Democracy Is Coming to the USA

Election season is like Trick or Treat for adults, except we registered voters seem to end up with a lot of Mary Janes and saltwater taffy and way too few Dove Bars and Reese's Cups. 

Thirty-two days from now, unless you've availed yourself of early voiting or an absentee ballot, we'll be knee-deep in big muddy hitting levers, blackening circles, chopping chads (and jeremys in Florida) as the will of some of the people (at party nominating conventions this summer) is transformed into the will of all the people. The miracle of democracy, coming to a ballot box near you.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard ." Sing it, H. L. I'll hold the hymnal while you turn the page. Of course, in this country for the most part, hardly anyone has an opinion on how well democracy works since we rarely get above thirty percent turnout by registered voters in an 'off-year' (= non-Presidential) election.

Living in one of the thirteen original colonies (I still think we should get silk jackets, have colonial colors and maybe a secret handshake), I'm watching the wheels as I'll have the opportunity to vote for a state representative, a state Senator, a United States Senator, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a parsnip in a bear tree, to say nothing of a slew of State Constitutional officers, culminating in a new Governor. Plus, in my town we'll have a local referendum question, though the pygmy pony initiative failed to make the ballot. Again.

You'll have about the same range and scope of choices where you live-but only if you choose to vote. The same folks who'll sit on hold for twenty minutes for a call-in radio talk show can't take ten minutes to go vote on Election Day. Maybe they think you have to pay a fee to cast a ballot, or lack a calendar that tells them when Election Day is. 

The same people who call Dancing with the Stars or America's Got Talent hundreds of times to get their favorite advanced to the next round don't think it's appropriate to have an opinion on the direction their state or nation should take.

If you don't choose, you lose. And don't tell me you don't have enough information. In this country at this time in our history, if there's one thing we have TOO much of, it's information. The trick is to turn it into knowledge you can use to make informed decisions. Because that's what we're lacking....
-bill kenny

How About Norwich Crabs?

Tonight at seven is possibly the most important and also contentious meeting of the City of Norwich Inland, Wetlands & Conservation Commission in the city's history. Let me add substance to what you may have read as bombast. 

Here's the proposal the commissioners will review at tonight's meeting, as outlined on the Norwich Community Development Corporation (NCDC) website, like the many municipal commissions, agencies, boards, volunteers (and paid staff) who work to expand and enhance the Grand List of our city. 

Tonight's meeting is a small piece of the entire decision-making process, and there may not be a 'final' decision, so to speak, tonight at all. A lot has been written on both sides of the issue, and much of it unkind, demonizing those with whom we disagree because that's how we roll (and so do you, to be honest; human nature is often very inhumane).

I'll keep my opinions on the entire project to myself, except to note as a homeowner, when I bought our house eight years ago, my monthly mortgage payment was a shade over $1500, and it's now north of $2400. I could use a little help in funding my city government, so if not this proposed project, feel free to make a suggestion. I'm keen to listen.

Having typed ALL of that, I wanted to resuscitate an observation from a very long time ago whose truth is still current. I thought this was as good a day as any to return to it. It's not an original thought but, rather, what I remember of what someone from the Connecticut Business and Industry Association offered in conversation.  

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

If You Think I Mean You, I Do

(If this helps, and it won't, feel free to substitute the name of your town for the name of my town, even if you don't have a body of water bigger than a puddle.)

Dave and Dan were standing on the dock near the Howard Brown Park in Norwich, crabbing. They'd known one another for many years and had watched as their city, so bustling in their youth, quietly disappeared one business, one restaurant, and one block at a time, leaving nothing behind for anyone. For them, crabbing was more than relaxation; it was a diversion to take their minds off their city's troubles.

Except Dave had other troubles as well. As quickly as he caught crabs and turned around to drop them into his twenty-gallon catch bucket, one or more of the crabs already in the bucket would make a break for it. Dave spent almost as much time chasing fugitive crabs skittering down the dock and back into the river as he did fishing for them.

Dan took his crabbing at a very different pace. He worked with a small hoop net and bait cage, catching no more than one single crab at a time and when he did catch a crab he'd spend minutes turning it over, examining it from every angle, holding it up to the light, looking at the cheliped, the apron and the walking legs. 

Sometimes, after concluding the examination, Dan would drop the crab into a child's sand bucket that was his catch bucket and the most recent captive would settle down in the water coming to rest on top of another unfortunate crab.

At other times, Dan, when he'd finished examining his catch, would simply throw the crab back into the river, rebait his trap, and lower his hoop net over the side of the dock and resume crabbing.

As the hours wore on, Dave spent more and more of his time struggling to keep any of the crabs he'd caught in his dockside catch bucket, often first hearing the lid clatter as it was pushed off by one of the crabs, then chasing it down the dock before, with one final leap, it eluded his grasp and reached the freedom of the river. 

Dan watched Dave struggle, slowly shaking his head in sympathy, and, as the shadows grew longer in the afternoon sun, he offered his friend some advice.

"You're doing it all wrong," Dan said. Dave stared at Dan for a moment before pointing out, "It looks to me like we're both doing the exact same thing-so I don't understand what I could be doing wrong that you're not. Point is, Dan, I've caught a LOT more crabs than you have, but I'm not able to keep them because they never give up trying to escape and eventually get away!"

"Yeah," said Dan, "that's your problem. It's what you're catching."
Dave, by now nearly furious, could feel the gorge rise in his veins as he practically shouted at Dan, "How can there be a problem with what I'm catching? I'm catching crabs-you're catching crabs. We're both catching crabs!" 

"True enough," Dan said, "but you're catching all kinds of crabs. I'm only catching Norwich crabs." Dave stared at his friend. "What do you mean, you're catching 'Norwich crabs?' What the hell is a Norwich crab and how could that possibly make a difference?" Dave demanded to know. 

"It's the most critical difference," said Dan. "With Norwich crabs, when you have one and put him in the catch bucket, if he tries to get out, all the other Norwich crabs hold on to him very tightly and keep him from ever succeeding."

When I was first told this story, I thought it was extremely funny. It never occurred to me that it was also true. If we, and by "we" I mean you and me, whoever and wherever we are, don't learn to let go of the hurt and anger from previous failures and choose instead to reach for rewards, despite the risks, at our next opportunity, this story goes from being very funny to very sad all the way to being our last story and the one that becomes our epitaph. Trust me on this one.

-bill kenny 

The Road and the Sky

My wife and I have lived in Norwich a couple of weeks shy of thirty-five years. Sometimes it feels a LOT longer than that because of a sense of foreboding, a waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop state of mind so many of us seem to have.

The current buzz on social media platforms in our area is shouting and pointing on both sides about a proposed Amazon distribution center in the newly created Occum Industrial Park. Many Occum residents liked their village just the way it was, and the notion of an industrial park, hopefully to attract commercial enterprises to expand the Grand List and lower the tax burden on homeowners, was greeted less than enthusiastically. Having Amazon as a possible neighbor operating 24 hours a day, every day just down the street hasn't quieted their concerns. 

There's a sort of tradition in Norwich, probably going back to the Nine Mile Square, I suspect, that causes some residents, new and old, to assume the worst from the moment any initiative is announced, perhaps to avoid the rush, or, more likely, because they've concluded the advantage of pessimism is that you can only be surprised and never disappointed. In that sense, Amazon is just the latest in a long line of projects. It may be time to reconsider that mindset.

For decades we've all listened to laments about missed opportunities, bad luck, poor faith, lack of working capital as the municipal Grand List puttered along at a rate of growth just above that of inflation, which basically meant we've had no real growth at all.

Of course, if you've looked at municipal infrastructure from roads to sewers, class sizes and extracurricular offerings for students in public schools, manning and staffing of public safety agencies and, most immediately and importantly, your property tax bill, you already knew all of that.

The small businesses that quietly folded or relocated to another town, the forest of 'For Sale' signs scattered throughout every neighborhood, and the families everywhere who just stopped being our neighbors from one day to the next and disappeared have all become part of who we are and how we live. 

So far, our response to decades of decline has been to complain about it loud and long, and with the advent of social media, electronically too. I'm gobsmacked at how many folks click a mouse and add a mad face to a disparaging comment they agree with, no matter the subject. We've forgotten it takes a lot more energy to be a light than a horn, and we're going deaf without hearing what anyone is trying to say.

Old New England towns, and that's what we are, are a tough sell for industry at any time. The Amazon project is not a silver bullet and will not allow us to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but it is an incremental step in a forward direction in a small town that has allowed itself to believe for too long that going in circles was progress.

You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate the importance of critical mass, which is the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and creates further and future growth. In other words, one thing leads to another. 

Is every idea worth investigating? Yes, and weighing costs and benefits for all of us who live here. Just putting the "No" in Norwich doesn't help us do anything. Where we are in ten, twenty, or fifty years is in direct relation to where we go today and how we choose to get there. 

We're starting to see a glimmer of what can be when we put aside the petty and personal private agendas and define a destination and work as one to get there. How far we go is up to us.

-bill kenny

Hesitation Waltz

In almost every Any Town America you point at, more and more of us are from somewhere other than here. Our allegiances, culture, and habits have shifted.

Where our grandparents worked for one employer for most, if not all, of their lives, we hop from position to position, not always for financial remuneration, but sometimes for benefits and/or other intangibles (work from home/a sense of ownership of the process/flextime). 

Our customs and preferences, in terms of brand loyalty from the cars we drive to the food we buy, differ greatly from our parents' and not merely because they are our parents.

As George Carlin once noted, our houses have become places to keep our stuff and, by extension, our neighborhoods and cities are containers for our storage units. A check of our shoe closets will not turn up those technicolored monstrosities available for rental at fine lanes everywhere, but for lack of a better description, Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone is not only a picture of where we are, but where we're going.

If you have children in school and attend their PTA or PTO meetings, you see the same parents at every meeting. That's also true for Neighborhood Watch, Church Social, volunteer sports coaching, etc. Sociologists speak of 80/20; that is, eighty percent of a community's volunteer efforts come from twenty percent of its population. No wonder you're tired-you're doing the work of four of your neighbors.

It's easy to get sidetracked and think of a city as its buildings and roads, but they're only part of the story. We, the people, are the reason for edifices and infrastructure, and too often we hesitate instead of stepping up to be the difference. 

No one else can do what each of us can. He who hesitates is lunch. You will miss every shot you never take. And that's been a problem for way too many years for way too many of us in my little town.
-bill kenny 

Mr. Commerce

As I've aged, the only part of me getting thinner is my hair, and perilously so.  When I was little, barber shops were closed on Sunday and Wednesday (supposedly to make up for being open on Saturday, when most of their customers, boy-kids, were dragged by their moms to get haircuts). 

My dad always insisted on crew cuts. I hated crew cuts; correction on the tense of the verb, still hate crew cuts. I sort of understood the Wednesday closing and, from my own experience, can appreciate how relaxing having a day off in the middle of the week can be.

It was the Sundays off I never understood. It must have been habit or tradition; it wasn't reciprocity, that's for sure. Every picture I've ever seen of Jesus has him with long hair and a beard, so it's not like he had his own barber back in the day. That actually increased my regard for barbers as a kid-they were nice when The Lord may not have been their biggest customer.

I think if you're going to work one or more of the days of the weekend, you should seriously consider consecutive weekdays off as compensation. The locked place over the weekend I stood in front of sparked this train of thought. It was closed because 'he's open on Sundays,' the fellow sitting on the bench told me. 

I wondered why he wasn't closed on Sunday and open on Saturday, as so many of us see Saturday as part of the work week now, and the fellow explained that there was little business traffic on Saturdays. 

Of course not-the store is closed. Who would go to a store that's closed? I suspect people who have no money to spend. And these days, the foot traffic alone could fill a shoe store for millipedes.

-bill kenny

Seasons and Reasons

After what at times felt like a very hot, humid, and cranky summer, Fall arrived in New England last week, and we've been braced for a nor'easter for the last few days. The threat of rain and cooler temperatures, coupled with dark, foreboding skies, made me realize the seasons had, indeed, changed.

The big clue for the last month or so has been how the daylight is a little later in arriving each morning, and that same daylight seems to depart a few moments sooner every day. 

I appreciate the calendar last Tuesday making it official that summer had ended but I already knew the seasons were changing and I'm not a big fan of the part of the year we're entering. I don't dislike autumn so much as dread what follows.

But there will be some marvelous days between then and now-bracing mornings, gorgeous foliage, crisp evenings, and I hope where you are you, and yours have much the same, and more. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

-bill kenny

Channeling Ted Lasso

Belief is a wonderful thing. 

It's not better than pony rides for your birthday, admittedly, but it's powerful stuff and can get you through some, if not all, pretty hard times. I have, in my dotage, worked harder to be a happy idiot, succeeding at least in the latter part of that endeavor. I will attempt to see the brighter side of a multi-car collision (unless I'm part of it).

Given lemons, I not only can make lemonade; I'll build you a two-story condo out of lemon peel with a detached garage made of rind and a backyard spa-all for under 249K, complete with a full basement. 

Volume is the answer to your 'how can you do it?' question. 

You're welcome is the response to your thank you. Moving right along...

I think insistence on seeing the Brighter Side has helped me more than it has harmed (and has definitely kept me from going to prison) but it's tiring to try to be so cheerful so often when I can use some help from those around me. I live in an area with a lot of folks, regardless of the issue, whose minds are made up; don't confuse them with facts. 

If all I ever get from this is a song I can hear, playing right in my ear, but I can't sing it, and yet I can't help listening, that's fine too. I've always loved words and extra starch. Back by Tuesday.

-bill kenny