Dressing Isn't Just for Salad Anymore

From the dark and dusty archives, my failed attempt at sartorial splendor. 
At the time I called it:

Every Girl's Crazy 'Bout a Sharp-Dressed Man

You've seen it. I know I've seen it as well. The trend where people wear pajamas like regular clothes. I never really warmed to that bit some years back where people who were not medical professionals wore scrubs, and I've always been underwhelmed by the Pajama Game trend just because it's goofy. 

Many years ago (before any of us were even born, come to think of it), as a rock and roller working in the vinyl jungle, I interviewed the Boomtown Rats who boasted not only the self-aggrandizing (and relentlessly brilliant) Bob Geldof (known now as Sir Bob to Her Majesty and Saint Bob according to many of the yobes he used to hang out with) but a keyboardist named Johnny Fingers (some of his best-known work is here) whose stage attire was pajamas. For reasons that may say more about all of us and the relations we had, or not, with a variety of controlled substances, no one seemed to notice or care. 

Today, perhaps because all the world's a stage (whether we like it or not; sorry Will), pajamas show up everywhere. Additionally, but I suspect not so coincidentally, the number of celebartists (whose particular art is being famous for being famous) who wear their underclothes on the outside approaches legion. 

That injunction our Moms gave us all those years ago about wearing clean underwear is paying off big-time and I, for one, am very grateful since beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there are certain things I don't really need to ever behold.

In the United Kingdom, yesterday, there was much ado about underthings--ironically, underthings that were under clothes. So unless you're Clark Kent, we all look pretty much the same, when viewed from space. A retail chain, Next, had a complaint about a cartoon print on men's underpants (no part of that sentence fragment makes any sense to me at all) by a customer and decided to literally, eat their own shorts and withdraw from sale all 5,200 pairs of underpants that may, or may not, have had a likeness of Hitler on them. 

The chain is quoted in the story as having gone back to the designer who insists the image is actually that of V. I. Lenin. That explains everything, right? There are about forty questions left unanswered by the story, to include the 'why did you think putting a cartoon likeness of anyone on underpants was integral to the process in the first place?' but in addition to that tip about wearing clean ones, my mom once suggested to me 'don't ask the question if you can't stand the answer.' She was going to suggest 'don't sleep in the subway' but she had to go scrubs shopping with Lenin's Mom. 

-bill kenny

Santayana Would Be Flummoxed

Those who do not learn from history are fated to repeat it is an aphorism attributed to George Santayana whom I have (too) often seen somehow linked to Carlos Santana. 

As someone saddled with a last name some think is the same as the 35th President's (it's not) I can understand the fear of what happens when we fail to remember much less learn from the past. 

Not that the fine folks of the National Enquirer Theme Park aren't suffering from selective amnesia so much as having no idea what tasteful recollection might look like. Hopefully, they have enough land to add further fun-filled attractions like the Children's Crusade, The Rape of Nanking, and, of course, The Final Solution. Talk about making Pigeon Forge, Tennessee a tourist destination...   

Living in 21st Century America where my ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge doesn't bode well for our chances of making it to the 22nd Century. But with any luck, few will remember and even fewer will care.
-bill kenny

Funny the Way It Is

There's an expression I love that goes, 'speak the truth, even if your voice wavers.' In an era of social media where yelling at total strangers while pretending to argue with them is done in ALL CAPS, not only is the truth hard(er) to find it seems to me maybe at times it's harder to listen to as well.

We have a November election for all six seats on the City Council (the Mayor is a four-year term) and for nine on the Board of Education. I can't be the only person in Norwich who tries to elect people in whom I have faith they will do their best for our city, not that I always agree with every position they take on every issue confronting us. 

All I can ask of them, as I think we should all do of one another, is they do the best they can. Have I voted for people in elected office who've disappointed me? Pull up a chair and let me tell you about it. Kidding about the chair. Of course, I have and so have you.    

Have there been elected people whose effort and accomplishments have surprised and delighted me? Yes, as you can tell because my feet are smiling. I'm as guilty as probably you are of losing sight sometimes those we elect are our neighbors, from next door or across the neighborhood who, when the rest of us said, 'well, somebody has to step up and do ....' they said, "I will." 

Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena observation is as true here and now in Norwich, as it was at any time since he first said it. In today's version Old Rough and Ready would update the gender references I'm sure, but you get the idea. 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”   

Earlier this month as the debate about the Norwich City Budget, our fiscal map for the next year of our collective future was being crafted, generated more heat if not quite so much light, Alderwoman Joanne Philbrick, a neighbor of all of ours who for decades has been involved in making Norwich a place for everyone to come home to was singled out and vociferously criticized for her remarks at a City Council meeting that some, okay, many (myself included), felt were highly critical of our schoolteachers. 

What she said may not have been what she meant and probably isn't what we heard but I don't criticize someone else's beliefs simply because they are not mine. However, the hateful and hurtful comments so many of us voiced in response to her remarks may be a reason why we have so few neighbors volunteering to seek office. Who can blame them?  

It's easy to support freedom of speech when you agree with the speaker but the true test, and one we as a city did not do well this time is when you find the speech disagreeable. We need to remove the coarseness from our civil discourse and extend to one another the same respect we expect and demand from one another.
-bill kenny          

Second Sitting

I haven't had breakfast yet this morning which is why, perhaps, this relic from a decade ago spoke so loudly to me. At the time I called it:

You Are What You Eat

Came across a feature yesterday offered on the internet that made me smile. It's a listing of foods that help you burn excess weight (usually through a process that requires your body to use up more calories processing the food than the food, itself, has in it). 

You've seen lists like this for years and about once a decade or so someone tricks up a new name for it and you have the Blah-Blah Diet with a book for only $29.95 (plus processing and handling) and an infomercial where a lot of folks who look vaguely familiar sit on a couch and tell each other stories about their own amazing weight losses while taking turns staring in wide-eyed incredulity at somebody else's 'true story of weight loss'. 

"Gee Buzz, your colon is so clean you can pass a car through it!" exclaims Mitzi, who looks like one of the people who used to be on Three's Company. Not one of the original cast members, of course (the survivors are out doing supermarket openings), but one of the replacements after the show started into its glide slope of viewership decline and burned up on reentry.

And Buzz who may or may not have been in Encino Man with Pauly Shore (how'd you like to have that on your resume?) tells us all about it. I had a great idea for a drinking game one night watching these infomercials. The group makes up a list of pat phrases you know will be said and every time one of them is uttered, everyone has to quaff a beverage. And the winner is me because I didn't come to your house and do this drinking game stuff. 

Meanwhile, back at the list. They're basically all the same--just a slight variation of what your Mom told you to eat and not to eat. There's never a lot of chocolate eclairs on these lists of fat burning foods and I've often wondered, near-altar boy as I am, why is it that God, who moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, didn't make the stuff that's good for us taste better. 

I know broccoli is a lot better than a hot sausage sandwich for me, but guess which one tastes better? Maybe He could hire the International Flavors and Fragrances (you thought I was goofing on you?) to work on short term solutions to that challenge. Of course, smiting would work just as well. I figure after a while we'd all get tired of attending funerals where the guest of honor had marinara sauce on his cheek (and you could still see where the lightning bolt hit him). 

Because, and this is as true of any list I've ever seen, I don't care how good something is for me. If I don't like the taste, or sight, or smell or sometimes the sound (or the name-I almost ate calamari once. I will NEVER eat octopus), I'm not having anything to do with it.

My favorite example is hot oatmeal. I've tried everything and I still can't bring myself to eat it. I know it's good for me (I don't know why, but never mind) and I can read the side of the box and get the nutritional information (by the way, what is the point of nutritional information on bottled water? It's water for crying out! Spare me.), and I'm sure the flavors are marvelous. 

I almost get there-I boil the water and pour it into the bowl and stir it up without gagging and dip the spoon in and lift it out, next stop, lips and glottis, and no deal. I will not open my mouth, no matter how good oatmeal is for me. And if you want to offer me a swig of a probiotic drink of something to wash it down, you'd better have a Maid of the Mist raincoat on, buddy boy, because you are so going home to put on new clothes. Could be quite a hike-better eat yer Wheaties.

-bill kenny

The Meaning of the Day

I think sometimes we get a little lost with the mattress sales and such. This is from this time a couple of years back and was called:
 

Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War

I couldn't find a picture of a barbecue grill so this will have to do, I suppose.

Memorial Day.

-bill kenny

Charles Darwin to the White Courtesy Phone, Please

David Letterman used to have a regular and much-loved feature on his late night television show entitled Stupid Human Tricks. 

I've little doubt Cameron Wilson would have qualified for multiple appearances. And not just in court, as it turns out. 

Are you familiar with the turn of phrase, 'too stupid to breed?' That does sound a lot like Cam, or at least one can hope.

-bill kenny 

Allt Vi Säger Ar Att Ge Bin En Chans

Thank you, Sweden.

They gave us the fish, the Bikini Team, the Chef, and (of course) IKEA.  

And now the McDonald's restaurants in Sweden are doubling as a Beeskeeping Force. 

All I can say is Två alla nötköttspattor, specialsås, sallad, ost, pickles, lök, på en sesamfröbulle.

On behalf of Eric and all the others, Tack!
-bill kenny

Leavened Levity, of Sorts

So 'cast your bread upon the waters' was only a suggestion? Who knew?

-bill kenny  

A Car-toon

Revisiting a posting from a decade ago (and yes, as you'll discover again, I wrote as badly then as I do now (and maybe badlyer if that's possible). At the time I called it: 

All Hat

Driving in the middle of the day earlier in the week, I passed a fellow in an electric blue Miata convertible with the top down, wearing a large hat. The fellow, not the car. Actually, I knew the driver, not that I waved or gave any sign of recognition, though the 'You're Still #1 with me' gesture did come to mind. 

I worked with the man a really long time, and I suspect neither of us recalls that period with any warmth or fondness. He had the Miata then when it was a new and cute little car that sort of reminded fossils like me of a classic Lotus without all kinds of pieces falling off every time you drove it someplace. 

For over a century the sun never set on the British Empire and for many years the same was true of British Leyland Motors. Great Britain, the same nation that built Lancasters and Spitfires to thwart Hitler and his Horde cranked out swarms of Austin Metros and Triumph TR7's with little thought of tomorrow. From the two seconds or so I had to form a judgment, the years haven't been kind to either of them-and between us, he had far less to lose to start with. 

Anyway. What had caught my eye was, on a beautiful day (and it was and we deserve as many in a row as we can get for as long as we can have them), he had the top down, to catch the rays (I'll assume). Except, he had a large hat on in the car, behind the wheel. To me, that defeats the whole purpose of having the top down. If you wear a hat in a car with the top down, it should be the law you must also shower while wearing a raincoat. I'm sorry, some rules are needed here. What is the point, otherwise, of having a car with a convertible top? 

If you have a sensitivity to the sun, put the top down only at night or when the car is in a garage; leave the top up when you're driving outdoors (and when you're driving indoors and the indoors is a car wash) or just sell the car and buy one with a permanent roof.

We have a name for a car whose roof can be lowered or removed, 'convertible.' I don't think we have a name for a car whose roof does NO tricks at all and why doesn't that car deserve a name?. Or in this guy's case, lose the hat that covers your scalp and get one big enough to cover your head. 

Keep America Beautiful, Bozo (and no, that's NOT what I started to type). 
-bill kenny

Sons, Daughters, Fathers, and Mothers

I hope the weather, which has been hit and miss for most of this spring (and mostly miss if you're keeping score) cooperates as Memorial Day, this coming Monday, marks the unofficial start of summer

When I was a kid (in the dark days of black and white TV and NO Internet) we called it Decoration Day because so many families spent some part of the day traveling to or at a cemetery decorating the grave of a fallen member of the Armed Forces (World War II, Korea, and the ongoing Vietnam War touched practically every family). We've grown accustomed to having professional armed forces now and often forget that for many years we had military conscription, usually called the draft. 

In our War for Independence, we had volunteers but conscription was a process to guarantee manpower. And for decades since we called everyone regardless of age 'our boys in uniform.' After the draft was eliminated in 1973 and both sexes could serve, maybe because we thought it sounded silly to say 'our girls in uniform', we referred to 'our women in uniform' and once we did that, it made sense to also say 'our men in uniform.' Odd how we made men out of boys, eh? 

Memorial Day's now a big backyard barbecue day and almost everyone with a product or service to sell advertises their Memorial Day Specials. I guess that's okay and at some level is actually part of what the holiday is about even when we get too busy to remember.

Thanks to the Norwich Area Veterans Council, Norwich hosts its annual Memorial Day Parade and Program, rain or shine, this Monday starting at noon with a parade from the Cathedral of Saint Patrick up Broadway to Chelsea Parade with a brief program of guest speakers and the placing of memorial wreaths on all of the markers commemorating America's wars, on the north end of the Parade. I hope you can attend.    

A lot of very brave and talented people in this city and region, and across our country, sacrificed their lives so we could cook baby-back ribs or check out the deals at the car dealerships. But not just the very brave and talented--a lot of frightened, flawed and ultimately fragile men and women in uniform died so we could complain about the price of gas, politicians we don't like or how our favorite ball club is off to slow start again. 

After the Chelsea Parade remembrance, I visit the Yantic Cemetery, a short walk from my home to spend a moment at the graves marked with American flags. It always feels like far too little but I’m not sure what else I can do.

Yantic Cemetery is not as poetic, perhaps, as Flanders Field by John McCrae, but its silent eloquence is enough, I think, to remind us all that we live in the greatest nation in the history of the planet in part because of the sacrifice of those who served and we should each strive a little harder to make our lives deserving of their sacrifice.
-bill kenny

Think of It as Foreshadowing

I was looking for something else when I found this from just about two and a half years ago with sentiments and attitudes that sounded an awful lot like this time last year when I was counting down to retirement (if not ecstasy). 

I am a little spooked at how true it feels, even now, since I thought I'd decided to retire as the year was starting but this suggests it was a long time before that. At the time I called it:

Thin Ice or Thick Water?

I’ve been dilly-dallying about closing a chapter in my life and starting another as I round third heading for home in turning sixty-five years (incredibly and unbelievably) old in April. I can remember turning ten and cracking wise with my grandparents (mom’s Mom and Dad) on the phone about ‘being almost old enough to collect Social Security’ and my father on the other side of the kitchen muttering ‘first you have to go to work.’ Check and check, Dad. 

Oh, that’s right you missed most of it. It’s okay. We had two kids you never met but I think you would’ve liked them; they’re grown-ups now and I’ve grown to be older than you ever were. We ended up leaving Germany a quarter of a century ago, as the two nations were officially becoming one as I recall, settling (and I mean that in every sense of the word) in the southeastern corner of Connecticut.  

It’s weird how lives work out in real-time sometimes despite what you think will happen. I was online the other day and a friend from my Germany days who retired about a year ago mentioned in a post on the passing of someone he knew, and I knew of, about the passing of a third person with whom we had both worked.

Phil, not that I ever called him anything other than “Major,” had died of a heart attack near the end of September so I was awfully late to the website memorial but, from my limited first-hand experience I think all memorials are for surviving friends and acquaintances rather than family members. They certainly aren’t for the deceased.

It’s feeling a lot like Joseph Heller’s Closing Time as I’m surrounded by reminders I’ve really stayed too long at the fair and am now waiting as our son, who makes his living as a financial counselor, looks at the limited assets and resources I’ve collected in nearly five decades playing a grown-up on and off television to tell me the moment I can stop giving my time to total strangers and have it for my wife and myself.

It will come not a tick too soon as I’ve developed a deepening dislike for what I do to earn a living and the people with whom I do it (as an abstraction; I still like them as people well enough, at least for now) and from the time I get up I have a countdown clock measuring when I can come home.

My son is being very careful because his father is ridiculously thick-headed and once I’m pointed in a direction, I will not turn around or change course, no matter what happens. And that’s precisely the part he worries about because I have long since understood that I won’t have the dollars a full-time job offers and will instead, have acres of free time.

It’s that notion that most frightens me I think. It’s ironic that a Fallen Away Roman Catholic, a FARC, would be the poster child for the Protestant Work Ethic, but here I am irony and all. I define who I am by what I do.  I am Sigrid’s husband and I am Patrick and Michelle’s father. 

It’s getting used to the idea of being a ‘was’ when referring to employment that is rattling me and I don’t mean the job itself I mean the idea of going to work and doing work every day. I read all the time about guys who retire and die within a year; the gold watch is still under warranty but they’re under the ground.

I assumed we’d be looking to move after retirement to someplace less expensive-sort of an abstraction that got suddenly very real earlier this week when my wife told me she’d been called by the people who own the house in which we rent an apartment who are about ten years older than I am, who will drop by today to talk about selling the house, making what had been a desultory moving discussion a more urgent priority.

We’ve lived in our house (apartment) for twenty-five years (actually I have; I paid rent for a month before she and the children arrived from Germany which included two weeks when I didn’t know how to find the house and slept in my car or in my office) and are long past the point where we are possessed by our possessions, we are consumed by them.

We have a house full of stuff, in the George Carlin sense of the word and a basement filled with past lives that I know I never thought about walking away from but will start to consider that carefully now. If the house is sold we may have to move unless the new owners like my wife (they won’t like me, no one does and the feeling is reciprocated) and the rent isn’t too much more than it is now.

But if we end up moving I wonder if I should retire earlier than I had planned so that we only move once more to someplace we’d intend to live out the rest of our lives (and that will most certainly not be where we are now). I always define home to be where my heart, the woman I love, is. Now I may have to learn to speak “Zillow.”

I’ve lived the way a horse runs, looking no more than one footfall ahead of where I am. Explains why I’ve suddenly gone over cliffs so frequently and yet always with a look of total and complete surprise.
-bill kenny

The Tragedy of Youth

I was walking home late Saturday morning from the Mayor's Workshop at Foundry 66 with every intention of grabbing some lunch and then heading back into downtown Norwich for the Haitian Flag Day celebration at Franklin Square and surrounding environs but got caught up in some sideshows and never made it back downtown.  My loss, I know, but there's always next year.

As I was walking up Broadway there were two pairs of (I'm assuming) Norwich Free Academy students standing catty-corner at the intersection of Chelsea Parade South and Broadway with hand-lettered signs hoping to direct passing motorists to a student-run car wash, probably on campus.

As I explained to the duo on the Chelsea Parade side who were hoping to catch drivers headed toward the Cathedral of Saint Patrick and downtown, they needed to stand farther UP Broadway, closer to the Civil War Soldier monument to alert drivers to the car wash AND give them enough time to hang a left at the intersection to get them to the campus and the car wash. 

I also suggested their classmates on the opposite corner nearest the Park Congregational Church wanted to position themselves farther DOWN Broadway, perhaps facing the Bishop's Residence, so that drivers heading towards Norwichtown could react to their sign with enough time to turn right at the church and arrive at the car wash.

The pair seemed appreciative of my suggestion and the thought process behind it and were moving farther up Broadway as I turned onto Chelsea Parade South to make my way home. I heard them hailed by the dynamic duo on the other side asking what they were about, but I wasn't prepared for the brutal candor as one of them shouted back "the old guy we just talked to had a great idea and maybe you should..."

I confess I sort of stopped listening at that point as my brain was trying to both comprehend and vigorously deny the 'old guy' characterization simultaneously but I found myself laughing out loud at how the tragedy of youth is that it's wasted on the young as I continued on my way. Of course, at my age, my hearing ain't what it used to be either I suppose, nor my eyesight when I look in the mirror in the morning.
-bill kenny       

Cadbury Should Live So Long

I have trouble imagining what a million dollars would look like in one place, all stacked neatly perhaps in piles of one hundred dollar bills. (Almost) Needless to note I would have exponentially more and greater difficulty imagining what ninety-one million dollars would look like, but I'm pretty certain this is NOT it.

Chocolate sold separately?

Not sure where in Maslow's hierarchy needing a ninety-one million dollar rabbit sculpture falls but I'm hoping to go the rest of my life, however long or short it proves to be, without having to ever find out. Of course, my idea of art and its price, cost, and worth probably differ from yours and that's okay as it takes all kinds of people to make a world.

And before you ask, yes, these, too, are available for purchase and like the rabbit, will be filled (by design) with air. Can't start your holiday gift-shopping too early. 
-bill kenny    

A Decade and Two Days

I'd like to think my memory is as good as it ever was but concede the sad truth many of us share that the older I get the better I was. This is from ten years (and a pair of days) ago and based on current events and headlines from Southwest Asia, feels more like just yesterday:

Photographs as Memories

The photographer who captured a moment in long ago war in a faraway land before most people currently on Earth were born but part of the collective memory of a lot of us who came of age in The Sixties, Hubert van Es, died in Hong Kong yesterday. He was 67. 

He was a Dutchman who found himself in Southeast Asia as a photojournalist as the War in Vietnam ground to an end and produced a very famous image of came to be known as "The Fall of Saigon" (in April 1975) — a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop in an attempt to escape Saigon as the North Vietnamese Army entered the city. 

For two generations of Americans, Vietnam was not an especially shining moment, either in history or in memory and there are not a few who believe to this day much of our national sense of self and our place as a nation in the world was adversely impacted by an intervention that began as a well-intentioned limited involvement and ended for far too many as a nightmarish quagmire.

van Es was part of a worldwide coalition of creative persons, both visual and reportorial, who witnessed a world larger than themselves and recorded moments within it and shared them with the rest of us, both in the then and now and in all the days that were to come. They recorded history but offered no judgments on it--allowing us to have the information and perspective to evaluate for ourselves. 

In the decades since The Fall of Saigon, we've talked among ourselves about the meaning of our engagement, how it ended and what it all meant. In many ways, the resolve and resourcefulness we show now as we move in the world are a result of the expectations (dashed) and experiences (rescued) that we formed in the days when celluloid was the notepad of the ages. Few paid so much attention, and so well, as Hugh van Es. 
-bill kenny

A Change Is Gonna Come

Change can be both evolutionary and revolutionary and, depending on where you are, it's sometimes too slow and almost non-existent.

Sixty-five years ago today, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

We still do not have equality in many aspects of our society, including our public school education throughout the country, but Sam Cooke was absolutely right even as we've yet to agree on the calendar for the date we arrive.
-bill kenny   

Never Gets Old

This is from exactly ten years, a full decade ago; and while the characters to some extent have changed, the movie is exactly the same. I called it: 
 

If Money Talks, Who's Listening?

All across Connecticut, towns and municipalities are practicing their ability to walk on eggs while holding their breath, knocking on wood and keeping their fingers crossed (mine already are-you can tell by my typing). 

In Connecticut, despite the calendar which starts in January and ends in December, the fiscal year starts 1 July. Meanwhile, the Federal government starts its fiscal year on 1 October. You can't tell the budgets without a calendar.....get yer red hot calendars...!

Cities and towns whose sole power to tax is tightly defined and controlled by the state, are busy measuring three (or more times) and cutting once all across the state as many, like Norwich, have requirements to have an approved budget for the next fiscal year by a date rapidly approaching at the end of next month.

They should be nervous-a great deal of their budget depends on allocations from the state of Connecticut and, let's face it, no matter the state and no matter the town, if the choice comes down to a program or position in the Capital or one someplace in the 'boondocks', guess who's going to win? Color me surprised only as long as we can afford crayons.

But, as is so often the case in The Land of Steady Habits, the Governor,  and the Legislature, haven't quite agreed on the next budget (and really aren't within shouting distance of one another) and until/unless that happens, the 168 municipalities at the lowest level of participatory democracy, our hometowns, are in limbo. Any guess they make on State dollars can, and the laws of probability suggest, will, be wrong.

We go through this around here, to varying degrees, every year. And every year we all get a case of the heebie-jeebies and vow to 'fix' this 'broken system' and then suffer amnesia when the crisis passes. As a matter of fact, since it's so familiar and recurs so often, I'm not sure if 'crisis' is even an appropriate word to describe it.

Better a horrible end, than horrors without end, I suppose, but this annual dance could end with very little effort if we could all sit together and work it out. After all, money talks. And some days you can't get a word in edgewise.
-bill kenny

Any Road Will Get You There

I've never really been a big fan of yelling, though I wouldn't be surprised if our two children had a  different opinion. If I thought it would fix anything I'd be out in my garage right now yelling at the first car I ever owned back in the day, a 1962 Corvair until it turned into a Corvette. Pretty sure I'd be more than a little hoarse (and not a pony) by now from all that shrieking.

Did I attend/join in Monday evening's City Hall rally in support of education prior to the second public hearing on the budget? No, because I didn't (and don't) think it changes anything and the hullaballoo and hurt feelings surrounding the rally, comments made by members of the City Council, and the continued perception of public education as a cost rather than an investment causes us to lose our focus on what I think is the heart of the matter. 

For lack of a more elegant assessment, we have come to the place where the road and the sky collide in terms of how we local government goods and services. How we finance all of the things we say we want in the manner we want them is a challenge we're no longer successfully addressing so arguing at the top of our lungs about what one or the other item costs, in this case, public education, is missing the bigger flick.

If I had a dollar for every time in the twenty-seven years of budget deliberations and discussions I've followed that I've heard 'this is a tough budget year,' or 'what you're seeing is bare-bones,' or my personal favorite 'there's nothing left to cut,' I could fund all our municipal departments and have money left over.

Let's channel the anger and animus so many of us are feeling right, with more than good reason perhaps, into something more productive than marking up poster boards and name calling. Since we've spent years saying 'we need to find a better way' let's stop talking about it and find a better way.

Every election (and we have one coming up in November) we ask candidates seeking office ‘do you support education?’ as if anyone would answer ‘nope; gimme ignorance, it’s easier to fool dumb people.’ My point is what do we mean when we ask that?

When we say “I support education” I suspect some of us mean the industrial age model we have now and have had for decades, not the technology age we need and should have. Eisenhower isn’t the President, except in many of our history books (is it still called that?) and we need to look at the now and the next and prepare for them. We're not doing that so we're failing our children and ourselves and are digging a hole so deep we'll never get out. 

I don't know what I don't know about creating 21st Century public education and paying for it. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, especially after yet another bruising budget season, in believing we may not be asking the right questions (which could be why we don't seem to have any answers). 

Two essays from the Center for American Progress worth considering are "Seven Great Education Policy Ideas" emphasizing today’s students need better preparation for jobs to support their families and allow their full participation in our economic growth and a "Fresh Look at School Funding," on how to pay for that transition

Why not a task force (no idea of how many members) from across the community to examine, evaluate and recommend new approaches on how we deliver public education to our children, to include the tow I just mentioned. The only rule for that conversation would be there are no rules.

The only rule for those conversations would be there are no rules.
My mom used to tell us as kids when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. Based on current events, we aren't running out of time to test her theory; we are already there. 

-bill kenny

Rosaries vs. Ovaries

I would never be happy listening to anyone, including those to whom I am related by marriage or birth, telling me what or how to do any aspect of my body so I'm always confused when (invariably) men in elected office at all levels of government seem to think it's okay to get involved and offer laws and strictures on what a woman, any woman, can and cannot do with her own body to include all aspects of her reproductive rights.

I'm a man who was raised a Catholic so I'm doubly NOT someone who should ever talk about abortion unless some of the legislative initiatives wending their way inexorably to the Supreme Court mandate that everyone must have an abortion. Otherwise, not my table. 

In other words, if you are opposed to abortions, don't have or get one. 

Guys, we don't have the biological equipment required to think we have a seat at the table for any discussion on reproductive rights.   

-bill kenny

Speaking in Tongues

Some people think I was born mean. Most of those who think that share my last name but that doesn't mean they are always right even though I am. I think this may prove I was born meaner and have mellowed. You're welcome. At the time I called it:

Flypaper for crazies?

We'll all seen people with sweatshirts or tee-shirts that say 'ask me about my grandchildren.' I at some point in the past unknown to me have been fitted with one that says 'tell me about anything at all, I don't mind.' 

I was in the local grocery yesterday afternoon grabbing some sports drinks as if what I attempt now at the fitness center could ever be confused with physical exertion. Humor me, okay? If I want to think it's a workout, what's the harm in letting me have this little fantasy. It isn't, and if cornered I'd admit it, but I do get winded and a bit sweaty and parts of me hurt until the Tylenol kicks in. Plus I look cool with a multi-pack sports drink in my hand as I stand in line. I get almost as much of a work out carrying that to the register as I did on the treadmill. 

I wound up behind a fellow carrying a lot of stuff in his bare hands, without benefit or a shopping cart or a basket. I've had that happen, where I get ambushed in the baked goods by freshly made oatmeal and raisin cookies while I sort of have my hands already full (A reach exceeds grasp kind of moment). 

Have there been times I've parked the item I originally came into the store to get and bought a lot of other stuff, taken it all out to the car and then returned for the original item? Yes, guilty as charged.

Not sure what happened with this guy. He was pushing a bag of charcoal briquettes in front of him but did not seem to have any meat you would normally associate with grilling in his hands (and I don't care to imagine where else he might have put it). 

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I've never been hijacked by briquettes when I'm Lost in the Supermarket, so I didn't have the highest regard for this fellow traveler on the Big Blue Marble. When he started mumbling, from where I was behind him (I scrupulously enforce that ATM space rule when I'm in line. It will never be my hot breath you feel on your neck and vice versa) I thought he was talking to the scandal magazines alongside the gum and candy. 

One of the most sobering aspects of growing old, is how, as I've aged, less and less of the headlines or pictured celebrities mean anything to me at all. One of magazine covers had someone who is so famous she only has a first name and a TV show (I think), but I have no idea who she is or the name of the show and no matter how often my daughter (and even my wife) tells me, I know I will never learn it. There's nothing sadder than an aging hipster.

Anyway, Marty Mumbles seemed to be talking to the magazine with what looked like Mel Gibson, or someone else, and (maybe) his girlfriend as a thumbnail-sized photo on the cover. I think the wife of a scandal-ridden public figure was also on th over telling me she was staying married to her husband even though I hadn't asked and from what I've read elsewhere, it's all pretty tawdry. Sometimes I think the USA is now The Truman Show, and not Harry S, except the batteries have been removed from the remote and we can't change the channel. 

The fellow in front of me wasn't talking to Mel or the wife, as it happened. I looked up to realize, as he stacked his stuff (and '12 Items or less' became a suggestion, exactly when? I missed that memo) as high as he could on the smallest possible amount of space on the conveyor belt, he was actually talking at me. There was a reasonable amount of frantic head nodding and eye-blinking, which was of no help at all in understanding a single word of whatever he was, or wasn't, saying. 

All the while the cashier was scanning his stuff, he had his back to her, addressing me. I always get these guys so I just bided my time. When she announced the total, I had to point him, using the smile and nod technique (and NO sudden movements) in her general direction so that he realized the ride was just about done. 

Of course, he wasn't prepared to pay and went through his pockets looking for cash, paper, and coins, before defaulting to a credit card, shuffling off with enough plastic bags to choke a landfill all the while jabbering away to anyone (else) who made eye contact.

When I handed the cashier my sole item, she remarked that she hadn't seen me 'in here with that guy before' as if I made it a practice to collect strangers in the night. I thought about telling her just that and then decided silence, in my case, was golden. Besides, if I dawdled, I'd be late for the cookout, and that would never do.
-bill kenny

Gimme An "M"

My mom passed away a little less than three years ago. I'm sorry you never got to meet her because she was wonderful, though if you had you might have wondered why she was saddled with me as a child. I'm pretty sure she'd have an answer for that because that's how she was. This is from a long time ago and at that time I called it:
 

M Is for the Mudflaps

I figure everyone with a pulse, or an approximation, is waxing poetic today in honor of Mother's Day, as well we should except....my mom is a tough old broad who wrangled six of us to adulthood, the last three for a significant distance without her partner of (at that time) nearly thirty years. 

At some point today, unless I beat her to the phone call, she'll call to wish my wife a Happy Mother's Day and then walk across the street to the beach on the ocean where she lives in Florida. Don't ask her what the Spanish word for snow is because Mom hates snow, really hates snow.

When I was a kid, Mom was more than unflappable, she was a force of nature and in the nearly three decades since the death of her husband, all of her children, joined by grandchildren and now great-grandchildren have watched her lead the life she wishes after taking care of so many of us for so long. 

Mom came to visit Sigrid and me and our two children when we all still lived in Germany. She and Franz and Anni Schubert, Sigrid's parents, got along wonderfully well even though they shared not a single syllable of a common language. Sigrid's mom was a Rubble Woman upon whose back the Federal Republic of Germany became the economic engine of Europe in the decade after World War II. Anni's husband passed some years ago. The two women took, and take, no shit from anybody and raised children pretty much who are the same way.

My sisters, Evan, Kara, and Jill are accomplished, masterful and successful. They take care of their own families with the same devotion and also the same discipline (no feet on tables, no glasses without coasters) as their mother did them. Glenn, Russ, and Joe are fortunate to have them in their lives and smart enough to know it.

I and my two brothers, Kelly and Adam, are married to women, Sigrid, Linda, and Margaret whose Moms raised them to give us the confidence every day to go out into the world and try to reinvent it in our own image and, when we come home at the end of each day, defeated but undaunted, to convince us we can begin again on the morrow because of their love and support. I think at last count we have, among us, two point three boxcars of children, some with families of their own.

I realize you fear with my diabetes being so sweet puts me in danger of being terminally mushy. No worries, I'm not, as I invoke the deathless words of Ray Wylie Hubbard to close. Love ya, Mom(s), all of you.

-bill kenny