Picket Lines and Picket Signs

We had a grey day in this neck of the woods and wilds of Southeastern Connecticut on Saturday, with a chill wind and unkind drizzle, but that didn't keep residents and neighbors from near and far gathering to push back on the Broligarchy that's dismantling much of everything the United States and its government has stood for since the end of World War II. Too many of us seem to have forgotten that silence equals consent. 

Time for some new math. 1 + 1 = a good start, and when you find something to believe in, it's easier to believe in yourself. People turned out globally and locally, and, cynical, old curmudgeon that I am, I have no idea where this is going, but from what I saw and felt on Saturday, no one is going away anytime soon.

Around the corner from my house.

However, for those who only now are getting engaged because your grocery prices haven't gone down, cheap gasoline isn't flowing like honey in the Promised Land or your 401K collapsed but who were unmoved at the calculated cruelty to those seeking a better life on these shores, to people of color, veterans, women, those juggling multiple jobs to survive in the richest nation on earth and those of a gender orientation or identification different from what you would like, welcome but it shouldn't have to HAPPEN to you for it to MATTER to you.
-bill kenny 

S*it Gets Real

The Norwich City Manager presents his proposed budget tonight in City Council chambers at 7:30 in City Hall. Here, again, is the tentative schedule of public hearings and department presentations, all of which will be carried on the City of Norwich website.

I suspect some of us will feel the gorge rising long before tonight's presentation is even close to ending, and as righteous as that indignation and anger may feel, this is what I strongly suggest everyone who has skin in the game in Norwich watch BEFORE authoring comments on the daily nespapers' coverage of the evening, or on any of the innumerable social media platforms we seem to rely on for all of our news and information because those with the training and education are now deemed to be 'fake news.' 

And who says ignorance isn't bliss?  

Instead of putting the 'No' in Norwich at budget time as we always do, let's do better, or at least try.
-bill kenny

A Marsupial from Memory

Found this on a shelf in the cupboard from a very long time ago. Things were weird back then, so I'm perplexed that I am now surprised they're even weirder. 

I'm thinking maybe our English cousins celebrate April Fool's Day a bit longer (and more intensely) than we do on this side of the pond. Or not. You be the judge: submitted for your inspection, "Woman Suffering from Depression to have 'Therapy Pet' Kangaroo Taken Away." 

I realize that in many applications of tough love programs to combat substance abuse, there are animal-based figures of speech, such as cold turkey or get the monkey off your back. And if one fails to get or to stay clean, you've screwed the pooch. 

I don't grasp exactly what therapy pet kangaroo taken away might be as code, and I didn't want to be L7, so I checked in urban dictionary. No joy. The notion that this is an actual, legitimate story from the same people whose language so many of us speak and whose royalty fascinates us (though not enough to emulate George Bernard Shaw or even Robert (I always thought it was a good sized boat) should provide food for thought but I'm more of a dessert tray guy myself.

The old 'what did you say?' story about how the kangaroo got its name has been pretty much been put to bed, which is certainly more than can be said for Irwin, the subject of our newspaper article, leaving me to wonder if somewhere Rolf Harris is smiling or grimacing. From a distance they look very much the same.

-bill kenny

If Dreams Were Thunder

For me, this is the roughest time of the year. The calendar says Spring is here, and when you look outside, you're inclined to agree. Except more often than not, it's brisker and crisper than we'd like, and the breeze is more of a shriek than a whisper.

Major League Baseball 2025 edition has already started in a season that will, as has been the case in recent years, end in November, which is way too long for anything other than a fantasy involving cooking oil, satin sheets and a lady named, well, I'm not allowed to detail any more of that in this space today (or any other).

I love baseball, though I have close to no idea what kind of a Grapefruit League season "my" New York Yankees had, and because the games don't count, I don't either. I've rooted for them most of my life, with a brief interlude elsewhere as I was entering double digits when Joan Payson owned the New York Metropolitans.

I still root for Mr. Met for many of the reasons as first chronicled in Jimmy Breslin's masterpiece, Can't Anybody Here Play this Game? The latest version is a much better team, and its loyal fans should be proud of them.

But that's not really important. What is important, I believe, on MLB's Opening Day, is everyone's team, whoever they are, starts the season in first place. Every pitcher's earned run average is a Hall of Fame worthy 0.00, and you can't help but believe 'this is the year.' All of us know that no one wins the World Series on Opening Day, but, conversely, no one can lose it. And that's as it should be.

The season is still in its infancy, and more so than in recent memory, we need all the optimism and enthusiasm we can gather from whatever sources for as long as we can keep it. 

Opening Day has whetted our appetites for the months ahead. We get from Point A to Point B in a variety of ways but in the same number of days. Whether we live them in hope or in dread is a choice we make and then must own. 

-bill kenny

Show of Hands

Forgive me if I channel my inner Martin Niemöller and then compound that by encouraging you to find yours. With apologies to Thomas Paine, these are times to try any person's soul. 

If you had turned off the news since the November election (my hand is up), you might not have realized the Greedheads are stripping our US of A and selling it off for parts.

It has to stop. Now's as good a time as any. 

Think globally and act locally.
Norwich is doing both, and you can do it, too; just look around.

So much for compromise solutions, summer soldiers, and sunshine patriots.
-bill kenny

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