Stop Making Excuses

While out walking on Sunday morning, perhaps inspired by the NFL's use of Roman numerals to count Super Bowls (though never mentioning Roman Gabriel), I struggled to remember any of my school-boy Latin as I wended my way down Washington Street to the Norwich Harbor both of us enjoying a break in the days' previous very cold air, me probably a little more than the ice forming on the banks of both the Shetucket and Yantic Rivers as they met to form the Thames. 

Mostly I remembered that 'All of Gaul is divided into three parts (Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres).' but (I think) more appropriate (and on point) to some of the painfully recent events here in Norwich might be, 'what is permitted is what will continue.' 

Between us, rendering that second quote in the 'original Latin' is a bridge (wider than the one spanning the Rubicon, sorry Mr. Moore my teacher) too far for me after all those years ago but...

Here we are, a little more than half-way through the winter of our discontent and we've done little more than ruminate over the very public failings, if not failures, of two institutions with our city's name in them, Norwich Free Academy, and Norwich Public Utilities. 

You read the same newspaper I do so I don't need to quote from The Bulletin of two Saturdays ago on NFA or from its editorial page last Sunday on the now-former general manager of NPU or the NPU Board of Commissioners' explanation of its decision from last Thursday. I appreciated very much the Commissioners feeling they needed to offer an explanation although a similar perspective from the NFA Board of Trustees was striking in its absence. Sometimes the things we do (and don't do) speak so loudly I can't hear what we're saying.   

What I found eye-opening and thought-provoking were the comments and responses, and absence of same, from readers and residents, about the articles not only on the Bulletin's website but also across the social media platforms where so many of us offer drive-by analysis with almost as few characters as we had thoughts prior to writing, most of which seemed to reflect a 'what can we do?' resignation mixed with a grim 'someone should do something!' attitude, which, to me, were both terribly short on specifics.

Yes, our lives are very busy, sometimes too busy, we have convinced ourselves, to take the time to make and to be the difference in our community and so we suffer in (somewhat) sullen silence and wait for someone to show us how to be the people we've told our children they should aspire to be. 

Might I suggest the time for searching for someone to do something is over and encourage each of us to be that someone because otherwise, what is permitted is what will continue.'
-bill kenny