Buy a Ticket

Driving to the gym the other morning in the oh bright early hours, I passed a person in a gaudy and colorful sweat suit (or are we now saying 'work-out togs?') strolling along in the general direction of the gym smoking a cigarette. 

We're talking electric lime-green shirt and international emergency orange pants while puffing away on a Benson and Hedges or some brand of cigarette that has popped up in the 22 and half years since I stopped smoking that you can buy in a gas station for a skosh under ten bucks a pack. 

I have no idea how anyone can afford to smoke name brand or cut-rate cigarettes anymore (said the guy who smoked three packs a day for twenty-three years), but acknowledging how much the taxes are on each pack, you have to wonder about what happens to all manner of federal, state and in some instances, city. projects if every smoker in the USA looked up tomorrow and said 'that's it! You've hit my pain threshold with taxes, I quit!'

Luckily, for the projects, not the people who smoke, that will very likely not happen (but if it does, remember you read it here first) leaving me to ponder the point of the clothes and the behavior in terms of fitness. Lest you think I'm either a phitness phanatic or enrolled in the fitness relocation program, I am neither. 

I go to the gym most weekday mornings, passing the Tastee bakers on my way there, to relieve some of the accumulated stress I've picked up in the course of the previous day scurrying around on this ant farm with beepers because $10 a month for membership is a lot cheaper than lawsuits for bodily harm to scads of people who richly deserve the beating I'm not going to dispense because I have this nice guy reputation to project, I mean protect.             
  
If wearing the clothes helped to lose weight or tone muscles, I'd already be there. I have the tops that 'wick' perspiration away (no idea where the word 'wick' came from), the cunning little towels I can drape around my neck and over my shoulders (under my 'wick' shirt, together with the baggy shorts I choose deliberately because my knees look like Edward Scissorhands was massaging them after more knee surgeries than I can almost count. And don't let me forget the headbands-the crowning touch to my work-out ensemble especially as it matches (I think) the two I have for my wrists. Yep, the spiffy, sporty, doofus, that is I.

Of course, I was disappointed to learn first-hand that I had to do more than wear the clothes to get any benefit from exercising and I'm sure the Marlboro Man has reached the same inevitable conclusion. He's just a little winded as a result.    
-bill kenny

More Déjà vu for Me and You

As we count down the days until summer arrives, a more urgent countdown is ongoing in our City Council chambers as the annual agonies over the next budget near their inevitable and never happy conclusion (until next year).   

I’m struck by how often I’ve penned something like the following (always mindful nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it, me). Stop me when you’ve read this before, but I can promise all of us will live through the circumstances that prompted it again and again.

Municipal budgets are much like the weather, everyone talks about them but nothing gets done, unless (of course) you’re on the City Council where the buck, or what’s left of it, comes to rest. Aside from elevating one another's blood pressure at public hearings, with letters to the editor and online comments, what have we succeeded in accomplishing in helping grow our tax base, creating relief for property owners, and (I think most importantly) making Norwich a place to come home to?

That’s not a rhetorical question, because, to me, it’s hard to tell what we're doing except we keep saying better days are ahead (and I want to believe that). But wishing ain’t doing.

People prefer a problem that's familiar to a solution that’s not. We are, and should be, concerned at what we pay in taxes for what we receive in services, but after we've said we're angry about one or the other (we rarely if ever complain about one and the other), we seem to resign ourselves to whatever is about to unfold and leave our protests at that, until the next year.

We choose to forget to live as we do is a 365/24/7 job for all of us, not just some. We changed the charter almost twenty years ago in an attempt to make how we govern ourselves more transparent and responsive with better-defined responsibilities and accountability for increased economic development and enhanced community quality of life.

I'm not sure how that worked out, despite the efforts of so many talented people who volunteer to serve in elected positions like the City Council and Board of Education or on one of the nearly innumerable agencies, boards, commissions, and committees we have in the city.

Perhaps just me but instead of an effort to help those trying to help all of us we point fingers at one another. The problem with finger-pointing is three fingers on the hand point back at ourselves. Perhaps we think if we all wear mittens no one will notice.

Economic vitality isn’t just growth of the grand list, improved property values, and reduced taxes; it’s about enhanced opportunity and increased quality of life for every resident. We need to stop talking about how much we need to change and actually change. I can’t imagine a greater 'good' for a government, at any level, a greater need for it and a more appropriate time to seriously work towards that than right now.

- bill kenny

The Neuralgia of Nostalgia

I can travel a few different ways to work and sometimes, because I like to think I'm foiling a stalker or predator, I vary the route (I also have a lifetime of working in ridiculously unimportant, nondescript jobs that would attract no attention so I'm the kind of guy if the bad guys kidnapped me, they'd let me go, after apologizing and giving me a few bucks for the trouble). I'm not ever going to have an adventurous job, so why not?

I can take an interstate and then use a state road, more of a cut across to another state highway that takes me to work. The cut across was built about the same time as the Mohegan Sun was coming on line as a casino and the Route 2A bypass became a big deal (and it also enabled travelers to come from Route 395 to the casino or staying on it travel over the Pequot Bridge and hang the left at the intersection with Route 12 and head over on Route 2 to the Foxwoods casino (we have the Double mint Twins of Gaming (clever how the marketers eliminated the "B" and the "L", eh?)). 

Cynics have suggested if you wanted to save time, you could roll the car window down as you traveled over the bridge and throw your money into the Thames-but what would the sport of that be and where would we get the wonder of it all, if you did? 

And for a state with no money, there's always road construction, often more fitful than befits one of the thirteen original colonies, but times are hard and friends are few and hard to find. And while we may not be able to afford much of the construction we need on/for our roadways we always have the budget for warning signs. 

My personal favorite but only because I don't have a two-way radio to turn off at certain hours is always the large orange sign that, in addition to talking about the two-way radios and blasting, tells me "Be Prepared to Stop" in large yellow letters on a cyclic basis.
 
It's like the sign on 395 just past the State Trooper barracks, across from the gas station that advises "Speed is monitored by aircraft." So what? Where's the shock and awe of that warning? How about "Speed monitored by dirigible." 

That would make everybody wish they had a sunroof or a front seat spotter just so they could keep an eye out for the Hindenburg (except we probably wouldn't drive slower, and looking out the roof instead of the windshield, there'd be more accidents). 

So, how about on that orange warning sign we have something different like "Be Prepared to Tango"-no mean feat considering we are all sitting in cars and trucks and the Tango doesn't have a chair in its steps anywhere. "Be Prepared to Smile"--"Be Prepared to Rapture" (I'm not sure if you can use a noun, much less what, for some, is a proper noun, as a verb, but the Tango people didn't mind so I'm hoping the Rapture folks are cool with this). 

Or "Be Prepared to Boogaloo" (and there's someone on the shoulder handing out gold chains or necklaces with coke spoons hanging off them, platform shoes and elephant-leg bell bottom trousers). 

And, just how much preparation to stop does a body need in the first place? Right there, that little dot at the end of this sentence, that is a period which is a grammatical stop. No heavy nets, no orange signs, no yellow letters-just halt. See? That was easy. Now where did this Hai Karate after-shave come from and who left this eight-track cartridge in the front seat?
-bill kenny

Salt of the Earth

Requiescant in pace

-bill kenny

From Another Decade

I wrote this a decade ago. I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.

For a lot of us today, hopefully, the weather cooperates as Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer with Labor Day regarded as summer's unofficial end. It's interesting how we've 'repurposed' two disparate and distinct observances and changed their message and meaning.

When I was a kid growing up (in the dark days of black and white TV and NO Internet) we called this Decoration Day because so many families spent some part of the day traveling to or at a cemetery honoring the grave of a fallen member of the Armed Forces (World War II, Korea, and the ongoing Vietnam War touched practically every family). We've gotten so used to having a professional armed force in this country we forget that for many years, actually until 1973, we had military conscription, usually called the draft. 

Even back to the War for Independence, we had people who would volunteer, but conscription was a process to guarantee manpower. And the draft was only for men-there were women in some jobs in the Armed Forces (WAFs and WAVEs are the two I remember learning about and I'm sorry for forgetting the others), but certainly not in all jobs and they joined of their own volition. 

We called everyone serving in the military back then 'our boys in uniform.' After the draft was eliminated in 1973 and both sexes were serving, maybe because we thought it sounded silly to say 'our girls in uniform', we instead said 'our women in uniform' and once we did that it made sense to also say 'our men in uniform.' Odd how we made men out of boys, eh? 

Today's a big backyard barbecue day and almost everyone with a product or service to sell has advertising about their Memorial Day Specials. I guess that's okay and at some level is actually part of what today is about even when we get too busy to remember.

A lot of very brave and talented people sacrificed their lives for the notion of this nation so we could cook baby-back ribs or check out the deals at the car dealerships later today. And not just the very brave and talented--a lot of very frightened, flawed and ultimately very fragile men and women died in uniform so we could complain about the price of gas and politicians we don't like and how our favorite ball club is off to slow start again and worry about what we're gonna do with the kids when the school year ends. 

If you're reading this, I can suggest another place you can go without having to get up from your chair or computer. It doesn't take very long, though, for those in uniform whose lifetimes have now ended, it will always be too short and I visit it every day, especially when I think I'm having a tough time of it. 

It's not as poetic as the lines penned by a John McCrae, but it doesn't pretend to be. We are, after all, living in the greatest country on earth with a professional armed force that, if we work the TV and newspapers just right, we hardly ever need to think about, though today would be a most appropriate opportunity to do so; but if you forget, that's okay. In a way, they fought so that, too could be one of our freedoms, but some mother's memory remains.
-bill kenny

As the Daylight Hours Do Retreat

As a kid, I didn't know anyone anywhere who was my now current age. In hindsight, I imagine Gramma and Grampy were pretty close to it. When I mention grandparents, I mean Mom's parents. We rarely (if ever) saw Dad's parents which was just as well because his mom's brogue was so thick you couldn't understand her and his dad never said a word or at least none I can recall. I do wish I'd paid more attention to both what all of them said and, more importantly, how all of them lived. Too late smart, again. 

Now I'm getting ready to retire and, while counting down the days, am still struggling with what I should and could do with and to so many of those in the course of life so far who were in the "despite" part of my successes rather than the "because of" aspect.

I've decided, somewhat reluctantly and uncertainly, to forego reckoning and revenge because those emotions, perhaps very rewarding, are so corrosive and I've now become too fragile to carry them around inside of me without suffering more of the damage than I could ever hope to inflict. 

Leaving you to draw your own conclusions

It's not that I've mellowed because I haven't. I neither forgive nor forget. It's not in my ancestry and most certainly not in my heredity. I've chosen to focus instead on what's next rather than on what's left, and what's left behind. Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent, when I paint my masterpiece.
-bill kenny    

The Element of Surprise

Three coins in a fountain. Each one seeking happiness.

You'll soon find this under ''garish collectibles' on eBay

Or not.

All that's missing is 'best to Mrs. Supreme Ruler and the kids."  

Of course. From the same mouth that promised "a wall that Mexico will pay for," "wonderful, affordable healthcare."  And, my personal favorite, "A middle-class tax cut." 

More of the same from a guy who is a terminally veracity-challenged. Maybe just me, but I'm awfully tired of winning. I do believe that when you elect a clown you should expect a circus leaving me to wonder what is the expectation when you elect an asshole. Nevermind.  
-bill kenny

Closing Time?

Some days this stuff writes itself and other days I have to wait a little bit until the fog lifts over this beautiful wreck of a country so I can better appreciate what exactly we hath wrought. 

For all the Republican Evangelicals thrilled beyond words that the US Embassy has been relocated to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv because they've only supported a serial philanderer, veracity-challenged, and ethically deficient narcissist as president because they believe his tenure is part of The Lord's plan to return his beloved America to old-time religion and true values, here's some more good news. 

This would never happen at Mar a Lago

My first thought was Joseph Heller's Closing Time, and then, drain the swamp jokes aside, I recall far too many nights at Olde Queens Tavern in New Brunswick back when I thought I was bulletproof where the last call was always the same, "drink up! You don't have to go home but you do have to go."  
-bill kenny    

Who Sows Virtue Reaps Honor

It’s almost time to ‘start your barbecues!" as Memorial Day, for many the start of summer, is just around the calendar corner. Before you start packing for picnics, or the shore or taking in the Rotary Carnival that starts tomorrow night at Howard T. Brown Park and goes through Monday, I’d like to offer what passes for thoughts from previous years for Memorial Day.

(I'm old enough to remember when we observed/celebrated holidays where they fell on the calendar. I'm not sure we’re not better off with a return to earlier times, but my old codger is probably showing. Sorry.)

Meanwhile, I'm probably the first to wish you the best for your Memorial Day holiday, which is observed this Monday. There’s a parade, complete with a marching band stepping off at noon from the Cathedral of Saint Patrick to Chelsea Parade followed by a one clock ceremony.

Earlier, actually at ten, at The Memorial Park in Taftville, around the corner from the Knights of Columbus, there’s a remembrance service dedicated to Army Private Victor Davis, a Taftville resident who died in a Japanese POW camp on 30 June 1943 after surviving the Bataan Death March. 

The Taftville VFW Post 2212 and the American Legion Post 104, together with the Norwich Area Veterans Council, do a wonderful job of organizing this annual event, as they do with so many others throughout the year. I always find time to attend and I hope you will too.

If tradition is any indicator, there will be some remarks by local civic leaders and those who served in uniform around the world in both war and peace and who lived to come home and tell about it, as well as words of comfort from a clergy person.

Maybe you'll look around at the metal folding chairs, all neatly aligned facing the podium and wonder how many of those who were there last year made it this year. The memory of sacrifice only survives until the last person who remembers those sacrifices has passed.

But in the Brave New World, it's long since become 'what have you done for us lately?' And new enemies, far more formidable than any we have encountered before, require vigilance and sacrifice.

We've become heavily entrenched in and entranced with our own beliefs and are less interested than at any time since the Nativist movement in what anyone disagreeing with us has to say about anything.

Perhaps as a reminder to take into the upcoming holiday and beyond, I can offer the seventy (and four) words which closed Abraham Lincoln's second Inaugural Address.

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

-bill kenny

And Though She Feels as if She's in a Play

We’ve been seeing the commercials for weeks, really since just after Easter because that’s how relentless advertising has to be for us in the era of Consumerism Uber Alles. It’s hard to believe technically this time next week it still will not be ‘real’ Memorial Day.

No worries, three-day weekend fans, we’ve got your six. Yep, this Monday will be the official observance of Memorial Day where we shall break out the briquettes and bar-be-cues, go to car lots for all the latest deals on previously owned but gently-used automobiles we don’t need and let's not forget about mattresses.

That last one always weirds me out as I’m not sure I understand the relationship that’s supposed to exist between bedding and remembering the last, full measure of sacrifice of uniformed men and women in defense of our nation. It’s sort of like the bed linen sales that are held to mark Presidents Day. For many, you can’t have the latter without the former.

I found something to while away the hours between now and whichever Memorial Day you are observing (I hate using the word ‘celebrate,’ it’s inappropriate under the circumstances in my opinion). And I hope you’ll enjoy and explore it as well.

It causes me to pause in the headlong rush of oblivious self-aggrandizement we have called the 21^st Century and invites me to feel both the loss and the sense of service to more than self that has, and I hope always shall, mark the lives of so many in the US Armed Forces.

And, perhaps most importantly, at least to me, it reminds me of the cost, price, and value of the freedoms so many of us take for granted far too often. And how great an obligation we, the living, have to those who’ve made our lives and lifestyle possible, to strive to be the best people we can be so that we are worthy of their sacrifices for us. 

-bill kenny          

Monday Meditation

Start of another work week? Another school week? 
Just another week of life on the big, blue marble? Another chance to try again? 

Not always true for everyone. 
This is our story, today is the next chapter and we are solely responsible for how it turns out.
-bill kenny

I'd Be a Genius

Friday night I had a nightmare instead of sleeping. I have no idea where I was, but I was with the younger of my two brothers and it felt like South America, one of the many places I've never been.

I have no idea why I am so certain of the location, but I am. We were attempting to rescue his older sister, and my youngest sister though from what I also do not know. I do know I awakened on more than once in the course of the dream, soaked in panic sweat and walked around our apartment in the dark until I had calmed down.

The original 'you can me call me Al.'

When I came back to bed I immediately fell asleep again and the nightmare picked up where it left off. It may have lasted seconds but they felt like hours. When I finally got up for the day shortly before six on a grey Saturday morning I seriously considered calling my brother to make sure he and our sister were okay. 

And then when I thought about what I would tell him when he asked about my concern, I decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and hoped all they were telling me were lies in the first place.
-bill kenny

      

As Deep as Any Ocean

Despite the political pitched battles being waged on climate change and the all-important search for the guilty (aside from Scott Pruitt; he has yet to encounter any guilty persons at anytime he flies first-class) because a good guy with a global warming theory can stop a bad guy with a semi-automatic peanut allergy (or something like that), meteorology trumps ideology (pun intended).  

Reasonable people can agree to disagree, I’ll concede that point but, there are times in this urgent and vital national discussion we may be at least one or more reasonable persons short. I have the feeling that when dinner is hosted at the Algonquin Roundtable there may not be places set for Dana, Lamar, and Mo (the GOP Pep Boys of Science).       

But who can blame them for what some might (selfishly) think of as willful ignorance? Not me, especially not when you have George Church with what could be the answer to all our prayers, assuming your house of worship is located in Jurassic Park.

And you’ve only thought of Fox News as your absolutely #1 go-to place for fair and balanced, we-report-and-you decide news and information. HA! When Horton is through hearing a Who tell him he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do. And he'd best pack a lunch. 

-bill kenny 

A Ball of Gas Surrounded by Flames

In the future, said Andy Warhol, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. For the most part, based on what happens out my window, across my television screen and on my computer monitor, a lot of us are living on borrowed time as I’ve concluded we must be very nearly already in the future.

Between those who are famous for seemingly just being famous and those whose basis for fame eludes me entirely since it’s devoid of skill, intelligence or ability we have James Harrison.

Celebrities, my dear late Andrew, make headlines; heroes make a difference.

-bill kenny   

The Savagery of Nature

This is more observational than possessing an actual point (I know, "what's new about that?" Words hurt, smarty-pants and sometimes sting). I was in my office this past Sunday attempting to get ahead on a project I've been fitfully working on for awhile but as closing time nears and I worry about hearing 'last call,' I'd like to get it finished or at least leave it in decent enough shape so that someone coming along doesn't mistake it for the dog's breakfast. 

Leaving the building shortly after noon I watched two blue jays battling over what at first I thought was a strip of roofing tar paper, or the like, on the sidewalk about fifteen feet away from the front door. As I approached, the birds fled (I like to think it's my superpower being able to frighten birds. Since it's worked for over six and a half decades, change my mind), dropping the tar paper into the grass as they flew away. 

Roofing tar paper, not an actual baby bat

I thought there might be a light breeze as the tar paper kept flipping but a check of the tree leaves and the absence of their movement caused me to look closer. The tar paper was, in fact, a small, I guess baby, bat with outstretched wings, struggling to flip itself over and not be at its most vulnerable on its back.

Perhaps it fell out of the tree (I have no idea where bats live and am hoping they have no knowledge of my domicile's location either) and the blue jays were fighting over which of them would make a meal of the little guy (or gal). The bat was no bigger than my thumb and was thrashing around attempting to defend itself. Since to my understanding bats eat bugs and fruit while blue jays eat anything that doesn't eat them, the bat was at a severe tactical disadvantage.

It was so young/small the only noise I could hear was a barely audible (to me) high piercing squeaky sound (maybe to another bat, it sounded more like Pavarotti). I wanted to help the bat but didn't trust myself or it enough to grab it with my bare hand by a wing (it was Sunday so prayers were sold separately) and place it under one of the ornamental shrubs, someone, thousands of years ago thought would look nice bordering the building (they were utterly wrong by the way).

I suspect to the bat, I was no different than the blue jays though from a distance I more closely resemble Ozzy Osbourne (we both come from a long line of mumblers). Actually, I interviewed Ozzy a long time ago and a long time after he bit the head off a bat so I found a small branch with some other smaller branches forming a near-fork shape and used that to lift the bat off the ground and carry it to one of the bushes where I placed it as deeply in the center, under the bush in the hopes of protecting it from the birds, as possible. 

Having done my good deed for the year (I try not to overexert myself) I headed home and when I returned on Monday morning, the short branch was still under the bush, but the bat was gone. I told myself he flew away and have decided that's the version of this story I want to tell. And if you have a different idea, you are wrong. And that's all I have to say about that. 
-bill kenny                 

Benson Is On to Something

It looks like all the April rain (and sleet and snow) showers have resulted in some serious blooming happening along lower Broadway, below City Hall, as you head to Main Street. 

If you’ve convinced yourself that nothing any good ever happens anymore in Norwich (suggested sound effects include loud lamentations and the rending of garments), this might be a good time to double click to some online classifieds and check out that special on size 44 Triple E jump boots because you will not appreciate what follows here. And that’s fine because it just means more for the rest of us.

If you haven’t walked lower Broadway in a while, it’s bustling with activity. There are all kinds of construction going on, on both sides of the street, flanking Billy Wilson’s and at the Fairhaven, courtesy of the Stackstone Group who put their money where our mouths are and have invested heavily in places to come home to in downtown.

Next door to the Donald Oat Theater and Norwich Art Council is some serious renovation going on from I don’t know who, as they are reviving a long dormant and forgotten property and adding some sparkle to Broadway.

But those are works in progress and since we are a city notoriously short of patience, (except when we're not, I guess)  I wanted to highlight another positive that happens when you get involved in helping out on weekend community aside from the glow from within. It’s how community economic development achieves Critical Mass. 

As you (should have) read in Monday’s Bulletin, the long-awaited (and not just by me) ‘downtown coffee shop’, Craftsman Cliff Roasters, opened to great rejoicing and is, I believe, a signpost of where downtown is heading when we too often prefer to sigh about souvenirs of Norwich’s past. 

Crazy socks face the window while ties go to the runners.

I and many other volunteers had already enjoyed a taste while we were sprucing up downtown during the First Saturday of May and stopped in to recharge. And while some were waiting for a cup, I strolled to the intersection of Broadway and Main, crossed the street (at the crosswalk after looking in all directions to include skyward) heading for 27 Broadway and the even more newly opened Monocle on Broadway.

They were just beginning their Saturday workday but they’re open every day (Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday, 10-2; 10-5 on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, and on Thursdays from 10 until 7). 

I took a quick look around before getting back to the clean-up and the next time you’re “Puttin' On the Ritz" you should stop in. They have suit and tuxedo rentals and sales as well as assorted menswear. And they have unique cufflinks, ties, shirts, belts, cologne, crazy socks (I’m told a huge seller), as well as dog ties and kerchiefs (for the canine who already has everything else I suspect). They even have dress uniform items such as parade gloves, patent leather shoes, etc.

Monocle Max dressed and ready.

Even if you’re a water-drinking nudist (there’s a mental image you will not be easily rid of, and you’re welcome) you should be delighted that more entrepreneurs and businesses are staking a claim in Norwich to make a living for themselves, adding to the City’s Grand List, and making a positive difference in our community’s quality of life.

Shopping local is really the new black (and green as in dollars), with a creative, transformative rainbow spreading to and through Broadway and beyond. And as they say, there’s magic in the air. All you have to do is enjoy it.       
-bill kenny  

Strangers on this Road

We'll all seen people with sweatshirts or tee-shirts that say 'ask me about my grandchildren.' At some point in the past unknown to me I was fitted with one that says 'tell me all about anything, I don't mind.' 

I was at the local grocery yesterday afternoon grabbing some sports drinks as if what I attempt now in the mornings could ever be confused with physical exertion. Humor me, okay? If I want to think it's a workout, what's the harm in letting me have this little fantasy?

It isn't really a workout and if cornered I'd probably admit it, but I do get winded and a bit sweaty and parts of me hurt until the Tylenol kicks in. Plus I look cool with a multi-pack sports drink in my hand as I stand in line. I get almost as much of a work out carrying that to the register as I do on the treadmill. 

I wound up behind a fellow carrying a lot of stuff in his bare hands, without the benefit of a shopping cart or a basket. I've had that happen, where I get ambushed in the baked goods department by freshly made oatmeal and raisin cookies while I have my hands already full (one of those reach exceeds grasp kind of moments). Have there been times I've parked the item I originally came into the store to get and bought a lot of other stuff, taken it all out to the car and then returned for the original item? Yeah, guilty as charged.

Not sure what happened with this guy. He was pushing a bag of charcoal briquettes in front of him but did not seem to have any kind of meat you would normally associate with grilling in his hands (and I don't care to imagine where else he might have put it). I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I've never been hijacked by briquettes when I'm Lost in the Supermarket, so I didn't have the highest regard for this patron.

When he started mumbling, from where I was behind him (I scrupulously enforce that ATM space rule when I'm in line. It will never be my hot breath you feel on your neck and vice versa) I thought he was talking to the scandal magazines alongside the gum and candy. One of the most sobering aspects of growing old is as I've aged, how less and less of the headlines or pictured celebrities mean anything to me at all. 

One of magazine covers had someone who is so famous she only has a first name, and a TV show I think, but I have no idea who she is or the name of the show. Marty Mumbles, as I dubbed him, seemed to be talking to the magazine with what looked like Mel Gibson and (maybe) his girlfriend as a thumbnail-sized photo on the cover, but I was in error. 

I looked up to realize, as he stacked his stuff (and '12 Items or less' became a suggestion, exactly when? I missed that memo) as high as he could on the smallest possible amount of space on the conveyor belt, he was actually talking at me. There was a reasonable amount of frantic head nodding and eye-blinking, not a lot of contact, which was of no help at all in understanding a single word of whatever he was, or wasn't, saying. 

All the while the cashier was scanning his stuff, he had his back to her, addressing me. I always get these guys so I just bided my time. When she announced the total, I had to point him, using the smile and nod technique (and NO sudden movements), in her general direction so that he realized the ride was just about done. 

Of course, he wasn't prepared to pay and went through his pockets looking for cash, paper, and coins, before defaulting to a credit card, shuffling off with enough plastic bags to choke a landfill all the while jabbering away to anyone (else) who made eye contact.

When I handed the cashier my sole item, she remarked that she hadn't seen me 'in here with that guy before' as if I made it a practice to collect strangers in the night. I thought about telling her just that and then decided silence, in my case, was golden. Besides, if I dawdled, I'd be late for the cookout, and that would never do.
-bill kenny

I'll Have to Owe You

View of the Norwich Free Academy from Chelsea Parade

The better of our two weekend days, weather-wise, was yesterday, Mothers Day. I'm not necessarily suggesting cause and effect but your other choices are 'sheer coincidence' and 'sorta spooky so don't think about it.' Yeah, cause and effect it is, at least for me.

(Not named for Terry) Bradlaw Building

I went for a walk, admittedly not much of one but, on the other hand, I'm not much of a walker either, so it all sort of works out. And if you're not impressed with the pictures I took with my cell phone camera, please remember I could have always decided to describe the places where I was standing in tortured and extensive detail and you know how much most gooder I am with words, right? 

Slater Museum

You're welcome.

Everything's in bloom at the Park Congregational Church

-bill kenny 

Neither a Card nor a Moment

I figure everyone with a pulse, or an approximation, is waxing poetic today in honor of Mother's Day, as well we should. This is my first Mother's Day without Mom who passed away almost a year ago but who is always and often in my thoughts. These are a few of them from a really long time ago. Miss you, Mom.

When I was a kid, Mom was more than unflappable, she was a force of nature and in the nearly three decades since the death of her husband, her children, joined by grandchildren and now great-grand children have watched her lead the life she wishes after taking care of so many of us for so long. Mom came to visit Sigrid and me and our two children when we all still lived in Germany.

She and Franz and Anni Schubert, Sigrid's parents, got along wonderfully well even though they shared not a single syllable of a common language. Sigrid's mom was a Rubble Woman upon whose back the Federal Republic of Germany became the economic engine of Europe in the decade after World War II. Anni's husband passed some years ago. The two women took, and take, no shit from anybody and raised children pretty much who are the same way.

My sisters, Evan, Kara and Jill are accomplished, masterful and successful. They take care of their own families with the same devotion and also the same discipline (no feet on tables, no glasses without coasters) as their mother did them. Glenn (Evan's late husband), Russ (Kara's fella) and Joe (paired with Jill) are fortunate to have them in their lives and smart enough to know it.

I and my two brothers, Kelly and Adam, are married to women, Sigrid, Linda and Margaret whose Moms raised them to give us the confidence every day to go out into the world and try to reinvent it in our own image and, when we come home at the end of each day, oft defeated but never undaunted, to convince us we can begin again on the morrow because of their love and support. I think at last count we have collectively two point three boxcars of children, some with families of their own.

I realize you may fear with my diabetes, being so sweet puts me in grave danger of being terminally mushy. No worries, I'm not, as I choose to invoke the deathless words of Ray Wylie Hubbard to close. Love ya, Mom(s), all of you.

-bill kenny 

Hannes and Siggy Have Yet To Be Heard From

I have a great deal of respect for any and all firearms. I served in the US Air Force for eight years and grasped the concept of weaponry and its applications very early on. There was never any need to know the text of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. 

Here it is in Thomas Jefferson's own handwriting.

Maybe joined together writing is a little hard to read and let's face it, that is a little faded after all this time. Let me help. "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." 

Don't wish to get in the middle of any discussion (started to type "argument") over baring arms or arming bears but I think maybe we spend way too much time fixated on the clause following the comma after "a free state." 

And you can call me crazy but I'm also thinking Balew is not what TJ had in mind. 
-bill kenny

Best Part of Waking Up

I get up early on weekday mornings. Admittedly nowhere near as early as my rise and shine younger brother, Mr. Chariots of Fire, but early for me (though for much of this past week, owing to later in the previous evening's activities, I've been getting up a half hour later) and it's so early that I'm mostly sleep-walking for the first thirty minutes or so after my feet hit the bedroom floor.

That usually works out okay as much of my getting ready to head to the gym, or to work or to just simply greet the day, is a routine that I help out by organizing the evening before. I lay out my morning medications, not meditations as auto-correct keeps trying to suggest, next to the nasal spray which, in turn, is next to the glucose meter which is always to the left of the sphygmomanometer. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Some mornings I get up, slap on gym clothes, carry my work clothes on a hanger and head to the gym, drive to work, shower and get dressed for whatever adventures lie ahead. Some mornings, like yesterday, I shower at home and get dressed for work before heading there. 

About four times a year, for no actual or particular reason, I stop shaving and then, after a couple of days, tell myself  I'm growing a beard (because technically I am). I pretend that this time, I'll look dashing and debonair. Sort of like Brad Pitt meets Antonio Banderas. Instead, I always look more like the bear, Ben, in Grizzly Adams. 

Actually, that's a vast overstatement. I look like a 'pennbruder' (a hobo) says my wife and she's being kind. I resemble that guy on the corner of Main and Water Streets with the dirty rag and the squeegee bottle who wants to clean your windshield for a quarter while you're waiting at the light. And, be warned, I don't have change for a five. 

Anyway, yesterday morning after showering and shaving I was ready to brush my teeth (I can skip shaving for weeks at a time but I have to brush my teeth at least twice a day because, well, because I have to). I keep the toothpaste standing on its head in the short plastic 5-ounce cup that holds the dental rinse I start with followed by the actual tooth brushing (teeth brushing?). For whatever reason, instead of putting the rinse in the cup, I used the Stetson aftershave I keep on a shelf beside the shower. 

Unscrewing the cap, pouring the aftershave into the cup and lifting the cup to my mouth set off no alarm bells at all. My nose, fortunately for me, was way more awake than any other body part it seems and got a big whiff of the Stetson stuff and kept slapping at my front lobe until the rest of my brain went 'whoa!' and I caught a look at myself in the mirror looking sheepish (and unshaven). I then smiled because I had the gums and teeth to do that, safely, at least once more. Good morning, indeed.
-bill kenny