"Ninety Percent of Being a Dad..."

Tomorrow is Father's Day, and of course I have a memory. When I was in the US Air Force, after I was married but before we had children, shortly after Easter in 1980, I happened upon a tremendous card that was pitch-perfect for my dad for Father's Day.

I was in the Rhein Main Base Exchange, and the thing you have to know about US military overseas shopping opportunities, be they exchanges (like department stores) or commissaries (like groceries) is when you see it on the shelf, buy it. There's no 'look in the back room for more,' no 'we're expecting another order in a week.' It really is a case of 'he who hesitates is lunch.'

When I saw the card, I knew it was ideal for two people who had long ago come to the realization they had nothing to say to one another but neither wanted to be the first to admit that because an admission such as that would be giving up, and these two Thick Micks never gave up, ever.

Our relationship, and as I discovered, that of my brothers and sisters as well, to varying degrees, frequently had more turbulence than tranquility. I used to say my father was the angriest man I ever knew until I caught a glimpse of myself one morning in the mirror. I then stopped saying that.

The card captured all of that, and when I got home I signed it, wrote a note whose every word I still remember, addressed the envelope, put a stamp on it and put it in the hand-tooled leather carrying bag Sigrid had gotten me for our first wedding anniversary and into which I dropped any number and manner of objects as I went about my life.

I next saw the card some six months later, when Sigrid, Frau Ordnung Muss Sein, was cleaning out my bag and held it out to me in soft, silent reproach as we sat in our living room. She pursed her lips and waited for her spaetzen-hirnn husband to grasp what the object was and then, realizing he did, slowly shook her head.

For my part, chagrined as I was, I insisted it wasn't that big a deal, as I could save the card for next Father's Day and thought no more of it. Sadly, the universe did. My father was to die in his sleep of an attacking heart the following May. The words I'd always meant to say but needed thousands of miles of ocean to actually write were never shared.

I became an adult when I bought my first beer legally. I became a man when I took a wife (or more exactly, when she married me). I became a father with the birth of our son, Patrick, and of our daughter, Michelle. When I looked at my dad 'back in the day,' I saw him differently than I do now, shaped and formed by the crucible of events controlled and beyond our control each of our lives has contained.

I've learned not very much in seven plus decades here on the ant farm except, tell the people you love that you love them when they and you are here so they know it and don't be surprised that they already did and that in their own way they love you too. Tomorrow, to my brothers and my brothers-in-law, fathers all, and to you as well and always, Happy Father's Day.
-bill kenny

Juneteenth 2026

Today is Juneteenth Day.

I could offer you an explanation on the origins and history of the day, but that news article does a better-than-good job of it, though I think for us in Norwich, we have a softer and celebratory focus on the day and the events around and behind it.

It's also called Emancipation Day, and words mean different things to different people, to say nothing of hiding things that would better be brought to light. Today's a holiday but don't kid yourself, there's unresolved sorrow, fear, resentment, anguish and anger associated with the origins and causes for the system of oppression whose end, in the United States as we knew it came back on June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned the War Between the States had ended months earlier on 9 April and they were now free. 

Events begin at five o'clock tonight at the David Ruggles Memorial Freedom Courtyard at City Hall. It is the 37th Annual Observance of Juneteenth Day and promises to be quite the do. Everyone is invited, and anyone who chooses to attend will be welcome.

Holidays bring different people, and peoples, together to reflect on who they are, who they were, and who they are on the way to becoming. Ideally, each of us sees in one another a reflection of ourselves as well as a better understanding of our unique talents and gifts-the stuff that makes us, us. 

That's why the celebration an dflag raisng at City Hall is important; not only for all the people who are going to be there, but for all those who've come before them and those as yet to be born who will fulfill their promises and who will dream their own dreams and then live those as well. 

So celebrate with us here in Norwich or wherever in the world you find yourself today. Sometimes, unless and until you look back, it's hard to see how far you've traveled. It is easy to realize the journey has a distance yet to be accomplished and to feel daunted by the challenge of that task, but the travel is sweeter and sweetened by the knowledge of where we were and where we are now. 
-bill kenny

It's the Song that They Don't Sing

Out walking the other day, I passed a Chevy of some kind (I think) with Connecticut tags wrapped in a chrome frame with black lettering inset that, above the plate, read: "Sexually Deprived" while below it, "For Your Security and Protection."

I had walked perhaps three steps beyond the car when my brain managed to make my legs stop as it finally processed what my eyes had told it, and I walked back to take a second look. Yep, that's what it said. Would that there had been nothing more, both I and Edgar Allan might have been content, but no.

On the back window shelf, facing whoever would be following the car, was a stuffed brown and white toy bear, maybe ten inches high or tall, wearing a red negligee and black racing goggles. 

Looking again at the car (tearing myself away from the Teddy in a teddy was an herculean struggle), I realized the car's tires had four different rims as well. If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse decide to use the HOV lane, I have a funny feeling I've just spotted their vehicle.

I've spent a great deal of time between then and now pondering all of this, and not just because my life is surprisingly empty. I'm seeking an explanation that would, in turn, lead me to a conclusion as to its meaning, and I have to tell you, I have nothing. Nichts, Nada, Zip.

I'm left to wonder if it's part of a postcard from a brave new world tomorrow or just more roadkill on the human highway. I fear it's a whole lot of nothing and a little bit of everything.
-bill kenny

You Were Bigger than the Whole Sky

The Age of Connectivity has enabled us to attempt relationships with people from across the globe whom we might not otherwise ever know or know of. I joke, but not really, about answering 'YES!' to the question, "Are Friends Electric?" because in my case, I have ten times more online ether acquaintances than actual flesh-and-blood ones. 

The interactions, as you know if you too are a netizen, are so much easier than in real life. You choose to respond to someone, or you stop responding. No awkward silences, no sense of guilt, just ones and zeroes.

And there are so many platforms to choose from in which to be alone in the crowd. Whether you choose to embrace the world or hold it at arm's length, you have the control, but it comes with a price. Real human emotions, happiness, anger, sadness- the whole panoply on the spectrum can be voiced in cold type, but the heartbeat behind the machinery can be lost or misconstrued.    

This stopped me cold yesterday, as the hole in this person's heart is so large and so deep, even if every one of us responded to them, it would be meaningless. 

Saying goodbye to someone whose existence you never knew is worse than failing to say hello to someone you'll never meet. And it's the price we pay for the shared community we think we're building online.
-bill kenny

The Only Consonant Is Change

Have you ever heard 'no good deed goes unpunished'? Now you have. The other day, exiting my local grocery store and walking through the parking lot, a car passed me in search of a parking spot. He found one just up ahead, signaled, and made the turn into the spot all in one motion. Game over.

I continued to walk towards my car, which took me past his. The driver was just getting out as I walked by. My Imp of the Perverse, having successfully ignored most of the world's population for most of yet another day, decided that social intercourse and human interaction were just the ticket and lurched into action.

My ears heard my mouth offer in an extremely cheerful voice (I hate when I do that bonhomie 'hail fellow! well met!' crap) 'just so you know, your driver's side brake light is out,' which, as a conversational opening gambit, falls squarely in the innocuous bordering on moronic scale of exchanges. The driver, now standing beside his own vehicle looking at me evenly, noted in a flat tone of voice, "what's your fluckin' point" (but without the L).

I've collected good questions much of my life. I started out trying to pair each of them with good answers, but that rapidly became a bridge too far, so questions it is. And this was a fine one.

All I could do was smile-no words could adequately explain to the driver that I had only attempted to be helpful, but no worries (as my children's generation was fond of saying), SB, it won't happen again. Ever. As for that good deed, hardly a trace left in the here and now, just junk all across the horizon-a real highwayman's farewell.

-bill kenny

Busy Weekend?

If you weren't following World Cup first-round action, or the rage in the cage event on the White House lawn, I'm telling you something you already know.

Riddle me this: who had his name taken off a Washington, D.C., landmark almost as quickly as he forced it? I'm sure the President isn't happy about this turn of events, but before he has Kash Patel unleash the FBI to investigate all the folks on scaffolds who made it happen. 

Equal parts unseemly and illegal, though neither of those reasons is even vaguely compelling for the crawlers who enable the man and reinforce his bad impulses.

I propose a compromise to satisfy all parties. No, President Trump's name will not be on the Kennedy Center, but we'll put up something that will instantly call him to mind.

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one of all.
-bill kenny

No Flag Has Ever Stopped a Bullet from a Gun

Between now and Election Day, we will hear every single person seeking office in these United States of America invoke 'the flag' in support of whatever it is they are advocating.

That is their right, just as it is mine to arch my right eyebrow and aim a caustic comment or two (I get them by the gross, they're much cheaper that way) in their general direction, certainly no longer in the hope of dissuading them or any adherent from pursuing a particular course of action I'd rather they not, but because it's hygienic and perhaps therapeutic for my own mental state.

I, along with millions of others since before this nation was a nation, served in its armed forces, wore its uniform, followed the lawful orders of those placed in leadership positions, and did as best I could what was expected of me in defense of my country and my family. In recent times, we've had ample, egregiously awful proof of the importance of defining and defending both in the broadest sense possible.

The American flag is a symbol of that nation and means to each of us what we wish to see in it when we look to it. Today is Flag Day, and we are going to hear a lot about 'the flag' and 'our country' before we make decisions this November about who we are and who we shall continue to be. 

I always think of Carl Schurz's words about "my country" and how far too often pseudo-patriots have selectively edited and condensed/corrupted them to support their own agenda. Here's all of it in one place: 

"(O)ur free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”

It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, so you rarely hear the whole quote in much the same way as we use the flag to cover a multitude of venalities. Today, Flag Day, it's good to remember our flag shouldn't be a prop of personal or political posturing but rather a symbol of our nation's resolve and unity.
-bill kenny