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