Shaken, but Not Stirred

Are we the only species on the planet who become as unhappy when we get what we want as when we're denied it? No wonder visitors from other galaxies steer clear of us. We can't even get along with each other when we have agreed that we want the same thing. The devil, and a reasonable amount of turbulence, seems to be in the details.

Have you ever been, or watched an American in a foreign country? From the way many of us behave, it seems we Americans think people in other countries are deaf and stupid, so we SPEAK ENGLISH VERY LOUD and S-L-O-W-L-Y. News Flash: They can hear us fine. They just don't understand us. Can you blame them?

As persnickety as we are, might we also be the only ones on the block who can appreciate who we are and where we are? I have a hard time imagining a dog, purebred or pound puppy, admiring a sunset. Or encountering a box turtle who enjoys cloud watching.

We are capable of many emotions, some perhaps not very admirable (I can't imagine wolves shunning one of their own because 'his den isn't from around here' but they haven't gotten to that on Animal Planet yet) and others so profound you have to assume it's what helps define us.

Yes, we behave crazily sometimes, but that insanity is a component of our humanity just as much as our thumbs and an appreciation for Goethe are all part of the package.

Maybe that's why we seem so fragile and should be handled with care.
-bill kenny

More True Now Than Ever

"Show me an upright, respected man.
I'll have him licking my boots when I put money in his hand."

"There's no one alive who can't be purchased or enticed.
There's no one alive who won't sell for a price.
Money Talks." 
-bill kenny

And the Stars Look Very Different Today

Our lives and times seem much harder than they once were (and getting harder all the time), and I'd suggest they are. But being the Crown of Creation is a full-time job, and like it or not, we are up to the task, despite occasional setbacks and slip-ups...

In case you think we're losing our touch, cast a look and give a listen to this revisited video that NASA has created. I found it years ago, fell in love with it, and then forgot all about it until just a moment ago.

Lilies of the Field? Nice. Selected primates' use of primitive tools. Okay.
We may be lonely, but we are not alone, except with our thoughts......  
-bill kenny

Picture This

Like almost everyone on the planet (seemingly), I have a smartphone as a cellphone. I have no idea how to make or answer calls should the need arise (and when it does, I look around frantically for someone to help me with the technology, usually to no avail).

It's chock-full of applications to facilitate accomplishing the most amazing of feats, most of which, despite all the years of having a smartphone, remain a complete mystery to me. I can sort of use the calendar, given enough time, and, I'm proud to note, can actually use the search function, though I've had no success when I Google 'how does my smartphone work?' 

Truth to tell, I have the phone for the camera. I have delusions of photography. I'm not really a photographer, though I take a metric butt-ton of pictures just about every place and every time I go and post them all over the place. Volume over quality, I guess.   

Ansel Adams, am I not, and while practice makes perfect, it's actually perfect practice that makes perfect, and that's not happening, at least not in my case. However, I fell across a cheat sheet of sorts, with a title seemingly written for me: "How to take better photos on any smartphone."

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I don't doubt that; I'm just unclear on the pixel-to-picture exchange rate.
-bill kenny 

"First-Time Callers..."

Today is National Grandparents Day. It was informally observed for decades until the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who established it as the first Sunday after Labor Day, on Sunday, 7 September 1979. 

To be honest, it could have been celebrated since the founding of the Republic, and until VERY recently I would have had no idea. And by 'VERY recently' I mean since the middle of July. My wife and I became first-time grandparents with the birth of a son to our daughter, Michelle, and her husband, Kyle. 

In this Age of Technology, Oma and Opa have been oohing and ahhing over shared videos on Facebook and devouring all the still imagery we can find. Still, tomorrow, albeit very late in the day, as it's a drive and a half to Virginia, we'll get a chance to see our grandchild in the flesh for the first time. 

We'll only be in Virginia for a couple of days, not long enough to see him grow up and go to college by any means, but hopefully, to share moments of his life we'll remember even though he won't. I think the expression is true: "A grandchild fills a space in your heart you never knew was empty."
-bill kenny 

Maria Muldaur Approved

I live close (relatively) to two of the largest native american casnons in the country, and yet unless I'm using gambling space to get from one point to another in the casino, I've never paid any attention to all the means of gambling, sorry, GAMING, that the places offer. I love how we've substituted an M for the B and neutered the word. You can still lose your life savings in one visit to any of the tables or machines, but it sounds so much more refined to say gaming.  

I have to concentrate when I'm watching stuff on ESPN because across the bottom of the screen, more often than not, are odds on a variety of sports and sporting events. No idea what Over/Under means, but I compensate for my lack of knowledge by having an absence of interest. 

All over my TV for weeks was a blitz of commercials for something called Kalshi, which at first I thought was for a cereal I always thought was called Kashi. It wasn't. Imagine my surprise. The commercial with the golfer and the aliens was, I thought, pretty funny. 

In terms of how Kalshi works, not a clue. I must confess I did not know the golfer was a celebrity; the perils of not getting out much anymore. The other golfer/alien commercial is, for my taste, much darker and funnier, though I still don't understand any of what this is all about. 

I do know casino operators are less than thrilled with Kalshi and with its growing-by-leaps-and-bounds popularity. I realize some people will drink anything and others will bet on the opportunity to watch them do it. But while it's not quite a high-roller's dream, I came across a story on a camel marketplace where you can buy, sell, trade, and God knows what else with camels. 

It's not Ali Baba and the forty thieves, but it does make midnight at the oasis an attractive destination. Unless, of course, you're a camel.
-bill kenny 

Understanding the Price of Freedom...

My mind is sometimes a projectionist’s fever dream as cross-generational imagery, historical, hysterical, some mine and some from before my time, coalesce and collide unbidden and unwanted. I can't watch, but I can't look away either.

All of those images pale when recalling street-level video of a brilliantly blue heaven over a lower Manhattan skyline on September 11, 2001, and the startling and sudden appearance of a commercial airliner entering one of the Twin Towers, disappearing inside, forever, while the mind struggles to process what the eyes had seen

Who doesn't have a story about where they were on 9/11?  Today, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of those attacks, the shock and pain are still fresh. It’s as if history stopped at the moment of the first plane impacting. And when time began again, the Age of Innocent Ignorance was over, and that of the Dark Hard World had begun.

The attacks of 9/11 created for every American, regardless of race, creed, politics, sexual persuasion, or color, including those not yet born, a shared memory in which pre 9/11 America becomes almost mythical. 

As often as we speak about the way we were before 9/11, there's a strange quiet when we talk of what has happened in its wake. We talk in abstractions about the Global War on Terror and of the thousands, and tens of thousands, of men and women in uniform deployed around the world in defense of freedoms we too often take for granted here on the home front.

We'll offer thoughts for the victims of 9/11, but to better understand the price of freedom, perhaps we should visit the memorial at Norwich’s Chelsea Parade to remember the selfless service and sacrifice of Norwich residents Jacob Martir-Guiterrez and Keith Heidtman, who died during Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Their memorial is just a few steps from Norwich Free Academy, where both were students. In such a way, the circle remains unbroken in remembering two young men who ran towards, not from, danger when their nation most needed them because they realized courage is not the absence of fear, but, rather, something more important than fear.

There's a German proverb, "fear makes the wolf bigger than he is." There are already too many wolves in our world without creating more. As Franklin Roosevelt offered to a very different America in a very perilous time, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

We can honor Jacob Martir-Guiterrez and Keith Heidtman, not just today, on the anniversary of 9/11, but every day, by living fearlessly and helping one another become better people.
-bill kenny