I Watch the Patchwork Farms

This is the hardest part of the season for me. The promise of the endless summer I savored in June has been replaced by a sinking feeling that I've missed out yet again, even though I'm not really sure what, exactly, I've missed. The days are still very often hot, but the light fades faster than it did three weeks ago, and there's something in the air, different and yet familiar.

In years past, this was the time of year when my wife and I would be organizing one or the other (or both) children for the arriving, too-fast-and-too-soon school year (actually, my wife did all the organizing, and the school supplies were assembled despite my assistance). This not-summer much longer but not-yet autumn resonates beyond those of us with school-age children.

That the world beyond my doorstep is in shambles and chaos is not helping me manage the malaise that's become my constant companion for reasons I cannot fully understand. We have lived in our house, on our street, in our neighborhood, and in our city for nearly thirty-five years. I don't think the fatigue I'm feeling in terms of 'same shirt, different day' is a result of any of that, but what's harder to sort out is what to do about it.

You may have had it happen to you as well-you look up and you're not where you used to be or where you want to be, and have no idea how you got to where you are or what to do next. I used to tease my wife back when it was just she and me, as I loaded us into the VW Käfer and just drove. After all, when you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. Eventually, we were always home and dry, more or less.

I've been around this juke joint for a not inconsiderable number of years, somewhat to my surprise and to the abject chagrin and dismay of more than a few people whom I won't dignify by naming, though they know who they are. I'm thinking that maybe I'm just momentarily becalmed and that in the next moment, or maybe the one after that, the wind will fill my sails and we'll be off again, racing to the horizon and beyond.

I'm starting to enjoy the sunrises more than I ever have and to take the sunsets as personal affronts when the days end. I can figure out how and when the night creeps in on a cat's feet, but I cannot stop or slow it. Hoping today's events can fulfill this morning's promise, just as I did yesterday, and hope to as well on the morrow.

-bill kenny

The Dustbin of History

I try to stay out of other states' politics, since residing in The Nutmeg State is already challenging enough without borrowing trouble and mixing it up with folks in places I don't live. 

I must, however, make an exception for Graham Platner and the professional political consultants who advocated for him to become the Democratic Party's senatorial nominee in Maine to oppose the incumbent, Susan ("Yes, I am as close to clueless as possible") Collins. 

Again, not my state, but from what I've learned so far about Platner, which, I suspect, is by no means everything, he's a skeeze and a sleaze and has always been one. It would appear the Maine Democratic braintrust did ZERO vetting of the guy after asking themselves, 'Do we think he can beat Susan Collins?' Nothing else mattered, apparently.

The Nazi-affiliated chest tattoo, the just-above-the-police-calls ideology he offered in public discourse over the last few months, didn't cause anyone to go "huh? It was only when the trickle of rumors about his previous relationships became a torrent of accusations that the folks in charge realized perhaps their Golden Child had feet of clay. 

The murmurings questioning the motives behind the women coming forward bewilder me. They are victims, and it was courageous they spoke up. What kind of person would invent a story where they themselves were the victims of sexual abuse and rape? Believe the women.

Meanwhile, Platner did not go quietly. Instead, he sees himself as a victim of internal politics and, somehow, 'the media' (for reporting on his past, when no one else would?). In the future, as Andy Warhol, once said, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Time's up, Graham. Goodbye.
-bill kenny   

Growin' Up (Behind the Wheel)

I find myself alone with what passes for thoughts at odd hours, almost always in my car, which, doddering curmudgeon that I am, is funny because life and times for my generation go full circle. 

When I was coming of age, the driver's license and the open road (and all they promised, if not always delivered) were a rite of passage. And here I am, very much as I started, a long way from home on a dark highway, lost but making great time.

It was the era of Springsteen's chromed invaders-GTOs, Malibu SSs, Olds 442s, Buick Wildcats, Mustangs, 'Cudas, and Chargers at the top of the list. All those muscle cars had gas lines the size of garden hoses, and all of us, the dweebs included (present!), knew the cubic displacement and the brake horsepower. MPG at a time when gasoline was thirty-five cents a gallon was a nonsense concept and was never explored.

We traveled in packs but were often alone. Our music was transitioning from AM radio to FM, and we struggled to move from converters to tape decks, almost always eight-track, with FM receivers. I remember taking the back seat out of a car to make room for ludicrously sized speakers that were very important to me, but I can't remember why. Because I suspect, just because.

Growing up in the sixties, we were the pioneers who 'experimented' with pot and sex, sometimes at the same time and sometimes not so much. We were all psychedelic capitalists who believed dope got you through times of no money better than money got you through times of no dope. 

Fifty-plus years later, we invented the Real Estate Collapse and Stock Market Meltdown (all caps for a reason) and were absolutely stunned when it happened (now I know why we called it dope).

I watched older neighborhood boys, sent off by my parents' generation, thousands of miles away to places I couldn't say, for causes I accepted as good and true because my government told me it was so. 

A lifetime later, it's my generation sending our children and grandchildren to other eerily familiar wars, and I know just how good we've gotten at lying, but I don't know who we're fooling.

Now that I'm retired, I don't get up with the chickens to go to work the way I did for decades, but I think I prefer to drive in the dawning and the gloaming--when you don't know (or care) where you're going, any road will get you there. 

Those with whom I traveled in the wee small hours always seemed as lost as I, and the roads led everywhere and nowhere. Even now, I keep the windows rolled up, crank the climate control, and turn the tunes up. 
-bill kenny
 

Independence Day Post-Mortem

You probably have one or more in your neighborhood as well: the bozo who purchased a boxcar's worth of what sounded like M-80s for Independence Day but didn't quite use them all up and will now throw them around after dark for probably much of the remainder of this month or until they manage to hurt themselves because of a lack of caution (fingers crossed; and that body part chosen for a reason).

Sorry for sounding so grumpy, post-holiday. 

I hope yours was whatever you wished it to be. Most of the Northeast and large parts of the rest of the country have sweltered for nearly a week as a result of a heat dome and the thunderstorms and lightning it produced. I spent part of the Fourth in an air-conditioned house, rereading an amazing speech by Frederick Douglass, delivered 174 years ago in July 1852.

For those in love with the Bling-Crunk-Rap-Crap I see on music TV where we pretend it's art (at least I do), try this on for size in terms of anger, emotion,  eloquence, and, all these decades later, timeliness. Pull up your pants, home fry, and turn your ball cap around. Your act is so faded.      

THUGLIFE? Please. How in the moment is this: "Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me.

"This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice; I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony."

I hope your Fourth, our Fourth, was good, but that today and all the days that remain are great and greater than the sum of the hours of which they are made and that we finally succeed at that which we have striven our whole lives, a color and bias-free society, grounded by equity, built on equality of opportunity and beholden only to each of its citizens pledged to its success. 
-bill kenny

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Some Mushy Stuff

Today is our son's birthday. This is from a decade ago and was called: 

So Much Like a Man I Just Had to Say

Our son, Patrick, is forty-four years old today. 

The evening we (my wife and I) found out she was pregnant, and the ultrasound indicated the sex of the child Sigrid was carrying, I was a goner. I got the goofiest grin on my face, and when I think about what I looked like when the doctor told us, I smile in that same manner to this day.

Patrick was, and remains to this day, a low-maintenance fellow traveler on the Big Blue Marble, together with the love of his life, Jena, with whom he celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary on Independence Day. 

If he has ever experienced disappointment or distress, and I know that he has, he has never let anyone else feel it. There have been times in our lives when I have hurt, knowing that he was hurting and there was nothing I could do about it. 

I remember the briefing at Dad College where all of this was covered. The curriculum hasn't changed in a long time; ask anyone who is a father, and you'll see what I mean. All of our teachers stressed the importance of understanding the words of Reinhold Niebuhr.

I realize I've learned more from my children than I ever taught them, and no one has tested me more often than my son on what I've learned, or should have. His smile that lights up a room, his ready wit, his unfailing courtesy, and grace (no matter the chaos and catastrophe surrounding him) are traits he has from his mother, as he could have never gotten them from me. He has no idea how fortunate he is that it worked out that way.

I hope he has a wonderful day. Happy Birthday, my darling boy! 

-bill kenny

Matthew 26:11 Vs. Deuteronomy 15:11

We have a situation here in the Rose of New England, Norwich, Connecticut. Many years ago, one of the city's nearly-native sons, John Manuel Andriote, repurposed the 'America is a great melting pot' metaphor to create one closer to home, "Norwich is a saucepan." 

He was right then, and he's right now. You can find the same hopes and hates here that you have all across our nation. We are America in miniature, with opportunities and challenges.

We're currently engaged in a serious discussion about siting a homeless warming shelter in a former church in the middle of a historic residential neighborhood. It would be for winter-time use only, from mid-November to mid-April (advocates estimate that there are about 80 homeless people within our city limits). 

The discussion is just getting started, but there are, as you can imagine, very strong feelings on the issue, from across the city as well as across the street. I don't believe there's a right or wrong answer, but I think we're arguing about a band-aid for a situation requiring major surgery.

I'm struck by "If approved, the new shelter would operate from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. nightly from around Nov. 15 to April 15, Kelly has said." Where do/can homeless people go at any time, day or night, for the other seven months of the year? And why don't we concern ourselves with that?

Meanwhile, we entertain proposals for warming shelters rather than invest in permanent, affordable housing. "A lot of the people who are ...using the shelter have jobs, have cars...Kelly said."

I'm old enough to remember LBJ's War on Poverty, but now we're waging war on poor people. We need to stop chasing temporary fixes and create lasting and equitable solutions. We must cure the ACTUAL illness rather than treat the symptoms. -bill kenny

Uber, Under, Sideways, Down

I recently underwent a procedure (not an operation because it happened in the doctor's office (I think)) involving steroid injections in my spine to relieve my arthritis, which has, as with so much else in my life, only worsened.

Actually, the needle was intended to get as close to certain nerves at the base of the spine as possible. It did get so close on the left side that my leg kicked out uncontrollably while the injection was being administered. The doctor consulted an X-ray screen operated by a technician to see where he was placing the needle; it's not like I was a dart board (I hope).

I mention all of this because the injections and their aftermath meant I couldn't drive myself home. As I keep myself to myself, I don't have anyone, even after thirty-four years of living where I do, that I consider a friend and would impose on to give me a ride to and from the physician's office.

Rather than take a taxi to and from the office, I downloaded the Uber app, which I have never used (I lead a very sheltered life), and was able to use it to get to and from the procedure using what Nathan, the driver, called 'a fifteen-minute friend.' I think he's right. The car was neat and comfortable, and he was a considerate driver and a terrific conversationalist. A fifteen-minute friend. I like that.

Coming home, Ray, a different driver in an obviously different vehicle, was just as delightful as he explained he had a studio apartment practically on the beach in the shore community of Niantic. He drives just to meet people and share experiences.

Terrific time all in all, and I'm no longer afraid to consider ride-sharing if that's what we're still calling this. And perhaps coincidentally and perhaps not, a few days late, I came across this article, making me grateful that I departed and arrived with all the stuff that makes me, me. 
-bill kenny