Mr. Watson to the Bakelite Phone

Once a month, I have to order my peritoneal dialysis supplies. The folks I get them from tell me the dates on their website, send me emails and text messages, and also call my home phone and leave a message reminder that repeats itself three times. 

The best part about the latter occurrence is that the message shows up on the phone as a 'voicemail' flashing light even though the phone never rings. Alexander Graham Bell has some splainin' to do. 

In theory, I could do it all online through their website, but I get nervous about the possibility of making an error that could prove life-threatening, and so I opt for a live person on a phone line, which means hold music while I wait in the queue for 'a representative' (of what, exactly, is never clear) and then an often disjointed conversation where one of us pauses because the other one was talking and now the first one thinks the other one may have hung up, but they didn't, and we start again with 'Hello, are you still there?' 

Eventually we exhaust one another. I've often theorized the office where they answer the phones has caller ID, and when my number shows up on the display, the reps draw straws to see who has to answer. 

After eleven months of doing this, you'd think I'd be better at it, or they would. We're not. We're telephone twins, separated at birth but connected at the dial tone. I have acquaintances who marvel that I still have a landline. I tell them, 'What do you think the cockroaches will be using to order Chinese take-out after the world ends?' 

They laugh because they think I'm joking. I laugh because I know I'm not.
-bill kenny

Picture This

My cellphone has a pretty decent camera, so much so that I use it far more than any other feature on the phone. I go for quantity, not quality, when it comes to pictures, to the dismay and despair of family and friends with whom I share my efforts. 

But I found photos of objects and subjects so small, you, like me, may find it hard to believe such imagery is even possible. As you're about to see, it is.

Microphotography.
Rendering Gregory Heisler's observation, “Photography’s 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent moving furniture,” moot.
-bill kenny

Fingers Crossed

Another Friday the 13th (alas, sadly without Jamie Lee Curtis). Not that I'm superstitious, but here's something I offered six years ago on this date. Coincidence? I think not...

Broken Mirrors, Black Cats, & Walking Under Ladders

WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined blah, blah, blah, awful stuff, blah, blah, whenever it's Friday the 13th and fear of blah, blah, blah. The End. 

C'mon, none of us ever read disclaimers all the way through, so I figured I'd offer you a slice of that mock apple pie made with Ritz crackers, and a tall frosty glass of something other than milk from a cow to wash it all down. Mmmmm. You got a little something on the side of your upper lip, there, sunshine.

We've got the most highly developed brain of any species on this planet, but we're also the only species that hate and fear one another for reasons such as different religions, skin colors, or political beliefs. So if any other species has the gift of speech (and I guess, the ability to read as well and a thumb that works a scroll ball), now might be a good time for one or more of them to ask aloud, 'how come the bipeds are the crown of creation, anyway?'

On top of all those misplaced prides and prejudices (you don't suppose Jane is related to Steve, by any chance? I'm trying to imagine Fitzwilliam Darcy having a discussion with Oscar Goldman), we have the mother of all irrationalities, Friday the Thirteenth and the fear of it. 

Of course, it's only irrational if you don't put any stock in any of the literature or folk tales you've heard since you were young. There are seven-point-two katrillion jillion websites (a number I just made up and have you ever known me to lie to you?) on every aspect of this day and date combination, and one's as good as the other, or as bad, depending on how you feel.

You might have a lucky number, a favorite color, or a special letter, so far be it from me to pooh-pooh, pshaw, or tsk-tsk (I love when I can use classic ancient words; I am, after all, wearing Old Spice), your values or beliefs. If they help you place your universe in order, that's fine.

I put all the cash in my wallet in order by denomination (Catholics go first, obviously) and then in sequence based on the serial number. My wife used to find this quirk endearing; now, not so much. She's helped me manage my compulsion by making sure I have very little folding money. Everyone standing behind me in lines everywhere, as I used to put the bills in order, is very grateful.

In a way, I guess it's counter-intuitive to wish you a happy Friday the Thirteenth, especially in this most snake-bitten of a year, where there's zero chance we need anything aggravating our luck. And yet, here we are, staring at the calendar while looking out the window and praying that the approaching dark cloud is rain and not locusts. 

-bill kenny 

A Fresh Wind that Blows Against the Empire

Everywhere we live can be as large and as small as we wish it to be. We control the definition and depth of what, between ourselves, we call 'my little town.' Norwich, as cities go, isn't a large city, especially if you live in a Bridgeport or a Hartford, but it can seem that way when you live in one of its neighbors, all of which are far smaller. 

My point? When we in small cities speak of 'them' in city government, we're really talking about 'us', since many of the elected and appointed leadership in municipalities of a 100K or less are friends and neighbors.

Last Tuesday across these United States, we participated in elections that altered every aspect, or had the potential to alter, of our local governance. In some places, we were choosing a new governor; in many others, state representatives and deciding referenda issues as well.

I defer to the bloviating blowhards of The Left and The Right (caps in these cases are a given; the gowns, not so much) on all the chatter channels to tell me why the residents of Moose Jaw, Montana, voted to outlaw sippy cups and what that means for immigration reform. What we should have learned last Tuesday is how much there is yet to do across this country to better realize the dreams we have for ourselves and our loved ones.

We need to continue to press on, a brick at a time, not through a plate-glass window, but on top of the previous brick, to build the foundation that we will use to construct the bridge that takes us from the here and now to the where we need to go. Everyone can do something-that's the greatest joy of local government-each of us can help.

As I wait for the weather to sort itself out and for whatever kind of winter we're going to have to get here, knowing that as night follows the day, it will, at its own pace and in its own time.
-bill kenny

11/11

Today, Veterans Day, is a holiday, but it is NOT Memorial Day; we honor everyone in uniform, living and dead, past and present. 

When I was a kid, today was called Armistice Day, because it began as a commemoration of the end of "the war," which was later known as World War I for the sadly obvious reason that we had a World War II. There was always a moment of silence to mark the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

We are a nation again at war (and have been, it seems, for most of my seventy-four years on earth). We have every shade and flavor of service personnel serving in places across the globe, some so remote I fear the people who sent them there don't know where they are. Because they are out of sight shouldn't mean they are out of mind. 

Heroes and heroines in uniform are making a difference every day and allowing all of us to somnambulate with our eyes open as we don't see the lives we could have led because of the incessant assault we endure.

It's a new world and a new way of war, but those making the sacrifice are the old souls who have always borne the burden--not just those in places marked with dots on maps of countries we cannot name, but all those who whet the blade of the sword they wield in our name and in defense of everything we are and will ever be.

Find a moment today to think about all who have served and resolve to do better and be better as a resident, neighbor, and citizen. We can use the help, believe me.

We are more filled with self-doubt as a nation than at any time perhaps in our history. Now is the time for courage and steadfastness, but we shall prevail because we must. For anyone, anywhere, now, or then, in uniform who placed service over self, whenever and wherever that is and was, thank you.

Sometimes we forget the very words we meant to say-as long as we don't forget those who earned that gratitude, we will always be worthy of their sacrifice.

-bill kenny

Gig Economy, Anyone?

My first job was as a parking lot attendant/part-time lifeguard in the summer at Sandy Beach, at Harvey's Lake, Pennsylvania.  I tell myself I went on to bigger and better things after that, and maybe I did, but it was fun, and I had some spending money. It certainly wasn't a career, and I never looked far enough down the road to ever consider it that way.

I settled in more ways than one, I suppose, but I have a good life, personally and professionally. I look at Millennials, and whatever we call those who've come after them, and feel for them, as they are better educated than my generation and earn far less than I did when I was part of the workforce. I found this online description: "Millennials make a living through a mix of traditional corporate jobs, specialized technical or financial careers, freelance work, and digital side hustles."

Perhaps if we offered people an opportunity to earn a living wage, they'd take us up on it, and we'd see that legendary rising tide of prosperity lift more boats than is currently the case.<SIGH>

But if you are seeking a side hustle, I may have found just the thing for you.

CHURCHOFGNOME.ORG

Perhaps we can carpool to work?

I call shotgun.
-bill kenny

We Live in the Most Dangerous of Times

If the Shoah, the Holocaust, was an unfinished symphony of genocidal annihilation for Europe's Jews (and it was only unfinished because the rest of the world finally wrested control of the killing factories from the True Believers before they achieved their Endlosung), then on this day, eighty-eight years ago, the first notes of the overture in that murderous symphony, Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), were played.

When you look at the pictures of death and destruction, and listen to the softly told tales of survival, often by the purest of coincidences, if you have a heart, it is sickened and if you have a conscience, it is outraged. But to keep the next exercise of extreme intolerance from ever reaching this point, we all need to retain the memories of the events as well as the circumstances that allowed the events to happen.

The Nazis did NOT leap out of bed eighty-eight years ago this morning and cause the German nation, the land of Luther, Schiller, Liszt and Beethoven, to lose its collective mind and soul. For decades leading up to this day, and not just in Germany, but all across Europe, East and West, the systemic and systematic marginalization of Jews, apartheid before that word was in fashion, was in practice and a part of everyday life. The Nürnberger Gesetze of 1935 helped dull all Germans to the slaughter to come.

The ability to use language in reducing those who are the object of your animus to something somehow less human than yourself so that the acrimony and injury inflicted upon them has no more consequence than stepping on a bug is a critical tool in the creation and construction of the crematoria and concentration camps and no less vital to that than the jackboots and the armbands.

Find the time to go online or to your local library and invest an hour into researching the decay and depravity that began with Kristallnacht is asking a lot, I know. So how about a deal? What if you and I promise one another to take an additional breath before using a racial epithet to characterize someone on the other side of the political spectrum with whom we disagree? 

Or to refrain from suggesting (at the top of our lungs) what a person with whom we are arguing may attempt to do with her/his logic and conclusion, as anatomically difficult as it might prove to be.

Instead of counting to ten, we try to count to eleven, then twelve, and then just keep counting until the gorge in our veins recedes just a bit and our blood has gone off its boiling point. And, most importantly, when we see someone else in mid-screed, we mitigate and mediate to help assure a more rapid return to civil and civic discourse in our interactions with one another.

Germany was not a nation of Nazis on Kristallnacht. Many believe they were in the minority even when in power. It isn't just the sins committed on this day eighty-eight years ago that should live in infamy forever, but, rather, the sins that could have been prevented had two or more people joined and raised their voices in opposition. We must never forget the lesson of what happened next.
-bill kenny