Born Again Hooligans

I'm not even sure what the title means-it just popped into my head. And if you're wondering where this is heading today, join the club. I'm not sure I'll know when I've reached the end.

Was intrigued in one local newspaper by a report on who is held responsible for underage drinking in CT and how much (or little) pain is inflicted on those charged. I've never seen this as a 'grey area'-to me, it's very binary. You are over 21 (1) or you're not (0). Don't really understand the niceties of arguments like 'he/she was serving alcohol at a private party on private property'. Okay-if I kill someone in the privacy of my basement can I tell law enforcement folks to bugger off because it's my house? I know-oversimplification, but not by much and not for a real reason. More distinction without difference which is something we love in this culture. When we remember to think about differences and distinctions at all. Speaking of remembering....

Earlier in the week, in another newspaper, was a report (actually it was history as it had happened weeks earlier) of yet another store closing and leaving the Norwichtown Mall. Interestingly, the mall's website, perhaps presciently, lists another business as no longer being in the Norwichtown Mall (actually a Chinese restaurant). It has to be truly AWFUL economically for a Chinese restaurant to shutter its doors. Admittedly, the walk-in traffic by Werewolves of London is down, extremely, in a sad, old-fashioned place like the Norwichtown Mall, but such restaurants always seem to make it. Like those trees you see growing in the tiniest plot of dirt on the side of sheer rock cliff--I admire that tenacity. So, despite the fact they no longer show up on the map of the mall, I hope they will continue to survive (and prosper).

The usual suspects were quoted from across Norwich on the hard times that have beset the Norwichtown Mall. We had the usual quota of 'back in the day' stories that causes me to hear Springsteen's "Glory Days" playing in the jukebox of my memory. Significantly, the folks in Boston who own the mall, Edens & Avant, had no comment ('sometimes the things you do speak so loudly I cannot hear what you're saying'). It is, after all, a business and private enterprise, so who can say what and to whom? Norwich's Mayor Lathrop, responding to a reporter, offered that he'd be calling the developer next week to talk about the mall. I would, and should, be reassured except back in November, the Mayor and the Planning Department Director (after attending a NYC one-day development showcase, as guests of the folks from Boston), intended to speak with the same developer about their plans for the same Norwichtown Mall. And no one, it seems, except me, remembers any of that. That's the problem with being an eidetic, aside from rhymes with pathetic. Whereas born-again hooligan is an off-rhyme. Hey! I think I've reached the end.
-bill kenny