An All-Season Curmudgeon

This is a long-ago wander down memory lane...hope you packed a lunch.

I am VERY happy our two children are out of the buy-me-that-toy-for-Christmas phase. I am also pretty sure they both wish their father were as well, but you can't have everything and at my house, that's a lesson you can't learn often enough.

Many years ago, I endured the traipsing from store to store in search of Furby, an object whose appeal eluded (and still eludes) me. Our little girl wanted one and that was good enough for me. I think she ended up with no more than two though my recollection is that there were battalions of different models of these little dust bunnies available. I was always proud I resisted the temptation to train it to speak incredibly rude sentences (but only just).

She, and we, collected beanie babies with a little more vigor than we pursued Furby, but their saving grace (when was the last time that phrase was used in connection with beanie babies?) was that you collected them all year round, they weren't specifically tied to this time of year (I keep visualizing the Gift of the Magi at the original Nativity where each of the Wise Men gives the Baby Jesus a different Beanie Baby.)

I know I've gotten old when I recoil in dismay at the must-have, mucho-buzzed-about toy, Zhu-Zhus, a robotic rodent (so much for alliteration; it's actually a mechanical hamster) that neither eats nor poops but does all the stuff between those two actions and whose scarcity has driven the price into the stratosphere for moms and dads shopping for their special someone.

Zhu-Zhus are actually going, at online auctions, for more (by two and threefold) than it costs to donate for the care and feeding of a third-world child, or (dare I say it?) one much closer to home (ask your local equivalent of Children and Family Services department). 

I'm not sure how anyone can walk past one of the bell-ringers with the kettle this season and NOT put something in for those in need if they've already given a zhu-zhu a good home. And if the past is the prelude to the future, in a couple of years, as part of local collections to help the hungry and indigent, our children will be donating their now unwanted zhu-zhus to those in need of a roof or a warm coat. 

I suppose if you're a real live hamster, that turn of events will constitute a happy ending, at least until the next trend surfaces.
-bill kenny

I Can't Help About the Shape I'm In

With the weather growing colder in Southeast New England as fall descends into winter, I'm seeing fewer signs stapled to utility poles for the ever popular weekend-consuming event: the tag sale, or yard sale, sometimes called a garage sale. I have another name for these, but mom asked me years ago to NOT use it in the event children are reading this (a child, is, technically, writing this, hers).

At certain times of year around here these are really popular, and are in your area, too, I suspect. I've never really gotten the attraction of rummaging through someone else's stuff, deciding if I like/need or want it, figuring out a price or haggling with the owner over the number on the tag and then taking the purchase home and making it part of my life. I have a very particular and defined sense of personal space. I don't like you in mine and I don't want to be in yours unless we're all stampeding for an exit during a fire drill. 

I don't think I've been to a yard sale, assuming I don't count the thought-it-was-a-stationary-bike bicycle I bought from Gayle and Eric across the street; but it wasn't a stationary bike, at all, as it turns out. Gayle had already left it at the curb for the trash pick-up and I gave her five dollars for it and then almost killed myself falling down the basement stairs when I put it away. 

It was at that moment, sprawled halfway under it and halfway over it, that I realized it wasn't what I thought it was and that I should have left well enough alone (and thereafter did). My whole involvement with the bike now consists of shouting "watch out for the bike!" to people heading down the indoor basement stairs. 

We have a house, probably like yours, filled with things we no longer use or need but we cannot bear to discard. Pieces of yourself and who you were but no longer are. Junk we didn't even realize we still have. I have shelves in the basement filled with items we got for the kids, way back when, some we bought for them when we all lived in Germany and we haven't done that for over a quarter century. I'll never part with any of it. It takes a lot to get into my family and even more for me to let go. 

Each item has a story or a memory, even the stuff of which I have no recollection, maybe especially that stuff. George Carlin's observation never rang truer and while we may laugh at it, for the comedic directness and accuracy of its acerbic assertions, we always divide the world into ours and yours, and guess what we think of yours? Oh well.
-bill kenny

Holidays Ahead!

Maybe just me but we didn’t seem to have a lot of time to spend being grateful in the days leading up to Thanksgiving (I guess because of all the preparation involved) and, let’s face it, as quickly as the plates were cleared after the big meal, lots of us were off to the stores for holiday sales. 

If you’re still eating leftover turkey today for lunch while I appreciate the thought, I’m not sure that counts as being thankful even if it is delicious. Sorry for grumbling, but I wanted to get that off my chest. 

Earlier this week, I started to enjoy the sounds and scents of the season when I first encountered the Salvation Army collection kettle at the Norwichtown Commons’ Stop and Shop. And the display of wreaths just before you reach the kettle really confirms the start of the holiday season.

Over eighty years ago, Norwich was named Connecticut’s Christmas City and this Saturday we’ll have a chance to enjoy again some of the reasons for that honor. But you’ll need to get up early (and maybe dress warmly) to sample all that’s on tap in The Rose of New England.

Did I mention sneakers? I should have because you’ll want those as Reliance House has teamed up with the Hartford Marathon Foundation for the 6th Annual Norwich WinterFest 5K and Free FitKids Fun Run starting at nine o’clock. There’s still time to register as a runner, a walker or even as a volunteer by clicking here. 

Now that you’re warmed up, you’ll be just in time for the 31^st Annual Norwich Winterfest Parade in downtown at one o’clock. This year’s theme is “Vintage Christmas” and, as always, the parade features music, lots of marchers, even more spectators, high school marching bands and some pretty stiff competition for trophies and awards for the best floats.

The Parade Grand Marshal is Tucker Braddock who has served the City of Norwich in many ways to include as an Alderman and member of numerous boards and committees. 

If you’ve enjoyed the parade in years past of course you already have it on your calendar but bear in mind this year’s route has been modified. It’ll still be a terrific time (of course!) but the route will now be the same as the one we have for the St. Patrick’s Parade.

In other words, the marchers will step off on Main St. by the Otis Library, make a right onto Franklin Street, then a left onto Willow Street, with another left on Chestnut Street, followed by a left onto Broadway (feels a little like NASCAR) with one last right turn back onto Main Street. And as always there are great activities for the whole family throughout downtown after the parade concludes.

And don’t forget Leffingwell House Museum’s Christmas in the Colonies on Sunday afternoon from one until four for a look at the way we were and speaking of Sunday, the first day of Hanukkah is Sunday evening so Chag Urim Sameach!

-bill kenny

Our House

I am the oldest child of Joan and Bill Kenny. Dad died in 1981 and Mom passed away a year ago last June. I have lived for a skosh over sixty-six and a half years and today at one in the afternoon, as the last of all my brothers and sisters, I will become a homeowner.

Thank you to Patrick who began his suggestion in a phone call to me about a month before I retired by insisting I 'don't say anything until you've heard me out.' 
And people say I don't listen...

C, S & N sold separately

And to Byron for his patience and efforts (a recurring theme as you're about to read).

And to Yola.

And to Peter.

As well as to Stacy.

And not forgetting Eduardo.

And Emily.

And Carey.

And Wes.

I never really cared if I owned a house. Ever.

I do very much care I will now get to spend the rest of my life with the love of my life and the best way to make sure that could happen was to buy the house in which she and I now live. 

No big lessons to be learned here, least of all by me especially today, of all days. 

Except: I love you, Sigrid.
-bill kenny       

Fine Line Between Robert and Jack

We had a cold snap in these parts the latter portion of last week. By cold snap, I mean overnight temperatures in the teens (Fahrenheit; I use Celsius in the summer to help me think cooler, but never in the fall and winter when I'd be colder) and since we hadn't really had a gradual decline in temperatures from the middle fifties where we spend a lot of Autumn to where we ended up it felt like a punch to the gut.

I do not do well in cold weather. I shiver uncontrollably even if I'm not actually cold (though I usually am), which seemed to start back when I was in the USAF and stationed in Greenland in the middle of the Seventies (the decade, not the temperature) and has continued to this day. 

Something else that doesn't do well as the temperatures drop is open water, be it in rivers or lakes and a short walk from our house is the Uncas Leap at Lower Yantic Falls where the decline in temperatures correlates to an increase in icing along the banks of the Yantic and ice formations on the rock walls facing the Lower Falls. 

The ice formations are a thing of beauty at a spot that is already quite beautiful all year-round and that's not just my opinion but also that of the American Planning Association. I'm not native to New England, but I've lived for nearly three decades in a place I never expected to ever be and I never tire of the sight no matter the change of the season. It's another way I remind myself that sometimes it's the journey as much as the destination.

-bill kenny       

Some Thoughts on the Sunday After Black Friday

I wrote this forever ago and am a little surprised either at how world-weary I was when I wrote it or am at this moment when I rediscovered it. In any event... 

Someone much wiser than I once explained to me that freedom of speech doesn't entitle you to shout fire in a crowded theatre, nor does it afford you the privilege of sitting next to someone and whisper non-stop as the celluloid races through the projector gates. The danger, he said, each one of us faced was that 'sometimes the things you do speak so loudly I cannot hear what you're saying.' 

I thought about that yesterday as I watched people scurrying through the local mall on their search for low-cost holiday gifts for the mailman and newspaper carrier, oil tank filling guy, coffee making person, etc-a dozen or a hundred jobs that no one notices until they're not done. 

The trick is to make sure to find something that doesn't like cheap and when you start the hunt early, you have a better chance. I've had this conversation with neighbors in years past who have a very complex and complicated mental math they do to compute just how much to spend on a gift for a person whose name they more often than not they don't know or for one who, if the job is done right, they rarely see (not at Adam's house, of course; he probably takes the news carrier with him and Sam I Am for a morning jog). 

And in the case of the 'sandwich guy' or the 'coffee server' (and the like), it's a person with whom you would never speak, aside from 'please' and 'thank you', but if you crossed paths in a locale such as Borneo or even Boise, you'd chatter away like magpies who'd known one another your whole lives. The concept is called familiar strangers and many of us have a world populated with them and very few others. 

I've gotten better as I've aged (I'm not bragging; I set the bar pretty low) and I no longer immediately say everything I'm thinking, which I did for decades and then wondered why I had tension-filled relationships with people. Turns out I had difficulties distinguishing between inside and outside voices, especially as I tend to hear both, and if you don't, it's your loss. Blurting is often hurting, a little tip from me to you about getting along here on the ant-farm. 

There was a time I'd ask those shopping for the knick-knack thank you gifts, 'why don't you just give the person money?' After all, it's a holiday whose primary colors seem to be red and green and since most of us are in the former why not share some of the latter? I think we give each other seconds of pleasure that are put away and forgotten or lost by the end of the holiday season because we can't stand the insulted silences if we didn't. 

It's not words, so much, that frighten us, it's the quiet between the words. That the words have, perhaps, sharp edges is all well and good as long as they keep coming, because that way we don't have to worry there might be time to think about their meaning and the last thing many of us want to do is find ourselves alone with our thoughts. 

I wonder if there's life on other planets and, like us, have giant parabolic microphones to pick up the sounds emanating from this septic orb if they've long since learned to turn the volume all the way down. We wouldn't mind, I fear. 
-bill kenny

Curtailing My Walpoling

Thank you universe! 

My work here is done.
-bill kenny

Attention Shoppers!

If you're reading this on a handheld device while standing in a line outside a big box store to snag a once-in-a-lifetime-deal on almost anything under the sun to include a television, a new cell phone, a refrigerator-freezer or gaming console, please go home now.

All of us who have the capabilities to read this blather have all the physical possessions we shall ever need. Anything you're standing in line for now, or elbowing folks out of the way to get to later in the day as Black Friday accelerates, is sheer and absolute greed. 

Thanksgiving and this is still Thanksgiving my friend, is to celebrate with friends, old and new and not acquire more things to put in the basement or attic with the other things we already own and don't use.

Many years ago in Germany, I had an acquaintance who described Americans as "people who buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like." I really disliked him for that characterization but I always think about what he said when Black Friday rolls around and know I cannot argue with his point.

Where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, a town of about 40,000, if I were to add up all the square footage of all the shops in our downtown, occupied buildings or otherwise, I suspect it's less than the floor space in the average Super Box Store. It's getting better and will keep growing but the big bucks head to the Big Box stores. Fair enough, I guess.  

I can be gracious and concede that reality because tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, and assuming you're not tuckered out from that super deal you got on the 1932 hand-carved mahogany Terraplane at MaxBucks MegaStore, you could support one or more of the local shops where you live, all of whom help make your city or town an even better place to come home to.
- bill kenny

Never Too Many Blessings

Thanksgiving Day, 2018, United States of America

Well, a lot of things have happened
 Since the last time we spoke
 Some of them are funny
 Some of them ain't no joke.

 And I trust you will forgive me
 If I lay it on the line
 I always thought you were a friend of mine.

 And sometimes I think about you
 I wonder how you're doing, now
 And what you're going through.

 'Cause the last time I saw you, we were playing with fire
 We were loaded with passion and a burning desire
 For every breath, for every day of living
 And this is my Thanksgiving.

 Now, the trouble with you and me, my friend
 Is the trouble with this nation
 Too many blessings, too little appreciation.

 And I know that kind of notion, well, it just ain't cool
 So send me back to Sunday school
 Because I'm tired of waiting for a reason to arrive
 And it's too long we've been living these unexamined lives.

 'Cause I've got great expectations, I've got family and friends
 I've got satisfying work, I've got a back that bends

 For every breath, for every day of living
 This is my thanksgiving

 And have you noticed that an angry man
 Can only get so far?
 Until he reconciles the way he thinks things ought to be
 With the way things are.

 Here in this fragmented world, I still believe
 In learning how to give love, how to receive it
 And I would not be among those who abuse this privilege
 Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge.

 And I don't mind saying that I, I still love it all
 I wallowed in the springtime
 Now, I'm welcoming the fall.

 For every moment of joy, every hour of fear
 For every winding road that brought me here
 For every breath, for every day of living
 This is My Thanksgiving.

 For everyone who helped me start
 And for everything that broke my heart
 For every breath, for every day of living
 This is My Thanksgiving.

-Don Henley

-bill kenny

Too Many Blessings, Too Little Appreciation

This is a story that’s older than our country and variations of it have been traditionally experienced by all who arrive on our shores in some manner or form since our earliest days. Sometimes we forget that we are at our best as a nation when we realize we are a diverse people with shared circumstances.

Having offered that as sort of disclaimer for today’s words let me hasten to tell this tale while you struggle to finalize those last-minute holiday grocery shopping lists for tomorrow’s festivities. I’ll do my best.

The travelers were very poor and had come a long way with very little money and less hope. The lives they led had been so desperate that arriving uninvited in a nation that had no use for them had seemed not only attractive but really their only choice.

The first months were terribly hard. The immigrants didn't know the customs, couldn't understand or speak the language, had little grasp of the nature of the place they had come to live in and even less desire to learn of it. Arriving in the middle of the winter, totally unprepared for the season's savagery by their experiences in their own country, nearly half were dead by the Spring.

Their hosts in this new world had difficulties with the settlers. Their customs, their language, their religion were all so different from what they had known; it was hard to see a way to develop any sense of attempted community. On more than occasion, as it had turned out, befriending the new people had proven to be unwise as more and more of their sort just kept showing up and crowding out those who had lived in the area for so many decades.

The emigres were in a precarious predicament. It had taken almost all of their savings to make the trip to what they hoped would be a fresh start. They believed or wanted to, that if they worked hard and did well, one day they could send for family and friends to join them in their brave adventure. 

But every day was a challenge and more often than not, often without a victory. They were isolated, decimated and left to their own devices. It took extraordinary hospitality and courageous kindness by one of the long-time residents of the established community to extend a helping hand and organize support so as the following fall approached the new people had reasons to believe.

How fortunate there wasn't any strict security at coastal ports of entry, or any security of any kind actually. Fortunate for us, who followed in their footsteps that is. 

We, the direct and indirect descendants of those first arrivals four hundred and ninety-eight years ago, will tomorrow remember Thanksgiving, only because Samoset ignored the arguments and fears of so many of his fellow Abenaki and welcomed the Pilgrims to the New World, establishing even before we were a nation, our national legacy of welcoming all to our shores.

Happy Thanksgiving.

-bill kenny

Still True

Found this from a very long time ago and was surprised at how well it still stood up (better than I most of the time and unassisted). 

We live in a most amazing age. 

As residents of a planet where around the world via the electric fire of television, we watched the murder of a President, a walk (actually more like a skip) on the moon, the tearing down of a Wall that divided a continent and a nation, and the destruction of buildings and thousands of lives in a flash of jet fuel, steel and glass, it's sometimes easy to forget we are, each of us, skin covered miracles. 

Helping underscore this assumption (actually for me, more like an article of faith) I can offer you only one item as 'proof', conceding I don't know that it proves anything but that every day we get up and amaze and amuse, often in unequal parts, the other seven billion of us on this ant farm (with beepers) we call home. 

Somedays are so hard, it's almost impossible to celebrate yourself, no matter how important that is to do--it's okay, watch this, and celebrate someone else, and know we can do this, too. 
-bill kenny

Paging Franklin Dixon

I've been working on mysteries without any clues for the last couple of days. I discovered some marks on the side supports of our detached garage (as in from the house; not aloof), about mid-calf high on my leg (I'm 5'8"). I fear it may prove to be one of those dreaded math word problems: 'if a locomotive leaves Yakima heading south at 60 mph departing at two in the morning and another train leaves Wombat Falls at 3 AM, heading North at 45 mph, what's the conductor's name?' I HATED math word problems and have spent most of my life unsurprised math is a four letter word.

I've been looking for animal teeth marks on the wood, or maybe paint flecks on the noses of some of the squirrels that hang around in our backyard hoping for a hand out every time the back door opens usually courtesy of our daughter, Michelle.

Michelle stands on the back steps and throws handfuls of peanuts at the rodents as the darkness gathers before dinner. I don't know how they know she is going to do it when sometimes she doesn't even know, but they're ready every single time. Spooky. 

I'd almost not be amazed if the squirrels had been involved in this, not that I'm attached to the paint job on the garage door, but it was the NOT knowing part that was making me crazy. Walking past my parked car, I noticed on my front bumper on my side what seemed to be cake frosting at about the mid-calf level (probably the same height if I were Richard Harris in the rain, oh no....).

Yeah, it turned out, speaking of turning, I've been creating my own zebra customized front end auto treatment while slowing widening incrementally my garage door. At least that's what I'll be telling myself I was up to when I go shopping for that double-wide. 
-bill kenny

The Semi-Circle of Life

I wound up with a hitchhiker yesterday in the front seat with me-barely visible. A gnat I guess or maybe a tiny fly, who didn't appreciate the grasp of tools we humans have that enable us to form glass and make windshields for our cars. The little bug(ger) kept bouncing off the inside of the windshield, regrouping on the dashboard and attempting to fly off again, into the window. 

I don't consider myself to be anything vaguely like a 'one with the universe' kind of guy. As a matter of fact, I'm very much the person most of the rest of the planet cites in surveys as to why they don't want to be from 'here' anymore. Despite what others say, I believe we should all take turns-it's just that I think the line forms behind me if you follow my drift and I know you do because deep down, you're the same way.

I decided to roll down the front windows and coax the bug to escape. I'll be honest, it was about as mild outside as it was inside and who among us doesn't love doing favors that cost them absolutely nothing in the first place. You doubt me? Try this: ask me if it's okay to borrow your neighbor's car this afternoon. Sure, go right ahead! See? That was easy and trust me, in five minutes I won't even remember giving you the green light. 

It took the bug more time than I'd have liked to make his way out. Perhaps I was the first car it (or (s)he) was ever in (glad I'd just had it cleaned inside and out; you never get a second chance to make a good first impression) and after the bug was gone, it occurred to me I had no idea where it was from. 

Perhaps it was a Norwich gnat and now was wandering around in Ledyard (or Preston, I sort of lost track). I'm not sure how territorial bugs are (or need to be) or how well they interact with strangers. For all I know I may have provided safe passage for a migrant or (as Rainman Donald has suggested) a gang member. 

Of course, driving home I heard and then saw a splatter on the outside of my windshield and wondered if I had just witnessed another Circle of Life moment. Hakuna Matata, indeed.
-bill kenny

Difference between Utopian and Dystopian

Quite a number of years ago I went through a bleak blackness or a black bleakness (never figured out the difference) which produced items similar to what follows. I tell myself I'm past all of that now but I know from sad experience how persuasive a liar I can be. 

How do I explain this one? Carefully, I guess. In the course of hopping across the world wired web, I came across a discussion about a 'dis' (disrespecting) that may or may not have been administered as part of a comment offered by someone connected with the other evening's telecast of the Country Music Association's annual awards. 

This has actually NOTHING to do with the awards, the recipients or the respect and/or lack of it that was, or wasn't, offered (I'm not sure that constitutes a full disclaimer, and if it does I'm not sure that's even approaching coherence but I hope so).

As is so often the case these days when a platform posts a story and solicits visitors' comment, very close to ZERO monitoring of the comments themselves ever seems to happen. So after two or three (at most) readers' notes that are actually about the original story, all the trolls and gnomes come out and start posting on, in this case, a variety of 'social' sites some of which read like Cougar Country and/or SugarDaddy dot ayup. 

I've reached (and passed) an age where I shake my head in as much disbelief as embarrassment when anonymous strangers share way too much about the emotional bankruptcy by which they define themselves. By the time I read the third consecutive troll post, my brains had been thoroughly shaken but not stirred. 

That may have been why as I read "...Life is so lonely, I am a gothic (sic). My friends told me about GothicScene and ..." my mind started to dry heave. You know I had to copy the URL into the web browser and see this one for myself. And it was worth it though I didn't fully appreciate the self-congratulatory mention of "the...most effective dating site... for vampire singles in the world!" But in fairness, vampires only have half as much time, daylight and all that, the rest of us have so I should be glad I suppose someone's got their back. 

I know I've gotten old when I wonder if this is the brave new world Al Gore envisioned when he invented the Internet back when the last Ice Age was ending. We seem to have almost engineered ourselves out of existence and, as it happens, no one and nothing else on the planet will miss us when the last of us has gone. And I worry that day may be coming much sooner than we thought.
-bill kenny

Not Quite Going the Distance

The passing earlier this week of a NASCAR legend, David Pearson, reminded me of an as-nearly-as-old-as-I-am remembrance that when I first offered it, was called:

Anecdotes and Antidotes

I caught part of a late afternoon clips compilation show yesterday that has convinced me I have got to start watching more NASCAR racing on TV. Since I don't currently watch any, some will be a quantum leap and a near-massive overdose, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I might even like it. 

To review: I have a car, that's half of it right there and I can make left turns. And...I don't think there is a third thing.

Actually, I'm being catty and unkind and you probably didn't bat an eye. One of us has been at this too long and I got here first, pilgrim. As an adult, I've never watched any form of auto racing, be it the Indianapolis 500, stock cars or the Grand Prix of Hohokus. 

It's like pumpkin pie (we had this discussion in my house last night on what to have after Thanksgiving dinner. And when I say 'we', I mean my wife.); I've never had pumpkin pie in my life (so far) but I know I won't like it. 

And that's what I thought and felt (notice the past tense of the verbs) about auto racing. But then I watched this clip: a guy, in one of those flame-retardant suits with a helmet on, fast-walking past a LOT of race cars on a banked turn, all kind of nose to butt stacked behind one another. 

Obviously he's a driver and equally obviously he's looking for someone and then (I guess) he sees that someone he's looking for in an orange Impala (maybe?) and the fast-walker JUMPS WITH BOTH FEET through the car's windshield and he starts wailing on whoever is behind the wheel and then fast-walks away. The guy in the car climbs out and chases the first guy and they start beating the shift out of each other. 

It was amazing! 

I love baseball but baseball players fight like gir--well, in light of the soccer player let's use a different comparison, one that you say to yourself, okay? It never crossed my mind that the race car guys would be this passionate, but why not? They're going at ludicrously high rates of speed, risking their lives so there's three, or more, boxcars of adrenaline rush in the general vicinity and large sums of money are involved (I'd love to know what it costs to buy a space on a hot driver's car for whatever it is you're selling). I guess hearts could flutter a bit, all in all. 

So to review, you've got money and lots of it; you have prolonged high speeds in very tricked out cars with literally hundreds of thousands of people watching you in the stands (other sports have pauses (innings, quarters, frames) so you can get a soda or hit the bathroom; what's the deal in NASCAR or the 24 Hours at Le Mans?), and I'm the world's most surprised guy that tempers flare. 

Don't you wonder what's actually in that Indy 500 milk? I saw another video clip of a winning race driver climbing a fence without a ladder. I don't think Federer or Tiger would be quite as into that in what they do, at least not with that 2% stuff.
-bill kenny

Mid-November Noodlings

One of the downsides to living where there are four seasons is the transition from summer to autumn, especially for the trees and their leaves. I am very much of the 'live and let live' persuasion when we speak of 'fall clean-up' which translates to the 'lie and let them lay' position on leave gathering. 

I've noticed in recent years in my neighborhood, some of us have gathered so many, it's as if we're waiting for them to fall from the trees and nab them on the first bounce. We rake them up and some of us, maybe you have the same kind of neighbors where you live (maybe you are that neighbor where you live) place them in black plastic bags awaiting pickup by the trash folks. 

If it happens around here the way I watched it happen in a neighboring town, the dustmen empty the plastic bags into their trucks and discard the bags. Causing me to wonder what the point of the plastic bag was/is. Elsewhere I've seen these VERY large paper bags filled with leaves, in theory, because the paper is biodegradable, all of it can go directly into the landfill--or do you think they're headed for incinerators? Around here we have trash to power incineration units though I've no idea how much energy we get from such an operation.

For millions of years, I estimate, we as a species did nothing with the leaves as they fell from the trees and landed on the ground. You see all that dirt all around us? I have a funny feeling where some of it might have come from and I'm not sure what we're accomplishing by how we're operating now. 

While I wasn't looking compost has become a lost cause, it seems, perhaps in some circles even a dark art. In its place, we have created a first-class annoyance, the leaf blower. We went from devices that looked like vacuums and picked up fallen leaves and plopped them into bags (do you remember those?) to a gadget that hangs from your hip and can be used to blow leaves that have fallen on your property into someone else's yard or out into the street.

I think leaf blowers are a much more accurate and painfully perfect symbol of America in the 21st Century than either the Bald Eagle or the Stars & Stripes (forever or only for a limited time). There's nothing that says "WTF?!" more than a guy on a Saturday afternoon working a leaf blower wearing dark shades with Ibuds in both ears. And I'd ask him why he's doing what he's doing, but he's as oblivious to me right now as I am to him for the rest of the year. Ahh, Sweet Suburbia. We've got Mother Nature on the run--now what?
-bill kenny

Gratitude Is the Attitude

If you've been a little slow to get your holiday season started, there's no time like the present (that's both a hint and a play on words, btw) to pick up the pace, my friend, because the festive occasions are coming thick and fast and nearly non-stop between now and the beginning of the next year. 

Let's face it, the autumn days continue to grow shorter giving way to darker skies with hints of snow in every brisk(er) breeze; the newspapers get a little plumper as merchants boost their advertising hoping to catch a shopper's eye while halls and other stationary objects find themselves bedecked in holly and garland.

As you probably read in Bob Farwell's Bulletin column, the tenth annual O'tis a Festival is this Saturday from ten until three (with Santa projected to arrive at eleven). Naysayers to the contrary, there's plenty of free parking and again this year helpers to guide you to the primo parking spots. 

And there promises to be music, merriment, and entertainment for the whole family as well as two floors of handmade arts and crafts from dozens of regional vendors with ideas and offerings to help jump-start your annual gift-gathering and giving. If you haven't attended in previous years, you've picked a good time to come and enjoy.  

One of the bonuses, I think, to the O'tis a Festival is all the added hustle and bustle it brings to downtown, not to mention the extra feet in the street (and on the sidewalks) to check out not just the fest but what downtown businesses have been added and improved since last year and there are a lot, so come early with the intention to stay late.

And while the O'Tis a Festival is a terrific time (and reason) to get started on just-right gifts for loved ones and others on your list there are opportunities to give and share the spirit of the season especially with those in need right here in our backyard.

After you've visited the O'tis a Festival, please stop by Norwich Family Dental Associates on Lafayette Street because Saturday is the last day of their Third Annual Fill Ted's Truck to benefit the St. Vincent De Paul Place Thanksgiving dinner. You can find a very long list of suggested perishable and non-perishable donations on their Facebook page. And everything helps. 

With Thanksgiving a week from tomorrow, your Connecticut Food Bank will also put to good use any donation of food or cash that you’d like to offer. And speaking of cash, the Bank of America has partnered again this year with Feeding America to fight hunger. For every $1 you give, Bank of America will give $2 more. So, if you give $25, they’ll make it $75. If you give $50, they’ll make it $150 and so on.

We can help make this a happier holiday season for both friends and friends we’ve yet to meet. Open your heart and know whatever you share is both needed and appreciated.

-bill kenny

  

A Question of Balance

For each of us, it's an individual struggle that (it turns out) we all share.

One side's ice and one is fire. 
-bill kenny

My Little Town (Times a Hundred Thousand)

Everywhere we live can be as large and as small as we wish it to be. We control the definition and depth of what, between ourselves, we call 'my little town.' Norwich, as cities go, isn't a large city, especially if you live in a Bridgeport or a Hartford, but it can seem that way when you live in one of its neighbors, all of which are far smaller. 

My point? When we in small cities speak of 'them' in city government we're really talking about 'us' since many of the elected and appointed leadership in municipalities of a 100K and less are friends and neighbors. 

Last Tuesday across these United States we participated in elections that altered every aspect or had the potential to alter, of our local governance. In some places like here, we were choosing a new governor, in many others, state representatives and local government officials as well. 

I defer to the bloviating blowhards of The Left and The Right (caps in these cases are a given; the gowns, not so much) on all the chatter channels to tell me why the residents of Moosejaw, Montana, voted to outlaw sippy cups and what that means for healthcare reform. What we should have learned last Tuesday is how much more there is yet to do across this country to better fulfill the promise of the Founders and to realize the dreams we have for ourselves and our loved ones. 

We must continue to press on, a brick at a time, not through a plate glass window, but on top of the previous brick, to build the foundation that we will use to construct the bridge that takes us from the here and now to the where we need to go. Everyone can do something. That's the greatest joy of living in these United States: each of us can help. 
-bill kenny

A Moment of Reflection

Not everyone will make it to Taftville's Memorial Park this morning at 11 for the Veterans Day observances sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2122 and the American Legion Post 104. It's probably just as well since it's more of a pocket park located at the intersection of South B and Norwich Avenues, but we'll miss you as we pause, if not exactly stop, and thank all of those who wear and have ever worn the uniform of any branch of our armed forces.

Today, Veterans Day is not Memorial Day-we honor everyone in uniform, living and dead, past and present, today. When I was a kid, today was called Armistice Day, because it began as a commemoration of the end of The World War, which was later known as World War I for the sadly obvious reason that we had a World War Two. There was always a moment of silence to mark the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

We are a nation now at war for almost two decades. Because it's not on the evening news or on the front page of the daily paper above the fold doesn't mean men and women in uniform are not far from home and in harm's way. 

Field of Flags at Norwich Free Academy

Don't get confused by all the attention paid to Kim, all her other K named relatives, and the other useless mouths who make daily headlines. Heroes and heroines in uniform are making a difference every day and allowing all of us to somnambulate with our eyes open as we don't see the lives we could have led because of the incessant assault we endure.

It's a new world and a new way of war but those making the sacrifice are the old souls who have always borne the burden--not just those at Forward Operating Bases marked with dots on the map of countries we cannot name but all those who whet the blade of the sword they wield in our name and in defense of everything we are and will ever be.

We are more filled with self-doubt as a nation than at any time in at least my lifetime but that's a temporary condition. There will always be light and dark, but we shall and will prevail because we must. For anyone, anywhere, now, or then, in uniform who placed service over self, whenever and where that is and was, thank you.

Too often we forget the words of gratitude and appreciation we meant to say, but as long as we don't forget those who earned that gratitude we will always be worthy of their sacrifice.

-bill kenny

Another Three-Day Holiday

Too many of us think three-day holidays are enshrined somewhere in the US Consitution, probably near the Second Amendment (which so many believe can be neither altered nor abridged in any manner at any time) and the Fourteenth Amendment (which can be edited to suit the mood of whoever is in the White House on whatever day a discussion happens).

For those who feel that way, this is another of those three-day weekends. Except it's not.

You're welcome.
-bill kenny
USAF 1975-1983
 

No Single Drop of Rain

Today is the eightieth anniversary of the beginning a half a world away that would plunge nearly the entire globe into war while sentencing millions to the unspeakable and unimaginable horror we know today as Kristallnacht. 

If the Shoah, The Holocaust, was an unfinished symphony of genocidal annihilation for Europe's Jews (and it was only unfinished because the rest of the world finally wrested the controls of the killing factories from the True Believers before they achieved their Endlosung), the first notes of the overture to that murderous symphony, Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), were played on November 9, 1938

When you look at the pictures of death and destruction and listen to the softly told tales of survival, often by the purest of coincidences, if you have a heart it is sickened and if you have a conscience it is outraged. But to keep the next exercise of extreme intolerance from ever reaching this point, we need to retain the memories of the events as well as the circumstances that allowed them to happen.

The Nazis did NOT suddenly leap out of bed eighty ago and cause the German nation, the land of Luther, Schiller, Liszt, and Beethoven, to lose its collective mind and forfeit forever its own soul. For decades leading up to this day in 1938, and not just in Germany, but all across Europe, the systemic and systematic marginalization of Jews, apartheid before that word was in fashion, was in practice and a part of everyday life. The Nürnberger Gesetze of 1935 helped dull Germans to the slaughter to come.

The use of language in reducing those who are the object of your animus to something somehow less human than yourself so that the acrimony and injury inflicted upon them has no more consequence than stepping on a bug is a critical tool and integral part of the creation and construction of the crematoria and concentration camps and no less vital to it than the jackboots and the armbands.

We, you and I, must promise one another to take an additional breath before thinking or voicing a racial epithet to characterize someone on the other side of a political spectrum with whom we are disagreeing. Instead of counting to ten, we must promise to count to eleven, and then twelve and to just keep counting until the gorge in our veins recedes just a bit and our blood has gone off its boiling point. 

And, most importantly, when we see someone else in mid-screed, we mitigate and mediate to help assure a more rapid return to civil and civic discourse in our interactions with one another. What happened in Pittsburgh to start this month of November wasn't an American aberration but just the next chapter in the American version of the story of anti-semitism and racial (and racist) hatred.   

In 1938 Germany was not a nation of Nazis on Kristallnacht; they were in the minority even when in power. It isn't so much just the sins committed on this day that should live in infamy forever, but, rather, the sins that could and should have been prevented had two or more people joined and raised their voices in opposition. 

We must never forget what happened next.
-bill kenny