Early Until Late

It's not so much 'guess where I'm headed today' as it is 'why aren't you going, too?'

Norwich, Connecticut, 2018

After all, 

-bill kenny

Take a Really Deep Breath

I started getting paid to work during the summer of 1968 as a parking lot attendant, food service employee, and occasional lifeguard at Sandy Beach (and Drive-In), owned by Sam Slomowitz, "Mr. Sam," and his wife, "Mrs.Sam" at Harvey's Lake, Pennsylvania. I had turned sixteen that April and I don't think I needed to shave yet. 

I was sixty-six this past April and defined who I was by what I did for a living for every day of that past half a century. Today I retire. 

I feel everything from exhilaration to abject terror in looking at the vast expanse of my life yet to be lived (I hope) without a map, a compass or any idea of where that feeling of 'this is where I belong' should and could be. I think of Joseph Heller's Yossarian (my all-time hero) at the end of Catch-22  preparing to run away and smile (though maybe it's a grimace). 

I suspect I shall probably feel this way for every waking moment remaining. I never worry about getting lost because everyone tells me where to go and now here I am about to have all the time in the world, trying to make each moment count. 

For Patrick and Michelle, our two children, all that bullshit as you grew up when I gave so much of my time to total strangers, always at your expense and could only offer you 'if I had the time' is, I can finally concede, just so much bullshit. The adults you became despite my absence amaze and astonish me every day. 

For Sigrid, the light and love of my life, who married me four plus decades ago and who promised then to love me for better and for worse, I'm wondering if for three meals a day every day may be a bridge too far. I guess we'll find out. I hope you'll meet me in the land of hope and dreams.
-bill kenny       

A Little Somethin' I Learned at Dad School

Just look at them and sigh

Show; don't tell.
-bill kenny

The Rose City Blooms

If there was ever a moment to be a petal or even a thorn in the Rose City, that moment will be, arguably, this Saturday. Go to bed early Friday and prepare to rise and shine oh bright early Saturday morning for the 2018 edition of the Rose Arts Festival.

If you caught any of the Festival's revival and return last year at Chelsea Parade then just think bigger, better and lots more and you'll be close to what the organizers have spent months working on for this year's event.  

Perhaps you're someone who enjoys pancakes for breakfast and a 5K and 10K road race, with lots of live music and interactive art and community activities throughout the day with a chance to play eighteen holes of miniature golf indoors in the Otis Library. 

Where on earth do you think you might find all of that in one place? This is the part of the column where you say the  'Rose Arts Festival, of course!.' (the 'of course!' is optional, but a nice touch.) I think we may have to practice this reader participation stuff but after the Rose Arts Festival is over.  

Chelsea Parade will be the center for daytime Rose Arts Festival activities and, ideally, just about the most populous (if not popular) place in the state Saturday starting at half past eight with a fun run (I personally think the phrase is oxymoronic but to each his own) and/or a pancake breakfast (why can't you do both, as long as you're careful jogging with the syrup decanter?).

Both the 5 and 10 K road races follow at eight with a Rose Bud Parade beginning at ten and then hours and hours and hours of music, exhibits, demonstrations, magic show, and art. Speaking of which, there will be all kinds of Creative Station classes, all offered on a first come, first serve basis. 

And what's a  festival without food, you ask (or should). No worries. There's a food court that'll have a smackeral of just about whatever you have a hankering for with enough variety to satisfy any craving. There's also a culinary competition in the mid-afternoon and I'm starting a rumor that they're looking for volunteer judges (I just always happen to have my own napkins).   

There's live music all day from Cowboy and Lady, Ryan Montbleau, Congo Sanchez, and Sister Sparrow and The Dirty Birds (of whom I am a huge fan). And I've not yet mentioned performances by the Chestnut Street Playhouse Cabaret and the NFA Theater group, well, until just now that is. There will be tours of Teel House and a contest for the Best Dressed Pet.

And as the sun goes down, the Rose Arts Festival moves to Downtown After Dark, with more music in more places than your ears can ever imagine. For anyone who still insists there's nothing going on in downtown, just keep saying that but for the rest of there are live performances on almost every street corner until early Sunday. 

If you've been waiting to celebrate the start of summer and the city of Norwich, the Rose Arts Festival this Saturday is your chance to do both. Enjoy!
-bill kenny    

Channeling Geisel

...from my electronic scrapbook. Not all the links survived the journey...

Jon & Kate Meet Dr. Seuss

I don't watch pap on my TV
You'd think that means I watch TLC.
But I'm so bored with What Not to Wear
American Chopper? I do not care.

The shows all seem so fake to me 
Because I remember the "old" TLC. 
The Learning Channel it was called
Until into showbiz it was hauled. 

More glitz, more handheld, more "Me-TV"
Toddlers and Tiaras, dysfunctionality. 
I do hate to brag about this advertisement
But most of their shows are self-aggrandizement. 

Those two luckless losers, Silent Jon and Witch Kate
The newspapers report, will now separate.
Maybe the kiddies can have their own show
Please tell me their names as I do not know. 

Three years ago, both led the most quiet of lives
Then the chaos descended as the cameras arrived.
He was too surly, she was a twit.
How can folks in their homes tune in for this s**t?

They're opportunistic, their kids make a crowd.
Has neither of them ever heard of Lance Loud?
Between diapers and feedings and small children's squeals,
They're fussing and feuding when not cutting deals.

And now, as it happens, Warhol was right.
Fifteen minutes is over so now say good night.
You were famous for being famous, that's the name of the game.
Though no one's quite sure of the source of your fame. 

We'll cap all the cameras and shut down the lights,
And quietly skulk off into the night.
Yeah, it's sad about you, but it's worse about us.
Yourselves and your kids are now under the bus. 

I never watched you so I guess I could gloat,
But I just changed the batteries in my TV remote.
Jon and Kate Gosselin, so their lives are all gone?
Let's turn on the tube, something new will come on.
-bill kenny

This Is the Origins Story I Like Best

There's no reward.
-bill kenny

I'm Still Breathing Into a Paper Bag

People who claim the World Cup is boring are stupid. But it's also okay because it means there's more for me, but yesterday afternoon I had almost all I could stand. 

Seriously. 

Seriously?! 

For three of the four teams in Group F, Wednesday at 10 AM (DST), it's alles oder nichts.
-bill kenny  

Thank You, Interwebz!

As a kid, one of my favorite things to read, along with the Sunday Prince Valiant comic (which I still love to read), was Ripley’s Believe It or Not. In a pre-internet world, it was a classy variation of “News from the News Room Floor” or “The Dog Ate the Parts We Left Out” and for a wide-eyed kid who was struggling to grow up ‘somewhere in the swamps of Jersey,’ it was quite often a revelation.

I thought of all that Thursday morning when my hometown paper offered this news nugget: “Bridgeport Police: Man Doing Push-Ups in Street Likely High on PCP” Makes Red Bull's "Gives You Wiiings" pale in comparison, I think.

As a member of the FBI’s Fitness Protection Program, I’m always on the look-out for alibis and excuses to NOT take care of myself. Thanks, Man in Bridgeport! If I had heroes, you might be nearly one of them.

-bill kenny

Not My Words

In the summer

I stretch out on the shore

And think of you

Had I told the sea

What I felt for you,

It would have left its shores,

Its shells,

Its fish,

And followed me.

-Nizar Qabbani

Waiting for me at work yesterday when I arrived

- bill kenny

The One Over San Luis Rey Would Be a Breeze

I was heading over the Mohegan-Pequot Bridge on Saturday afternoon, from Route 12 towards Route 395 when zipping by me was a man wearing a lime green ball cap (making him visible from space) in a convertible Audi sports-type car, with the top down on the car. (That’s how I was able to get the full flavor for his ball cap).

It was a gorgeous day, maybe one of the ten best days we’ll have all year but my point in mentioning the motorist with the head cover is why? You bought a convertible to put the top down whenever you desire, though I’m guessing more in pleasant/delightful weather than during a rain of frogs or a plague of locusts (and those Rain-X windshield wipers can do nothing to clear your glass, btw), so now that you have, why are you wearing a hat? To me, it’s like wearing a raincoat when you shower. Yes, you can do it but why would you?

Yesterday, practically home coming over what we call the “Asylum Street Bridge” (I‘ve heard ‘old timers’ call it the ‘Canada Bridge’ but have never heard why), a two way traffic bridge that’s in need of repair because of all the wear from people like me who use it as a short-cut to get from where we are to where we wish to be, an auto in the opposite direction executed a 180 degree (I can’t say “U” or “K” because there’s not enough room to do either) on the bridge.

I know this because he did it in front of me, without signaling, and cut me off to turn around. He gambled, correctly, that I like my car more than he likes his and that I was willing to hit the brakes hard to avoid hitting him (while staring in my rear-view mirror and hoping the driver behind me had invested in brakes as well; she had).

The person in the car behind him on the other side, who’d had to make her own sudden stop, was less than impressed by the skills it took to turn around in such a confined space a full-sized Buick Terraplane and was leaning on the horn with her right arm while giving the driver a rating of one rigid digit of her left hand that she followed him with as he finished his maneuver and disappeared up Lafayette Street.

I think she was being a bit harsh as it took a reasonable amount of skill to make that kind of a turn. I feel it was definitely worth more than just a 1. Probably that Olympic Skating Soviet judge I’ve heard so much about.            

-bill kenny

Bullish on Norwich

This weekend's weather was, I'm hoping (and keeping fingers crossed), a preview of what we can expect when Summer 2018 officially arrives tomorrow morning a little bit after six. Not that I wait for calendar pages to tell me what to do. 

I wasn't alone this weekend enjoying the Norwich Harbor as the 30th Annual Juneteenth Celebration shared space and place of pride with boaters at the marina and walkers and gawkers (like me) along with kayakers at Howard T. Brown Park and fisherfolk (I'm working on a term that reflects the sport's appeal to men and women and that's the best I've gotten so far, but I'm open to suggestions). 

There were lots of us out and about enjoying the great weather and a lot of great weather to enjoy. One of the improvements that regular Harbor visitors like us shave noticed in recent years is how places to enjoy a meal or sit and sip some liquid refreshment have multiplied mostly a block or so from the water.     

On weekends, especially fair-weather ones, I try to log fifteen-thousand or more steps and as I see  Norwich from the sidewalk at speeds approaching and sometimes exceeding four miles an hour (admittedly only when I'm walking downhill) affords me ample opportunity to savor the various flavors of the city I've now lived in for more than a quarter of a century. 

I cannot remember, because I wasn't here the businesses that once lined both sides of Main Street from Burnham Square to who-knows-where nor have I ever experienced the hustle and bustle of Thursday night shopping across Franklin Square, but I have read and re-read (and still very much enjoy) the Bill Stanley books I've always chosen to believe he intended to be equal parts postcards from the past and signposts of the future for a city he was so passionate about. 

I never had the good fortune of meeting Mr. Stanley but the longer I've lived here the easier I find it to understand why he was such a vocal supporter of Norwich, past, present, and future. We have a lot to be proud of and while I'll agree 'we are certainly not Mystic' as someone yet again scolded me Sunday morning as we crossed paths near Yantic Cemetery, at some point not even Mystic was Mystic. 

And when someone (else) asks me via email "don't you get tired of being a cheerleader for this place?" My easy answer is nope, not at all.

I spent some quality time Saturday with a very friendly Monocle the Dog (I knew that liverwurst aftershave would come in handy someday) at a new haberdashery and tuxedo rental business that's opened on Broadway practically across the street from Craftsman Cliff Roasters, who now have a Little Library on the sidewalk out front so you can read a book to complement your coffee. 

There's an Indian food restaurant working to open on Main Street with a great view of the Reid & Hughes building which has seen more activity this month than in (I'm guessing) the last decade. And next weekend is the Rose City Arts Festival returning to Chelsea Parade (last year's revival was fun for all) during the daylight before making way for live music in Chelsea as our summer nights begin. 

When I walk in Norwich, I always wear pants with pockets so I have someplace to put all the fun and enjoyment because this is my town now. You should try making it yours. See what happens.
-bill kenny       

             

I'm Younger Than That Now

From exactly ten years ago...as I wrote it then, or tried to.

of Mice and Men

A week or so ago, there was an exhibition and information session at the Otis Library in Norwich, CT on city plans and the history of city planning in Norwich over the years. I didn't go, not because I wasn't (or am not) interested in what happens in the city in which I live but, as James McMurty says, "I'm not from here, I just live here." Based on what I read in the local papers, it seemed to go about the way I feared it would. 

The accounts suggested those who attended were impressed but dismayed in almost equal amounts by the number of detailed studies accomplished (and the decades these plans covered) and how almost, without exception, they were shelved, left to gather dust until cleaned and moved when the shelf was reorganized to accommodate the next plan that was commissioned. There seemed to be an undercurrent of chagrin at the realization a lot of folks had asked a lot of questions, and gotten a large number of answers and then no one was interested in any of it.

Seems almost like a case of MADD, Municipal Attention Deficit Disorder, which is a challenge many small cities, with large numbers of volunteers, will always face that's compounded by the twin plagues of too much to do and not enough time to do it all in. In Norwich our City Council and Mayor all have full-time, and real-time, jobs and lives beyond City Hall.

They have hired professional city management and department heads and municipal employees but when one of us residents says 'somebody oughta do somethin' about that (whatever that is on any given day) we usually are thinking of the Council and Mayor. Makes sense-we elect them--we don't vote for the Comptroller or the Personnel Director. 

And, think about it: what exactly is a plan? It's a map, of sorts, that takes you from where we are to where we'd like to be and transports you from now to some time in the future. It's a little bit like going to Grandma's except, because we're a city, there are sometimes discussions about whose Grandma we're going to visit and what her house looks like. 

I always want a house with a yard big enough for a swing set (and a pony, of course)--but some think a Starbucks is a better idea while others don't speak up at all until after we've driven past Grandma's house. And don't get me started on what route to drive to get there or whose car we're going in! The discussions on all of this can get so heated, there's a danger we lose sight of what it was we set out to do.

That may be what befell a lot of the plans on display at the library. That so little of any of them has made its way into our daily lives is probably more a sin of omission than commission (you can take the FARC out of the church but you can't take the altar boy out of the FARC). 

The sad part is, to me, I have little doubt we, like towns and cities everywhere, have not gone around the same bridge twice (sorry, Captain Yossarian) for the last time. Unless (and until) George and Lenny agree on where to build the rabbit farm, the chances Steinbeck will ever meet us there or at his grandmother's house are moot.
-bill kenny

So the Only Constant Is Change?

This is from a really long time ago. And I thought it was brilliant at the time I wrote it and re-reading it, it's not my fault that it's still brilliant. Meaning, I suppose, that delusional is a permanent condition. Sigh.

Three Vowels and a Consonant

I was off Monday, taking some compensatory time from the people I work for to stretch a weekend into a shortened work week. In my house, that means BGP's, 'Baby Girl Projekts' (with a "k" in deference to my wife's heritage). 

My son's 27th birthday is approaching and we decided (the plural first person is my fig leaf that it was a joint decision; we know it wasn't, okay? But it costs so little to let me have my dignity. Thank you.) that we'd go to IKEA in New/East Haven CT which everyone here pronounces Eye-Key-ah and which we tend to call Ick-Kay-uh from all those years ago when they weren't in the USA and neither were we.

We started shopping in the IKEA in Wallau, (West) Germany back before we had our own family and while there were still two Germanys. It was a radically different way to buy furniture and we furnished our entire apartment in Offenbach am Main with it and were able to make do with the provisional store after an employee accidentally set fire to the one in Wallau and it burned to the ground (that much wood created flames that formed a glow on the horizon we could see from our house, some 40 kilometers away). I've always enjoyed IKEA because their stuff has clean lines and is simple to assemble. 

A lot of the furniture names are fun to say as well, except the ones that have an "O" that isn't an "O", you know, the "O" with the line through it. I think they could just skip that letter altogether. Some kind of Swedish variant of Donovan's "First There Is a Mountain." 

Sometimes, the furniture is fiendishly clever in its design so much so that when we visit the Connecticut store, I feel there are more bright ideas per square foot there than in any other place in the state. Based on the behavior in Hartford, I think I win.

We used to travel I-95 South to get there but I HATE I-95 in either direction. I think through some point in the late Fifties it was probably faster to use 95 as part of the trek from Boston to NYC but then population growth in the corridor turned stretches of it into a parking lot with tollbooths. Years, ago, people mocked me as a resident of New Jersey ("what exit?"). The Turnpike Authority, who had their own police force and were NOT afraid to use it, expanded a huge stretch of 95 into six lanes in either direction. 

Some wags suggested it was to make it even easier and faster to get through and out of Jersey. Be that as it may, when you have 95 in Connecticut practically two lanes in each direction for the entire state, which was great in '58, but not so much in '09, the idea of 'who's laughing now' comes to mind.

We take 82 from Norwich onto 80, I think (I just drive and not especially well; directions I leave to my navigator) and then a bit of 91 and then 34 to IKEA. I skip the ferry ride at Chester and take the scenic route through Hadlyme (which to my mind should be the next town neighbor to Gotmilk and GimmeGoodLovin, but isn't) and East Haddam and Deep River and who knows what else.

I saw campaign signs supporting Merrick Alpert in what I thought was his uphill battle to unseat Senator Christopher Dodd in a Democratic Party primary in 2010. The signs were in Haddam, which I've always believed in political geography is about as hallowed Democratic ground as you can get. Maybe that 'culture of corruption' mantra and a sense that Chris has stayed way too long at the fair are catching up with the Doddster. 

There are already two Republicans seeking their party's nomination to run against him and the election, itself, isn't until November 2010. Maybe Connecticut will end up with two independent Democratic Senators. Of course, before that happens I'll have figured a shortcut to get from the IKEA lot back on to Route 80 and skipped all the color of a staycation that driving through New Haven can mean. At least I can dream I will.
-bill kenny

For All the Lads Who Are Now Dads

At the risk of repeating myself but not caring if I do...

You Will Still Be Here Tomorrow

I wrote what follows some time ago. I'm hoping the wisdom I believed to be there when I first offered this arrives shortly but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Being my wife's spouse and our children's father are the two things I do best and between us most days I'm not all that good at either of them. My wife makes the former work for both of us.

As for the latter, I didn't take classes and while I yearned for an indeterminate probationary period, there was none. And nothing but on-the-job training. It's the hardest job I could ever love and despite what I believed while I was on the giving end, Dad is the highest compliment I can receive in the whole world. 

And today is our day. Of course, all of us who are fathers have people to thank (especially our children without whom technically....) and I won't even try to list all of the fathers whom I have had the good fortune to know because that list would go on forever.

I have to pause for the father I shared with my brothers and sisters.

I caged this photo from Adam who got it from the school where Dad taught (and which I attended). He got pictures, and I still get newsletters and fundraiser solicitations from them. Life is unfair, but funny that way.

Our dad was a short time here and a long-time gone but there have been many times I've had wistful and wishful conversations with him about our two kids (who are now themselves adults). I think in many ways, I've spoken more with my father in the three-plus decades since he passed than I did in all the years we shared the planet.

I know these are fantasy conversations because had I ever asked him for advice and had he ever offered it, there would have been no place for me to put it. So full of myself was I for so many years that's it's only been in the last score and more that I've learned to appreciate how fortunate I am that those who do love me do so despite rather than because of me. I can't help but think he'd have laughed his ass off at that because of how often I've laughed knowing it was true for him as well.

Getting married to my wife made me a man. Having and loving the children that together we made and raised made me a better person. Happy Father's Day.
-bill kenny

Stop Reading This!

Good Saturday morning, and so much for the pleasantries. 

Let’s not dilly-dally about this; as happy as I am you’ve stopped by today, stop reading this right now because you’re probably missing out on the best football you will ever see in this life.

And by football, I’m referring to the description the rest of the world has as opposed to that Hand Egg stuff we here in the Occasionally United States call ‘football.’  Here’s your visual aid.

And before you ask, the USMNT didn’t make the World Cup for the first time since 1994, and we didn’t deserve to. Stop worrying.

Pull up a couch near the biggest big-screen television you can find and enjoy every moment of the motion and the magic. With some good fortune, you’ll soon more fully appreciate why it’s called the beautiful game.  

-bill kenny

A Key in the Door

It was a made for television moment from two of the best showboats if not showmen in the business and it's kind of fortunate that Americans have so little use for history, our own as well as everyone else's, otherwise some of us might have thought we were being revisited by the ghost of Neville Chamberlain.     

"So you know Dennis Rodman, too?"

Savor the visual as something very few of us ever thought we might see but the devil is in the details in the text of the statement both men signed, or, rather is conspicuously absent from it. 

Four points, and none of them on either man's haircut though not for lack of trying I have to assume. The tricky part is #3, the "reaffirming" of the commitment to 'working toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.' 

For those who love the English language, 'reaffirming' is another word for 'we're saying it again like we did at the end of April.' Repeating it, which is all that has happened in the statement, costs no one anything, ever. 

But what's missing is a four-word phrase that belonged right there in that third point, "complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization."  When we speak of this, and we shall incessantly until the next bright shiny object in the news cycle comes along, we may be hard-pressed to articulate specifically what was accomplished. 

As a rule, I never praise the day before the evening arrives and I worry that if the past is indeed prologue, we may have some dark hours yet before us.
-bill kenny        

Follow the Flag

from USFlag.org:

The History Of Flag Day

The Fourth of July was traditionally celebrated as America's birthday, but the idea of an annual day specifically celebrating the Flag is believed to have first originated in 1885. BJ Cigrand, a schoolteacher, arranged for the pupils in the Fredonia, Wisconsin Public School, District 6, to observe June 14 (the 108th anniversary of the official adoption of The Stars and Stripes) as 'Flag Birthday'. 

In numerous magazines and newspaper articles and public addresses over the following years, Cigrand continued to enthusiastically advocate the observance of June 14 as 'Flag Birthday', or 'Flag Day'.

On June 14, 1889, George Balch, a kindergarten teacher in New York City, planned appropriate ceremonies for the children of his school, and his idea of observing Flag Day was later adopted by the State Board of Education of New York. On June 14, 1891, the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia held a Flag Day celebration, and on June 14 of the following year, the New York Society of the Sons of the Revolution, celebrated Flag Day.

Following the suggestion of Colonel J Granville Leach (at the time historian of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution), the Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Dames of America on April 25, 1893 adopted a resolution requesting the mayor of Philadelphia and all others in authority and all private citizens to display the Flag on June 14th. Leach went on to recommend that thereafter the day be known as 'Flag Day', and on that day, school children be assembled for appropriate exercises, with each child being given a small Flag.

Two weeks later on May 8th, the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution unanimously endorsed the action of the Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Dames. As a result of the resolution, Dr. Edward Brooks, then Superintendent of Public Schools of Philadelphia, directed that Flag Day exercises be held on June 14, 1893, in Independence Square. School children were assembled, each carrying a small Flag, and patriotic songs were sung and addresses delivered.

In 1894, the governor of New York directed that on June 14 the Flag be displayed on all public buildings. With BJ Cigrand and Leroy Van Horn as the moving spirits, the Illinois organization, known as the American Flag Day Association, was organized for the purpose of promoting the holding of Flag Day exercises. On June 14th, 1894, under the auspices of this association, the first general public school children's celebration of Flag Day in Chicago was held in Douglas, Garfield, Humboldt, Lincoln, and Washington Parks, with more than 300,000 children participating.

Adults, too, participated in patriotic programs. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, delivered a 1914 Flag Day address in which he repeated words he said the flag had spoken to him that morning: "I am what you make me; nothing more. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself."

Inspired by these three decades of state and local celebrations, Flag Day - the anniversary of the Flag Resolution of 1777 - was officially established by the Proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson on May 30th, 1916. While Flag Day was celebrated in various communities for years after Wilson's proclamation, it was not until August 3rd, 1949, that President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day.

-bill kenny

Our Boys of Summer

If you have a little trouble reading this today, that's only fair since I had difficulty typing it probably because I'm wearing gloves. Actually, I'm wearing baseball gloves on both hands, just in case a foul ball heads in my direction. I believe in being prepared.

Scouting aside, I'm getting ready for the start of the 2018 New York-Penn League baseball season, which is already underway but as far as I'm concerned our Connecticut Tigers' home opener at Dodd Stadium this Friday against the Lowell Spinners makes it official.   

Let me share some wisdom from Cal Ripken, Jr., the Baltimore Orioles baseball immortal, "you can be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball." As someone frequently accused of being childish, I like to have Cal's quote in my pocket. Comes in especially useful this time of year.

The warmer temperatures are arriving, at least in theory, bringing bluer skies and longer days. We've observed Memorial Day, most of the kids are finishing school and even the calendar says next Thursday is the "official" start of Summer. So this is the perfect moment for local, professional baseball. 

As you probably know, the Connecticut Tigers, are the Class A Short-Season affiliates of the Detroit Tigers, but did you know the New York-Penn League (NYPL) is the oldest Single-A baseball league in the United States? It hardly shows, in my opinion. 

Our Tigers play teams from Aberdeen, Maryland, (whose principal owner is none other than Cal Ripken, Jr.), the farm hands of the Oakland A's, the Burlington, Vermont Lake Monsters. and open at home Friday against the baby Bosox. 

And, for geography lovers, the Tigers will also tangle with the Brooklyn Cyclones, affiliated with the New York Mets as well as with the Staten Island Yankees. (I'm betting you can guess their affiliation). 

When our kids were kids, they were the perfect reason for me to head to Dodd Stadium with them back in the days of the Navigators and Defenders. Baseball at Dodd then and now is a great value and the CT Tigers are terrific family entertainment. 

Class A is a learning experience that forges potential into professional talent and you have to admire the efforts both teams make on the field. There's not a bad seat in Dodd Stadium, you can still follow the action while getting a burger, fries or whatever at a concession on the concourse and you don't need to take out a second mortgage to pay for a family outing at a Tigers game. 

For fans, it's an afternoon in the sun or a nice evening under the stars but for the players, this is real-life and it's their real lives. They give it all they've got because the goal is that "trip to the Bigs." And, at last count, seventeen former CT Tigers are in the Major Leagues, so hard work is rewarded.    

Meanwhile, up at Dodd Stadium, there'll be plenty of between-innings silliness to keep us entertained. And between you and me, I'm not sure we'd see adults do the Chicken Dance with their children and (often) their grandchildren on the roof of a dugout at Fenway, Shea or Yankee Stadium so maybe the best fun is the fun you make yourself. 

Did I mention this Friday night home game has fireworks afterward? Actually, there will be fireworks all season long because how else would you celebrate the greatest time of the year, baseball season? See you there (and bring your glove).

Thanks, I’m Good

Not sure what it says about us a country or a culture that, with the leader of one nation negotiating peace on the Korean peninsula with an infantile narcissist (and btw, the North Korean media can use the exact same headline), our news feeds are all abuzz with reports of Sonic’s Pickle Juice Slush.  

In the grand scheme of things, you’d think it was a simple choice between coverage of an effort at mitigation of tensions that stretch back to close to seventy years or wall to wall reporting on a semi-frozen fast food item that (from what I’ve read) could prove to be so sour one sip could cause your underwear to give you a wedgie. But no….nothing is ever as it seems

In short, this is the Information age’s equivalent of a cat meme. Worldwide, real-time and totally live. Thank goodness we don't have scratch and sniff internet. Yet.  And then we wonder if there’s intelligent life “out there” why they don’t visit.

-bill kenny

Between Exhalation and Exultation

I don't need much of a reason to focus on myself and my own inner world. 

Being the self-absorbed bastard that I am (the apple doesn't fall far (enough) from the tree), I have watched current events over the last week to ten days unfold refracted, reflected and ultimately refined through so much of the planned and unplanned activities within my own life. 

Raised as a loyal son of Holy Mother Church, I've drifted and dawdled for decades as the stream of my life has taken me where I've convinced myself I've wanted to go, not that I've not sometimes thought about Big Things from when I was a kid and how all of that has now become all of this. 

Every organized religion and a couple of the somewhat disorganized ones have sacred writings, scriptures if you will. No matter the region, or the religion, it's part of our human genome, the need to be a part of something bigger. 

Be it the Koran, the Old Testament, the New Testament, or a roman a clef by Danielle Steel, there's a narrative-a place to go look for details. When you argue a matter of theology and someone says, 'you can look it up!' the texts are what they're referring to.

There's the blood of the Lamb, the descent of the dove, the tongues of fire, the burning bush and an almost unending number of symbols and signs that The Lord (however you perceive S/He to be) uses to get our attention and pass along the Word. 

What if we were the first generation of inhabitants on this planet who had a Deity? I don't pretend to know what all of those before us had, I'm just saying we're the first and Our God uses the tools we have today in much the way as in the days of old we've read about. 

Somewhere I read of how someone speculated on how that God would communicate the Ten Commandments, if, like so many of us, S/He had to use text messages. 

Perhaps:
1. no1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg's
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-X only w/ m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl. ttyl, JHWH. ps. wwjd?

What would you ask if you had just one question?
-bill kenny

Basically, Because I Can

This is from almost a decade ago. We don't plant gardens at my house anymore though sometimes we still talk about doing it (okay, I talk about doing it). I looked in the backyard yesterday and the fencing for the garden is still there but it's disorder in many places, not unlike in some respects, the city in which I live.   

Rocky and Bullwinkle Offer a Teachable Moment

This year the garden my daughter and I have planted in our yard is different from our gardens of the past decade and longer. The selection of vegetables has been restricted in terms of variety and volume (we had so many tomatoes last year it was ironic that it wasn't a local election year if you follow my drift), so that planted this time are far fewer types of tomato plants and lettuce. Perhaps the biggest change in the garden she and I have planted this year is that I have planted none of it. 

I came home from work one day last week and she and her mother had traveled to "CT's Home Improvement Warehouse", the one with the orange signs (as in 'orange you sorry you didn't choose a different color?') and rented the small roto-tiller, the Mantis, chewed up a patch of the backyard, worked in the compost to prepare the plot and planted the crops.

Since, among my talents, is the inability to understand when to water young plants, I don't even do that part of the garden. I open the back door, walk down the stairs, stand on the concrete landing and admire the fruits of not-my-labor. I never grow tired of this. Between us, had I realized how much fun gardening this way was, I'd have taken it up years ago. Assuming my daughter would have allowed me. 

Michelle is very much her mother's daughter in terms of attention to detail (the map she drew of the garden with the layout and distribution of plants is color-coded and seems to also be to scale). In years past, I would draw schematics on white pieces of paper in ink with my recollections of what I thought we had planted and where. Usually in equal parts less than accurate. Two, or maybe three, years ago we waited for most of the season for the rhubarb that I thought I had planted to break through. Turns out it may have been elsewhere in the patch but had been mooted when I'd clipped it with the mower. 

The garden is in and doing well, or as well as anyone who has only been around for forty-eight hours can be doing, except as I learned yesterday morning, our neighborhood posse of squirrels, the same animals who show up, magically, when they sense Michelle might be home from college on weekends and holidays, and beg, literally, for peanuts, played the 'let's dig up the corn plants' card yesterday with deleterious effect. 

Michelle was outraged at their betrayal. To their credit, they were thorough, though I knew better than to offer that observation aloud. The squirrels ate every shoot of every plant, digging them out of the garden so as to enjoy every mouthful. I find it interesting that since pulling this stunt, we haven't seen the little ba$tards since.

They're usually all over the back landing with the first rays of the sun, banging into the blue recycling bins (searching perhaps for something to eat) making enough noise to attract attention, hopefully, to be followed by fistfuls of peanuts being flung in their direction. 

This morning and all of today, not so much or so many. My daughter is angry and I think the squirrels know it, and no matter what Animal Planet has taught me, I think they might even know why. In a way, as I've watched her rearrange our garden, and look to replace the corn plants and then safeguard the replacements, I've come to see our little backyard setback as symbolic of Norwich. 

We have a plan of development in the Rose City, a relatively stable infrastructure, a good handle on our municipal expenses and realistic if not fully articulated goals for small-scale economic development. We know to realize our plans and benefit ourselves and our children, we must be prepared to accept a certain amount of sacrifice in the now for rewards to be reaped in the future. But delayed gratification is so hard and for so many, it's too hard. 

Yes, we know if we eat our seed corn there will nothing to plant or to harvest. But we're hungry now and someone, somewhere could show up with corn enough for all at harvest time and then our sacrifice and self-control will have been unnecessary. At least that's what we tell ourselves and our squirrels. That, and that they can fly. 
-bill kenny