Looking Forward, Not Backward

I finally, eventually my wife noted, got to the point in the holiday festivities where I read the Christmas cards we received (and exchanged) with others. I'm very proud of myself--some years I've failed to do this entirely and my wife has spent until close to Presidents Day glaring at me (I always blame Washington and she always blames me so we're even). 

I used to get angry at the Christmas season, not at the Savior (I'm crazy; not stupid) and smelled hypocrisy in every greeting card, fruitcake, and holiday cookie. After all, I reasoned (or thought I did) many of these came from people who, the rest of the year would cross the street rather than say hello to me as we passed. But as I've rusted (not mellowed) I have started to see a kind gesture of remembrance as just that and have stopped answering with a (rude) gesture of my own. 

It's not that life is too short, though I learned again this year, that is certainly the case--but because life is too important to not enjoy ALL of it, the hopes and the hype, the dreams, and the dread. All of those make our lives singular and remarkable within our families, our places of work, our neighborhoods, our cities and towns, and these United States (with my apologies to Our Town). 

The trials and travails of 2019 will be here in a matter of hours, and in some spots on this orb, that year has already begun, so forgive me if I encourage you to linger for a moment in the Here and Now, not to look at where we were this time last year and where we are today, but to simply celebrate today and tonight for what it is and we are. 

After all, it's the same procedure as every year, James. Hurrah! Wir leben noch!
-bill kenny

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

From long ago but not quite far (enough) away. At the time I called it:

The Space Between

This close to the Next Year, rather than rue and regret what has been, perhaps we might mentally better prepare for what is to come (assuming we believe ourselves to have some control over what is to come). I've met those who see themselves as hostages of Cruel Fate or an Indifferent Deity as if we had been plopped down on this orb and abandoned to our own devices.

I'm not sure I can articulate specifically or enumerate to any detail, but I respectfully disagree. Yes, we are each our own Captains, lashed to the mast of the ship that is our life, alone in an ocean of souls, but it's a big ocean and we've all found ourselves here somehow and, at least for me, coincidence isn't really going to ever explain the how much less the why.

Thornton Wilder's The Bridge Of San Luis Rey may have been his contemplation on the value of his own life, a speculation that there's a land of the living and a land of the dead and his belief (or hope) that the bridge between them is love. 

To his own question, would his death matter to God (Wilder was a veteran of World War I, with carnage and brutality never seen in the history of our species, who became in spirit, if not, in fact, part of The Lost Generation), he was willing to ask the complementary question: how do we make our lives have a meaning beyond our own lifetimes?

Not the cheeriest of questions to ponder while the old year's days creep slowly to their appointed end and we embrace the next with the same wild-eyed frenzy we did the last, and look at how that turned out. And if the question disquiets you, what of the answer? "Between the idea and the reality. Between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow."

In New England, and across these United States, we are surrounded by memorials in stone, from monuments to buildings, dedicated to the selfless sacrifice of all those who have preceded us--who have set the bar, so to speak, for the rest of us to clear, each in her and his own way. 

Not all of us can be a general, but all of us can be generous. Not every one of us will be President, but each of us can be present when a helping hand is needed, be it next door, around the block or halfway across the world. 

We each have the power to save the world, at least the small plot of it on which each of us stands. Where can we be this time next year if we strive to be great at this time this year? We have a year to work on the answer and make one another forget the question.

-bill kenny

A Good Day to Read Something Else

I offered what follows on the last Saturday in December of 2008. Until I re-read it earlier I would have told you I'd mellowed in the decade-plus since then. Like so much else in my life, before and since, I would have been wrong in arriving at that conclusion. 

I think at the time I wrote it I might have had zwischen den jahren (between the years) blues; I suspect it may be a cyclical thing as I'm feeling it now. Today might be a good day to read a newspaper or the directions on the side of a box of cereal. I feel obligated to suggest that before you proceed.
 

Across the Universe

I started writing this blog, rant, bark at the moon, confessional, about fourteen months ago. I stumbled across the device to do it, otherwise, I would have had to invent it, and being an idiot, that would not have been pretty. 

If this is the first time you've been here, I could tell you this is just part of an off-day, but then you'd look at another entry and realize that was untrue. If you've been here before, thanks for the use of your eyes and your brain--as you've long since figured out, I don't write this for you, or anyone else. I write it for me. I spend decades with no place to put my words and now there is here. 

In a way, it's funny how the sins of one generation are visited, if not embraced, by the next. I don't keep in close contact with my brothers and sisters, with the exception of Adam (who was always exceptional) and yet from what I've gleaned of our lives when some of us interact with others of us, we are all driven like the old man was. Be it getting up in the middle of the night to go to work, staying late, taking it home and working on it over the weekend, we each, in our way, accomplish the behavior we had modeled for us when we were younger. 

For some of my sisters and brothers what makes this even more impressive is that by the time they came along, Dad was past the full-bore days-they got a taste and not the same treatment those of us on the front end of familius-crippled-insidus received and yet they arrived at the same conclusions. 

We were raised, whether we knew it or not, by a parent for whom nothing we did would (or could) be ever good enough. We competed with one another for whatever passed for my father's affections. He never hugged, he never kissed, he never patted you on the head or on the butt. 

He had the heaviest hands imaginable and almost anything you did as a child to and through young adult, would prompt him to use them while a torrent of verbal abuse, practically technicolor in the richness of its vocabulary, rained down upon you. All I ever recall my mother doing was growing sad, leading me to wonder what that relationship was like. 

The only opinion in my father's house that mattered was his--he didn't care if you attempted to parrot it back to him when you talked because he wasn't listening. I learned to save my words, and ball them up like the fists I knew I could never use against him in anger, pick my moments and wound with a word until the conversation was mooted by a backhand across the mouth. I carried around the anger from those not-quite-last-words for decades, oblivious to the toxicity I was harboring until I met a woman on Christmas Day in 1976 whom I knew the moment I saw her, I would marry. 

And I did--it took me until October of the following year, but I did. And when we traveled home from Germany so I could show the old man the woman who loved me, barely a year later, I realized I was stepping out of his shadow only because she enabled me to. He neither knew nor cared that I had decided the 'next time' we came across the Atlantic, he and I would talk. We had our lives ahead of us, he and I--and now we were married men, and to me, equals. 

I didn't know the next time I'd fly across the pond would be to bury him along with all the things we never got to say. It would have been a very deep hole, I admit, had it happened, but I swallowed the fear and pressed on as the husband in the only role I knew. 

And when my wife told me she was pregnant, and we learned it was a boy (we still have the black and white Polaroids from the ultrasound where the doctor showed us the telltale 'ornaments') I had so much to say and no one to whom to say it. 

Through the birth of our other child, so alike and so unlike her brother, she made, and makes, me crazy to this day. To and through the Fall of the Wall, and the NATO Going Out of Business Sale whereby I didn't lose my job, but it lost me and I had two hours to pick one part of the world where my nearly-previous employer promised to seek a position for me. And I chose the Northeast because as Robert Frost noted in Death of the Hired Hand, 'home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.' 

I discovered Connecticut was really two states (not a clear concept when I was a child). There was the Gold Coast, where Buffy and Derick had ponies, and then there was the part beyond the Connecticut River, not so much the Land of Steady Habits as the Land of Sharpened Elbows. 

We have a house because of my ability to earn a living and we have a home because of my wife's talents at adapting to a strange and different environment that strains and challenges her and us every day and yet we rarely feel the shocks because she is that strong in protecting us. 

And my children have grown into adults, unlike their father, to my immense relief. Yes, sadly, a lot of their looks are from my side of the family but their easy smiles, the welcome in their eyes, their willingness to help a friend whom they've just met, they get from their mother. 

They are, as always, my favorite presence under the Christmas tree and my proof to my own doubting heart that there is a force greater than myself who does know when a swallow falls to earth or when the lilies of the field need to look splendid or when one person, crippled inside, needs to sit at a keyboard, but not one that composes music, and create a Song of Thanksgiving that only he can read.

-bill kenny

A Rumination On the Way to Ruination

What follows is from eleven years ago on this date (back in the era when computers were steam-powered as I recall). If you remember reading it, you are a better (wo)man than I, Gunga Din. At the time I called it: 

"I pick up phones to hear my history. I think of all the calls I've missed."

Growing up, one of the things that stuck with me was the later in the day a phone call came, the less likely it was to be good news. In my family growing up, we knew better than to phone home after 8 PM, no matter what, and no matter where we were.

At 55, I am, I suppose, all the adult I am ever going to be. The growing old part worked far too well and the growing up part didn't seem to work at all. I still get nervous going into a darkened room and will search out the light switch even if I'm only passing through. And phone calls now? Even with, or perhaps especially because of, caller ID, when the phone rings in the evening, I am always startled (maybe wary is a better word). 

The phones we have require two rings to show me the number and name of the caller (and a voice chip somehow 'reads' this information and offers me an audio attempt at a name, sometimes to great comic effect), and I stand, transfixed, watching that little display.

Despite 'do not call' registrations, I get a lot of callers from folks who technically don't want to sell me anything, which is prohibited by the registry, but rather only want to take a few minutes of my time for a survey on a multitude of issues, services and products which, many times, always seem to end in what sounds suspiciously like a sales pitch. All of these morons I can handle and do, with a tad more relish and enjoyment than I really should have, truth be told.

When I see the name and number of my son or daughter in the display, however, my bravado evaporates and I start making horror movies in my head. I mutter 'please don't be anything bad' at least three hundred kajillion times between the second ring, which displays their name, and the third ring that never comes because I answer the phone. 

Both of them think it's cutely hilarious their old man breaks out in cold sweats when they call him after dark--if my wife answers the phone, I pace and fret within eyesight and earshot, lest she somehow forgets to tell me of a cataclysmic catastrophe that has befallen one of them. 

When we brought them home from the hospital, and they still had that 'new baby smell', I used to sit in a corner of their room and watch them sleep. I was fascinated by their breathing and with any and every movement they made while in their crib. I had no need of television-I had found my must-see and did so many times, for many hours, as they grew up.

As an adult, I can understand and internalize the realization that I cannot protect my children, who are in fact, adults, themselves now, from every evil and misfortune in the world, but when the day gets dark and the phone rings at night, my inner grown-up is nowhere to be found. 

And all of me that's left is able to do now is to stare at the ringing phone and hope the monster under the bed has gone away by the time I answer it.
-bill kenny

In the Master's Chamber

They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast. 
They can't even agree what meal they are having or when. Just ask Dave. 
Talk about putting the fork in fork you. 

Relax said the night man we are programmed to receive, you can check out any time you'd like but you can never leave (my old Kentucky home).
-bill kenny

Time Flies

Different nations have different holiday customs for this time of year though as residents of Norwich, a Global City, we should already know that I guess.

In many countries today is celebrated as St. Stephen’s Day. In Germany, it’s Zweite Weinachten, or Second Christmas, the day (after celebrating with your immediate family) to visit with friends and neighbors.

In England, this is Boxing Day Boxing Day, though not necessarily for reasons I thought of as a kid, when I imagined the Queen donning twelve-ounce gloves and going a few rounds with other members of the Royal Family.

Here in the Land of the Round Door-Knobs, a lot of us spend the day in stores and malls either exchanging a gift this time yesterday we were cooing in appreciation over receiving or grabbing bargains by the (shopping) cartload. .   

   

The newspapers and television news shows are filled with retrospectives of the soon-to-be-year-that-was though I suspect our respective mileages of rejoicing and regret may vary. It’s a matter of calendar logic to conclude we all got older but I’d hope when we look within, we can see we got better (and how).

The year is nearly done, the race is almost run. For many, all that's left is the settling of the tab with your significant other, your boss, your bank, your neighbors, and family and friends. Weird how someday this will all be part of the “Good Old Days.”

Actually, who we once were, or how we got here isn't, to me, nearly as important as what we do next, when we do it and when we begin. Experience, I’ve been told by people who look like they have a lot of I, is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted, and I’d add it's also nearly as much about what we don't know as what we do know. Stasis can only lead to decay and decline because there is no standing still, only forwards or backward. 

I hope 2018 was good, and if not good, then kind, to you and yours and I welcome the arrival of 2019 and the hope and promise of what it may bring for us all. I realize a year from now some of us will not be here to read the update to this entry (or write it, perhaps, for that matter) but while the actors and actresses are changed and exchanged on a daily basis (in every aspect of our everyday lives), the play goes on. We change partners but continue in the dance. 

With apologies to Dickens, 2018 was the best of years and the worst of years and 20198 will be the same. It's not really a matter of the number of days and hours in a year or a lifetime, but what we do with the space between the beginning and the end. I hope you have all the space you need for that which you need to do and look forward to talking to you next year.

-bill kenny

My Gift from the Magi

I never tire of telling this story of my most wonderful Christmas Day and am neither deterred nor discouraged by the deafening silence with which my telling of it is greeted within the walls of my own house by my spouse and children. I care not a whit. 

I tell this tale because I love the telling and have lived within its happy ending for over four decades. If you've heard or read this before and choose to not revisit it again then move on and have yourself a merry little Christmas. This is what I called: 
  

My Christmas Story

I first spoke to the woman I was to marry forty-two years ago tonight. I had seen her but hadn't worked up the nerve to speak to her, a few weeks earlier but I already knew I would marry her (to this day, I have no idea how I was so smart. But I was). 

I had been in (West) Germany only about two months, arriving shortly before Halloween, which, back in the day, wasn't a holiday of any kind in Germany at all-it was strictly a Yank Prank like Thanksgiving only harder to explain to people who weren't American. 

Chris and I had started out drinking and feeling sorry for ourselves, me in the lead on that count (for being stuck in Germany for the holidays), earlier in the day in the Frankfurt am Main party district, Sachsenhausen, where what seemed like millions of people, swarming like flies, made passage from anywhere to anywhere else almost impossible.

Eventually, though I have no recollection how, we came to be more in mid-town, down the street from CBS Germany (though we didn't know that at the time) near Eschenheimer Tor. Because I am relentlessly competitive, I got much drunker much faster than Chris who did a very good job looking out for me since, family tradition, once I get my drunk on I'm never confused with Mr. Congeniality. 

Chris and I were seated in a booth with a round bench around the table with room for plenty of other people but they would have to move in as we had decided to remain on the ends. As the evening went on, our table filled up. When the woman who was to be my wife arrived with her girlfriend there was really hardly any room left so when she asked if she could be seated I offered her my lap and she accepted.

As quickly as she sat down I offered, "now that you're sitting on my lap, how about telling me your name?" and so it began, in a moment of suaveness never before (or again) seen on our planet. Cue the swelling music.   

In the decades since all of this happened, I've tried to calculate the number of actions and activities that had to take place, just so, so she and I could meet but since I chose to be a liberal arts major making sure I'd avoid using or needing  math in my life, I cannot possibly execute the calculations.

I've long since given up trying to make sense of the world as it was or as it is. I will tell you I believe because that's how I was raised and habit is often more lasting than logic, that there is a reason for everything we do and everything we fail to do. 

As attractive as I find the 'we're all hostages from Hades/We're all bozos on this bus' approach to questions about divinity, humanity and the universe at large, I can't really leave it there.

If Christmas is a time of love, and this is the night when I found mine, how can I not encourage you to be of good cheer and renew your faith even if you've yet to meet the person who completes you? A more luckless, lunchless, loser than I could you not have imagined, but a miracle was still mine. Keep your eyes wide and your heart open. There's magic in the air if and when you want it.

-bill kenny

Ironisches Weihnachten

Many operations within the government of the United States of America are currently shut down because the Congress and the President cannot agree on funding, or even reinforcing and building, a wall on our border with Mexico.

Negotiations will resume on Thursday, meanwhile, the stalemate continues. 
Between now and then, of course, all involved in negotiations will pause to celebrate a holiday about a child born to a middle eastern couple seeking refuge and shelter.

Maybe more effort should have been made to put Christ back in Christian than in Christmas.
Perhaps a thought for another day, but for today, Merry Christmas.
bill kenny 

Braving the Winds of Grief

This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and for many (more importantly) the 'so many days until Christmas' countdown has dwindled down to !!!! (exclamatory marks sold separately at fine stores everywhere)

Maybe today is a good day to see someone in a corner of our lives we normally see through on our way to the many important things we each do and never really acknowledge. We're a pretty crowded ant farm with beepers and briefcases and sometimes the person next to us falls through a crack and we never notice.

Anglicans (Church of England in the UK) call this Stir-up Sunday, not as in get agitated or become more forcefully engaged in the world around us, but for more quiet and comfortable reasons, but I do like that name and the possibilities and connotations.

For some of us, this is the best of the Season of Joy and for others, it's really nothing more than the next to last Sunday in 2018. We are the sum total of all the choices we make and the lives and love we share. We are the reason for this season.
-bill kenny

Welcome to My Dotage

I accomplished all of my Christmas shopping this past Monday. I owe my success again this year to my gift of organization and, more correctly, to the realization everyone in my orbit is better off when I pay someone else to wrap the presents I'm giving. 

This is from a really long time ago when I used to trail pieces of Christmas wrapping paper by strands of discarded cellophane tape from my shoe sole, sowing chaos rather than spreading cheer. 

At the time I called it:     

"A Steve Austen outfit..."

I almost forgot one of the more important traditions in my house at Christmas: Dad's badly wrapped gifts, under the tree resembling the dog's breakfast, especially in comparison to EVERYONE else's wrapping jobs. Even when they were small, really small, our two children could wrap a present better than I. 

I am incapable of figuring out how to take a flat sheet of paper and shape it neatly and symmetrically around a gift. It doesn't make any difference what size the gift is or how large or small the sheet of wrapping paper is. It doesn't seem to be a problem with the scissors or the sealing tape. I am forced to conclude it's O, H, S, &T, Operator Head Space and Timing.

This year I was going to do all gift cards-they come neatly packaged in their own festive envelopes. They stack very nicely, don't take up a lot of space under or near the tree and don't involve me looking foolish with tape, scissors, et al. 
Spread my gifts under the tree last night, as my daughter is home for the holidays from college, and looked at the display in the twinkling lights and 'underwhelmed' is the only word I can use. 

My project today is to battle the throngs of shoppers I thought I had cleverly avoided and get stuff that I am guessing my children and spouse may want or failing that, won't hate too much, ruin huge amounts of paper and tape wrapping them all up and place them, like bedraggled bits of road kill, under the tree so that everyone on Christmas Eve can look knowingly at one another and laughingly say as they pass the presents, 'here's one from Dad!' Father Christmas, indeed.
-bill kenny

Donne's Bell

Today is the shortest day of 2018. The sun rose later this morning and will set sooner this evening than it did on any other day for this entire year. 

This time next week will be the start of the last weekend of a year that for me at least has seemed to be without end.  

We're zeroing out accounts, taking balances, and fixating on the next wave of new projects, promises, and beginnings. Maybe a good point of departure.

There's just so many second chances. Why gamble on a less than sure thing?
-bill kenny

I'll Owe You Some Words

And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

"Take a little time, open up your mind, And see that humankind’s destiny is intertwined."
-bill kenny

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

By this time next week, Christmas has already passed, so let me offer a sincere Merry Christmas to you and yours from me and mine slightly ahead of the rush. And if you don't observe the holiday, I apologize for the salutation but not the sentiment. 

As I've aged (more like milk than wine), I've learned we all share many different customs and beliefs, but they are often just different ways to say and to celebrate the same occasions, so however and whatever you observe, Happy Holidays.

Based on how my life has gone for 66 Christmases (so far and looking forward to more), I don't need (or miss) snow or frosty weather or sparkling lights and boughs of holly or gift wrap and holiday cards--although all of those are very nice and help complement a contented and contemplative state of mind.

I have lived through some big changes this year, a retirement and the purchase of a house, and realize perhaps better than ever before how grateful I am for the love of a woman for over forty years of marriage in every circumstance imaginable to include even Norwich, Connecticut. Proving again life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.

I'm grateful for the presence of our two children, Patrick and Michelle. The adults they have each grown to be are as wonderful and extraordinary as the children who blessed my life all those years ago.

This is the time of year when each of us, if not always all of us, has a greater awareness and attitude of gratitude for what we have and what we continue to hold dear. In the joy of the season, it can be hard to remember much less help those in our community who have not been as blessed as we are. Need knows no holiday and for those among us seeking a place to live, a warm meal or maybe just a kind thought, this time of year can be cruel.

But we have an opportunity to brighten Christmas for neighbors in need. This Friday evening, the longest night of the winter, from 5:30 to 7:30 at the Saint Vincent de Paul Place Soup Kitchen, 120 Cliff Street, it’s the Homeless Persons Memorial Dinner, sponsored by Generations Family Health Center.

You can get tickets for their Garlic Roasted Chicken Dinner fundraiser, by calling Jillian Corbin at 860.889.7374, The tickets are seven dollars each or two for ten and if you were to also bring a donation of a non-perishable item with you Friday, I don’t think anyone would mind.

I'm told there's no such thing as strangers, only friends we haven't met and here’s a chance to prove it. Since it is, after all, Christmas, when miracles can and do happen, won’t you share some of your good fortune with someone who’d most appreciate the kind act you are doing and perhaps in that way each of us can be someone else’s Christmas Present?

-bill kenny

I Hear the Old Man Laughing

I don't ever remember celebrating my father's birthday as I grew up. Logic dictates we, our mother (his wife) and my brothers and sisters (his children) must have done so as we did for everyone in our family, and yet every year I struggle and fail to find a single memory of a single moment of that day.

I mention that because had he lived, tomorrow would be his ninety-fifth birthday and I'd like to think he would be something I never felt he was while we shared the earth, proud of something, anything, I'd ever done. In this case, as was so true in our shared lives, I would be cheating (oh so slightly) because I'd hope he'd be proud of his grandchildren, Patrick and Michelle, who are fortunately for them far more Sigrid's children.

My most lasting memory of my father isn't really a memory of him, but a reminder of how life goes on within you and without you. Many years ago while shopping in the US military exchange, Sigrid found 'the perfect card for you to send to your dad for Father's Day.' This was all pre-Internet and global village days, remember, and was back when it was only she and me and work (and sadly, not always in that order). 

I don't remember the card, though this would be a better lesson for me if I had, but I signed it, and Sigrid addressed it, put a stamp on it and had me throw it in my work bag (a large  shoulder-strapped book bag, that carried, judging from its weight, most of the world's most curious and heaviest items).

And that's where the card remained. Months later, and well past Father's Day, she was rooting through my bag, in search of something I had promised to bring home but had misplaced. What she found that day, and registered a quiet note of disappointment with me because of the discovery, was the card we both thought I had mailed all those months earlier for Father's Day. Faced with the reality I obviously hadn't, all I could do was mumble a promise to do so 'next year.' 

You've guessed, of course, my father died before 'next year' ever happened. As a self-centered oldest child, stiff-necked and incapable of bending, I had clashed with him nearly every day of our lives. I think from the time I could talk, all I said to him was 'no.' 

I don't recall what we fought about or why, but they were bitter arguments, often ending in physical contact that made me more fully appreciate the weight of his hands, but I refused to yield anything at any time and we passed months, if not years, exchanging as few words as possible for as long as possible. 

I had wished the worst for him countless times, and when notified by the Red Cross (I was still on active duty in the Air Force at the time) that he was dead, my first reaction was (and to this day still is) overwhelming guilt. 

We three oldest children had moved out and away, but our two youngest sisters and one brother were left to be raised by our mother in circumstances vastly different from ours when were their age, and I made no effort to ever learn or to attempt to mitigate or improve. 

I've never spoken to any of them about those times and know I never shall. More casualties in a war that should have ended decades ago, but continues even as I type this and feel the gorge rise in my veins as if "enough" weren't already, and finally, truly enough.

But (and it arrived less than a week ago) I can now smile at a brilliantly different perspective offered by my brother Adam, who wrote a book for his three (!) grandchildren, Pop-Pop Rules: A how-to manual for the little girl who saved my life simply by showing up. I think it's brilliant but don't take my word for it; check it out for yourself. 

In the decades since his death, I've had to concede I am becoming more accepting, like it or not, that I am my father's son in ways neither of us could have ever seen or imagined. Maybe he'd be proud of that, but in a way, I truly hope not. 

Life is a sum of all your moments--waking and dreaming; everything you've done or left undone; every word, said and unsaid and of all your prayers, answered but, more especially and finally, unanswered. 
-bill kenny

Feel Like a Number

I read the other day that Google is closing down its effort at a Facebook clone, an effort that never really captured anyone's imagination the way the marketing folks had hoped it would. I've joined so many social networks over the years I've lost track (and for the most part also interest). In the passage of time since signing up I've discovered I no longer have (assuming I ever did) any idea what some of them do or are; I've rattled around here on the big blue marble for a shade more than sixty-six years so maybe I could and should leave well enough alone.

This is who we are. A sentient, self-aware species yearning to be individuals, right along with everyone else surrounding us. Each of us, heck, ALL of us, all seven billion or so on this planet, want to be able to rush to the shore or scream at the sky 'hey! look at me!' 

If there is a God, how does He (or She; how ironic would that be to learn God the Father is actually God the Mother? And stuff, like picking on your sibling, taking the last cookie, or not making your bed, is REALLY the important stuff while faith and food works are as may be? What a hoot.) possibly keep track of us all? 

I understand I should look to the lilies of the field who neither toil nor weave and I'd realize that not one swallow falls to earth without His knowledge but am I the only one who has days like those of the fisherman who prays, 'Lord, Your ocean is so large and my boat is so small'? 

I spend more time online in conversation or interaction than in so doing with real people, though at least in theory, the ones online are as real as those in the flesh and in the here and now. My children are very much at home in this Brave New World, barely remembering the quaint old days of dial-up and now part of the migratory electrons that are so many virtual meeting places. Each of us can stand alone, but it's easier to stand alone when you are together. 

Maybe that's part of what separates us from the beasts (and all this time I thought it was these nifty thumbs), our knowledge of our finite future. The realization that tomorrow will dawn for some, though not all, of us and that there will be a day when the last person who knows of our existence, themselves, passes from this earth and we cease to be part of the communal context and conscience and become forgotten. 

And someone someplace scrolls over whatever has replaced what we now call this community of connectivity and marvels at the primitive beauty of that which was left behind.
-bill kenny

Faith for Reasons Still Unknown

Despite all the misery, malevolence and hate-filled utterances throughout what has been (at least for me) a very long and contentious year and most especially now during what we called as kids the Season of Hope, today, Gaudete Sunday remains a favorite of mine (since my earliest school days).

Before I had memorized the entire Latin Mass, in the hope (forlorn) of becoming an altar boy, I had theorized from what I understood of the roots of the word Gaudete and its proximity to the birth of Jesus that it must somehow be Latin for 'just hold on a little bit longer.' I still think I should get partial credit for grasping the feeling if not the exact meaning

A lot of the warmth of our human hearts regardless of your beliefs is reflected by the holiday seasons that fall together this time of year somehow reminding us, I hope, that we are, when we can see and live beyond our differences and rise up to our promise and potential, all very much the same people.

Far too often we have too many blaring horns in the cacophony of life and can most certainly use another light, especially in this, the most hopeful of seasons. 

-bill kenny

Watchin' the River Flow

It's always been one of my favorite Dylan songs. It rollicks more than it rocks and rolls and makes me smile every time I hear it. And I hear it at the oddest moments like the other day at Lower Yantic Falls around the corner from our house as winter settles into Southeastern New England. 

Of course, the winter weather helps slow the river down and extends the enjoyment.
-bill kenny

Somewhere Along in the Bitterness

Through all the means of mass distraction in the 21^st Century we have long been aware of the seemingly ceaseless stream of random violence and calculated carnage in every corner of our country but with Newtown, I realized and maybe you did, too, I had never thought such a horror could happen here in our  state, home.

Even those who question the existence of God can have no doubt that evil is real and in the world, because it came to a place that offered safety and security, an elementary school filled with adults who gave the last and fullest measure of devotion to save those least able to save themselves, the children.

Six years after the inconceivable tragedy at Sandy Hook I don’t pretend to have insights into why what happened in Newtown happened at all. All I can offer is to hold the parents, siblings, and friends of those who were murdered in my thoughts as the survivors hold them in their hearts. I'd pray for better days for them and for us but hope for better days may have been among the casualties at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Newtown should remind us to examine our lives and decide what is truly important. But for any number of reasons we don't seem to like the idea of a reminder. Instead, we see every incident of inchoate violence since the murder of innocents this day six years ago as an isolated singular event, rather than as larger and unending episodes of anger and rage so profound we still dare not speak of causes and solutions because our emotions are still too raw or as we tell ourselves, ‘it’s too soon.’ 

Except, it's not soon; it's too late, much too late for six young teachers and twenty even younger children and grieving relatives who put very small coffins into the cold, cold earth, during the holiday season six years ago and who will carry until their dying day a hole in their hearts that time cannot and will not ever heal.

We’ll have (every) other day of this year and all the years that remain to argue about 'what's important.' And that's fine by me as long as we can finally and fully agree: today is a day to pause and hold our loved ones closer and see in their eyes a reflection of who we must become to make and to be the difference in the world, today and every day.

-bill kenny 

Quasimodo Looked Familiar

I fell across this in my archives (sounds much more spiffy than it really is) yesterday and it made me smile so I wanted to reshare it undeterred by the realization that at my age almost everything makes me smile, or seems to. At this time I called it:

And One to Grow On

We were a loud and large family when I was a child. My parents had heeded the Biblical injunction at least in part-my dad always had a garden though how fruitful it was, it's hard to say now-but we were many so they were good at math, well at least at multiplication.

Our birthdays usually involved grandparents, Mom's, who were much closer to us at least geographically, living in Elechester out in Flushing, Queens, than were those of Dad, someplace out in Illinois (I learned years later, Taylorsville (maybe without the 's')). Our sightings of Grandma Kenny were rarer than Elvis, the live Elvis, who's still not nearly as successful as the dead one, so we always called Grandma Kelly, Grandma.

It was of her I thought yesterday morning when reading the saga of Nicholas Trabakoulos versus Sue Handy, actually Judge Susan B. Handy, in a courtroom in New London, Connecticut, on Thursday. 

Grandma had, when her children were our ages, she told us, started a birthday tradition of gently smacking the birthday child on the bottom once for every natal anniversary topped at the conclusion by a pinch, 'to grow an inch' by your next birthday. 

In the ensuing decades, the notion gentle was lost. Reading that now helps explain why, usually for our tenth birthday, most of us received a set of Esso road maps as a gift so we wouldn't get lost when we ran away from home.

Anyway, Nicholas wasn't ever at those gatherings which is just as well as Nicholas comes across as a bad man when you read the news report. I couldn't help but wonder if he'd built up his stamina if Lance Armstrong couldn't have used him on his Tour de France Astana team. 

But that was not to be. Nicholas had other ideas and when a boy and his bike (and his sawed-off shotgun hidden under a pink blanket) have their mind set on something, that's all there is to it.

Nicholas, says the news story, was in Groton visiting from New York when he robbed someone of $140, making his getaway by bicycle. The idea of a bike race where you also commit armed robbery probably hasn't yet been broached to anyone in the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism but brace yourself. 

I can envision swarms of competitors bike shorts and ski masks, stretching to the horizon with satellite TV uplink vans and bloggers, twitters, and facebookers as far as the eye can see. Tourist Ka-Ching!). I just hope when they go with it (not if) that we don't owe Nicholas royalties on the intellectual property rights.

Back to Grandma. 

Nicholas the Biker had not been Mr. Congeniality during his incarceration says the story, from the time of his arrest, through his trial to his sentencing Thursday, where he was awarded fourteen years for both robbery and weapons possession (I wonder what became of the bike?). 

As they say in the infomercials, but wait, there's more. Apparently not appreciating the right to remain silent might be for his own good, Nicolas "unleashed a stream of obscenities... when Handy asked Trabakoulos if he had anything to say. His responses are unprintable." Johnny, why don't you tell us what Mr. Trabakoulos has won?

The judge ordered Nicholas removed from the courtroom, gave him two hours to mull over his actions and then brought him back to ask if he wished to apologize. Nicholas had a number of wishes, but apologizing didn't make the list. 

Judge Handy, like Grandma, then gave him six additional months on top of the fourteen years, for contempt of court. It would have been too much, I suppose, had Nicholas also been sentenced to be transported to the pokey on the handlebars of a bicycle pedaled by a corrections officer, though I'm unsure if the officer could have reached the bell. 
-bill kenny

So Many Different Suns

I wrote this a couple of years ago and have returned to it on an annual basis since then because the sentiment, like the event itself, is an evergreen and a calendar fixture. And at this time of year with the rush for relentless cheerfulness ever escalating, taking a moment to reflect and respect is certainly not out of place. So, thank you for the kindness of your indulgence again.

We are only slightly more than waist deep in that most wonderful time of the year where far more than just the halls end up decked with boughs of holly and tinsel, eight different kinds of lights (all energy-saving LEDs of course), ornaments of all shapes, sizes, and colors (with price tags to match) and most of us struggling to swim upstream in a sea of customers wherever we do our holiday shopping, buying gifts and presents instead of enjoying the presence of the gift of family and friends.

Because of the hectic head noise that seems to be a part of our Yuletide preparations and celebrations, we end up staring at the (Christmas) trees too often without seeing the forest. I hesitated while typing ‘trees’ in case it serves as a reminder or trigger because you have yet to get yours, adding another chore to your to-do list.

Between all the hurried holiday greetings and in the midst of the manufactured merriment, you may wish for a moment you could use to catch your emotional breath rather than another big box store bargain and to collect your thoughts and count your blessings instead of gathering your purchases and pocketing your change. Something, anything.

If you seek respite from the holiday if only for a few minutes, I have a suggestion courtesy of the Norwich Area Veterans Council for an event that’s really more of a moment.  It’s this Saturday at noon in Taftville’s Sacred Heart Cemetery; but it's not a unique-to-Norwich event, not by any means.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Wreaths Across America whose three-fold mission is to Remember, Honor, and Teach. Every year this national outreach coordinates wreath-laying ceremonies on veterans’ graves on a Saturday in December (this one coming up) at Arlington in Virginia as well as veterans’ cemeteries and other locations in each of our 50 states, at sea, and in over two dozen cemeteries in other countries where US military members have been buried.

I’ve attended previous ceremonies at Sacred Heart while I admire the power of words, I concede I don’t know enough or the right ones to adequately describe an event that is a heartfelt and homegrown acknowledgment of the lives of our departed veterans (of all services and from every conflict and era of our history). You should experience it for yourself.

It is both a gathering and a reflection of our community in remembering the fallen, honoring those still in service and teaching one another that freedom is free only with sacrifice. 

I’ll save a place for you Saturday at noon.

-bill kenny