Is and Ain't

For those of us who see Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer, this, the Labor Day weekend, in that same spirit marks its end. Neither, of course, is true and that can be most easily proven by looking at the calendar but perceptions of reality and reality are often the same thing, calendar be damned. 

I benefited during my working career from a lot of people who came before me in terms of demanding and receiving a living wage, a safe workplace, dignified and respectful treatment and a list of tangible and intangible benefits that runs from here to the horizon.

Enjoy the Labor Day weekend.

But always remember what it's about.

-bill kenny

Rants with Pants On

I saw a man yesterday with a Mohawk haircut, but the part that wasn't in the Mohawk was shaved to the naked scalp. He was wearing a three-piece suit that probably cost twice what my car is worth. I cannot imagine what he does for a living to be able to do what he does for a living. He wasn't a young guy, either. I'm not really good at guessing ages, or weight for that matter, so that career as a Carney is out. 

Actually, he was closer to being my age and he looked as goofy as the guys with whom I didn't go to Woodstock together all look-you've seen 'em, too. They have long hair, gray and frayed and wispy, in a ponytail. Nothing sticks it to the man like a Volvo station wagon, Teva sandals and the green 'we recycle' grocery bag while shopping for tofu and bean sprouts. Fight the Power!

Here's somebody I'd like the 'man' to stick it to. The auto-American cretin who compensates for his car's driver's side headlamp being burned out by driving with his high beams on and not dimming them as you and he approach one another. Yeah, I remember what Driver Ed said: don't retaliate and turn yours on-it makes two blinded drivers but still... My son gave me a great idea-I turn off all my lights which makes it a lot easier for Hi (no Lois) to see me behind the wheel as I visually suggest that he's my #1 special friend, but not in that way. 

I also don't know what to do about the driver who goes up a one-way street the wrong way, slowly because he certainly doesn't want to cause an accident, for a short distance, to pull into somebody's driveway, rather than go around the block. I love when he comes nose to nose with a car coming down the street the correct way and they glare at each other like Mr. Upstream Salmon has any comeback at all. Or that guy's cousin, the driver who backs up a one-way street the wrong way with the car flashers on, so I guess it doesn't count as much. 

How many crumbs from the toaster tray do you suppose it takes to assemble an entire piece of bread, and can you toast that slice when you're done? I have a Facebook account and when I go here, why does it say "you must log in to see this page"? Don't they mean "you must log in to see the NEXT page" since I can see the log-in page just fine?

Boy, do I feel better getting that off my chest and onto your screen.
-bill kenny

T-T-T-alkin' 'Bout

The MTV Video Music Awards were held earlier this week and I missed them. Again. And as always. With each passing day, I fear I become more like the old codger on The Simpsons who yells at clouds, except I already do that on sunny days.  

There's an Amish expression I like, "the older I get the smarter, my father becomes" which is probably truer than I'd like to admit although as far as I'm concerned NOT in terms of music though I suspect if you ask our children (who never met my father before he died). This is from a point in time, between his passing and after their birth. I called it:

Days of Miracle and Wonder (Whip and Bread?)

I'm old and this type of story doesn't do a lot for me except age me even faster. Do I wince because it's one of my idols-of course? I return to Santayana's injunction and equation now that I'm on the receiving end of some higher math and read the news account of two twenty-somethings NOT knowing who Bob Dylan is/was. 

And then I take a breath and remember our Patrick and Michelle are two twenty-somethings (I can be more precise than that as in this or this, but you get the idea) and realize that exhalation is a good thing (though not if you plan on seeking higher office, perhaps). 

In much the same way as I have little knowledge of and less appreciation for performers like Black Eyed Peas (I'm so unhip I thought there was a hyphen in the name, and now I'm trying to figure out if Will and Sam I Am are related) or No Doubt (the official state band of Missouri, by the way; I don't know if you knew that since I just made it up), there's been a generational changing of the guard, as is always the case, that has moved 'my' music to the back of the discount rack and shifted its broadcast location on the radio dial from "W-O-L-D" to that part of the frequency spectrum just above the police calls.

It's hard for me to remember that the kids in U2 are actually older than my daughter Michelle's cohort, who regard them as fossils. Huh? REM started touring at nearly the same time as my son Patrick started walking-but to me I can still hear the breezy nonchalant brilliance of songs like I Will Follow or It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) in other people's music to this very day. 

And of course, old coot that I am, I'd argue none of that could've ever existed without Dylan or Lennon and McCartney (why does he get short shrift? Because he's still alive? Please-as one survivor to another, bravo, Sir! And well played) all of whom, when they were so much younger than that now, not only always carried ID but were asked for it by many of those my parents' age. 

And as excited as my generation's performers got over the chords they, and we, thought they had discovered, they were only building on the work of those who came before them, the (GASP!) older musicians that we had never heard of. I mean, Tabitha's right, who is the loneliest monk?

Rock and roll is, by nature, political-it's the music your parents love to hate. And it doesn't make any difference how I define rock and roll or how you define it, because each of us carries a dictionary and jukebox in our head (are there still jukeboxes or are they another victim of progress? I hope not. I don't recall seeing any in a very long time, but I lead a quiet life) and at a moment's notice any of us could have pushed B 52 and bombed 'em with the blues. 

So this old white guy, Dylan, is wandering around when a neighbor, God Bless 'em, calls the cops and the Law and Order Brigade puts the world right. Home Sweet Ocean Place Resort and Spa bet Woody Guthrie never stayed, or got delivered, there in the back seat of a black and white. This Brave New World is, indeed an amazing place. If you're hungry from your hike, we've got all the Fixin's in the kitchen--enjoy every sandwich. 

"These are the days of miracle and wonder.
This is the long-distance call.
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo/The way we look to us all.
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky. These are the days of miracle and wonder,
And don't cry, baby, don't cry, Don't cry."
-bill kenny

I Might Seem Ambiguous (But I'm Not)

There's a better than average chance as you turn back from the bus stop and head home after waving farewell (and maybe doing a happy dance) as the kids return to school, that you'll walk past one or more lawn signs. 

Yep, perhaps because of the rain we had last week, the "Vote for Me" signs are starting to spring up like dandelions or toadstools. Don't misread what I just offered. I'm a registered voter and always vote, even when I was in the Air Force overseas and voted absentee. Too many men and women in uniform sacrificed to defend the freedoms we have for me to ever be nonchalant about voting. I sometimes think that's why Election Day is so close on the calendar to Veterans Day just to remind us but that could just be me.  

I regard lawn signs for City Council or Board of Education as the pulse of our democracy because decisions made at the most local level of government is where our quality of life changes the most, fastest, and deepest. Does that mean I'm saying an alderperson is more important than a Senator? You probably should answer that based on whom you think wields more influence about our schools, roads, public safety, and community quality of life.

I think we (meaning definitely me and maybe you) get a lot more emotionally, if not intellectually, engaged in our national contests, such as choosing the President, who should continue dancing with the stars or what color the next M & M should be. And for the most part, engagement at any and all levels of our government is critically important to make sure 'the will of the people' isn't just a fine notion but an actuality. 

We have the good fortune in Norwich to have a plethora of neighbors interested in helping us shape who we are becoming, and I applaud all of those who offered themselves as candidates. I think we can use all the help we can get. We each have one vote (though in parts of New Jersey where I grew up, that was always a great topic) so we should investigate each person asking for it before investing in them as the decisions we'll make we have to live with for two years which is a long time to have Buyer's Remorse if you follow my drift.

I don't care for whom you choose to vote as long as you choose to vote. We'll have enough newspaper articles, radio interviews and, I'm assuming candidates' forums, to hear what those seeking office believe to be the way ahead and their role in helping us get there. I always need to know what a candidate's ideas will cost as well as what they're worth with as much specificity, (remember when we used to say 'granularity' Is that still a thing?) as possible. 

So, office-seekers, spare me glittering generalities like how much you love Norwich. Sort of guessed that when you announced your candidacy, so let's move on together and define the issues most important to each of us, listen as our choices explain how they'll address them and then cast an informed vote on November 5th. 
-bill kenny       

And the Stars Look Very Different Today

As a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut and a baseball player. The latter was beyond my reach in this life, so far, and but the former, while probably out of reach as well is no longer out of the question.  

Thanks, NASA.

With domestic flight check-in times at two hours and international flights at three, I figure I should start to get a move on to make the Mars launch. As soon as I understand how much carry-on and checked baggage I'm allowed.
-bill kenny

Where Did the Summer Go?

I always thought school summer vacation whizzed by far too quickly and then I became an adult and discovered as the movie grows shorter, the reels seem to unspool even faster than when I was a kid. Yipes!

Talk about Time Flies. 
-bill kenny

Child's Play

It all comes to a head this afternoon at three for the 2019 Little League World Series and I'm sorry that it ever has to end because I, for one, need to witness and experience the joy of just living and loving what you're doing which is what the Little League World Series is all about.

In a world where we pay adult athletes wages that approximate the gross national product of some Third-World nations to participate professionally in a sport our children play for free, there is something about the exhilaration and exuberance of the competition in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, that I still find a tonic for the soul. 

The animation and engagement of the television announcers, some of whom as youngsters, played on these same fields in pursuit of a championship, is contagious and inspiring. If you can listen to the Little League Pledge, almost as old as I am, or even just read it, and not get goosebumps, don't bother checking your pulse, call your coroner as you're no longer among the living. 

All you can be is reminded and refreshed about why you choose to follow baseball. Why, in an era of a dozen other sports all grabbing more headlines and world-wide attention, the simple beauty of a contest that, at its most basic, involves striking a small leather-bound and round spheroid with a stick, be it wood, metal or some kind of composite and doing it better than a like number of others attempting to do the same on the other team. 

For a few days, eleven-year-olds can serve as role models for adults and an entire team of players, who've just been white-washed and whose run to the Series has ended prematurely and with a drubbing no one would wish on anyone else stand one behind the other along the first and third baselines after the final out and shake the hands of the team sending them home prematurely and tell them 'good game' and really mean it, because the Little League World Series isn't just about baseball, it's about life, as it should be lived. 

"... I will play fair.
And strive to win.
But win or lose, 
I will always do my best." 
The Kids Are Alright. 
-bill kenny

The Angry World

I like to think I'm better now than I was years ago. Sometimes the only thing I'm better at it, I fear, is lying about how good I am (and I am quite excellent at that). And at other times, I find it easier to look back at far I've come to avoid being fixated on the distance yet to be traveled. This is from a long time ago and I called it:

Papering over our differences of opinion

I keep a wallet filled with foolscap, absolutely crammed. It works out well unless you were to rob me, as there's rarely any money in it, though not necessarily because of all the foolscap.

Many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away I was a little too tightly wound (that gasp of incredulity you may have just heard from people who've known for three decades is legit). The Me of Back Then makes the Me of Now look comatose. At the time I may have actually slept with my jaw ratcheted closed. I cannot imagine in hindsight why I didn't have a stroke then, unless, perhaps, it's because I'm a carrier.

I couldn't let go of my anger. The Air Force, to my relief as their employee, rather than dump me amongst the flora and fauna, decided to send me to the head of the Psychiatric Services Wing at the Rhein-Main (Air Base) Clinic, Doctor Gurtin. He was terrific and very funny (because he thought I was if I'm being honest) and very willing to try to rescue a wild-eyed junior enlisted Sammy Glick impersonator who kept wading out into the deep end.

He came up with the foolscap. Every time something angered me, I was to write it down on a piece of paper and put the paper in my wallet. But every time I'd write something down, his rule was that it had to be on its own, separate, piece of paper. No doubling up, no lists. By the end of the day, I could, and did, have hundreds of slips of paper in my wallet. 

No worries-I had to review ALL these slips each night and put on a separate sheet of paper, all those items I was still ANGRY about (I could put those on a single piece of paper) and then I'd put that list on my nightstand. The night before I would go to see him at the hospital, I had to review the (six) pieces of paper, and transfer anything I was still angry about, to yet another piece of paper and bring that one piece out to our weekly conversation.

Within a month, I had no lists, simply because I'd review all the slips of paper of all the things that made me angry and realized I had no idea what the heck was written on most of them or what the words I could read actually meant or concluded (after reviewing the note and thinking about it, which Gurtin told me later was the key point) whatever had happened to spin me up wasn't that important after all.

How about this week or real soon (and I mean real soon) we all decide to use the Gurtin Solution. Watch the news, read a newspaper, check out a column online--we are REALLY CRANKED about a lot of stuff. It's a miracle that sales of boxing gloves haven't gone through the roof. We all know or know of, someone who wants to "fix" things by looking to punch someone in the nose (or are, themselves, that person).

I know people who tune in to certain TV programs just to yell at the talking head in the vapor box who is making a fortune by yelling at them. I guess they watch because it feels so good when the show is over. There are others who insist on reading columnists' words out loud and follow every line of the writer's argument with a scowl, or a gesture or a deprecation. And we just keep getting louder and angrier about more things, and more people every day. We don't know how to get off the escalator because most of us don't even know we're on one.

Passion is fine and necessary. If our ancestors back in the ooze didn't care if they evolved to have legs that carried them from the pond and helped us grow lungs, every day would be Friday, if you follow my drift. 

It's the grinding though, that is wearing out us out, the pitched battles we are waging to benefit who knows who or for what purpose. You wanna feel silly about how we now get along with one another, but you don't want to use the foolscap? 

Okay and I'm using this example because the 18th anniversary is almost upon us. Tell me five things this country was PO'ed about at eight AM on September 11th, 2001. Go ahead, I'll wait. Too hard? Gimme three things, then. How hard could that be? No? You want to take a break from all this head noise and hate to concentrate on the real and important tasks at hand instead? Go ahead, I'll make a note of where we were and we can get back to it sometime real soon.
-bill kenny

Hello In There

We've gotten very tired in my house of answering the landline telephone from what looks like a local number, maybe even close to the phone number of someone we know but it's actually some jablone trying to sell solar panels or the automated drone voice of someone who claims to be from Apple or Microsoft or the Social Security Administration and we must 'press one now' or something just awful will happen and it'll be our fault. 

Almost all of these robocalls wait for the person answering the phone to say something otherwise they go silent and move on. I mention all of that because shortly before 11 Tuesday morning the phone rang and the Caller ID said it was a number in the 203 area code (Connecticut down in the New Haven and Fairfield Counties area) and we didn't answer. The caller left a message for my wife whose name (and phone number) they had from our long-time next-door neighbor.

The caller said she'd ben trying to reach our neighbor for a number of days and was now worried and would Sigrid please knock on the doors and ring the doorbells and make sure she was okay. We've lived alongside one another all the years since we arrived from Germany, so since November 1991 and our neighbor was always there with a smile, a little something for the kids as they were growing up, fresh-baked cookies at Christmas. In other words, one of those Currier and Ives tableaux.

We went next door and banged and rang to no avail. Sigrid looked through the mail slot and saw a stack of mail on the hallway floor and that's when I called the Police Department and the dispatcher promised to send a car to conduct a wellness check. Actually, four cars showed up and eventually, they figured out how to get into the neighbor's house and, as you've guessed I'm sure, they found her dead though no one offered an idea of how long it had been.

We saw her very nearly every other day for close to twenty-eight years but I couldn't tell you when I last saw her or how long her garage door had been open. She was eighty-two years old and people who tell me 'she led a full life' mean well I'm sure but are full of crap and I hope they don't offer that believing it be of solace or comfort to any of her relatives.

We're all we have and sometimes I think we may spend too much time and energy arguing with one another over what we DON'T have in common, losing sight of all those things we share. For me, this is another reminder that the next time I say hello to someone it could be the last time.
-bill kenny

   

Harder than It Looks

At some point on our watch, the USA became an outtake from Lord of the Flies, with the accompanying chaos and destructive hatred.  We have more metal detectors in our schools than at our airports and active shooter drills are now part of our schools' curriculum from Pre-K through graduate school. 

And speaking of school we spend more to incarcerate people than on elementary school education nationally and speaking of incarceration we have more people in jail than any other country on earth. (What? No chants of "USA! USA!" for that news nugget? I'm shocked)

Instead of complementing the universe opened through applied technology for education, we leave our children alone with a machine, the personal computer, more fraught with peril than the TV our parents were blamed for plopping us in front of. And then we 'wonder and worry about the kids.'

Heck, that black and white one-eyed monster had neither the sex nor murder cascading from it that the flat screen monitor with the DSL hookup or T-3 line brings to our kids 24/7 to say nothing of the hatred of others and conspiracy theories without surcease. 

This is the Brave New World, Pilgrim, the one we worked so hard to make. 
So put on a brave new world face.
-bill kenny

As the Summer Days Fade

When I was a kid, the calendar pages took forever to turn. You waited for your birthday and for summer vacation and they took their sweet time getting here. But the thing about summer vacation was once it started it was over so quickly. 

Still feels that way and I haven't been a school kid in a long, long time. I offered a lot of what follows this time a year ago as the days grew shorter and the leaves started to turn but that wasn't the biggest change.

 A week from today, children in sixth through the eighth grade begin a new year of classes at Norwich Public Schools, (everyone else in NPS starts a week from tomorrow). joined by students at the Sachem campus of Norwich Free Academy as well as NFA 9th graders.

Like you, I've been seeing back to school displays in stores everywhere for weeks as the retail sector has its own calendar that moves even swifter than the one the rest of us have hanging in our kitchens. 

Speaking of back to school, we are smack in the middle of Connecticut Sales Tax-Free Week which started on Sunday and runs through Saturday. Not everything is sales tax-free or exempt though if you're buying back to school clothes or footwear costing less than $100 an item you can save some money. 

The CT Department of Revenue has a Chart of Exempt and Taxable Items online that includes "antique clothing" and "bicycle sneakers without cleats" and I mention them because they make me smile

You can combine your back to school shopping with money-saving while patronizing local businesses so that more of our dollars stay here where we live and continue to support those merchants who help make our community a better place for all of us. 

As we head towards autumn, perhaps this is a good time to check those kitchen calendars to see if we can't find space and time that allows us to volunteer for one or more of the many activities we have across our city, like the Greek Food Festival, A Taste of Italy or Walktober through dozens (if not hundreds) of others events. 

We all enjoy going to them, right? And while it's nice to believe they run on rainbows, all of them rely on volunteer power, which is where you and I come in. As I alluded to, sort of, last week, there's an 80/20 rule of volunteering about who does the work and who enjoys the fruits of it but my larger point is there isn't a single aspect of our community that would not be better for our getting more involved and engaged.

I mentioned the new school year and not just for parents of school children but for all of us, a great place to lend a hand and stay close to home is our local school. Let's face it, we certainly had a lot to say last May and June about the schools during the City Council budget hearings. But we all have a stake in them, all-year-round. The kids in my house and perhaps yours are grown and gone, but graduations shouldn't mean the end of our interest and engagement. 

Summer's ending and it's time to become a bigger part of where we call home starting now. 

Pick your passion and begin.
-bill kenny

Wiedersehen Macht Freude

I've found myself looking back a lot more frequently and extensively than looking forward in recent months. Not sure if that's got something to do with my retirement a bit more than a  year ago, my advancing age and its accompanying health challenges or that nostalgia booster shot I got over the summer together with that shingles vaccine. 

Anyway, some part or all of that got me to thinking or something like it I guess. Not that I haven't been in this place before. The last time I was here I called it: 

Sometimes the Dot Isn't Short for Dorothy

Those maps of the stores in the malls that every mall has always have a red pin stuck on them with a note, 'you are here.' I often wonder why the floor upon which the map display is constructed doesn't have red or orange color tiles right there so when I look down, after reading that part of the mall map, I'm reassured. 

Like those who have fallen in love with the camera part of our cell phone (and none of the cameras I've owned in my life could call anyone, anywhere. I could throw some of them at somebody to get his attention but they had to be pretty close), there's a compulsion to photo-document every moment of our lives.

Here's a shot of me at the mall, looking at the directory. And here's a picture of me showing you a picture of me looking at the mall directory and OH! Here's one of you and me looking at a picture of us looking at a picture. As Walter explained to Ray, people take pictures of each other just to prove that they really existed.

And when our time for coming and going has come and gone, who will know we were here? Will there be a little dot on the front sidewalk at your house? When you look at how long we, as a species, have trodden this planet, what names of all those who've gone before us, do we know? 

My family and yours and his and hers all helped build this country and are part of the history of the USA that has gotten us from 1776 until here and now at this moment but where are the names? We preserved Mount Vernon and Monticello-no one has contacted me about efforts to save 33 Bloomfield Avenue in Franklin Township, NJ, where three of my brothers and sisters were born and where my mother and father worked as hard as they could to make a life for us. 

There's no marker at the corner, with Easton Avenue, that says 'this where Evan Dolores Kenny waited for the school bus to take her to Saint Peter School in New Brunswick, every school day for eight years' (Evan NEVER missed a day of school as a kid. How's that for dedication?).

And the same is true for you and yours. And yet here we are, so many people in the same device. Famous faces and famous places mixed in equal parts with ordinary lives doing extraordinary things. You, I, he, and she--we are here. 
-bill kenny

Half a Century Later

This past weekend was the 50th anniversary of Woodstock (I have no idea how old Snoopy is). Kidding off course about the Woodstock we were celebrating, assuming that's what we were doing.  Found my homage, of sorts, to the festival of peace, love, and mud, from ten years ago and I think it's aged rather well which is more than I can say for myself. 

At the time I called it: 

Souvenir from Woodshuck

The weirdest thing this past weekend wasn't having to dodge all the "Woodstock" era music on the radio-heck, I own a lot of it as long-players (before compact discs, before mp3's. Look 'em up) and interviewed at various times in the ensuing decades more than half the folks who survived all of that. If I survived, why shouldn't they? (Turns out I remembered more about it than they did and I wasn't even there-what does that tell us, grasshopper?)

Hand on your heart, if you listened to the original soundtrack of Woodstock, either the two-CD set or the original three-record set four times in the last forty fifty years, why? I own it, and its companion set, the one with the nude little kids on the cover, with stuff that somebody didn't think was good enough to be on the first set (and was for the most part, right) and every once in a while I pull it out of the rack, marvel that I still have it, and put it back. 

And here we all are, well, some of us at least, forty fifty years later, still being stardust, being golden, though more of us are leaning towards golden oldie than just golden I suspect. 

What really convinced me that you can't go home again was a reminder that the Summer of Love was holding a memory liquidation sale. Who was released from prison last week, just in time to be a footnote to all of the hullabaloo, Squeaky Fromme. The Squeakster. Talk about a blast from the past! 

And just me, in the news stories broadcast over the last couple of days about her release or that ran in the print wire services and on-line, all I can remember seeing is the footage of her walking down the courthouse hallway with the other women loonies from the days of the Manson trial and/or the photo of her getting shoved into the back seat of the police cruiser after trying to take a shot at then-President Gerry Ford with a revolver that had no bullets (and how symbolic was that?).

In other words, I saw LOTS of Squeaky from then and not so much, actually not any, from now. Can't really blame anyone-I have snapshots of me from high school and they scare the stuffing out of me now. Maybe you too? Sort of like having Dorian Grey as your DMV photo, if you know what I mean. 

I'm framing a bad movie in my head, tooling across Yasgur's farm in a sunflower yellow and white VW microbus- Canned Heat blasting out of the eight-track player and Squeaky Fromme bobblehead dolls lined up on the dashboard as we gulley-whomp through every rut in the road. "They were turning into butterflies above our nation", but only if you inhaled and held it for all those passing years, Ichabod.
-bill kenny

Choosing Jumpin' Over O'Lantern

I guess it's true. If you never ask, the answer is always no. So this nearly-autumn's question is 'are you ready for Pumpkin Spice Spam?' 

I'm thinking that's a hard "no" in my case but you do you.
-bill kenny

Batter Up!

I offered this a couple of years back to celebrate the ultimate in Small Ball, the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I really love watching it and if you watched it you'd love it too. We need a lot more Little League baseball in our lives right now, everywhere but that's beyond my paygrade.  

At the time I called this:

It's Not Just a Game

This is one of my favorite weekends of the summer and not just because I get to watch so many other people’s kids get dragged to stores for back to school clothes, though (of course) that is looming at least around here for next week.

Curmudgeon that I am, nothing warms my heart quite as well as watching a gangly young person who elevated barefoot to an art form since school let out in middle June having to get used to wearing shoes and socks again. As an adult with a list of required wear apparel (almost) longer than Trump’s reasons for why nothing is his fault, I say ‘welcome.’

The 2019 Little League World Series is in full swing (it started Thursday) so make the time and find a chair to watch baseball as it should always be played, for the sheer love of the game and for all the other people on your team. Here's the schedule (and yeah, there are kids from Barrington, Rhode Island, and Elizabeth, New Jersey, in The Show but I would talk about little league even if they weren't).  

I love professional baseball beyond any beats and bounds and I am always loyal to where the wellspring of the game actually is, on the sandlots across this country and around the world. With all the hell and hurt going on just about anywhere you stick a pin on the globe, I am looking forward to being able to watch some of today's contests.

There are always so many great 'aw, shucks' stories and magical moments in the course of every tournament. As much as I love the start, I hate to see it end, not only because I enjoy the energy, enthusiasm, and engagement these young people bring to my favorite sport but because someone, somewhere ultimately has to lose for someone else to win.

The dogpile that goes on at home plate when the last out is made (next Sunday afternoon at three) is balanced by a pang of sadness from the other dugout whose team struggled through an entire season to come up just short at the final moment. There’s no shame in losing-only if you didn’t play every second of every game to win and when you get to Williamsport, there’s no danger of that.

Little League baseball, in my jaundiced opinion, is how life should be. People take turns and say please and thank you. They respect the rules and those who enforce them. They try their hardest and give their all. They say ‘way to go’ to team-mates and competitors alike and really mean it and when an umpire says ‘that’s a ball’ or ‘that’s a strike’ they say yes, sir, and nothing more.

Little leaguers are us before all that adult stupid stuff gets installed. Check it out, if you have the chance and remind yourself of the way we were when summer days went on forever and you played baseball until mom called us in for supper. 

Don’t let anyone say that it’s just a game. 

-bill kenny

We Were Once a Fine Notion

I remember when it was a dream and goal of those who preached convergence as technology assumed a greater role in our lives that we would sooner, rather than later, share so much more information leading to greater knowledge and understanding of our world and our place in it. 

Instead, we settled for sending one another cat memes and calling people with whom we disagree libtards and fascists. Why didn't I listen to me from back in the day, long before Pantload45 elevated Lying into an art form and made online insults into a form of BitCoin when I called this: 

The Republic of Me

Remember when we all used to live together in a shared country? (Together being the operative word) We didn’t always get our own way (some of us spent a long time trying to figure out exactly who voted for McGovern, and then, later, for Dukakis; and then, even later, for the SECOND Bush) and we tended to favor the notion of having one political party in control of the White House while the other one was in Congress. 

We had infinite shades of grey, anatomically and otherwise. Now we have the most abrupt, bruising and brusque form of non-nuanced conversations in all the years I've been carrying around this belly-button.

To review, and the list is by no means exhaustive or inclusive: we have birthers, cut and runners, stay and kill ‘em alls, take your hands off my health care, make the bankers jump from the highest open windows in burning buildings, wise Latinas are better than middle-aged white guys with celebrities of every stripe weighing in on topics ranging from world hunger (hello Bono!) the environment (Hello Leo) to every issue in between (Chuck Norris; yes, that Chuck Norris and even Curt Schilling).

We have clenched jaws, flinty eyes, and hardened hearts, but that doesn't mean we can't talk-it just means we won't, I guess. Somewhere we decided two diatribes now equal one dialogue and I GET TO GO FIRST! (sorry). If we yell AT one another long enough, from a distance somewhere in space it will look like we are talking to one another. 

Respectful disagreement has gone the way of the dodo bird. If you don't agree with me you are the most awful person in the history of the planet, as is everyone else related to you, everyone else related to them and everyone any of you knows. Wait a minute-when I do that much finger-pointing some of the fingers on that hand point back at me. Hmmm.

Labels such as 'liberal' and 'conservative' are now pejoratives hurled like discount store invective at opposing viewpoints, appropriate or not, and the reaction to the labeling obscures quite nicely any opportunity to see the person we've just tagged. 

Now, all we are is disagreeable when we disagree. And we engage in preemptive shouting matches with one another in forums supposedly designed to let us exchange ideas and views. The longer the meeting, the louder the yelling and don't even get me started on the understanding.

I read an online note from someone who insisted 'health care isn't in my copy of the Constitution!' and as a joke, I shared that neither is "freedom of speech" (his or anyone else's). Rather, all of that is in the Bill of Rights (technically the first ten amendments to the US Constitution) which was created in reaction and response to concerns by well-meaning people (we'd probably call them 'kooks' today) about protection of personal liberties from a federal government not yet in existence (we had, after all, just defeated the most powerful nation on earth and were still a little touchy about folks telling us what to do). 

He didn't appreciate my tongue-in-cheek observation and was eager to suggest I stick my head between two other cheeks (which, I think, would have made it more difficult to see his point of view, but that's just me).

Back in the day, we talked things out and arrived at a consensus through reasoned discussion and debate. Now the line between gee-willikers and jihad makes it almost impossible to discuss anything. I mention this because in the fall we have countless thousands of local elections across these United States and we owe it to those whom we've nominated for office to speak in coherent and complete sentences about what we want and what we feel we need and how we propose to work together (that's a key phrase in my house) to achieve rebuilding our country.

You can't shake hands with people who have balled fists and maybe it's just me but this knuckle bumping horse hockey is so ten minutes ago. We need to learn once again to speak in complete sentences and respectful tones to one another, one at a time and then move on to larger groups. Eventually, we might get the hang of how we used to do all of this, back when we all lived in the same country at the same time. History needn't be a mystery.

-bill kenny

Change the Vowel and You Change the Meaning

I'm working very hard to get up early(ish) on weekday mornings (for decades I would have typed workday mornings, but no more) and head to the local planet Fitness in an effort to live forever or to die trying. It's pretty binary when you think about it: one or zero. 

Rummaging through my footlocker of 'whatever became of' stuff that I now keep in my mancave, I found this from long ago and far away. At the time I called it: 

The Sweat of our Brows

Watched from my office window as someone in sweats walking towards a building that I know has a fitness center, was smoking a cigarette, which she finished and put out in an ashtray very close to the front of the building she was entering. 

I smoked about three packs of cigarettes a day for twenty-two (plus) years and have my own definitions of insanity and dependence, as does each of us with a vice, but for Kafkaesque humor, you'd have to go some to top that. I'm thinking perhaps trying to wolf down a Haagen-Dazs giant ice cream cone before crossing the threshold into the fitness center, assuming H-D is still in business and makes such an item. 

We like the routine, the assurance of the rote drill (I think) and maybe that's where we believe the benefit accrues. It's like small children learning the Pledge of Allegiance long before they have any idea what allegiance means (for some of us that's still true). A whole generation now hits the fitness centers in the same way previous ones frequented the bars and clubs on Saturday nights or the churches on the Sunday mornings which followed. 

But for what purpose, and to what end? Behaviorists refer to an Obesity epidemic in the United States and it surfaces for its fifteen minutes on the electronic vapor and vapid box in the corner of the living room and then we have another double cholesterol-and-bacon burger from the neighborhood drive in and don't forget to supersize the fries and, what?-oh yeah, the drink? Gimme a diet cola, no ice. 

I'm wondering if we're not better off just eliminating the middle man and cutting out the white space. Put a cigar bar in the fitness center--or set up one of those luxurious dessert places in the lobby; call it "Cool Whip and Curls", no one will snicker. Those who wish to indulge can, and the rest of us can pretend to not see any of it as it'll all be out of sight. 

Look at how often we've used that trick to handle world events that should and could have numbed us. Besides, it keeps us from walking around with our eyes closed-people can get hurt going through life like that.
-bill kenny