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

The Words You Read

I have very little natural intelligence left at this stage in my life, so I find the ongoing conversations about Artificial Intelligence to be particularly interesting, insofar as I can follow the discussions (which is to the end of this sentence, to be honest).  

As is so often the case in the times in which we live, the amount of bogusness and volume of falsehoods, on all sides of the issue, are mind-numbing. I think all I know about AI is that it's not only coming; it's also already here. 

I'm thinking if you're as befuddled as I am, this may help.

And yes, I'm hoping I've successfully curried favor with our soon-to-be-Overlords.
-bill kenny 

Remembering the Power of Us

It happens on a regular basis, so there's no reason to be surprised. Usually within a fortnight (plus/minus a week) of Labor Day we have a shift in the weather, and the heat and humidity depart, not before dumping a large amount of rain in a short amount of time on the just and the unjust, and the leaves start to turn, and the lawn signs start to spring up.

National elections, where we choose a President, consume oceans of ink. This time our race for Governor is draining barrelfuls, but it's where the road and the sky collide; here at the local level the real issues in search of answers get decided. And the only history that gets written is what we choose to write. We can wound with words.

We look at politicians in D.C. or in Hartford as an abstraction, and more often than not we're right, but those who seek office inside the city limits are our neighbors and acquaintances, if not friends. We can put names to faces and faces to positions on issues that affect us immediately. Our families see one another in the market, at a local community event, or just out for a walk on the weekend.

It's pretty easy for most of us politically to tell a Gavin Newsom from a Donald Trump even from a distance, but when we're looking for leadership in Mr. Rogers ' Neighborhood, the nuances and differences are more subtle.

It's more a question of degree than dogma, and that's as it should be because this is where we all live, emphasis on the all, and decisions made 'for the common good' really mean for everyone on both sides of the street up and down the block. But when less than a quarter of all registered voters turn out to cast a ballot, leading starts to resemble shepherding cats.

A lot of us thought this time last year was pretty tough and hoped by now we’d be seeing some daylight. Cheer up, the pundits said; things could get worse. So we did, and they did as well.

I don't pretend to know what has gone wrong or how to fix it, but I doubt demonizing the other guys in DC, belittling your Governor, or polluting the blogosphere with innuendo and insults is helping.

It most certainly is NOT who we have been since the founding of the Republic. High times on Wall Street and hard times on Main Street. Maybe we don’t need new solutions so much as we need a return to our oldest and truest values.

-bill kenny

Not the Happiest of Reads

Some days, like Dr. Swain in Slapstick, I feel Earth's gravity is much stronger than on other days. I don't really believe this, but I like to say it, and I am not surprised to discover I also like to type it.

Maybe it's the weather, the changing of the seasons, the loss of reasons to be cheerful, or just plain old age, but I'm weary to the bone. And I'm not alone.

At one time we told ourselves that to get a good job, you needed to get a good education. We learned that from our parents who themselves had learned it from theirs, and we passed it along to our kids who ate it up with a spoon. 

What we forgot, as it turned out, was that the good job would be in a country other than the one they were raised in and that the term itself, 'good job,' was a relative concept, based on the standard of living being practiced wherever the offshore job express happened to drop anchor.

We reached sundown on the union a lot faster than anyone ever thought. The last couple of decades have just gotten weirder and weirder. Since 9/11 and all that followed it, we are scared of silence. We've basically outlawed it in our social discourse. 

The 24/7 news folks have been around for most of the lives of many of us, but it's only in the last two and a half decades that they are so ubiquitous. Remember when you'd be waiting for an airline flight and the CNN Talking Head would be on, and his mouth was moving on one of those TV's suspended someplace in the departure lounge? You couldn't hear squat, but there he was-like God himself watching over us. We, his flock, couldn't hear him, but no one minded.

I tell myself that I was the last person on earth to get a Facebook account because it would confirm what I already feared-I have no friends, not even virtual ones. But all of us now are members of the lonely crowd. I realized as I'm heading into the clubhouse turn here on the Big Blue Marble that we used to do all kinds of shit before there was anything like Facebook and all social media mutations, and we told no one about it. Think tree in a forest. Now add sound. What? Exactly.

And now, we have 'friends' who tell us when they change their picture or whose status update is that they have no update. Say anything-no matter how foolish, how venal, how incredibly self-serving- don't dare leave us alone with our own thoughts because we stopped thinking a while back and forgot how to start again. 

Thank goodness for the autonomic nervous system, or we'd be dead. Sorry. What? Oh, you needed change for a buck-I won't even tell you what I thought I heard.
-bill kenny