Waiting for Godot or Someone Like Him

There was almost a blank hole here today. I was so wrapped up in other projects that the deadline for writing and submitting the newspaper version of this screed was upon me before I was fully aware. I know, you almost can't believe your good fortune. Sorry to disappoint you and better luck next time

However, if I were to be honest with you and it costs me nothing to so do, it's not that I'm likely to run out of things to write about even if sometimes I sound more like I'm scolding than exhorting. Admittedly, from a distance it can be hard to tell them apart. Quite frankly, in terms of scolding and finger-wagging, Norwich is a target-rich environment.

There's never a shortage of folks, be it on a street corner, or in this section of the Wednesday newspaper, who not only know everything but who know everything better. I'm here almost twenty-three years and am amazed at the hundreds of us who can do a better job than any individual city leader, appointed or elected, you'd care to name.

Of course, unlike those hapless, helpless victims of higher criticism who just don't listen to our sage advice (which we provide so freely and frequently), few of us offer ourselves as candidates for office or (more's the shame) lend a hand as a volunteer on the dozens of volunteer panels ranging from advisories through boards to commissions and committees.

Instead we wait around for someone else to take the lead without ever fully realizing we are someone else's someone else. Sometimes all the help you can ever count on is at the end of each arm-and, to be fair, more often than not, that's all you need.

Of course, if you never risk anything, you never lose anything, but you also never experience the delight of winning either. You can spend an entire life waiting for the storm and you'll never experience the sunshine and who among us would want that?

I would imagine, based on my own observations of the crowds who've turned out that we've had close to 5,000 people each of the last two summers for those Wednesday evening Rock the Docks concerts at Howard T. Brown Park.

Not sure how many of us thought much less believed those shows would be as successful as they are, but somebody else did, and worked to make it happen instead of standing on the sidelines.

The 2014 Rock the Docks season was supposed to end tonight but the bad weather has slid the grand finale to next Wednesday, the 20th, with Malaena, whose slogan is "is music that makes you want to dance." And even if you dance the way I do, which is not to, you should still applaud the civic mindedness and hard work that made these concerts a destination in the middle of a city where we all seem to wait for something to happen.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for the fall and to see what happens next and who makes it happen.
-bill kenny