Blinked and Missed It

On Wednesday our temperature topped out at sixty-seven degrees. Today's forecast suggests that if we get to thirty-five, we'll be lucky. Yesterday, the weather forecast called for snow showers AND thunderstorms. At one point, such a prognostication would have astounded me.

However, almost thirty-five years of living in New England has cured me of my wide-eyed incredulity.

All four seasons in the same afternoon? Sure, why not?
-bill kenny  

Herzlichen Gluckwunsche

Today is my wife's birthday. 

Sigrid is remarkable because she is a force of nature as much as she is the love of my life. I am not, as you may have already imagined from any visits to this page, the easiest person with whom to share the planet, much less a life and a bed.

She is my human credential in that she always created and sustained a life for our children and me, and for too many decades, allowed me to put on this 'Hail Fellow, Well Met! Man of the World" artifice every workday morning (and far too many weekends as well), spend all day giving my time to total strangers, and then return home at night to be the person I intended to be when we fell in love.

I will never have enough money, talent, good luck, or any of the conventional advantages and attributes to give her all that she deserves. In recent months, because of health concerns, I transitioned from being her partner to being her patient, a deal that in almost five decades of life together, she NEVER signed up for. She doesn't complain and never has. 

She is the most important part of my life, and that is the only thing that matters to me. As long as she is in my life, it is complete and fulfilling. Happy birthday, angel eyes.
-bill kenny   

Christ on a Corroded Catamaran

DISCLAIMER: Title was my idea, inspired by the lyrical lunacy of Jeff Tedreich, whose politics column on Substack offers analysis of our current administration that rivals that of the late Dr. Hunter Thompson on the presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon. 

His observations over the last couple of years, especially in the wake of the Trump Triumph, have helped keep me sane. You might want to try him.   

Anyway, I loved that turn of phrase and co-opted it. It has nothing to do with anything, which may be the most perfect description of this space in the ether ever created. 

This time last week, our temperatures were struggling and failing to get beyond twenty-five degrees. This past Monday, the outside was sixty-seven, and the skies were gloriously blue. Yesterday it got to about sixty with more wind than I'd like, but beggars can't be choosers.

I know we're ten days away from the beginning of spring, and in New England, that doesn't necessarily mean squat in all honesty, but at the risk of seeming greedy, a guy could get used to this pretty easily.
-bill kenny

History Is Often a Mystery

Any city, large or small, is more than the sum of its brick and mortar structures, its thoroughfares and infrastructure, its public safety systems, or its schools. 

All of those are, of course, important, but what defines who we are is the degree of sacrifice and work we are willing to invest in developing and maintaining all of those material things for the betterment of all the residents who share a zip code.

Where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, we seem to have the same arguments over and over again, and it's not as simple as 'us vs. them,' though it's often reduced to that. More often, we seem to be 'our past keeps me from seeing the present' allied with 'my fear of the future keeps me nailed to the Now.'

We all know people whose perception of who we are as a city is heavily colored by what we once were. Not long ago, I had someone give me directions by telling me to 'go past where the school used to be at the intersection of Sachem and Oneco.' Okay, not exactly GPS, but still accurate, but only if you go back more than a few decades. Odd how yesterday covers a multitude of sins.

So, too, does a fear of what tomorrow may bring that becomes so great we not only choose to avoid risk-taking, but we choose to avoid even talking about risk-taking. We've decided it's better to have a horrible ending than horrors without end, except we have no proof tomorrow will not be a better day than the one we are having. It's another case of 'the pool ain't in, but the patio's dry' and all that means is we'll save a fortune this summer on swimwear.

My family and I moved here in the autumn of 1991, not that three plus decades have brought any revelations or blinding glimpses of the obvious, other than people prefer problems that are familiar to solutions which are not. I arrived here as a relatively young man and parent, but have no illusions I am either anymore, so I have to guard against situations where I become part of the obstacles that keep Norwich from being a place our children and theirs will want to come home to.

I listen with both fascination and dread when people speak of "historic" downtown buildings, some for sale and some foreclosed, as if there were actual history connected to structures whose best days were before I was born. Imagine how alien that must sound to nearly a third of our city, those residents who are under thirty-five.

What the preservationists espouse isn't just a reverence for the past but more a preservation of their past. That doesn't mean those buildings have a place in my or anyone else's present or future, much less that we should mortgage the latter to artificially enhance the former.

When a past isn't shared, perhaps it indicates a time whose past has passed, and that in Norwich, the time is long passed to keep throwing good money, private or public, after bad on little boxes on the hillside or on dreams our children will never see.
-bill kenny   

Crawling Over Rubble Just to Sound Me Out

The calendar says for those of us in the Northeast and most of the rest of the nation, this winter of our discontent is drawing to a close. We just started Daylight Saving Time, and in less than two weeks, the swallows return to Capistrano. 

I know it's been a rocky time for many of us for quite some time, and you have to look hard to find reasons to be cheerful. Dylan offered it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. 

My mother, mom of six of the thickest-headed and strongest-willed children to ever walk the planet, demonstrated her smartness when, without consulting the Internet (there was life before ether. Who knew?), she told us it took more muscles to frown than it did to smile. We believed her because she was our Mom, and it didn't hurt that she was also right, but how did she know?

So we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster. I always wear trousers with pockets, so I have somewhere to put all the fun. We can promise not to miss what we do not have and enjoy our now in the now and look towards tomorrow with hope and not dread. 
-bill kenny 

You Can Call Me Ray....

Sometimes I'm not sure if it's better to believe the calendar or my own eyes. We just started daylight saving time in the wee small hours of this morning. Many of us are already counting down the days to spring (I guess so we can then count down the days until Summer), but when I look out the window, there are more than enough reminders everywhere that winter's last word hasn't yet been spoken.   

Don't know about your house, but in mine, there's always one clock we forgot to move forward on Saturday night, and then didn't see it at all Sunday, so it's actually Monday or Tuesday when we finally get caught up on all the watches and clocks. 

I hate the clock on the microwave, and it shows because I never get it set correctly. You can hear the sounds of my struggling with it as it beeps and bleats in frustration while I manage to do everything but get it to move forward, and eventually, my wife resets it in what seems to be one fluid motion, leaving me to wonder as I always do why we have the forward and back thing with the clocks in the first place. 

I guess I should find solace in the knowledge that we do it whether we understand why or not. And while I'd like to hope the spring ahead means winter is now finally in retreat in the Northeast, what we will have is more daylight in the afternoons. As a kid, I thought it made the days longer and gave us more time, and the elderly adult in me now hopes that kid was right on both counts.   

But having the time is one thing; doing something productive and worthwhile with it is something else entirely different. I'm not going to lecture or hector because your mileage may vary, but there are people and projects in need of your extra time and singular talents, be it on your street, neighborhood, city, or state. 

How many projects around your house have you left undone because you just didn't have the time to get to them? Me too. Maybe tackle cleaning out the basement/attic/garage or shed project? And before you start, call Norwich Public Works and schedule a bulk pick-up.

And if you're already caught up on the around-the-house projects, look no further than the end of your street to find an agency or organization in need of volunteers' time and talents. I'm not talking large-scale projects like leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but down to earth. 
     
Take an hour and invest it: in reading to a child in the local library, or seeing if your neighborhood school can use a helping hand, assisting an elderly neighbor to grocery shop, or just visiting someone who's a shut-in. It will benefit more people than either of us can possibly imagine

Take a hint from your clock and outshine the sun. It's alright.
-bill kenny

It's "D" Not "T"

The last time we had a parade in downtown Norwich was for Winterfest, and look at the snow and cold that followed. I’m not suggesting cause and effect, but I mention that because Norwich’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is this Sunday, and I’m concerned we might have large numbers of very short-bearded men with pots of gold and shillelaghs that we won’t be able to get rid of until Memorial Day. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, but I wanted you to know the possibility is out there.

Weather permitting (a phrase we’ve used almost every day for the last seven weeks or so), the Norwich Saint Patrick's Day Parade steps off at one from Ferry Street, makes its way around Franklin Square and up Franklin Street and then uses Willow Street to march to Chestnut and then, in turn, Broadway before making a left at the Wauregan onto Main Street and finishing up at City Landing.

Here’s the website and a listing of many of the other activities going on in and around the parade itself. Last year’s parade was a great success, not just in terms of marchers but also for cosa a chur ar an tsráid (putting feet on the street) across downtown.

Think of the Parade as another reason to stop and visit somewhere, far too many of us simply drive through on our way to someplace else, sometimes complaining how ‘there’s never anything to do in Norwich.’ Which, I agree, can be true except when it’s not, such as tomorrow.

Everyone is welcome to march, but it’s really more of a brisk walk than a march in terms of distance, so you can smile and wave without breaking a sweat.  And you won’t be alone.

When Irish Eyes are Smiling, let’s hope they brighten and warm up tomorrow afternoon enough to allow both the wearing of the green and the marching of the feet. And though it’s technically early, it’s right on time for Sunday: Beannachtam na Feile Padraig "Happy St. Patrick's Day!"

-bill kenny