Safe at Home

Robert Frost once wrote, "Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in." 

I'd like to believe he was attempting to define home as more of a feeling than a specific location but having slept, heavily, through a number of American Literature courses during my college years I could be very wrong (and not for the first time) but I am well-rested (if that counts). 

I thought about Frost, New England's poet if not poet laureate, on Sunday while sampling the 2nd Annual Peruvian Festival in Franklin Square. All of the Global Norwich outreaches are marvelous opportunities to meet people who are both just like and also completely different from us in a fun-fueled environment of music, food, costumes, and customs almost always in bright sunlight and beautiful weather. You cannot help but have a good time and that as Martha Stewart says, is a good thing.

One of the more salient points about Norwich of which I was reminded again on Sunday is not just how many different kinds of people and traditions we have in a relatively small city but how well we get along with one another when allowed and encouraged to just be people who live in the same area. 

I've suggested before that the farther out in space you travel the more alike we all look like back here on Earth but there's been too much talk lately suggesting people with whom we disagree should be making travel plans and that's not only the wrong idea but it's not who we are as a nation, state, and/or city.

There's been far too many headlines and stories that could lead the faint of heart to think we live in a fractured and fragmenting society with too many irreconcilable differences and unbridgeable distinctions with loud-voiced people who seem to delight in exacerbating all of that synthetic discord for personal and/or political gain. Sunday reminded to say out loud and to keep saying it, "just look at Norwich."

When I was a kid one of my least favorite neighborhood games was what I called "for me to look good, you need to look bad." (Also known as a cut battle) None of us growing up had much (or thought we did when we actually had everything we needed, a family to make where we were a home) and so when you could crow about something you had and no one else did, or mock somebody for the way they looked or dressed or what kind of car they had, you'd feel better because others felt worse. 

As an adult (or a person in an adult's body) I recognize that tearing others down in order to build yourself up isn't just destructive but stupid. 

And again, I think back to Sunday, watching every kind of people running power lines, not just for their food, drink or crafts stand, but for the one next to theirs because each of us wins when all of us win. As cliche as it sounds, it's true: teamwork makes the dream work. And while that may not be a part of anyone's definition of 'home' at least not yet, it is an integral value of the country we all live in and of the city we should enjoy sharing.
-bill kenny
  

I Really Hate This Thought

Most of the time wandering the internet, I find smiles. But sometimes I don't.

What we make of the space between being born and dying is what will define us.
-bill kenny

Not So Funny Now

I have always smiled/laughed/chuckled and/or chortled at any variation of this meme I've ever seen.

Of course, I've never encountered Nick Spaeth who may not have been born under a bad sign but sure knows how to make one. 

If it counts, on Saturday I went to IKEA in New Haven via the 'scenic route' as we like to call it, wearing our bulletproof vests after double-checking to make sure our auto insurance comprehensive coverage includes full glass. Well-played, Nick. Well-played.
-bill kenny

In Honor of the Dog Days of Summer

Last weekend we baked around here so I'm happy to have seen the last, for now, of that heatwave. Here are some thoughts from long ago on another one. I called it at the time:

I Guess He Could Be Your Co-Pilot and Best Friend

Traveling yesterday afternoon, taking advantage of the nice day for the month of July (I thought it was scheduled earlier in the week, but I'm so wrong about this stuff so often), my wife and I were heading from Norwich to Waterford via Route 32 (we can go 395 but there's such a level and pace of traffic it wears me out trying to keep up with it).

It's not really the road less taken, though the volume of traffic pales in comparison to 395 which is just as well as it connects Norwich and Montville and New London as you travel around the not-so-glamorous back entrance to the Mohegan Sun casino.

The only tricky part is just as you're hitting Quaker Hill because 32 blends with an exit of 395 and I know from experience on both sides of the merge, it's not a day at the beach. For a driver on 32, the merge involves a reasonably extreme over-your-right shoulder scan of your sector, so to speak, as cars entering far faster than your speed are (in theory) trying to slow down as they merge and before they hit the traffic signal (or you).

If you're coming off 395 at this exit, all the turtle drivers are to your left and to make it interesting for both of you, at that traffic signal I just mentioned, there's always a lot of people making the right at the light which means they need to get into that lane, and if they cross in front of you, well, stuff can happen.

Which it did yesterday, but funny stuff. It was a guy in dark Saab, the sedan model (I think that means four doors, right? Anyway, that's what I mean) and he's looking to go straight and get into the left lane on 32, coming from 395. There wasn't a lot of traffic and it was a pretty easy maneuver.

So much so that I had more than enough opportunity to eyeball his shotgun partner, his dog, a big brown one, window rolled down, head out the window (I'd love to know what they are thinking about aside from 'here, kitty, kitty; c'mon Kitty') wearing wraparound sunglasses, just like his owner. 

For a moment, I was watching the SPCA version of the Blues Brothers movie. The part of a trimmer, and far more hirsute, Jake, played by the dog. My turn was approaching and as I put on my blinker, I murmured a short prayer, "Our Lady of Acceleration don't fail us now."
-bill kenny

But...We Already Had the Picture

After embarrassing the Senate Majority, Mitch McConnell, and exposing Rand Paul and Mike Lee for hypocritical sacks of shit they are, the effort to replenish the Zadroga Act, that funds the healthcare for all 9/11 responders who have been subjected to nearly unbelievable catastrophic health concerns as a result of their selfless sacrifice on America's Darkest Day, was passed by both houses of Congress earlier this week and will be signed by Mr. Much-Ado About-Nothing-Unless-It's-About-Himself, The Undefeated Champion of Self-Aggrandizement, Pantload45, this coming Monday. 

This is the photo seen 'round the world, deservedly. 

The image reminded me of something I wrote so long ago, Trump was still on his second wife and third bankruptcy, back when we didn't have a Fake President so we didn't have Fake News. At the time I called it:

Art Imitates Life

The memorial services for Walter Cronkite had just concluded when the next reminder that we're not in Kansas anymore showed up. Huffington Post reported the current issue of Time Magazine (I was only vaguely aware that magazines were actually still printed; how quaint), based on a survey of some nine thousand folks, has concluded Jon Stewart is the most-trusted newscaster in America.

As a child, I have memories of David Frost with something called "That Was the Week That Was" an import from the BBC that survived the trans-oceanic passage rather well. And we all remember Dennis Miller and others on Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live (I'll skip the 'back when it was funny' gratuitous shot since it's on way past my bedtime now and I have no idea if it ever was funny). 

My point is there's always been a tradition of these types of send-ups as entertainment and parody can be liberating and rebellious all at the same time.

It wasn’t coincidental that one of the first things Hitler and the Nazis did after seizing power was to eliminate Fasching or Karneval observances from everyday German life. If there was one thing the gang who couldn't shoot straight knew it was that they didn't need or want anyone poking fun at them. Trump semi-carries that tradition forward by no longer attending the White House Correspondents' Association Annual Dinner because while Cadet Bone Spurs is very good at dishing it out, he can't take it. 

But in a country that televises poker tournaments and spelling bees on an All-Sports Network, and covered the death of Michael Jackson like it was the passing of Mary and Joseph's other Son, naming Stewart the most trusted newscaster in America is still quite a leap. 

Hand on my heart, I didn't think it would be Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck, but it says a lot about us, and maybe more than we can stand, that we'd choose Stewart. I'll just put it down to 'convergence' and grow more uneasy that the line between surreal and cereal narrows more by the day.

-bill kenny

Think of What You're Saying

Life is very short.

If you can't sign a peace treaty, declare a truce and move on.

And there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.
-bill kenny

Remembering Ellen James

The other day, surfing the TV dial I encountered live coverage of the 2019 Tour de France, which is a huge deal in many places across Western Europe. I have no idea who is winning or where in the various stages the race actually is, but it reminded me of something I wrote so long ago that at the time I wrote it Lance Armstrong was still being celebrated for returning to the competition and not being castigated for the brilliant cheater he was revealed to be. At the time I  called it

The (other) Bikers

It's a lot different from when we were growing up and used them as essential transportation to get to and from the field (the baseball field, of course, what else was there for a kid growing up in the late Fifties and early Sixties?) or from friends' houses. You might start out with just you and Neil, and then go a couple of blocks and pick up Bobby and then all you headed across the development, to the new Levitt houses, where Tommy lived. 

I'm talking about bicycles and as kids there was Schwinn and there was Royce Union and not much else. These were big, clunky solid yoke metal frame bikes, with balloon tires and white sidewalls. You had a mousetrap in the back, and that's where you kept your glove, baseball inside of it so that the pocket formed just right. Maybe your dad or somebody else's dad would remember to get the little can of neet's foot oil at the hardware store and you'd work that stuff into the glove before putting it into the mousetrap. 

Twenty-six-inch tires on those bikes and maybe, if you had a fancy one, it had front and rear handbrakes, but ours mostly didn't-you just stood on the pedals hard and the rear wheel broke away and wound up sliding to one side or the other. You stopped all right. We all knew somebody whose folks had gotten them a bike with three gears, think of it! but we didn't have bikes like that. Going uphill, you pedaled hard-if it got steeper, you pedaled harder. Screw up, you fell off and walked uphill holding the bike by the handlebars, feeling (and looking) like a dork.

I was thinking about all of that yesterday as the bikers, not Marlon Brando and The Wild One raced across parts of France whose towns can only correctly be pronounced by having your adenoids removed. And again this year, one or more people have died along the route at the various stages, and I keep thinking 'nobody ever got hurt when we rode to Resko's house' and that was over an hour back in the day (it'd be like three days in 'now' time). 

It wasn't until the LA Olympics in '84, sitting in Germany and watching the highlights of the games the Warsaw Pact boycotted, that I first saw Americans go ga-ga for the most European of sports, in my opinion (unless they make sulking an event). The oval track with the impossible angles of banking, the skinny tires that seemed to be made of solid rubber, the 'Disco in Frisco' skin-tight speedo outfits and most especially those 'revenge of the Alien' head shaped helmets, all of it so aerodynamic I thought these guys could fly. Reading about the Tour de France, I learned flight wasn't the half of it. 

I was aware of a Frankfurt am Main based Tour de France cyclist, Didi Something or Other, and I couldn't understand how you could make a living as a professional bike rider. I had a movie in my head, where Didi is in Munich, perhaps visiting his fan-club (I'm sure he had one) and checks into the Munich Hilton which is right at the Munchen-Reims airport and as he checks in, what exactly does he put under "occupation"? 'Professional Bicycle Rider' And if the concierge snickers across the desk while reading it, upside down, in the ledger, does he offer to prove it with a bike strapped to his back? 

Then in the late Eighties, Greg Lemond, an American from I have no idea where, not only became successful on the European Bicycle race circuit (that's hard to believe, isn't it; a circuit for bike racers? 'See you in Naples?' 'No, I'm training for the Bern Butt Buster, see you there.') he won the Tour de France (and why, by the way, is THAT the big race, or at least the one we all think we've heard of). 

Actually, he won it three times, twice AFTER accidentally shooting himself. He recovered, but after those two victories his career seemed to go away (I always wondered where he'd been shot since we're talking a LOT of hours on a bike seat if you follow my drift. Where's that AFLAC duck when you really need him?)

How many times did Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France? And then all the great back story: the battle against cancer, the birth of the little boy, more bicycle races, more yellow tricots, Sheryl Crow, no more Sheryl Crow, the retirement and then the unretirement and then after a four year absence, he's back on the bike in the thick of the competition, even though the battalion of announcers (and cameras-I love the mini-cam guys riding backward on the motorcycles thisclose to the charging riders) covering the event are more often now noting with keener and deeper regret he will, in all probability, NOT win the race. All this before his final and tragic fall from grace.

And what does the winner get anyway? A permanent press yellow jersey? The opportunity to write 'winner of the Tour de France' on the hotel check-in form? Do you think Duna could do that?
-bill kenny

Golf on the Radio

Over the weekend, I came across a short video clip online that you could argue has nothing to do with us. But if you live here, I think you'll agree it has everything to do with who we are and who we are struggling to be. 

The next time you're online, go here to watch it yourself. It takes a little under three minutes to view and I'll warn you in advance you won't learn a thing about automotive mechanics but you will learn a lot about never giving up.

In the meantime, I'll attempt to describe it to you and concede I am trying to do what a dear friend once called 'listening to golf on the radio.' So, hand me that three wood and don't be surprised if I decide to lay up and hit short to avoid trouble.  

A small group of men finds two thoroughly abandoned cars in some heavy underbrush I have no idea where. Both cars are in terrible condition but they have no time to mourn or feel bad about that. They have someplace to be and one of these two cars will have to get them there.

The car they choose is the lesser of the two wrecks I guess you could say but is still in pretty awful shape. It has no battery for the starter but someone rummages around until they find one with some charge among a pile of discards.

While under the hood, they realize they have no oil cap for the crankcase but they do have a doll's head that will fit in the hole. When one wonders 'what will people say if they see that?' the answer is "who cares? it'll stop the oil coming out."

Inside, there's no driver's seat but they have found a child's stroller they tie down behind the steering wheel and move right along when they realize both the radiator and the gas tank are bone dry. They fill the radiator with water from their jerry-can, sacrificing their drinking water and discover the other car has gas in the tank, so they use an ax (!) to nick the tank's corner, making a hole and slowly, almost a drop at a time, collect the fuel and transfer it to their car.

Working together, they find and mount tires on the wheels. Throughout the entire video NOT one word of doubt or discouragement is heard.

"Dino" hits the starter and when the engine turns over and the vehicles lurches forward through the bush one of them yells, "Hey boys! We got a car!" The driver adjusts the fuel gauge to read full and sets the disconnected speedometer to 200 kilometers an hour. And off they roar down the highway headed towards their happy ending. 

None of what they did by itself should have worked but because each part did, the car rolled on down the highway. Sometimes we spend more time wrangling about who’s driving than we do about where we’re going. Maybe we should change our thinking.

-bill kenny

A Day Early but Still Sincere

My middle younger sister, Kara, and her husband, Russ, may still be finding stuff as they unpack having recently finished relocating from New Jersey to Florida. One of the things she shouldn't have to look for is my best wishes on her natal anniversary which is actually tomorrow, but I think in her case we should be allowed to start the shenanigans early and tarry for as long as we so choose. 

I'm reprising something I wrote sometime back when she was farther North. I called it: 
  

Brighter than a Burning Birthday Candle

Tomorrow is my sister, Kara's birthday. You can be forgiven for not knowing this but only just barely. It's a holiday (I would hope) at her house and probably should be one on her block as well as across the state, though in light of budget cutbacks, that's unlikely to be the case.

The world is a much better place because Kara is in it and our family is fortunate that she is our relative even if, as Albert Einstein postulated, everything is relative. (Could that mean everything is Einstein? I'm asking that because it would explain the bramble that is so often my hair when I awaken.)

Kara and I shared a small overlapping childhood as I was transitioning away as she was becoming her own person. And in a sense, I suspect, she sees herself more often as Jill and Adam's older sister than as the younger sibling of our brother, Kelly, and sister, Evan, with whom I spent far more years (but only because their luck wasn't as good as Kara's).

Kara and her husband, Russ, have their own family with RJ, Randy, and Jordan all men in motion and on a mission, in different directions at maximum velocity. I discovered long ago the easiest way to track the passing of time is to look at and to your children as they are better indicators of how far we have come than any mirror can hope to be. I imagine I am not the only one who made that discovery.

Kara should actually be our ambassador to the United Nations as she has a genius for talking people into doing things they would otherwise never, ever consider and, while so doing, convincing them that it was all their own idea in the first place while she is just pleased and proud to help them.

She (and our) younger sister, Jill, can probably actually pull off the Tom Sawyer painting the fence trick, but it's Kara who organizes the trip to the hardware store to get the brushes and the drop cloths. And she'll even help you muscle them into the van. Meanwhile, it's Jill who collects the money and, sorry, even though it's a quarter for a chance to paint and you did give her a dollar, she's out of change.

I wasn't around when our Mother was a kid, or a teen, or a young woman. I caught up with her as a young mother (and was, technically, the first reason why she was a young mother) but I've always thought Kara most resembles what our Mom must have been like when we were too small to really remember.

You cannot help but smile when you are with Kara-I am smiling now as I type this, thinking of her because she is relentlessly cheerful no matter the situation. Her children reflect the values she and Russ have instilled in them and are improving the world on their own terms just as their parents, but most especially my sister, taught them to do.

My brother-in-law has impeccable judgment, excellent taste, and most especially superior good fortune. Happy Birthday, Kara!

-bill Kenny

Big Day for Baseball

As a kid, I never had the coordination, the height, the strength or the stamina of any of the guys on the block with whom I hung out (but I did have the grammatical chops to know how to write that sentence from an early age). 

I had and still have a burning competitive desire to do well; when I was younger it was to win at all costs but as one ages, one surrenders certain things from one's youth (except, seemingly, the ability to speak of oneself in the third person). 

I'm not sure if I found baseball or it found me. My father brought home a Whitey Ford (right-handed) pitcher's mitt (Ford was a dominant and dominating left-hander for the NY Yankees in the late '50s and early '60s) that I still have, someplace. Every off-season I smothered it in neet's foot oil, put a baseball in its pocket, wrapped some seriously heavy-duty rubber bands around it and put it in the back mousetrap on my bicycle in the garage and prayed for spring and sandlot baseball.  

I never played organized ball at any level, not that it keeps me, to this day, from stopping as I channel surf to watch a game, major or minor league, that pops up on television or to pull over when I'm coming back from seeing my cardiologist and watch the little league games going on at the fields across the street from his practice. 

Dad was a (San Francisco) Giants fan and Mom a (Los Angeles) Dodgers fan when both ballclubs called New York City home. When the Lords of Baseball allowed both teams to head for California, I'm not sure my parents ever forgave them, but when the NY Mets arrived at the Polo Grounds in 1962, many thousands like my parents embraced them passionately despite the fact that they sucked like no one else in baseball ever had. (I just learned Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? is back in print and it's the best baseball book ever written so you should get it if you love baseball and/or the writings of Jimmy Breslin). 

My team was always the NY Yankees and I had my Whitey Ford pitcher's mitt to prove it. But as I've improved (I don't like saying "aged;" I'm not brie or wine) my devotion has deepened and widened for all teams (well, not so much the Baltimore Orioles or the Miami Marlins, for reasons I'm not really clear about anymore). 

That's why yesterday, more so than either the All-Star Game or that pathetic TV exercise the day before it, the Home Run Derby, is so important to me. It was induction day at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and is always one of the great days of the year as heroes of my (and your) youth (and later middle ages) are enshrined forever among their peers as the greatest to ever play the best sport in the world, baseball. 

Congratulations to the class of 2019! You are amazing.
-bill kenny

Hotter than Hooter in Heeter

Many think of me as someone who would bitch if hanged with a new rope. Perhaps, but I prefer to see myself as a Man of All Seasons. 

When it's winter, I complain about the snow, the cold and the ice. In the spring, my allergies give me cause and I give everyone else an earful of complaints. Come autumn, I fret about the bare branches, the accumulating tree leaves and the approaching winter months. 

Of course this weekend, like tens of millions throughout the country, I shelter as I swelter and stay indoors, hydrate, and complain about the heat but not too strenuously because I don't want to break a sweat while so doing.  

On Saturday morning I attended a Norwich City Council Economic Development workshop at Foundry 66 and very much enjoyed the air-conditioning. On my way into the building, passing through the Artspace parking lot that abuts These Guys Brewing which is next door to Foundry 66, in the midst of what was already a hot and humid Saturday (the bulk of the morning and the heat of the day were still before us) I passed a rose bush growing through the chain-link fencing that demarcates the two properties (I am always amazed at where plants of all kinds can grow and thrive and wonder if we humans might be better off taking our example from them) and this rose pretty much jumped out at me. Made the whole morning worth it.

"Well, last night I slept in the open (it gets so hot in the city)."
-bill kenny
  

One Small Step

"I sail to the moon

I spoke too soon

And how much did it cost

I was dropped from

The moonbeam

And sailed on shooting stars."

"Maybe you'll

Be president

But know right from wrong

Or in the flood

You'll build an Ark."

"And sail us to the moon

Sail us to the moon

Sail us to the moon

Sail us to the moon."

Fifty years ago today.

-bill kenny

Not Pink Floyd's Version

For me, ever since the Bush-Gore 2000 hanging chad contretemps, Florida, the Sunshine State, has been a source of mirth and merriment and sometimes various other emotions (often simultaneously) which brings me to a more recent chapter of something  I like to think of as "Only In Florida" (even though I suspect its not just there), this.

Yeah, it's gruesome and grotesque but the line in the story that stands out for me is "Authorities are still working to determine a motive..." Umm, show of hands: who among us can assist the agents of law enforcement in developing a hypothesis for the crime? 

Yeah, I think we can help them cut to the chase. Sorry! My bad. 
-bill kenny

Wish in One Hand

The expression goes 'be careful what you wish for.' 
It's truer than you might realize or believe.

Jim Rohn

And remember both wish and work start with W, have four letters and perform best in tandem.
-bill kenny

Why Keep Looking Back?

I was doing some between-grocery-store trips shopping on Sunday (you know, when there's a couple of things you want right now rather than wait until it's time to do your 'real' grocery shopping with the big cart and all) and was hailed by someone in the produce section (we were looking at fruits. Me, seedless grapes; him, peaches) who 'knew' me from that thumbnail picture in The Bulletin that pops up on random Wednesdays. 

I admit I was a little disappointed he hadn't recognized me from the 'Have You Seen this Dweeb?' photo on the side of the milk carton (and they say it 'pays to advertise') but was intrigued by his question which was: 'why are you so optimistic about Norwich?' He added that he'd lived here all of his life (so far) and hadn't ever encountered an "Energizer Bunny" (his words) when it came to Norwich. 

It took me a minute to slide the bass drum off my shoulders and put the sticks down and when I did I offered an elevator speech kind of answer (that's a vertical drive-by when you only have a floor or two to make your most salient point; in my case, I usually wear a ball cap to cover mine) that touched on the almost three decades my family and I have lived here, the positive changes we believe we have seen and concluded by channeling Randy Bachman's You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet in terms of optimism about tomorrow and all the ones to follow.

Less than impressed or inspired he countered with my least favorite response that, for me, signals someone looking for an argument rather than hoping to have a discussion, the old "whatabout?" 

I've heard it used for everything from Hillary Clinton's emails to, in his case, the Reid and Hughes building, which I think I read was abandoned in 1987 and acquired by the City of Norwich in 1993. Not that he's unhappy about the projected rehabilitation unfolding there now, mind you, but 'what about the delay and all the mistakes for all those years (again, his words) by city leaders?'

Yeah. He had me there. Right at the corner of 'back in the day' and 'looking through sepia-tinted eyewear.' Rather than elevate his and/or my blood pressure, I offered a smile and nod as I retreated towards the deli counter because I knew we weren't going to change one another's minds about how each of us feels about the town in which we live. 

Except. 
You can hold on to something from the past so tightly that you're not able to reach out and grab ahold of what's next. Norwich of 2019 is in more ways than I can ever imagine (or hope to understand) both similar to and yet different from the Rose City of 1993, or 1893 for that matter. And nothing we can do at this moment can, or will, ever change anything done or left undone from then. 

Have mistakes been made? Are we human? It's the same answer to both questions so let's adapt, learn from the past and move forward together into the future. And maybe come back later in the week for those seedless grapes when they're on sale.
-bill kenny       

Is That a Hands-Free Device You're Holding?

In a state that mandates hands-free operation of a cellphone when driving, something like this happens more often (I suspect) than any of us realize or would want to know about. 

I'm trying to imagine how much Andre tips for interior auto detailing.
-bill kenny

????

I had another shopping expedition yesterday to the grocery and among the items I bought was eggs, the jumbo size now. When I was a kid, my mom used to get her milk and eggs from Mr. Ruben who drove a dilapidated old former milk truck as he made his rounds in the developments that sprang up on the outskirts of New Brunswick. His eggs were all one size; I'm pretty sure that's all there was back then, just one size. 

And now, we have sizes but I'm never sure how that happens (or why). I have more than enough trouble finding a dozen unbroken eggs in a carton. And why do people stare at me when I find a broken one and replace it with a whole one from another carton? What am I supposed to do, just suck it up and take the carton home and make an eleven-egg omelet? 

Why are eggs packed in quantities of a dozen and who designed cartons that obviously do NOT prevent the contents from breaking? Just two of my recurring questions. Others, while channel surfing (thank goodness for remotes! As a child, I WAS the remote in our house and if we had then the channels we have now I'd have died of exhaustion from getting up and sitting down) include wondering why there's both a QVC and an HSN?

They're pretty much the same thing and, speaking of wondering, why can't you use BitCoin on them to buy stuff? I have no idea how BitCoin works, sort of like egg sizes maybe, but still, it would allow me to bundle together a bunch of stuff for which I have little to no use and even less understanding all in one place. 

Or these, which are NOT my questions but damn good ones anyway: 
How Soon Should You Go When You Feel the Need to Poop? 
Or, for those more existentially inclined,
If I Die, How Long Will My Dog Wait Before Eating Me? 

And don't get me started about the number of hot dogs in a package and finding a package with the same number of hot dog buns.
-bill kenny

But Not Nearly as Silent

We had a lot on our plates for the last week or so as Sigrid organized the reorganization of our apartment as both of our baby birds have flown, some longer ago than others. We had to move all of my albums and there are thousands of them (no lie) and hundreds of compact discs, all the cabinets to store them all alphabetically and chronologically and the devices to play them from the living room to what she took to calling the 'man cave' which was previously Michelle's room and before that Patrick's. I think 'the den' is a better choice, but a rose by any other name...

After we got through with that there was all of the stuff she had always wanted in the living room but never had the room for to fill up the room and when she got all through, it looked really terrific and a bit like something from the pages of a magazine.

And in the middle of all of this, there was the wedding of our son to his bride, Jena, not that we had any lifting to do with that (for which I'm grateful). By Saturday's dawning, my goal was, as the online meme says, to be as useless as the G in lasagna. I think I nailed it. 

I spent yesterday with my first 'there is absolutely nothing we need to be doing today' day in quite some time and I took full advantage. However the trouble, I discovered with doing nothing is it's very hard to tell when you're done. Maybe I'll figure it out today. Or not.
-bill kenny 

Who Knew These Were the Good Old Days?

There are days in recent weeks where I feel like 'Video Killed the Radio Star' in terms of how my get up and go has gotten up and went. It's not just physical but also mental as it hurts more than usual to even think (which explains why I do so little of it so often). It would seem I've been feeling like this for longer than I thought to judge by this item from a decade ago. I called it then:  
 

Bow-ties and High Noon

More and more we live in a word-less world. By that, I don't mean a silent one but rather, a world in which you can scrape by with pictures and symbols. I love looking at the tags in shirts--it's like a graduation from Semaphore University. There's no bleach, hang-dry only, wash in cold water, dolphin-free, dry-clean, only etcetera. 

I thought it reassuring that no matter where in the world you travel those symbols are the same until I realized it has a lot to do with the manufacturing process and that almost all the clothes we buy, no matter where in the world we live, are made in the same third-world sweatshops. That's more likely the reason why the care symbology at the collar is the same. Oh. 

I'm not going to hold a Geography Bee with Carmen San Diego on where our clothes are made, because I have no trouble finding my way around as nearly everyone tells me where to go. And that's an unfair advantage even for a television star to overcome. 

What I am intrigued by is how our technology, not knowing where in the world we will use it, has created its own language to which we have universally adopted and adapted. Do you remember when you used to yell for 'Help!'. Our machines' clocks do the same thing, sort of, except they flash 12:00--we all know that means there's trouble at the mill and are now conditioned, when we see it, to look around for a cause. 

My smart-phone does this weird little vamp when it's loading an application. Maybe yours does the 'gimme a minute jitterbug', too. It looks like a vertical bow-tie and then it starts to whirl and twirl in a clockwise direction. Someone told me it's NOT a bow-tie at all, it's supposed to be an hourglass. That actually makes more sense to me, since that would have something to do with time, which is what the device is wasting, and not neckwear, of which I have a closetful though I have no idea of its purpose (or didn't) even though I wore one on most workdays for decades. 

Every time I see the posters for the raffles, there's always the disclaimer at the bottom, 'duplicate prizes awarded in the event of ties' and I keep thinking, today's the day. Good fortune, here I am! Luck be a Lady tonight. And yet all I ever win is a dry-clean only dolphin two sizes too small, no bleach only.
-bill kenny

Well, Maybe a Little

I've heard the expression all my life, "Christmas in July." 
And yet I wasn't ready when confronted with it.

And we think Amazon rushes the season? HA!
-bill kenny

Do Not Attempt

I'm not quite H. L. Mencken in my lack of regard and affection for all the rest of us here on the ant farm with beepers but sometimes, I get pretty close to the bemused (and not amused) contempt and disdain in which he held so much of all of us.

I never really got the lawsuits about the drive-thru coffee being so hot it burned you if spilled when you put the cup between your thighs, mostly because what consenting adults do in the privacy of their cars, to say nothing of the privacy of their thighs, is really none of my business. 

Nor did I appreciate the logic of the labels slapped on the six-foot ladder's paint shelf proclaiming in HUGE letters that 'this is NOT a step!' Fully understood, it's on the other side of the ladder away from the other steps you use to climb it but good to know, I guess.

I mention all of this because there's a lovely (in terms of music and visuals) TV commercial for Mazda that says nothing about the car, though it's shown a lot, because we're hooked on a feeling which is great and one of the purposes of advertising and its evil older sibling, propaganda.

Seconds after it begins and the woman in the commercial holds the automobile's key fob, I'm guessing because the guys in Legal had a concern so many of us are abject idiots and mouthbreathing morons who would not otherwise know this, in tiny letters at the very bottom of the screen as her key fob turns into a red balloon and lifts her into the stratosphere, appears "Dramatization-Do Not Attempt."

And all this time, I thought the key fob might be a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket and every millionth or so might really turn into a red balloon and allow me to fly away, Now, if I feel cheated when that doesn't happen I can't claim I wasn't warned.
-bill kenny   

Why Not This Town?

Sometimes the easiest way to see where you are going is to look back at where you've been. 

As I've mentioned previously, I am rarely in danger of losing my way as nearly everyone in Norwich I've ever encountered has told me where to go, though I'm pretty sure, technically 'walk East until your hat floats' isn't actually a direction.

Anyway, I started writing this stuff, on a daily basis only for me (it seemed most days) and then anyone who fell over it out on the Interwebz almost a dozen years ago this coming fall (long before Wednesday's Wit and Wisdom, as one of us (me) calls it in my house started to grace the pages of The Bulletin).

My family and I arrived here in the late autumn of 1991 with two children, one who was to enter the 3rd grade at Buckingham School after the winter holidays and the other, too young for school at all and we spent a number of years heavily involved in the ever-increasing school-oriented activities of our children, from soccer, through chorus, to music which is how for the most part my wife and I first discovered the best, but most often overlooked, aspect of Norwich, the people who choose to live here. 

I'm not slighting the historical buildings and efforts at preservation (I'm sixty-seven years of age and us old things need to stick together) or the beauty of the Norwich Harbor from just about any angle at any time of the year, or the pearl of great price that is the Mohegan Park, and certainly not forgetting the Uncas Leap, the gorgeous homes along Broadway and attractions like the Leffingwell House and the Slater Museums. 

Yep, if I were making a guide book, there'd be photos galore and more of each of those spaces and places but what it doesn't alter my opinion that what makes Norwich worth the travel from anywhere at any time to the here and now continues to be the people who've chosen to call here their home.

You saw it in a densely packed downtown for the Harbor Fireworks last Wednesday and for the first concert of the season of the Rock the Docks series that has continued to grow in popularity every year since its inception. Not scientific by any means, but I'd wager over half of those in attendance call somewhere other than 06360 their home zip code.  

Add the Farmers Market which started out as almost a closely guarded secret and has now become a destination unto itself (despite continuing queries from non-attendees about the day, time, and location, none of which seems to bother those of us who go there) and, again, what makes all of these, or any of them, for that matter, worthwhile? The people with whom we share our city.

I'd love us to fall in love with ourselves; I think it would do us a world of good, but maybe we have to walk before we can run so we should practice liking who we are and where we live. And, maybe, stop being so surprised that so many others also like us. Hey, it couldn't hurt.
-bill kenny 

      

Thoughts Meander

Among the nicer aspects of retirement is doing things on your own schedule (unless you're married then you do them on your significant other's schedule) to include reading the daily newspaper seated at my kitchen table instead of online while at my computer, 

That means I read everything to include the obituaries. Suspect if you read them, you feel the same way sometimes: I'm always impressed with how long so many people live these days (and hope I and everyone I know and love will be in that number for quite some time to come). Many days the paper has folks passing who were in their nineties and all of their families were far away if listed at all. That so many have so few makes me wonder if the parents have outlived their children and I suspect they have. 

Not sure why but that got me thinking back to something from a long time ago in the third or fourth grade at Saint Peter's School in New Brunswick, New Jersey with Sister Thomas Ann. 

What happens to you, I asked her when the last person on Earth who knew of you during your life dies as well after your death? I don't recall thinking I'd nailed anything to the cathedral doors in Wittenburg (I'm pretty sure I didn't even know where or what that was at the time) but I found out when you ask questions like that you spend the afternoon in Sister Immaculata's office (she was the principal) and your mom gets a call at home and your father has to write a note, actually a letter, apologizing for your question even though, as I thought about those obits yesterday in the newspaper, for the life of me, I couldn't and didn't understand why I was sorry or for what. 

I have a smart phone-or said another way, my cell phone has a stupid owner. I can listen to music from a variety of sources. In this case, I listen to slacker as it augments the albums I've stored in the cloud (albums? I'm not sure that's what we call music anymore; but it's what old guys like me call it. As for cloud, well, nevermind). 

Sometimes life imitates art and in this case makes me promise to return the favor, which may disconcert some of those whom I pass on the street from now on. Through my headphones, came my favorite John Prine song-a song that if we could somehow adopt it as a second national anthem, or as the foundation for foreign policy, this planet might not find itself in the mess it so often seems to end up in and maybe one less person would die all alone in a world with over seven billion of us stepping on one another's toes. 

"So if you're walking down the street sometime, And spot some hollow ancient eyes, Please don't just pass 'em by and stare, As if you didn't care, Say "Hello in there, hello."
-bill kenny

A Lifetime in the Making

I wrote this a really long time ago, before our son got married (which he did last Thursday). I've not done very much very well in this life (or at least so far), but marrying my wife and being the father to our two children were excellent moves on my part. At the time I called it: 

Memo to My Son

Today is the birthday of my son, Patrick Michael. When I type 'my son' or 'my daughter' (when speaking of his sister, Michelle Alison) or 'my wife', Sigrid Katherina, I smile, not because of pride of possession mentality but because I am truly the most fortunate person on the planet. 

If we've not met, count your blessings-I am NOT likable. Take my word on that-and be assured I could send you a list of folks who could attest to this fact, and it would vaguely resemble the census in size and scope (to include minus the citizenship question), helps underscore my point. 

Go Yankees!

Being not likable makes it a difficult stretch to be lovable, and yet, my wife, an otherwise sane and logical person, could not possibly be married to me for over four decades, but has. Our two children are the result of her ability to make someone into something they feared they never could be. She not only raised two children, but she also transformed a self-absorbed obliviot into an Approximate Dad. Considering what she had to work with, she done good.

Sigrid went into labor in the middle of the morning and we drove across town to the Offenbach Stadtkrankenhaus. German physicians in the early Eighties were pretty much an unknown species to me (Sigrid's frauenarzt was cool enough-I still have the black and white Polaroids of Patrick in the womb, ornaments clearly visible) and I was to them as well. 

As Sigrid's labor continued and the contractions shortened and the delivery preparation's tempo quickened, I was asked where I would be during her stay in the geburtsaal, and I assured the doctors, 'right there with her', which surprised them. I attempted to explain that I had placed the order and had every intention of taking delivery. Maybe my German wasn't that good-it was like playing to an oil painting, no smile, no nothing, gar nichts. 

Rocking suspenders

When Patrick was born, Sigrid looked as if she had just run a marathon and was utterly exhausted. I watched while the midwife cleaned up my son and, as she swabbed off the blood, he peed on her. Crying, basically blind, totally helpless in an alien world, he was my son and I laughed out loud maybe in amazement but more likely in joy and thankfulness for what I had just witnessed. 

The midwife placed Patrick Michael on Sigrid's chest, for mother and child bonding and my disappointment knew almost no words. At that moment, I was so jealous of the woman I loved. I asked as politely as I could if, after she had 'had enough of holding him', if I could, and was stunned when she picked him up and fixing me with a stare that bordered on a glare handed Patrick to me, saying 'I've carried him for nine months, it's your turn now.' 

From the moment I held him, Patrick Michael was, and is, my deal with God. I know your children are beautiful, smart, talented, and handsome and I'm sorry-they're not my children and my son and my daughter are the absolute best not only in the world but in the history of the world. 

My always favorite photo. Always.

I walked him around that delivery room for the next two hours or so, singing I've Been Working on the Railroad and really working those Fie-Fi-Fiddly-I-Os, making up in volume what I lacked in pitch. 

He and his sister, have overcome the handicap of being my children, mostly because they've had the good fortune to have the love and devotion of my wife as their Mom. And, yeah, he's made me crazy, angry, frightened, delighted and every emotion in between--because that's what children do.

You didn't think I had this picture.

And as long as you remember to make sure they always know that sometimes they will do things you will not like, but that you will always love them, they will be able to do anything, even leave you when they grow up to be adults of their own. And your eyes will fill with tears as you watch them end the chapter of their childhood and begin to write their own novel as the life you always wanted for them finally begins. 

And it hurts, and maybe the keyboard blurs as I type this because it's really warm and my eyes are perspiring-yeah, that what it is I'm sure. And on this birthday I also get to say a few words to the newest Mrs. Kenny on the planet (to my knowledge), Patrick's bride, Jena: Sigrid and I have no words to express our joy that Patrick has found someone who loves him as much as we do. Welcome into our family and into our hearts. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kenny

Happy Birthday, Patrick! Love, Dad.