Better Living through Chemistry

There's been a generational changing of the guard with (illegal) drugs in America. When I was a wee slip of a lad, not that I or anyone I knew ever partook of The Herb, in the late Sixties and early Seventies "drugs" was marijuana and if you were flush, hashish. Stop asking about those Uriah Heep and Lothar and the Hand People albums in my collection, okay?

It was all very social and sociable, both communal and community at the same time. You rarely heard anyone say 'I have weed, I'll see you later' but more often, 'We have weed, man am I hungry.' I've been told marijuana may have been responsible for the spread of fast-food places to all sorts of off-campus locations across the country. 

Don't know if it's true, but will point out that I lost more than one friend who went for a shake and an order of fries and never returned. Funny. Once governments at all levels figured out how to tax it, marijuana was legalized. Sort of like the miracle at Cana.

The Eighties saw the spread of Chutes and Ladders and pharmaceuticals like Quaaludes, perhaps the dumbest drug ever created (until fentanyl). We cranked up the crazy in the Nineties with just enough malice and mayhem to require a separate category for 'hard drugs' like morphine, heroin, methamphetamine and the ever-ubiquitous crack.

And as the drugs got harder, so, too, did the people who dealt them because it became a multi-billion dollar business. The head shop with the dime baggies under the counter between the patchouli oil and the electric bongs gave way to the cigar boats we first saw on Miami Vice, which, in turn, were co-opted by narcotics submarines and human mules. 

It was we who helped create the appetite for self-destruction that fuels businesses which create cascades of cash, and the violence needed to protect that cash and all the trappings and trimmings that go with it, while at the same time funding a "war on drugs" that siphons off nearly as much money as the disease it purports to be battling. 
-bill kenny

Der Bingle Was Right

I came across a thought from Dr. Robert Anthony, who enjoys a reputation as a relentless optimist, prompting an acquaintance to offer wryly, 'he's never been to Norwich.' That would be funny if it were not also true.

I've adopted the good Doctor's mentality as my own, because in the dog days of summer, I can use all the help I can get and because the last time I had an original idea, it died of loneliness. Here's his most (to me) memorable observation: "Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy."

Seriously.
Who does that sound like? Anyone we know? 

Having arrived here almost thirty-five years ago with my family, I believe I've been here long enough to consider myself from Norwich, but I'm still not used to the cheery cheerfulness with which we expect things to fail.

The poets say "it's always darkest before dawn," and often it seems our clocks are stuck at a minute before daybreak. To make matters worse, assuming that's possible, not only are too many of us permanently unhappy, we seem to begrudge others any happiness as well. As if happiness were something so finite and so rationed that every time I smiled or laughed, you lost an opportunity to do the same.

What we have is a system that dictates that for me to look good, you need to look bad (at whatever you do or whomever you are). Everything that is perceived as successful is because of my efforts, and failures are despite my attempts. Each of us is quick to claim the credit but even faster to parcel out blame. 

But the problems of any city are bigger than any one person or one group of persons. Instead of concentrating on creating a definition of our city's economic and political challenges and opportunities (the indefinite article is deliberate), we have little tribes, some larger than others but all working in an intellectual and cooperative vacuum, who each claim to have devised the solution that must be accepted and implemented immediately.

That's when the waiting game begins-the waiting to see an idea fail; not 'if' it will fail, but 'when.' We can then search for the guilty, reward those who were not involved in the attempted and now discredited solution, and become enthused for the next Flavor of the Month proposal that comes along. We may secretly believe it, too, will fail completely, but no one wants to say that aloud and not be a team player.

We value false comity over genuine collaboration. What's needed is a team vision that attracts supporters and a process to produce results for the benefit of everyone rather than at the expense of some. Government that's done for people and not something done to them. Perhaps then we'll start to see happiness.
-bill kenny

B-52's, Clean-Up in Aisle Seven

I was taking a shortcut last Tuesday afternoon, looking for Triscuits in my grocer's. I assume stores in big cities have aisles reserved just for specific products, in my case, Cheerios, Cheez-Its (only the originals; NONE of the variations), and seedless grapes, but then I remember that I live in a small town and we can't have all the amenities we want. Some settling and sharing of contents may occur in shipment, and there's not a whole lot any of us can do about it.

By taking the shortcut, I ended up confronting the lobsters in the seafood department. I should tell you that the Gordon Fisherman needn't brave the dark and rolling sea for me. I eat fish sticks and just about nothing else. 

And if I were to be honest, what I actually eat are tightly compacted breadcrumbs that may or may not have fish in/near/close to them. One of the 'great things' people I worked with always told me as I was preparing to relocate to The Land of Round Doorknobs was how I could now have all the seafood I liked. I never had the heart to tell them I had all the seafood I liked by the time I was five.

Living in Southeastern Connecticut, where the farther north you head up the coast until you're Down East, the wider the A gets in lobstah, I cannot eat them and have trouble even looking at 'em. 

I'm a card-carrying carnivore; pork, chicken, lamb, beef, have napkin will travel. Fish, shellfish, crustaceans (nattily-attired and otherwise) not so much. If you and I were to be marooned on a desert island, you should kill me immediately, since I can tell you right now, I'd eat you right after you'd fattened yourself up on all the fish you'd caught. Doubt me? Doze at your peril.

Staring at the lobsters in the glass tank (why do they have to be kept like that? This is somehow more humane than a box with metal sides? ) I was almost going to type forlorn looking but I have no idea what part of the lobster is the face, though I think I know what the mouth is (but NOT why it looks like they're talking all the time) and I've no clue what a forlorn one would look like in comparison to a joyous one. 

I suspect the easiest way to tell them apart is a joyous one probably doesn't have giant rubber bands around the pincers (claws?) because it's on the ocean floor instead of in a glass tank in a supermarket.

I wanted to ask the guy behind the counter if the store feeds the lobsters before people buy them (and if so, what?), but they were selling so quickly the question was moot. It's strange watching them stacked atop one another, not really grasping the deal with the rubber band and still trying to get at each other in such a confined space. 

If they're capable of thought, are they sitting there thinking 'this is the crappiest day of my life!' Until the hand (and arm) of Fate surprises them and they're momentarily borne aloft and suddenly learn there are worse things in life than being in a glass tank. 

I ducked into the next aisle, Prepared Food, when I flashed on the notion that for all other carnivorous predators on this planet we are unprepared food. Yes, Virginia, there is a free lunch. We're eating it now. Praise the Lord and pass the cocktail sauce.
-bill kenny    

Gather Round, People, Gonna Tell You a Tale

I know I'm old. At a skosh beyond seventy-four revolutions around the sun, I'm less at ease every day in this world that technology hath wrought. I yearn for days past, when sex was dirty, and air was clean. 

When a half-gallon container of ice cream was actually a half-gallon, and when toasters lasted more than the time it took you to bring them home from the store, unless you ordered them online, in which case, have you noticed, the Amazon next-day delivery that you're giving them $139 annually is now more like the day after the next day. Maybe..

Some settling of contents in shipment may have occurred. No shit, seriously?

Stuff lasts less time now than it did when we were younger, and it breaks easier. And we don't fix anything anymore; we throw it away. Or my favorite bit: we put it in a recycling bin where, at some point, it's hauled, we know not where, and meanwhile a third- or fourth-world country gets buried in our unwanted detritus. But it's okay, out of sight, out of mind. And we feel great for saving the Earth. Apparently for dessert.    

Grown-up word from expecting less, and getting it, is entropy. But somehow, that doesn't really cover it. Stuff just doesn't work the way it used to, and if you wait long enough, it will get worse. And no one knows why or can do anything about it. But, to be honest, entropy is much too nuanced a word. Here's the perfect description of the dystopian hellscape we've created, a real grab you by the throat visual. 

Talk about The Ballad of the Night the Clocks All Quit and the Government Failed. Because that's all we can do: talk about it.
-bill kenny 

A Ray though Not of Sunshine

Eighty-one years ago today, the United States dropped a plutonium atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki. Exploding at 11:02 a.m. at a height of about 500 meters, the blast killed an estimated 40,000 to 75,000 people instantly, with the total death toll reaching roughly 74,000 by the end of the year.

Today is as logical a choice, as any day this month to mark another anniversary: when Ray Bradbury first offered this short story in 1950: "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains."

Then it was fiction.

Now, we have global warming, famine and disease across many of the Third World countries; hatred of others unlike ourselves all across the globe, warfare and destruction from the Strait of Hormuz to the Crimea, and greed and cupidity fueling ignorant arrogance everywhere in the land of my birth. 

We're on the path of perdition, paved with perfidy, and don't seem to know or care.
-bill kenny

It's Only Water in a Stranger's Tear

I had someone once explain to me, as if I were not aware of it, that 'Norwich is not ...' (a town in this region known for having Julia Roberts work in a pizzeria). 

The person making that observation looked nothing like Carmen San Diego, who would know these things, but I've lived in southeastern Connecticut long enough to recognize the truth in that statement. 

As a matter of fact, the list of other places that Norwich is NOT is longer than my arm, but I think that's part of the problem that residents, old and new, have with our city and with one another.

"How can we be in if there is no outside?'
We need to agree on definitions of who we are, as residents and neighbors, and why we are here. I will concede some people have settled in Norwich as a result of losing a bar bet; we can probably remove them from this discussion, but everyone else, old, young, male, female, whatever color in the rainbow you choose to be, all the rest of us are in this together, some more so than others.

And if I may, let's define ourselves in positive terms.

As a parent of two young children, when my wife and I settled here in the fall of 1991, neither we nor Norwich are the same as we enter early August of 2026. What we are looking for now, a small city with interesting places to meet and restaurants in which to eat, is different from what those with school children seek, or those working shifts at one of the casinos, or those who lived their lives here and are looking forward to a quiet retirement. 

And all of us look to those who lead the city to deliver to each of us what we want.

Those who have been here for decades have memories and meanings that those who've arrived more recently can't comprehend or understand. Long-time residents look at downtown and see the ghosts of Norwich past and fear that none of what once was can ever return. 

Others, driving through the same downtown to work beyond the city, see potential and promise all along the route even if it's not 'textbook downtown,' while still others see only empty storefronts and defeat. 

Our challenge is not that we each see a different Norwich but that each of our visions of where we live shares a common theme that has us as victims who are powerless to change our own story.

That's where we need to accept that change begins with us and moves from house to house, street to street, and across every neighborhood. We've tried countless variations of "help needs to come from Hartford or Washington or from the lone developer on the grassy knoll." And when all is said, nothing is done. 

Some of us seem to think we must do everything ourselves and wait, somewhat aloof, until the world is ready to find us. Except Norwich has always been at its best when it has been a part of the bigger world. It's when we've retreated into our separate villages and eyed those approaching from beyond our borders with suspicion and distrust that we have failed. We've spent so much time waiting for a moment that we cannot even define, much less recognize.

It's what we do in the space between our birth and death, choosing to be an exclamation or an explanation, that matters. We have become a city of cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Every new idea, every different proposal, is examined to see what benefit 'they' derive at 'our expense.' How about this: who f'ckin' cares? 

Some of us think squabbling is dialogue; it's not, but it is destructive. When we talk to one another, not at each other; when we choose collaboration over confrontation; no matter who we have been until that moment, we all become citizens of the same city, the city we each call home, no matter our language, culture, or color. Let's face it, literally: we are Norwich
-bill kenny

She Was Easily Undone

There are some people you always remember the first time you met them. In my case, my wife and, of course, my two children. I knew the first time I saw her that I'd marry my wife. 

And I tease our children that thanks to technology, I knew who they were long before they knew me (I sometimes wonder if they could have, would we have still met, but I see no reason to start down a path whose twists and turns, and ending, I cannot foresee). We had names for them months before they arrived, and I took enormous comfort knowing I wasn't bringing a stranger into my home from the hospital.

Now, in an era where so much social media and technology have supplanted person-to-person, it's different in terms of 'the first I read your tweet' or the first 'like' someone placed on an image you'd posted. 

I sat alongside someone at an event recently who very politely made it clear as we spoke that Facebook, LinkedIn and Blue Sky were all fine but he still preferred the knock on the door and the 'hello, may I please introduce myself to you?' routine.

As Dylan observed in another life, those who are not busy being born are busy dying, and today will be another busy day here on the ant farm. All mouths, no ears. 

Some blame the pagers and cell phones. I think it's the batteries. Without them, we'd have none of our current devices unless we could accommodate the tether. But perhaps we could, since not even the birds are free; they are chained to the sky.
-bill kenny