Signs and Portents

In the warmth of the post-Election glow, if I may inject a short infusion of pragmatism: with all the billions spent on campaign literature, signs, advertising, and campaign events, how is it that there's never enough money budgeted by anyone's campaign to pay for the pick-up and clean-up of lawn signs in the days after they burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away?

Tale of two days near where I live in Norwich: a major intersection of two highways where traditionally, on the Monday before the election, candidates and their supporters cluster and hold up their campaign's lawn signs as commuting motorists whiz by in, and towards, every direction as the lawn signs are waved and horns get honked (or vice versa, for all I know). 

Join me now on that same corner, same time of the afternoon-but yesterday when all the laughter has turned to sorrow. The only thing out there was a few lawn signs as opposed to the forest in the days previous. Meanwhile, the other lawn signs, the ones in front of houses that neighbors are surrendering because they can't afford to stay and have no place to go to, will wave in any breeze at anyone.....

-bill kenny

Pete and Roger Say "Hi!"

"People try to put us d-down (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-get around (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation)."

"This is my generation

This is my generation, baby."

-bill kenny

 

For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer from the Audience....

Not sure how finished this election season is nationally, but it's done and dusted where I live. How much will change as a result of how we've voted? Hard to say less than twenty-four hours after the polls closed, but I guess we'll find out together, not that we've been together too often in recent years at any level of our government.

When I was in the Air Force, we had an expression: 'If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' I've used that a lot in recent years when looking at people seeking my vote for office. I applaud their generosity and admire their energy, but telling me that 'I love my city/county/state' isn't really a qualification for elected office in my book. And assuring me you have the answers when I'm still struggling with the questions gets you a shoulder shrug.

I tease acquaintances that I never allow my lack of knowledge on a subject to keep me from having an opinion on it. If you didn't recognize that sentence as attempted tongue-in-cheek humor, please do us both a favor and find something else to read right now. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested many years ago, "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but NOT to his own facts."

As I've aged, I've grown more short-tempered and quite frankly less kind in my daily interactions with others. And I'm not alone. As part of the Baby Boom Generation who blamed our parents for everything we disliked, I'm not happy that my children blame me. Gets sort of awkward, to be honest.

I fear we're running out of grace for one another, and I suspect yesterday's election results will do little to improve that unless we resolve, each of us, to be a better person. I think many of us still want to change the world but have trouble getting started by changing ourselves. Baby steps.
-bill kenny

Did You?

That's today's question. You are today's answer.

Today should be a national holiday because it's Election Day, and nothing's more important than an informed vote. That's your hint to go and cast yours.

Bad officials are elected by good people who decide to not vote.
Don't let that happen today.
-bill kenny

Election Eve

It's almost the first Tuesday in November, and it's time to make your vote count and your voice carry. The letters to the editor, the comments in the readers' online forums of newspapers and social media sites, the calls to the radio shows, the heated discussions with friends and family in your living room or street corner--ALL OF IT MEANS NOTHING if you haven't voted early and don't get thee to a polling place tomorrow between six in the morning and eight in the evening, here in Norwich. 

Nothing changes if we don't commit to change. You wanna blame somebody for the mess we're in? Start by looking in the mirror and working your way around the room.

There's more than enough animus masquerading as discussion to last us through the next century. When you realize how much farther and faster we can come by working together, I can't understand why we work so hard to NOT do more of that. 

Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting. And no time to do it right the first time, but always time to do it over.
-bill kenny

The Sweep of the Second Hand

This time today was yesterday when it was already yesterday. This morning in the wee, dark early hours, we fell back an hour (I've always liked how we keep that straight, 'spring ahead' and 'fall back') across most of the country.

I've never been clear how much of the rest of the world does this time-travel-but-standing-very still-stuff, although daylight saving time is utilized across significant portions of the earth's Northern Hemisphere. 

The why we move clocks forward and back is the part I will NEVER understand no matter how erudite the explanation. We share the planet with a nearly infinite number of other life forms from single-celled amino acids to the full scale and scope of the abiogenesis catalog (now available for only three easy payments...), and none of them have watches, much less the concern for time and its division and measurement that we, Homo sapiens, have.

We look up in surprise and dismay at the time and wonder where it's gone, when it hasn't actually gone anywhere. The end of a television program, a movie, a radio serial or other entertainment, a relationship with another person, or political alliance.

You don't have to be Richard to have misgivings about time and what we do with it. Merely being human will qualify. Until this time, tomorrow.

-bill kenny

Bound for a Star with Fiery Oceans

It's amazing and somewhat amusing how a religious devotion, commemoration, and remembrance really evolved into an all-the-candy-you-can-eat-without-barfing exercise, all the way to an adult party-hardy event. Greetings and salutations nevertheless.

There was an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain that sociologists theorize 19th-century Irish immigrants brought with them that helped create our current observance/holiday/day on which to go gluttonous on all manner of sweets. 

Halloween is celebrated in about a dozen countries around the world, gladdening the hearts, I'm sure, of candy manufacturers in the days leading up to it as well as the bottom lines of dentists in the days and weeks following it. 

Remember how our Moms used to go through the goodies, making sure that the apples didn't have unpleasant surprises and throwing all the unwrapped candy away 'just to be safe'. Would it have killed them to pretend the Mary Janes were unwrapped (talk about a dentist's delight- it could take fillings out)--a candy that I don't think I even see at any other time of the year except now. 

And what about candy corn (and I loved it, btw)? If scientists are correct that cockroaches would survive an atomic war, I believe they would do it munching on candy corn, indestructible, indescribable, often imitated but never duplicated. One of the many things I surrendered once my doctors made me understand, as an adult, is that I couldn't be a part-time diabetic. And I miss it more than I can say.

As a parent, I can recall that some of the worst weather of the season always seemed to start about two hours before the kids got organized to head out. So I'll keep my fingers crossed for all the goblins tonight. 

And every child, no matter how young, wanted to trick or treat with her/his friends. Only a baby goes out with a parent. So with a heavy heart and a quiet footstep, the trick was to figure out how far back to trail them as they went from house to house, and no matter how many times a child was told 'no running', what happened? Yep. 

Why was I always surprised when mine paid as much attention to me as I had to my parents? And every neighborhood had a trick-or-treater, usually one of the hyperactive kids from down the street who ate the candy as quickly as he got it. Can you imagine how much magic it was in that house later that same evening? 
-bill kenny