End of Days

I have never been to the Vatican, nor have I stayed at a well-known motel chain, but I know my way around the Stations of the Cross and the Lives of the Saints. I'm always amazed at the number of people who think Christmas is the origin of Christianity-others consider the beginnings to be Easter Sunday.

If the former is The Promise and the latter The Promise Fulfilled-today, Holy Saturday, is the act of faith and hope that defines you as a Christian. The belief in the Resurrection which the New Testament portrays as  the reward for the faithful is never so near and yet so far as it is today.

The earliest disciples had nothing to go on, unlike we of the Brave New World Order. They had witnessed a crucifixion-one of the most egregiously horrific forms of death sentence at its time. Cowering in an upstairs room, huddled together fearing any sound and every footfall was possibly a signal someone was coming for them, they had no way to see the glory of Easter Sunday. All they could do was believe.

For them to believe as devoutly as they did between the worst day in the history of the world and its greatest day, remains, for me-loyal son of Holy Mother Church, but a FARC for more years than I care to recall-the day which created the Christian religion, today.

From childhood on, I struggled against the suffocation that surrender to the traditions and rites seemed to signify. I took no solace in unquestioning and unswerving belief-preferring what I understood the path of Thomas to be and, finding no one who could answer my questions, absenting myself from the body of believers. How odd that this declaration of freedom has never created a sense of being free.

Not that I don't envy those of faith and think about the comfort that comes from that, especially anytime I read another account of another servicemember lost in the flood that has been our facsimile of a Middle Eastern foreign policy for almsot two decades. 

We've lost two sons of Norwich in those years, but at the risk of being thought cynical, it's always the same movie, with a different cast. And if the cost of what we are doing, or failing to do, hasn't come to your corner and village or city yet, give it time as we war over horribly unremarkable places of a nation we have carried with us as a coward does an abscess for all these years, unable or unwilling (I can never tell which) to do that which we know we must to conclude that which we can no longer control. 

Faith is a wonderful thing, this from a man with very little; blind faith, however, is not.
-bill kenny 

The Solemnity and Sadness

As a child at Saint Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, it was forcibly impressed upon us by the Sisters of Charity whose charges we were (and for whom many of us became crosses, and yeah, Kelly, I'm talking about you) that there was nothing good about Good Friday. 

When we were old enough to mentally and emotionally comprehend the New Testament accounts of the Passion of Christ I couldn't imagine a more horrible way to die. As I grew older if not up and learned more of our species' history and track record in dealing with one another, I realized we could, and often did, behave like a life form beyond any Redemption.

Christmas gets all the ink and Easter all the lilies and chocolate, but Holy Thursday through the sunrise services of Easter Sunday morning are 'go' time for Christian believers. The events and circumstances of Good Friday, the sundering of the curtain in the Temple in Jerusalem (what a great word 'sundering ' is when you're in fourth grade; actually, it's still pretty cool), the forgiveness of The Good Thief, the testimony of the Centurion Longinus at the foot of the cross and a hundred and more sidebars, nuances, and obscured by time and telling points on the biblical accounts always seemed to make Good Friday the most important of the days leading to Easter. 

Around the world today, processions and reenactments of the Stations of the Cross at or near three o'clock in the afternoon will cap observances for the faithful and faithless alike leaving them Saturday to recoup and regroup before the Promise is redeemed for saints and sinners all with the light of Sunday morning.
-bill kenny

Same as It Ever Was

-bill kenny

How I Really Know Spring Has Arrived

My enjoyment of our first nice weekend day of spring, Saturday, came to an abrupt halt Sunday morning with the very less than spring-like weather we had as well as a headline in the newspaper on the doorstep, "Battle Brewing Over Norwich Schools Budget." 

I would hope you are as weary of my writing about our annual budget exercise as I am and yet, the more things change, the more we remain Norwich. I offered most of what follows quite a number of years back and then again, not too many years ago, and remain less than amazed at how little we've progressed despite past and present protestations and promises to the contrary. 

It was Einstein who said, "(w)e cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." However, the last time I checked, he never sought a seat on the City Council or Board of Education so I guess we could just ignore his advice.

Meanwhile, we’re searching for who’s to blame for the municipal budget that’s taking shape but the culprit can be found in the nearest mirror. We should know better, we go through this every year and yet because we don’t do things differently in the preceding eleven and half months we get to this point in the fiscal calendar every year and are amazed. Actually, and ignore my cynicism, we’re always disappointed about the results we didn’t get from the work we didn’t do. 

Every year we all get a case of the heebie-jeebies and vow to 'fix' this 'broken system' and then suffer amnesia when the crisis passes. As a matter of fact, since it's so familiar and recurs so often, I'm not sure if 'crisis' is even an appropriate word to describe it. Semantics aside, what next?

For right now we’ll scan the headlines perhaps more closely for local news than maybe we usually do and we'll talk about how we really should find the time this year to attend the public hearings the City Council and City Manager schedule for every municipal department as part of the budget preparation (the schedule is online on the city's website) but most of us won't. 

I meant to go to the Board of Education meeting for their proposed budget, but didn't, so I can't really talk can I? When all the shouting is over, and the muttering begins, we'll go back to muddling through with that same strained, stoic smile we always have because we've decided that doing nothing is somehow less painful than doing somehow to relieve the pain. Looks stupid when you read it, right? I felt pretty dumb typing it too, but here we are.

Better a horrible end, than horrors without end, I suppose, but this annual dance could end with very little effort if we could all sit and work together to solve our annual situation and then actually do it. It seems money talks. And some days you can't get a word in edgewise.

-bill kenny

Gratitude Is the Attitude

I stumbled across this entry the other day looking for something else and realized that without knowing it, it was this which I sought.  

We each have peaks and valleys, good days and dark days, moments of pleasure and of pain. We've all had opportunities to regret choices and decisions that have taken us farther away rather than closer to that which we desired. Sometimes there are ways to get back and other times we must live with the price we pay.

We each have been a prisoner of circumstance, heredity, genetics or serendipity and we all have been victims of what we see as an uncaring and unfeeling universe. Meet Nick Vujicic and realize, again (or for the first time) that the effective range of any excuse is far less than a meter. 
-bill kenny

Lace 'em if You Got 'em

On Saturday Sigrid and I went to the Westbrook Outlets to get me some new sneakers. Yeah, I know, that's an old term. I'm an old guy. I grew up with PF Flyers and Keds. Teenage boys back then wore Chuck Taylors, but us kids didn't. 

Later, there were Addidas, Nike, Reebok, Sketchers, British Knights (I think) and probably another hundred or so brands. All or almost all of them had endorsement deals with sports stars which is how we all knew about them (and why they were all so expensive or seemed that way to me anyway). 

Sneakers used to be made in the United States back before you were born but not before I was born. By the time the endorsement deals added to the price, all were made overseas by folks making in a day as a salary what the shoelaces on those "athletic shoes" now cost. 

Of course, we had to have a new term for sneakers. For what we were paying for them, we certainly needed one. It was at some point in the nineties that I discovered New Balance. They were made in the USA and they cost more but they felt good on my feet and they made me feel better about myself. 

In more recent years, they lobbied heavily for 'Buy America' legislation in the US Congress for military acquisition and you see a lot more of their footwear on our armed forces recruits than you did a decade or a generation ago. And they gave a lot of money to the Trump campaign who pushed  "Buy America" during the election even though its MAGA hats are made in China (and with his imposition of tariffs could, as a result, now cost about eight grand a pop, I suppose). 

That support of Cadet Bone Spurs pissed a lot of people off, myself included, but I still buy them and wear them even though more and more of the "components" are made overseas and only "assembled" in the United States. White People Problems and Ethics in my case.

A number of years ago I bought NB 993 (no idea to this day what the numbers mean) and walked out of the store a bit flummoxed that I'd allowed myself to pay $109 for a pair of sneakers even if they are "athletic shoes." Mine certainly are not. They just sit in the closet and don't do shit until I put them on and then I have to do everything, athletic and/or otherwise.

I saw the 993's on Saturday in the shop and now they're $139; yeah, thanks, but no thanks. Did you know that sneakers wear out? Seriously. Ideally, you should get new ones every five hundred miles or three to six months. (Wouldn't be surprised to find out the study was paid for by the Athletic Shoe Foundation) I got two pairs of walking shoes (a sub-genus, marketing wise I suspect, of athletic shoes) for a little less than ninety dollars and felt very good about myself, my feet, and my wallet (both pairs were made in Vietnam though maybe the boxes they came in were made in the USA. Maybe.). 

On the way home, we stopped at Denny's for breakfast even though it was the middle of the afternoon. The guy in the next booth had the zesty nacho platter which makes sense at Denny's I guess if whenever you go to Taco Bell you have eggs over easy. 

As Sigrid pointed out breakfast always tastes better when someone else makes it. She had some sort of a Grand Slam while I had the cranberry orange pancakes platter and she was absolutely right. It was delicious and took me hours to walk off, but man, did I look great in my new sneakers. 
-bill kenny               

Fine Line Between Sunday and Beach

This is from a long, long time ago. 
Sadly, what I believed then I still do, so I suppose being a constant is something.  

As a child, this was a big deal Sunday in my house. And I have to be honest, I was almost a teen before I even fully grasped why--Palm Sunday was up there near, though not quite at, Christmas Mass and Easter, and when my first name still had a 'y' on the end of it, I never really followed the reasoning as to why. Behold the Man, indeed.

Palm Sunday always seemed to be the deceptive handshake. The New Testament has accounts of the triumphal entry of the Son of God into Jerusalem, being welcomed by those who (as John Lennon would offer later), were 'lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime' as part of the inevitability of a week that had Him crucified on Friday (a more excruciating way to die at the time was unknown) and resurrected on Sunday.

I never impressed any of the nuns at St. Peter's School in New Brunswick with my scholastic aptitude or ability to interpret scriptures (I was almost married myself before I caught on to the importance of 'for I know not any man' and Joseph not having Mary stoned and why) and yet I still experience a dryness in my mouth dreadful foreboding as the events of the Passion Week unfold.

I couldn't stop reading about it as a child and I couldn't look away. When Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber cashed in with Jesus Christ Superstar, if nothing else, they linked the inquisition of Christ forever in my mind with a jaunty little music hall number that I can hear even as I type this. Another reason I'm confident of my destination in the next life.

Today is a day for many to visit the church of their choice. Sidewalks are crowded as families make their way to retrieve fronds of blessed palm (my mom's mother had a piece that never left its location, behind a framed black and white photo on the wall. Only now do I realize I have no idea of whom the picture was, nor any idea who I might ask). 

The blessed palm that doesn't end up scotch-taped to auto rear-view mirrors or suspended by a thumbtack alongside the front door will be collected after all the Masses today, at least in the Catholic Church of my youth, and then burned to become the ashes used on our foreheads for Ash Wednesday.

Intro ibo ad alteri Dei. I think I still know the words and know that I always will. I once had the faith to believe in their meaning but I lost that, or perhaps threw it over the side to help speed me on my way, and then I lost my way. I have the charts and maps spread out on the floor, but it's starless and bible black and I can't find my way home.

-bill kenny 

I Yield Back the Remainder of My Time

Today's words are courtesy of Emma González.

We survived the shooting at our school, but too many of our classmates did not. And since then, Members of Congress have done NOTHING to ensure that gun violence like this never happens again. That's why we're marching to demand that the lives of every student and every American become a priority, and we want you there by our side. 

17 of our classmates, friends, and educators were shot and killed, and dozens more injured during a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — our school. Devastated, our country is grieving and demanding that our elected officials offer more than just their thoughts and prayers — we need action.

Politicians have shown yet again that they are incapable of enacting common sense gun measures. So now, thousands of people will be marching to demand that they do what's right to ensure our lives are a priority over the gun lobby.

When our country experiences a mass shooting, the NRA and their supporters in Congress always wait for our voices to quiet down. But we're not going to quiet down. School is a place where we should feel safe, and if the politicans won't do what's right to keep us safe, then we're going to be too loud for them to ignore.

We're marching in Washington, D.C. today for ALL of our fellow students and for the victims and survivors of gun violence in every community.

Americans across the country will be marching in Washington, D.C. and at local events in every state. This will be a march for all of our voices to be heard. This will be a march for our lives.

Thank you for marching alongside us.

Emma González 
March for Our Lives 

My Breakfast of Champions

I am not a big fan of experimentation (I used to be a huge fan of things created through fermentation but that was another lifetime, one of toil and blood) and plod along for the most part with one foot in front of the other in travel and travail from Point A to something like Point B. It fills up the day and makes the time go fast.

On weekday mornings I have a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast after I've gotten to work. I still spend more time there than I do at home even as the days wind down because I live for the approval in strangers' eyes, I guess.. 

Perhaps true for you as well, I have a routine from the time I open my eyes to about a half hour after I'm actually at work. All the stuff in between happens, of course, because I'm the one making it happen, but it's an auto-pilot operation. I'm such a slave to how things flow that if anything changes or shifts like one of those wind-up toys which walks itself into a corner, I just keep bumping into whatever the roadblock has become, unable to clear it or go around it. 

Cheerios at work is my decompression food. When I sleep, I cannot recall if I dream though my wife has told me there are nights (and early mornings) where I shout out and/or talk or get up, and for which I have no explanation because I have no recollection. My dream world is just black. I use the whole going to work and getting used to being there for the next twelve hours part of the day as the Re-entry to Earth part of the program. And the fuel for this is Cheerios.

I knew someone who called them bagel seeds-suspect the Big G folks wouldn't have been too happy about that but it makes me smile and I repeat it to myself every morning and crack myself up. I never tire of saying it or laughing at it. If I had but a million or so folks with my delightful sense of humor (someone had to say it, and it didn't look like you were about to) I could have my own cable news show-and oh, how we'd all laugh then. Of course, if I had sixty or so million like that and Cambridge Analytica I could be President.

 I have Cheerios in the next to last of the red plastic bowls we had when we lived in Germany and used for cereal there. Some time ago, Sigrid finally (endlich!) found very nice and (actually) quite pretty replacement bowls and the red plastic ones went to the land of their ancestors on trash day. As the oldest thing that's still in our house, I get VERY nervous when anything is pitched out 'because it's really old.' You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows on that equation. 

I eat Cheerios without sugar or milk. Actually, and I don't eat a lot of cereals, I NEVER eat dry cereal with anything other than a spoon and my mouth. Why do you think they call it DRY cereal? 

What am I supposed to do with the milk? Drop little tiny people in the bowl so they can be rescued? Perhaps I should get a recording of Nearer My God to Thee, and, using sugar cubes to construct a fake iceberg, reenact the sinking of the Titanic. Of course, with that much sugar in my system, I'd be crayoning all the walls in the five-story building I work in for three days, from the outside in, until sedated with a croquet mallet. 

I used to eat Wheaties, back when Bob Richards was on the cover (I don't how old I was before discovering he didn't invent them but was the first endorser of a cereal). I guess if you had a box with Michael Phelps, using milk would make sense, but for that collector's edition on eBay, I guess you'd have to use the ultra-high temperature stuff that looks like white water. I've never understood how they get the cows to stand still while they heat 'em up. I suspect they catch them early in the morning.....
-bill kenny

Snow and Other Four Letter Words

Until we reached March on the calendar, I would concede Winter 2018 hadn't been all that awful (and I'm someone with a finely-tuned built-in awfulmeter). But then, as it turns out, the Ides weren't the only thing we should have watched out for in the third month. 

A few glances skyward might have been a good idea though I'm not sure what we could have done to stop any of the winter storms, to include yesterday's very light touch, that we've had in the first three weeks of the month. 

As a relentless optimist, I suppose in pursuit of the brighter side I would admit we could have had wildfires, mudslides, or tornadoes occurring on a regular basis, so there is that, I guess (not forgetting swarms of locusts and/or bees (all we are saying is ...). 
Small solace, say I from my position of honor at the precipitation station.

I look forward to complaining about how hot it is during the summer, eventually but in all likelihood NOT today (and tomorrow's not looking too good either). Meanwhile, I am concerned that for this year's Palm Sunday celebrations, Jesus will have to enter Jerusalem riding a Flexible Flyer. I refuse to be the one who tells the Pope.
-bill kenny    

Greater Grows the Pain

Do you stop for a coffee and something to munch on your way to work? Or maybe, heading home, you pop into a convenience store and grab what Winnie the Pooh calls a “smackeral” to tide you over until suppertime? Show of hands. Yeah, me, too.  

We’re not talking about a lot of money; just a couple or three bucks, give or take a couple or three bucks, right? And if it comes to more than ten to fifteen dollars in the course of a week, we’d both be amazed but if you’re looking for more bang (or bagel) for your buck (and who isn’t), I may have a pretty sweet deal for you. 

Let’s say you have eight dollars. I know how to turn that into sixteen meals. And if you’re spending a little more, say between twelve and sixteen dollars a week, I can set you up with twenty-four or thirty-two meals a month, every month. I knew that would catch your eye, but wait, there’s more.

And actually, this is the important part. Think ‘put your money where your mouth is,’ but I’m asking you to consider instead, putting your money where someone else’s mouth is and becoming a member of the Harvest Club, Connecticut Food Bank’s Monthly Giving Club.

Every day one of every eight people in Connecticut struggles with hunger, and in terms of kids, it’s more like one of every six. I’m not talking about people choosing to take a late lunch or skipping breakfast. The technical term is food insecurity, a euphemism that hides the stark reality of not knowing where/how your next meal is coming from.

In a state with about 3.6 million residents, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of our neighbors living with hunger as their constant companion, relying on food pantries and soup kitchens.

I know around the holidays usually from just before Thanksgiving through the New Year we all dig a little deeper for ‘those in need,’ a great thought and a lovely abstraction. We feel better and our help really does help but the need doesn’t go away just because the calendar changes years.

And speaking of change, the coins in our pockets are NOT what I’m talking about. You know how you pay for your gym membership or home delivery of your daily newspaper with a credit card or via electronic funds transfer through your bank? Why not do the same for the Connecticut Food Bank whose support is essential for the St. Vincent de Paul Place, and so many helping hands across our state.  

We’re spending five bucks plus a day now on a Veni, Vidi, Vici Mani, Pedi (or whatever it’s called) and for a little more we can help those helping feed so many who don’t have a guaranteed next meal.

It’s no muss and no fuss, it's just us. The Harvest Club is the backbone of the Connecticut Food Bank and our membership will do all of us a state of good.  Our state, Connecticut. 

-bill kenny            

Rhymes with Hope

Today, shortly after noon, the Vernal Equinox occurs, alternate side of the street parking rules are suspended and peace will guide the planet and love will steer the stars. Or not.

The months of some years are often little more than pages on the calendar artificially demarcating and dividing up the suck, so hopefully our recent spate of snow and more snow (alternating with ice and windy weather) will soon be a distant memory that will grow fainter right up until the moment we tell a  total stranger about what we've 'endured' and then stand back because tall tales aren't just the purview of Paul Bunyon and what's its name. Ouch. 

You deserve better than that, but good luck getting it. Besides, as the daylight continues to lengthen a little bit every day even the bad puns and jokes get a bit easier to take. All the way through the dog days of summer when we complain about the heat as if the snows of February and March were on Kilimanjaro and never ever happened. 

And then someone offers to go to the store and buy us a new rope with which to hang ourselves but we complain about how the new ones always seem to be so rough and scratchy. Couldn't live like that.
-bill kenny

Wiedersehen Macht Freude

I offer these words every year and always shall until I am unable to because I choose to believe that no one's life is over even after they die until everyone who knew them, or of them has died as well and that hasn't happened yet, again this year.  

This is a day I think about two people with whom I was once close. And if absence makes the heart grow fonder, their absence from my life for the better part of three decades should be a special measure of my affection; except I'm a cad, but they knew that and saw it as part of my charm. They shared more than just a place in my life but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Today in a month defined by Saint Patrick, is the Feast of Saint Joseph, whom the New Testament tells us was the husband of Mary (Mother of God) and, in a way, Jesus' step-dad. That could NOT have been the easiest job in the world in terms of keeping the young lad on the path of righteousness when running with whatever the Old Testament had for scissors.

"You'll put an eye out!" Joseph might have said. "So?" Jesus might retort, "I'll put it right back in." Actually, I can very easily imagine a lake of fire and Old Scratch wandering over to poke me with a stick and going, 'you had to do a Joseph as a stepdad joke, didn't you? How did that work out, chuckle trousers?'

Today is when the swallows come back to Capistrano in California. I have no idea if the return is connected to St. Joseph but many feel it may be and if that gives you a sense of hope then good for you and your belief. I don't know how the birds know today is the day,  do but they always do. 

In NYC they painted the white stripe on Fifth Avenue green for the St. Pat's parade so I wonder if the Capistrano village fathers paint their center stripe on whatever their main street is bird droppings white with grey for their St Joseph's parade, or if they even have a parade. 

I knew two marvelous people who shared the Feast of Saint Joseph as their birthday. They are from a time when I was always in a hurry and knew the price of everything and the value of nothing (sort of like now, but much younger) when I worked for American Forces (Europe) Network in Germany. 

Bob was my first boss in Radio Command Information (we produced radio public service announcements, the equivalent of commercials). He drove an absolutely beaten VW Beetle, had a neurotic dog named Sandy and a wife whom he worshiped, Erika. He was a former musician in the Army band and that's how he came to Germany in the post-World War II era. 

Bob had wonderfully detailed stories filled with narrative intricacies that didn't end so much as they'd just stop and his voice would trail off because he'd just remembered the subject of the story had died or had some other sadness befall him or her and you'd look at his face and realize his eyes were glistening as he fought back tears from a long-ago memory.    

Gisela was the record librarian of the most amazingly organized collection of vinyl in the world (not a lie; even the Library of Congress was jealous of her system). She had a story about coming of age in the ruins of her country after the war and choosing to work for the besatzungstruppen over someone else (who'd offered a little more money) because the former offered a hot meal at mid-day. And that was what sealed the deal and why Gisela had come to work for AFN. 

Bob's wife, Erika, was 'local color' (a citizen of the country where the GI was stationed, it was usually guys marrying women though I can recall Mimi being the opposite) and he lived in Erika's hometown, far from the exchange, commissary, and all the GI Joe trappings and looked like he was having himself quite a time. 

Gisela translated my permission letter from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where I and Sigrid were to marry) because I couldn't read, write or speak a word of German. She'd read a line and then offer me the English translation. I can still recall how brightly her eyes shone, how warm and broad her smile was as she translated the 'permission is granted' part and grasped me by both shoulders and gave me a congratulatory hug.

I remember both of them today on their birthdays as I have in previous years. I hope you'll forgive that I've told you a story you may have already heard. That's how us old people are. 

I hope Saint Joseph doesn't mind too much either since this is his day, but I knew them a lot better. What I don't know is how many others knew them or thought of them today. And I worry about what happens when no one is left here who knows you ever even lived. I'm starting to feel the pressure, just a little bit. 

I told you a small piece of their story to help me remember to celebrate them and to remind you we are the sum of everyone we have ever known or, perhaps, known of. People change but memories of people stay the same.
-bill kenny

In the Age of the Kleptocracy

Revisiting some older words that instead of aging like wine seem more milk-like. As a kid I loved word-a-day calendars. Now my tastes run more to Dilbert and New Yorker but I think that's because as an adult I rarely experience humor in real life so I go looking for it elsewhere. In reality, it's all around us but so often we're steeped in stupid to such a degree we can't see the size of the self-pity party we're throwing. 

Anyway. Thanks to someone I'll never meet but can say with a straight-face "I know" (a web denizen of elsewhere on the internet), I made the acquaintance of the word, snollygoster. If you're a Democrat, you've been using the names of Republican congressional representatives and if you're of the Republican persuasion, you've been invoking Democratic senators, as descriptives instead of an actual, under-used, real word that's fun to say and leaves a smile on your face. We're talking value for the money there, pilgrim, and I hope now that you know it as well you will use it responsibly and with parental supervision.

I'm not sure Craig Funches is a snollygoster but he's a story that, I am convinced has a lot about we're not knowing at least not yet. I'm incredulous in this day and age that anyone, a 42 year old woman it says here and her teenage son, would allow anyone into their (rental) car and add 'and we all went to the Taco Bell (you can't buy this kind of publicity!)' then afterwards, pulled over and got out of  the rental car to have a discussion on a personal and family matter rather than conduct it in front of the back-seat passenger is just too much for even me to believe.

I am the original wide-eyed kid, perhaps a gollysnoster, how would I know, in matters of human relations and trust despite the dateline on this story. Heqq, I even still believe musicians play their own instruments....
-bill kenny    

At Home on the Green Fields of Amerikay

Happy St. Patrick's Day (again)! 

Let's treat the over-consumption of dark beer and the ensuing drunken stumble-round in celebration of the day as read. Not all of us who claim the heritage are drunkards. I, to cite but one example, stopped drinking. About four hours ago. Ah, yes that scintillating "Irish wit" I claim to possess. Now I know how far my humor can take me-the next punctuation marks the demarcation. I offered these words a number of years ago, and traditionalist that I am, I feel they are painfully still appropriate.

The Irish's arrival in America was, for its time, the largest and most prolonged migration of one ethnic group since the nations of the world had begun keeping track of such things. Those who fled Ireland for America, and they were not only family members, but extended families, whole neighborhoods and, in many instances, entire villages and townships, were half a step ahead of starvation and destitution. 

To remain in Ireland was to die but fleeing to America was often death of another kind, only more slowly. Having already been made into outcasts in their own country, the immigrants hardly noticed how their treatment in the New World often resembled their handling in the old.

And still, they came, by the thousands every month, by the tens of thousands and into the millions. At one point, very nearly twenty percent of all Americans were of Irish ancestry which is a statistic offered on Saint Patrick's Day to help not just those of us who were part of the Irish Diaspora to remember where they came from but to remind all of us how far we have yet to go.

"Farewell to the groves of shillelagh and shamrock.
Farewell to the girls of old Ireland all round.
And may their hearts be as merry as ever they could wish for.
As far away o'er the ocean I'm bound.

Oh, my father is old and my mother quite feeble;
To leave their own country it would grieve their heart sore,
Oh the tears down their cheeks in great floods they are rolling
To think they must die upon some foreign shore.

But what matters to me where my bones they may lie buried
If in peace and contentment I can spend my life
The green fields of Amerikay they daily are calling
It's there I'll find an end to my miseries and strife.

So pack up your seastores now consider it no longer,
Ten dollars a week isn't very bad pay.
With no taxes or tithe to devour up your wages
Across on the green fields of Amerikay.

The lint dams are gone and the looms are lying idle
Gone are the winders of baskets and creels,
And away o'er the ocean, go journeyman cowboy
And fiddlers that play out the old mountain reels.

Ah and I mind the time when old Ireland was flourishing,
And most of her tradesmen did work for good pay
Ah, but since our manufacturers have crossed the Atlantic
It's now we must follow on to Amerikay.

And now to conclude and to finish my ditty
If e'er a friendless Irishman should happen my way
With the best in the house, I will treat him, and welcome him
At home on the green fields of Amerikay."
-bill kenny

I Brake for Mothra

I'm not sure why I called this by the above title all those years ago but it made me smile wandering through my archives. So, here goes: 

Do you remember when people spoke about things made in Japan in a derogatory tone? Before your time, probably (I wish I could say that, and mean it), but we did. We even had a snappy little jingoistic two word put down the seconded of which was 'crap' and the first word rhymed with it. 

Oh, how superior we felt as we laughed and got into our 1963 Terraplanes with the white-wall tires and eventually got those bad boy started and managed to drive away. Those were halcyon days.

The awful thing about that line was that it was true but it didn't stay true. Every year, more of what we had in our house and garage was made elsewhere until ALL of it (or just about) was and it was pretty easy to do since in some areas, like auto manufacturing, the US guys just got sloppy or stupid or something. That, too, is an overstatement and a generalization, but it hides a reality of a self-fulfilling prophecy that crept in, on little cats' feet and stamped "paid" to the dream of unending good times and decent wages in many parts of the country. 

We always speak of Detroit when we say US automakers, but I remember applying, with John C while we were both at Rutgers, for a summer job at a Ford plant in Metuchen, New Jersey (they built Torinos, I think) and there was a Saturn assembly center in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Both are long gone.

And now 'Japanese' cars, come from exotic places like somewhere in Indiana, probably near Dan and Marilyn Quayle's PotatoE Farm, and the Nissan, Honda, and Toyota folks are all heading the same way. Those who've concluded in print and electronic media that 'American-built' vehicles are inferior (because they're built by Americans?) should walk east until their hats float. 

Perceived quality problems soured us on Seeing the USA in a Chevrolet. My mom used to tell me I watched Dinah every afternoon, sitting on the coffee table in my parents' apartment and would blow a kiss right back at her at the end of her show. Kiss my butt, Burt. Dinah, I saw you first, even if he ended up with the Flying Nun in a Trans Am (for crying out loud!). 

And almost without realizing it, auto-erotic has taken on a whole new meaning.
-bill kenny

Time to Broach the Coach

Now that I'm convinced spring is arriving (eventually if not as immediately as I would have preferred), I'm trying to get back into my 'I Want to Live Forever Or Die Trying' regimen which consists of going to a nearby fitness center a five minute drive from my house an yes I'm aware of the irony of driving instead of walking (mind your own business). 

It's not that I'm training for an Iron Man competition or to run with my brother Adam on one of his escape attempts. I'm trying to not be (quite so) visible from space--the NSA guys actually use me to calibrate one of their satellite spy cameras when I'm out on weekends (all I wanted was a couple of lousy wallet size prints but no....). 

Between the health issues and replacement joints I have, I've long since conceded the best I can do is stage an organized retreat in the face of old age (hell, I am the face of old age) and I have surrendered gracefully those things of youth like much of my hair, my teeth, relatively clear skin, tuna, clean air as well hair-free ears while awaiting history's final judgment. 

I'm not at my sharpest when I get up in the morning. Or before I turn in at night  Or, now that I think about it, during daylight and night hours. 

Anyway, my point is I have a routine for 'doing the gym stuff' that involves wearing the gym clothes and carrying (on hangers) the very nicely pressed trousers and shirt (and belt and tie) my wife lays out the night before for me. I get into the car and go to the fitness center w. When I finish I head back to the car and never even glance at the back seat or the clothes on the hanger in the window. That's how sure I am in my routine. 

On more than one occasion, however, I've gotten to work, parked and exited the vehicle, opened the back door while reaching for the work clothes' hangers above the passenger window. Of course, the clothes aren't there. Tha's my visual to remember I've left them on a hook in the house.The good news is, of course, I haven't lost them, I know where they are; we're just not in anywhere near the same place. 

For reasons that make it genetically impossible for me to spend a week NOT forgetting my change of clothes, I have in my office a surfeit of work-out togs, just in case. Like maybe the problem is the gym clothes.  Except because the problem is NOT the gym clothes, my office looks a little like a locker threw up, except neater. People who wander the hall just assume, I guess, I'm having another casual Friday even if the calendar says otherwise. 

As long as I don't start forgetting the gym clothes on days other than (or even the same as) the ones when I forget the work clothes, I won't have to hide behind my desk all day. Even then, as long as nobody plays the National Anthem, the day should be like butter though it could get tricky when I frown at the crumbs of the crust of bread....
-bill kenny

Coming and Going

This is the time of the year when I'm never sure if it's better to believe the calendar or my own eyes. We just had the start of daylight savings time over the weekend and many of us are already counting down the days to spring (I guess so we can then count down the days until Summer) but when I look out the window there are more than enough reminders everywhere that winter's last word hasn't yet been spoken.   

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

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

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

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

How many projects around your house have you left undone because you just didn't have the time to get to them? Me too.Maybe tackle cleaning out the basement/attic/garage or shed project? I have a garage hoping this is when I have the time to get it cleaned. And before you start, call Public Works and arrange for a pick-up.

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

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

Thank you Barry Much, Len

This is from quite some back from a different area code than my present one, physically and emotionally. For reasons that had a lot more to do with the mechanics of the treadmill in the fitness center than any form of iron discipline and control I might be pretending to have, for most of my session yesterday, as measured by the two cross handles that keep me from being dragged off the device, my heart rate was a steady 123.

I cracked myself up all the while struggling on the treadmill when I realized that and then sort of made a game out of how steady I could keep going so that the heartbeat number never wavered. Of course, I've read the disclaimers on the label (understanding is another matter entirely) and appreciate the display doesn't purport to be accurate but what does the manufacturer know? How did we all decide what an "A" sounds like or how to write in "Q" in cursive. And what smell does the number nine actually have? (I still think backward it says 'cranberry sauce') The line between real and surreal often is narrow and when you add cereal, it's part of a good breakfast.

I've returned to the fitness center after the roto-rooter surgery (my doctor's term) on the artery in my right leg and with his knowledge and agreement. He stipulated I NOT lift anything heavy (like our National Debt or Crisis of Conscience) and to call him immediately if while treadmilling (treading? milling?) it starts to hurt.

That makes me giggle, too, since I'm usually at the fitness center around four in the morning (do not ask what time the bars close) and can only imagine what an otherwise very polite and mild-mannered person becomes when awakened in the dark of night by a Wisenheimer (from the Von Wisenheimer Family of Upper Ober-Knerdelheim).

With my luck, should there need to be a 'next time' he'll be the one with the scalpel and I'm just now remembering how painful the location of the incision was and how with very little additional provocation on my part how much MORE painful it could be next time. 
Like taking candy, from a baby.
-bill kenny