Sort of like "Free Baseball" but Without the Baseball

If this were the YES Network we'd be having what Michael Kay always calls extra innings, "Free Baseball." Today, 29 February, is a limited edition type of situation.

We only have one of these 'extra days' of February every four years. I had a classmate in grammar school, Jimmy M., whose birthday was February 29. We used to tease him when we were all kids that he shouldn't be in the seventh grade since he was only like three or four. Now, I guess, he's closer to his late teens as I near my 68th birthday. 

Can't help being cheerful about an extra day once every four years that we stick onto the 'shortest' month which happens to fall during our coldest season of the year. I suspect Australia feels very differently about the extra day, but still. We might have preferred it in June or July for additional hot fun in the summertime, but we're stuck with it where it is, I guess.

Since this is an extra day, as reflected on the calendar and included in the lifespan of those of us on the planet at this moment why not do something with that extra day? Once every four years, we can afford that I hope. It costs nothing today to perform an act of kindness or of civic-mindedness. This day came with the calendar, be it a Kincaide or a Far Side. Right here, 29 February. Put it to good use. Take a look around for someplace or someone to help. God knows it's a target-rich environment.
-bill kenny

Aged More Like Milk

Fell across this in my personal archives and am torn as to whether I was on brown acid or perhaps just Brioschi at the time I came up with it. I fear "both" might be the correct answer though I have noticed in recent years my indigestion has been non-existent. 
At the time I called it:

Bustin' Broncos on the Mac & Cheese Ranch

Brushing my teeth yesterday, that turn of phrase popped into my head. I'm not sure where it came from and when these things happen, I get a little nervous. Has anyone ever said to you, 'what were you thinking?' and you struggled to recount the process that had resulted in your making the suggestion to drill a second hole in the boat in order to let the water out? No one has ever done that with me and I'm finally starting to understand why, and in this case, knowledge is not necessarily power.

I have a brain that's more like Captain Billy's Whizbang, a turn of phrase supposedly from "The Music Man" (I adore every Lullaby on Broadway (but prefer Hackett's Lamb to Charles') as my collection of Iron Maiden attests) with which I have no familiarity and to which I tend to add 'Closet' though I don't know why. 

My frontal lobes are filled with badly and/or barely-remembered snatches of melodies from decades of rock and roll songs, some of which went plywood in Indiana while others are anthems (C'mon! Let's all Do the Clam!) none of which are improved when I sing them aloud at the top of my lungs, along with film clips projected on the inside of my skull (I can see them when I close my eyes) in random order and with no reason and less rhyme.

I don't even like Mac and Cheese. Well, hardly. I did watch a recipe on TV that added bacon to it and then it was baked, or maybe boiled (I didn't watch that much of it) and now in my head, it runs into a snippet of a TV commercial for a fast-food restaurant where somebody demands 'will somebody please make a bacon latte?' though the ad isn't for coffee.

I've been holding out for decades for pony rides for my birthday but I don't think I'd go out to the North Forty in search of a Chestnut Mare. Besides, my sister, Evan, is the equestrian; I'm more of a pedestrian (and the world is better for both of those choices), so there's not much danger I'll be moving to Montana soon(er or later). 

I think the only way this could turn out well would be if I end up riding Mr. Ed into the sunset-perhaps dueting like Dale and Roy, hopefully without ending up like Trigger.
-bill kenny

Just the Piece I'm Standing On

I was in New Haven, Connecticut, Tuesday as a follow-on to a clinical study I'm a part of by a world-famous healthcare provider on possible links between diabetes (I have Type 2) and Alzheimer's. 

It's a drive from I live to where the research is conducted but I tell myself if the folks striving to learn something actually do and can help someone else, it was worth the ride. 

Waiting at a red light in New Haven to hang a left and get to the clinicians' offices, I watched what I have to assume was a homeless man standing on the sidewalk during a lull in the traffic flow where he'd have his cardboard begging sign up soliciting change. 

At that moment he was opening up a bottle of water and emptied it over his head as a makeshift shower. The temperature was just south of fifty degrees Fahrenheit and there was a light breeze that in a city of concrete and steel buildings that turns streets into wind tunnels, was cutting and intense.

The truck driver behind me leaning on his horn brought me back into the now as my signal went green and we all moved deeper into New Haven and all I could see of the man was a diminishing figure in my rear-view mirror, to be replaced at the next intersection by a woman of indeterminate age holding her own sign, and behind her on the corner facing in the other direction another person and another sign. 

I was raised to believe we can do anything in this country we put our minds to. I cannot understand how so few can have so much when so many have so little but I have decided to no longer simply accept what I have yet to understand. We must be better than this and should be, especially to each other. 

I know cannot save the world, but I can try and so can you.

-bill kenny

Marching into March

We take our next step in keeping the globe in Global City Norwich appropriately enough (I think) with a march step this Sunday, 1 March, and the seventh annual Norwich Saint Patrick's Day Parade and Festival. 

Each year the parade gets a little bigger and better, thanks to all of those who help out at Norwich Events Organization as well as all of those who turn up to cheer the marchers, or march themselves, or enjoy the continuing comeback of a little more of our downtown that gets a bit more attractive with each event. 

Weather permitting (a phrase admittedly you can use in New England almost all year round), the Norwich Saint Patrick's Day Parade will step off at one Sunday afternoon from Ferry Street, wend its way around Franklin Square, up Franklin Street and then use Willow Street to march to Chestnut and then, in turn, Broadway before making a left at the Wauregan onto Main Street to finish up at City Landing. The best thing about a compact march route like that means as a spectator you can enjoy almost everything from just about anywhere along the route. 

Here’s the Facebook page, with a map of the route and a list of the shenanigans activities going on around the parade itself, including the locations with sparkling adult beverages and food trucks because marching (and just watching it) can make you thirsty and hungry. Turnout across downtown from both participants as well as spectators grows every year and since troighean air an t-sràid, feet on the street, is the goal, the more the merrier.

It's another reason to stop and visit someplace too many of us still too often drive through on our way to someplace else complaining ‘there’s never anything to do in Norwich.’ Which could be, I concede, except when it’s not such as this Sunday and on the other six days of the week as well. And while you are downtown, take a couple of minutes to check out what's new (or new to you) since your last visit and see for yourself how the heart of Norwich is beating stronger than ever.  

I've yet to miss a parade (and with my last name where else do you think I would be) and every year I meet people who do not live in Norwich but have heard about the parade and the family-oriented crafts festival afterward with authentic food and beverages (for all and sundry) and decided to try it on for size and were very pleased they had come.

Everyone is welcome to march though it's really more of a brisk walk than a march in terms of distance, so you can smile and wave without breaking a sweat.  And you won’t be alone.

Sunday's parade will be led by Lisa Griffin, this year's Grand Marshall, who'll be joined by a variety of local and regional agencies and organizations to help celebrate the day. Quite frankly, it just won't be a party without you, so plan on putting your best foot forward and being there. And Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

-bill kenny

That's Me in the Spotlight

When we were kids, tomorrow was a serious day on the calendar, Ash Wednesday. Today was the last day before we had to give something up, Shrove Tuesday though I'm not sure any of us understood what the word meant or even the origins of the term. 

As an adult, I lived for many years in Germany where Rosen Montag is part of the last gasp of Fasching or (as it's called in New Orleans) Mardi Gras or what our Brazilian friends know as Carneval. There's an 'eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow it's all over' mentality that I find so Funky Western Civilization. 

It's been decades since I gave something up for Lent (truth to tell, I failed my faith and gave up Lent but then kept on living) and I've rationalized my failure by pointing out to myself that since I always went back to whatever I gave up (usually something to eat as opposed to a behavior change), I hadn't really changed at all, so surrender cost nothing because it was worth nothing.

And then I look around me, and see where we are and where I am in the midst of all of that and realize I didn't run backward or stop running at all in order to be here (nor did any of us) but rather, just ran a step slower, a step less resolute, perhaps a shorter footfall until the distance grew inexorably between where we wanted to be (and knew we had to go) and where we were to end up, so far behind we could no longer see those up ahead.

And when the distance between us was too great to ever fill, we stopped and have forgotten how to start again. Which makes tomorrow, Ash Wednesday more important as a beginning than today can ever be as an end because I think I saw you try.

-bill kenny

Funny the Way It Is

If you spend your whole life, as so many of us do, earthbound, you can easily fall into the trap of inventing and believing in differences that separate us from each other rather than celebrating the many common threads we have that weave us ever tighter to one another. 

But with greater distance comes a broader perspective. 

Everyone's shadow is the same color but only if we are willing to look and see. 
-bill kenny

Donne and Done

Every day is the end of days for some. 

Stop living like you're afraid of dying and love the life you have. 

-bill kenny

Old Guy Musings

I was born the same year Dwight David Eisenhower was elected President, though I had no knowledge nor any memory of my life with him as the Chief Executive. I remember being in the third grade at Pine Grove Manor School when Nixon and Kennedy ran for the White House. 

Politically astute even then, I can recall a very wise fourth-grader telling me if Nixon was elected, kids would have to go to school on Saturday. That's when I decided it was time to back Jack. There you have it; for all those who believe I am a Democratic left-leaning pinko liberal loser, that may have been the moment the road to perdition was paved.

Nearly sixty years later, I'm not sure I understand what has happened to the country I grew up in, returned to, and have grown old in. We had so much go so well for so long. We don't seem to have any stomach for hard work or truth anymore. Our institutions which have always buttressed our way of life, from finances through interpersonal relationships, are pretty much bankrupt and we don't seem to have the will or wallet to repair or replace them.

We've spent most of the last decade in a free-fall-and when I say "we" I mean what was once considered the middle class and all that's happened since the elections of 2016 has been to see that descent accelerate. In recent decades we've traded blue skies for BMWs, washed our cigar boats with bottled water and elevated day-trading to some sort of an Olympic event. Meanwhile, for tens of millions of other Americans, the promise of prosperity of the Clinton Years never happened, so while we lament what has happened since then, our neighbors never had it that good in the first place and now look at us as if we've lost our minds and maybe we have.

Be it micro or macro, it's almost always the same movie, just with a different cast. We seem to be having trouble, not with leaning forward and looking ahead, with my apologies to Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, but with accepting where we are and why we will be here for the rest of our days if we don't change. It's what I call Present Shock.

At both the national and local levels there are two ways, it seems, to manage Present Shock. One is to do nothing but say no and insist that those in power are to blame for whatever we now see as a failure. The same folks with those 'how's that change thing going?' bumper stickers when Obama was in the White House years ago had ones that described his predecessor as 'somewhere in Texas a village is missing an idiot.' There's no point in a bumper sticker denigrating the current occupant who is both arrogant and ignorant as his MAGA minions can neither read nor reason. 

The other response is to just keep pressing the same button even though the pellets stopped dropping a long time ago. I live in a state where we invented 'securitization. Don't try to look it up, we've given it a whole different meaning than anyone in finance would recognize. We project revenues from the future and list them as receipts in the NOW as if they were real in order to balance the books. Does this remind anyone else of Wimpy's I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday for a Hamburger Today? The line between surreal and cereal grows finer by the moment.

We're working very hard here to break the cycle and seize the day and the momentum, but there's still a longing for what was. If it could only be yesterday tomorrow, then today would be wonderful. We've failed to realize that (too) often the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth (of the habit) and that sound of footsteps we hear belongs to ourselves as we calculate the distance we'd need to outrun our own shadow. 

But after a while, you realize time flies. And the best thing that you can do is take whatever comes to you. 'Cuz time flies.
-bill kenny

(Nearly) The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Yes. 

The Major League Baseball World Series Championships of 2017 and 2018 should be vacated. The banners taken down, trophies returned and rings smashed to bits. My mom used to say cheaters never prosper so I'm sort of glad she never got to see what happened as the second decade of the twenty-first century rounded third and headed for home. 

And sorry Dusty Baker and your whiny little plea to the same MLB Commissioner who didn't punish any Astros players for their cheating but whom you now wish to protect those same cheaters from retribution by opposing pitchers. I hope your players get drilled once or more during every at-bat not just all season but for every game of their entire careers. 
Bitter, yeah. Just a skosh.

All that said. Spring training baseball gets absolutely real today as both the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues commence play. Finally!  

Anyone who tells you baseball in Arizona and Florida in February does not count has never, ever lived in the Northeastern part of the United States. Those of us who (now) call New England home can face unconfirmed rumors of a nasty-a$$ winter storm return later this month with grace and composure, assuming we have MLB Network because our lives between possible snowflakes will be filled with images of grown, supposedly adult, men accomplishing sandlot heroics at Wall Street Raider salaries. And we eat it all up with a spoon and damn sure we ask for seconds, please.

For folks like me, surrounded by choices like SNY for the Mets, NESN for the Red Sox and YES for the Yankees, I'm almost tempted to say let it snow for a month (almost tempted). It'll be melted by the All-Star Game, at least it usually is. Old Man Winter, do your worst and we'll do our best. 

Baseball, the ageless pastime that makes old men young again has returned. and if the green of the grass looks just a little different maybe it's because of the dye we're using to make the field 'pop' because of the TV cameras with the artificial turf, but no worries, the crack of the bat isn't lip-synced. 

Break out the Windex, Rog. We're ready, okay, maybe only speaking for me, we are completely past ready and fully there.
-bill kenny 

Give Peas a Chance?

Many years ago, when I was a wee slip of a lad, our President at the time, George Herbert Walker Bush, he of  'Read My Lips. No New Taxes,' declared war on a vegetable that I presume had been minding its own business, broccoli. So much for lips that taste broccoli will never be taxed, I guess.

I, on the other hand, enjoy most vegetables, the current occupant of the White House excluded, though I'm not an enthusiastic supporter of Brussel Sprouts (and stop telling me 'you just haven't had sprouts prepared properly; there is no proper way) but the first President Bush couldn't spare even one point of light when it came to broccoli.  

Turns out, Great Britain didn't spare very much more than that either. And somewhere Russ Giguere weeps.
-bill kenny

Reflecting on the First Forty-Five

Abraham Lincoln's birthday is listed on my calendar blotter from last Tuesday, the 12th, with George Washington’s birthday this coming Saturday.

When I was a kid, we had both days off from school but those individual dates have had less significance (and far fewer school closings) for many decades since Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act and we rolled both of those birthdays into a larger celebration to honor all those who have had the privilege to serve as President. 

Now it’s simply called Presidents Day which we just had this past Monday (which explains all those mattresses, adjustable bases, and box springs on my porch I guess since Presidents Day is now when we do bedding sales, for reasons I’ve never understood), but I don’t think we really appreciated it.

That George Washington spent more than half of his farewell address warning his countrymen about the dangers of political partisanship, I find, in light of where we are today, astounding. Honest Abe used his Second Inaugural Address to offer "(w)ith malice toward none, with charity for all..." at a moment in our nation’s history where we most fervently hated one another (with a ferocity that would cost him his very life a little more than thirteen months later).

And now I wonder why we and all the loudmouths and blowhards on all sides of the political divide, refuse to work together to get this handbasket we're all in out of the hell we've maneuvered ourselves into.

When George and Abe were presidents, people disagreed with one another so vehemently they were fighting wars. You’ve seen the weapons in use back in their days, nothing neat and clean about them; it took a lot of work to shoot and kill somebody but a lot of people were more than willing to do that.

And now we have all this pouting and posturing on Sunday morning talk shows, in the Halls of Congress and on cable news channels 24/7 that makes my teeth hurt and should we ever we sort out who's to blame for all the wrongs and shortcomings, real and/or imagined, I’d hope we’d devote a scintilla of that energy to fixing things (but I won’t hold my breath). Instead, we keep playing ‘red or blue?’ games.

George Washington, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and so many from every walk of life who were never close to being President like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Stephen Douglas were so engaged in nurturing this nation and defending it from attacks both from within and without they didn't have the luxury of ideology. So how did we get here, where less than sixty percent of all registered voters could be bothered to vote in the 2016 Presidential election? 

Monday’s holiday didn’t cap a three-day shopping weekend, despite advertising to the contrary. It should have marked a moment to examine the lives and legacies of the forty-five men (so far) who have been President of the United States and to reflect upon their efforts and examples.

But more importantly, it should have strengthened the effort to better understand both our differences as well as our similarities in order to form a more perfect union and to jump-start the decision-making process we’ll each use to vote come November. 

-bill kenny

The Price of Ignorance

I'm trying to follow along with the math but am getting depressed at the results.

It's alarming what we can afford but more distressing about what we choose not to.

-bill kenny

97.7% Is Still a Pretty Good Percentage

Happy Presidents Day. Not so fast, #Pantload45.

Yeah, looking forward to the morning of November 4th. 

-bill kenny

Brevity Is the Soul of Communication

I have never been accused of being concise. Even those who are inclined to be friendly would admit I talk so much that were I to go overboard in the Norwich Harbor it would take me forever to drown as I would keep popping back up every time I disappeared beneath the waters to shout yet something else I'd just thought of while sinking. As a matter of fact, I'd still be bobbing around out there unless and until someone waded out and held me under until the bubbles stop despite the irony that "Bubbles" is my gang name. 

Despite my predilection for loquaciousness, it doesn't mean I don't admire people and/or documents that offer cogent and concise insights and observations, and I'm good at finding them and keeping them so I can break them out, dust them off, and use them to recharge my own enthusiasms when needed. 

For instance, I've saved the 2002 City of Norwich Plan of Conservation and Development (here's the one from 2013) not because I enjoy it as light reading but for this in its foreword which is as true for where you live as it is for where I live: 'Good cities don't just happen, they are made' and a line I hope we don't forget, 'the future of Norwich depends(s)on the ability of City leadership to bring together disparate opinions around a common vision.' 

Sounds an awful lot like a mission statement and a calling card we can all rally around, or should.
-bill kenny

Sedaka's Not Always Right

Not that you asked, or care for that matter, but we've changed our phone/cable/internet provider since the new year started. Actually, we were building up to it for quite some time in the latter stages of 2019, playing a series of 'if just one more thing goes sideways' games that culminated in us changing providers within the first seventy-two hours of 2020. 

It took our now-previous service provider seven or so weeks to send me an email (they unilaterally phased out snail-mailing invoices about three years ago unless I paid an additional fee for that service) with what I'm assuming is a final invoice for a bit under twenty-five dollars with no explanation as to why that amount. 

Asking their Social Media Outreach Team for assistance in getting an explanation got me nothing or maybe even less if you include elevating my blood pressure, despite their unfailing politeness. So I'm paying the bill via snail mail but I'm not being especially gracious about it as I've written them a less than gracious break-up note, below.

I've excised the name of the former provider since my mother raised crazy children but not stupid ones and I'd prefer to live forever (until I die trying) without being sued by legal representatives of a straight-talking buffalo.  

"Ref:        Final payment on account XXX-XXX-XXXX-XXXXX-X

Enclosed please find my cheque for $23.30 and a copy of your email invoice, dated 12 February 2020. 

I was unable to pay you online as my account closed on 6 January 2020 and can no longer be accessed through your website, though, at least in theory, you should already know that and should have sent me an itemized final bill via snail mail.

And yet, like so many other “should have’s” in the nearly eight years I was a Fxxxxxxr customer, you didn’t. Not that you asked, or would ever ask, for exit feedback as a customer moves on, you inherited a terrific product, U-Verse, from AT&T which you allowed to deteriorate for reasons I don’t pretend to understand.

I do know, however, my unhappiness at that time with Cxxxxxt, from service through billing, which drove me to AT&T was finally overcome by your ongoing failures and inadequacies, ultimately leading me to swallow very hard before returning to them as my provider in the hopes they have done something I do not see you ever doing, improve.

They say experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you want so I guess I have now had my Fxxxxxxr Experience. Again, enclosed, please find my final check."

-bill kenny 

For My Valentine

There are times, in light of my life's journey so far, that I wonder about the accuracy and truthfulness of the expression 'he who travels fastest, travels alone.' 

Even if it were to be true, I submit that he who would be involved in such fast travel is in danger of missing the entire point of the sojourn when he has no one with whom to share the journey. As someone who was very much, and for very long, unlovable, this is a day of major import and a minor miracle, all at the same time.

I look at photos of my wife, Sigrid, and I, back when we were fab and she was, as she still is, absolutely beautiful to me. It took zero intelligence for me to fall in love with her at first sight and something far rarer than intelligence to help us stay in love all those years on. I do find myself looking at her, then and now, and wondering if she still sees me as I was or as I am now and if the latter, why does she stay?

We have, she and I, grown old together which causes me to smile as I had nothing nearly so grand in mind when I first saw her. And there are those who knew me back before the day who would be amazed that she has kept me nailed to one place long enough for all those years to have become all these years, and to some degree, I share their amazement.

We have a life that isn't and will never be the one I thought I wanted when I believed things worked out the way we desired (if we only wanted something bad enough), but when I reach the end of every day, to include today, I look at her and at our two adult children, Patrick and Michelle, and know that I love, and am loved by, them and I cannot complain about some settling of the contents during shipment. Happy Valentine's Day.
-bill kenny

When You Pick a Lemon in the Garden of Love

The poets tell us 'tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. This time tomorrow, Valentine's Day, there are probably a not inconsiderable number of folks who'd like to pop one of those poets right in the nose. 

The San Antonio Zoo, which I visited once in the early spring of 1975 while enjoying (their word not mine) all the amenities of Lackland Air Force Base, have a fund-raiser just in time for Cupid's moment that helps their bottom-line and also addresses concerns about what becomes of the broken-hearted. 

Too extreme? Well, maybe, but in the words of Mike Primavera, you are never alone on Valentine's Day if you're near a lake and have bread. 
-bill kenny

A Ghost of a Moon in the Afternoon

The problem with not knowing where you're going is you don't know when you've gotten there. Like everyone else on this ant farm with beepers and cellphones, I don't know what I don't know. And many times what I don't know is what's important and critical. 

And yet while I'm frequently in error, I am seldom in doubt, probably like you and  I rarely, if ever, allow a lack of information to keep me from forming an opinion. (Between us, what you might call uninformed obstinance I too often regard as my superpower). And if you haven't already guessed, that's as close to a disclaimer as I'm going to get at least for today so proceed through the rest of this at your own risk 

My enjoyment, so far, of a much more pleasant winter season than I deserve to be having, has been tempered somewhat by a sense of foreboding that there's more than enough time on the calendar for us to still have a ferocious and freezing remainder of February that lasts into March and maybe April with just about nothing I can do about it except feel sorry for myself (which I do very well thanks to decades of practice) should it happen. 

But even if this is a false spring, no matter what the groundhog predicted (climate scientists we doubt but rodents we believe without hesitation; go figure), I intend to enjoy it as long as it lasts until it doesn't and then I'll whine. Of course, whining (though not about the weather) maybe what we're gearing up to do as we begin again the annual municipal budget process when, not surprisingly (though we always seem to be when it happens), we reveal ourselves to have more wants and wishes than wallet in terms of the dollars necessary to support our desires. 

And if you take exception at my use of whining, feel free to supply your own gerund, but let's admit to one another right now that we do, and have, and will, complain about whatever budget decisions are arrived at, no matter what those decisions prove to be.

But it's inevitable that we'll be unhappy and that unhappiness isn't good or bad; it just is and it's part of our human condition. I think we could be the only species on the planet whose reach can, by design, exceed its grasp. If a genie appeared at the end of this column and gave us one wish, we'd all wish for more genies (and probably fewer columns). It's who we are. 

I've watched birds on a wire miscalculate a landing-I've witnessed a cat misjudge a distance on a pounce and come up short, and who hasn't seen an over-enthused canine run nose-first into a glass sliding door but life goes on for them. They don't sit on a branch, or under a table, and ponder the 'what if' of their situation. They don't get wrapped up in the memory of that lovely nest they once built on a tree branch over on McKinley or how often they used to nap on the sunny porch of that house on Bog Meadow Road or try to figure out how to use a glass-cutter. They aren't hostages of their own history. 

We might do well to follow their example. Norwich is over three and a half centuries old and who we are in the here and now is a result of every decision that's been made by each of us, and all of us. Not every choice has been brilliant, but every choice is our own, and every one of them provides us with an opportunity to decide what we will choose to do next. 

Instead of arguing over how we got here and who's to blame, let's figure out how we're going to get to where we want to be and go there. You can use your hands to help a neighbor to help yourself or to make a fist and shake it at the moon.

We're a species that's elevated the Second Act to an art form and we should always remember that as we start the discussion and dialogue that will result in our next municipal budget with funding for public education and public safety, for infrastructure, and vital human services that enhance our community's quality of life without creating unfair tax burdens. 

Can it be done? I'd like to think so if we so choose but that's up to us. I can hear you scoff, but I’ve decided that that just means you, too, wonder if it can be done. I'd like to think so but it’s up to us. We can and must decide what we want and how we will pay for it. Every choice is a chance to do, and to be, better than we are. We just have to make it. That’s how we change.
bill kenny

Ant Hills and Picnics

Over the last week or so I encountered an acquaintance at a number of different events and we did the smile and nod at every instance. We were never as close as (I suspect) each of us thinks we were. 

Memory is funny that way (as opposed to the way Andrew Lloyd Webber has it). As fas as I'm concerned, that's okay. It's a large anthill but it's an even bigger picnic. I would ask that you mind the footprints on the checkered tablecloth.

I'm struck by, as the English say, how a person can be 'clever by a half.' He has (for him) slyly alluded to topics he's read in this space on days previous, I guess, wondering if I would notice (Yep) and how I might respond. Welcome to here we are. Population, us.

We were never The Owl and the Pussycat, more like Crusader Rabbit and Rags or Tom Terrific and Manfred, The Wonder Dog. And now it seems the least we can do is to wave to each other. And that's fine. Life, as Billy Joel once warbled, is a series of hellos and goodbyes.

Many of us are still auditioning to be the people we'll spend the rest of our lives in being. I, for one, never could figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up and I solved that problem by not growing up. Now that's clever by a half, as we dined on mince and slices of quince which we ate with a runcible spoon.
-bill kenny

Pitchers and Convicts Report this Week

For decades, this was one of my most favorite times of the year when major league baseball teams had their pitchers and catchers report for spring training in preparation for the longest season of any professional sport (not counting mumblety-peg). This year character witnesses and those without alibis will be reporting on separate dates I suppose.

This past off-season, the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox did a pretty good job of replacing that pot of gold fans look forward to at the end of the winter pause rainbow with a fifty-five-gallon drum of excrement, not that the rest of Major League Baseball didn't help by deciding that old adage 'cheaters never prosper' needed to go the way of high-top sneakers seemingly.

One hundred years ago, baseball had the Black Sox Scandal and from what I've read no one made the Cincinnati Reds surrender their World Series title so it would seem those trophies in Houston and Boston are safe. For now.    

There's a corollary to (attributed to) Richard Petty's quote "if you ain't cheatin' you ain't tryin'," that goes "and if you get caught, you didn't try hard enough." This sixty-eight-year-old man who becomes a seven-year-old again when spring training starts would prefer to not have his baseball players and teams try quite so hard. 

Every day proves there's less and less in my country worth believing in. Please don't force me to add baseball to that list.   
-bill kenny

Reel Life

Tonight, according to all the ads I've been watching TV, are the Oscars for the year's best movies. I think the last movie I saw was an English-language version of Star Wars in a Frankfurt am Main movie house on the Hauptwache as part of a 'let's be nice to US service personnel in foreign countries' outreach. I think we got in for free.

The theater allowed you to smoke cigarettes in your seat and you could order and drink beer as well. The weirdest part of the evening was watching all the German-language commercials that ran after the previews and before the feature. 'Oma. Kennst du den dass ploop-ploop?' being one I'll remember forever. (not what the product was, just the tagline). 

As you've surmised, I've not seen any of the films nominated this year (again) nor would I recognize any/most/some of the actors and actresses nominated for their roles though I will read the news story in the papers tomorrow about the winners and nod sagaciously, or as close to it as I ever get. 

Pass the popcorn and enjoy.
-bill kenny. 

I Changed My Hairstyle So Many Times Now

As a child, I learned literacy was a fundamental tool of a democratic society. All you had, when I was a kid, was a choice between literate and illiterate; those who could read and those who couldn't. 

It's taken us until the 21st century and the Age of Connectivity as the world gets joined more closely and tightly together to add a category that has sadly (to me) become the fastest-growing, alliterate; people who know how to read but choose not to.

When I was a kid every living room had a television, usually with the Big Three channels, a public TV station and some kind of local low-power operation; a telephone on the wall in the kitchen with the really long cord so Mom could consult with Dad, who was in the living room, while she was calendar-planning with someone on the phone; and a daily newspaper, in my case living in Franklin Township (in Somerset County in New Jersey), an afternoon paper, the Daily Home News (now the Home News Tribune), delivered to the front stoop. I used to help Bob F deliver the paper on my bike, and he on his.

Local newspapers are in rough shape that's getting rougher.  Subscribers are diminishing and that means the advertisers are growing scarce as online micro-journals start to dominate the etherscape in which so many of us spend so much of our time. 

Instead of all the technology and information making us smarter, we've become more insular and more distrustful and intolerant of viewpoints that are not our own. I'm as guilty as the next person even as I finger-point at them ignoring the fingers of the hand pointing back at myself (that's why I  usually wear mittens). 

An hour on social media on any given day right now can age you ten-fold as you wade through invective and innuendo all masquerading as information, from any and all sides of the aisle. And as McKay Coppins points out in The Atlantic, cheer up things could get worse between now and the November elections and in all likelihood will.   

It's getting hard to remember, much less concede, that there are three sides to every story: Mine, Yours, and The Truth.
-bill kenny

Cosmic Karma

We are as of midnight two hundred and seventy days away from electing a new (and better) president of the United States on Tuesday, 3 November (I did the math, and unlike claims made by #Pantload45, Mexico didn't pay for the calculator). 

Perhaps cosmically, karmically or just comically, two hundred and seventy is the precise number of Electoral College votes one needs to have captured to be elected to the highest office in our country, become the most powerful person on the planet and the moral leader of freedom-loving peoples everywhere. 

Which sort of leaves you-know-who sucking down a quarter-pounder with a side of large fries while chugging a diet coke. 

Register and vote. Why not make sure you're registered as this would be a perfect day to do that and take with you a friend who may not be sure if they are also registered and both of you can make sure together because together is the only way this gets better for all of us.
-bill kenny 

In Advance of Presidents Day

As we've learned from history:

George Washington: I cannot tell a lie.

Donald Trump: I cannot tell the truth.

Senate Republicans: We cannot tell the difference.

-bill kenny 

More Will Be Needed

As a clean-shaven freshman entering his second semester at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus in the spring of 1970, I along with hundreds of other Rutgers students assembled to hear from our new University President, Dr. Edward J. Bloustein. 

We, the student body, had already heard stories about the former president of Bennington College for Women who'd been selected to lead the state university of New Jersey as it marked its 204th anniversary and there was quite the anticipatory buzz as we gathered around the statue of William the Silent at the Voorhees Mall Green. Legend had at it that Silent Bill, as we called the statue, would only whistle in the presence of virgins, and was thus fated to be forever quiet.

At the appointed hour, Dr. Bloustein stepped to the podium to share his perspective on the role and import of education and cut straight to the chase. "The purpose of education," he explained, "should be to learn the rules of the game better than anyone else so that you can then change the rules." And with that, he stepped back from the microphone concluding his speech as our jaws dropped from both the brevity of his remarks and the audacity of his vision.   

We were part of the four thousand or so undergraduates enrolled at Rutgers that spring but by the time we graduated in May of 1974 the University population exceeded forty-thousand. The scale and scope of changes we were to experience across and throughout every aspect of our lives, and not just at a smallish college on the banks of the sleepy Raritan River in central New Jersey, but the world could not have been imagined by anyone, to include those of us listening on that sunny spring day nearly half a century ago. 

I thought of Dr. Bloustein while reading Mayor Peter Nystrom's State of the City address of  January 6th on the importance of establishing a school construction committee "whose purpose," he offered," is to help lead our city forward as we make difficult choices."  Our City Council unanimously answered his call for action at their 22 January meeting and formalized the next steps in restructuring our public schools. 

The volunteers of the School Facilities Review Committee deserve our thanks for a lot of the heavy lifting they did that the new School Building Committee will need as they develop recommendations for the physical reconfiguration and construction of our schools before we, the voters, will make our decision. 

As someone whose father was a teacher his whole life and who, with my wife, last had children in Norwich Public Schools fifteen years ago, I hope you'll forgive me if I say we may not be going far enough if all we're concerned about are our school buildings and locations. Yes, the facilities are important, but they are only one component of a larger educational process.   

Norwich and the world of 2020 requires skills and abilities that, as a matter of course, didn't even exist a decade ago and while no one can predict what 2030 may require, we can all agree that only by remaining agile can we prepare our children to learn the rules of whatever games their world will have, and more importantly, to also change those rules to assure their happiness and success.
-bill kenny

Orange You Glad You Stopped By

The third President of the United States in the history of our country to ever be impeached by the U. S. House of Representatives will offer his last State of the Union address this evening before both chambers of our legislative branch. 

Between us, I would have preferred he was too busy packing his things and loading them into the moving van at the White House rear gate but Mitch "Chicken Kiev" McConnell had other plans which is all well and good as I can wait until thirty-eight weeks, until Tuesday, 3 November, to vote him out of office.

As have predecessors before him, Pantload45 will basically launch his re-election campaign in his live, televised-to-all-points-east-and-west address and it would be nice since he'll be dressed like a grown-up if he actually comported himself like one. I'm not too sanguine at the chances of that happening for the entire address but if you're a gambler, that might be a bet to take. 

I wouldn't expect him to mention even in passing that while he has stood the watch:
the national debt has ballooned; 
the climate crisis has accelerated; 
the incidence of reported hate crimes has risen sharply as has rampant racism; 
not forgetting our allies no longer trust us (nor should they); 
his trade wars have damaged core components of every aspect of our nation's economy, and America has put up a very large "Not Welcome" sign at every border. 

Perhaps he should, instead, choose to talk about:
the 11.6 million American jobs added to the economy;
the 4% increase in real wages after inflation for American working men and women; 
the record corporate profits of US companies;
the decrease by some fifteen million people of Americans without health insurance,
or how the stock market has nearly tripled in total value.  

Except, all of those things happened while Barack Obama was president. 

Come to think of it, tonight might be good to just Netflix and Chill AFTER you've made sure you've registered to vote in November.
-bill kenny

Yet Another Successful Orbit Around the Sun

When you grow up in a large family with many brothers and sisters you come to regard birthday cake as a separate food group. I'm the oldest of six children and growing up in our house we celebrated sibling birthdays in January, February, April, July, October, and December. 

My brother, Adam, is today's birthday boy. 

Fun fact among the Kenny Kids and Kin, my brother has no middle name. 

His name is Adam, as our mother, Joan, explained in clipped and terse tones to Father Stan Lewandoski (who immediately regretted his inquiry) attempting small talk at the baptismal font in the entrance to the nave of Saint Joseph's Church in East Millstone. New Jersey,  because "he was God's first, and my last." 

Mom then glared at my father who, in my memory, almost always had the last word with everyone on earth but decided, wisely, I think in this instance, to hold his peace.

Adam is a person of many skills and abilities to include, perhaps most especially, a husband as well as equally important a father and also a grandfather (three times over) and is deserving of every happiness, not to mention fully-loaded slices of birthday cake, not just on this, his birthday, but every day. Happy Birthday!
-bill kenny