An Attitude of Gratitude

If you've been a little slow to get your holiday season started, there's no time like the present (that's both a hint and a play on words, btw) to pick up the pace, my friend, because the festive occasions are coming thick and fast and nearly non-stop between now and the beginning of the next year. 

Let's face it, the autumn days continue to grow shorter giving way to darker skies; the newspapers get a little plumper as merchants boost their advertising hoping to catch a shopper's eye while halls and other stationary objects are bedecked in holly and garland.

As you should know, the annual O'tis a Festival is this Saturday from nine until three (with Santa scheduled to visit and food trucks throughout the day, though none serving reindeer burgers I'm told)). Naysayers to the contrary, there's plenty of free parking, and again this year helpers to guide you to the primo parking spots. 

There promises to be music, merriment, and entertainment for the whole family. Two floors of handmade arts and crafts from dozens of regional vendors will also be on display, with ideas and offerings to help jump-start your annual gift-gathering and giving. If you haven't attended in previous years, you've picked a good time to come and enjoy.  

One of the bonuses, I think, to the O'tis a Festival is the added hustle and bustle it brings to downtown, not to mention the extra feet in the street (and on the sidewalks) to check out not just the fest but what downtown businesses have been added and improved since last year. There are a lot, so come early to stay late.

While the O'Tis a Festival is a terrific time (and reason) to get started on just-right gifts for loved ones and others on your list, there are also opportunities to give and share the spirit of the season, especially with those in need right here in our backyard.

With Thanksgiving a week from tomorrow, Connecticut Foodshare will also put to good use any donation of food or cash that you’d like to offer, and don't forget Feeding America. 

We can help make this a happier holiday season for both friends and friends we’ve yet to meet. Open your heart and know whatever you share is both needed and appreciated.

-bill kenny

Memo to My Grandchildren

Today's title may have startled my adult and married children as well as their partners. I'm not known for subtlety (or anything else, for that matter) but I'm not suggesting or intimating anything. If I caused you to spill your coffee in consternation, I apologize.

Whenever I encounter an infant or toddler in a shopping trolley or pram, I always make it a point to welcome them to earth. Seriously. This place is pretty much a shit show and we adults made it that way, but the small ones don't know that, at least not yet. After all, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression and perhaps they'll remember that (or not).

Babies are not miniature people, but, rather, very nearly an entirely different species from us adults. 

And I suspect any resemblance to any other living person is not only purely coincidental but nearly miraculous. 
-bill kenny

Blink of an Eye

We're all familiar with the phrase 'I can't believe it's been THAT long' where the passage of time seems to have ambushed us. 

I've discovered as I decline, not age, the speed of that process increases (to my horror and chagrin). 

Here's an example to give you an idea of the speed of thought.

"And the best that you can do is to take whatever comes to you."
 -bill kenny

Talk to You Later

I was trying to explain to an acquaintance the other day that everyone, everywhere serves a purpose even if they don't think so. He'd had a rough week and I think his self-esteem was at a low ebb. 

I'm never sure how people like this always seem to find me. There must be some kind of an invisible mark on my forehead or something. Maybe I need to comb my hair differently or wear a bigger ballcap.

The funny part (not necessarily hilariously funny, though thanks for that thought) is that I try to be as supportive as I can which, since I have 'issues' (shall we say) with most other people on the planet, is more challenging than it needs to be.

I lack social grace and/or the ability to make small talk (what exactly is small talk and is there an opposite and what is that called? Tall Talk? Big Talk?). I have enough trouble making eye contact, much less remembering names and or spousal and family relationships. 

I've been known to ask women who've recently given birth if they're expecting a baby or to inquire after the welfare of a spouse to learn he/she has gone their separate ways on the matrimonial highway (usually I've been more fond of the one who's done the Great Escape but I don't think I've ever actually said that aloud), which certainly leaves all of us in a Downtown Awkward Moment.

I worked years ago where some of my near-colleagues complained about my lack of sociability to one of the people in charge. When I'd pass people in the hallway they'd ask 'how are you doing"' and I always said, 'Thanks for asking' and kept walking.

He suggested the proper response 'You should ask them how they are.' I was flummoxed and carefully explained I didn't care how they were. I didn't know their names. I had no idea what they did in the building; it wasn't like we were going bowling after work. 

They were people I passed in the hallway endless numbers of times every day. We were filling up about 1.8 seconds while we closed the two-and-a-half meters of space separating us as we walked towards, and then past, one another.

It was his turn to be flummoxed, I guess, as our meeting ended somewhat abruptly shortly afterward and slowly I noticed more and more often fewer and fewer people in the hallway as I walked from one office to another. I was tempted to get a button that read 'Ask Me about Raising Wombats for Pleasure and Profit' (though I suspect there's precious little of either) sort of as an icebreaker. 

I had even gone so far, should someone, indeed, ask, to be prepared to pounce on them, shouting 'And how are you?' over and over again. No wonder everyone around me is a total stranger. Hey! How are your wife and kids? Can I interest you in a wombat? How about a line of bowling? I've got my own shoes, seriously.

-bill kenny

Those Were the Days

If you've never experienced the harsh screeching of a modem connection you can skip this space today. 

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I walked through six-foot snow drifts uphill in both directions to go to school, the internet was in its infancy, and America Online was leading the way.

AOL as we all called it was so overwhelming they eventually purchased Time/Warner and all of its subsidiaries. Halcyon days indeed. 

This story caught me up short and reminded me again how no one steps into the same river twice because both you and the river have changed. 
-bill kenny

"Exquisite Karmic Irony for $400, Alex"

I've enjoyed reading The Onion for many years. 

At first glance, I thought this story was one of their trademark satirical pieces. 

Sometimes, Ruth is stranger than Bridget. Not today, Satan.
-bill kenny

  

20/20 Hindisght

A week-plus later, and the events of this November's election sting a little bit less than they did in the first couple of days afterward.  

I am a seventy-two-year-old white, heterosexual male who lives rather comfortably in retirement (not extravagantly by any means but we have 'enough'). I have always been in the majority in this country, no matter the setting or situation. 

My position of privilege, if you wish to use that term (I do), allows me the luxury to do the 'Big Thinking on Important Stuff' posture since my worries about the price of gasoline or ground beef in the market are relatively small. Sometimes I judge other peoples' behaviors far more harshly than my own; I'm a much better lawyer for my shortcomings.

I have to remember I'm sitting in a position that others do not enjoy in terms of the aforementioned 'enough.'  People vote with their wallets and their bellies and demagogues are adept at convincing people that what they say is more real than what is actually happening. Perceptions of realities and realities are too often the same thing.

I've concluded we have about half a nation that no longer processes information from sources that I would consider as 'mainstream news' (daily newspapers, local TV stations, nationwide cable news outlets). 

And when I say I fear NON mainstream news I'm not talking about Fox and the Zanies at places like OAN where some truly frighteningfever dreams are offered as facts every day. I'm talking beyond that, to things I'm aware of but rarely sample because they are too strange for me; things like 4chan and WhatsApp, and hundreds, if not thousands, of YouTube channels that make NewsMax look like the NY Times. 

The swamp of dis and misinformation is probably depthless and certainly terrifying. It's the combination of technology and hate/ignorance that has become the greatest threat to all of us.

I think there was despair this election cycle over everyday issues that outweighed my (elitist) concerns about the importance of women's reproductive rights and protecting democracy. It's hard when you're struggling to make ends meet to have the luxury and energy to appreciate larger concepts like DEI.

It's easier to blame 'the others' for all of your ills, as Weimar Republic Germans did in the 1930's. Sadly, with the state of education across much of the USA, not many people will learn, much less remember, the lessons of the Germans' despair that birthed Hitler and the Holocaust.

And while you may dismiss my words as somewhat florid and untrue, I fear I'm closer to the end of my country and things will only get worse and not better. 
Buckle up for a very dark ride.
-bill kenny