It's Only Water in a Stranger's Tear

I had someone once explain to me, as if I were not aware of it, that 'Norwich is not ...' (a town in this region known for having Julia Roberts work in a pizzeria). 

The person making that observation looked nothing like Carmen San Diego, who would know these things, but I've lived in southeastern Connecticut long enough to recognize the truth in that statement. 

As a matter of fact, the list of other places that Norwich is NOT is longer than my arm, but I think that's part of the problem that residents, old and new, have with our city and with one another.

"How can we be in if there is no outside?'
We need to agree on definitions of who we are, as residents and neighbors, and why we are here. I will concede some people have settled in Norwich as a result of losing a bar bet; we can probably remove them from this discussion, but everyone else, old, young, male, female, whatever color in the rainbow you choose to be, all the rest of us are in this together, some more so than others.

And if I may, let's define ourselves in positive terms.

As a parent of two young children, when my wife and I settled here in the fall of 1991, neither we nor Norwich are the same as we enter early August of 2026. What we are looking for now, a small city with interesting places to meet and restaurants in which to eat, is different from what those with school children seek, or those working shifts at one of the casinos, or those who lived their lives here and are looking forward to a quiet retirement. 

And all of us look to those who lead the city to deliver to each of us what we want.

Those who have been here for decades have memories and meanings that those who've arrived more recently can't comprehend or understand. Long-time residents look at downtown and see the ghosts of Norwich past and fear that none of what once was can ever return. 

Others, driving through the same downtown to work beyond the city, see potential and promise all along the route even if it's not 'textbook downtown,' while still others see only empty storefronts and defeat. 

Our challenge is not that we each see a different Norwich but that each of our visions of where we live shares a common theme that has us as victims who are powerless to change our own story.

That's where we need to accept that change begins with us and moves from house to house, street to street, and across every neighborhood. We've tried countless variations of "help needs to come from Hartford or Washington or from the lone developer on the grassy knoll." And when all is said, nothing is done. 

Some of us seem to think we must do everything ourselves and wait, somewhat aloof, until the world is ready to find us. Except Norwich has always been at its best when it has been a part of the bigger world. It's when we've retreated into our separate villages and eyed those approaching from beyond our borders with suspicion and distrust that we have failed. We've spent so much time waiting for a moment that we cannot even define, much less recognize.

It's what we do in the space between our birth and death, choosing to be an exclamation or an explanation, that matters. We have become a city of cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Every new idea, every different proposal, is examined to see what benefit 'they' derive at 'our expense.' How about this: who f'ckin' cares? 

Some of us think squabbling is dialogue; it's not, but it is destructive. When we talk to one another, not at each other; when we choose collaboration over confrontation; no matter who we have been until that moment, we all become citizens of the same city, the city we each call home, no matter our language, culture, or color. Let's face it, literally: we are Norwich
-bill kenny

She Was Easily Undone

There are some people you always remember the first time you met them. In my case, my wife and, of course, my two children. I knew the first time I saw her that I'd marry my wife. 

And I tease our children that thanks to technology, I knew who they were long before they knew me (I sometimes wonder if they could have, would we have still met, but I see no reason to start down a path whose twists and turns, and ending, I cannot foresee). We had names for them months before they arrived, and I took enormous comfort knowing I wasn't bringing a stranger into my home from the hospital.

Now, in an era where so much social media and technology have supplanted person-to-person, it's different in terms of 'the first I read your tweet' or the first 'like' someone placed on an image you'd posted. 

I sat alongside someone at an event recently who very politely made it clear as we spoke that Facebook, LinkedIn and Blue Sky were all fine but he still preferred the knock on the door and the 'hello, may I please introduce myself to you?' routine.

As Dylan observed in another life, those who are not busy being born are busy dying, and today will be another busy day here on the ant farm. All mouths, no ears. 

Some blame the pagers and cell phones. I think it's the batteries. Without them, we'd have none of our current devices unless we could accommodate the tether. But perhaps we could, since not even the birds are free; they are chained to the sky.
-bill kenny  

All in All

Our two children were raised on Duplo and Lego. 

This was PPC, pre-personal computer, of course, and the other competitive and complementary activities were books, board games, television, and the Outdoors.

Their minds grew, and imaginations flourished as they manipulated the brightly colored bricks and blocks. Somewhere in our basement, we have boxes full of the bricks, including the pirate ship and the space shuttle, but those two I can remember. Truly magical toys that are something new every time out of the box.

I don't think you or your children had to have ever played with any of that to be impressed by all of this. Just sit back, enjoy, and near the end is a menu of all the others that exist so you can go from one to the other. 

The video takes about forty minutes, and you already know you don't need to ask me how I'd know that, right? Absolute rubbish, laddie.
-bill kenny

Well, The Telephone Was Ringing....

I have the good fortune of rarely remembering my dreams, which would be a disappointment to oneirologists everywhere if I were a public figure of any import whose existence mattered to anyone at any time anywhere.

I say 'good fortune' because I'm wrestling with one I had recently, which I remember all too well and that disquieted me a great deal. My wife and I were home in her country, though I don't know where, and I actually don't know how I know that, as in the dream we never left the apartment where we lived with a third person whom I never managed to identify.

In the dream we had no children-just one another though I have no memory of whether we were young(er) or old(er) than we are now. And everything in the dream was in shades of brown.

I'm not sure in the dream if I realized it was a dream, which, I'm assured, in itself means something though what or why I do not know. That I could have a dream guide on my cell phone 24/7, iPhone or Android, is curiously of little solace to me but does speak volumes about the entrepreneurial spirit and greed of code writers here in what I fear is becoming the last century.

Nothing looked familiar to me, causing me to wonder if I'd become Pirate Prentice as I kept looking to the skies for Gravity's Rainbow, somehow feeling better that if I had seen it but never heard the roaring across the skies, I was safe until Tyrone Slothrop returned from an outing. And even then it could be a stairway to the stars.
-bill kenny

Bloom Where You're Planted

Each of us can summon a hundred reasons in an instant on why things in our lives haven't gone to plan. But the bottom line is that if you want something badly enough, you'll find a way. If not, an excuse.

Be an exclamation, not an explanation.
-bill kenny

Comcast & the 8th Amendment

 

US Constitution

David Figueroa may not be a Constitutional scholar, but he has some real-world experience with cruel and unusual punishment that they never mention in law school. 

Hopefully, he gets his just desserts.
-bill kenny

Beneath the Bottom Line

Someone told me the Good Book cited money as the root of all evil. I figured that made me a Saint, New Orleans or otherwise, but the real eye-opener was the discovery that it's the LOVE of money that's really at the root. 

Internationally, nationally, regionally, and locally across this country, we've gotten ourselves jammed up trying to understand what happens after you throw money at problems that don't go away, and then you run out of money. 

Many of us are living in spaces and places where there are a lot more for-sale signs on front lawns than vote-for signs across our towns as we head into the last month of summer and towards the post-Labor Day Election Scuffle and Shuffle. 

It's not your imagination; we're living in a hellscape, and if the experts are to be believed, it's not going to get noticeably better any time soon.

We're going to elect 435 congressional representatives, 33 Senators, and 39 Governors come November. I'm guessing those CNN poll-takers opted for 'unseat' because 'running out of town on a rail' wasn't an option. More's the pity.

I'm not sure at the macro level; it's not unlike attempting to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. And with all due respect to those in the political prognostication business, a shift in a seat here or there may mean little more than we've traded up for a tablespoon. 
-bill kenny