The Dentists' Favorite Holiday

I offered this on this date last year. Don't think of it as a "repeat," so much as a holiday tradition for a day that's not actually a holiday at all.

It's amazing how a religious devotion, a commemoration, and remembrance really, evolved into an all-the-candy-you-can-eat-without-barfing exercise all the way to an adult party hearty event. Greetings and salutations nevertheless. 

There was an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain that some sociologists theorize 19th-century Irish immigrants brought with them that supposedly helped create our current observance/holiday/day on which to go gluttonous on chocolate. It certainly caught on in the United States, but we are no longer alone. Far from it. 

Halloween is celebrated in about a dozen countries around the world, gladdening the hearts, I'm sure, of candy manufacturers in the days leading up to it as well as the bottom lines of dentists in the days and weeks following it. Alas, poor Linus, I knew him well. We can always content ourselves that Strongbad doesn't do candy, I guess. Did you have Trick or Treat for UNICEF in your neighborhood? Sign of the times now, I fear, I haven't seen or heard about it in years and years.

Remember how our Moms used to go through the goodies making sure that the apples didn't have unpleasant surprises and throwing all the unwrapped candy away 'just to be safe?' Would it have killed them to pretend the Mary Janes were unwrapped (talk about a dentist delight-it could take fillings out)--a candy that I don't think I even see at any other time of the year except now. And what about candy corn (and I love it, btw)? 

If scientists are correct that cockroaches would survive an atomic war, I believe they would do it munching on candy corn, indestructible, indescribable, often imitated but never duplicated. It was one of the many things I was supposed to surrender once my doctors made me understand, as a an adult, I couldn't be a part-time diabetic. 

As a parent I can recall some of the worst weather of the season always seemed to start about two hours before the kids got organized to head out. So I'll keep my fingers crossed for all the goblins tonight. And every child, no matter how young, wanted to trick or treat with her/his friends. Only a baby goes out with a parent. 

So with a heavy heart and a quiet footstep the trick was to figure out how far back to trail them as they went from house to house and no matter how many times a child was told 'no running', what happened? Yep. Why was I always surprised when mine paid as much attention to me as I had to my parents? 

And every neighborhood had a trick or treater without a bag-usually one of the hyper active kids from down the street who ate the candy as quickly as he got it. Can you imagine how much magic it was in that house later that same evening? Me neither.

My own children long ago outgrew the doorbell ringing and candy-collecting aspects of the evening and we don't even play anymore at my house. But the Dream Children and ghosts of ghouls past sometimes encounter one another on my porch when "Open, locks, Whoever knocks!"
-bill kenny

Another Long Walk Home

I started out striving for 10,000 steps a day and slowly upped the ante until now it's often a lot closer to 15K. One of the things I've noticed as I've aged is that my stride has shortened and I'm not nearly as sure of my steps as I was when first started.

One thing that has remained the same is that I tend to walk farther, faster, and stronger when I'm walking towards something or someone rather than just meandering. On Saturday we had weather to make you think the harshness of autumn will never come, but six and half decades around the block have taught me that that is just so much wishful thinking.

So now I enjoy what I have when I have it and try not to look up from my plate to see what you might be having, lest if spoil my appetite and enjoyment of what I already have.
So this was my Saturday afternoon; come walk with me.

I tell myself church spires were intended to help us lift our hearts as well
as our spirits, but I don't always believe me.

The Cathedral of Saint Patrick stands stuck like some soldier undaunted.
I'm not sure there's any benefit standing outside though that's all I do.

Gorgeous skies, gorgeous City Hall.What else can I do but take a picture? 

Norwich Arts Center is in the spirit of the season.

Norwich Rotary Peace Poles at The Harbor.

Channeling my inner Holden Caulfield on the Heritage Walk

Uncas Leap at (lower) Yantic Falls.

Norwich is not where I'm from, but it's where I'm from now. Judging from the distance and the direction I'm heading, it's gonna be a long walk home.

-bill kenny

All My Designs, Simplfied

I've done a reasonable amount of reading about dreams. In a way, that's only fair since I traded so many of my own for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises. When people speak about the return on investment in such transactions I have nothing of any value to offer. Perhaps that's my superpower?

Anyway. I had a dream the other night that was both so vivid it was hard to not believe it was real while also simultaneously being so beyond anything I've ever done, or could ever do, that I knew I had to be dreaming.  

I was snow-skiing with Der Grosse Patrick, DGP, someone I had worked with in Germany another lifetime (for both of us) ago, whom our son, Patrick, named because he was so taken by encountering someone with "his" name. We were also with someone I only know through Facebook though in the dream, DGP, spoke with her as if he, too, knew her. 

I haven't snow skied since I was sixteen. I'm pretty sure DGP still cross-country skies but I have no idea if the FB friend skies or not. I do know because she's mentioned it, that she is tall and in the dream, her height (and my lack of same) had a great deal to do with the success in digging out of an avalanche that we were in though how that happened I have no idea. 

I am, now fully awake, presuming we were in Germany skiing perhaps in the Alps based on nothing I can put my finger on but then I have to also note DGP and I never was involved in any stories happening in the Alps. I do remember trying to read road signs in the dream; and aside from "remembering" they weren't in English, I couldn't tell you what language they were in. 

Dreams, I've read, last for seconds though they often feel longer, much longer, to the dreamer and that was certainly the case in this instance. I spent most of the dream wondering when I would wake up and not understanding how everything that was happening in the dream could be happening at all. 

I'm not very good at remembering my dreams, happy or sad, so I'm also mulling over why it is that I so keenly recall this dream and wondering if my worries about the point of the dream are misplaced and that perhaps I should worry about why I am remembering as much of it as I am, assuming my memories aren't also a part of the dream.
-bill kenny             

Silent or Silly

We are a voluble species, speaking not just for myself (who is a motormouth) but for those of a more taciturn disposition. This past week I ended up in my primary care physician's office for what proved to be a respiratory infection.

Summoned from the waiting room, walking down the hall to the examining room, the assistant asked me how I was. I tried to explain I never know how to answer that. So often, too many of us say 'fine,' but what if that response is held against us later in the examination? 

I have a movie in my head where the doctor explains to me that he examination has determined that I have a broken arm and then goes on to add, "but as you assured the nurse out in the hallway, Mr. Kenny, that you were 'fine,' I'm giving you a big paper bag of air and a warning to think next time before speaking." 

In my case , that would doom me to be forever silent, but you see my point (I'm not wearing a hat so it's easier). 

The same thing happens at the store usually at the checkout, when the cashier prior to ringing out the order, asks 'did you find everything okay?' How literally should I take that? It's been many decades since I found everything to be okay but I suspect that's not what the question was about. 

Having unloaded a cart of groceries and other prospective purchases onto the conveyor belt at the register, I guess, doesn't seem like the answer we were going for. I've now made it a practice to always respond to 'did you find everything okay?' with "yes, you'll have to hide it better next time."

When I've timed the delivery just right, I can usually enjoy another minute of silence before any further and futile attempts to fill it up with empty words. Paper or plastic?
-bill kenny             

Another Page of Memories

When I first wrote what follows eight years ago, I called it Never Trade Luck for Skill. 
Not sure what we did last November or how much longer we're all gonna pay for the decisions that some of us made but here we are and here we'll stay.

I came across that suggestion yesterday and, single-minded cretin that I am often (with reason) accused of being, thought of the ten of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of small and quiet decisions that households across this nation make on a daily and weekly basis as the economic tides continue to threaten to pull so many of us under. 

A non-economist acquaintance once shared with me 'when you're out of a job, it's a recession; when I'm out of a job, it's a depression' and I suspect there's more to that than meets the eye. At the end of last week and intermittently this week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been 'flirting with 10,000 points'. I have absolutely NO idea what any of that preceding sentence means, but I've heard it repeatedly and parrot it like I know what I'm talking about. 

All of us do. We all assume or did until it turned out the whole house of cards decided to reshuffle itself, that someone somewhere knew and understood what it was we were doing for most of the last decade. Like Wimpy, offering to gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today knowing full well we would have no money on Tuesday, we just kept adding days to the calendar and hoped Tuesday wouldn't arrive. 

When the economic ship of state started taking on water, I didn't really understand the big picture and, like so many, haven't been as successful as I'd like in appreciating the larger picture and fuller impact. Conversely, with Bernake in the Seventh House and Geithner aligned with Mars (or something like that) am I alone in detecting a tone of barely-controlled euphoria by broadcast and print news reports on economic growth? Except I'm still not "getting" it.

Why isn't it all this just Accidental Excellence (not this one)? When we got it right, we had no idea what we did to produce those positive results so, not surprisingly we couldn't duplicate them, so when things started to go south, we went with them. It's hard to not be superstitious, wash your face and hands until you get the bill at the end of the month for soap and water. In times of stress we rely more on routines and rituals, they offer us the comfort and appearance of the familiar, the known and the comfortable and serve, in their way, as a mantra against a world we cannot otherwise manage. 

But they, and we, control nothing and soon enough we'll be reminded of all of that again.
-bill kenny

After All, It Was You and Me

I was in the fourth grade in a basement classroom of Saint Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, when the squawk box in the corner of the room crackled and the principal, Sister Immaculata, told us President John Kennedy had been shot and led us in praying the Rosary. 

We were, I guess, not very good at prayer as Kennedy died in the hospital, or he may well have been dead at the moment the bullet smashed into his skull while he rode in that ill-fated motorcade in Dallas, Texas. 

For you all of this is "history," but for me this is all from memory, strangely always in black and white, none of it pleasant and all of it from a past that I had hoped to have passed out of. But here we are. Again.

Later today, because we have this insatiable desire to know the unknowable, or to die trying, an enormous number of previously unreleased documents on the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy will be released and every single conspiracy theorist and whack-job from here to Area 51 and back will hop into their black UN helicopters and leave chemtrails across the sky as they rewarm every old chestnut and probably offer some new ones. 

Today is different. Today is not the same. 
-bill kenny

Victim or Victor

I'm a poster boy for "don't believe everything you think." My bias, filtered by my perspective, will always shape my perception of reality. I never have any illusion that I am, at best, a commentator rather than a reporter on events. If you confuse the former with the latter or think one is the other, we need to be seeing and reading other people starting right now. 

All of that is my disclaimer on what I'm about to offer based as it is on my attendance at two mayoral candidates' forums and one for those seeking places on our City Council all to be chosen in an election two weeks from yesterday. 

If you, too, attended these same events, we may/may not have drawn similar conclusions (see my first two sentences on why). These are mine; your mileage may vary.
  

All those in elected office and all seeking to gain or retain those offices deserve our thanks for their generosity as well as gratitude for their service. Norwich, to hear us talk among ourselves, may lack many things but engagement and enthusiasm aren't among them. 

That said, however, not everyone who wants to help can, or should. 

We are fortunate to have as many talented people as we do seeking to serve in elected office and freedom of choice rather than freedom from choice is important in any, and every, election.

I see more often online than felt in any of the audiences I was part of, a sense of quiet anger at the politics as usual that many believe we are suffering from and a poorly disguised desire to find a single issue as a litmus test to prove to ourselves why my choices for office are thoughtful while yours are stupid. I'm concerned that too many of us are willing to cut off one another's noses to spite a total stranger's face. 

During the forums sometimes those seeking our vote didn't do themselves any favors by being part of the problem rather than offering opportunities and collaboration. I fear we're edging ever closer to 'love me, love my dog' absolutism that leaves no space for dialogue.

Something about the insular (perhaps abstract) nature in reacting online at a newspaper's website or on a Social Media platform frees us to be more bruising and brusque in our comments and reactions towards a candidate and their supporters, inflaming them to respond to us and our choices in a similar manner. We need to get better at reading and listening to understand others’ point of view rather than to dismiss and argue with them.  

Sitting in the audience and listening over the last couple of weeks as candidates offered themselves and their vision of our shared reality to the rest of us I concluded as well-run as the public forums have been, a fact-checker should be added because time-keepers and moderators have their hands full with the events on stage as they unfold in real time. 

Don't misunderstand me: Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts and I saw (too) many instances where opinions somehow became facts because they were offered in a dogmatic tone of voice with no one challenging the accuracy of the assertion. 

Since there’s so much confusion starting at the national level and spilling down to us here in the weeds, let me stipulate for future reference that factual accuracy is not political correctness and ignorant belligerence is not leadership.

What I kept hearing were candidates who were frequently wrong but never in doubt, at least about their own utterances. But it is NOT costing twice the national average for Norwich to educate our children. And developments like the Wauregan Hotel and Ponemah Mills are paying taxes. If you keep claiming otherwise after being corrected (by another candidate), you are dishonest. 

Too often I heard excuses like "I read it in a newspaper," or "I saw online" masquerading as reasons for lies (a lie, for me, is having a misstatement corrected but repeating it at the next forum because it's a new audience).Sorry to upset you, but that's crap on a cracker. And so are you for trying to pull it off.

I'm not sure how a mish-mosh of half-truths, 'everybody says it' statements, factual conflations, and flat-out lies are supposed to help me decide who should be our next leaders. What they really do is help me decide who will never get my support, and that's not how we should be choosing.

I work to avoid being or appearing partisan because I know my truth may not be yours, but we should all agree that honesty with one another is essential to continuing to progress as a city. 

The mindset each of us chooses approaching Election Day, November 7, has everything to do with the outcome of our votes. 

Victim or Victor, We are what we choose.

-bill kenny

More Candles but also More Cake!

The great thing about a large family is there's always a birthday. These are some musings from a few years ago on a sibling's natal anniversary. 

Today is the birthday of the United Nations. The local Hallmark store was fresh out of UN-Birthday cards the last time I checked though they may still have some (or lots of) Keepsake Ornaments. Why anyone thinks Star Trek, Tom and Jerry or Agent P have anything to do with a Christmas tree is totally beyond me but I'm not the one trying to sell stuff at an exorbitant markup for the holidays. Call before midnight tonight and we'll get your money faster!

Actually, if you want to drive into lower Manhattan today and double park in a fire lane, in honor of the UN's birthday I'm sure the NYPD is very understanding. Or not, especially not.

More importantly, though the Secretary-General may disagree, at least for me, is that today is my brother Kelly's birthday. Kelly, as you may recall my mentioning a few years ago was, briefly, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Okay, technically he was only almost the Pope but only because, as it turned out, not all bears do $hit in the woods all the time and on that technicality, the Curia decided otherwise.

And, it turns out, two of the electors may have been monkeys and their antipathy towards my brother knows no bounds. Or is it the other way? I get confused sometimes probably because I've only seen Kelly twice since the fall of 1981 when he was sitting on the floor in my sister's kitchen in Jersey City.

But despite the time and distance, we are still very close (I tell myself). We have the same slightly jaundiced view of the world; he is a Rangers devotee and I like Chuck Norris. We think so much alike we complete one another's sentences, for instance when he says 'go fuc*' I say "yourself." Incredible, right? Do not try this at home, ladies and gentlemen, we are professional siblings.

So, later today, when you finally ransom your car back from the clutches of the NYPD impound  lot (And people say the Internet isn't educational!) find a place to watch cartoons and brace yourself for Bugs Bunny who, if he did not already exist when Kelly started to watch TV, he would've had to have invented. 
Happy Birthday!
-bill kenny

Why There's a Next Year

Like many life-long Yankees fans, I was hoping for a different outcome from the weekend in Houston, Texas but as someone from Great Britain once opined you can't always get what you want. 

Considering the team wasn't picked to even make it to the playoffs, losing in seven games to the Astros in the American League Championship Series is not the worst that could happen. 

The worst that could happen is that February 22, 2018, never gets here, not only because we could not celebrate the birthday of the Father of Our Country but because there would be no chance for the great wheel to turn once again as we welcome Spring Training.

It's one hundred and twenty-two days until the dawn's early light of Thursday, 22 February. We can wait together.
-bill kenny  

Giving the Words a Rest

We had lovely weather here on Saturday, just wonderful. I hope yours was as lovely.

At Yantic Cemetary, Norwich (Connecticut)

My brother, Adam, runs the Marine Corps Marathon today. I thought of him when I took this.

-bill kenny

Forty Years Is the Blink of Eye

Twenty-six minutes after ten in the morning on Friday, October 21, 1977, at the Offenbacher Rathaus in West Germany. Chris and Evelyn were the witnesses and you and I were the main event. I'm pretty sure it's too late to rethink it now.

I'm a Jersey Guy, wherever I roam so of course, I defer to The Jersey Guy for the words required when suffering from inarticulate speech of the heart. I love you, and always will.  

-williabaldo 

Is This What Ian Meant?

This photo has NOTHING to do with the words below. I just like it.

Somedays, this stuff writes itself (I know you’re hoping this is one of them). You’re in luck!  

It is.

-bill kenny 

Can't Hardly Wait

My wife, Sigrid, has her wedding anniversary this Saturday. Technically, it's mine as well though I usually defer for a couple of days to allow the marching bands, the balloons, and the floats to clear out from in front of the house (so the prize patrol van has enough room to park because this is my year to win).  

I'm kidding, of course. I celebrate our wedding anniversary whenever she tells me I can. You're not married as long as she and I are and not have a few rules to live by. In our next lives, I'm hoping it's my turn to have a few as well.  

It's our fortieth anniversary which makes me smile even as I type that because I find the length and strength of our relationship, when I look at those I've known and at those around me, be it at work or home, to be pretty amazing. 

Sigrid is admittedly a bit more tempered in her enthusiasm, observing that it feels like a lot longer than forty years. I'm pretty sure she says that because the Germans use the metric system though I'm not sure just how many hectares are in a German year. I was just told it's square hectares. Okay.

Of course, I want to do something special. I am, after all, the eldest son of a man who once bought his wife (my mother) a vacuum cleaner for her birthday, and not just any plain old vacuum cleaner but the roll-around pull-it-behind-you with the hose type. Yep. The apple certainly doesn't fall far from the tree. 

I've been racking my brain to find the perfect present that says, of-all-the-people-in-the-world-you-love-me-and-if-could-choose-anyone-to-marry-I'd-choose-you-all-over-again. When I opened our local paper Wednesday morning, it jumped right out at me. 

Stunning, innit? Just sort of screams "I LOVE YOU!"  What? Oh, it's a butter cutter. I know, now you wish you'd thought of it, right? And since we're on the East Coast I can skip that whole ordering the multi-size butter cutter stuff, as we don't have the dairy diversity that I guess the folks on The Other Coast have.

Second time in my life I've known the meaning of love at first sight (don't tell Sigrid, okay?). And what clinched it for me was this dynamic short video, very nearly professionally produced. When Mr. Announcing Guy shared "It can be used with one hand or two, depending on your strength and the hardness of the butter," my heart was like a brick of Kerrygold and melted into a little puddle just above my belt. (Did you notice the variety of colors? So many choices!)

I can't wait to see Sigrid's reaction. I've already made up the pull-out sofa we keep in the garage for managing marital misunderstandings but I think I may still need to fill out a change of address form. Certainly hope it's a bright, sunny day; it'll help me explain the dark glasses. 
-bill kenny

If You Have Abibliophobia

I love events that become traditions even if they didn't start out that way. And this Friday marks the kick-off of the fall edition of one of my favorites, the biannual Friends of Otis Library book sale. 

Our daughter and I go every fall and spring and I've been preparing for this by eating double portions of carrots at every meal and hitting the mirror at the gym to practice my eye rolls because I want to be ready to read when it's time to crack open a few books. 

I've offered the words which follow previously and don't mind repeating them because this event is important to the library and it should be to each of us. 

The book sale begins this Friday morning with a sneak preview from nine to ten which  attracts collectors from across the Northeast (check out the license plates on the cars parked in a two-block area around the library) who gladly pay $10 for the head start it allows them on all manner of goodies and great deals. 

There's no reason to fear that all the good stuff will be gone by the time we get there because the basement is always filled with treasures waiting to be discovered, purchased for pennies on the dollar and taken to a new home.

I have tsundoku and my doctors say there's really no cure. I don't  suffer from it so much as enjoy it and the Otis Book Sale is an opportunity to hang out with other bibliotaphs shuffling between the shelves, not sure exactly what we're looking for until we find it. And judging by the increases in attendance for every sale, I'd say more and more of us are finding what we're seeking. 

The book sale is open to everyone from ten until three on both Friday and Saturday and from noon until three on Sunday. It's a great way to refresh your home shelves (I probably need to buy some more) which is already a terrific reason but, in light of the current fiscal challenges libraries across the state are facing as a result of the Governor's Executive Order (because of the lack of a state budget), the money raised from the three-day sale helps keep the lights on the doors open at  Otis. 

Libraries, and I'm thinking the Otis in particular, are far so much more than the sum of the goods and services they offer to their communities which can make it difficult to put an accurate price tag on their value for all of us throughout the community who use them.

What is Otis worth to you or your family aside from a trip downtown to rummage through the shelves and bag yourself some bargains? Check out this item on I found on the American Library Association's website, the "Library Value Calculator," and be prepared for a surprise.

I've spoken before about the oft-mentioned 'problems with downtown parking' myth, and that's the word I use because it is a myth. I think what many people mean is they cannot take their car with them into the library. But cheer up, there's plenty of free municipal parking with hundreds of spaces no more than a four-minute walk. And we are wearing shoes....

Browsing for book bargains can cause you to get awfully hungry so I'd make the time before or after hitting the library to grab a bite at one of the restaurants along whatever path you choose to use to get to the library. There are tables for every taste and plates for every palette, all steps away from the library and one another at Franklin Square. And you'll have a chance to check out first-hand how much more alive downtown is since the last time you looked.

A cynic, I'm told knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. At the Friends of Otis Library Book Sale, show you know how valuable this regional resource is to you, and buy a bag of books. Borrow my glasses and buy two bags.
-bill kenny

Sometimes Silence Is Superior to Saying Sorry

I’m not sure I knew (or cared) who Harvey Weinstein is/was until late last week but I’m willing to concede I probably won’t forget if I live to be one hundred and five. 

As a son of a woman, a brother of women, a husband, and father of a daughter, the behavior outlined by people like Rose McGowan defies description in terms of my reaction and revulsion. That Weinstein is not alone isn't an earth-shaking realization. I am not the first person to be aware of this kind of behavior but I am still shamed by yet another reminder of how the world works for people other than myself. 

I read postings in my newsfeed from women who are Facebook friends over the weekend into the early morning hours of Monday about their own experiences as the objects of sexual harassment and sexual assault they had endured (neither of which are ever acceptable) and from others who offered a simple and simply eloquent "Me, too" on postings about the same subjects. 

For reasons that have to do, I hope, with how I was raised, I offered this with good intentions: 

That adage about better to say nothing and be thought a fool (or a patronizing or even worse clueless cad), rather than open your mouth and prove it. As a twitter poster reminded me, and countless other men, albeit too late at least in my circumstance:

As a well-meaning buckaroo, I was at a loss as to what I could say when silence in this matter and at this moment was the right response. This I knew before and have NO trouble saying: Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or to whom. 

You don’t ever have to say anything to anyone ever but I want you to know if you choose to, I will always listen and will always try to help. Hopefully better than I did this time around.

-bill kenny

I Was Born in an Abundance of Inherited Sadness

I was getting in a weekend walk yesterday afternoon while the weather allows it as, judging from the large number of motorcyclists I saw out doing, in their way, what I was doing in mine (gathering rosebuds without risk of thorns), we probably are running out of daylight and nice days to do that.

I hiked down McKinley Street until it became Franklin and then walked that all the way to Main Street, past the Wauregan and then a slight left beyond the courthouse until I was at the Norwich Harbor. 

I doubled back so I could walk past the Mercantile Exchange and curse the (absence of a) view of the Harbor they have from their back plaza (too much and too many ugly parking structures that someone before the Nineties began thought was a great idea; it wasn't then and it isn't now) back down Main Street and renovations that will create a new business, just past the Main Street Garage as you make your way back towards the intersection with the Shannon  Building and the Wauregan Hotel on opposite sides.

I noticed the sign hanging from the building a little farther down Main Street for Encore Justified was missing and started to fret until I remembered, 'when you hear hooves, think horse not zebras.' And speaking of zebras since the crosswalk was right there, I used it and continued up Broadway past the not-quite-ready-to-open Craftsman Cliff Roasters coffee shop next door to the under-construction  Fairhaven Hotel that's one of the Broadway properties the Stackstone Group is transforming. 

Proving I'm not as predictable as I'm often accused of being I chose to NOT take a photo of City Hall and continued up the hill, on Broadway rather than Union Street, towards Little Plains Park and past the Cathedral of Saint Patrick. I admired the foliage on a tree in front of a yellow house facing the park that's in desperate need of TLC and dollars to fund a renovation and restoration. 

I came upon a bumper crop of lawn signs on a corner house near Broad Street supporting a multitude of folks, incumbents and newcomers alike, seeking seats on the City Council though the one that caught my eye because it towered over all of the others was a For Sale sign causing me to wonder about the  support from someone who is probably engaged in packing and leaving.

As I neared Chelsea Parade and home I paused as I often do, to admire the exterior of the Mount Crescent House Bed & Breakfast (and smiling at the memory of the afternoon I had the opportunity to enjoy the view of the outside from the inside (and it is gorgeous)), and then hurried past the Teel House and a moment later, was home again, home again, jiggity jig.
-bill kenny

Clear Your Calendar

If you decided to sleep in this morning you may not ever get the chance to read these words. Or pay off that credit card bill or return that book to the library. 

When they say "you snooze, you lose" this is what they were talking about. 

Don't know about you but I feel fine.
-bill kenny

Of the Rosary Might Be More Appropriate

I started sitting and typing what passes for thoughts, hopes, and dreams (interspersed with the occasional invective, veiled threat, and innuendo) exactly ten years ago. Wow. I'm rarely at a loss for words, as you would well know if you've been reading this at any time during the last decade, but that's really all I have today, wow. 

These are the ones that got it all started (plus some Grateful Dead just because). 

Driving past Washington Street this morning, it looks like a growth industry is the hardware business-selling neighbors large plywood sheets and paint so they can erect signs to yell at one another on the issue of spot zoning.

New signs insisting on the right to do with their property what they wish, possibly from those who've sold options to developers, angry at 'the select few' (as their sign says) who insist this commercial endeavor be turned away.

Another sign boasts about the increase in tax revenues and the additional (service) jobs a new mini-sprawl, I meant mini-mall, will bring to Norwich (even though the pharmacy hailed as 'new' will be the existing one from across town.)

Jobs, much like Einstein's matter, can neither be created nor destroyed, at least in development models. If we take six inches from the front of the blanket and put it on the back, the blanket is NOT a foot longer. Let's hope we do NOT need a thirty-seven-minute PowerPoint slide show Monday night at Norwich City Hall for that to be understood.

Everyone's signs ignore, or seem to, our inability to look ahead and plan accordingly.

When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. Right now, most of us think any movement, even the circles in which we are turning, is the same thing as direction. Most don't know the difference between smart growth and economic development (all ducks ARE birds but not all birds are ducks) and until we learn that, we're fated to waste a lot of time thinking we're having a contest between 'property rights' and 'NIMBY'. It's not really what it's about.

Meanwhile, those whose agenda is not and will NEVER be that of advancement and enhancement of Norwich's economic basis will prosper while residents remain reactive instead of proactive.
-bill kenny

Can’t Tell the Phobias without a Scorecard

No one, to my knowledge, is afraid of Thursday the 13^th or Sunday the 13^th. But when we start contemplating the calendar and fall across today, some folks get way beyond afraid and transcend 'skeered.'

Their terror is so real and so large that having just one poly-syllabic word to describe that fear of Friday the Thirteenth, friggatriskaidekaphobia, isn’t quite enough so we have to have a second word as well, paraskevidekatriaphobia.

I wonder how often either comes up as a word during the National Spelling Bee. I’d ask ESPN since they air it live (because we can stretch the meaning of sport beyond all belief) but they’re working on their own fear, JamelleHillMayTweetAboutTrumpAgainphobia.

Friggatriskaidekaphobia seems to have its root in Frigg, who is/was the Norse goddess of wisdom (and for whom Friday is named) as well as two Greek words, triskaideka, meaning 13, and phobia, meaning fear. 

Paraskevidekatriaphobia is derived from Greek: paraskeví means Friday, and dekatria is another way of saying the number thirteen.

Girl Scouts would have been smart enough to ask for directions.

What other blog gives so much value on the flimsiest of pretenses? And how do we do it at such an everyday low price?  Volume!  We buy directly from the dictionary factory and pass the savings, as well as diphthongs and diacritical marks, still farm-fresh right to you. Helps me avoid Athazagoraphobia.

-bill kenny

As Mathy as I'm Likely to Ever Get

A blast from my past. For comity's sake, I'll offer that I hope you enjoy.

Driving home yesterday afternoon on Washington Street I saw a lady walking with two dogs-one barely a dog at all, in terms of carbon footprint while the other looked like a Great Dane crossed with a Brick House. I flashed on that expression always attributed to people from the South (I wonder if Bridgeport counts, if I'm in Norwich) about 'it's not the size of the dog in a fight but the size of the fight in the dog.' while looking at the pair take their mistress for a pull. 

She had her hands full. The big one, whom I named Lenny, was slow and plodding just taking it all in. The tiny one, George, was pushing to get ahead and move on--possibly not even sure where he was heading, but making great time while doing it. He barked at every falling leaf while Lenny moved as if in slow-motion while we were back up in the booth reviewing the replay. 

It was entirely possible that one of Lenny's umm, movements (quick save on my part) would probably weigh more than George with his leash and collar on and from the distance that George kept from Lenny it seemed, perhaps, he had come to the same realization. A chopped Honda with a rear spoiler, because that's what keeps the rear wheels on the ground when the nitro kicks in on the 1.8-liter engine, went Humpty-bumpy down Washington, windows wide open, the driver sharing his music with the world. 

The microscopic rep from the Animal Kingdom was the first to voice his displeasure, I suspect because the bass was so overdriven (cracks seemed to appear in the sidewalk and birds and bugs were plummeting stone deaf and dead to earth) it was probably painful for such sensitive ears. George, as befit his size, actually sounded like a squeak toy as he registered his protest. 

Lenny, on the other paw, seemed at first to not notice or mind, as he plodded on oblivious to the SOHC of the Apocalypse heading in his direction, boom chakalaka boom. When the Honda could have been no more than ten feet from him, Lenny let out a HUGE bellow, the force of which may have actually slowed the Honda down and stepped into the street, dragging his dog-walking companion with him. 

The Honda hot rod stood on the brakes, at least as good as his subwoofers, and Lenny stood on his back legs with his front paws on the car's hood and howled in a piteously pathetic tone that simultaneously told you he was hurting and promised he wouldn't be in pain alone for much longer. Even I, who have difficulty telling which end of the dog to pet and which not to, knew there was no translation needed from the Dog Whisperer. 

The driver fell out, more than exited from, the car, frantic that he'd hit the dog. He should have had such luck, instead, he had the animal's fullest attention. The woman was struggling to control George who was doing that small dog classic barking while straining on the leash routine that translates as 'let me at him and I'll murder the bum!' 

Meanwhile, woebegone Lenny yelped for relief from forces he could not perceive. Eventually, the driver realized the sound system was the culprit and turned it all a tick to the left of eleven, the dogs quieted down and he got back into his ride. I was just driving past as I watched George, always quick to hold a grudge I suspect, christen the guy's front tire. I figured as angry as he'll be about that later, he should be grateful Lenny hadn't followed George's lead.
-bill kenny

All These Letters but None of them Are Varsity

This time a month from now will be the day after we've elected a Mayor, a City Council, a Board of Education and a City Treasurer (I almost always forget that last one). You're better at math than I am so I'll let you do the countdown as long as we agree to not lose sight of the importance of an informed vote. If you just speed-read through that last sentence, please go back and read it again and tell me which word is the most important. Yeah, you know me too well: informed. 

Every election, be it for the Presidency of the United States or the fourth-grade, I spend a lot of time reading as much as I can about those running for office. The higher the elected office the easier it seems to gather insights and information on the persons and programs asking for our vote.

In theory, for local elections, we should have easy access to the beliefs, accomplishments, and plans of those who are, literally, our neighbors, and yet politics can sometimes be a strange intoxicant causing some to become a person they themselves don't recognize in order to capture an office. 

I listen to my neighbors, attend debates and candidate forums, take copious notes, read all the news articles I can find, and yet I always seem to get lost wading through letters to the editor of the local newspapers. 

Don't get me wrong. I think those letters of support to the editor are a marvelous idea and an integral part of our tradition and institution of local governance, but as the years have gone on, they're less about learning something informative about those seeking to be a member of the City Council or the Board of Education and more about what the other gal/guy/party will/didn't do. Instead of enticing/exhorting me to run towards a person or a party, they too often encourage me to run away.

Letters assuring us the people seeking office are good to their Mommas, crazy 'bout Elvis, rescue stranded kittens from trees, and, generally, are kind and generous people. But, we already know that. We are extremely fortunate to live in cities and towns with carloads of people who want to help and who will work hard to make things better. The road to a proverbial warm place (no, not Miami) is paved with good intentions so mind the potholes.   

Except not all of us who want to help can actually do so. All things being equal, how do you pick the best of the well-intentioned? I suggested it earlier, do your research. Talk to your neighbors but don't let them make up your mind for you. Decide what issues matter to you and seek out those who share your beliefs. 

And please, find the time to attend a candidates forum even for people you don't think you'll vote for (maybe especially those people). As a matter of fact, you can get a start on that tonight at seven in the NFA Slater Museum auditorium for a debate among all five mayoral candidates. Many of us spend more time picking out the clothes to wear to work than considering who should be on our Board of Ed or City Council. And if that doesn't bother you, it should., 

Since I was speaking about letters how about some from you, the candidates? Tell me your goal, your plan for achieving it and how you'll measure our progress on the way to the Emerald City so we don't get lost or stalled. You've got one opportunity to tell me. Do NOT mention puppies. Go. Gimme the Truth.

-bill kenny