What Else Do I Have to Say?

The expression says if you wait at the bank of the river long enough, you will see the body of every enemy float past you. I'm reaching an age where that may be true, but I probably would no longer remember them and that's scary as well since those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.

I mentioned to a former colleague one time  that it was the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination to which, somewhat alarmed, he responded 'someone killed her?" 

Welcome to the Feast of Unshared Assumptions-the Holy Father hasn't quite gotten around to recognizing it yet, but it's on his list of projects after he closes that endorsement deal with Trojan.

Actually I'm making up part of the previous paragraph (HINT: not as much after the last conjunction as you'd hope). For people under the age of thirty (which my chum was), a valid question would be who is Lisa Kennedy Montgomery? No, she's not related to Jamie though the argument can be made she is about as annoying. (I love Tori Amos and when the interview concluded I wanted to whack someone with a mallet.)

But I digress-the larger question as someone who will not see seven agai is when did the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy shift from memory to history? It depends on your age, of course, and how empathetic you are to doddering codgers like me who too often use the past to avoid the future.

His death was, for Baby Boomers, the first seance if you will, that we all experienced. 

Everyone to and through a certain age stayed home from school and watched three days of relentless black and white news reels as haggard reporters in their white shirts sat in airless studios attempting to come up with new ways to tell us the US President had been murdered.

By the time we reached the on-camera live from coast to coast killing of the man who was accused of murdering the President, I don't think very many of us were left to do any critical thinking about anything for years afterwards.

A lot of things ended in the days following the murder of John Kennedy, but even more began, to include the world as most of us now know it (I didn't say it was a world many of us liked). The assassination lasted only a moment and took only one life but in the flash of the muzzle fire, everything was swept away and what we are now is heavily colored by what we were when. If you don't get given, you learn to take. And learn we have, and take we do.

-bill kenny

All Quiet on the Western Front

I started the day with some hope I'd be going home but apparently it was the root beer talking.

The nephrologist spoke to the hospitalist who consulted with the physical therapist (all of whom wear different color scrubs to help you out tell them apart, unless you're color blind, then you,'re screwed) and the decision was I am staying until at least Tuesday.

I'm starting to think they're actually talking to my wife who's saying, "Take your time."

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.

-bill kenny

No Sugar Tonight

Or today either, for that matter. 

I'm enjoying medical care up close and personal in my local hospital. When you look out the window in my room, you can see the cemetery. 

But no worries, right?

See you tomorrow. Maybe.

-bill kenny

Bears Repeating

It's not so much 'guess where I'm headed today' as it is 'why aren't you going, too?' Heat of summer or cloudy skies and rain, it's the 60th Rose Arts Festival and it wouldn't be the same without you.

Rose Arts Festival 2025

As the saying goes....

-bill kenny

Take Us to the Land of Milk and Honey

It really is simple.

It's always almost roll credits time for some.
-bill kenny

Two Hands to Help Ourselves

As a cranky, elderly Yank who woke up one morning and realized he was trapped in the body of an old person, I've discovered that my tolerance for well-intentioned stupidity has been exhausted. 

My problem with controlling my urge to smack dopes with a cricket bat is that I live in a target-rich environment and Amazon is all out 'self-control.' It's not just locally; we are a nation of insatiable appetites who still think the world revolves around us, even though few anywhere else on the globe agree with that. 

At some point, as the Evangenitals would have you believe, the Lawd gave us two hands to take as much as we could and two pockets to put it all in. And to do it quickly because around here, he who hesitates is lunch. 

We want things we don't need to impress people we don't like, and think little to nothing about it. Welcome to Amerika 2025. As long as we put a flag on it, it ain't greed, right?
-bill kenny

Private Party

Very much narrow casting today, to (in general) New England, because that's where American History is made, and more specifically to where I live, the Rose of New England, Norwich, Connecticut. 

We, like many towns throughout the region, aren't suffering from Future Shock but, rather, Present Shock. When the textile mills went south, geographically, in the Fifties because of much cheaper labor (and then, in turn, in the New World Order, went overseas for even cheaper labor), we had no Plan B. 

Quite frankly, the manufacturing era is over. America doesn't make things anymore, aside from TikTok videos and MTV. We devalued and disassembled much of our education system to the point that we no longer have the skills or knowledge to apply for work, even if all the factories elsewhere came back here tomorrow.   

Here in Norwich, it means we have a Grand List mostly of residential properties because, despite all the brave talk, we are less than successful in attracting commercial and business enterprises. Oh, don't get me wrong, we're making progress, but not at a rate and pace that slows the annual mill rate increase on my house, which raises my mortgage payments to pay for taxes that fund the continuing crumbling infrastructure of every kind and constraints on public services.

What we do have is lots of old buildings, and by old, I mean the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century. In a perfect world, or even one just up I-395 a few exits, we'd have a plan for economic tourism that would complement intelligent development. The keyword is plan. Instead, we have hope.

I've been driving past this house since the day I moved to Norwich, over thirty-three years ago, and have watched many gallant and enthusiastic attempts to restore this structure. For all their efforts, and with all due respect to the artist's rendering above, this is what we have now.

This is, to me (unfortunately), TYPICAL Norwich. "Ready, Fire!, Aim." Another old building that has been determined to be historic and so must be 'preserved' but with no one else interested in buying it, the City of Norwich did, and now like the Mercantile Exchange, the Wauregan Hotel and the Reid & Hughes Building (to name just three) the city is in the real estate business, again. We were the dog that caught the car. And now what?

We're back to people buzzing about a developer fixing it up (somehow), but for what purpose and to what end? Where is the infrastructure for Norwich to effectively exploit historic tourism? We spend a lot of time talking about and still don't have a coherent or cogent plan to develop one. 

Neither of the two people nominated by their respective parties for the office of Mayor in this November's election has offered any specifics about anything they will do (or try to do) to improve our Grand List and the community's quality of life. Gibberish and generalities shouldn't be any way to run for office, but look nationally and do not be surprised. 

With apologies to Andy Dufresne, while Hope is a good thing, hope is NOT a plan, and what's needed now, perhaps more than at any time since I've lived here, is a plan. And the courage to implement it.
-bill kenny