Remember Charlie, Remember Baker

History is a funny thing. Today fades right into yesterday before your very eyes and then because it was so subtle you almost but not quite forget about it. Almost.

Today, forty-nine years ago, I was getting rousted out of a perfectly good bunk in a barracks somewhere on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, by a fireplug of a man with a Smokie-the-Bear hat, SGT Griffey. I was a month (nearly) into Basic Training, but the news headlines were being made half a world away with the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. 

I grew up in an era when history was reduced to the memorization of dates and events to be parroted back on test days, but even in today's world of alt-facts and fake news, I'm confident so many years down memory lane we, as a country, have never really made our peace with that war, the way we fought it, the way it ended and most especially with how we treated those who came back though never home from it.

And we still have large numbers of young and not-so-young men and women, deployed across the globe serving our national strategic interests and furthering our foreign policy objectives while I sit in front of my big screen and bitch about the two hundred channels of cable I get.

Some have suggested Vietnam demonstrated the danger of trying to conduct a guns AND butter war, that is, we send people off to fight while back on the home front little changes. If that's the theory, then I guess it's true, since while we had sappers trying to clear mines from rice paddies in monsoon season we also had half a million gather in the mud of Yasgur's Farm. And when all the toking and joking was over, the ages of everybody were practically identical, though I think the guys humping it through weeds were younger, but also older.

But the Vietnam War, as all wars are, was less geopolitics and more personal loss and grief across a generation. I was still finding buildings and classrooms as a wide-eyed freshman at Rutgers when I lost forever a Manhattan prep school classmate, Roy O., in Vietnam.

I was grateful so many years later as part of the events surrounding the Norwich Sesquicentennial when the American Veterans Traveling Tribute to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial stopped at Howard T. Brown Park, giving me a moment to say thank you and farewell to my friend.

From what I know from long-time residents of Norwich, the city lost twelve young men in the Vietnam War. When I read accounts of that war and its aftermath, I'm angry, bitter, and more than a little guilty at how so many of those who survived were treated, Those fortunate enough to come home returned to us often wounded in places that will never, ever heal and were left to their own devices while the rest of us raced to forget what we never knew enough about in the first place.

Praise we great men and women I know, but the sacrifices made by those with whom we live and love make me wonder if we praise and remember the right people.
-bill kenny

Short, Sweet, and Sad

Not gonna lie. I missed it and I'll bet you missed it, too. 

I'm talking about the recently concluded Texas Sandfest. 

As a kid who spent his early summers at the Jersey Shore, I'd like to think some of those with whom i shared the beach could have found themselves on the Sandfest Medals podium but then again, maybe not. There's always next year, though. 

Am I right? 
-bill kenny

Candles on the Cake Set off the Smoke Alarm

I got congratulated a lot Friday for my birthday when it was really my mom who deserved all the credit. I was, literally, along for the ride. I spent part of the day, as a man who pretends the best is yet to come, looking up the results of my most recent blood tests to confirm I still had blood and in preparation for an office call with my endocrinologist who is one of the half dozen or so physicians I see regularly. 

I like to think of them as "Team Bill". They, on the other hand, are not too crazy at that moniker. I think the tee shirts were a touch too much.

Ten days ago was a bit tense as my urologist in our first meeting since I finished chemotherapy, harshed my buzz by scheduling a prostate exam (people often say prostrate exam- I love that). But I've reached an age where you grumble, drop trou, and bend over. My Air Force experience will serve me in good stead. 

How ironic as an aged FARC, I'd feel such kinship with a dreidel. I haven't stopped, but I have slowed down and more and more I've become the old guy I spent a large part of my life avoiding. Over six dozen years of trying to outrun the sound of my own steps in fright, I've learned to appreciate the irony of not having to worry about a legacy when so little was accomplished.
-bill kenny

Pack Your Own Chute

I have been pretty much a homebody since retirement six years ago. Sue me. I like to sleep in my own bed. That doesn't mean I'm averse to day trips or one-night overnight stays; I'm not ecstatic about them but I can cope.   

I like to drive and if I can't drive, I like to take the train. A hundred years ago, or so, the US rail system was the envy of the world. Nowadays, not so much. As a matter of fact, it sucks. About the only thing I like about trains I can ride now is the one I can take from New Haven that lets me out at Yankee Stadium (our son showed me that and it's way cool). That I have to drive from my house in Norwich to New Haven is not nearly as much fun with my clothes on as I'd like.

I hate flying, or more specifically being a passenger in an aircraft. There's no place to go on a plane. There's no legroom or elbow room. The take-offs and landings frighten me to near hysteria and the rest of the time a flight is like a really boring bus ride at 35,000 feet but with even less to see because we're above the clouds. 

The worst thing of all about flying is the whole getting cleared to board and checking in, and conversely retrieving your baggage. I hate every aspect of the process but cannot afford to fly in my own private jet (curse you, Universe, having me born handsome instead of rich. And delusional instead of sane).

I've never had lost luggage mainly because I never pack anything worth losing (looking at you, Adam) but lots of people have had that unfortunate experience and it turns out there's a cottage industry of purchasers who buy lost luggage. Why would I make this up? 

And complete a happy ending, if not the one you thought of at first.  
-bill kenny

Kyrie Eleison

Today marks the start of my seventy-second revolution around the sun. To be honest, there were times this past year when I didn't think the old geezer would make it, and more than a few moments when I didn't really want to. My birthday makes me morose so if you were looking for a grin, there might be a better day to linger here.

Life is a contact sport and my life coach advised me years ago to learn to like red shirts so I've spent a lot of time on the sidelines and benches watching, sort of like Ray Davies in Waterloo Sunset minus both Terry and Julie. 

I never understand why people congratulate you on your birthday. In my case, my Mom deserves the credit as she did all the work (not forgetting Dad's contribution). As the oldest of six, I was no day at the beach though I recall spending a lot of time at Gramma and Grampy's bungalow in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. I guess Salt Life forever, no matter what. 

I may not have as much to show for seventy-two years here on the ant farm as others I suspect, but am grateful for the love of my life, my wife, Sigrid, and our two brilliant children, Patrick and Michelle, and their spouses, Jena and Kyle. 

I like to think I have enough. Be it health, happiness, money, or possessions. I've become rather fond of a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright that I really wish I had thought of first, or last: "The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes."
I think he's on to something.

Kyrie Eleison.
-bill kenny

B-B-Back in M-M-My D-D-Day

On New Year's Day, 1966, London Records (their USA record company) unveiled a billboard for the next Rolling Stones album, December's Children, that showed the cover of the album blown up to massive scale for the billboard and the words, "The Rolling Stones: The Band Your Parents Love to Hate." 

So true. My father hated rock and roll music, especially the Stones. When he expressed a kind word for The Beatles after hearing 'She's Leaving Home' I almost reconsidered my devotion to them. My point? While music is a universal language and, I think, the way feelings sound, there are innumerable dialects and variations among the tribes. He was a Dean Martin, Perry Como, guy, while what I listened to was 'crap.'  

Sunday night those selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced (as part of "American Idol" without a twinge of self-consciousness at the irony of that choice of venue). I was as thrilled to learn John Mayall had been (finally) selected as I was confused by the inclusion of Foreigner which had (past tense deliberate) one original member, Mick Jones (who was a great interview, as I recall from another lifetime) but he no longer tours with them, leading me to wonder who or what is Foreigner now).

Folks who have been active and successful within the last three or so decades were also inducted though, channeling Dad (somewhat to my chagrin), I have little to no appreciation or understanding of who they are or how what they make could even, as a joke, be called 'music.'  I guess Townsend was r-r-right.
-bill kenny

Charting a Course

Now that we've had three weeks or so to catch our breath (scout for exits perhaps and count our spare change) I heard someone suggest the other day that the best thing about City Manager John Salomone's budget proposal was that it wasn't worse. (No definition of ‘worse’ was forthcoming; I waited.)

I always think of a German expression that translates as 'better a horrible end, than horrors without end.' Point in fact, the City Manager’s proposed budget is not horrible and it's NOT an end, but rather, the necessary starting point to begin a dialogue and discussion (that may get raucous and ill-tempered but that's part of it) which should drive the development and adoption of a(ny) final budget. 

The City Manager was doing his job, and it’s not just the City Council members who must now also do theirs. It’s each of us, and all of us; residents, businesses, taxpayers, luckless pedestrians, whatever you wish to consider yourself.

Any spending document the size of the proposed budget has a lot of moving pieces and a lot of requirements for oversight and coordination. And since you can't tell the players without a scorecard, you can find all of this year's budget documents online. (There are also previous years' budgets for comparison).

If you'd like your very own copy to have and to hold, you can buy one at the City Clerk's office. This is a blinding glimpse of the obvious: A proposed budget tells us what things cost; only we can decide what they are worth. It’s up to us to choose between what we want and what we want right now. No one, including all in city government, elected or appointed, wants to pay more in taxes for goods and services. 

As I will keep saying because we have selective hearing, this is an ongoing discussion we will/should and must have with one another, our city's department heads, and our elected officials as we craft a blueprint, a roadmap (call it what you will) by which we determine the quality and quantity of municipal services, ranging from public education and public safety to trash removal and road resurfacing and everything in between, and what we are willing to pay for those goods and services. The city budget is an agreement we make with one another and for one another.

I have no expertise in finance (and have never stayed at a Holiday Inn), but there’s a disconnect between revenue and expenditure. I doubt anyone is unimpressed by the quality and expertise with which the city and its departments deliver goods and services. Where we need to become concerned is the lack of growth spurt in the Grand List NOT tied to residential reevaluation but to genuine commercial economic development. Simply put, we have nowhere near enough; being busy is NOT being productive in fostering commercial economic development.

Telling the City Council ‘to cut the budget’ may be therapeutic but it is not especially helpful. Cut where? And how? The myth of ‘fat’ in the budget is just that, a fairy story. Budgets in recent decades have been exercises in new recipes for making stone soup as there is no meat or bone left. There’s only so much ‘do more with less’ our city can manage before we accept we can’t do anything anymore as we are.

Economizing alone will not reduce taxes. What we need is more meaningful commercial economic growth that expands the Grand List throughout the city. The quality of our community is built on the quality of the decisions we must now make, starting now
.-bill kenny