Short Thoughts on the Longest Day

The farther out in space we go, the more alike we look. It’s only when we re-enter our atmosphere that the effects of gravity and tribalism become more pronounced.

Residing as I do in Global City Norwich, I smile as we punctuate our lives with a variety of celebrations of many of the different stories we are as the people who all happen to call this place our home. And yes, I'm always saddened by the often ignorant and arrogant online observations of so many on social media platforms and their reactions to those stories.

I wanted to emphasize the importance of stories because when we speak of History, which is really the story we tell ourselves of who we are and how we came to be, we usually think in terms of capital letters and monumental events, forgetting that all of us are the authors of our own tales of our time here on earth.

In deference to, and respect for, Edward Shepherd Creasy, who authored “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,” almost a century before the beaches were stormed at Normandy on this date on June 6, 1944, D-Day wasn’t just a battle historians concluded ultimately won World War II and saved Western Europe, but may also have been the milestone in our country’s journey of political, social, military, and economic ascendance in a world landscape littered with sometimes petty parochial and ideological loyalties.

We think of larger than life men and monumental moments when we study D-Day, and there are many to choose from, but we risk losing sight of the human element of our own humanity in the details that the day involved, which is what we should remember.

The survivor stories, so many people in the same device, fighting not only for something grand and noble like a Free Europe and, by extension, the free world but also for one another. 

They sought out a protected position where the sea met the shore while being raked by weapons fire without rest or respite. Waves of troops waded onto the beaches and wrote with their blood and sacrifice the first chapters of what was to become our modern, Post-War World where we hoped cooperation would replace confrontation.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to walk the beaches of Normandy and struggled to imagine the carnage and brutality of the conditions on that day and the courage it would have taken to overcome them. It’s a way of learning history that books and classrooms, while important, can’t really touch, but for many of us the stories, more so than the lessons, are all we have.  

And many of those D-Day stories are deservedly well-known, while others less so, but I’m always struck in reading and remembering June 6, 1944, by what we, the inheritors of the world who never saw the dawn on June 7, have done with it. And by how much harder we should still work.  

-bill kenny 

A Petard Would've Been Cheaper

The master of the Art of the Deal, Mr. Three-Dimensional Chess Grand Master, the Teflon Don, has gotten himself caught in a trap of his own creation. 

Unfortunately, most of the rest of us worldwide have also been ensnared.

And meanwhile, those Epstein Files won't release themselves.

Jail to the Chief (and all his anblers).
-bill kenny

If I Were a Good Man

 

"If I were the moon, I'd be cool
If I were a rule, I would bend.
If I were a good man
I'd understand the spaces between friends."

-bill kenny

Immediate Gratification!

I'll keep this short today (I heard that cheer) since brevity is the soul of wit.

Go to Google Search, type "zerg rush," and then hit "enter." You're welcome. 

Yeah, I know; we could be using all this computer power to cure world hunger or create peace in our time, but the gratification with this is more immediate. Trust me.
billl kenny

Stay Strong

I'm having trouble staying out of my own way this week for reasons I can't quite sort out, try as I might. When I was a young man and occasionally lost my driving wheel, I just shrugged and put my shoulder into it and counted on the next day to bring me something better. 

I turned seventy-four last month and know from looking at the mug in the mirror that the tomorrows are more finite than they were five years ago or even five months ago. 

These are hard days for all of us. Spite can be an effective motivator, trust me.

Illegitimi non carborundum. 
-bill kenny

The Way We Were (Not)

One of the things I always liked about Howard Johnson's as a kid growing up was the choice of ice creams for dessert after dinners with Gramma and Grampy. At the time, this was the Sixties (GASP!); there were (I think) twenty-eight flavors. I'd always pick chocolate, but it was nice to know there were so many others. 

Of course, Hojo's as they were then are not now, nor is the world in which they existed close to the one in which I grew up. Progress is what progress does-the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

Thanks to the convergence of technologies we have means of gathering and sharing information we didn't have when I was a kid (we had computers but no one 'normal' ever saw them as they were huge machines the size of rooms, fed by punchcards) all gathering up news and notes we desire and delivering all of it to our desktop or the screen on our smart phone or device.

Remember when we referred to this jumble of wires and ether as The Internet (both with caps)? We were Such Hosers, eh? Now we have news aggregators that are so transparent and seamless we have no idea where the item that just showed up in our news stream actually began. 

Add to that the growing number of readers and netizens who cannot distinguish between opinion and fact (the demarcation is stunningly simple unless you're sadly stupid), and we, as a nation or a neighborhood, descend into discord and disintegrate.

We were Athens-we are becoming Sparta. And don't mistake me, we are each entitled to our own opinions, but we are never allowed to have our own facts, be they on anthropogenic climate change, creationism, or gay rights. 

I suspect you and I have very different views on just these three items, not to mention the deeper and more fundamental issues such as the designated runner starting on second base when a baseball game goes to extra innings.

We can agree to disagree, which is how our parents functioned, or we can hurl invective at each other like the morons we elected to represent us in Dodge City (and they do a fine job, as they seem to be as imbecilic as we are-at least your guy is, mine is a genius (see what I mean?)).

How we view the world has a lot to do with the window and prism (filter) we choose. You pick Fox, and I take CNN. You tune to MSNBC, and I like the Cartoon Network.  For me, it's perspective, and for you it's propaganda. Tomato, tomato; potato, Dan Quayle.

Someday we'll have a meeting of the minds, as Isaac Asimov once feared, but it will be in the middle of nowhere, beyond the city limits of common sense or decency. And the first thing we'll do is argue about how we got there and, more importantly, who is to blame. After we round up everyone who knows more than we do. Leaving just us, as horrible a fate as either of us can imagine.    
-bill kenny

The Wisdom of Higgins

I was stunned when visiting my brother Adam's blog to realize that today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the death of my father. I had forgotten completely the very event I'd have thought I'd go to my grave remembering. Color me surprised.

I know I'm not the only son with a complicated and complex relationship with their dad (I can think of two other sons right off the top of my head in the same boat, but I'll also concede it's a large ocean), but until earlier today, I've tiptoed around this date and our relationship.

Truth to tell, for the first time since his passing, I wasn't in his shadow. That's not a good thing, or a bad thing; it is what it is. It took me all these years to realize, Higgins, from Ted Lasso, captured it perfectly:

"I try to love my dad for who he is and forgive him for who he isn't."
-bill kenny