see at any other time of the year except now. And what about candy corn (and I love it, btw)? 

If scientists are correct that cockroaches would survive an atomic war, I believe they would do it munching on candy corn, indestructible, indescribable, often imitated but never duplicated. It was one of the many things I was supposed to surrender once my doctors made me understand that, as an adult, I couldn't be a part-time diabetic. 

As a parent, I can recall that some of the worst weather of the season always seemed to start about two hours before the kids got organized to head out. So I'll keep my fingers crossed for all the goblins tonight. And every child, no matter how young, wanted to trick or treat with her/his friends. Only a baby goes out with a parent. 

So with a heavy heart and a quiet footstep, the trick was to figure out how far back to trail them as they went from house to house, and no matter how many times a child was told 'no running', what happened? Yep. Why was I always surprised when mine paid as much attention to me as I had to my parents? 

And every neighborhood had a trick-or-treater without a bag-usually one of the hyperactive kids from down the street who ate the candy as quickly as he got it. Can you imagine how much magic it was in that house later that same evening? Me neither.

My own children long ago outgrew the doorbell ringing and candy-collecting aspects of the evening, and we don't even play anymore at my house. But the Dream Children and ghosts of ghouls past sometimes encounter one another on my porch when "Open, locks, Whoever knocks!"
-bill kenny

Just Tuning-Up

I know it's early, but Happy Very Nearly Halloween!!

For those who observe.
-bill kenny 

When I Look Out My Window

My fondness for Autumn is tempered by my knowledge of what happens next, not because of anything Autumn, itself, has ever done to or for me. In New England, we pride ourselves on the 'leaf peeping' weekends (which are just about over for this season), where excursions travel throughout the region, oohing and ahhing at the multitude of colors adorning the branches of the deciduous trees as their leaves die.

Sorry. That's what they do, hell, it's what we all do. I'm not planning on taking a dirt nap for a while longer yet, but I'll concede I don't have that color thing going on for me unless grey is the color you're talking about and the only part of me thinning is the hair covering my scalp. 

Industry left New England in the first decade after World War II. We didn't know it at the time, but the Age of Greed triumphed over the Age of Need, and those who owned factories that made things got tired of paying the folks who worked in them a living wage and benefits and shifted everything South by 900 miles and only had to pay a fraction of what their labor costs had been.

Mills that had been in Massachusetts for generations were shuttered as their doppelgangers opened in one of the Carolinas (it all sounds like banjo music to me), and then a generation later, lather, rinse, repeat as the new location is somewhere it takes you ten minutes to find on the map, all in the name of value to shareholders. The business of America is business; don't forget your receipt.

The offshoot in Norwich is there tracts of land, monuments to Mammon, sprawling factories in every corner of the city that have lain fallow for forty years and often longer, slowly disintegrating, releasing toxins into the air and poisons into the earth so that, like the salt Rome plowed into Carthage to kill it, nothing will grow. No neighborhood is immune.

Ruins of Capehart Mill by Lacey Raymond

There's the Capehart, the gun maker in the middle of downtown, and small ruins that ring the approaches to the city-reminders of what once was, once upon a time. But this time of year, in the early morning, hours before dawn, when stepping outside, the stars seem so bright and so near you can touch them, you remember there's no ground light to dissipate their glow or make them seem as far away as they really are. 

It's nearly Halloween and colder than a witch's teat, and you know which way the mercury is heading. Dress warmly and mind the shadows.

-bill kenny

Season to Taste

The calendar says we're hip deep into autumn in New England, and leaf peepers are out on weekends trying to catch that blaze of color across the countryside's woodlands that signals the beginning of the end of this year's cycle of the seasons and warms the hearts of lift operators, bed and breakfast owners and snow plow drivers everywhere in the Northeast-I'm just hoping we're not there yet.

After a mostly cloudy and punky day (I hate to be critical since I'm certainly not very good at creating days, or nights for that matter, but it was pretty crappy outside), the skies darkened almost beyond belief, and then a hard rain fell on the just and the unjust, as well as those just being there. 

And then, as suddenly as the end of the world had started, it stopped, and the clouds parted, and the sun came out. I would wonder if God had Alzheimer's and ADD, but if They didn't, and They really exist, when I stand before the Throne of Judgment, I'll hear ALL about the beginning of this sentence. I'm going to be in enough trouble already, so let's pretend you wondered about it instead, okay?

After the second round of dark skies and rain, it became a quite nice, albeit very short, afternoon, but I could see the lingering clouds as evening reached out to embrace us. I don't mind a biblical visitation of the plagues, if it's absolutely unavoidable, but I'm hoping we start with the frogs. 

After all, they're supposed to taste like chicken, right?

-bill kenny

Cut the Crap!

It has, so far, been a relatively quiet election season in Norwich. I realize we're still transitioning from summer to autumn, so for a lot of people, it hasn't been the right time to think about elections or what comes after them (governance, or attempting it), but it's time to turn to the task at hand.

I have no idea what the format for any future candidates' forum will be if held (the one at NFA could have been better organized), but I'd hope there'll still be opportunities to meet the people who are offering to help out by holding elected office and if not really "get to know them" then perhaps, "get to know them a little bit." And for them to get to know us a little better. 

I used to attend a lot of City Council meetings (and now watch them on public excess television), so my interest in getting to know the candidates is perhaps (selfish and) based, in part, on my understanding of how our political dynamic here works (or doesn't, as I sometimes despair).

If there's a chance to discuss particular topics, I'm very interested in learning more about how the candidates feel about our city budget but what I really will listen for from each person is how he/she envisions working to build our municipal grand list so that my personal property taxes go down (and yours, too, if you live in Norwich, Connectciut). So far, all across social media is a lot of vitriol and vicious comments about others who are running for office. Lots of heat but no light.

I'm tired of office seekers telling me 'Norwich needs economic development.' Newsflash: I already know that. I want people who wish to be the Mayor or Alderpersons to tell me, in detail, how they will grow the Grand List, attract new business, and create additional revenue streams for our city government.

I have a box of cliches at home, under the bed: 'pull together', 'work as a team', 'check our egos at the door', 'work across party lines', so we can skip all of that and cut to the chase.

I'd like to hear the candidates' thoughts on how the Council could be more effective and efficient in the accomplishment of their duties (and come to think of it, maybe they can help me understand what exactly the City Council does, and what they think it should do). But to be honest, I'm not holding my breath as we continue to choose new brooms to sweep old dust and pretend it's progress.

-bill kenny