Real Simple

I, probably like you, own a boatload (or close to it) of self-help, be-the-best-you-you'll-ever-be books and have actually read enough of them to realize that the deeper you dive into them the more likely the one you're currently reading is contradicting something you've previously read.

I've actually had self-improvement books from the same writer that, from one offering to the next, walk back insights they previously offered without even acknowledging that they ever held a different position and/or point of view. Talk about putting the 'eat' in caveat emptor...

Here's what I think it all comes down to:

So if you're out tonight and you're on your bike, wear white.
-bill kenny  

The Rose Knows

Unless you've gotten up in the middle of the night like I did for decades to prepare for work you've not yet missed any of the 2019 Rose Arts Festival at Chelsea Parade here in Norwich and then after six o'clock tonight in close to a dozen locations in downtown (a/k/a Chelsea or in this case the other Chelsea with the clubs and the pubs).

There are road races for all ages and types of road racers starting at eight-thirty and more kinds of fun imaginable (and trust me on that as I have quite the imagination). 

It's still so early that I don't have pictures of this year's festival to share with you, yet, but promise to share when I do. 

In the meantime, these are some of the scenes of some of the fun from some of the time of some of the folks who attended last year. That's a close to a disclaimer as I have ever been, at least in this life.

No matter where you're coming from or why we have stuff you'd love. 

So come on along and find out. See you there!
-bill kenny  

Rolf Harris Died for Somebody's Sins

An acquaintance who knows my appetite for the bizarre, and tries to avoid ever being the object of it shared an item with me that thrilled me to the marrow. It combines my love of the arcane dateline with my commitment to the concept of the global playground, and here it is.

Yes, if you're in Iowa and beset with crop circles, I'm not sure this helps you at all, but the Mel Blanc fan in me LOVES the idea that on the island of Tasmania there's something a bit weirder than the Devil (I've always been a bit disappointed that oh-so-many years ago when I saw a real Tasmanian Devil, it behaved nothing like Mel's and sounded more like Marvin the Martian.)

I think in light of the number of poppies the little fellows probably eat before wandering around in circles, the farmers should be grateful the beasties don't develop raging cases of the munchies and hit the local 7-11s for Ho-Ho's and sugar-coated donuts. Just cleaning up the discarded packaging alone would take two days a week. Or so I've been told, as I have no personal experience with the snacking while stoned phenomena at all. 

Initial reports, such as the one above were a bit sketchy, but leave it to the BBC, with apologies to Sir Eddie Haskell, to add granularity to this discussion and allow us to snicker while pretending this is serious business. 

Speaking of which, as true where you live as it is where I live: "Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don't change." but nearly as important, and certainly more germane today is:
"Watch me wallabies feed mate. 
Watch me wallabies feed. 
They're a dangerous breed mate. 
So watch me wallabies feed." 
G'day.
-bill kenny

Confederacy of Dunces

We had another nearly-nice day yesterday around here. I'm treating June in Connecticut as if it were a chocolate layer cake, always moist. Seems to be more or less a national trend but I don't live in Indiana, so I don't know what it's like where you are. I do know when John Donne rings the bell around here, I'm the only one in my corner. And right now, even though summer has officially started, I'm not working on my tan, that's rust. 

Like most days this month, we had a threat of showers (if we were to NOT have showers, I'd fret that something was wrong with the clouds), not torrents of rain (at least around here) but enough in the forecast that you knew it was raining as if Gene Kelly could keep a secret if his life depended on it. 

And as I walked from Point A to Point 2 (I majored in neither math or phonics at Rutgers, nor orienteering (come to think of it) which must be why so many people tell me where to go) I passed a building where the sprinklers were on, making sure the lawn was getting watered. I imagine there's a schedule for this kind of stuff and a contract that regulates the relationship between the waterer and the wateree but after all the recent rain, seriously? 

Instead of an agreement that helps get things done, we have a starting gun in a footrace to see which side can come with a faster reason for why something cannot be accomplished. Or, we have a variant of the Abilene Paradox in which one party is unwilling to even attempt to change even though they say they want to change. Instead, they strive to have the other side come up with reasons for why change is bad so they are absolved of any responsibility for failing to change. 

Happens everyday and more often than you'd imagine. Just watch the evening news and listen to what those who are our leaders say and then watch what they do. You think we got into the messes we have in this nation right now by accident? HA! Pull up a chair buckaroo and I'll explain how the professionals we have who are mucking everything up have made it possible for us to ever need to try this at home. Ever.
-bill kenny

A Rose Arts Festival By Any Other Name

What a difference a year makes. This time last year everyone hoped the return of The Rose Arts Festival would be as successful as its inaugural, and helped send a signal Norwich was back. Based on the crowds, the fun, and the momentum generated, I think it was mission accomplished.

I offered much of what follows previously but now I can puff out my chest a bit more while putting some pride in my stride. You can too. Keep practicing so by Saturday it'll feel natural.

If you caught any of last year’s Festival just think even bigger, even better and a whole lot more and that’s probably close to what the organizers have spent months working on for this year. 

Perhaps you're someone who enjoys pancakes for breakfast after running/walking in a 5K and 10K road race, with lots of live music, interactive art, community activities throughout the day, more arts and crafts vendors than you’ve seen in a year and (everyone’s favorite) a Slip and Slide.

Here’s where I ask, ‘where can you find all of this?’ and you say “The Rose Arts Festival at Chelsea Parade!” (the exclamation point is optional but warranted, I think). Yep. Chelsea Parade is the center for the daytime Rose Arts Festival activities and will probably be the most popular place in the state Saturday starting at half past nine with fun runs of 5 and 10K.

Race Registration starts at seven. At nine you can choose between a Millionaire’s Triangle Walk (go on it to find out what it is, you’ll enjoy it) or the Rotary Pancake Breakfast (I’ve already done the walk and have a syrup decanter, so guess where I am).

The Rose Bud Parade begins at ten and then there are hours and hours and hours of music, exhibits, demonstrations, magic show, and art. Speaking of which, there will be all kinds of Creative Station classes, all offered on a first come, first serve basis throughout the day.

You could have a festival without food, I guess, but why? Not to worry. There's a food court with something for everyone so whatever you’re hankering for, you can’t help being satisfied.

There's also a culinary competition in the mid-afternoon with performances by the NFA Dancers, NFA Haitian Club, and the NFA Singers, as well as live music from Kathleen Parks and Brad Bensko, Kat Wright, Root Shock, and Dumpstaphunk and a special highlights tour of the Slater Museum featuring Eastern Connecticut Artists.  

And once the sun goes down, the Rose Arts Festival moves to Downtown After Dark, with music and happenings in more places than your ears can ever imagine. If you still insist there's nothing to do in downtown, and you know who you are, just keep saying that but you’ll have to be pretty loud to be heard over the live performances just about everywhere.

So if you've wanted to celebrate the start of summer and the city of Norwich, the Rose Arts Festival this Saturday is your chance to do both. Enjoy!

-bill kenny

You Don't Have to Be Great to Start

Seems like a blinding glimpse of the obvious but sometimes it doesn't feel that way.

If you don't need the reminder, good on ya! Find someone who does and pass it on.
-bill kenny

Take the Sun and You Still Grow

As I'm sure you know, or should, June is Pride Month.  

Not that everyone shouldn't be proud of who they are every day of the year. 
Just sayin', in case you needed a reminder.
-bill kenny 

No Matter Who You Vote For

Noises on the radio, megaphones on cars

Sermons from the street of shame, know-it-alls in bars

Posters in suburbia, experts on TV

Don't let them disturb-i-ya

They're just the powers that be

Hey-Ho!

Don't worry! Nobody can win! (Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!)

No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in

Hey-Ho!

Oh great, great slumbering nation

Awake! Set yourself free

Oh! Smell the comforting bacon, taste the bromide tea

And give a little chirrup as I ladle on the syrup

Promises are cheap

Let me bear your crosses, make me boss of bosses

Then you go back to sleep (Ha ha ha)

Hey-Ho!

-bill kenny

A Trick of the Calendar

Here's a 'did you know?' for you: This time ten years ago it was the Father's Day weekend. True story, well, as true a story as I ever get to tell I guess, if you insist on honesty. This is from a decade ago:

We're Still Here

True story I've just remembered: from so long ago, Patrick is our only child. He and I are driving from our home in Offenbach to my work in Frankfurt am Main. He is about three or so in the back seat of our car, in his car seat. The car is waiting for the light to change at the intersection of Eschenheimer Landstrasse and Adickesallee, just a block down from the old Frankfurt cemetery. 

"You know what?" he asked me, in German (as that's all we spoke), looking out the side window at a kebab-laden or a trinkhalle, "if Mom had married someone else, I would have a different father." Thanks for playing, indeed.

Both of my brothers, Kelly and Adam, are fathers, so Happy Father's Day to them and to you, even if you're not one of my brothers. All three of us are fathers without a reference library as our own father passed away almost thirty years ago and, quite frankly, set an example before his passing that I suspect none of us would have been interested in following.

I don't know if either of them has, in the course of their own families, had moments where they've wondered 'what would Dad have done?' I have had a few, but not as many as being the oldest, perhaps, I should have had. My wife and I are married for almost thirty-two years, and all but about eleven minutes of that are because of her hard work and certainly NOT mine. We have two children, a son turning twenty-seven in three weeks and a daughter whose birthday (her age is her business and not my story) was a little more than a month ago.

When my son was small and when my daughter was (much) younger, I was fortunate that my wife's Dad, Franz, was close at hand to serve as a sounding board to his somewhat befuddled and another cultured son-in-law as he struggled to remain competitive in the Parenting Olympiad. 

I never wanted children or thought I never did, until Patrick and Michelle were born. I was very fine with defining myself as Sigrid's husband but I think 'and father of Patrick and Michelle' adds a lot to my resume.

I don't have happy memories of interaction with my Dad and learned many years later he could have said the same about his relationship with his father. I grew up thinking somehow I was the screw-up and judging from the caustic comments, I wasn't alone. I was numb, literally, after we learned my wife was pregnant with Patrick because I feared I would forge the next link in that chain. 

That fear evaporated in the first moments of his life on this earth and while his sister later brought her own challenges (how could someone so tiny be so insanely defiant I used to wonder as she would glare up at me, no higher than my knees it seemed, and tell me 'no' for hours on end), I kept coming back to Freshman Orientation at Dad's College: Help Them Do Well and Be Happy.

I've since discovered, as have probably all fathers, it is pretty easy (especially in hindsight) and not unlike the lesson of Dad's College. You can't do too much about the skinned knees or the first true loves that break hearts but tell yourself, and your child, 'this, too, shall pass' because you know it will even when they know it won't. 

All you can wish for your son or daughter is that they are well and happy-two conditions for which they, themselves are most responsible. I used to fret that their father, unlike the parents of their friends, couldn't afford cars for them to drive in high school, or ski holidays or wardrobes from A & F, wasting so much of my energy on pointless worry since both of them grew up never missing what they never had. 

Today, Father's Day 2009, both of our children are adults with lives very much their own and have more or less accepted that in the heart of their dotty Dad they will always be his kids. And should the day come when they choose to have children, I think (or hope) they'll have good memories from their own childhood to draw upon and smile.
-bill kenny

? ? ?

I'm not the nostalgic type, at least not often and certainly not anymore. 

However, there was a time when the USA was the bright shining city on the hill, thank you Peg Noonan, and now, well, now is a very different time.

I am not sure I know the answer anymore and the idea of the question haunts me.
-bill kenny 

(Not Quite) Infinite Jest

We are, say believers of all denominations and congregations, made in the image and likeness of Our Deity. I'm very much on the fence not just about that but also on every and any other aspect of a relationship we may or may not have with another plane of existence but if there is a Lord (capitalized because I'm hedging my bets because you just never know about these things), we may be here for some Divine Comedy (Dante sold separately) or, more likely, Comic Relief.

All good things come in threes, or not. 

Here's one: South Carolina Woman Stopped for Driving Drunk on Toy Truck 

And if you think that's amazing, try this motorized maniac on for size: Drunk Man Joyrides in a T-55 Through a Polish Town. 

And finally, and dismounted as well (double bonus points perhaps): Trump-Supporting Teacher Fired After Posing Semi-Nude: Lawsuit. Of course, there's a lawsuit, how could there not be a lawsuit?

Subject to your questions, that concludes my briefing.
-bill kenny

Tempus Fugit

I was walking up Broadway Sunday morning under threatening skies and the occasional raindrop to somehow mark Father's Day when I saw the banners suspended at Chelsea Parade near Norwich Free Academy, one atop the other. 

The lower one read "Congratulations Class of 2019" in honor of last Wednesday's graduates and above it, an invitation from the Police Athletic League to sign up for the fall soccer season. 

Talk about the blink of an eye! It's a reminder that the passage of time is both a constant and a variable, depending on your perspective. For those who graduated last week, those previous four years just flew past, right? But if you're lacing up your boots and waiting until the fall season gets here sure feels like forever, doesn't it? 

In downtown Saturday as the 31st Juneteenth celebrations were enveloping Franklin Square and beyond in good vibes, good food, and new friendships, Apollo Ziembrowski was putting the final touches on his "Open for Business" sign in front of his provisional shop in the old Bulletin building, just down the sidewalk from Epicure Brewing, Foundry 66, and These Guys Brewing Company. 

It's a placeholder until his space on Broadway, between Cafe Otis and Craftsman Cliff Roasters, and across from Monocle gets finished and his Apollo's Bike Shop joins the ever-expanding offering of goods and services downtown Norwich is offering, fueled by the fearlessness of enthusiastic beginners, something that's been a scarcity for decades around here, new people with more faith in themselves than fear of failing. 

But here's the thing: I just rattled off a list of established businesses we pass by every day which we now see as part of Chelsea but NONE of them existed this time four years ago. For those who complain about how there's nothing happening in downtown and for those who keep telling me about Norwich's 'Good Old Days,' you're both wrong. These are the best of times, so far.

And before you shake your head, let me note I own all the Bill Stanley books and have browsed the Bulletin articles in the Otis Library because I wasn't here for large parts of the 'back in the day' stuff but I recall first visiting downtown on a fall weekend in 1991 and wondering 'what the hell happened here?' as I walked for blocks from the (old) Otis Library to the Harbor and saw just about no one anywhere. 

That's certainly not the case now. Not only are there feet on the street (see, I was listening during Saturday's meeting), we have destinations we’re going to. And yet we are a city with many who mourn what was but is now gone and those dissatisfied with what we are because there's not more of it fast enough to suit them. 

All of that brings me back to my earlier description of time as both a constant and a variable. Every moment contains equal parts of then, now, and next. It's what we do in each moment we have that matters most. Carpe diem.

For those reinvigorating downtown Norwich, carpeing the heck out of every diem, thanks, and I can't wait for tomorrow because the best is yet to come.

-bill kenny 

Life Imitates Art

When I got up yesterday morning I had every intention of heading to my local Planet Fitness because I needed to get back into that routine again (despite my usual persuasiveness, I did NOT talk myself out of not getting up and getting ready to go).

And then, before heading out I visited Facebook and one of my real-life friends, Lee, had a brief pictorial story on him and his wife's efforts to rescue a turtle Sunday night near where they live in Manchester (Connecticut).    

As I walked to the garage and my car, I spontaneously combusted decided rather than an indoor treadmill, I'd head up to Mohegan Park where I live in Norwich. As I arrived at the lower level parking on the far side of the park, I encountered what, for all I know, may well have been the same turtle about five feet to the right of my car. 

Doesn't look all that happy together, does it? 

It appeared to me (and you can see it in the picture a bit) like maybe s/he has some thin fishing line as a necklace (or not) and believe me when I assure you I tried to remove it but perhaps s/he thought they looked pretty with it on because they wanted NO part of my effort to help remove it.    

I'm hoping later this week maybe Lee runs into a double-parked bullfrog on his street that has to be toad (like I needed to work so hard to play a classic Rory Gallagher tune). 
-bill kenny  

Inspiration but in Moderation

At one time I gave some serious thought to posting nothing but uplifting stuff every single day of the week. And then I realized a decade plus into doing this on a daily basis, someone, somewhere might wonder if I had been kidnapped or was being held against my will. 

That means I have a quandary; attempt to be uplifting while also staying in character.

Nailed it, unless you're named Timmy or Jimmy, and either of you is stuck in a well, in which case you knew the gig was sketchy when you signed on.
-bill kenny
 

There's So Much You Have to Know

For All the Lads Who Are Now Dads

At the risk of repeating myself but not caring if I do...

You Will Still Be Here Tomorrow

I wrote what follows some time ago. I'm hoping the wisdom I believed to be there when I first offered this arrives shortly but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Being my wife's spouse and our children's father are the two things I do best and between us most days I'm not all that good at either of them. My wife makes the former work for both of us.

As for the latter, I didn't take classes and while I yearned for an indeterminate probationary period, there was none. And nothing but on-the-job training. It's the hardest job I could ever love and despite what I believed while I was on the giving end, Dad is the highest compliment I can receive in the whole world. 

And today is our day. Of course, all of us who are fathers have people to thank (especially our children without whom technically....) and I won't even try to list all of the fathers whom I have had the good fortune to know because that list would go on forever.

I have to pause for the father I shared with my brothers and sisters.

I caged this photo from Adam who got it from the school where Dad taught (and which I attended).
He got pictures, and I still get newsletters and fundraiser solicitations from them.
Life is unfair, but funny that way.

Our dad was a short time here and a long time gone, but there have been many times I've had wistful and wishful conversations with him about our two kids (who are now themselves adults). I think in many ways, I've spoken more with my father in the three-plus decades since he passed than I did in all the years we shared the planet.

I know these are fantasy conversations because had I ever asked him for advice and had he ever offered it, there would have been no place for me to put it. So full of myself was I for so many years that's it's only been in the last score and more that I've learned to appreciate how fortunate I am that those who do love me do so despite rather than because of me. I can't help but think he'd have laughed his ass off at that because of how often I've laughed knowing it was true for him as well.

Getting married to my wife made me a man. Having and loving the children that together we created and raised made me a better person. Happy Father's Day.
-bill kenny

A Long Hard Slog

I've just about given up watching television news. Not because I already know everything, and everything better, but because I'm starting to fear I already know too much. Our national news coverage in the medium of your choice is pretty much 'the parting on the left is now parting on the right and the beards have all grown longer overnight.'

Two and a half years ago some of us elected someone to be the Disrupter in Chief and he has been all of that and more. Not sure why so many of us, myself included, are stunned and saddened to almost sullen silence at the depth of his venality and ineptitude. 

Those who voted for him didn't want politics as usual, and he delivered that by the truckload. I cannot pretend to be unhappily surprised or shocked at the things he says (which are all almost always lies) or does (which seem so often to be deliberately callous, hateful, and hurtful). That's the great thing about being a pessimist; I can only be surprised and never disappointed. and yet with this guy...  

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, which now so often appears to be the Great Divide in terms of distance from one position to the other, we have a lot of faux flustered outrage and little else in terms of offering an alternative path and alternate vision of who we are as a nation. 

We pick a cable news network or newspaper that confirms our biases as truths and creates a safe space bubble that allows us to comfortably demonize everyone who doesn't watch/read it, and/or who disagrees with us. And all the while, America drinks and goes home.

And at the end of the day, all of us look around to see where the next scandal is starting to form. The odor of ill repute is so intoxicating and the joy at the misfortune of others can be so addictive. Circuses are what's called for in these serious times to distract us from ever thinking about our dire circumstances and if the collateral damage proves to be someone famous or infamous, what of it? 

"When you should have found someone to put the blame on, Though the fury's hot and hard; I still see that cold graveyard. There's a solitary stone that's got your name on."         
-bill kenny

Dream Big!

We had a rainy, misty, junky kind of a day yesterday so I headed to an indoor mall, one with an alarmingly rapid rate of declining storefronts within it since I was last there not that long ago, to grab some steps. 

Striding purposefully or what passes for it with me at this stage in the game, I walked past a kiosk not much bigger than a pushcart (they come in sizes it seems and I know this because I asked on one of my earlier visits as part of the Curious George Fellowship I have applied for) with a large sign, nearly as large as the kiosk itself, stating in large, bold letters "Under New Management" and in smaller ones advising would-be patrons that the new folks weren't responsible for anything that happened before January 12, 2019. I'm guessing that includes that case of plantar fasciitis I had (the sign did not stipulate as to what the new management was and was not responsible for) though I didn't actually ask. 

I slowed, if not fully stopped while reading the sign since, as I said, the kiosk was about the size of a medium cardboard box with the lid cut off. That is, NOT the kind of place where the person behind the counter ever says things like, 'let me check in the back to see if there's more in stock," or "you'll have to speak with my manager, one moment please." 

I know, everyone has to have a dream to guide you just ask Sam Walton or Jeff Bezos, so good on you kiosk person! Except there's another word that starts with D, delusion, and that may more accurately describe what you're working on.
-bill kenny          

But I Was So Much Older Then

Wow. Found this from when I may have still been wearing short pants, at least it reads that way as I struggle to describe social media platforms that I've now been using for a decade (and not of the rosary) but back then the blush wasn't yet off the rose. I called it:

I Guess We're Lucky it's called Facebook

I admire persistence, at least in theory. Actually, I admire my own persistence which, from a distance looks to others like 'this guy's really dumb' but it's an act (not all of it and not all the time, but I like the idea of being a man of mystery and you'll have to guess the exact when). 

I have joined a couple of the social networks (I'm not even sure that's the correct term, that's how much of a dweeb I am), Twitter and Facebook. I've steered clear of myspace because I have the distinct impression old people are not warmly welcomed and as an old person, I know I'm not the welcoming type, so we're even. 

And did you notice this past week the number of thrash rock guys with myspace pages who bought the farm? I bet Metallica is happy they went mainstream or they'd never get the chance to spend their Napster royalties.

There are scads of these sites though how any of them make money is beyond me as the twitter people don't seem to have advertising (maybe they're trying to get everyone on earth hooked up only to learn Bill Gates isn't going to give them a dollar for every person). That's so "oldest child" in me, fretting how total strangers who may not even exist, will make a living as if they would ever return the favor. 

Meanwhile on Facebook, maybe it works that way on your page, or wall, or whatever the starting point is called, where you get suggestions for people who might be your new friends. I have today years old of living in this skin, and for the most part, the answer is 'I don't think so.' There's a reason why I have no friends in the F&B, Flesh and Blood, World and it carries over to the virtual one.

So that the machines that are Facebook keep suggesting the same someone, over and over, seemingly because she, too, went to Rutgers University (it's the State University of New Jersey, there are tons of people who went and still go there) is not especially insightful. It's just a variation of asking everyone in a bar 'do you like apples?' without the payoff.

Push comes to shove, Facebook, try hawking James Gandolfini as a suggested friend. He also went to Rutgers. Heck, I interviewed Journey twice, and nothing untoward happened to anyone. Hey! We've got TWO things in common. You gonna finish those onion rings? 
-bill kenny

If You're Within the Sound of My Voice

(tap, tap, tap) Testing, One, Two, Three. Is this microphone on? It is? Okay, good. I certainly hope all of you shiny and hopeful graduates of the Class of 2019 can hear me. If not, please put your hands up and I will feel sorry for you.

I realize you’re surprised that I’m your commencement speaker since I’m not on your programs. If it helps, you’re not nearly as surprised as Campus Security, who thought until I started speaking that I was still locked in a classroom. Surprise is one of the many spices of life and I believe we should always season to taste.

I’m teasing of course. I’m not really anyone’s speaker this graduation season, though there are certainly enough of them going on that, I might perhaps slide up near the microphone and be able to actually contribute to one or more, but probably not.

It’s okay as I’ve learned to be gracious about not always having my way and would encourage all graduates of any school in any year at any time to also be. As large as we like to think our globe is, with room for all, it’s more spacious when you learn to get along by going along, so let that lesson be one of my graduation gifts to you (and no, I didn’t keep the receipt so you’re stuck with it).

For most of my working life, I had a framed quote I attributed to Mark Twain. "Every day a child is born who will change the world,” it reads, “but we don’t know who that child is." My old neighborhood had a darn good idea which kid wouldn't be growing up to change the world and yet look at me now, struggling to change the subject.

Class of 2019, you’re going to hear a LOT about the promise you represent and the opportunities you’ll have and (with apologies to Dr. Seuss), the places that you’ll see. And those fine thoughts are absolutely accurate but they come with costs and prices that each of you must be prepared to pay because while you are like so many before you, you are also very different.  

You are the first graduates of American high schools born after 9-11. The world you have grown up in, defined as it is by that event, is frighteningly different from the one I and everyone else who’ll tell you in the next hours how they’d love to switch places with you.   

   

Your world will require skills yet to be developed to master technologies yet to be invented in a society not yet imagined. The one constant in all of the change you will face is you, and everything you have learned until now is just the start to what’s left to learn, to share, and to do.

You represent and reflect, good and bad, everything all of us are and what we hope you’ll be.  I won’t wish you good luck so much as good lives, well-lived with people you cherish and love, reshaping and sharing the world around you. You can do it. Now go forth (or fifth).

-bill kenny

Going Around the Bridge Twice

I think of this as Breakfast at Epiphany's where every bite of the omelet is a revelation. 
You may feel very differently. 

What if God Was One of Us.....

Every organized religion and a couple of the somewhat disorganized ones have sacred writings, scriptures if you will. No matter the region, or the religion, it's part of our human genome, the need to be a part of something bigger. 

Be it the Koran, the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the latest roman a clef by Danielle Steel, there's a narrative-a place to go look for details. When you argue a matter of theology and someone says, 'you can look it up!' the texts are what they're referring to.

There's the blood of the Lamb, the descent of the dove, the tongues of fire, the burning bush and an almost unending number of symbols and signs that The Lord (however you perceive S/He to be) uses to get our attention and pass along the Word. 

What if we're the first generation of people on this planet who had a Deity? I don't pretend to know what all of those before us had, I'm just saying we're the first and Our God uses the tools we have today in much the way as in the days of old we've read about. Someone I encountered yesterday speculated on how would God communicate the Ten Commandments, if S/He had to use text. 

Perhaps:
1. no1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg's
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-X only w/ m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl. ttyl, JHWH. ps. wwjd?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

-bill kenny 

Safari, So Good

I'm not a big fan of grocery store self-checkouts for no actual reason, I'm just not. I'm nagged by the suspicion because someone else has always rung up my groceries, I suppose, that someone else should always do it and I'm not particular about who that is as long as it's not me. 

At self-checkouts I take the stuff out of the cart (I'm a wimp and will fill a basket with so much stuff I hyperextend my elbow trying to carry it while pretending it doesn't weigh a ton so I grab a cart even if I'm only getting two things which became ten things because they always do) run it over the scanner (not too fast but not too slow either, sort of a Goldilocks of the laser beam), wait for the beep or boop depending on the store, put the bought stuff in the recyclable bags I always bring, dig through my wallet for the coupons, scan those, then pay for my stuff and leave. 

I will concede I'm not throwing the delivery truck when it arrives in the back of the store filled with stuff and putting all of it on the shelves, but I'm doing everything else so I think I should be considered part of the store staff, at least as far as using the break room and maybe for the annual beach outing. 

That's never going to happen and I 've accepted it even if I'm not happy about it as I queue up with the cashier in the twelve items or less line behind someone with eighty-five items who glares at all of us behind him daring any of us to say one word and Pow! to the Moon, Alice! (or Mars if you're Presiden Trump who seems to think they're the same thing.)

Not me. Oh, I'll stew about it, sure, but I decided for my sixty-seventh birthday what I wanted was to celebrate my sixty-eighth, so I let that kind of provocation roll off my back and I wait my turn. Invariably the cashier greets me and asks, 'did you find everything okay? undeterred by my now-standard answer of "yes, you'll have to hide it better next time." 

She doesn't blink or give the slightest indication she even heard me, damn you, E..F. Hutton. I don't even get a thin smile; it's like playing to an oil painting. On second thought, maybe that self-checkout is worth another look.
-bill kenny         

Up Next, Sports!

But first the long-range weather forecast.

In these parts, it could happen. Except we'd have hail instead of kale (I hope).
-bill kenny

Which One's Pink?

I get weary of people telling me to be more upbeat and cheerful. I think the best way to achieve that is probably a lobotomy but my healthcare plan doesn't cover it. So I've come up with the next best thing (bromides by the bushel; try this one on): 

Oh, yeah, and have a great weekend (insert smiley face of your choice here:   )

-bill kenny

A Compendium of All the Good Things about Our Current President

He's not twins.
-bill kenny

As Casey Kasem Would Say.....

"Now, on with the countdown..."

Reminder: National Donut Day, Friday, is NOT an actual holiday. 

No wonder we are becoming (as my youngest sister Jill often in frustration used to exclaim as a small child) "stupider and stupider." We are approaching the point in terms of real and surreal usually known as cereal. 

We have all seen reports of people playing Pokemon Go at Auschwitz, and in fairness, this kind of stuff is nowhere near that level of stupid. But we're getting there, faster than you could dunk a donut in your cup of coffee. 

My concern: what happens when we hit rock bottom? 
-bill kenny

Some Short Thoughts on the Longest Day

The farther out in space we go, I believe the more alike we look. It’s only when we re-enter our atmosphere that the effects of gravity and tribalism become more pronounced. Residing as I do in Global City Norwich, I smile as we punctuate our lives with a growing variety of celebrations of so many of the different stories we are as the people who all happen to call this place our home.

I wanted to emphasize the importance of stories because when we speak of History, which is really the story we tell ourselves of who we are and how we came to be, we usually think in terms of capital letters and monumental events, forgetting that all of us are the authors of our own tales of our time here on earth.

In last Sunday’s Bulletin was a wonderful supplement devoted to the 75^th anniversary of the allied invasion of Europe at Normandy, France, always called D-Day, which but for the weather forecast this week in 1944 we would commemorate today but that we’ll observe tomorrow, June 6.

In deference to, and respect for, Edward Shepherd Creasy, who authored “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,” almost a century before the beaches were stormed at Normandy, D-Day wasn’t just a battle historians have concluded ultimately won World War II and saved Western Europe, but may also have been the milestone in our country’s journey of political, social, military, and economic ascendance in a world landscape littered with sometimes petty parochial and ideological loyalties.

We think of larger than life men and monumental moments when we study D-Day and there are many to choose from but we risk losing sight of the human element of our own humanity in the details that the day involved, which is what we should remember.

The survivor stories, so many people in the same device, fighting not only for something grand and noble like a Free Europe and, by extension, the free world but also for one another. They sought out a protected position where the sea met the shore while being raked by weapons fire without rest or respite as waves of troops waded onto the beaches and wrote with their blood and sacrifice the first chapters of what was to become our modern, Post-War World where we hoped cooperation would replace confrontation.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to walk the beaches of Normandy and struggled to imagine the carnage and brutality of the conditions on that day and the courage it would have taken to overcome them. It’s a way of learning history that books and classrooms, while important, can’t really touch, but for many of us the stories, more so than the lessons, are all we have.  

And many of those D-Day stories are deservedly well-known while others less so but I’m always struck in reading and remembering June 6, 1944, by what we, the inheritors of the world those who never saw the dawn on June 7, have done with it. And by how much harder we should still work.  

-bill kenny 

Either Sadness or Euphoria

My wife and I began as a limited partnership, so to speak, in 1977. We expanded to a trio with the birth of our son Patrick in 1982 and became a quartet when Michelle was born in 1987. Children, as they so often, and correctly, do, grow up and become their own persons. 

Our house in Norwich got a little bigger some years ago when Patrick moved out to write his own adventure novel. I remember sitting in our then car, a Mitsubishi Mirage, crying my eyes out after his mom and I had said goodbye to him at the apartment he'd taken in Boston. I think I cried for a number of hours that day and in the days that followed. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we reverted to being a trio.

Both of us considerably younger than the next picture

Yesterday our daughter struck out on her own, renting her own truck and muscling, along with Kyle with whom she will be living, a huge portion of her possessions from our house to the household he and she are setting up as she starts the first chapter of her new story.

I was kind of proud of myself for being mostly dry-eyed as boxes headed out the door and into the truck but concede that was only because I concentrated on other things. And then I thought about holding her entirely in the crook of my arm on the day she was born and listening to her snick her tongue against the alveolar fricative ridge on the roof of her mouth to make a clicking sound when she had had enough to eat and it became very moist around my face.

Stalking the wild lingonberries

Her mom and I are very proud that she is ready for the world. If only my heart were.
-bill kenny