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

August Already?!?

Today marks the start of the eighth month of the year.  I can still recall looking forward to the beginning of 2026. Actually, that's a lie; I dreaded its start. I had just begun kidney dialysis and was struggling with it very much, and feared I was nearing the end of my rope.

Winter passed and then spring, and now we're in the last full month of summer. Much of my life has adapted and adopted a new routine that revolves around a cycler for ten hours or so every day (evening). 

I'm grateful I have health insurance to pay for the bulk of all of my treatments and confess to not knowing how people who have no or only a little health insurance can manage to stay alive if they get sick. I'm aware that for many black-hearted and red-hatted fellow Americans, that worry, among others, makes me a Lib.

Challenge accepted.    
-bill kenny

You Make Your Own Chains

"There are those who think that
Life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance."

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears, and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will."

-bill kenny

Microphone Check, One-Two, One-Two

Do you hate waiting in line more in hot weather than in the cool of the Spring or the Fall? Me, too-not sure why, but I sure do. And once I get steamed, emotionally and physically, it carries over into everything I do for hours afterwards. Talk about all revved up and nowhere to go. Need to learn to savor the flavor while I still have a sense of taste.

It's been a free-for-all weather-wise this summer. We've had low water levels in our rivers, lakes, and streams, but we're not farmers around here, so it's not as critical as in Idaho and Nebraska. Here we have crunchy forests because it's so dry, not dust storms that blow lives and livelihoods away forever.

When I want to feel sorry for myself about how unhappy waiting for anything makes me in the heat, I think about how much closer to the end of my life I am than to the beginning. Especially with a phalanx of physicians and a dialysis machine that I'm on. What if, despite my obstinacy, there is a Hereafter and I'm a walk-on in that movie?

In light of how I have felt about Him for lo these many decades, how can I expect The Lord of All Creation to react to my arrival, probably on a very hectic and crowded day when I'm at my most snippy (rhymes with Skippy) (inside joke).
-bill kenny

Grifters, Grafters, and Circus Clowns

We are having weather in my neck of the woods with the edges still on it. That is to say, in years (and decades) past, we'd have gradual warm-ups or cool-downs and rain and snow in measured and moderate amounts. And not just here, but everywhere. 

I'm familiar with those who argue climate change has been a fact of life since before there was life on this orb and there's a certain amount of truth to that statement of fact, but also true is that we, heedless of the consequences to ourselves and others across the planet have been abusing Mother Nature to the point where she has been striking back here and around the world.

In the United States, we're repealing ecological safeguards and guardrails in the name of 'freeing up capitalists to do what they do best,' which is to poison our waters and pollute our air. For those who think the outbreak of cyclospora is some kind of coincidence, think again. Elmo Musk's DOGE eliminated almost twenty percent of the workforce at the Centers for Disease Control, the people tasked with guarding our health. And yet the tainted lettuce and resurgence of measles come as a surprise to so many. Seriously?

If you like to swim in the ocean and think it feels a little warmer than in past years, be grateful you're not a fish or any other marine life because our oceans are taking the brunt of the heat that greenhouse gases have been allowing to pass through the atmosphere. I'm not a fan of seafood, but even I can see when our food is being poisoned. 

Brain Food

"Anybody here see the noise, see the fear and commotion?

I think we missed it.

Anybody here see the love, see the hate being motioned?

Don't give me no hand me down shoes.

Don't give me no hand me down love.

Don't give me no hand me down world.

I got one already."

-bill kenny

Already Worrying about Winter

I am very much a whiner. I have a natural talent for it and after seventy-four years on the ant farm, I've developed a better than rudimentary skill set for it as well. I have a strong sense of self-a very powerful sense of personal hurt (real and/or imagined) and finely honed feeling of outrage about everything in the universe that's just not working out for me (whether it was supposed to or not).

I am a natural victim and the reason you may not have noticed is because you're one, too, in all likelihood. No shame, my brother or sister-it's what we do and how we roll. Besides, who has time for all this happiness anyway? Don't they say Misery Loves Company? And who of us wishes to be alone?

I offer this as my best effort at a cheering thought because we here in the Northeast and, it turns out across the country, are getting steamed and baked all at the same time this summer. Lovin' Spoonful were right on the money and John Sebastian knew whereof he spoke/sang. 

It's almost August. Six months from now, at least in this area, more likely than not we'll be up to our keisters in snow and ice and these days of what feels like a hundred degrees will seem like fever dreams. Except dreams don't leave footprints in snowdrifts. 

Those are mine and mine alone and while you can't see it from that picture, the snow was about twenty-six inches deep before it stopped. Guess what I was thinking about while slogging through it all? Yeah, you're right, that was too easy, wasn't it?

-bill kenny   

"We Are What We Pretend To Be....

I'm fixated on how we seem to be DEvolving rather than evolving. We're louder, less kind, meaner and actually dumber (in my opinion) than the previous one and we 'r not troubled enough about any of it to change direction. 

I think we're well on our way to being a nation of impatient mind-readers. Don't furrow your brow or make that face (I know 'what face? I wasn't making a face!' Were, too.). 

You may phrase it more elegantly (I would certainly hope so) but, with apologies to Beckett, we're NOT Waiting for Godot but rather hoping the other one shuts up real soon so we can talk.

It's taken me forever to warm to texting on my cell phone. I get hung up on spelling all the words with all the right letters in the proper places with capitalization and punctuation for all. 

Such fastidiousness can make you roadkill with hair on the human highway and more often than I'd like, I've been reminded that he who hesitates is lunch.

I've had follow-up texts as I've been struggling to frame a response to an earlier note. It's hard to count to ten and get a grip on your annoyance while holding a piece of plastic with more computing power than our first three home computers had, put together, while some touch typist is kicking your thumbs.

We're about the same in person-to-person communications, too. Those Sunday morning public affairs programs the major TV networks used to have so the FCC would cut them a break at license renewal time, have evolved into snarkfests where folks who remind me of terriers in need of Ritalin just yap at one another when they're not shredding some 'guest' like an old chew toy.

We're all rushing to get someplace other than here and once we're there, wherever 'there' is, we're off again. My German wife calls it kein ruhe im arsch and she would know as she's married to one (mit ohren).

When you next converse with a real, live person try to listen to the interaction between you, not just to the words but to the silences as well, and you may be surprised at how little of the latter breaks up the stream of the former.

I used to tease acquaintances and associates, disquieted at how rapidly I spoke, that people from my home state of New Jersey couldn't afford a pause to catch our breath or collect our thoughts, because with so many in such a small state, if you stop speaking you won't be heard from again for years. 

So now we talk, type and (for the most part) think in shorthand delivered in staccato, acronym and emoticon all masking, while masquerading as, meaning. Instead of technology and our tools helping language and literature to flower as arts and culture flourish, we've continued to dumb down and throw majesty and meaning over the side.

I came across a quote from Indianapolis' #1 Son, Kurt Vonnegut that makes me smile and think every time I read it. If it does half as much for you, it's worth the inclusion, "...do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."
-bill kenny (Class of '74)