Peanuts and Cracker Jack Sold Separately

Don't look now, the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays are battling in the World Series. The two teams with the best records in their leagues, respectively, ended up facing each other. What's not to like?  

I'm reading a lot of criticism about how bad the TV ratings will prove to be for two 'small market teams,' when we should be celebrating both organizations for building teams that went the distance. In light of how many (and often) clubs hired mercenaries, sorry, free agents (who were anything but) and still came up short, in the case of my Yankees, waaay short, perhaps a moment of silence should be observed. 

As Seinfeld noted years ago, all professional sports fans are really cheering for are the clothes, as the contents of the uniforms change zip codes every off season, and sometimes during it, leaving all of us who cheer as the sole constants in our own universe.

Back in the day I used to frequent a joint where, at the far end near the 19" TV on the arm over the bar, were folks who wagered on every pitch and on what happened after every pitch. Most nights they had no idea what the score was-their game inside the game had nothing to do with The Game. 

Was it illegal? I guess maybe not on an afternoon when the beat cop picked up $20 on a double play ball, but still. Now, of course, almost anything goes in terms of wagering, and the games have truly become afterthoughts.

I'm told baseball is not a 21st-century American sport. On the other hand, neither am I. A whole lot of shit has gone south around here in recent decades, and I'm not sure what's in this bag, but I'm the one holding it, and I'm not happy about it. 

Of course feelings of any kind went out with high button shoes and hoop skirts here in Air Age America, home of the WTF? and OMG! text messages and every type of statistic and metric imaginable. 

I still remember the guy a row down to my left the afternoon my son took me to Yankees Stadium, who spent the whole frickin' game texting on his Crackbery. Seriously. You paid how much for these seats? You cannot fix stupid-but you can whack it a few times to loosen it up.

So find the time to check out the Boys of Summer's Last Hurrah of 2026. They may not be any boys I know, but they're all the guys we got. I've already put my mitt, double wrapped with rubber bands and a baseball in the pocket, under the back mousetrap of the bike, trying to get a head start on Spring training. Mandatory report date for spring training is Friday, 19 February 2027, but who's counting, aside from me?

-bill kenny

Better Not Older

Today is my brother Kelly's birthday. It is a little-known fact that he is 348 years old, though his youthful appearance and childlike innocence and enthusiasm (plus a lot of plastic surgery) belie his age. 

Truth to tell, I have no exact idea as to his age, having seen him only very sporadically since returning to the US three and a half decades ago. My other brother and sisters are very jealous of his good fortune. 

In a large family of children who resemble one another, Kelly was the tall, blond kid who looked exactly like, well, exactly like Kelly. It was an interesting house growing up with a brother who locked himself in the little boy's room while simultaneously locking Mrs. Brennan, the teacher, out at Saint Peter's kindergarten in New Brunswick. I have a memory of her calling the house and our Mom speaking into the telephone in an attempt to coax Kelly out. I believe he eventually decided to exit of his own accord.

But years before that I recall sharing a bedroom with Kelly, and by the dawn's earliest light he would awaken, stand up in the crib, clutch the rails, and shout exuberantly, 'Everybody up! Kelly's belly empy!' 

Kelly might have had a career as a physicist since, at a very early age in a finished basement in the house on Bloomfield Avenue, he managed to flip over a massive TV console (those barge-like furniture styles that said 'muricah in the early 60s ') trying to retrieve a toy car that had rolled underneath it despite the complete absence of leverage or a fulcrum. If only we hadn't lived in a universe with a yellow sun? Perhaps just as well; he has always hated tights.

As it is, Kelly in this universe is more than a terrific deal for his spouse, children, and grandchildren, not to mention the members-only contingent composed of his brothers and sisters. I have no idea how he plans to mark his natal anniversary, but I can safely assume it will be both stellar and steadfast, like the celebrant.
-bill kenny

Horton Hears an Economic Development

There's a story that anyone who's ever graduated from third grade has heard about the three blind men who each touch an elephant at a different part of the animal's body. 

The first touches the trunk and announces the elephant is wiry and agile. The second touches its flank and concludes the elephant is massive and sturdy, while the third one grabs the elephant by its tail and pronounces it to be skinny and weak.

All three are absolutely correct but also completely wrong, both in equal measure. Good news, at least for them, as all three could have lucrative careers as economic development consultants. Because economic development relies on amortization rates, projections of rates of quarterly and annual growth, costs per square foot, return on investment, and a dozen or so other definable variables and variants, it's tempting to see it as a science.

But a strong argument can be made that it's probably closer to being an art and sometimes, fairly or not, it's more luck than skill. One man's ceiling is literally another one's floor (especially in an urban environment), and very often what you see is (exactly) what you get, WYSIWYG, but just as often is dependent upon not only on where you stand but on what you wanted to see when you chose to look.

In a sense, economic development in Norwich is that aforementioned elephant, and in The Rose of New England we spend almost as much time arguing over what is, and isn't, beneficial economic development as we do over whether we are actually experiencing any. And, as is the case with that pesky pachyderm, once you pick a perspective, it colors and shapes everything you see.

Many of us are unhappy at the status of our Grand List, in terms of the ratio of commercial to residential properties. Others are vocal about the nature of commercial development, and for any one person happy about another small business opening in Down City, there are two or more annoyed at the lack of success in marketing our vacant storefronts and Brownfields.

We don't have throngs of shoppers crowding the sidewalks in Franklin Square or small start-ups sprouting from Hamilton Street on the East Side all the way to where Church and Water Streets intersect with Chelsea Harbor Drive or a wave of small retailers lining both sides of Main Street and activity in professional offices and apartments above the ground floor. Yet.

Whether a resident of Laurel, Bean, or Cherry Hill, we benefit from every effort to increase in the grand list, and be it Greeneville, Taftville, or Thamesville, any enhancement in our community's quality of life is always an advantage.

Sometimes it depends on which part of the elephant you touch and how closely behind it you are walking. If you got some on your shoes, I may be able to help you. Step Right Up.
-bill kenny 

Revisiting the Second Amendment

You see it surface in conversations and on bumper stickers, all the time. The Second Amendment has sparked decades of discussion and debate about what the Founders intended and what it should mean in our current American society. I'm not going within ten feet of a position on any of that, believe me. Wouldn't touch it with a barge pole (Mom raised crazy children but not stupid ones).  

I had to fire an M-16 for familiarization in the USAF and have less-than-pleasant memories of marching at least halfway across San Antonio, Texas' Lackland Air Force Base (fun fact: Lackland is the largest USAF installation in the world WITHOUT a standalone runway) in the late spring of 1975 for the opportunity to so do. They didn't even let us keep the paper targets (mine looked brand-new).

The Second Amendment is, for many, the third rail of American politics  But what if we're getting it wrong all these years on and it's not 'the right to bear arms,' but rather the 'right to arm bears?' It would have made this story much more interesting, I think.

And I hope you'll join me in a moment of silence for Ferdinand.
-bill kenny

Maybe I'm Amazed

The first time I saw my wife, Sigrid, in a club in the Sachsenhausen district of Frankfurt am Main, she was wearing a Buffalo Sabers hockey jersey—a souvenir and remembrance of an earlier relationship. 

I never met 'him' and, not surprisingly, we've never talked about him, which is sort of funny since I wouldn't be here, in these circumstances, without him.

She was, and remains, the most beautiful woman I have ever known. Then, her hair was dark and fell to the small of her back, which has been one of my favorite places for a very long time. Now, she wears it much shorter and frets when she finds a grey hair (I'm one of the reasons why she has them), and I say nothing but smile at the wonder of it all.

I was tongue-tied for months after first seeing her, and when I finally did speak, I told her I loved her because that's the way I am, and the way it was. We were engaged at Easter 1977, before about fifty percent of the people currently on earth were even born, and were married forty-nine years ago, today, in the Offenbach Rathaus shortly after ten in the morning.

Chris, who became Moni's husband and then 'becca and David's dad, then a widower, and who now lives in Texas, was my best man. He was the person who discovered my 'translator' (I spoke little to no German at that time) had memorized the ceremony's language in English, and that was the extent of her knowledge of my language. Zwei hundredt deutschmark im arsch, wie Ich mich erinnere...

Evelyn, at the time Rick's wife and still Kevin's mom, was maid/matron of honor, and afterward we all went to a small restaurant not that far from the Rathaus for a celebratory meal that Franz, who passed some years ago, Sigrid's dad, and Anni, her mom, organized. 

Some time later, we visited, as a married couple, one of her aunts who doubted we would ever marry, noting, 'after I have triplets!' (I looked at her husband and thought, 'It must be magic married to this one'). I asked as best I could, 'wie gehts den die drillenge? how are the triplets?' (which earned me neither language skills nor style points; two trends that continue to this day).

Sigrid is the last person I think about before I close my eyes and the first after I open them. She is very much 'like breathing out and breathing in' for me, and I can only wish you, at some time in your life, will find and have someone who makes everything you do, good and bad, worth the waking. 

We have two children, themselves now adults, but always our children-Patrick and Michelle-who have enriched our lives more than words of any language can ever capture.

I have little recollection of my life before our marriage. Admittedly, I'm better off that way. I do recall being mostly unlovable except when I was unbearable. It matters not to the woman who married me. Even after all the years, when she looks at me, I can do anything--a feeling no one else has ever inspired in me. That I have nothing I need to do for her to love me is amazing in ways I cannot explain. 

I'm pretty sure, especially in the years since arriving in the New World, that (at times) this isn't the life she signed up for under 'for better or for worse' and I, too, keep waiting for better days even as they grow shorter.

It still seems to me like we married last week, though. I suspect she feels it's longer than it actually is (because the Germans use the metric system, at least that's why I hope so), and I'm grateful for every day we've had and every memory we've made. 

I hope the years we are yet to have together are even more than the ones we've shared. You are an angel of snow-too lovely to hold but too beautiful not to try.
-bill kenny

Beep!

There's a difference between a city and a community. The former is more of a geopolitical entity, while the latter is, ideally, a state of mind. Sometimes one can be the other, and sometimes not so much. 

I would suggest the latter empowers the former more than vice versa, but we may not agree on that as much as I'd like. We're two weeks away from Election Day (I've already voted by mail and strongly encourage you to register and do the same if you haven't already), whose results will indicate to some extent just how much of a community we actually are. 

Norwich, like so many of the places we each call home, remains a work in progress and can only be better when you get involved. For those who confine themselves to drive-by commentary on social media sites, remember it takes more energy to be a light than a horn. You know who you are.

-bill kenny

Channeling Walt

The unsexy Autumn, the one of grey skies, biting winds, and near-freezing morning temperatures, arrived this weekend in the part of New England where we live. Our oil furnace, which had a quiet summer (and at almost six bucks a gallon for oil, thanks, Mr. Art of the Deal, for which I'm grateful), was working away when I awoke Sunday morning to what appeared to be our first frost of the season. 

We have a persnickety radiator in the bathroom that works when it feels like it and has no relationship to the temperature of the house or the output of the furnace, but it was hot to the touch as my morning began, and I smiled because it doesn't happen that often. 

I also smiled because I'm hoping it saves me an extra visit from the folks who provide our oil and service our furnace, who have, on occasion in the past, had to send out the radiator whisperer to tweak the balky device and get it to work (until the next cold spell).

Sunday's skies were clear and so deeply blue you could get lost staring into them. It made the colors of the leaves still on the trees seem even more vibrant when serving as a background. I've never been a fan of leaf-peeping, mainly because of what happens after all the leaves are peeped, but it was still lovely enough even for a curmudgeon like me to appreciate.   

We had middle sixty-degree temperatures last week, but this weekend we were in the high forty and low fifty area, which the meteorologists tell me is where we should be. I think I should be where the weather suits my clothes and doesn't hurt my face when I'm out walking in it.

Still, grateful for all four seasons and the opportunity to enjoy them.
-bill kenny