Is There Life After Breakfast? (Norwich Meetings 16-20 November 2009)

As we head towards Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays, maybe just me but the year seems to feel like it's accelerating. Perhaps because daylight has shifted, the days all seem to be shorter and more jammed with activities. Personal calendars that were already pretty full are now loaded with holiday parties, travel, shopping outings and all kinds of other activities.

It's understandable if you have even less time now for municipal meetings in your town, because it tends to happen here, in my town, Norwich, Connecticut. This week in the Rose City is a great example of 'so many people in the same device' as there are as many different kinds of gatherings as there are people to have them. They're competing for our attention with everything else in our lives, so the burden is on us to choose wisely and well (something we're not always known for as a species; see seersucker jumpsuits and porkchop sideburns as just two examples of what I mean).

This morning at nine is a regular meeting of the Senior Affairs Commission (based on what I understand of their published schedule, it's their last meeting until March). Here's a draft copy of their September meeting minutes (which did mention an October meeting, but I didn't find any posting of October meeting minutes).

If you support regionalization, you should enjoy a double dose of it in the Norwich Business Park, at 5 Connecticut Avenue, as the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, SCCOG, holds an RPC Reference Committee (suspect RPC doesn't stand for really pretty crazy) at 6:30 followed by a Regional Planning Commission meeting at 7:30 this evening.

They seem to be two different meetings for (I assume) two different purposes but I don't have enough familiarity with their functions to grasp the why or how. What I find of more interest, and hope the new City Council will as well, is the mechanism (or lack thereof) for relaying information to the Norwich City Council by its representative at these meetings. A check of the SCCOG website, where minutes are a hit or miss proposition at best, doesn't help me understand the attendance at meetings.

At City Hall, there's a welcome and thank you reception for incoming and outgoing City Council members, beginning at 5:30 in Room 335 (old courtroom) followed by what will be, in all likelihood, the last convening of this City Council at seven.

The Council meeting agenda reflects a variety of issues. The one getting a lot of the ink is the hospital property purchase. I believe in 'have a reason for everything you do'. And try as I might, I can't see the reason for the rush to acquire this property. I've been to meetings of the Hospital Site Development Committee (more than at least three of its members) and you can review the cost benefits analysis on the website and applaud the committee's candid and clear-eyed assessment. To me, we need to think in terms of decades not years or months for development and return on investment. While you're looking at the Council agenda I'd call your attention to item one of the public hearings as well with a new definition of a 'resort'.

Tuesday afternoon at 5:15, in their offices at the Buckingham Memorial, is a regular meeting of the Public Parking Commission (the private parking commission's meetings are by invitation only, I believe). Based on the minutes of their September meeting, I don't understand why we don't consider downtown parking more of an economic development issue than we do (to their credit, it seems the members of the Committee do).

The Norwich Free Academy Board of Trustees meets at 5:30 in Room 6109 0f the Latham Science Center; if you have a child in NFA or your taxes support the tuition of students attending NFA, you have good reasons (and incentives) to pay attention to these meetings as NFA is another example of regionalization and shared benefit.

At six, it's a twofer, The Norwich Public Utilities Board of Commissioners and the Sewer Authority meetings, beginning at six in the NPU building at 16 South Golden Street. The minutes of their 4 November special meeting aren't available from their website or the municipal website.

The Commission on the City Plan meets at seven in the basement conference room of 23 Union Street. There are September meeting minutes, but none for October on the city's website (but there was a meeting to produce an item, report #1, for the City Council's Monday meeting agenda).

Also at seven, is a regular (and investment) meeting of the Personnel and Pension Board, whose members are in need of (re)appointment, at least as detailed on the municipal website and whose efforts, in a turbulent investment market on behalf of city employees, are laudable.

And finally also at seven, is a regular (I think) meeting of the Downtown Neighborhood Revitalization Zone Committee at ArtWorks to Empower. No, I don't know where that is, but I also couldn't find minutes of recent meetings so I may not be the best person to send out as the scout.

Wednesday morning at 8:30 in their offices at 5 Connecticut Avenue in the Norwich Business Park is a regular meeting of the (entire) Southeastern Council Council of Governments. If this helps, September's meeting minutes are posted but NOT October's.

The Rehabilitation Review Committee meets at a quarter to nine in the basement conference room at 23 Union Street. As a review of their October regular meeting minutes suggests, they're also actively engaged in what could be seen as economic development. I point this out because there's been an effort to get arms around all the agencies and activities with a place at the economic development table, and now, during the post-municipal election honeymoon, is as good a time as any to get coordination accomplished.

At nine in the community room of the Dime Bank on Route 82 is a regular meeting of the Norwich School Readiness Council, Children First. A newspaper lists this meeting as being on Thursday, but the city's website says it's Wednesday. That underscores my larger frustration: we use all kinds of information dissemination tools (texts, tweets, facebook postings IM's) for the most varied of pursuits, but cannot successfully deploy them to support public policy initiatives. Here's what's on the CFI website about their meeting. Yeah, nothing. If information is ammunition, we, in the public, are too often unarmed.

The Housing Authority meeting has been cancelled for this month. One of the newspapers lists a meeting at 5:30 in Room 319 at City Hall of the 350th Anniversary Executive Committee, but it's not on the city's website and we observed this anniversary in July.

There's a special meeting at 5:30 in the Norwich Public Schools Central Office, 90 Town Street, of the (Kelly Middle) School Building Committee and at six, in Room 210 of City Hall is a regular meeting of the Norwich Baseball Stadium Authority, whose members' appointments need to be seen to, and who are, I hope, soon going to have good news about a new tenant for Dodd Stadium and the baseball season of 2010.

Thursday afternoon at five is a regular meeting of the Historic District Commission in Room 210 of City Hall and if the city's website is correct it's their first meeting since June. The Norwich Ice Arena Authority meets at six in their facility on the New London Turnpike-there are no meeting minutes posted on line and their appointments expired, or melted might be a better choice of words, two years ago.

And that's an attempt at what's going on in Norwich, mostly after breakfast (to include, where necessary, brunches). Don't bring a cake fork to a knife fight, but always carry a napkin, Virginia, in the event that there really is a free lunch. It'd be a pity to use your sleeve. Put the kettle on, mate.
-bill kenny

Run Straight Down

How do I explain this one? Carefully, I guess. In the course of hopping across the world wired web yesterday I came across a discussion on a 'dis' that may or may not have been administered as part of a comment offered by someone connected with the other evening's telecast of the Country Music Association's annual awards. This has actually NOTHING to do with the awards, the recipients or the respect and/or lack of it that was, or wasn't, offered (not sure that constitutes a full disclaimer, but I hope so).

As is so often the case these days when a service posts a story and invites visitor comment, very close to ZERO monitoring of the comments themselves happens. So after two or three (at most) reader notes that are actually about the original story, all the trolls and gnomes come out and start posting on, in this case, a variety of 'social' sites some of which read like Cougar Country and/or SugarDaddy dot ayup. I'm at an age where I shake my head in as much disbelief as embarrassment when anonymous strangers share way too much about the emotional bankruptcy by which they define themselves. By the time I read the third consecutive troll post, my brains had been thoroughly shaken but not stirred.

That may have been why as I read "...Life is so lonely, I am a gothic (sic). My friends told me about GothicConnecting.Com and ..." my mind started to dry heave. You know I had to copy the url into the web browser and see this one for myself. And it was worth it. Breathtaking-especially the self-congratulatory mention of "the...most effective dating site... for vampire singles in the world!" Talk about a time saver. Vampires only have half as much time, daylight and all that, than the rest of us so I'm sure glad someone's got their back.

I'm getting old when I wonder if this is the brave new world Al Gore envisioned when he invented the Internet back when the last Ice Age was ending. We've engineered ourselves practically out of existence and, as it happens, no one and nothing else on the planet will miss us when the last of us has gone. And some days, I worry that day may be coming sooner than we thought.
"I went walking in the wasted city,
Started thinking about entropy.
Smelled the wind from the ruined river,
Went home to watch TV.
And it's worse when I try to remember,
When I think about then and now .
I'd rather see it on the news at eleven,
Sit back, and watch it run straight down."
-bill kenny

Anecdotes and antidotes

I caught part of a late afternoon clips compilation show yesterday that has convinced me I have got to start watching more NASCAR racing on TV. Considering I don't watch any, some will be a quantum leap and near-massive overdose, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I might even like it. I mean, I have a car, that's half of it right there--and I can make left turns, and...I don't think there is a third thing.

Actually I'm being catty and unkind and you probably didn't bat an eye. One of us has been at this too long and I got here first, pilgrim. I've never watched any form of auto racing, be it the Indianapolis 500 or stock cars or the Grand Prix of Hohokus. It's like pumpkin pie (we had this discussion in my house last night of what to have after Thanksgiving dinner. And when I say 'we', I mean my wife. Lots of talk about lemon meringue and apple pie and one mention of cherry-bet you can guess by whom and bet you can also guess what kind of pie we're having); I've never had pumpkin pie in my life (so far) but I know I won't like it.

And that's what I thought and felt (notice the past tense of the verbs) about auto racing. But then I watched this clip: a guy, in one of those flame retardant suits with a helmet on, fast-walking past a LOT of race cars on a banked turn, all kind of nose to butt stacked behind one another. Obviously he's a driver and equally obviously he's looking for someone and then (I guess) he sees the someone he's looking for in an orange Impala (maybe?) and the fast-walker JUMPS WITH BOTH FEET through the car's windshield and he starts wailing on whoever is behind the wheel and then fast-walks away. The guy in the car climbs out and chases the first guy and they start beating the shifter out of each other.

It was amazing. I love baseball but baseball players fight like gir--well, in light of the soccer player let's use a different comparison, one that you say to yourself, okay? It never crossed my mind that the race car guys would be this passionate, but why not? They're going at ludicrously high rates of speed, risking their lives so there's three, or more, boxcars of adrenaline rush in the general vicinity and large sums of money are involved (I'd love to know what it costs to buy a space on a hot driver's car for whatever it is you're selling). I guess hearts could flutter a bit, all in all.

So to review, you've got money and lots of it; you have prolonged high speeds in very tricked out cars with literally hundreds of thousands of people watching you in the stands (other sports have pauses (innings, quarters, frames) so you can get a soda or hit the bathroom; what's the deal in NASCAR or the 24 Hours at Le Mans?), and I'm the world's most surprised guy that tempers flare. Don't you wonder what's actually in that milk? I saw another video clip of a winning race driver climbing a fence without a ladder. I don't think Federer or Tiger are quite as into that in what they do, at least not with that 2% stuff.
-bill kenny

At least we'll always have Paraskevidekatriaphobia

It's interesting that there are so many more concerns about Friday the 13th in a nation of fifty states, founded from thirteen original colonies than just about anywhere else. From the notion of seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror while crossing the path of a black cat and not throwing salt over your right shoulder, to dozens of local and regional variants, we all know people who, today, are as quiet and immobile as they can, 'just in case...'

And before you or I tsk-tsk those concerns (have you ever actually tsk-tsked anyone or anything? Me neither. It requires a permit in some jurisdictions, and can only be accomplished in the presence of consenting adults. As I recall, your mileage may vary), here's a puzzler, filed under 'Things from England' (with apologies to the late Scott Muni) that suggests if you worry enough about anything, you can, and will, get sick. Like that old saw about how paranoids are convinced people are out to get them and when, because they alter their behavior, people are indeed out to get them, does this mean they are cured?

I, like so many others, tend to visit the snopes.com website for all the latest in debunking junk I see on TV, which means with the resignation of Lou Dobbs from CNN, web traffic has probably slowed to a trickle. That's where I can check out topics ranging from 'the public option will grow hair on your knuckles' to 'Amelia Earhart is Barack Obama's Secret Santa' and just about any combination of either of those we could think of. But Friday the 13th is a slippery slope even for snopes.

So after I've suggested you not step on a crack, or do anything else with it, or have any interaction with a ladder of any kind for any reason, I'd offer, in a half-full glass kind of world, perhaps we're all better off if we consider today as the second coming of Thursday the 12th, only supersized.
-bill kenny

Breeze Blows Leaves of a Musty-Coloured Yellow

One of the downsides to living where there are four seasons is the transition from summer to autumn, especially for the trees and their leaves. I am very much of the 'live and let live' persuasion which translates to the 'lie and let them lay' position on leave gathering. I've noticed this year in my neighborhood, some of us have gathered so many, it's as if we're waiting for them to fall from the trees and nab them on the first bounce. We rake them up and some of us, maybe you have the same kind of neighbors where you live (maybe you are that neighbor where you live) place them in black plastic bags awaiting pickup by the trash folks.

If it happens around here the way I watched it happen yesterday in Waterford (the home of the speedbowl, not the crystal), the dustmen empty the plastic bags into their trucks and discard the bags. Causing me to wonder what the point of the plastic bag was/is. Elsewhere I've seen these VERY large paper bags filled with leaves-in theory because the paper is biodegradable, all of it can go directly into the landfill--or do you think they're headed for incinerators? Around here we have trash to power incineration units though I've no idea how much energy we get from such an operation.

For millions of years, I estimate, we as a species did nothing with the leaves as they fell. You see all that dirt all around us? I have a funny feeling where some of it might have come from and I'm not sure what we're accomplishing by how we're operating now. While I wasn't looking compost has become a lost cause, it seems, perhaps even a dark art. In its place we have created a first class annoyance, the leaf blower. We went from devices that looked like vacuums and picked up fallen leaves and plopped them into bags (do you remember those?) to a gadget that hangs from your hip and can be used to blow leaves that have fallen on your property into someone else's yard or out into the street.

I think leaf blowers are a much more accurate and contemporary symbol of America in the 21st Century than either the Bald Eagle or the Stars & Stripes. There's nothing that says "Wha?!" more than a guy on a Saturday afternoon working a leaf blower wearing dark shades with Ibuds in both ears. And I'd ask him why he's doing what he's doing, but he's as oblivious to me right now as I am to him for the rest of the year. Ahh, Sweet Suburbia. We've got Mother Nature on the run--now what?

"This is my street, and I’m never gonna to leave it,
And I’m always gonna stay here If I live to be ninety-nine,
’Cause all the people I meet, Seem to come from my street.
And I can’t get away, Because it’s calling me, (come on home)
Hear it calling me, (come on home)."
-bill kenny

Veterans Day 2009

For many today is a day off, maybe an opportunity to get a head start on Christmas shopping. Yeah, I know we're in some tough economic times and we have far too many too-big-to-fail business operations, so while I'm reluctant to harsh your einkaufsrausch (no more for me, Herr Ober, I'm buying) I'd remind you today is Veterans Day.

I'd hope you could could spare the time today to find an observance, there are still a few being conducted, honoring some, most and actually ALL of those who've worn the uniform of our Armed Forces just to make note of their choice and of their service. Veterans Day gets confused by some (as happened at the Norwich observance Saturday at Chelsea Parade) with Memorial Day, but from its beginnings as a pause to mark the end of World War I (the war to end all wars-who says The Lord has no sense of humor?) it's much more universal and more all-encompassing.

This is the day, and some years the only day of the entire year (but if you know how self-centered I am that doesn't really surprise you, does it?) when I remember my family's ties to uniforms and inspections. I think about my dad's two brothers, Uncle George (his older brother, whose real name was Michael. No one ever told me why he was called George. George was in the US Army stationed in Germany and went home to California to work for Sparkletts (who bought drinking water in the 1950's? Los Angelenos, that's who) with his braut, Mitzi) and his younger brother, Uncle Jack (who spent almost a career in the USAF before his wife, Alice, died of cancer and he was left to raise their tribe of children by himself).

I recall two of my mother's younger brothers, Uncle Jim (on the US Army CISM swim team. Jim served in the Honor Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He smoked Camel cigarettes that he opened from the bottom of each pack) and Uncle John (who was wounded at Pork Chop Hill during America's nearly-forgotten war, Korea. John should have never been in the Army because he could only see out of one eye. When the doctor administered the vision test, he covered his bad eye with his left hand and read the chart. When the doctor told him to 'change eyes', John switched hands but continued to cover the bad eye). All of them were ordinary men, as were all of those with whom they served, the people who are mentioned in the history books are only possible because of all of those NOT in them. All made extraordinary sacrifices for generations unborn and never to be known by any of them.

There's a small event today, in Norwich, at eleven this morning over in Taftville at the little pocket park near the Knights of Columbus. Dennis told me about it, and extended an invitation. I don't think he'd mind if you came along. Like I said, it's small and with each passing year, observances like this seem to get smaller, which in light of current events and world-wide deployments, I find both confusing and dismaying.

Make your life a prayer, I can recall Father Costello from St Peter's telling us as kids. In that spirit, at least for today, "Say a prayer for the common foot soldier. Spare a thought for his back breaking work. Spare a part for his wife and his children, who burn the fires and who still till the earth."
-bill kenny

What was the Second Best Idea?

I'm minding my own business last night watching television, reveling that House is back because I really like that show (I knew more than one person who suggested, prior to my TKR in March, the show's main character and I shared a personality. I accidentally hit that person with my cane. Fourteen times, according to the arrest warrant) and up popped a commercial for a synthetic motor oil with a character with a Scots accent, who smacks people while shouting 'think with your dipstick, Jimmy!' I dimly remember this spot from much earlier this year-I'd hate to think they brought it back for me.

This commercial is so bad on its best day it could only hope to be stupid and offensive. As it is, I just sat there with a head full of questions, asked nearly as much in sorrow as in anger. The commercial plugs the only oil (the non synthetic variety from back in the day) the Kfz-Meister at Autohaus Winter would allow to be used in the BMW 518 we had in Offenbach.

I'm not sure if I were the only American patron the dealership had but I was the only customer forbidden to buy tools from their parts department because as the mechanic explained to the parts people, 'the gentlemen doesn't know how to work on our cars--or any other cars.'I just assumed the oil was a serious and sober product. Obviously it doesn't mix well with alcohol, at least not at whatever ad agency they were using to come up with commercials.

All I know about the place where my oil is changed in the car I drive now, is that it's not the one the guy with the dipstick is flogging. How many of us know what brand of oil, or what weight, we're putting in the vehicles we drive? I write down the brand of gasoline and the mileage I get from every tankful, every time I put gas in my car, and have no idea what I have from this 'data', if that's what it is.

I think I could be practicing a variant of an out take from Deming's Red Bead Experiment, but I'm not thinking with my dipstick. And if you've been elected to public office, bookmark that url for the Red Bead stuff. We're gonna talk a LOT about that concept in the coming months as newly elected people who wanted to change the world take office and swiftly learn the limits of their new powers, and why 'power' is a pretty stupid word to use. And how ashamed should all of those with opposable thumbs be that there's a Facebook page dedicated to this pap?

Later in the stop set (commercial advertising cluster) there was a thirty-second spot for car insurance that plays the company name off of the notion of a Lizard or Not (as opposed to the Wizard of Oz) involving a temporary employee filling in for the company mascot. That you have to keep your eye on the whole frame and see the full candy dish on the desk helps make the cut in of the now-empty dish as we hear the payoff line, 'aw, he ate all my mints!' really sing. Whatever those ad guys are drinking they should share with the oil guys.

There's two thing I never understood about the oil spot. This is obviously the best idea for a campaign they had-so what did the second best idea look like? Could it have been worse than that Super Bowl TV ad that fired gerbils out a cannon and bounced them off a wall (I could remember what was being sold in that spot, could you?) And secondly, do you think if we had a 105mm howitzer we could jam that Glaswegian bully into it as payback for Jimmy?
-bill kenny