Today's Teachable Moment

A picture is worth a thousand words.

I owe ya. 
Shop Local. Start today and see where it takes you.
-bill kenny

After You've Come Back from Black

If you're reading this on a handheld device while standing in a line outside a big box store to snag a once-in-a-lifetime-deal that is not on a new television, a new cell phone, a new refrigerator-freezer or a brand spanking new gaming console, please go home now.

All of us who have the capabilities to be able to read this blather already have all the physical possessions we shall ever need-anything you're standing in line for now, or elbowing folks out of the way to get to later in the day as Black Friday accelerates, is sheer and absolute greed. 

Thanksgiving and this is still Thanksgiving my friend, is to celebrate with friends, old and new and not to acquire more things to put in the basement or attic with the other things we already own and don't use.

Many years ago in Germany, I had an acquaintance, Detlef K, who described Americans as "people who buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like." OUCH. I really disliked him for that characterization but I always think about what he said when Black Friday rolls around and I'm forced to concede I cannot argue with his point.

Where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, a town of about 40,000, if I were to add up all the square footage of all the shops in our downtown I suspect it's a lot less than the floor space in the average Super Box Store that already has two or more zipcodes (and coming soon, time zones). It's getting better in Chelsea and will keep growing but the big bucks head to the Big Box stores. Fair enough, I guess.  

I can be gracious and concede that reality because tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, and assuming you're not tuckered out from that super deal you got on the 1932 hand-carved mahogany Terraplane at MaxBucks MegaStore, you could support one or more of the local shops where you live, all of whom help make your city or town, as they do mine, an even better place to come home to.

And it's even better when you're a part of something bigger than yourself, like growing the place you call home just a little bit more.
-bill kenny

William Jennings Bryan Is Right

Somewhere among the sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, eleven different kinds of vegetable side dishes on a table groaning from being overloaded there should be just enough space for this.

Someone, somewhere you go today needs something basic more than you want something extra, so if you can help, please do so.
-bill kenny

A Time of Togetherness and Gratitude

Our calendars tell us we are in the 'traditional' holiday season (which some of us think includes Halloween, except it doesn't) and today's words are in a way my part of that tradition as I've offered them in years past. 

I'm writing in short sentences since you probably have a lot to do today and not a whole lot of time to do it all in, what with Thanksgiving and all the Fixin's on tap for tomorrow.

This is the time of year we celebrate our good fortune, in a vaguely historical homage to the Pilgrim's Progress that we can't quite explain. That's probably because we get it wrong. The First Thanksgiving was actually an act of generosity and kindness by those already from here shared with those who were recent arrivals and who had very little.

We think of The Pilgrims when we think about Thanksgiving but it's the Native Americans who sustained them and helped those ill-equipped settlers adapt and overcome whom we should be honoring and emulating. 

For those of us not planning to pick up or drop off someone at an airport who's flown in/flying out to be part of the Thanksgiving holiday, there's the accomplishment of the 'things we forgot to get for the feast' shopping expedition. Taking care of the little things counts in life and most especially for holiday dinners.

My First World Problem is always about cranberries, jellied or berries? Yeah, I lead a hard life. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. While I'm standing struggling with what is truly a trivial concern, I'm somehow not seeing those around me who would trade my troubles for theirs in less time than it takes to read this sentence.

I see people with handmade signs at the entrances of our shopping areas and at highway intersections and we all pass at least a half-dozen collection points every day where donations for those whom we call 'the less fortunate' are being assembled. They need our help but they are not 'the less fortunate;' they are our neighbors and in some instances, our family and friends.

I don't care what the news says about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. No one I know can eat the NASDAQ, whatever that is, so don't get fooled. Our times may be better but that's not the case for a lot of other people. If you thought the last decade was challenging in terms of prosperity, try being a family that didn't have much to start with when things went sideways.

Again this time of year, and more so now than in previous years, agencies and organizations that work with the invisible indigent we have chosen not to see are nearly overwhelmed by the requests for help.

Ask the St. Vincent de Paul Place about how many (more) hot meals they're preparing not just for the holidays and how many new food pantry customers they have. And if recent years are any indicator, this is when the Connecticut Food Bank receives the largest number of donations, to include yours, which is all well and good assuming hunger is a holiday thing, except it's not.

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving, when you're with friends and family enjoying the food and festivities after the feasting please go online and find an agency someplace doing good and donate so they can do better.

How much should you give? Until it helps.
-bill kenny

All Exits Look the Same

Someone much wiser than I once explained to me that freedom of speech doesn't entitle you to shout fire in a crowded theatre, nor does it afford you the privilege of sitting next to someone and whisper non-stop as the celluloid races through the projector gates. The danger, he said, each one of us faced was that 'sometimes the things you do speak so loudly I cannot hear what you're saying.'

I thought about that recently as I watched people scurrying through the mall beginning the search for low-cost holiday gifts for their mailmen and newspaper carrier, oil tank filling guy, coffee making person, etc-a dozen or a hundred jobs that no one notices until they're not done. The trick is to make sure to find something that doesn't like cheap and when you start the hunt early, you have a better chance. 

I've had this conversation with people in holidays  past who have a very complex and complicated mental math they do to compute just how much to spend on a gift for a person whose name they more often than not, do not know or for one who, if the job is done right, they rarely see.

And in the case of the 'sandwich guy' or the 'coffee server' (and the like), it's a person with whom you would never speak, aside from 'please' and 'thank you', but if you crossed paths in a locale such as Borneo or even Boise, you'd chatter away like magpies who'd known one another your whole lives. The concept is called familiar strangers and many of us have a world populated with them and very few others.

I've gotten better as I've aged (I'm not bragging; I set the bar pretty low) and I no longer immediately say everything I'm thinking, which I did for decades and then wondered why I had tension-filled relationships with people. Turns out I had difficulties distinguishing between inside and outside voices, especially as I tend to hear both, and if you don't, it's your loss. Blurting is often hurting, a little tip from me to you about getting along here on the ant-farm.

There was a time I'd ask those shopping for the knick-knack thank you gifts, 'why don't you just give the person money?' After all, it's a holiday whose primary colors seem to be red and green and since most of us are in the former why not share some of the latter? I think we give each other seconds of pleasure that are put away and forgotten or lost by the end of the holiday season because we can't stand the insulted silences if we didn't.

It's not words, so much, that frighten us, it's the quiet between the words. That the words have, perhaps, sharp edges are all well and good as long as they keep coming, because that way we don't have to worry there might be time to think about their meaning and the last thing many of us want to do is find ourselves alone with our thoughts. 

I wonder if there's life on other planets and, like us, have giant parabolic microphones to pick up the sounds emanating from this septic orb if they've long since learned to turn the volume all the way down. We wouldn't mind, I fear.

"Dumbed down and numbed by time and age.
Your dreams that catch the world the cage.
The highway sets the travelers' stage.
All exits look the same."
-bill kenny

In the Middle of Nowhere

Every Saturday, one of our local daily newspapers has an editorial page with a "view from the Left" and a "view from the Right." I've always been impressed with the scale and scope of subjects the two advocates explore each week. 

I appreciate the newspaper's striving for balance but In light of how much of our lives most of us spend in a variety of states, politically and philosophically, I am less than comfortable at the ease with which we tend to create real and sometimes synthetic lines of demarcation that do nothing to help us build the bridges we need throughout this country, but do manage to speed the expansion of walls we keep erecting.

Nationally we have too much 'my mind's made up, don't confuse me with facts' already, so folks like Fox News and MSNBC, continuing to 'accidentally' or 'inadvertently' (as the preferred adjective, like anyone on earth ever does something vertently) have used video of one event to underscore and support reports on entirely other events, That needs to stop now.

As for One America News, OAN, they need to sign off permanently as they are adding nothing but uncivil coarseness to our civic discourse though I've been assured by friends who live where Sinclair Broadcasting has stations that those make OAN look like PBS. 

Meanwhile, back here at the local level (wherever that may be for you), we must resolve to get better at distinguishing a good person from a good elected official. Sometimes they are one and the same and sometimes they are two different people. All ducks are birds but not all birds are ducks. I dare to offer a blinding glimpse of the obvious like that because It helps underscore my larger point which is while each of us is our own message in a bottle, it's a big beach.

"Well out here in the middle, You can park it on the street. Step up to the counter; you nearly always get a seat. Nobody steals. Nobody cheats. Wish you were here my love. Wish you here my love."

-bill kenny

Life Goes On

Somewhere last week, I lost track of almost all the days in it. I've had this happen before and have put it down to 'getting old' but that doesn't actually make sense since I've lived through all the days, I just didn't seem to get any of 'em on me.

The most memorable item as best as I can recall was how we will celebrate Thanksgiving (and by extension, Christmas) this year. My wife and I have two children who are, in every sense of the word, adults themselves, though in recent years I've developed a vision problem that precludes my successfully seeing them with my heart as anything other than as they once were.

I have memories of my son, Patrick, now 37, being no more than two or so when I'd pick him up to put him in his backseat car seat in our BWW 518 while cheering 'nur Patrick!' to which he shouted in return, 'nur Daddy!' It was always a pep club rally in the garage behind Ahornstrasse 67, Offenbach am Main. Zwei Deppen aber glucklich.

Michelle, our daughter, a proud graduate of Eastern Connecticut State University, would (back in the day) balance herself on my right arm as I held her up so she could see herself as a tiny toddler in our bathroom mirror while we (her brother and I) serenaded her with 'How Much is that Baby in the Mirror' to the tune of some other song whose name I've forgotten, as she peered solemnly into the mirror and then slowly smiled when she realized the baby she was seeing was herself. I smiled because the song was one of the ways I obliquely introduced English as a language into my children's lives.

And now, part and parcel of all the days I don't recall, our family which went from two to three to four and then down to three is back to two again and I'm feeling sorry for myself even though I did my job as a dad (and will testify to that effect in court) and should be happy our children are, themselves, adults with their own lives.

My wife, whose country and culture have no formal Thanksgiving holiday is the architect for every reason I have to be thankful for every day, even the days that have rushed by, unheeding and unmindful. The moments that I thought I'd remember have so often, too often, been joined by all of those now lost to me forever. 

And though I've always tried to move as quickly through life as it has through me, I've not been as successful as I could and should have been. And yet, somehow, the days I'll remember all my life are those of miracles and wonder and all of those seem to involve, and revolve around, those I love.
-bill kenny

Doing Good vs. Meaning Well

In this era of convergence and connectivity where clicking a 'thumbs up' or giving someone's post on social media a 'like' feels as if we've done something except in reality we've done nothing, too many of us get exhausted just contemplating actually taking action on anything.

It's the weekend, so in theory, this is when we could do things, except there's college football today and pro football tomorrow and shopping for Thanksgiving and maybe for a headstart on Christmas, and, and, and...

But, how about today, here in the area of The Rose of New England, we choose to really do something, head for downtown and Main Street to the Otis Library and enjoy the offerings at the 11th annual O'Tis a Festival. 

A photo from a Festival Past

There is food and drink at the library and at the thousands of restaurants (your mileage may vary depending on your hunger) that surround the library while inside, the shelves of books will share space for the day with dozens of local artisans and craftspersons with handmade delights of every description and at least one or more of them will be just the thing for someone special in your life.

It starts at ten this morning and goes until three and you will be very pleased with yourself as a real-life action figure supporting our town. See you there.
bill kenny

Dark Thoughts on a Dark Day

As I recall, we had already had lunch and recess on the closed-off portion of Division Street. The grammar school had been built less than three years earlier in what had been a vacant lot near the high school on the city block in New Brunswick that St Peter's Parish owned. 

The church, flanked by the convent on the far side and the rectory on the near side, was actually two blocks away, down the street and up the hill from the railroad overpass across from Makaronis' Town House Restaurant and next door to Albany Wines and Liquors, bridge at the train station where my father and hundreds like him congregated workday mornings (and for my father, Saturdays, too) and traveled first by Pennsylvania Railroad, later (after the merger of two failing lines), Penn Central and still later (when Uncle Sam 'rescued' rail travel in the Northeast Corridor) on Amtrak into "the city'.

I was in fifth grade of St. Peter's School (I learned years later, despite the name carved in marble on the front of the building, the possessive case was inaccurate and incorrect. But no one had yet invented industrial Wite-Out) and when I first returned to the USA, I drove through my old hometown one weekend while my family was still in Germany, looking perhaps, for myself and the person I was then in the hopes of better understanding the man I had become. The school name, in all its incorrectitudeness was still there. There have to be some constants in the universe, I suppose and our classroom was in the basement, on the Division Street side of the building (as opposed to the courtyard side, facing the high school).

We had been working on our penmanship. Our school was a firm practitioner of the A.N. Palmer method of cursive writing. Those of us in third through fifth grade loved the name of the writing style and found it incredibly funny for what it almost sounded like. We assumed the Sisters of Charity (a misnomer of some magnitude I should note), our teachers, weren't in on the joke.

I can still see the classroom. Sister Rosita's desk in the front, centered and in front of the blackboard that took up the entire wall behind her, facing in the far corner, to her left, the entrance and exit door in the back of the classroom. Our desks faced her, arranged in academic order. 

That is, the student with the best report card was in the far upper left corner at the head of the column with everyone to, and through, those who failed lunch and recess at the far lower right-hand side of the room, as defined by Sister Rosita. Fifty-two students of varying abilities and enthusiasms--all blank slates waiting to be drawn upon.

Everything in that classroom was defined and controlled by Sister Rosita with the occasional support and intervention of Sister Mary Immaculata, the principal, whose office was upstairs (no talking in the stairwells! no running in the halls!) who existed, aside from report card day, as a voice on the cloth-covered speaker in the upper left corner of the classroom, above the blackboard alongside the American flag to which we pledged Daily Allegiance.

If you are left-handed, as one of my brothers is, the Palmer Method is a trial since it assumes and presumes all of us write right (in Latin, left is the word 'sinistro' from which we have derived sinister; do you sense a bias here?) but even for right-handers, the capital Q is challenging. It's a fine line between a cursive Q and a very pretentious number 2. There's also the two variants on the lower case 't', one for in the middle of a word like 'little' and the other for when it's at the end of a word such as 'variant.' When you're in fifth grade, these are matters of great concern.

Earlier in the week, before lining up to board the buses that took us home (and there was always a snobbery of those who walked home, the townies from New Brunswick, towards those of us from the developments in Franklin Township, beyond the city's borders) we had all watched, again, the Civil Defense film on what to do in the event of an Atomic Attack. 

I remember the sound of the film threading through the projector gate almost drowning out the assault music soundtrack laid down by the 101st Airborne String Quartet over the ominous narration of someone like Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (no one had ever heard of Sr.; which being a Junior, I had more than casual curiosity as to how that had happened. I still use the Jr., even though my father died over three decades ago). 

Orchestra crescendo, vivid orange flash that filled the screen and turned it red and then black, and something about turning away from the windows and putting our heads under our desks. Most of us were ten and eleven and hadn't spent a lot of time confronting thoughts of our own mortality. We weren't thoughtless-we just hadn't thought about it. It made for a quiet ride bus ride.

All of that evaporated when the loudspeaker crackled as Sister Mary Immaculata activated the microphone at her desk. We waited and then waited some more as, instead of her usual imperious summoning of a hapless miscreant student for punishment for a real or sometimes imagined offense, there was the hum of an open microphone and the sound of a radio or television, whose volume was very low. Sister Mary Immaculata was, for the first time in my history at St Peter's, at a loss for words. We all leaned forward as if willing her to speak and perhaps thirty seconds on our efforts were rewarded.

She started slowly and softly in a tone of voice I had never heard from her, or I think, from anyone. As I was to learn later in my own life and use myself, it's the voice to explain events and occurrences that have no explanation. She started by telling us the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy with whom every child of the Roman Catholic faith in the United States had an unspoken and unbreakable bond. (He was our President-the first Roman Catholic, the first President who didn't look like our grandfather, a President with a pretty wife whom our moms liked a lot with small children (younger than us in the fifth grade)), had been shot, later adding he was in Dallas, Texas.

All of us at St Peter's School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and (very probably) across the United States and (maybe) around the world, bowed our heads and clasped our hands as Sister Mary Immaculata led us through The Rosary--the entire Rosary, not just a decade. That was how I, at least, knew something more horrible than what she was telling us had happened, was happening. I'm not clear if we had finished when she interrupted herself, struggling to remain composed, to tell us the President had died. We said another Rosary for the repose of his soul, but my heart wasn't in it.

I don't think I'd ever wondered until then why God didn't answer every prayer the way a petitioner wanted (I'm pretty sure I didn't use the word 'petitioner') but as the afternoon abruptly ended and we all went home to participate in the national seance provided by the three TV networks (no cable news, no satellite, no video on demand, no Internet) almost all in black and white (color television was a luxury almost beyond measure), I knew without knowing the world as I had lived in it had ended, not changed.

I looked at the calendar this morning with regret and incredulity, in equal measure. I and everyone who was born, lived, and died, in the USA in the fifty-six years since President Kennedy's murder, will never know what we and our world would have looked like had we prayed harder or longer or louder. 

I'm not sure I ever prayed again, or in the hope of my prayer being answered. And after so many years and tears, I'm not sure I still know how. I can remember that kid, head bowed, at the front of the room and I envy him for the strength his faith gave him in such a dark hour, knowing that the darkness was not only beginning but winning.
-bill kenny

Where There's Smoke...

Because I stopped twenty-three years ago (actually on 30 September 1996) today's Great American Smokeout Day snuck up on me like a puff of --well, you know what kind of puff. 

I smoked three packs a day for about twenty-two years. I started out smoking Pall Mall Reds (my father had smoked them for all the years growing up as a kid that he smoked before he quit). They were a cigarette that other new smokers (we were all college kids and let's just admit that smoking tobacco was akin at times to a palate-cleansing exercise and leave it at that, okay?) were reluctant to bum as they were unfiltered so you needed to dry lip or you flossed to remove tobacco from between your teeth.

I'm not a former smoker-I'm a recovering smoker. I don't know if it was the nicotine or the tobacco or whatever chemicals were supposedly put in cigarettes, but I was, and am, addicted to and always will be. Even to this day, I miss smoking a cigarette, despite everything I know and believe to be true about the health dangers associated with it. 

And, hand on my heart but also on my wallet, smoking now would be a danger to my precarious financial health. (Now sounding like an old codger, mainly because I am) I can remember back in the day, at the Air Force commissary at Rhein-Main AB buying a carton of cigarettes for (maybe) six dollars. By then, I'd traded up through Pall Mall Golds to Benson & Hedges. Now, if I'm reading the signs correctly, it's about ten dollars a pack with well over half of it in taxes, federal, state and whatever anyone can get away with.

I was in the last generation to watch TV ads for cigarettes and remember slogans like "I'd Rather Fight than Switch!", "A Silly Millimeter Longer, 101" and "Come to Where the Flavor Is". Look at kinescopes of old TV shows, to include newscasts, and you'll see Chet Huntley (of Huntley and Brinkley) smoking on the news set, on camera. Cigarettes were everywhere-there were "Show Us Your Lark Pack" commercials that eventually provoked the genius who was Stan Freberg to respond as only he could.

I stopped completely because I knew if I didn't, I'd die from some health condition created or aggravated by smoking. That my health is so poor now, but that none of my maladies have anything to do with cigarettes, makes me smile, albeit ruefully, at how the Lord's sense of humor is so often puckish (and 'p' isn't my first choice for the first letter).

The biggest challenge after I stopped was what to do in the car while driving. It was the most natural thing in the world for me after putting the car in gear, just to light up a cigarette and for many months after I stopped smoking I struggled. It was odd, too, to get used to how food tasted when you finally descended from the cloud of smoke. 

On the other hand, I didn't miss that 'licked an ashtray' feeling in my mouth when I first awaken. And oddest of all, and to this day I don't get it, all the years I smoked I couldn't smell cigarettes on someone else, simply unable to detect it, and now, I get almost ill when standing next to someone on an escalator who was just on a smoke break.

I try to take it easy on people who continue to smoke, because I appreciate how hard it is to give it up, even for a day even with all we know about what happens to us if we can't stop. So if you're struggling with the nicotine monkey today and are able to keep him at bay for the day, good on you and maybe tomorrow you can take another step.

And if you tried but couldn't do it, don't worry, you have the power to make any day you want your very own Smokeout day. You can kick the butts in the butt if you so desire. And use your Zippos for those live shows if you've sworn off cell phones.
-bill kenny

Celebrating the Coming Holiday Season and Ourselves

As we head towards Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays, the year seems to feel like it's accelerating (so maybe I should have written 'as we careen towards the holidays'). Perhaps because the daylight has shifted, the days are all shorter and more jammed with activities. Personal calendars that were already pretty full are now loaded with holiday parties, travel, shopping outings and all kinds of other activities. 

So I can understand your momentary exasperation when here I am lobbying you to put yet another event into the mix but, trust me on this one, you'll thank me later. This Saturday, starting at ten and running through the middle of the afternoon, is the Tenth Plus One (a/k/a Eleventh) Annual O'tis a Festival at the Otis Library, a self-proclaimed "Holiday Extravaganza" with many local area artisans offering beautiful handmade items absolutely perfect for gifting to others (and, since charity begins at home,, also keeping for yourself).

I've regarded Otis Library on Main Street in Norwich for many years as the last man standing who is just now (finally) being rewarded for steadfastness. A decade ago, there was very nearly nothing in downtown, aside from, we assured one another, lots of potential. And now, after a lot of heavy lifting, risk-taking, and plain old-fashioned hard work from a lot of different folks, there are actual (and flourishing) businesses lining the streets leading to the library with the promise of even more on the way. 

As the Norwich Community Development Corporation's "City on the Rise" promotional videos making the rounds on a variety of social media platforms underscore, there's a lot more happening in Down City than many of us once believed would be possible. And at just about the middle of the intersection between promise and performance is the Otis Library.

As urban planners and developers from across the country have repeatedly insisted because it's completely true, Otis and countless libraries nationwide are not close to the same places we went to as kids, wherever that library was. Here in Norwich and elsewhere I'm sure, city downtown districts look to the library the way the fingers on the hand look to the thumb.  

Saturday's O'tis a Festival is another instance of a library not staying in the box we may have mentally constructed for it. When the festival began over a decade ago, it was sort of a book fair with a smattering of 'other stuff.' But as the years have progressed, the local and community artists and artisans have turned just about all the free floor space in the library into an arts and crafts market (think Rose City Arts Festival, but indoors, because it's November and not June, and without the bouncy castle (I think)).

There will be over three dozen vendors, free take-home crafts for the kids (I'm not sure that means in exchange for your children or just something for them to do), displays of Native American artifacts, and eats. There's entertainment, raffles, and a visit from Santa throughout the day. 

And if you're worried about parking, don't be as 'celebrity parkers' to include local TV news community personalities toward Primo Parking Spots to assure your walk back to your car laden with presents and gifts is as short as possible.

We always talk about having a 'community center' and, at least a day, this Saturday, we will in the Otis Library, bustling with more activities than either of us could otherwise imagine. And since nothing succeeds like success, the more of this we all support, the more of this we will all have to support (it's science, I think). 

Vibrant downtowns are all about feet on the street and O'tis a Festival is another way of putting our best foot forward. So step out and step up. Celebrate the coming holiday season and yourself.

-bill kenny

Why I Failed the Audition for "The Hardy Boys"

I've been working on mysteries without any clue for the last couple of days. I discovered some marks on the side supports of our detached garage (as in from the house; not aloof), about mid-calf high on my leg (I'm 5'9"). 

I thought I smelled one of those dreaded math word problems: 'if a locomotive leaves Yakima heading south at 60 mph departing at two in the morning and another train leaves Wombat Falls at 3 in the afternoon, heading North at 45 mph, what's the conductor's name?' I have always HATED word problems and have spent most of my life unsurprised math is a four-letter word.

I've been looking for animal teeth marks on the wood, or maybe paint flecks on the noses of some of the squirrels that hang around in our backyard hoping our daughter Michelle stops by to feed them. She stands on the back steps and throws handfuls of peanuts at the rodents until her arm tires (they never do). I don't know how they know she is coming but they start to gather about two hours before she arrives. 

I'd almost not be amazed if the squirrels had been involved in this, not that I'm attached to the paint job on the garage door, but it was the NOT knowing part that was making me crazy. Coming from an appointment yesterday at mid-morning and walking past my parked car I noticed on my front bumper on my side what seemed to be cake frosting at about the mid-calf level (probably about the same height if I were Richard Harris in the rain, oh no....).

Yeah, it turned out, speaking of turning, I've been creating my own zebra customized front end auto treatment while slowing widening incrementally my garage door. At least that's what I'll be telling myself I was up to when I go end up shopping for that double-wide.
-bill kenny

Very Unlike Our Weekend's Weather

This was done and dusted a decade ago. At the time I called it:

No More Mr. Bad Example

This not-at-all-November-like-weather we've been having presented me with an opportunity this morning to do a good deed that, except that you already know I'm pathetic, I should be too embarrassed to recount.

I wound up with a hitchhiker in the front seat with me-barely visible. A gnat I guess or maybe a tiny fly, who didn't appreciate the grasp of tools we humans have that enable us to form glass and make windshields for our cars. The little bug(ger) kept bouncing off the inside of the windshield, regrouping on the dashboard and attempting to fly off again, into the window.

I don't consider myself to be anything vaguely like a 'one with the universe' kind of guy. As a matter of fact, I'm very much the person most of the rest of the planet cites as to why they don't want to be from 'here' anymore. Despite what others say, I believe we should all take turns-it's just that I think the line forms behind me if you follow my drift and I know you do because deep down, you're the same way.

This weather right now is remarkable (and if you wanted a sled for Christmas, please don't hate me if I hope you are keenly disappointed) in terms of temperature and temperament and yeah, I know fall and winter will arrive with a vengeance and probably on the same day, but this would be the best Thanksgiving ever if I could wear cutoffs (long enough to cover the scars on my knees) and a short-sleeve shirt.

That's probably why, to NOT jinx anything or anger Anyone, I decided to roll down the front windows and coax the bug to escape. I'll be honest, it was about as mild outside as it was inside and who among us doesn't love doing favors that cost them absolutely nothing in the first place. You doubt me? Try this: ask me if it's okay to borrow your neighbor's car this weekend. Sure, go right ahead! See? That was easy and trust me, in five minutes I won't even remember giving you the green light.

It took the bug more time than I'd have liked to make his way out. Perhaps I was the first car it (or (s)he) was ever in (glad I'd just had it cleaned inside and out; you never get a second chance to make a good first impression) and after the bug was gone, it occurred to me I had no idea where it was from. Perhaps it was a Norwich gnat and now was wandering around in Ledyard (or Preston, I sort of lost track). I'm not sure how territorial bugs are (or need to be) or how well they interact with strangers. I may have provided safe passage for a colonist or an innovator.

Of course, driving home I heard and then saw a splatter on the outside of my windshield and wondered if I had just witnessed another Circle of Life moment. Hakuna Matata, indeed.
-bill kenny

Whether or Not There's Weather

My wife and I took a week's vacation to the sunnier if occasionally trouble with hanging chad climes of South Florida, flying into Tampa a week ago last Friday, staying at an Air BnB (probably spelled that wrong because I'm still not clear on what it is) and visited the Tampa Zoo, St. Petersburg (the one without the Volga Boatmen), and three days of Disney.

We didn't eat at a Waffle House, something I've yet to do but still yearn to do, but I did enjoy a moment on/near the water in St. Petersburg that continues to warm me even back home in the cooler and getting colder parts of New England to which we returned this past Friday afternoon.

And because it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, even at The Happiest Place on Earth, here's a moment of Season's Greetings as well.

See? Think of yourself as also having been on vacation, without having to take your shoes off at the TSA checkpoint.
-bill kenny   

I Was Yesterday Old Before I Learned This ....

A passing refrigerator truck on Broad Street turning left on to Washington Street yesterday morning opened my eyes even though I was already awake (as opposed to woke whose meaning and correct opportunities to use I've never mastered as you've just learned).

I've been a fan of Hershey's Chocolate in nearly all of its forms (except anything with mint in it. That's a hard NOPE from me) for nearly my whole life and have also been of fan of their ice cream for a not inconsiderable number of decades.

But, as the truck noted on its side (and as I understand it, disclaimers are now part of the paint and print jobs wherever and however Hershey's Ice Cream is sold) they are completely different and given to litigation towards one another companies. 

It's like finding out Johnson's Baby Powder contains neither. Talk about a red face of embarrassment. And all these years I've been adding Hershey's Syrup to Hershey's Ice Cream? Akin to putting out the fire with gasoline.
-bill kenny   

For Your Kindness I'm in Debt to You

With Halloween in the rear-view mirror, it's time to set our sights on what the greeting card folks and carol writers insist is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. But quite frankly (scrooge alert!) as we round the turn and head for The Holidays (mental, if not actual, capital letters always expected), we (or at least, I) start to lose sight of the reason for the season almost before it starts and regard this time of year as just another obstacle to be cleared, another steeple-chase to be run, another 'thing' to be gotten through. 

I'm not alone. I saw lots of grumpy and frumpy folks in recent days, wandering past the ever-increasing number of holiday gift displays in stores everywhere wondering 'what are all these (other) people doing out here shopping today while I'm out here shopping today?' I was, and remain, another obliviot alone on my exercise wheel alongside the other human hamsters, chasing the pellets I want for Thanksgiving dinner and a head start on the Christmas gift lists.

It's a cliche, I know, but that doesn't make it less true: we are blessed as a society. We really do throw away more of everything than most other people on earth have ever had, or will ever have. And yet, given the chance, we cry for the moon and the stars and cry even louder when we all we receive is the sun. 

Is it possible our greed grows exponentially as our needs grow arithmetically? How much is enough and how much more is too much? Did The Lord give us two hands so we could take as much as we could grab and two pockets to put it all in? And how are we supposed to offer a prayer of thanks when our mouths are full?
-bill kenny

Yet Another Rumination on America's National Past Time

I'm already in Countdown to Spring Training mode for the 2020 baseball and not because my Yankees didn't win the World Series (again). 

I love baseball mostly for many of the reasons that I keep reading are also factors in its continued loss of mass appeal: the absence of time constraints (look at football, basketball, hockey, soccer as points of comparison), the reliance on ritual and routine, and the breaks in the battle when coaches and managers make trips to the mound for pitching changes or  consultations and the whole infield heads out there for a palaver (and I keep thinking maybe a snack that was smuggled out there in a baseball glove)

I have days and nights of Hot Stove machinations to cogitate and ruminate about and will savor every moment of them. While applauding every member of the Washington Nationals' organization on their first-ever World Series championship, I'd hope they spare a thoughtful moment for a pair of unsung, though probably well-ogled, heroines who had, perhaps, a critical role in their success and who paid a price for that devotion.

Like it wasn't hard enough already to keep track of balls and strikes?
-bill kenny

Between the Swearing In and the Swearing At

Former long-time Norwich Alderman, John Paul Mereen, offered some counsel years ago to recently-elected alderpersons, suggesting that shortly after their swearing-in ends the swearing-at begins. We all sort of chuckled in City Council chambers that night at the legendary "JP" wit and wisdom though there was probably a tad more truth to his observation than humor.

In very short order both our new City Council and Board of Education will begin their terms of office and all of us will be reminded again about the contrast between campaigning in poetry and governing in prose. I think the question we should work first and hardest to answer is 'what do we do next?' 

At the one and only candidates' forum, at NFA's Slater Museum auditorium, the crowd of about seventy-five or so citizens (to include the friends and family of the candidates) heard repeated pledges, if elected, of collaboration, communication, and cooperation from all on the stage that evening.

I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full kind of guy accentuating the positive here where I've chosen to live for the last twenty-eight years or so. However, my rose (city) colored glasses see long-term challenges stretching from as back as I can recall that our newly-elected leaders must finally start to address as the second decade of the twenty-first century comes to a close.        

For the Board of Education, as a parent whose two children attended Buckingham and Kelly Middle schools, when do we start to reshape and redefine education for our children that will allow them to prosper in the Knowledge Age that the convergence and connectivity of technology have created? The correct answer is now.

Tools like virtual classrooms, distance learning, digital citizenship and leadership, personalized learning, blended learning, the neuroscience of learning and so much more deserve to be evaluated and, perhaps implemented. None of that is dependent upon another round of property acquisition and capital construction. The world has changed since public education started in America maybe it's time for that education to change as well. Board of Education members, please create an environment where our Superintendent of Schools and her staff are rewarded for risks they take to help all of our children succeed.  

For our City Council whose predecessors paid lip service to the notion of one city but who refused to do anything except talk about the additional tax rate in the Consolidated City District to fund the paid fire department, the time for mere talk is done. 

If, as promised during the campaign season, expanding the grand list and enhancing community quality of life is to continue and accelerate, the additional tax burden borne by what we see as the city's economic engine, downtown, must be addressed and adjusted. 

Some questions for our soon-to-be alderpersons: Has there ever been a complete financial impact of implementing a one city tax on property owners and businesses? What does the City charter say about modifying taxation? What opportunities exist that haven’t yet been explored? How would/could a one tax structure be implemented?   

Large issues await the fresh perspectives and renewed energy, you, our elected leaders will provide in finding solutions. 

One thing we know as citizens, the price and cost of our government are not going to go down. Creating and maintaining world-class public schools, state of the art infrastructure, and responsive public safety systems require both will and wallets. We will be judged by our actions, not our words. Stop waiting for your moment to arrive and be in this one now.
-bill kenny

True to Life

Not that long ago I was out walking on the Heritage Trail to the Norwich Harbor. My choices for the return leg of the hike leading back to our house were back up Washington Street, which is a state highway and very loud and highly trafficked or through the downtown district and up Union Street to Broadway and Chelsea Parade.

I have little talent so the only way I'll ever get to Broadway is walking on it, so off I went and was just passing Monsignor Kelly Park which is sort of opposite the Cathedral of Saint Patrick when an arm from the past reached out and grabbed me.

Actually, he had no choice. I had earbuds on and was listening to a station I've created on Slacker radio (I wasn't yet to the point where I was singing along, loudly and undeterred that I know very few of the lyrics of anything played on the station) so I hadn't heard him at all. And he assured me he had been hailing me from across the street, the St. Pat's side, so to speak, for at least a minute.

When my family and I arrived in Norwich two and half decades ago, he had been an ambassador of sorts explaining to many of the people both at work and in the neighborhood as to where we were all from and how we came to be here-assuring them all we spoke English and there was no reason to speak slowly or loudly (which I had actually enjoyed for a couple of weeks). 

We were never friends-I don't make friends because I'm not willing to be one so I can't be surprised when no one reciprocates. This guy was a person who uses your first name a lot, especially with others around and creeps you out by ladling on the pseudo bonhomie just a tad thick and too often.

Same thing this time. Lots of how you've been and very little explanation of where he has been for the better part of a decade and a half. That's actually a guess-I don't know how long he was gone before I realized I hadn't been seeing him. As you can surmise it left a huge hole in my life. Truth to tell, I had trouble recalling his name and was working hard to NOT speak in such a manner that would require using it.

I realized as he was speaking about 'going to Mass with the family' that I recalled a very different woman than the stunt double with two very small (maybe six, maybe not, year olds) youngsters standing in front of the cathedral. He seemed to read my eyes if not my mind as he rushed to explain he and D-- had "gotten together" not long after his marriage had gone south (I'm not suggesting cause and effect; I don't care enough) and he was now living back in the area.

I'm thinking it had something to do with the length of the walk or just because I'm way too old to make happy talk with mopes I don't remember, but I asked him if his divorce didn't keep him from taking Communion (something as an altar boy trainee we spent hours at the time discussing) and he assured me he was 'a Catholic in good standing.' I hadn't realized scorecards were now issued and I wasn't surprised that suddenly he wanted to be anywhere which didn't include me.

I made it a point to look at my watch while pointing to the cathedral spire suggesting he shouldn't keep the Pope waiting and smiled as he assured me we really do need to get together while making absolutely no effort to make sure that would ever happen as he ran across the street to his 2.0 family. All I had been was a vamp for time. The whole exchange had lasted about three minutes. I'd put the song I was listening to on pause instead of stopping it. It was like I never left.
-bill kenny   

Celebrating Light Over Dark

Not everyone will make it to Taftville's Memorial Park this morning at 11 for the Veterans Day observances sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2122 and the American Legion Post 104. It's probably just as well since it's more of a pocket park located at the intersection of South B and Norwich Avenues, but we'll miss you as we pause, if not exactly stop, and thank all of those who wear and have ever worn the uniform of any branch of our armed forces.

Today, Veterans Day is not Memorial Day-we honor everyone in uniform, living and dead, past and present, today. When I was a kid, today was called Armistice Day, because it began as a commemoration of the end of the World War, which was later known as World War I for the sadly obvious reason that we had a World War Two. There was always a moment of silence to mark the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

We are a nation now at war for nearly two decades. We have young people in uniform serving in places like Afghanistan and Iraq who hadn't even been born when aircraft crashed into the Pentagon, a field in Pennsylvania and New York City's Twin Towers changing our world forever. Because it's not on the evening news or on the front page of the daily paper above the fold doesn't mean men and women in uniform are not far from home and in harm's way. 

Field of Flags at Norwich Free Academy

Don't get confused by all the attention paid to Kim, all her other K named relatives, and the other useless mouth celebrities who make headlines. Heroes and heroines in uniform are making a difference every day and allowing all of us to somnambulate with our eyes open as we don't see the lives we could have led because of the incessant assault we endure.

It's a new world and a new way of war but those making the sacrifice are the old souls who have always borne the burden--not just those at Forward Operating Bases marked with dots on the map of countries we cannot name but all those who whet the blade of the sword they wield in our name and in defense of everything we are and will ever be.

We are more filled with self-doubt as a nation than at any time in at least my lifetime but that's a temporary condition. There will always be light and dark, but we shall and will prevail because we must. For anyone, anywhere, now, or then, in uniform who places service over self, whenever and where that is and was, thank you.

Too often we forget the words of gratitude and appreciation we meant to say, but as long as we don't forget those who earned that gratitude we will always be worthy of their sacrifice.

-bill kenny