Humpty Dumpty Definitions

"Sovereignty is generally defined as supreme, independent control and lawmaking authority over a territory. It is expressed through the power to rule and make law. 

Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy, which refers to the ability of a state to act independently in international affairs. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body, or institution that has the ultimate authority over its citizens and the power to modify existing laws.

In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity. According to international law, sovereign states are all considered equal, and no state has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another sovereign state."

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

The United States appears to have gone Through the Looking Glass since oh-bright-early yesterday morning. I'm wondering if FIFA will want its imaginary Peace Prize returned now that our President has gotten close to starting a third world war. 

Every accusation proves to be a confession. Uncanny.
-bill kenny 

I'm on the Way

There's far too much of 2026 to go to already be defeated by the scale and scope of what could be or happen. I mention this because I ran into someone yesterday who was already fretting about how things he has yet to do may turn out and how he might never be able to compensate for the misses of shots he hasn't taken yet.

It's hard to cheer someone up who's that committed to being sad, it really is, and one of the things I've promised myself for this year is to stop wasting my (finite) energy on helping those who do not wish to be helped. 

I came home after encountering this Eeyore-type person and caught up, via Facebook, with an acquaintance and his wife as their newborn infant was facing a health challenge. I was struck by the upbeat tone of his typed words on the screen as he shared his concerns.

Both of them were planning on only one outcome, and in the course of the day, that proved to be the case. I smiled, reading his update later, thinking about how blessed that little one is to be raised in a family with a relentless sense of optimism about what tomorrow and the day after tomorrow may hold. 

There is a difference between seizing the day and embracing it and everything that comes with it, good and bad. Perhaps this could be the year we each make it a point to find that out for ourselves. Let's get lost, me and you-an ocean and a rock is nothing to me.

-bill kenny

Onwards!

I'm still crossing out the "25" and rewriting it as "26" on checks, but aside from that, the new year is off to an uneventful start (not that I'm complaining). I have a new hobby: cleaning and dressing the site on my lower stomach where the peritoneal dialysis catheter and tube were placed. 

This coming week, I hope to learn how to use the machine that, combined with the dextrose solution, will fill, dwell, and drain my kidneys. I have already learned that the object is to drain more out than I put in. The better I get at all of this, the longer I will live, and that's a deal too good to pass up. 

And you? Without being too nosy, did you make resolutions? And have you already broken one or more of them? I don't think the Guinness World Records people keep track, so you can safely claim whatever you wish and however you will. Of course, escaping your own judgment will be harder to do since you know best your own tricks and traps.

I have hopes for 2026-not resolutions. I hope this year to be a better person to people I've known already in my life and to whom I have been less than kind (unless they're a$$holes, in which case, no deal). I'll also hope to not allow the past to color the future and accept I cannot be forgiven for sins I've not yet committed (and the same is true for everyone else).

It's a new year, and I appreciate having lived to see its dawn. We can go anywhere and do anything. We just have to decide and then agree on what anything will look like. Let's go.
-bill kenny  

Time Flies

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. This is how Norwich, Connecticut, finds itself today as the new year dawns, and many of us who live here are both surprised and disappointed at the same tired results. 

I don't pretend to know if it's true as well where you live, though I have my suspicions. President Jimmy Carter, perhaps presciently almost five decades ago, called it the "American Malaise." I think he belled that cat, especially in light of the year, just passed, that too many of us experienced.

Where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, is a city struggling to dig itself out of a hole that pessimism and cynicism (and a double dollop of greed and shortsightedness) spent decades creating. Some days are better than others, and the key for us is to string together a bunch of those better days.

This past November, we elected a new Board of Education, as well as a new Mayor and a new City Council (both with a mixture of new faces and experienced hands). 

Some might say we were spoiled for choice. And yet voter turnout, the critical element of any effort to improve where we call home, was barely above 54% of all registered voters (there's a skosh more than 12,000 of us registered in a city of close to 40,000 total)

We can't seem to shake a feeling that government is something done to us rather than for us, and that foreboding seems to trump (pun intended) the brave talk about revitalization, mill rates, enterprise zones, zoning variances, and the other nouns, verbs, and gerunds of political grammar. We all need to do better.

Perhaps too often at times, we have allowed everyone (and anyone) with a self-printed business card that says 'developer' to talk with us about how little of our money will be needed to get our fences whitewashed, only to find out, too late, we’re on the hook to buy the brushes, the whitewash, the paint and, sometimes, even the fences. 

We choose to forget that everything, including missed opportunities, comes with a price and a cost. We wait for someone, somewhere, to rescue us overnight from a situation that has taken decades to develop to the point we are at now, and cast about for someone to blame as part of any attempt to find a solution. 

Those whom we’ve elected will soon enough feel the sting of our disappointment if they fail to guess what we want before we ourselves know what that might be, or how to achieve it.  

We need to learn to speak and work with one another to better use ideas, ideals, and words to build bridges that join rather than walls that continue to divide. The New Year started today. What better time to begin again?
-bill kenny

Same Procedure as Last Year?

My wife and I watched a particular show (a short film, really) every New Year's Eve we lived in Germany, joined in time by our son and then, some years later, our daughter. 

Children being children, they grew up as we, their parents, grew old. Again this year, it will be just my wife and me, the two of us, enjoying this.  

-bill kenny

I'm Gettin' Older, Too

We're a day away from drawing a line under this year and counting our blessings (and cursing our shortcomings). I thought I'd try for something cunningly clever today, it being the next to last day of 2025 and all. Then I saw the 'precocity' warning light flashing on my forehead in the mirror, and that was the end of that bright idea.

I would hope your 2025 was good, and if not good, then kind to you and yours. I've had better years, and I suspect a lot of us could say the same thing. I welcome the arrival of 2026 and the hope and promise of what it may bring for us all. 

I realize a year from now some of us may not be here to read the update to this entry (or write it, for that matter), but while the actors and actresses are changed and exchanged daily (in every aspect of our everyday lives), the play goes on. We switch partners, but continue in the dance.

2025 was the best of years and the worst of years. 2026 will be the same.
It's not really a matter of the number of days and hours in a year, or a lifetime, but what we do with the space between the beginning and the end. I hope you have all the space you need for what you need to do, and I look forward to talking to you in the next year.
-bill kenny

We Find Out What We're Made Of

We had our first serious snowfall over the weekend (Friday night into Saturday), here in Rose of New England, followed by incessant mewling and puking in online forums about how badly the white stuff was cleared from roadways.

Coincidentally enough, clearing it from the sidewalks, which is the property owner's responsibility, wasn't even mentioned, and less coincidentally, wasn't accomplished for the most part. We're excellent judges of others' behavior and even better attorneys for our own, I guess.

Because of the various medical maladies I have that have all worsened as I've aged, my lack of physical ability to mow my own lawn in the summer is now bookended by the inability to shovel or clear snow in the winter. We still have a snowthrower, but I can't even walk behind it anymore (it has five forward gears and two reverse, and for all the years we've owned it, I have no idea what most of those are for). We've had it close to a decade, and when I could use it, I'd clear our sidewalk as well as the sidewalks of both of our neighbors, since I had the device out and running.   

Our son, who made arrangements for the folks who cut our grass this past summer, found someone to clear the snow away this winter. We're on his list, and he gets to us when he does (perhaps alphabetically by height?), and in the meantime, our next-door neighbors shoveled our front and back steps as well as our sidewalk. 

My wife went outside to tell Mr. Next-Door-Neighbor that we had someone coming and that while his effort was deeply appreciated, there was no need for it. An hour or so later, she looked out in front of our house to see Mrs. Next-Door-Neighbor just finishing our sidewalk. 

The pair fled Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11 and settled in Norwich. They keep to themselves, except to help us, and there's no way I will ever be able to thank them enough for their thoughtful kindness.
-bill kenny.