The Petty Pace Picks Up

This is the quiet before the storm in my house and yet it's a place I have been twice-once very recently and once exactly twenty-two years ago today. 

I work for the Federal Government-feel free to sneer, many people do and I have unkind thoughts about each of you since I am keenly aware of how good I am at what I do but how many obliviots are uncontaminated by any clue. Fair enough.

I spent most of  this past summer not getting paid 20% of the time because the cretins we elected to a variety of offices in the our Nation's Capital are too petty and pusillanimous to understand what the word 'compromise' means. 

There were things in my house, probably like yours for similar reasons, that we did without because we didn't have the money. Feeling bad for the CEO of AIG wasn't on my list of concerns and I can empathize if you didn't care either. 

Today might be my last day with pay for an 'indeterminate period of time' which is bureaucratese for fugifIkno, which is not an acronym but rather a statement of exasperation. 

I'm not liking the feeling in the pit of my stomach today because it's identical to how I felt twenty-two years ago on this, my last day of ever working in Germany at a job I very much loved. Wiedersehen macht nicht immer freude.

It's not just the loss of control over my own life, or any control if I were being honest, though that certainly is part of it. I think for me some of it is anger, if not outright rage, at how history repeats itself and how often it's the same same shirt just a different day.

I have chosen to be angry with the Tea Party and the jackals, worms and gnomes who sup at their table. They would like to pretend after years of NOT offering any constructive idea for universal affordable health care that they are unhappy at the shape of the program slated to begin tomorrow.

Their counter proposal two weeks ago left the 46 million currently without health care, still without health care and their magic phrase, "market solutions," is big money code for devil take the hindmost-as long as it doesn't impact the well-off.

I'm worrying that one American Revolution may not have been enough and if we're living through the beginning of the end or the end of the end. And if you think I'm being melodramatic or overly self-pitying as you wonder why you're fresh out of cake remember: me today, you tomorrow. Count on it.
-bill kenny

If You Never Do

Much is made in poetry and song about the airy delightfulness and wonder of being. If you are of a nature where your spirit needs to soar while contemplating the sheer marvelousness of your own existence, I'd suggest you not look too closely or too often to the left or right, front or back, as we shimmy, shake and shuffle cheek to jowl here on the ant farm with beepers because there's over seven Billion (with a B) of us and while special is as special does, our mileage may vary.

I spent a not inconsequential amount of time with people earlier in the week who operate in the sincere belief that talking about taking an action, perhaps if done loudly enough, might be considered to have been an action. Except, of course, for the actual doing part-and/or LACK of doing part.

For someone with eyes shut, the two look the same. And since looking the same and being the same are now, by this logic, identical, we've created a whole new dimension of reality, except, as it turns out when you build a logic tree for the statements supporting it, none of them exist as truths but only as truisms.

We've lost the delicious duality of meaning in the sound of one hand clapping by trading it for the poorly-examined assumption that one hand washes the other, but always in silence. And silence equals assent.

Thanks to Sara LaMothe for provoking this today, though we've never met nor likely ever shall. She did nothing to directly precipitate any of this and yet. Sing a song of sixpence for your sake and take a bottle full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds in a cake and bake them all in a pie. They told me you missed school today; so what I suggest is just throw them all away. The Handbags and the gladrags...
-bill kenny

By Tomorrow, Today is Yesterday

We went to the Eastern States Exposition, The Big E as it's called, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on Wednesday. If there is an East Springfield, I'm thinking we don't go through it or at least haven't gone through it yet.

Of course we haven't been going all that long. Our daughter Michelle and I made the first trip in 2006 as Sigrid was home in Germany visiting her family and I did some quick calculations that suggested I would have one less meal for two people to prepare if I went to the equivalent of a State Fair where there were eighteen point two boxcars of every kind of food stuff imaginable as long as you can imagine it all deep fried.

I had worried that in Sigrid's absence my culinary skills would either poison our daughter or drive her to run away from home and I wasn't comfortable with any line of patter I rehearsed to myself in preparation for the Inquisition that would follow.

The best I came up was to attempt with a straight face to persuade Sigrid that Michelle had been inadvertently left on the runway at the Frankfurt Flughafen when all three (other) members of my family joined me here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs in November 1991.

Then I remembered the hallway pictures of us all having fun in the backyard in Norwich and I reached for The Big E food offerings like a dying man clutches a straw life raft (I think that was a collision of two different figures of speech and was definitely NOT pretty).

We made it then and we go every year since in celebration and because quite frankly who doesn't love deep fried Oreos or a banana on a stick, covered in chocolate with the chocolate covered in bacon. The Big E. Very much not the place to go to if you're on a diet or ever hope to lose any weight. But delicious, and open through tomorrow, just so you know.
-bill kenny

Breaking Up is (Even) Hard(er) to Do

Living as we do in this age of miracles and wonders, why should I be surprised that we've applied so many of our technological innovations in single minded pursuit of making one another unhappy, or more unhappy (as the case may be)?

That we're also very good at it is one of those 'goes to show' moments, I guess. I can dimly remember being single (not that I was ever any good at it and not that any woman whom I may have known during that period of our lives just looked up wistfully and wondered 'what might have been?') and I have no sense of nostalgia or regret.

I'm only good at marriage stuff now because the woman I married is so excellent at it. I was never that 'take a look at my girlfriend' guy in prep school and listening to all the purple prose and other prolix praise of Saturday nights past while changing for PE was more of a torture than a treat.

My social life, probably like yours, was equal parts fumble and mumble and not a time period I regard with any sort of fondness. I never really knew when I was going out with someone on a steady basis and/or when we had broken up. This made for some awkward moments tightly compacted so that each minute felt like a year but in a news item I fell across in the New York Times, there is now, thanks to converging technologies life after "'tis better to have loved, and lost" but at least for some, without he better part.

 In a culture that has break-up and make-up sex, why am I not surprised we're #1 in revenge porn websites? Truth to tell, I don't actually know that we are #1 but suspect we're in the Top Five; I truly believe we have a knack for this kind of thing and when I say "we" I mean "you".

Old lovers used to fade away and become shadows-I can remember doing things like changing how I walked home from school to avoid going past a certain house or a particular hang-out after whatever I had (don't think 'relatiosnhip' was the in-vogue word then) had ended.

Now, I guess I'd just bulldoze the house down and get misty-eyed as people screamed until the emergency rescue folks showed up. As Neil Sedaka a moment as all of this might be-I'm thinking of the formerly most faded and jaded man on the planet and his words of, well not exactly solace or consolation. I've heard retribution can be served slightly warm with perhaps a white wine. The chill happens later.
 -bill kenny

And You Know Who's the 2000 Man

Mr. His Satanic Majesty Himself, he who laid traps for troubadours who get killed before they reach Bombay, Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger, is about to become a great grandfather. Why would I joke about something like that?

Talk about time is on my side, yes it is, I'm trying to figure out where exactly did the time go? I do not have mad math skills but they're good enough I think to offer a wag that Keith Richards is something like 238 years old, or close, right?

Actually, I'm having trouble accepting something that has a lot to do with the head and heart and not so much with numbers. What does Jagger's familial addition make all of us who grew up listening to the band? Yeah, that's what I feared: Old.
-bill kenny

Chelsea Parade Rest

I took advantage of the marvelous weekend weather, aside from that late night Saturday/dawn's early light Sunday squall, to wander around Chelsea Parade, all of it, which, from my biased opinion, sits in the middle of the most important real estate in all of Norwich, as my family and I live but two minutes away.

You can watch the seasons' pass in a parade of their own at Chelsea Parade. Spring training always starts a little earlier than the pros heading to Florida or Arizona start. And the pennant races are still fast and furious as pick-up-team footballers and lacrosse players get in some extra reps as the seasons shift around them.

The only sport not practiced on the expanses of the green triangle bordered by Broadway and Washington is mid-winter skiing and I suspect that's mostly because downhill is out of the question and  cross-country hasn't caught on around here the way is has out west.

When our children were smaller, it was a short bus ride to Buckingham School, since closed and later razed, with many of the kids of the neighborhood. Streets are a lot like tides that way-when our kids were small all the young kids were on our end of the street, and now that all of those children are adults of their own, all the kids on our street live on the far end and we hear but rarely see them.

Most of the same kids who went to Buckingham rolled up the hill to Kelly Middle School-a bit farther away to be sure, but still more or less in the neighborhood and then for high school, it was the walk across Chelsea Parade to the campus of Norwich Free Academy. The school was a portal for the neighborhood kids to the wide world beyond in ways perhaps parents couldn't always be.

I stopped to compare notes with the Civil War soldier who stands an unblinking watch, being as he is, to my knowledge, the last serving member of the Grand Army of the Republic, whose crest decorates the stone border surrounding his statue.

That he's looking at the flag pole, and beyond it, to what we consider to be the heart of our city, Chelsea, is not coincidental, I'm nearly positive. That he's seen things of which he dare not speak, I have no doubt and I think I'm grateful for that silence.

But more eloquent than the silence is the space to his back where Broadway and Washington meet and a small strip of land at the tip of Chelsea Parade where Norwich has traditionally memorialized the selfless sacrifices of those who've served in our armed forces.

I paid especial attention to how the grass has grown over the street once paved in gold which has seen its share of tears through the years as stone remembrances were erected for those who fell during the two World Wars, Vietnam and to honor Prisoners of War and Missing in Action of all of our nation's conflicts.

The landscaping has come along well and the footing poured by Public Works for what many hope will be the final monument on Chelsea Parade is in place and ready for this Saturday evening at six when the Norwich Post 9/11 Memorial to two Norwich residents who died during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Army Specialist Jacob Martir and Army First Lieutenant Keith Heidtman is dedicated.
All we'll need is you.
-bill kenny  

I'm a Sole Man

With the lovely weather of the fall days we're having here in Southern New England (I always think I should throw in a couple of y'all's when I type the word Southern), I've taken to walking after eating my lunch of a green salad.

I have a pretty organized route that I've now altered it so I no longer go past the burger joint as I wander because nothing makes the memory of a salad you just finished eating resemble a recollection of a bowl of grass clippings faster than the scent of grilled Angus beef and the tangy aroma of bacon.

Yesterday on my route across the work compound, I discovered one of those speed measurement signs set up on the main road. You know the kind I mean-they have the posted speed limit sign on the top of the device, and a flashing display with "Your Speed" underneath. As a motorist, I always slow down often in chagrined surprise over how fast I was really going.

But as a pedestrian, Bill Bi-ped, on the sidewalk, I was ecstatic to discover I was hurtling along at better than 14 miles an hour. Say it ain't so! I half-expected to see smoke coming from feet. I can't run anymore after the surgeries and replacement knees and they refuse to run by themselves so I try to keep a steady four mile an hour pace as I walk. I was really stoked reading the display.

Okay I was a little less stoked when I stopped at the intersection but was still clocking at a little over 12 mph. Those New Balance sneakers were worth every penny I paid for 'em except....well, as you've probably guessed, the machine wasn't measuring my speed but rather that of a Ford Escort, teal-colored I'm saddened to say, zooming up behind me.

For an all-too-brief moment, I'd felt like Colonel Steve Austin only to come crashing back to earth as Oscar, Madison, not Goldman. And as much as the pain of disappointment hurt, I knew I couldn't just walk it off.
-bill kenny

Exit Sandman

When J. R. Murphy struck out to end the bottom of the 9th in Yankee Stadium yesterday afternoon as NY fell to the San Francisco Giants, 2-1, I shook my head realizing when Mariano Rivera, whose final season and major league career were celebrated in marvelous fashion all season long in every ballpark the Yankees visited capped by yesterday's Mariano Rivera Day at the Stadium, his catcher, that same J. R. Murphy who caught him in the top of the 9th, wasn't even born.

Would I have found it to be perfect had Andy Petitte won his last start as a New York Yankee against a very talented, but spelling challenged Yusmeiro Petit (so close and yet...), yeah I sure would have. I sometimes forget professional sports is a business first and all the emotion, the fist pumping, the throat lumping and the heart thumping are secondary to the bottom line.

And the bottom line is the Yankees' post-season chances are now on life support. The places are set at the table and even if something amazing were to happen, the ultimate Hollywood Happy Ending would probably not happen but a kid can dream. and,I'll be honest I slept well last night knowing that two of my favorite professional baseball players left it all out on the field yesterday. They didn't win but they left me and others with memories that will last as long as there are fans to tell the story.

Final week of the 2013 regular season-do this now and be ready for what's next.
-bill kenny

Picture This

This was/is my weekend to do nothing. The first one of the month where I didn't know before the week started what I'd be doing when it ended. And, it felt good to sleep in yesterday morning until shortly after seven o'clock.

Admittedly, I felt I was wasting the day but most of the morning the weather in our parts did its bit to help me feel less guilty about the time frittering as it was something close to nothing but different than the time before. And there wasn't a raspberry beret in sight.

I like taking pictures-I don't take good ones so I make for it by taking lots of them, but sometimes I get lucky and the picture turns out okay and I have enough photo treatment effects to approximate magic without committing anything close to art.

So that's what I did yesterday and, between you and me, I also watched Rutgers come back and beat the Arkansas Razorbacks, so life was pretty sweet.
Yeah, pretty as a picture if you must know.

-bill kenny

I'm Thinkin' of the Days

As sorely as I am tempted to rant about the governmental kamikaze pilots in a particular part of the House Republican Party, and their determination to bring this country to its knees, I'll save that for another time because those muttonheads aren't going anywhere. And if you doubt me, give Newt Gingrich a call and ask him how the last Potomac Pissing Contest worked out for him and his posse.

No, today, but not for long because your devotion to the New York Yankees may not be as heartfelt as mine and I would hate to call you stupid even though if you don't root for them I think you are, I'll mourn the closing of an age as two of the Four Amigos, and three remaining ones, call it a career while the Yankees close out their 2013 final home stand against the defending World Champions, but not going anywhere this year, San Francisco Giants.

Far more importantly, Mo and Andy ready themselves to ride off into the sunset.
Mariano Rivera, Mo, we knew about from the moment it was clear he would return from last season's injury. He'd take a victory lap around Major League Baseball and then, ever the gentleman, would take his leave of us.

Andy Petitte, he of the brooding deep set eyes, peering balefully over his glove with the mitt shielding most of his face, many figured would call it a career at the end of this season. And physically, the man of summer was not treated kindly as he spent time he, and we, would have preferred on the mound, instead in rehab and on the DL.

In fairness, Petitte had plenty of company as this year's Yankees should have been sponsored by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of The Bronx. It's much easier to list the starters who didn't spend time in rehab than vice versa. And the 2013 season is ending more with a whimper than a bang as the only chance the Yankees have to be a wild card playoff team is more mathematical than even whimsical. That's always a part of baseball and why spring is always the season of hope.

Too bad for those who hope as it would have been terrific for the most successful pitcher in Major League playoff history, Petitte, to have had one more ride on the carousel and, aided and abetted by Mo, forming the most successful starter and reliever pair in the game, and to have gone out in a blaze of glory that would have eclipsed all the lights on Broadway.

But, man proposes and God disposes and though they often think and behave otherwise, the Steinbrenner Family are men after all and like the rest of us, especially I fear on Sunday afternoon in what will in all likelihood be his last home start as a Yankee, ever, Joe Girardi having caught and now managed Petitte, will give him the game ball for one last time.

And am I being nostalgic or greedy, or both, if with the game hanging in the balance in the late innings, the call goes out for Mo to shut the door one more time and bring it home.

Spring training 2014 is less than 160 days away and all I can hope is youngsters somewhere if not over the rainbow then down on the farm on teams toiling away in the late summer sun after a seven hour bus ride to East Squeegum in the International Tractor Pull League realize they have some big cleats to fill and a tradition of quiet and exceptional excellence to make their own.
-bill kenny

Somewhere Old Shadows and Shades Shuffle Down the Street

Today is Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Remembrance Day. In terms of the barrels of ink expended on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, this is more of a quart size observance than gallons.

Today has its roots in the late Seventies when Congress still did things other than kvetch and bitch about the other party, creating this observance in 1979 as the nation worked to rebuild its psyche after Vietnam. As long as we have had war, which is nearly as long as we've been on this planet, we've had the fog of war and its shroud too often on the real costs of conflict.

When I was a wee slip of a lad in prep school, I had an English teacher, Mr. Castle who had survived the Bataan Death March of World War II. He was a shattered man because of that experience.

And yet, not that many years ago, I met a long since retired Navy Lieutenant who had been a junior enlisted submariner whose sub had been sunk in the Pacific and he and others on the crew had been captured. He, too, survived Bataan but he was mentally and emotionally a completely different person than my school teacher and is, to this day, one of the most positive people I have ever met.

It's been years, decades actually, since I last watched the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Washington DC. One of Mom's brothers, Jim, was assigned to the guard detail but I was very small and have no memory of watching him stand the duty, but I still carry the recollections of the ceremony and its significance and can attest as well to the emotional impact it has on the observer.

For friends and families of POW's and MIA's there no finality, no neat but sad, ending or the conclusion of a chapter. Memories of loss fade, and life goes on, even if the number of guests at the banquet changes while the dull ache remains.

Perhaps the best we can do today is pause to honor the lives and sacrifices of the thousands of men and women who were/are prisoners of war or missing in action and vow if only to ourselves to demand of those who so blithely send our armed forces into harm's way as if it were a holiday package that our causus belli be always just and our accounting of losses be forever full and complete.

We owe those who are absent no less and far more.
-bill kenny

There's Always Someone Looking at You

In light of the calamity and catastrophe in Washington D.C. this past Monday, and I will not get into a ‘there’s too many/not enough guns/gun control’ argument because this is neither the time nor the place, how in the name of everything good and holy could this ever be an appropriate or even vaguely  rational response?

Go home, Alex Jones, not because you’re drunk though it might be better if you were but because you’re hateful, hurtful and seriously stupid. If you don’t find an imbecile who insisted (and still insists) the Boston Marathon Bombing was a hoax to be intellectually offensive, wrap tin foil around your head and sit very quietly in the center of a darkened room in the bunker you’ve built in your basement.

Wait until ‘the government’ rounds you up and if it takes a while, don’t leave whatever you do and wander out into the general population. As we demonstrated again on Monday we are sold out on crazy and don’t need anyone else drilling a second hole in the boat to let the water out.  

–bill kenny

Use What Ya Got to Get Whatcha Want

This Saturday has the potential to be both historical and hysterical here in The Rose City, as events coalesce to provide us with a more than reasonable amount of much ado about quite a bit.

At Dodd Stadium, seasonal home of the Connecticut Tigers and professional baseball under the lights, we'll have a plethora of (k)nights all during the day as the Connecticut Renaissance Faire takes up its new residence in this, the opening weekend of its fall 2013 offerings.

If you've ever wanted to spend time in days of old (aside from when we debate the Reid & Hughes building in City Council Chambers), get thee post-haste on any Saturday or Sunday between this one, the 21st, and the 20th of October (as well as Columbus Day) to Dodd for a classic good time.

And Sunday, there's reduced admission for Norwich residents (and you've heard people complain about being from here? Here's a switch.).

Also this Saturday, and for some perhaps more hysterical than historical, it's the return of a man no one wants to acknowledge, precisely because he is from here, Benedict Arnold.

Okay, Arnold himself is NOT returning, so take it easy with the eggs benedict memorial breakfast preparations, but a likeness of his left leg, the one severely wounded during the Battle of Saratoga, spared the fiery end his life-size effigy met in New London last weekend, a gift from the Whaling City's Flock Theater, will be arriving by boat at Howard T. Brown Park.

After travelling up the Thames and making landfall in the park, the leg will be transported in a three foot coffin to the Leffingwell House Museum as part of their day-long focus on the man whose name is synonymous in American history with 'traitor.'

I realize you may have just furrowed your brow and grimaced at the mere mention of his name, but Major General Benedict Arnold is part of Norwich's history and a major presence in that most decisive of all our conflicts, our War of Independence. Feel free to NOT forgive if you so choose-but don't be so foolish as to think you can forget. Or should.

Before you launch a vitriol-laced brickbat at anyone for 'getting that Benedict Arnold business stirred up again,' might I suggest you spend part of your Saturday afternoon, between noon and four, at the Leffingwell House Museum as General Arnold is interviewed by a young reporter from the Norwich Packet and offers his side of what is one of the more unhappy stories of the American Revolutionary War. You may not change how you feel-but you'll know more than you did before.

Saturday evening, just to round out the day, if you haven't already stopped by, check out one of the last remaining publicly staged readings of the new musical, Benedict Arnold, commissioned by the Spirit of Broadway Theater, as it prepares for the 2014 world premiere production!!

There aren't many tickets left so if you think you'll be interested (and why would you not be?), make your reservations now because admission is limited and otherwise by Saturday, your chances could be history. Sort of like Arnold himself.
-bill kenny

Turn the Page

It was twenty-two years ago today I worked my last day in Europe. I still haven't decided if I'm angry or sad about what went on and why. I hadn't lost my job so much as it had lost me.

In less time than it takes to explain the appeal of totalitarianism to Eastern Europeans, that appeal evaporated into thin air and where there had been two Germanys for four and a half decades, there was suddenly only one.

As a card carrying grey eminence of the NATO occupation forces, and with Exchange and Commissary privileges to prove it (not forgetting my Mainz-Kastel Audio -Video Club Frequent Shopper Membership), I was part of the 'everything must go!' overhead the United States Armed Forces parted with in their Getting Out of Europe sale.

In dribs and drabs for the course of a couple of years, many of those with whom I had worked, in and out of uniform, found themselves in the same place and space-where the road and the sky collide with very little time to think once much less twice.

I was considering all of that (and the role the talentless Captain Mary P and the graceless Colonel Tom D played in my exit-you didn't really think I'd forget you, did you?) because this Sunday is Election Day throughout a now reunited-for-nearly-twenty-years Germany that, if many English language reports are to be believed, will return a former Ossi (an East German), Angela Merkel, to a third term as Bundeskanzlerin.

It's the most powerful popularly elected post in Germany, and by extension, across the European Economic Community (what we call the Common Market) whether Frau Merkel and her fans are comfortable with that characterization or not.

She's not popular in southern Europe (an understatement if there were ever one) as the economic reforms she espoused and ultimately imposed on the rest of the member nations as the EEC threatened to buckle under the hammer blows of the world-wide depression very nearly bankrupted nations who had spent money they didn't have on things they didn't need.

In some places like Greece and Spain, her popularity rivaled another German, from another time, and whose name I will not use but you may have seen his picture and thought he was Charlie Chaplin. He wasn't and, more importantly, she isn't no matter how often the contrary is argued.

Gone, though not forgotten, are the tee shirts that were everywhere when the blush of reunification had faded that read on the front "Bring Back the Wall" while auf den ruckseite, it said "And Make It Three Meters Taller."

Nearly a third of Sunday's voters have no idea what all of that Ärger was about because they have never lived in anything other than one Deutschland. If I'd known then what would happen to my life now and that of my family, I don't think I'd have changed a thing, despite or because of that knowledge. We are the sum of everyone we've ever known and the journey, so far, has been as educational as it has been entertaining.

Sometimes this story each of us is writing can be a bit tricky as farewell often becomes goodbye and other times, it's yet another hello.
-bill kenny

Sometimes You Get the Best Light From a Burning Bridge

On our way out of the Mohegan Sun yesterday afternoon after the Connecticut Sun upended the Indiana Fever in overtime to close out a disappointing 2013 WNBA season on a positive note, Michelle, our daughter, darted ahead into a gap into the herd of folks leaving leaving me with the lame and blue-haired contingent.

As I tried to accelerate to see her if not relocate her, I ended up brushing against a guy with an all-too-familiar aroma, that of a freshly lit cigarette. Make no mistake, as someone who smoked three and a half packs a day every day for twenty-three and a half years or so and who stopped cold turkey on the last day of September 1996, I miss cigarette smoking not only every day, but every waking minute of every day.

Didn't stop me from turning to look at him while offering 'sir, there is no smoking permitted here.' His eyes narrowed and his voice thickened as he offered sarcastically 'thank you very much, why don't you go (anatomically challenging while we both were walking) me?'

I smiled as I slowed and touched his elbow so he understood that I could (and the look in his eyes told me he wasn't happy with this knowledge), and to remind him I was very nearly a head taller than he, as I said, 'if I did, you'd never go back to sheep again.'

And I then left him to stand stock-still pondering how nicotinic acid can so severely dull your sense of counter-point and repartee. I imagine he's still there.
-bill kenny

The Good Is Oft Interred

Starting today, I’m gonna start to be a lot nicer to my wife and children because I now have a greater appreciation for the power of having the last word. Wow. Talk about Joan Crawfordesque. Not a lot that’s unknown about that fire’s origin. I may have to get up even earlier to fill in that hole the size of the Grand Canyon I must’ve dug by now.

I’ll make it a point to avoid my brothers and sisters since I have a lifetime of ‘boss in charge of the dog’ and other remarks to atone for, though for K, J &A on the far end of the chronology, I’m hoping more for a ‘which one was he again?’ reaction. That may be as close to forgiveness as West Virginia is to heaven in my case, I suppose.

It’s an amazing obituary and I would hope each of us should and could be inspired by it to attempt to both do better and be better. As for me, I’m doing what I can with what I have. I’m brushing and flossing more so, if nothing else, people remember my diamond smile.   

-bill kenny

A Bullet for Your Boyfriend

I’m as big a patriot as the next person and considering my relative size and mass I could make the argument that I am, in fact, a bigger patriot than most. I tend to not push the wave-my-flag-in-your-face button too much or often.

I never met George Bernard Shaw but I am both keenly aware and inordinately fond of his observation that “…(P)atriotism is fundamentally a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…” 

That knowledge and his delivery of it tempers my enthusiasm to purchase a red, white and blue foam finger with “We’re #1” on it whenever we visit NYC and find ourselves in front of the United Nations building.   

In the course of six plus decades here on The Big Blue Marble, much of it spent in the 48 contiguous more or less United States, I’ve benefited from and enjoyed immensely a large percentage of the rights and privileges enumerated in our Constitution and Bill of Rights and guaranteed by the toil and tears of generations of patriots and matriots. (did you see what I did there?)

Some, such as freedom of religion or freedom from religion (as more than a few have suggested) are seemingly more clear-cut and less contentious than others to include pony rides on your birthday and  the right to bear arms or bare arms (I’m not a big fan of homonyms but I sure do like cinnamon and syrup on my French toast). Perhaps the right involves arming bears-I’m never sure.

I didn’t grow up on Walton Mountain and while the wilds of Franklin Township, New Jersey, seemed vast and scary when I was a child, I concede that had a lot to do with my being a child and not so much with any actual scariness, especially now when the only fear might be running out of Grey Poupon.

We didn’t have guns in my parents’ house and I never had dealings with weapons of any kind until I joined the Air Force (mainly because I was assured they were the branch of the US Armed Forces least involved with weapons, mostly at the request of the other branches; it worked out that way for me).

For many of us, God and Guns are a way of life and as I‘ve always understood life in these United States, as long as your rights aren’t infringing on mine, and vice versa, we be cool and ships. And yet, despite that when I came across this article, I paused to ponder. I’ll point out, though you’ll realize it for yourself, this isn’t a new law in Iowa just folks having a second look, no offensive pun intended.

I will concede if I were a bad guy, the idea of a visually impaired person with a lethal weapon and a willingness to use it might color my decision on making a house call. Unless I were a ninja or a mime, I might be deterred if for no other reason than a fear of ending up interred. As for rubber ducks, the orange sauce does nothing for them at all.  

-bill kenny

Jeff and Rod Were so Right, Touch Wood

I originally wandered around in this space in the ether about all things (not really but it made for a grand statement) Friday the 13thish a number of years ago. Funnily enough a mirror balanced on a ladder fell and landed on a black cat but nothing adverse happened to me so I figured I'd revisit that earlier meander and hope to heck that history repeats itself. What's the worst that can happen? Really? Well, I stand corrected then.  

It's interesting that there are so many more concerns about Friday the 13th in a nation of fifty states, founded from thirteen original colonies than just about anywhere else on earth 

From the notion of seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror while crossing the path of a black cat and not throwing salt over your right shoulder, to dozens of local and regional variants, we all know people who, today, are as quiet and immobile as they can, 'just in case...'

And before you or I tsk-tsk those concerns. Have you ever actually tsk-tsked anyone or anything? Me neither. It requires a permit in some jurisdictions, and can only be accomplished in the presence of consenting adults. As I recall, your mileage may vary. 

Here's a puzzler, filed under 'Things from England' (with apologies to the late Scott Muni), that suggests if you worry enough about anything, you can, and will, get sick. Like that old saw about how paranoids are convinced people are out to get them and when, because they alter their behavior, people are indeed out to get them, does this mean they are cured?

I, like so many others, tend to visit the snopes.com website for all the latest in debunking junk I see on TV, mostly on Faux Gnus. That's where I can check out topics ranging from 'the public option will grow hair on your knuckles' to 'Amelia Earhart is Barack Obama's Secret Santa' and just about any combination of either of those we could think of. But Friday the 13th is a slippery slope even for snopes. 

So after I've suggested you not step on a crack, or do anything else with it, or have any interaction with a ladder of any kind for any reason, I'd offer, in a half-full glass kind of world, perhaps we're all better off if we consider today as the second coming of Thursday the 12th, only supersized.
-bill kenny

Sleeping Beauty

I had a day off yesterday in the middle of the week, a rarity for me and an unfortunate accident for many with whom I had contact. My wife and I had an errand to run at the Mohegan Sun casino, down the road (ten minutes or so by car) from our house and got that accomplished around mid-day.

As we walked from one point in the Grand Hall to another to get done what we needed to get done I was cut off, pipped at the post so to speak, by a relatively young man in a white dress short with dark blue jeans pulled up to around his armpits.

I hadn't heard radio or TV reports of flooding and was somewhat shocked to see how how high the water gets when the levee breaks. He was also wearing a brown engineer's hat, indoors (yeah I'm that old that such oafishness annoys me) and a white tee-shirt with dark black lettering worn under the white shirt.

The tee shirt said something about ninja, though obviously not a very good one or I wouldn't have been able to see it under his dress shirt. To characterize him as 'a thrown together look' would be to malign thrown together looks entirely. Dumpster projectile vomiting is closer to what he resembled as opposed to a denizen of one of the most successful and poshly appointed casinos in the world.

All I could think of was a (shanty) Irish expression I heard from my childhood, I'm thinking was never used about any of us growing up but which on some days might have been true, "first one up is best one dressed."
-bill kenny

On a Day Just Like Today

Today is more than just a somber day of the calendar, a moment of poignant pause and quiet reflection for what once was and what can never be again. There are losses we shall never overcome and scars that will always be visible no matter how much we cover them.

It’s been a dozen years since the first, halting and somewhat confused news reports of airliners crashing into Manhattan’s Twin Towers shortly before 9 A.M., and then the Pentagon and the carnage, and courage, which followed those catastrophic events.

For family and friends who suffered losses that day, September 11, 2001, the years have been as if an eye blink. And the once searing pain of grief has now become the dull ache of a forever broken heart.

Epochal events on a world stage become historic but personal and private recollections of those who are now gone always live on, in, and through, each of us.

Despite the time and distance separating (but somehow joining) Norwich to New York, the Pentagon and a forlorn field in Pennsylvania, the service and selfless sacrifice we remember today extends beyond the buildings and lives broken and shattered on a crisp and clear nearly autumnal day that was so filled with promise when it began.

A dozen years on, we learn everyday just how heavy the burden of the past weighs on us and how it continues to cast a shadow not only on today but on our tomorrows as well. Habits and customs passed from one generation to another changed in the roar and flash of an instant, leaving us only memories and the need to begin again. And so we have.

In towns and cities, large and small, in a thousand different places and spaces across our country today, millions will remember just as we promised one another we always would.

For volunteers of the Norwich Post 9/11 Memorial Committee today is a reminder of their efforts, now crowned by success, begun more than two years ago at the request of the City of Norwich, to remember two young men, soldiers both, who will never grow old.

The committee designed a permanent remembrance of the two Norwich residents and students of Norwich Free Academy, US Army Specialist Jacob Martir and US Army 1st Lieutenant Keith Heidtman, who died during Operation Iraqi Freedom. That memorial at Chelsea Parade will be dedicated two weeks from this Saturday, September 28 at six PM.

Both were still nearly neighborhood kids when the events we mark today occurred and yet both responded as grown men do, with the fullest measure of devotion and sacrifice, doing what they felt needed to be done.      

Jacob was killed by small arms fire in 2004, while on patrol in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, and Keith died in 2007, when his OH-58 Kiowa helicopter was brought down by enemy fire in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad.

The dedication of the Post 9/11 Memorial should afford their families, friends and former classmates, with as many of us as will fit in Chelsea Parade a celebration of their lives and the gifts their sacrifices helped preserve for all of us.
Please join us, on a day just like today.

-bill kenny

Ritalin Rulz

I love social interactions where we'd have to work hard to overlook or excuse a child's childish behavior but, luckily, we never even get to that part of the transaction because their designated grown-up was boorish beyond belief.

When you have difficulties spotting the parent in that kind of combo pack, I always silently thank my two long gone Grandmas for raising their children to have manners. It gave me somebody to learn mine from.

Take Simone Baker and her six year old son, name redacted by the AP (sure hope when he's older and falls in love, the object of his affections keeps her name or this will be terribly awkward). She obviously never met my grandparents, any of them, nor my parents. Her loss.

Her son, it will appear after you reach the end of the article, invented an explanation that Tiger Mom, in rushing to aid her cub, believed wholeheartedly. Or.....she just really wanted to beat some kindergarten teacher's butt and this pretext was heaven-sent.

I especially liked the champion understatement that the equally-unidentified-in-this-story teacher 'wasn't up to talking.' Or filing, I imagine, or combing her own hair. Or eating food which required chewing. I will not be surprised if she displays little appetite for ever returning to a classroom stocked with miniature people. Awkward.

As for Simone, well, she's still out and about apparently. It was, after all, the weekend and I'm wondering what she did with herself with the schools closed and all. I'm sure the Kansas City, Missouri, police have John Langley and a film crew in tow to restart that TV franchise and have it hosted by a former politician before he was a former actor before he was a former body-builder.

When it comes to turning his back, he'll show that Kansas City Kitty how it's done. -bill kenny

Syriassly

One of the most powerful rights we have in our country, and one that makes us the envy of many elsewhere, is to disagree publicly with our government and not disappear unter Nacht und Nebel never to be seen or heard from, or of, again.

Saturday, the President of the United States, a man for whom I have voted twice, offered in his weekly address to the nation his best explanation, so far, on why he feels the nation he leads must take action.

Quite frankly, the blush has been off that rose for me since the Bush Administration lied about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, and we all jumped on the bandwagon and off the cliff lemming-like to bring 'freedom' to a portion of the world where the advanced nations are in the 17th Century, yes Saudi Arabia, I mean you, and others, like Afghanistan, are so poor and so broken and backwards they could cease to be in a blinding flash and no one not living there would notice they were gone.

I appreciate the President's concern and recognize it is both genuine and sincere when he says "We cannot turn a blind eye to images like the ones we’ve seen out of Syria."

Except over 80,000 Syrians have been murdered in a fratricidal orgy of death from March 2011 to March of 2013 by one side or the other of blood-thirsty lunatics but it's the 1,429 who died as victims of saran gas who have caused the President to lose his fear of red lines and their crossing.

Sorry, sir. We have two hundred times that number of casualties in this country going to bed hungry every night, sleeping under bridge trestles, victims of domestic abuse, substance addiction, an-in-the-crapper economy for anyone hoping to earn a living wage and two hundred other challenges we need to marshal our resources to solve. Screw the sideshows in the sandbox.

Might I suggest I, and you, have watched us create a military power so expensive to maintain that not only do we rank #1 in dollars spent on defense but we outrank the next 24 nations on that Top 25 list. We, you and I, have no idea what victory over global terrorism looks like. We know, despite the war criminal Cheney's bland assurances, that no one anywhere is throwing rose petals at us.

Better they throw whatever it is they have at one another than at us. The Hezbollah, the Al Qaeda, the Friends of Assad, the Assad-Sucks-the Big-One groups, all of them-a plague on all their houses. We cannot fix them-we should have learned that in Bosnia nearly two decades ago-if not there, then in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

We have sent the flower of a generation with more talent, spirit and energy than any cohort before them and a genuine desire to serve in the wake of the horrors of September 11, 2001, directly into the blades of the meat grinder. Without a second thought or apology and covered up all the stupidity with the usual chest-thumping patriotic pap about the glory and the good of the country.

If all these talented folks' lives are worth sacrificing then why don't we, you and me and those of us NOT halfway across the globe killing strangers, work harder to make this country worth their sacrifice and return us to the head of the table at the banquet of nations.

Yes, Sir, no Sir; three bags full, Sir. Full of what is open to speculation.
-bill kenny

And there's Still All Day Sunday

This has been a brilliant weekend, nearly incandescent in terms of delight and bedazzlement. Spent some time traveling as The Connecticut Kennys to Central Jersey for the marriage of Suzanne, Adam and Margaret's oldest child, to Ryan in a wonderful ceremony as Friday afternoon ended and dusk approached.

We traveled back to The Nutmeg State at mid-day on Saturday with time enough to spare to catch a good part of a great time, The Taste of Italy, Norwich Style at Howard T. Brown Park at the Norwich Harbor.

And today, the Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I could squeeze in a pony ride or two. Or three. Or just sleep in. Perchance to dream.....
-bill kenny

Should Have Gone with the Chicken

The expression goes “practice makes perfect” (shouldn’t it be “perfect practice makes perfect”?) which is why when someone asks about my religious beliefs I usually respond with ‘a Perfect Catholic’ (because I’m no longer a practicing one).

I grew up in a church that required you to abstain from eating meat on Fridays and not being a fan of seafood I developed a still-firmly-held fondness for grilled cheese sammiches and a wary regard for what I assumed even as a child was a very powerful fishing lobby.  The distinction between star-struck and Star-Kist wasn’t lost on me.

It seemingly escaped the notice of Howard Cosby, nearly a neighbor but actually a resident of a correctional facility down the road in Uncasville which is sort of midway between right here,  and New London.

You might assume people who live in New England, and Howard does live in New England, might have some knowledge of and/or affection for seafood, but I’m a fish sticks guy and have learned to live with the askance looks that I get so I’m giving him a mulligan on not knowing fish was a meat. It can happen.

I was assured by Jacques Cousteau in confidence many years ago during a dream one of us was having that sharks refer to fish as ‘the other white meat.’ That was a revelation that left me very uneasy to this day which is why I never apply tartar sauce before swimming in the ocean. And if I get sunburn, I get sunburn. You have some dill on your eyebrow. Just sayin’.

I’ve been reading this story in a variety of news outlets and a shared commonality (what other kind are there, I wonder, aside from ‘shared’?) is in recounting the why he is an inmate part of the story, as a reader, what I always call ‘the compulsory program,’ (Dick Button would be so proud) the mention of the nearly two decades of sentence he has for sexual assault catches my eye. It’s heartening to realize anyone can change, or attempt to at the very least.   

On the other hand, he may well be hedging his bets against a future life where his skandha takes the form of a flounder fillet as part of a less than Good Friday incarcerated kitchen combo platter. Probably tastier than roast dukkha with w(h)ine sauce.  

-bill kenny

The Fundamental Things Apply

Here's a fact, Jack(t) [didn't know how else to get it to rhyme], on average in these United States 542 people get married everyday (I am assuming to each other; otherwise the math is terrifying). 

Here's another fact, today I do not care about 541 of those pairings. Sorry, I simply do not care. 

This evening Adam and Margaret's Suzanne weds Ryan and Happily Ever After begins immediately. Congratulations! 
-bill kenny

Weather or Not

I tend to tread lightly this time of year. No, not to impress the Jolly Old Elf before the Christmas List Proof-Reading of Good Boys and Girls happens, but because on the Eastern Seaboard we’re, in theory, up to our hips in hurricane season. 

That, some years we’ve been up to our necks is always a cause of both gratitude and a source of concern for me who, as an oldest child, has elevated fretting to an art form.

Actually if the International Olympic Committee were to make fretting a competitive sport, you’d see me on the medals podium probably fretting about the size of the sash on the medal. As women have insisted for eons, size really does matter.

But that’s not why I’m pussy-footing about as September skies cloud over and the sun and fun of summer days fades like a bad burn from Ocean Beach. 

This has been, so far, a very quiet hurricane season, one might say delightfully quiet (not that anyone was complaining), or it was until these blabbermouths decided ‘gee, what a swell idea for a story even though we’re thousands of miles away from any worry about this.”

I’m fretting that now, like the sports announcer who extols the long range field goal kicking ability of Billy-Bob from State U just before he shanks four attempts into the crowd to include those in the other end zone and dooms the kid to swing shift at the Gas ‘n’ Go Car Wash, we could have ourselves a heckuva of a remainder of the hurricane season.

Thanks KOAA, for painting an orange bulls-eye on the backs of folks from The Keys to Kennebunkport. Bozos. I hope Ralphie (IV or V) shows up at your station Halloween party and is so pissed that he had to run almost a hundred miles to crash it that he stomps your wicker pic-a-nic baskets flat level with the ground. 

Wait until I tell him you were having hamburgers….

Worrying about hurricanes almost drives me to drink-and I don’t want another drink. I only want that last one again.

-bill kenny

Being the Change Rather than Just Hoping for It

Shana Tova to those who will celebrate Rosh Hashanah beginning at sundown this evening. The seasons are starting to change, summer is ending and fall beginning and with it a rush to ready ourselves, especially here in New England for the winter we so often fear and never quite fully prepare for.

But before we get there, there are some loose ends, at least in my mind to tie up, and one, much like the fresh start and celebration of Rosh Hashanah involves a quiet shift we felt and saw in the last three weeks here in Norwich. 

The visible, to all and sundry, is the magnificent wall-size mural created by Faith Wibberley on the previously blank brick wall of the Spirit of Broadway Theater on Chestnut Street. 

Susan Gale, one of the most relentlessly optimistic people on our planet once suggested "(a) fresh outlook is like a fresh coat of paint. It doesn't cost much, but sometimes it makes a huge difference."  

I find it delightfully ironic that a fresh coat of paint on the Spirit of Broadway was happening, literally, as the organization's against-all-odds $30,000 fundraiser for the World Premiere performance of their musical "Benedict Arnold" was crowned with success.  

As I read the calendar, while many of us will be enjoying the Taste of Italy, Norwich Style, at Howard T. Brown Park or the Greek Festival on Washington Street this Saturday, others of us, with their theatrical noses to the grindstone will have their first rehearsal with an orchestra and a week from today will be the first public performance.  

Thank you to the Spirit of Broadway for creating an opportunity and a project which transcends personal and/or political differences, allowing us as a committed community to rally round for a greater good which hopefully serves as a fulcrum to finally launch historical tourism as a viable regional pursuit and job creator, for so many disparate voices to be heard in a meaningful (and financial) way saying 'yes' to the heritage and history of Norwich, even the parts with blemishes and warts (perhaps especially THOSE parts).

In my opinion, it's another example and amazing proof of what you can get accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit and that takeaway could and should be a teachable moment for all of us, especially for those who are registered Democrats as next Tuesday is a Democratic primary selection for candidate for Mayor. 

As promised/threatened here some time ago, I will not offer you, as a fellow-registered Democrat, an opinion about for whom you should vote, except to insist you owe it to yourself and to the rest of us as a registered voter to find your way to a polling place between the time they open and close next Tuesday. No excuses.

I'm tired of elections in Norwich coming down to a choice between Ignorance and Apathy-the dynamic duo of "I don't know" and "I don't care.' We spend more time deciding on what to order from a fast-food menu than we do in analyzing the qualifications and abilities of the neighbors who choose to run for public office. 

But don't we love to howl when "they" turn out to not be like "us?" Except, of course in a democracy, especially at the local level, there is no "us" or "them" just we the people. 

So with so many marvelous things happening incrementally across Norwich, these are truly the days of miracles and wonders, invest in yourself and in one another, and be an exclamation and not an explanation.
-bill kenny 

Lessons from the "Baby, Ride Easy" School of Social Intercourse

Welcome back to the real part of the calendar. Summer's not only done, it's over. If you have children, they're off to school. At work, there's no 'real' holiday until we get to November and Veterans Day-don't hand me Halloween, please. Grown-ups have usurped it as another excuse to get our drunk on, but it was a children's holiday and in my heart, shriveled and cold as it is, so it remains. 

On my walk in honor of Labor Day yesterday, which bore a striking resemblance to all the other walks I take and make throughout the year, I encountered a young person (in my case anyone younger than 50 though in this specific instance more like 16 based on the clothes) who was kind enough to allow me first passage on a wide-enough-for-only-one-person path way. 

I've lost a reasonable amount of weight in recent months as part of my escape plan (yet to come to fruition) and no longer need a flagman with a placard reading 'wide load' to walk ten paces in advance of me, so it wasn't courtesy motivated by size and mass. Rather, the young man, demonstrating (I thought) he wasn't raised in a barn allowed his elder to proceed first. 

I was (and still am) grateful for the kindness and then, within seconds, assured everyone on earth he'll probably never do it again. I had headphones on since I prefer listening to what I perceive as 'my music' over anything happening in the real world. If I could afford prescription mirror shades, I'd wear them as well while walking but I can't so I wear very dark sunglasses so as to better be an island in the stream of humanity.

As I passed the youngster, I said aloud 'thank you' and looked at his face as he mouthed, 'no problem.' I stopped, turned and removed my ear buds and somewhat shrilly asked him 'what did you say?' He repeated 'no problem' and discovered to his dismay and chagrin just how wrong he was about that.

If, like me, you're a codger and a curmudgeon, the good news is, I suppose, that we had a good day yesterday as I schooled a youngun' on the acceptable verbal cues of successful social intercourse. I really hate the use of  'no problem' instead of 'you're welcome.' Truth to tell, I'm not especially fond of the contraction but accept it with a sigh of resignation and a five minute tirade. 

The sigh was the same sound I made when, as I continued on with my walk in sanctimonious smugness (and red New Balance sneakers, to match my eyes (you were thinking of another body part, weren't you?) I realized with a shock, short of calling him a whippersnapper and demanding he stay off my lawn I had become 'that cranky old guy' that every neighborhood has. 

The difference between steadfast and stuck gets more difficult to distinguish, much less explain, as the years go by. And often, it's impossible.
-bill kenny

Selections from the Governor Scott Walker Songbook

There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the Legion boys come 'round
She always stood her ground.

Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.

This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,
She couldn't be fooled by a company stool, she'd always organize the guys.
She always got her way when she struck for better pay.
She'd show her card to the National Guard
And this is what she'd say

You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

Now I'm a union man, amazed at what I am. 
I say what I think, that the company stinks. Yes, I'm a union man

When we meet in the local hall, I'll be voting with them all.
With a hell of a shout, it's "Out brothers, out!" and the rise of the factory's fall.

Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die. Until the day I die.

The union has made me wise to the lies of the company spies
And I don't get fooled by the factory rules 'cause I always read between the lines

And I always get my way if I strike for higher pay
When I show my card to the Scotland Yard and this is what I say:

Oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

Before the union did appear my life was half as clear
Now I've got the power to the working hour and every other day of the year

So though I'm a working man I can ruin the government's plan
And though I'm not hard, the sight of my card makes me some kind of superman

Oh, oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

Labor Day 2013. 
Robber Barons, Mega Banks and Wall Street: too much; 
Working Poor, Middle Class and Main Street: not enough. 
-bill kenny