Nipped in the Bud(get)

You might know them better as 'single-serve' 'airplane bottles,' 'shooters,' or 'singles,' alcohol containers. Local vernacular refers to them as 'nips.' They are garbage, whether filled with your booze of choice (which, judging from the discards I see as I walk anywhere, appears to be Fireball in all of its variants) or just empty discards on the highways and byways.

In Connecticut, there's a nickel 'deposit' on each nip sold, payable at the point of purchase. The purchaser doesn't get the nickel back when the nip is consumed, so there's no incentive to not just throw them away. 

In theory, the deposit is aggregated and distributed to the cities where the nips were purchased to finance clean-up efforts from the discards. In the last six months, over fifty-one MILLION (with an M) nips were purchased here in the Land of Steady Habits.

We are a state that believes in recycling, so our soda and beer bottles and cans have a ten-cent per-container deposit redeemable by the consumer, as well as orange juice and tomato/V-8 juice containers. 

Strangely enough (to me), there's no deposit on milk containers or on any other plastic or glass container, beverage or otherwise sold in Connecticut.  My cynical evil twin, Skippy, thinks the state is really missing out on a cash flow there. 

New Haven, home of Yale University and seemingly a lot of thirsty people, with a population of about 134,000, sold the most nips, almost two and a half million. Norwich, the Rose of New England, where I live, is home to just over 40,000 souls but, punching well above our weight class, sold the sixth-largest amount of nips, pocketing almost $67,000.

You would assume that with that kind of money available for clean-up, our streets and sidewalks would be spotless and discarded-nips-free. Reminder: the Feast of the Assumption is August 15th; any other day is on your own time.
Suspect more than one of us would drink to that.
-bill kenny

Victim or Victor?

Growth and adaptation are key to the success of every organism, from a single cell to a government spanning a continent. It shouldn't be that surprising to us, living in Norwich, that our city has changed a great deal in three and a half-plus centuries. That's the thing about change-it relentlessly keeps happening because it's a process and not a product, a journey and not a destination.

Long-time residents will concede that this Norwich is not their grandparents' city, and the youngest among us are looking forward to when their Norwich doesn't resemble the one in which we live now. 

We have decisions about who will speak for us in Hartford and in Washington, D.C. coming up next week. Calling into local radio shows, writing letters to the editors of the only local newspaper that still has an editorial page, and commenting on postings on social media community pages are all helpful but are no substitute for casting a ballot. 

I voted very nearly a month ago by mail. In addition to all manner of officeholders and hopefuls competing for my vote, we have a referendum issue here in The Rose of New England, and it deserves more than a drive-by in terms of your consideration.

We need to reinvigorate neighbors and residents who have become discouraged experts, who have a cloud for every silver lining. There are many among us who can cite numerous examples of 'what didn't work the last time' to talk themselves out of trying the next time, whatever the issue.

Our refusal to let go of the anger and resentment created by past failures keeps us from grasping the promise of the opportunities before us now. Simply put: If we think we can't, we won't. If we don't even try, we'll fail. We'll miss every shot we never take. It's kinda simple: You cannot win if you do not play. Game on.
-bill kenny

On with the Countdown....

This time next week, throughout the country and across the state, we'll be rewriting our history. Again. Elections are peaceful revolutions, or should be. 

We shall have chosen among 'more of the same,' 'less of the same,' or 'something that will prove to be completely otherwise'. Exactly as we wanted, unless it wasn't. 

No one has ever said representational government is neat and tidy-that's a good thing, because it isn't. And while the big mandala continues to spin, smaller and lower-echelon wheels, where much of the real grinding gets done, continue to move as we all move forward.

A better tomorrow only happens if you make it happen.
-bill kenny

Pick Up Every Stitch

As I've mentioned (incessantly), my fondness for Autumn is tempered by what I know happens next, not because Autumn itself has ever done anything to or for me. In New England, we pride ourselves on leaf peeping weekends where excursions travel throughout the region, oohing and ahhing at the multiplicity of colors garbing the branches of deciduous trees as their leaves die.

Sorry. 

That's what they do; hell, it's what we all do. I'm not planning on taking a dirt nap for a while longer yet, but I'll concede I don't have that color thing going for me unless grey is the color you're talking about and the only part of me thinning is the hair covering my scalp. But Sunday morning, for just a moment, wow, it was beautiful, and then it was gone.

Industry left New England in the first decade after the end of World War II. We didn't know it at the time, but the Age of Greed had triumphed over the Age of Need, and those who owned factories that made things got tired of paying the folks who worked in them ein apfel und ei when they could shift everything South 900 miles and only have to pay ein apfel.

Mills that had been in Massachusetts for generations were shuttered as their doppelgangers opened in one of the Carolinas (it all sounds like banjo music to me) and then a generation later, lather, rise, repeat as the new location is somewhere it takes you ten minutes to find on the map, all in the name of value to shareholders. The business of America is business; don't forget your receipt.

In Norwich there are tracts of land, monuments to Mammon, sprawling factories in every corner of the city that have lain fallow for forty years and often longer, slowly disintegrating, releasing toxins into the air and poisons into the earth so that like the salt Rome plowed into Carthage to kill it, nothing will grow. No neighborhood is immune.

There are small ruins that ring the approaches to the city-reminders of what once was, once upon a time. But this time of year, in the early morning, hours before dawn, when stepping outside, the stars seem so bright and so near you can touch them, you remember there's no ground light to dissipate their glow or make them seem as far away as they really are. It's nearly Halloween and colder than a witch's teat, and you know which way the mercury is heading. Dress warmly and mind the shadows.

-bill kenny

One Temporary Escape

Some buy houses for their proximity to schools, shopping, or mass transit, but I, the relentless pragmatist, was keen on walking distance to a cemetery. The Yantic Cemetery is next door to the hospital, where I'm on a first-name basis with the Emergency Department staff. 

Gotta tell ya, it's weird looking out one of the hospital's 4th-floor windows and seeing a person at a grave site who looks like your primary care physician and then realizing you haven't seen your roommate since he went to the OR for tennis elbow surgery yesterday morning. A chill goes up your spine that has nothing to do with naughty nurses or those half-assed (literally) gowns.

Meanwhile, back at Yantic Cemetery, I love reading the headstones and sorting through the relationships. Two plus centuries ago, husbands often outlived their wives because so many of the latter died in childbirth. Often, the child died as well, and those graves are islands of a special sorrow.

There are many headstones of casualties from the volunteer units formed to help preserve the Union in the fight we call, inaccurately and without irony, "The Civil War." Someone, I know not who, always places small US flags on each of the sites-it's very lovely in a slightly sobering way.

 

There's a group of the headstones, I once counted twenty-eight, formed around a cannon that should look out of place in a cemetery but doesn't because it honors those who died at Andersonville and whose remains were repatriated.  

Veterans Day is around the (calendar) corner, and there are few places more appropriate to remember ALL who served for God, Country, or because we're all young and naive still than small-town cemeteries where abstractions and statistics have names and headstones.
-bill kenny

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