The Wisdom of Higgins

I was stunned when visiting my brother Adam's blog to realize that today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the death of my father. I had forgotten completely the very event I'd have thought I'd go to my grave remembering. Color me surprised.

I know I'm not the only son with a complicated and complex relationship with their dad (I can think of two other sons right off the top of my head in the same boat, but I'll also concede it's a large ocean), but until earlier today, I've tiptoed around this date and our relationship.

Truth to tell, for the first time since his passing, I wasn't in his shadow. That's not a good thing, or a bad thing; it is what it is. It took me all these years to realize, Higgins, from Ted Lasso, captured it perfectly:

"I try to love my dad for who he is and forgive him for who he isn't."
-bill kenny  

But While Everything Is Blooming

I've been a little preoccupied recently (the competition for post-occupation is brutal), but I had an opportunity last weekend to decompress and reassess. I've been working on some things that were important for other people but didn't have much value for me.

I think we all live like that sometimes. 

We give our time to total strangers and then discover we need to shift scheduling priorities, but those to whom we gave the gift of our time now see it as an entitlement, and they have hard feelings when something they've grown accustomed to is rationed or curtailed. What were once vices are now habits, and what began as voluntary is seen as mandatory.

I've gotten a little too old to continue to live for the reflection of approval in other people's eyes-I've discovered that for some time, maybe a few weeks or even months, I'd lost track of that hard-acquired fact. In the last couple of days, the sometimes petulant reaction of those who have no legitimate claim to my time and talents when I've placed myself first has reminded me that self-abnegation is not a virtue others applaud, but, rather, abuse.

We all work our way through valleys that sometimes feel like chasms. This one has been a little deeper and a little wider than I'm used to, but I put that down to having close to a full lifetime's experiences now, unlike when I was a child. 

I'm putting away the things of childhood, and what's left in its place has the attractiveness and the danger of the new and untried. That's a path I haven't walked in a long time. I'm thinking it's high time I went.
-bill kenny   

Better Late than Never

I'm a bit late to the party, but best wishes nevertheless. Sunday was Bob Dylan's 85th birthday.  I almost cannot believe this, even though I'm typing it. For Dylan to be 85, I would have to be...let me do the math on this for just a second, okay? Take away the five and carry the one plus....YIPES! One of us is really old, and I suspect it ain't the kid from Hibbings, Minnesota. And don't get me started on you, okay?

I guess you had to be there in one place, a generation lost in space as McLean sang, to really appreciate how bad pop music was until Dylan and The Beatles, coming at it from different perspectives and different backgrounds, reinvented it and allowed all of us to own it. It was a long, long time ago.

US pop music before Dylan had Pete Seeger, The Weavers, and Folkies and Okies for the most part. Woody Guthrie was idolized, but the guy at CBS (the largest label in the world at that time) was Mitch Miller (and we watched his TV show and oh boy...) while Guthrie lay dying. We also had the Brill Building contingent and a ton of heart throbbers and throbbettes and all the June/Moon/Croon lyrics you could eat with a-- well, you can probably guess what utensil you could eat 'em with.

I was too young to catch the guy who, as Elston Gunn, was the piano player for Bobby Vee and most of the hokey folkie incarnations--I picked up on him first through other folks doing his material and being seduced by his command of the language through Blonde on Blonde before finally stumbling across John Wesley Harding even as the auslanders were unveiling Rubber Soul. I realized the language was so powerful because the ideas it reflected were the foundation of the Next New World.

All of that was eons ago, and the face I shave in the mirror now could barely clear that sink a lifetime ago. Like Leo Kottke, I spoke with Dylan (and Leo as well and knew who they both were when I did; and my feet are still smiling), and was close to tongue-tied (my wife knows how rarely that happens) since all I wanted to tell him was how much his music meant to me even while realizing that he didn't make music for how it made me feel; he made music for how it made him feel. We were along for the ride.

So, as Loudon Wainwright, III, one of those dubbed a New Dylan in the Seventies before we realized there was nothing wrong with the old one, once offered, (a belated) Happy Birthday. I hope we'll always find new and better reasons to celebrate you as you have so often celebrated each of us.

-bill kenny

Arrivals and Departures

I'm always delighted by small children and infants, though I am often annoyed at parents who don't keep better control of them in social environments. I was shopping yesterday, and hadn't realized it was 'bring your mewling child to the store with you' day because I was up to my butt in very unhappy, very young people.

When that happens, I go with the flow and get cranky myself. Don't get me wrong-I'm not angry with the children. A newborn didn't decide to get in the car and drive to the store. Mommy did. Or maybe daddy, but based on what I saw yesterday, more than likely not, though mommy probably wishes she knew where daddy was.

I don't know when we became a country of the very young and the very old, but having been the former and now being the latter, let me tell you that all the other age groups, and food groups for that matter, had best start pulling their own weight.

We spend way too much money on diapers and Depends in these parts. We built this nation for our children-that's the deal every generation worked with the one that followed, except now we sold our children and their children out for offshore bank accounts and left them with no skills, no jobs, and no hope.

We're so busy blaming the New World Order and the changing times that we have no time to look in the mirror and look at ourselves. When Gandhi talked about being the change you want to see in the world, he wasn't talking about the change under the couch cushions in the living room. He was talking about all of us to each of us, for everyone.

If being polite means being less than honest, maybe we should ask one another if that's too high a price to pay for comity. We owe each other the unvarnished truth to build the world we all want to live in. Hurt feelings are a luxury we most certainly can afford if they get us to where we need to be.
-bill kenny   

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

We are a nation (and culture) addicted to fossil fuels. I suppose we had to be addicted to something, and it had to be cheap and it had to be abundant. We became so addicted to it, and shared that addiction around the world so that now everyone has the habit and fossil fuels are no longer the former nor the latter, and yet still addictive.

It wasn't until the seventies when the Arab nations exporting oil realized our dependence was so great we might succumb to the temptation to whore out our own mothers for a tankful of the good stuff for the Winnebago. 

I learned to drive when high test gasoline was less than forty cents a gasoline and the right to always buy it for that price was, we assumed, somewhere in the Constitution. Half a century later, welcome to five bucks plus a pop, and the search for the guilty goes on.

You'd think if we're spending more now on imported oil than we were at the height of the Arab Oil Embargo, that we'd be looking to alternatives to the high costs and dicey supply availabilities we are facing and will face every day of the future as a nation. You might even be tempted to believe the people we elect to represent us in our nation's capital might have more than a passing interest in our future since they share it. But you would be wrong.

First and foremost, they're interested in their own futures, and as we all know, the next election is (always) just around the corner. And when you're running for office, you're only statesmanlike between fundraising dinners on the way to the next baby-kissing contest and county fair. After a while, the audience knows the candidate's stump speech as well, if not better, than s/he knows it themselves. And believes even less of it than they do.

And it must be politics that would have one of the two major parties (the more stupid of the two, in my opinion, and, yes, name-calling never settles anything but I like the feeling), determined to turn the clock back no matter what the rest of the world is up to. 

Meanwhile, the wizards of Washington, so quick to search for the guilty everywhere but in their own mirrors, remain ever vigilant in their dedication to their definition of 'the American Way,' even if neither they nor we have any idea what the hell they are talking about. Just "Drill, Baby, Drill." (and let me know how that works out)

And don't worry about what it all means, because it adds up to nothing written in sand and blown by the wind. We've always been at war with (insert name of your least favorite nation here), and we have the history books to prove it.

If you remember it differently, you remember it wrong, and you've picked the wrong country at a dangerous time to start remembering things wrong. These are times when politicians, finding themselves with cannibals among their constituents, promise them all missionaries for dinner. That way, there's no worry about who would say grace.  
-bill kenny

Two Hooves or Two Wheels?

We've all seen the stickers. I think at one time I may have had one on my bumper, some variant of 'Share the Road with Motorcycles.' I do what I can, when I can.

Driving the other day on Route 12 in Scenic Preston (Preston Chamber of Commerce: that'll be five bucks, please; cash money only and that's per mention so come across quick or the party's over before it starts), I'm heading towards the Pequot Bridge keeping up with the flow of traffic as the intersection widens to three lanes at the light and two of the lanes make a left to go over the bridge towards the back entrance to the Mohegan Sun or to access 395 North or South.

I hear him before I see him so I call him Doug(ie) Doppler (and yeah I know it's bassackwards, but so is bassackwards), a motorcyclist with NO helmet, no leathers, just wraparound shades (the rain finally stops in Southeastern Connecticut and we go all stupid) in the right-hand lane.

I'm on the left because that's where I need to be when I clear the casino ramp) and the guy weaves around to pass on his right the truck in front of him, cuts behind the car in front of the truck so he can ride between that guy and my car, accelerating as he comes alongside, and then darts quickly to his left as his rear tire is parallel to my right front.

He's not in front of me long as he speeds up and slides (don't know what other word to use) between the car in front of me and a bus.

In a flash, he's gone, and I hope he's safe wherever he's going. Meanwhile, I'm alone in my prison on the road, trying to sort out why worrying about motorcycles doesn't seem to be the front lobe priority for those who ride them as they'd like the rest to have. And yeah, I mentioned all the protective clothing, none of which this guy had (or was required to), because Connecticut is a Ride Free State thanks to "Pappy."

I'm hoping all the folks who ride are exercising their freedom of choice and have chosen to sign organ donor cards attached to their operators' licenses. I mean if we're gonna do some outing with motorcycles and watching, I say let's make it interesting and figure out a better and safer way to share the road, since a lot of folks in the motorized boxes don't have to be nice, as we all know, because they've got lots of protection even if they're not paying attention.

I don't ride a motorcycle, but I think my car driver's rule works as well for two wheels as it does for my four. It's NOT my skill or ability on the road that I worry about; it's the other guys', even when it's the other girls,' and as nice as the bikes may be, none of them are a match one-to-one with even a beater. And what's the point of saving fifteen seconds of travel time if you risk being dead forever?

-bill kenny

Nearly Unremarked Upon

Some calendars are always at war with themselves. We had it happen this past weekend with Memorial Day here in the USA and the Feast of Pentecost this past Sunday. I wrote this a very long time ago and think it's survived rather nicely (though how would I know, right?).

Not Just This Wheel's on Fire

As a grade school child, this past Sunday was one of the most difficult days we had all year as Roman Catholics. As a loyal son of Holy Mother Church, I struggled to wrap my head around The Holy Trinity and God as the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost (later changed to Spirit, which I always thought was a great marketing idea, as all I ever thought of was Casper, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to be the point).

Just as I was getting comfortable with the contradiction of three persons in one Godhead, along comes Pentecost Sunday, and when you're a kid, because you don't know the words 'disquieting' or 'surreal,' you say 'weird' (a lot).

 

Now, as a somewhat world-weary adult, I look at the Gospel of John, usually used as part of the Mass, and envy that school kid with his unthinking faith and belief.

John, say the Scripture scholars, was (at best) reconstructing what might have been said at Christ's last Supper, but because of when those same scholars think the Gospel was written, it's very possible that John, himself, heard none of the words spoken he quotes. 

Ironically, and coming full circle, John himself becomes the proof of his own theory that belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, taken on faith alone, by those who did not witness his miracles, is at least as powerful as belief by those who were present.

The tongues of fire, we were taught in catechism (when I was in public school and attended religious instruction in the church basement once a week) and later, when at St Peter's in religion class, were to cleanse our hearts and minds of doubts and questions. over seven decades into this journey, I guess they needed to be lot hotter because the former remain and the latter abound.

But, honoring the notion of symmetry and hoping the truth in the lesson is so simple and obvious, even I can grasp it, I cling to the example of John and his testimony of faith and belief in that which he had not seen. No man alive will come to you with another tale to tell. And you know that we shall meet again, if your memory serves you well.

-bill kenny