Please Ring Bell. Wait for Attendant.

I saw that sign on a house on Union Street in Norwich, CT., while out walking. I have to back up a bit and explain how I came to be walking on Union Street mainly because I cannot so easily explain the why behind the walk.

I've been aware that I've become stuck in recent months and don't have enough tricks to get unstuck. I've been been painting myself into a blacker, and tighter, corner with each passing day and wasn't having any luck getting out of it. I've always been in a hurry--not that I've had too many destinations when I set off. Falling in love and marrying the person I was searching for even when I didn't know I was searching for her made the 'last stop' of the day a lot easier, but the stuff from the time I opened my eyes in the morning was and has always been a little more intense than it needed to be.

The other day I decided I needed a guy. It didn't have to be a guy-but I needed somebody smarter than me. So, yeah, by definition, it could've been you. Ideally, I needed a guy to tell me it wasn't me it was everyone else-except then I wouldn't have had a lot of use for him and would have been back where I started, which Everybody Knows, (This) Is Nowhere.

I got really lucky and found someone who realized this time I was drowning and not waving and that between one liners was a somebody who needed a bit of help wrestling it to the curb. He may not be the guy, but he's a guy and that's a start. He had some suggestions on reading and what with my shiny new bifocals and literacy skills and all, I figured books were a good idea.

I've been looking for a reason to go to the Otis Library which was completely and utterly rebuilt, refurbished, repurposed, revitalized and reopened a few months ago (in a perfect world, you'd come over the rebuilt Laurel Hill Bridge, hang a right and drive on a newly paved Main Street to get there, but you can't have everything). I walked from my house near Chelsea Parade to the library which gave me a chance to spy, briefly, on all the other people's lives that go on in the Rose City.

As is the case across the country, with the credit crunch, there are a lot of for sale signs and more than a few foreclosure signs to include one on a multi-level, multi-family house that had two little tiny children (I'm guessing three, maybe four years old) struggling to peer over the banister on the third floor down the stairs at me with the biggest eyes I've seen in a while. But what I remember more than the size of their (brown) eyes was how dead those eyes were and cold. And I couldn't quite figure out how you could be working on probably your first set of big kid pants and already have caught the last reel of the flick of your life and know how it ends.

I don't think they could read yet and I hope they didn't read the foreclosure sign in front of their house that says anyone who shows up today, 31 May, at 1 P. M. with a cashier's check for $19,000 may be the new owner. The sign didn't say what happens to the two kids and whatever grown-ups are living there with them after the money changes hands. Maybe all of this would make a nice episode of those shows my wife likes to watch, like "Flip This House". Maybe this episode we'll let the camera roll and see what happens after the bright and shiny people are finished.

The Otis Library is really nice and the the thing that most impressed me wasn't technically in the library--and it was all the folks, kids, teens, tweens and young adults, out in front of it and actually coming in and out. We didn't have a lot of this in the old library. And there's an energy and vitality that spreads from the front door through the magazine and newspapers area, past the media room and the children's library. Sort of a proof of concept: Build it and they will come with the part of Shoeless Joe played, this time, by the Dewey Decimal system.

I'm really hoping that it's true and that it spreads from the library across the downtown area that has so many small businesses working so hard. I hadn't walked around in a long time and was really pleasantly surprised at how many places there were and how many smiling faces were in them. EOTO isn't strictly speaking just for kids, silly rabbit. It's how you rebuild a neighborhood one house at a time, one block as you can, until you've saved a street and then the streets that link to it.

It's a pebble in a pond but without the small stones and water. It's how, when you hike up Union Street, you see all different kinds of houses and when you get to #23, a breathtakingly beautiful house that someone is selling and that I would love to buy but have absolutely no reason to ever do so and even less money to do it with, there, engraved on the brass plate just above the bell, you read: Please Ring Bell. Wait for Attendant.
I'm developing the mindfulness to not wonder how long that wait for the attendant actually is.
-bill kenny