Sunrise and Shine Services

Not sure why I haven't noticed it before now but driving home yesterday after dropping a rent check for our apartment off with our landlord, I passed a sign for (I think) an Episcopalian Church with a sandwich board out front about their Sunday Summer Services Schedule. I'm assuming it's different in some way from their non-summer Sunday services schedule, otherwise, why the sign? 

Traffic was moving too briskly for me to pull over and get a picture on my cell phone of the sign, lest you doubt my veracity (it's not like I'm Pantload45, the Prevaricator in Chief, but still I'll admit that's really low bar to have to clear) but I saw it elsewhere at other churches and denominations as I drove.

Point in fact, once I looked for it the more of those signs with schedule changes I saw. Raised as a Roman Catholic I'd assume there might be a case made to publicize the schedule shift perhaps with doves ascending and tongues of fire as well as a booming voice announcing the summer hours for services, though in my faith the booming voice would best be reserved for calling Bingo numbers.

Meanwhile, I have an image I cannot shake, so I'll infect you with it as well so I have company in Hell of God the Father sitting in a chaise lounge somewhere, pool-side, wearing cargo shorts with a print shirt, sipping an umbrella drink and next to Him, sharing an umbrella, Jesus, with a wife-beater tee-shirt that reads "I'm With Him" but it's lined out and reads instead "I AM Him."   

-bill kenny

         

Revisiting Glory Days

I found this yesterday and even from a distance of nearly a decade my glee at discovering the Poet Laureate of Freehold, New Jersey is older than I is both nearly visible and palpable. I really should see somebody about that sense of unseemly glee I manifest. I should, but I won't. 

I wasn't ready for it when it showed up in the mail earlier this week. Yes, the mug of the slug in the mirror every morning that I shave, unless I let my face grow long, hasn't been smooth and youthful in many a decade, but since the aging has been incremental I've never been sentimental about it happening. I'm getting better, not older, I keep telling myself. If I live to be three hundred and forty-two I should be close to middling by then. 

And then, YIPES!, there he was on the cover of the AARP magazine, BRUCE!!!! Talk about Glory Days. I'm still not comfortable with having an AARP card in my wallet and keep it under my auto club card like maybe the tow truck operator would quibble about a senior discount (I should live so long). AARP is more than just a very organized lobbying group for the over-fifty is nifty set, based on the membership (almost sixty million people) it's a middle-sized country unto itself. 

Springsteen turns sixty in September-I do not recall growing old and I started to see him perform when he'd show up at the Rutgers College commuter Lounge, The Ledge, in my sophomore year, so that would make it 1971, so we're talking....a really long time. I feel it every day but I can't hear it in a single note he sings or the E-Street band plays and as I read the article in the magazine the emotions chased one another, competing with a lot of memories.

As much of the soundtrack of my growing-up years as the Beatles and Every One After made the exclamation mark is Springsteen. Even now as an apprentice doddering buffoon, I can never imagine myself hanging with (Sir) Paul McCartney but can see cruising down Route 34 outside of Toms River's Richard's Cafe casing The Promised Land with a guy I once thought of as 'a Newark' (a greaser). 

Strange Times in Germany story (and I have the poster from his first tour hanging up in my office). Sigrid and I went to see him in the Frankfurt Festhalle. I think we had third-row seats, but more importantly, the Be-Bop Ghost Dancer, BBGD, had a seat directly behind us (actually, directly behind Sigrid). I think I was standing up from the moment I got dressed to go to the show that morning, but BBGD only started dancing as the show began. 

He was transported by the music, head nodding, feet shuffling, arms and hands doing a little boogaloo down Broadway weave. Good energy, lousy luck. He semi-smacked Sigrid on the top of the head, grazing her, and she turned around and looked up at him and made her displeasure quite clear. BBGD seemed to get her point and danced alone for a while but then, the music overcame him again and he popped her, again. Sigrid, whose appreciation of The Boss approaches her enthusiasm for a root canal, slowly stood up and made sure the sleeves on her blouse were pushed towards her elbows as she spoke slow and low to BBGD who was, by this point in his own world. 

Like lightning, the love of my life thrust her arms straight-forward at a velocity I cannot describe and struck BBGD's shoulder blades with the heels of her hands with such force she knocked him heels over head, backward, into the row BEHIND where he had been standing. He landed on his feet, on the beat, still dancing. From the look of rapture on his face, I suspect he still thinks Bruce had something to do with his levitation. 

And maybe he did. He's been moving me for close to four decades and to underscore how we are twin sons of different mothers, the same week he made the cover of Time and Newsweek, I bought BOTH magazines. Coincidence? HA! Didja hear the cops finally busted Madame Marie for telling fortunes better than they do? Just summer gossip, don't believe a word of it.
-bill kenny

A Smile with More than Just My Canine Teeth

In honor of what feels like the dog days of summer, though somewhat ahead of schedule, is a little missive I penned to the universe a long time ago. At last check, I was still waiting for the universe to respond, underscoring the wisdom of 'be careful what you wish for.' 
  
Traveling yesterday afternoon, taking advantage of the nice day for the month of July (I thought it was scheduled earlier in the week, but I'm wrong about this stuff so often), my wife and I were heading from Norwich to Waterford via Route 32 (we can go 395 but there's such a level and pace of traffic it wears me out trying to keep up with it). 

It's not really the road less taken, though the volume of traffic pales in comparison to 395 which is just as well as it connects Norwich and Montville and New London as you travel around the not-so-glamorous back entrance to the Mohegan Sun casino. 

The only tricky part is just as you're hitting Quaker Hill because 32 blends with an exit of 395 and I know from experience on both sides of the merge, it's not a day at the beach. For a driver on 32, the traffic merge involves a reasonably extreme over-your-right shoulder scan of your sector, so to speak, as cars entering far faster than your speed are (in theory) trying to slow down as they merge and before they hit the traffic signal (or you). 

If you're coming off 395 at this exit, all the turtle drivers are to your left and to make it interesting for both of you, at that traffic signal I just mentioned, there's always a lot of people making the right at the light which means they need to get into that lane, and if they cross in front of you, well, stuff can happen.

Which it did yesterday, but funny stuff. It was a guy in a dark Saab, the sedan model (I think that means four doors, right? Anyway, that's what I mean) and he's looking to go straight and get into the left lane on 32 coming off from 395. There wasn't a lot of traffic and it was a pretty easy maneuver.

So much so that I had more than enough opportunity to eyeball his shotgun partner, his dog, a big brown one, window rolled down, head out the window (I'd love to know what they are thinking about aside from 'here, kitty, c'mon Kitty') wearing wraparound sunglasses, just like his owner. 

For a moment, I was watching the SPCA version of the Blues Brothers movie. The part of a trimmer, and far more hirsute, Jake, played by the dog. My turn was approaching and as I put on my blinker, I murmured a short prayer, "Our Lady of Acceleration don't fail us now."
-bill kenny

Dialin' for Dylan

In light of all the bickering and dickering, posturing, pouting, politicking and out and out gaslighting, for my money based at a certain address in Dodge City, but rambling and ranging from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol, the news reports from your chosen channel of poison pill dispenser that all end up sounding like "Oh, yeah? Whatabout..." before descending into false equivalence coupled with finger-pointing and blame-gaming as an integral part of our institutional problem-solving matrix, I think we may be done. 

Welcome to the New American Political Normal, please insert forty cents for the next three minutes. You probably don't get that. At one time in America, we had phones in glass booths on every street corner because we had no phones in our pockets. We could put coins in those phones, starting with a dime, and call people, Mrs. Avery. We can't afford a return to the Good Old Days so this day will have to do. Especially since this is all there is.

Not that long ago, as a nation, we were falling in love with love. We were a nation of dreamers who saw our best days yet to be. Sic transit optimism. As is the case so often in personal relationships, there's a phase in any courtship where every single thing is endearing and precious and then as life grinds on, we find ourselves waiting for the shine to come off. The same habits once so cute become irritations and annoyances and, if unchecked and uncorrected, grounds for growing apart and divorce. And who's to bless and who's to blame?

It's us because it's always us. We routinely hold elections for office-seekers as if we were auditioning magicians. Open the curtain and let the wizards' duel begin! Voila! Healthcare or poof! a balanced budget or Ka-zaam! an exit strategy for a war no one ever wanted, equal treatment of everyone and anyone as some kind of novel and futile gesture, and women's' rights sacrificed for politically expedient and obscure goals. That's our star-spangled kabuki theater. 

All with no money down and no easy, monthly payments. But then when the house lights come up, it's always no more than two old white guys in bathrobes and pointy hats left on stage. 

And a lot of unpaid bills. These bastards wanted to be what we wanted them to be and we sure as hell wanted it as badly as they did. And none of it will ever really happen because none of it was ever really real. "It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." 
-bill kenny

Moving Fast, Everything Looks Great

I'm struggling to become better at riding a bicycle that the Interwebz provided to our daughter Michelle and which she, in turn, gifted to me. We're on the prowl for a small bucket I can use as a helmet as large watermelon shaped domes run in my family but the biggest hassle has been my working to repetitively and repeatedly extend my two legs which is sort required to propel yourself forward on a bicycle. I just don't have that degree of flexibility, yet, in the old pins. I probably didn't have it when I wrote what follows (pre-Lance confesses to cheating), but it didn't stop me or even slow me down a little bit.

It's a lot different from when we were growing up and used them as essential transportation to get to and from the field (the baseball field, of course, what else was there for a kid growing up in the late Fifties and early Sixties?) or from friends' houses. You might start out with just you and Neil, and then go a couple of blocks and pick up Bobby and then all you headed across the development, to the new Levitt houses, where Tommy lived.

I'm talking about bicycles and as kids there was Schwinn and there was Royce Union and not much else. These were big, clunky solid yoke metal frame bikes, with balloon tires and white sidewalls. You had a mousetrap in the back, and that's where you kept your glove, baseball inside of it so that the pocket formed just right. Maybe your dad or somebody else's dad would remember to get the little can of neet's foot oil at the hardware store and you'd work that stuff into the glove before putting it into the mousetrap.

Twenty-six-inch tires on those bikes and maybe, if you had a fancy one, it had front and rear handbrakes, but ours mostly didn't; you just stood on the pedals hard and the rear wheel broke away and wound up sliding to one side or the other. You stopped all right. 

We all knew somebody whose folks had gotten them a bike with three gears, think of it! but we didn't have bikes like that. Going uphill, you pedaled hard-if it got steeper, you pedaled harder. Screw up, you fell off and walked uphill holding the bike by the handlebars, feeling (and looking) like a dork.

I was thinking about all of that yesterday as the bikers, not Marlon Brando and The Wild One raced across parts of France whose towns can only correctly be pronounced by having your adenoids removed. And again this year, one or more people have died along the route at the various stages, and I keep thinking 'nobody ever got hurt when we rode to Resko's house' and that was over an hour back in the day (it'd be like three days in 'now' time).

It wasn't until the LA Olympics in '84, sitting in Germany and watching the highlights of the games the Warsaw Pact boycotted, that I first saw Americans go ga-ga for the most European of sports, in my opinion (unless they make sulking an event). The oval track with the impossible angles of banking, the skinny tires that seemed to be made of solid rubber, the 'Disco in Frisco' skin-tight speedo outfits and most especially those 'revenge of the Alien' head shaped helmets, all of it so aerodynamic I thought these guys could fly. Reading about the Tour de France, I learned flight wasn't the half of it.

I was aware of a Frankfurt am Main based Tour de France cyclist, Didi Thoreau, I think his name was (I have no idea as it turns out) and I couldn't understand how you could make a living as a professional bike rider. I had a movie in my head, where Didi is in Munich, perhaps visiting his fan-club (I'm sure he had one) and checks into the Munich Hilton which is right at the Munchen-Reims airport and what exactly does he put under "occupation"? 'Professional Bicycle Rider' And if the concierge snickers across the desk while reading it, upside down, in the ledger, does he offer to prove it with a bike strapped to his back?

Then in the late Eighties, Greg Lemond, an American from I have no idea where, not only became successful on the European Bicycle race circuit (that's hard to believe, isn't it; a circuit for bike racers? 'See you in Naples?' 'No, I'm training for the Bern Butt Buster, see you there.') he won the Tour de France (and why, by the way, is THAT the big race, or at least the one we all think we've heard of). 

Actually, he won it three times, twice AFTER accidentally shooting himself. He recovered, but after those two victories his career seemed to go away (I always wondered where he'd been shot since we're talking a LOT of hours on a bike seat if you follow my drift. Where's that AFLAC duck when you really need him?)

How many times did Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France before most of us even realized it? And then all the great backstory: the battle against cancer, the birth of the little boy, more bicycle races, more yellow tricots, Sheryl Crow, no more Sheryl Crow, the retirement and then the unretirement and now after four years, he's back on the bike in the thick of the competition, even though the battalion of announcers (and cameras-I love the mini-cam guys riding backwards on the motorcycles thisclose to the charging riders) covering the event are more often now noting with keener and deeper regret he will, in all probability, NOT win the race.

And what does the winner get anyway? A permanent press yellow jersey? The opportunity to write 'winner of the Tour de France' on that hotel check-in form? Do you think Duna could do that?
-bill kenny 

More than a Blast from a Past

I rediscovered this one and while it's old (as am I), I think the larger point I was struggling to make (and not very successfully I have to concede) still stands up. It has nothing to do with our current political climate though I think that is connected to the one already in evidence when I wrote this. I called it by a different name at that time.

One-Trick or Not

I don't remember what the product is; actually, eventually I do, but when the commercial starts I can never recall the sponsor (it's for an Internet bank)-and a grown-up is sitting at a short table with two little girls of less than (probably) five years of age. He asks the first little girl if she would like a pony, and the child eagerly says 'yes' and the man gives her a small pony replica. Smiles all around.

The man asks the other little girl if she, too, would like a pony and she responds in the affirmative, at which point he makes a 'chck-chck' sound and out from behind this large dollhouse ambles a real pony, bridle, and saddle. The child is delighted. 

The first child not so much and we get some close-ups of her face as we hear the squeals of delight from the other little girl. Eventually, she screws up the courage to tell the grown-up very non-judgmentally for a child who just got double-crossed 'you didn't say I could have a real pony.' To which he quickly rejoins, 'you didn't ask.' 

The announcer proceeds to read advertising copy about sneaky is as sneaky does, trust whatever the bank is to do whatever banks are about, grown-ups eat bugs or some such palaver. What I always come back to is the abject hatred on the first girl's face for all things adult. She isn't close to tears or a tantrum; she's close to homicide. 

Either she is an incredibly gifted actress at such a young age, or the producers of the commercial didn't let her in on the joke and what we are seeing in the commercial is her actual animus, spontaneous and unrehearsed. 

Sometimes when I follow the news even casually, I expect to see the streets of America littered with plastic pony replicas. We are, I think, as a people the most relentlessly optimistic nation on earth, perhaps unrealistically optimistic. I grew up in a USA that liked Ike, grudgingly extended equal rights to everyone, went in one generation from a chicken in every pot to two cars in every garage and which now finds itself, for lack of a more elegant term, flat-out broke. 

The part that doesn't have me worried is that we can't fix what doesn't work, because our history tells me we can. What bothers me is will we choose to repair ourselves? We've conspicuously consumed just about everything this planet has to offer and its riches haven't come close to filling that hole in our hearts. And now the one in our wallet is even larger than that one. 

We've conditioned ourselves to find solutions in fifteen, thirty and sixty-second increments and ideas like universal health care, greenhouse gases, equal rights for everyone, and economic reinvestment, don't lend themselves to discussions or explanations that can be jammed in between the blue mountains of a beer can commercial and the soft porn of a shaving cream advertisement. It's not even fair to say we lose interest-we never had any. 

Our whole lives guys in suits with briefcases fixed everything. We never asked, because we never wanted to know. We built armies, we went to the moon, we sold each other real estate everyone at the closing knew wasn't worth the money being paid for it, but no one got upset or concerned because the Suits were there and they were fabulous. We, too, were fabulous. Heck, everything was fabulous, unless it was brilliant.

And now the suits are shiny with wear, and in some cases, there are holes at the elbows and the sleeves are ragged. And the property we used to build the grand list to elevate the bond rating for the twenty-year municipal debentures we sold to finance the construction of the new transportation hub of the city that would increase all of our property values, well, bad news on that front as the sub-prime mortgage lenders who shouldn't have advanced us the money they didn't have in the first place are all flopping and twitching on the beach as the tide of prosperity continues to rush out and no one warned us about the undertow.

Except, of course, we were warned, but we thought they were asking if we wanted a pony.
-bill kenny

Celebrating Ourselves More (and More Often)

Judging from reports in Sunday's Bulletin, friends and neighbors in Greeneville had themselves a time Saturday enjoying both some gorgeous summer weather and one another's company at their Annual Spirit of Greeneville Day. 

Good on 'em. 
We have a lot to celebrate, not just in Greeneville, but throughout Norwich and, quite frankly, in light of how much time we seem to spend being unhappy about what we have (or more precisely what we feel we don't have), let me offer that we don't spend nearly enough time in positive self-talk about who we are and what we do well. 

Far too often I believe it's easy to find someone (and usually more than just one someone) who has a problem for every solution and who sees happiness as a rationed commodity so don't you (whoever you are) take too much joy in something going on around here, or else (I'm never really sure what is supposed to happen with the 'or else' part). 

I think when looking at news in and around Norwich and the people with whom we share our city too many of us wait for the other shoe to drop when we could dance barefoot if we so chose. We keep checking to see what the reaction is over at the cool kids' lunch table forgetting there are no cool kids (or lunch or tables, come to think of it). 

It takes every kind of people, sang Robert Palmer, to make what life is all about and we have the singular good fortune in The Rose City to have just about every kind of people there are. So we should be as filled with life as the days are long (and maybe more so). 

Norwich native son and nationally known author, John Andriote, referred to Norwich as 'an American melting pot in a saucepan size.' And I have to believe the more open-hearted and open-minded we are in our interactions with one another, the better off as a city we all grow to be. 

So I'm happy we have the Taste of Italy, Juneteenth Day, the Saint Patrick's Day Parade, and the Greek Festival, among other celebrations but there's room for so much more to reflect the contributions of so many others.

This Friday morning at ten is the dedication of the Ellis Ruley Memorial Park on the ruins of the Ruley homestead over on Hammond Avenue (just beyond Fitzgerald Field) on the East Side. 

Recognition of Ruley's life and art, as well as his place in Norwich's history, was very long in coming and I hope when/if you have the chance to visit the park at the crest of a winding and steep (but paved and handicap-accessible) path in the woods, you'll savor the solitude, find some inspiration of your own, and offer some thanks for the efforts of the too-many-to-name volunteers who made its creation one of the ways they make Norwich better for all of us.

And speaking of better for all of us, put Sunday afternoon (from two to six) on your calendar as Franklin Square (between Bath andWillow Streets) hosts Peruvian Fest 2018, a collaboration between the Global City Norwich initiative and Peruvians United of Connecticut. 

There promises to be enough food, music, fun, and more for all of us (they had me at bouncy water slide), so make sure to wear pants with pockets so you'll have someplace to put all the fun. We already have a name for it, Norwich.
-bill kenny 



            

Two Birds, One Stone

I wrote this for my sister, Kara, on her birthday and am reviving it as it gives me a chance to celebrate her natal anniversary again and to tell stories from her childhood that she hoped I had already told to everyone she knew (but was wrong). Here goes. 

Today is my middle of three younger sisters, Kara's, birthday, so many happy returns of the day and if anyone is able to have a happy day, it is she.  As a child who was the firstborn of the second cohort of kids my Mom and Dad had, Kara was about as easy-going as the day is long (July vice January in case you were wondering; and there's a reason, Jill, why I mention January and when we get there on the calendar, I'll return to that thought). 

She and Russ, her husband, have three young men of various ages but of similar disposition, making a home (and/or home base) for one another in the most central part of Central New Jersey and though I don't see them often (they have some of the best luck of anyone you'll ever know), they are a delight. 

Before Kara was Stella (which is what Adam and Kara's sister, Jill, call her), she was Clarabelle (there is NO point in being the oldest child, with all the embarrassing memories of every other sibling, if those memories are not summoned at the most inappropriately appropriate moments such as birthday celebrations) and this story would be even better if I could remember more of it.

My sister, Kara

I always tell people 'we grew up in New Brunswick', which is true except for the use of the preposition 'in.' We actually grew up near New Brunswick in what was called Franklin Township, on Bloomfield Avenue just off Easton Avenue and about eight minutes, by car (because you went by car or walked everywhere because the bus was sort of a joke, except the passengers were the punchline) from New Brunswick back before J & J reinvented the city in its image and likeness. For most of the late Fifties and all of the Sixties and Seventies, New Brunswick had Rutgers University and Johnson and Johnson. 

Mom did the grocery shopping at the A & P and got prescriptions filled at the Kilmer Pharmacy in the Acme Market plaza (we never got groceries there) but all the kids' clothes came from PJ Arnold's in downtown New Brunswick and for shoes, she took everyone to Gluck Shoes on Hamilton Street (I think), where she could get Stride-Rite shoes (with the all-important 'cookies' in the insoles for growing feet) for both Kara and Jill. 

I usually had my brother, Adam, and Mom would have the Dynamic Duo. Lost in the mists of (my) memory is exactly how Kara got tagged with Clarabelle--Jill, nearly two years Kara's junior and from the moment of her birth one of the three most intense people in this hemisphere (she has moved up in the rankings as well as weight class in the ensuing years) was, from her earliest age, given to the dramatic gesture, so much so that Mom called her Sarah (Heartburn) an homage, of sorts, to a famous actress of my grandmother's era, Sarah Bernhardt. 

Gluck's Shoes, actually all retail clothiers, haberdashers, foundation garment and other retailers were unlike anything we have today, with people who waited on you, bringing you the articles you described and helping you with them. The measurement of a child's foot was too important to be left to a self-service operator-and each young clerk, usually a man, carried a Brannock and swooped in at the moment you sat down, measured both feet, scribbled down the numbers and performed some kind of mathematical maneuver, disappearing into the back and returning with boxes of shoes. And that was that. 

This particular shopping trip my sisters were more than a bit restive, though the specific reasons now elude me, and Mom was verbally nudging Kara who would dawdle and daydream over each new pair of shoes. 'Clarabelle,' she'd say, 'let's make up your mind.-we don't have all day.' (even though we did). 

Jill hated being rushed and would fold her arms in front of her and scrunch her face up and furrow her brow to signal her unhappiness at the unfairness of it all, eventually provoking Mom to decide what shoes she was getting. That, in turn, created more drama, until Mom would bring her up short with 'Sarah, keep going and there will be no new shoes.'' The three of them went through this every time they bought anything, anywhere. All of them knew how it would end, but the game had a life of its own and they went along for the ride.

This particular afternoon, the clerk, certainly eager to please, took to calling both Kara and Jill, Clarabelle and Sarah, because, I realized with a start, that's what he thought their names were as Mom never called them anything else. Since both of them were used to Mom's nicknames, they saw nothing amiss and Mom never even noticed. 

As he was ringing out the purchases, a register with the round buttons where you put in the exact amount and little vertical canoe paddles (that's how they looked to me) popped up in the glass box at the top of the National Cash Register, whose clanging bell made the sale official, he asked me what my name was. 

I was way ahead of him-'Ralphie', I said. And your brother, he inquired. 'Ralphie, too' I offered, perhaps a little too quickly but to this day I think I got away with it. Frankly, Adam, I think that's where the seed was planted that led you to your college alma mater-and you are welcome. 

Anyway, without missing a beat the clerk handed mom two Stride-Rite shoe bags and leaned over the counter to give both Clarabelle and Sara each a lollipop. Happy Birthday, kiddo. Don't take any wooden Stride Rites. 
-bill kenny

Last Original Thought Died of Loneliness

Wandered around on Saturday enjoying the not as intensely hot as it could be for this time of year summer weather and also walked between the raindrops at times on Sunday in my neck of Norwich and saw ample evidence that this is the season of yard sales, tag sales, garage sales and Soupy Sales (checking to see if you were still with me).

Sounds like a quibble, I know, but for those engaging/organizing and having these sales would you please put the date on the signs that you insist on sticking on utility poles and slow-moving, recently retired young-at-heart-but-not-on-the-calendar, senior citizens? Please? 

And let's get something straight between us, okay? Antiques and old stuff and antiques are not the same thing and are not interchangeable words. All ducks are birds but not all birds are ducks, and that's true as well of both antiques and old stuff. For instance, I have a garage (and a basement, too, I just realized) filled with old stuff. Very little of it I will admit would rise to the level of antique. 

Yes, I'm sure you're correct in pointing out that putting 'old crap' on the sign, while truthful more than either of us would like, will probably not help anyone get it from their garage or yard to points beyond the property but we need to be fair with one another. 

A well-liked  PBS TV program is not called The Old Junk Road Show, except in many living rooms I suspect across the country, so let's vow to make candor our watchword and ease up on the use of 'antiques,' no matter how desperate for space in our garages we are. 
-bill kenny     

In Case I Wasn't Already Going to Hell

This is from many years ago, practically before I was born but not quite. At the time I thought I was being incredibly witty and urbane though in retrospect I don't know why. 

A recent survey of indeterminate origin indicated that while 35% of Americans surveyed can name ALL the ingredients of a Big Mac, only 14% can name all Ten Commandments. Almost 30%, however, did know that 'not covet thy neighbor's wife' is a Commandment, so it's NOT all bleak as long as no one wonders why so many MORE would know that commandment, I guess.

I'm wondering, based on the survey, if established churches will set up drive-throughs and take-out windows. Would you like fries with that Act of Contrition? Supersize those Hail Marys? Amen on a sesame seed bun with Hallelujah Honey Barbecue Sauce.
-bill kenny

What We Say

This is from a long time ago and when I fell across it the other day I was very surprised as I re-read it at how pissed off I still am about what happened then. And all this time I thought I was mellowing with age.

I grabbed ten minutes of some most excellent outdoors weather yesterday at mid-morning and walked around the block of the building in which I work. Back in the days when I smoked (and boy did I, about three and a half packs a day. I stopped, suddenly, on 30 September 1996 and never took it up again), it was customary to have a break for a cigarette in mid-morning and then again in the middle of the afternoon. 

In a way, becoming a non-smoker, I screwed myself out of those pauses, though whenever I try to organize a pity-party about that I have to remember 'by quitting cigarettes, I lowered my chances of ever having lung cancer, emphysema or any other respiratory illness by a huge percentage.' 

Unless, of course, I get hit by a cigarette truck, in which case the whole thing's a wash, I guess. I'm lucky in that the people I work for will allow me to walk away from the desk (and regroup) though sometimes it looks more like disappointment than relief when I come back.

Anyway, out yesterday morning I noticed on the corner a pick-up truck in a no-parking zone, the engine running, blocking a fire hydrant. On the door, the lettering indicated the truck was part of the fire department's fleet. There was no one in the truck and there were no emergency lights flashing or sirens howling (or even a small fire burning; I always have marshmallows and a stick. Just in case.). 

I half-smile at the deliciousness of this kind of stuff, be it thoughtlessness or hypocrisy or just simple absence of concern for others, because I know if that were my vehicle, the windscreen would be covered with tickets for a variety of violations, all deserved. 

Continuing down the street, maybe four additional car-lengths and at the curb in a real parking space was one of those police ticket patrol cars (you know the kind; they're electric and look like they're on loan from the Lego-land Police Department) that resemble a moon buggy. I think in theory, they're a great idea in an urban environment for a city-in much the same way as I like the concept of a Segway for patrols. In real life, the cars look silly and police on Segways crack me up, and when they have the helmets on, as well they should, I almost pee myself laughing (I have never claimed to be a nice person). 

I'm always surprised when the ticket person, or meter reader as I call them, is a full-sized human being, though I'm not sure what they should be, and my surprise discomfits me. I couldn't resist-I mentioned the illegally parked fire pick-up truck to Officer Krupke. Perhaps, he offered, without bothering to make eye contact with me, the guy went inside the building a minute ago and will be right back. 

Yeah. Welcome to Benefit of the Doubt, population: you, Officer. I told the police person there wasn't any part of that I was buying and, truth to tell, neither was he. And it was now two minutes since 'the guy' went into 'the building' perhaps like the bear, to see what he could see. Speaking of which, I offered, why not mosey on down to the truck and the fire hydrant and time just how long 'the guy' is absent? 

That suggestion got me eye contact and a heaping side order of a 'what are you, a wise guy?' look that I took to mean now was a good time to tuck and roll in the dismount and disengage portion of today's lesson on Inter-Personal Communications with Public Safety Officials. 

As Bob Dylan once offered, 'wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin', but don't wait too long. I figured it really wasn't warm enough for my tambourine to spontaneously combust so I called myself the breeze and decided 'back to the office' was as fine a destination as I could think of on too-short a notice.
-bill kenny

Truth Goes Up in Vapors

Forty-nine years ago today, nearly half a century, we walked on the surface of the moon for the first time. If you weren't yet born when that happened, you missed something, you really did. You can read a library of books on how much effort and coordination, time and talents and money such an effort took, and it's staggering, but here's the thing to remember from 'back in the day'.

Going to the moon wasn't the only thing we were doing as a country, as a tribe, as a nation-state on Earth. We had almost 450,000 men under arms halfway around the world in forests and fields of Southeast Asia in a war that was to be as divisive as any in the history of our nation and whose outcome left us saddened and sullen for a decade. 

Nearly the same number of young men and women were heading to Upstate New York during this summer, actually in August, for what was advertised as four days of Peace, Love and Music and almost all anyone can remember, whether they were or not, is the mud and the incredible performances by so many musicians, especially those whose flame flickered brightly from that stage and was then forever extinguished because of self-indulgence or profound bad luck.

Newton got beaned by the apple good

Back at the moonwalk, we on Earth watched around the world, with some of our younger brothers and sisters going outside to stand on the porch at Harvey's Lake (Pa) and look up at the moon to see if you could see the astronauts (if wishing could have made it so) as the astronauts seemed to skip and dance across the most desolate place we could imagine. 

As a nation we were faced with challenges all around us-but we found the time, actually, we MADE the time, to watch these extraordinary people do this extraordinary thing that NO ONE in our history had ever done before. 

And just as no man enters the same river twice because both he and the river have changed, there is no way we can ever be those people who watched by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming. 

We did it then, and we can do it now--not because it's easy, because it is most certainly not, but because it's hard and because if we do not repair and restore our country, we will have no one to blame but ourselves when in another half a century we cannot remember anything to be proud of since the Moon Walk.

Don't Interrupt the Sorrow, 
Damn right.
He says we walked on the moon.
You be polite.
-bill kenny

Pinocchio In Reverse

I guess if you were angry that we had a Kenyan Muslim in the White House, just about any choice you made for a successor would be hailed as an improvement even an aging and angry morally, mentally, ethically and financially bankrupt blustering and bullying buffoon who was both incapable of holding any elected office and incompetent of executing his constitutional duties once installed. Looks like you got your wish.

If he'd have only stuck to shooting his mouth off

I'm thinking we may be nearing the end of the line for all those who enable the Mango Mussolini with false equivalence arguments or who offer, as does Pantload45 himself, an unending stream of "whataboutisms" as some form of counter-argument to soothe their own troubled consciences about their willingness to aid and abet the abomination they installed in the White House. 

And the best part, and by that I mean the worst part, for me was his tortured and torturous (and failed) effort at blaming his catastrophic press conference performance on a double negative, as if Mr. "I Have All the Best Words" would recognize a double negative if it bit him where the Good Lord split him.

You can dip shit in sugar but it's still shit

So that I am clear: your guy is a scumbag. And the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt that is now a willing vassal to his greedy, grasping machinations so long as their wealthy patrons get an even larger slice of the American Dream than the 99.8% of it they already have are undeserving of your support in any shape size or form for the rest of their lives and yours. 

Trump began life as a real man but is ending up as a puppet. Sic Transit Asshats .
-bill kenny   

And the Torture of Chalk Dust Collects on My Tongue

As a parent whose two children (now adults) progressed through Buckingham as well Kelly Schools I'm familiar with the credo of the Norwich Public Schools, NPS, "Proud of our past, focused on our future." 

Too often many of us with (and without) children in our schools, don’t spend much time on either the past or the future, tending to think about NPS as budget formulations begin and start to heat up faster than the outside temperatures. 

As consumers of city services, each of us wants what we want; and as a minimum more than what we had the year before, while also not wanting to pay more for it than we did previously. Imagine a pie of money; no matter how many slices you cut the municipal dollars, in the end, there’s only one pie. 

And when it comes to the dollars in the city budget devoted to education all of us seem to know more than the neighbors we elected to the Board of Education. And, present company included, while our judgments are frequently in error we are rarely in doubt about controlling expenses. 

Last Monday night, I was a fly on a wall at City Hall as elected leaders from Bozrah, New London, Preston, Sprague, and elsewhere from the region, at the invitation of Mayor Nystrom, together with the City Council and the Board of Education sat with members of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, CCM, to begin to develop solutions to what has become the single most expensive area of municipal costs, special education. 

This will be a marathon, not a sprint. It was a first step on what will be a long journey and a hard climb. In offering an overview of Connecticut special education costs, CCM Deputy Director Ron Thomas explained there were about 70,000 special education students in our state and that one in every five dollars of education spending goes for special education. 

We know, or should, all about the challenges of education funding from this past spring when the BOE advised both the mayor and City Council they couldn't cut $4 million from their requested $83 million budget and the City Council’s approved $78.4 million left the Board seeking five percent reductions in tuition and contract agreements to cover that gap. 

Lost in the noise about the 2018-19 budget was a projected $1.5 million to $2 million budget deficit in the fiscal year that just ended, with most of that shortfall attributed to special education costs. 

As was made clear during the meeting, the bad news is many municipalities and their school systems across the region (and throughout the state) are in the same boat and that the even worse news is it's a very large ocean.

I was impressed with much of what was said but even more so by the willingness to listen and the offers to work together. Because while many think of education as expensive, I don’t know who among us wants to calculate the cost of ignorance.

-bill kenny

Random Beeswax

My wife and I spent the weekend helping my sister and her husband's family celebrate the engagement of their first-born. It was some great, extended family time as well as an opportunity for me to test and re-test some memories. 

I wasn't born in New Jersey but I most certainly grew up there before moving first to Europe and ultimately Connecticut to grow old so it was a chance for me on Friday (on our way down) to meander through New Brunswick which has changed a lot in the forty plus years since I was  Scarlet Knight (Keira was already taken) and yet surprisingly very little. 

Not sure what exactly my wife made of my right-hand fingerpointing tour guide impersonation as we sped down Easton Avenue and passed Bloomfield Avenue while announcing, "I lived at 33, on the left-hand side of the street from the second grade through tenth grade" but I most certainly said it and almost decided on the way back on Sunday morning to turn into the street and show her the house.

We had time on Saturday morning to wander around in Princeton, a somewhat alien clime for a Scarlet Knight, but as pretty a town in real life as it was in my memory, which included a snapshot of taking my younger brothers and sisters to Saint Paul School on most mornings and getting stopped and ticketed on more than one occasion by Princeton police for 'speeding' though the cars passing me prior to my pull-over weren't until it dawned on me that my 1962 Corvair might actually be attracting all the attention. Glad I always drove with my window rolled down (suspect Kara, Jill, and Adam would be as well had they ever thought about it). 

Logged about four hundred and seventy miles roundtrip (plus vicinity mileage) from Friday through Sunday and slept in on Monday awakening shortly after seven to find today's title neatly written in block letters on my calendar blotter. 

Not sure what it means, assuming it means anything at all but I am starting to get very used to the idea, despite an almost half-century of practice otherwise, that not everything has to have a meaning or merits worry if it doesn't. 
-bill kenny                   

If You Care, You Swear?

Suspect this is NOT what the editors of Reader's Digest were driving at all those years ago with their notes about 'towards more picturesque speech', but it's a lot easier to remember and way more fun to read. 

Having read the summary of the study, more than once, and swearing to get in the spirit on at least one occasion, I'm surprised it's not much louder at every public meeting we have in this country but, based on my everyday sojourns in social media I'll concede it's pretty much loud everywhere right now, has been for some time and will continue for who knows how long. 

I'm not suggesting we should sponsor contests to see if we can peel the paint from the walls of Congress in terms of the coarseness of our language, though that idea is tempting and oddly appealing in light of what is happening down the street at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

I'm just not sure we can overcome the logistics challenges to assure there's an even distribution on all indoor surfaces as we move our fellow citizens from coast to coast and sea to shining sea. 

True confession time, I, too, do think of some technicolor participles (and other parts of speech not quite as mature as my mom might like me to use ) but I strive to NOT speak those words aloud while processing the thoughts that precipitate them, at least not too loudly. 

Like many of us, I have had instances in the past where my evil twin, Skippy, (what my Imp of the Perverse tends to answer to) has confused inside and outside voice and my ears have heard my mouth say things that I had truly hoped would remain secret. 

Now, if I can just work hypoalgesia into a sentence, ideally a limerick, it'll be a banner day. 
-bill kenny

Signs and Wonder

We live in a word-less world. By that, I do not mean a silent one but rather, a world in which you can scrape by with pictures and symbols. I love looking at the tags in shirts--it's like a graduation from Semaphore University. There's no bleach, hang-dry only, wash in cold water, dolphin-free, dry-clean only, etcetera. 

I thought it reassuring that no matter where in the world you travel those symbols are the same until I realized it has a lot to do with the manufacturing process and that almost all the clothes we buy, no matter where in the world we live, are made in the same third-world sweat-shops, threats of tariffs notwithstanding. That's more likely the reason why the care symbology on the collar is all pictures rather than words.  

I'm not going to hold a Geography Bee with Carmen San Diego on where our clothes are made, because I have no trouble finding my way around as nearly everyone, be it at home or at work, tells me where to go. And that's an unfair advantage even for television stars to overcome. 

What I am intrigued by is how our technology, not knowing where in the world we will use it, has created its own language to which we have adapted. Do you remember when you used to yell for 'Help!'. Our machines' clocks do the same thing, sort of, except they flash 12:00--we all know now that means there's trouble at the mill and are conditioned, when we see it, to look around for a cause. 

My smart-phone does this weird little vamp when it's loading an application (I had to ask someone who knows about phones to describe that process so I could write it down here. I have so little idea of how the device works, when it doesn't work, someone else has to tell me as I cannot figure it out by myself). Maybe yours does the 'gimme a minute jitterbug', too.

It looks like a vertical bow-tie and then it starts to whirl and twirl in a clockwise direction. Someone told me it's NOT a bow-tie at all, it's supposed to be an hourglass. That actually makes more sense to me, since that would have something to do with time, which is what the device is wasting, and not neckwear, of which I have a closetful though I have no idea of its purpose (or didn't) even though most workdays for close to half a century I wore one.

Every time I see posters for raffles, there's always a disclaimer at the bottom, 'duplicate prizes awarded in the event of ties' and I keep thinking, today's the day. Good fortune, here I am! Luck be a Lady tonight. And yet all I ever win is a dry-clean only dolphin two sizes too small, no bleach only.
-bill kenny