Tick, Tick, Tick...

I'm writing this on Tuesday, many hours before the polls close here in Connecticut. 

I would have voted for a rancid tuna-fish salad sandwich left out in the sun for a week before ever casting a ballot for that Orange Abomination heading up the GOP ticket, so I was delighted to be able to vote for Kamala Harris and am 'nauseously optimistic' that Kam and the Coach will prevail but we live in an age of uncertainty and it could be quite some time until all the ballots, absentee, early voting, spoiled ballots, and the like are all tabulated.

I can wait. I have the rest of my life for us to get it right. But, regardless of the final outcome, here's something I do know about myself, and by extension (how arrogant, I know) about all of us, and I'm not happy with this discovery. 

I am now less accepting and tolerant of those with a perspective differing from mine than at any point in my life so far here on the ant farm. I want to blame Donald Trump for the hardening of my heart but I am lying to myself. He is and was never the problem with America; he is and was the symptom of the problem.

I very much dislike the person I have become and, thus, by the same extension I deployed earlier, I'm not especially fond of you either. We need to replace the hate with healing and I have no idea how to even begin to do that. But we need to try.
-bill kenny

"We Come in the Age's Most Uncertain Hours..."

I'm not going to tell you that today, Election Day 2024, is the most consequential in the history of our nation because I don't know if that's true despite reading/hearing it said repeatedly and incessantly for months.  

I voted by absentee ballot before today so I'm available to ferry any neighbors who need a lift to the polls. The act of voting is so revolutionary when you look at the history of the world and how it is run that it's amazing we're allowed to do it. Make sure you do.

I don't want to read/hear one murmur of unhappiness as of tomorrow about how displeased you are with the results of the counting of today's ballots if you chose to NOT vote. Choosing to NOT decide is still a choice. Shut up and bugger off. 

And when it comes to the Very Top of the Ticket, it's not really a choice, is it? 

I didn't think so. Vote.
-bill kenny 

The Sound of One Hand Typing

Does your local newspaper still have an editorial page, with columnists, cartoons, and letters to the editor? Maybe I should back up a little bit. Do you even still have a local newspaper? 

A lot of us don't anymore. Not sure where the Don'ts get their news and information from but based on recent years of experience from the decisions made in this experiment in governance in which I still live, it's no place credible or reputable.

Anyway. I subscribe to two local newspapers (one online subscription and the other online and newspaper on my doorstep subscription). The former is sort of a zombie paper with a tiny staff who'd be hard-pressed to cover everything just in Norwich to say nothing of the paper's purported coverage area. They do their best I know but, speaking as a reader, their best leaves a lot to be desired. 

That newspaper eliminated its editorial page years ago, around the time it refined its online presence to excise readers' comments and reactions (they are on social media as well but I've noticed their postings get few to no comments so I wonder why they bother posting at all).  

The other newspaper is more full-service (advertising drives newsrooms) in terms of local news and coverage and their editorial page, for the most part, reflects its readership and populace, consistently angering folks on either pole of the political spectrum regularly so I guess they're doing something right.

They endorsed Kamala Harris for President and devoted a full editorial to explaining why without ever mentioning even in passing that the other person is nucking futs, a convicted felon, very probably an insurrectionist, and possibly a traitor. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing they endorsed Joe Biden four years ago. 

My point is newspapers have always endorsed political candidates and we tend to not remember the specifics of those endorsements sometimes within moments of them being published, but in this election cycle two very prominent newspapers on either side of the country, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post decided to NOT endorse anyone for the highest office in the land. 

Silence in the face of evil is complicity, Jeff

Both newspapers are owned by billionaires one of whom could use his fortune to ameliorate pain and suffering in this country or ride in a rocket ship. Guess which one he chose? 

It's ironic, to me at least, that the decision to NOT endorse a candidate has resonated far farther and longer than an actual endorsement. I'm not sure if there's a lesson somewhere in those profiles of cowardice but I'm positive if there is, I can guess two newspapers in which you'll never read about it.

Some folks think canceling subscriptions 'will teach them a lesson.' It won't and we're better than that, or we should be. That's what MAGAts do, just ask Bud Light or Colin Kaepernick. 

The funny thing about billionaires; they get the same number of votes as you and me. So tomorrow, show how they can go f*ck themselves and make sure to vote.
-bill kenny

Too Dark to Type

Some days words are not enough.

This is one of them.
-bill kenny 

Prepping for Back and Forth

Tomorrow morning in the wee, dark early hours, we fall back an hour (I've always liked how we keep that straight, 'spring ahead' and 'fall back) all across the country.

I've never been clear how much of the rest of the world does this time-travel-but-standing-very still-stuff although daylight savingsis utilized across significant portions of the earth's Northern Hemisphere. I've always wondered about hourly employees working overnight shifts when the clocks change directions....do they work seven and get paid for eight in the Spring and then work nine and get paid for eight in the fall? 

The why we move clocks forward and back is the part I will NEVER understand no matter how erudite (or not) the explanation. As a matter of fact, technically we'll all be an hour older when Sunday becomes Monday than when yesterday became today. Science makes my hair hurt. And that's another thing I don't understand.

They actually did this LAST weekend

We share the planet with a nearly infinite number of other life forms from single-celled amino acids to the full scale and scope of the Abiogenesis catalog (now available for only three easy payments, and if you use your credit card right now...), and none of them have watches, much less the concern for time and its division and measurement that we, Homo sapiens, have.

And then we look up in surprise and dismay at the time and wonder where it's gone when it hasn't gone anywhere. So much energy is expended on endings from the end of a television program, a movie, a radio serial, or other entertainment, through a relationship with another person, or a business relationship or political alliance. All gone, their races run.

You don't have to be Richard to have misgivings about time and what we do with it. Merely being human will qualify. I'll leave the sun behind me and I'll watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by...I can see the world and it ain't so big at all. This time tomorrow.

-bill kenny

When Both the Faithful and Faithless Depart

When I was very young, and despite your snicker I actually was young once, going through the primary grades of St Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey tomorrow (aside from Good Friday), was the saddest day of the year. 

You may think today is the day after Halloween and you're right, but also you're kind of a pagan. Today is All Saints Day and in some circles a day of solemn celebration, in the liturgical sense. 

Tomorrow is All Soul's Day. When you're nine and have transferred to 'the Catholic School' from Pine Grove Manor in Franklin Township because there was finally room in the class near the start of the fall for you and Neil, your next-door neighbor who is now suddenly promoted to best friend, the more you think about the implications of All Souls' Day, the sadder it gets.

As I've aged (badly) I've developed quarrels with the Catholic Church in which I was raised but most of that churn is caused by what I've taken to calling middle-level management. With all due respect to the priests, bishops, and even His Holiness, the Pope, I'm not sure how much of the edifice the one true church (as it calls itself when it finds/feels itself under attack) has created since Jesus Christ founded it would pass the 'R U Serious?" test with the Lord.

We're not grading on a curve, either, guys. Wanted to pass that along. But one of the things I still believe, regardless of my exact grid coordinates in the theological hemisphere, is that there can be nothing more tragic than to be forever forgotten.

As a primary school grader on All Souls night, I used to fall asleep trying to remember every single person I had met in my life-a tough enough job when you're nine but when you're two and seventy, it borders on the impossible.

But maybe that's what 'heaven' actually is, the memory of you and your life by another person. Look at history. Much of it is a tale told by an---well, never mind who's doing the telling, but pay close attention to who's doing the remembering. 

Is forgotten the opposite of famous? And who prays for the souls of the faithfully departed when no one remains who recalls who they were? When facts fade, faith must suffice.  
-bill kenny 

Crystal Water Turns to Dark

It's amazing how a religious devotion, a commemoration and remembrance really, evolved into an all-the-candy-you-can-eat-without-barfing exercise all the way to an adult party hearty event. Greetings, salutations, and Happy Halloween.

There was an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain that some sociologists theorize 19th-century Irish immigrants brought with them that helped create our current observance/holiday/day on which to go gluttonous on chocolate. It certainly caught on in the United States, but we are no longer alone. Far from it. 

Halloween is now celebrated all around the world, gladdening the hearts, I'm sure, of candy manufacturers in the days leading up to it as well as the bottom lines of dentists in the days and weeks following it. 

Alas, poor Linus, I knew him well. We can always content ourselves that Strongbad doesn't do candy, I guess. Did you have Trick or Treat for UNICEF in your neighborhood? Sign of the times now, I fear, I haven't seen or heard about it in years and years.

Remember how our Moms used to go through the goodies making sure that the apples didn't have unpleasant surprises and throwing all the unwrapped candy away 'just to be safe'. Would it have killed them to pretend the Mary Janes were unwrapped (talk about a dentist delight-it could take fillings out)--a candy that I don't think I even see at any other time of the year except now. And what about candy corn (which I love, btw)? 

If scientists are correct that cockroaches would survive an atomic war, I believe they would do it munching on candy corn indestructible, indescribable, often imitated but never duplicated. One of the many things I surrendered once my doctors made me understand, as an adult, I couldn't be a part-time diabetic. And I miss it more than I can say.

As a parent, I can recall some of the worst weather of the season always starting about two hours before the kids got organized to head out. So I'll keep my fingers crossed for all the goblins tonight. Every child, no matter how young, wanted to trick or treat with her/his friends. Only a baby goes out with a parent. 

So with a heavy heart and a quiet footstep, the trick was to figure out how far back to trail them as they went from house to house, and no matter how many times a child was told 'no running', what happened? Yep. Why was I always surprised when mine paid as much attention to me as I had to my parents? 

And every neighborhood had a trick-or-treater without a bag, usually one of the hyperactive kids from down the street who ate the candy as quickly as he got it. Can you imagine how much magic it was in that house later that evening? Me neither.

My own children long ago outgrew the doorbell ringing and candy-collecting aspects of the evening and we don't even even play anymore at my house. But the Dream Children and ghosts of ghouls past sometimes encounter one another on my porch when "Open, locks, Whoever knocks!"
-bill kenny