What I See Depends On Where I Look

How we react and respond to broadcast and published news reports have a lot to do with us, and not necessarily with what the story is about or how it's presented (that said, you can see HUGE differences in the treatment of the same story when channel surfing among any and all of the cable news operations and then (a real eye-opener) look at that same story on an over the air TV news show)). Talk about 'your mileage may vary.'

The Beige Bozo at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue calls coverage of stories he doesn't like 'fake news' but that, like so much else spewing from his lips, is a facile oversimplification. In truth, we each shape what we see as much even when we look at the same thing, object, or event. 

At the inter-personal relationship level, the song remains the same. 

If your significant other, business partner, golf buddy, or employer were only as reasonable as you and I, they would do what we want, because when we say 'be reasonable' we mean 'do it my way.' In theory, the purpose of language is to better define differences and distinctions but every day and every way we get better and better at using language to obscure and diffuse. 

Sometimes fewer words can equal more meaning, ask Alice.
-bill kenny

Time Hack When Searching for the Guilty

We've been living life with COVID-19 in something other than real-time since March and not surprisingly the rates of infection and deaths correlate pretty well to how seriously and maturely we, the stay-at-home folks, have been handling ourselves. 

There's so much we each have to do to stay well both for ourselves and our loved ones. And it can be so hard it's easy to get overwhelmed, except it's not. Real simple, actually especially after you remind yourself that there's NO vaccine and (legitimate and credible) public health officials (not this whackjob) emphasize physical distance, repeated washing of hands with soap and water, and mask-wearing as critically important.

For those areas of our country which are continuing to experience an extension and/or intensification of the 'first wave' of the pandemic (I've read nothing to suggest that we're near the starting point of the next wave, but am braced for it when it arrives), perhaps in our search for 'who's fault this is' (I love when cretins try to problem-solve) maybe instead of looking out the window at others, you should try looking in the mirror at yourself. 

Because if it's too hard to do this one thing, you're probably too stupid to remain alive.

Subject to your questions, this concludes my briefing. Go forth and be less selfish.
bill kenny

It's Time To Make Your Own Demands

There was a story near the latter part of last week, though not in The Bulletin, that reminded me with a jolt that time flies whether you're having fun or not. 

The headline, "Norwich Officials Consider Renewing Downtown Revitalization Program Set to Expire" (it may be behind the paywall) is for a story about a municipal bond initiative for downtown Norwich we residents approved very nearly a decade ago. 

In the course of the last ten years, rehabilitation and revitalization efforts, great and small across Down City have been made proving, as Dylan once offered, money doesn't talk, it swears. The bond approved at that time was for about 3.4 million dollars and the story notes that about half a million dollars remain in the program which expires next April. There are, the story goes on to report, still some applications for the program pending and about $150,000 of repaid loans included in that half a million-dollar figure. 

I know, you're reaching to secure your wallet, but I'm not coming for it and so far, neither is anyone else in City Government. I can still recall the contretemps during the Council's adoption of our current budget about ponying up money for the Armstrong tennis courts reconstruction so I don't think any alderpersons have an appetite right now for an argument about another revitalization bond, loan, or perhaps a bottle and can redemption drive to get the money.   

Except as James Kwak wrote earlier this month in The Washington Post, "The End of Small Business," all the progress made in the past decade not just in our small town downtown but across the country may be nothing more than a memory because, as he notes, "after COVID-19, giant corporations and chains may be the only ones left." 

A decade ago, despite all the brave talk about architectural diversity and a construction heritage that stretched back for over a century and a half, downtown was on life support. We, who lived here at the time bet on ourselves in approving the bond and I think it can be argued the proponents and designated adults managing the downtown revitalization the bond paid for got a lot of things right. Not everything, but the successes were there and from Burnham Square to Main Street practically to the Mercantile Exchange you can still see positives. 

This terrific photo first appeared in an NCDC newsletter

As I wrote a decade ago growth and adaptation are critical to every successful organism, from a single cell tag-along to a government spanning a continent. It shouldn't be that surprising to us, here in Norwich that our city has changed a great deal in three hundred and fifty (plus) years. And that's the thing about change-it relentlessly keeps happening because it's a process and not a product, a journey and not a destination.

This time around, I'd wonder if looking across the entire city might not be a better idea or at least worth exploring. as opposed to again targeting only the Consolidated City District. It makes little sense to apply it to only 'downtown,' when the additional CCD tax burden discourages any development there. Fixing the CCD fire tax should be part of any further discussion on any revitalization bonding. 

Any next steps the City Council should consider on any bond(s) would formalize the entire process from application and eligibility through approval, articulating what agencies and city offices had which responsibilities for accessing funds to include an ongoing feedback/report to shareholders (us) and the City Council via (perhaps) the Community Development Agency or a revitalized and reconstituted Planning, Administration, and Economic Development (APED) committee of the City Council on what the bond monies have generated. 

Meaning well and doing well are two very different things and we should stop confusing the former with the latter. We need to accept the reality we can only have the city we are each willing to fight for. No more and no less.
-bill kenny

All Hail the Almighty Dollar

At some point, though I have no idea when, the way we are currently living will change, maybe not back to what it was before the pandemic but it will change. The mantra to remember as we weather our current storm is, as it always has been, 'adapt and overcome.'

I guess that's what some Gentlemen's strip clubs are doing, at least the former if not so much the latter, not that it changes their fundamental 'women are furniture' approach to the people they're exploiting. 

Operating from a position of power or privilege seems to span just about all aspects of commercial endeavor to include America's store, Walmart, who is piloting a concept that should do wonders for their shareholders' bottom line while doing even less than currently for the near-indentured servants they call associates because chattel is too much trouble to learn to spell. 

It all comes down to dollars; who has them, who wants them and who you step over or on to get yours.   
-bill kenny

99, Tick...Tick...Tick

We're down to double digits in the number of days before it's time to show the Greedheads the outside of the doors of the White House's Oval Office. The math is more than a little different if you're casting an absentee ballot for the Presidential election, but in my limited experience here on the ant-farm on all things ballot, you can't go wrong checking with these folks. 

It's been said in previous Presidential elections (and I, myself, have been one of those who've said it) but this time you should vote as if your life depends on it because it does; for you and me, our kids, their kids, their kids' kids, and all kinds of people from across the globe who've at one time or other looked to this country as Peggy Noonan once described it, 'the shining city on the hill.' 

Our national luster's been dimmed and too many of us have had our sense of right and wrong, of good and evil, dulled and damaged by the most cynical but simultaneously incompetent clown car of grifters and grafters since the Teapot Dome. It's time to keep one eye on President Criminal #1 and the other on the pages of the calendar because the days of this rat bastard are coming to an end.

Not soon enough as far as I'm concerned, but soon. And for now, that will have to do, realizing that tomorrow gets us all that much closer to taking back our country. I don't want a Blue Wave on November 3rd; I want a Blue Tsunami to sweep away the feckless and cowardly Republican members of the Senate and House who aren't immediately drowned.
-bill kenny

Thank You, Universe

Some days it's a struggle to write this (and don't even come at me with 'you should try reading it!') but other days, like today, it sort of writes itself. 

John and Yoko were right: Give Peas a Chance. 

Though in this case, they didn't have much of one at all.
-bill kenny

Warmed-Over Wisdom

This is from over a decade ago and it's more true now than it was at the time and at the time it was spot-on. Then I called it: 

One-Trick or Not

I don't remember what the product is-actually, eventually I do, but when the commercial starts I can never recall the sponsor (it's for an Internet bank)-and a grown-up is sitting at a short table with two little girls of less than (probably) five years of age. He asks the first little girl if she would like a pony, and the child eagerly says 'yes' and the man gives her a small pony replica. Smiles all around.

The man asks the other little girl if she, too, would like a pony and she responds in the affirmative, at which point he makes a 'chck-chck' sound and out from behind this large dollhouse ambles a real pony, bridle and saddle. The child is delighted.

The first child not so much and we get some close-ups of her face as we hear the squeals of delight from other little girl. Eventually, she screws up the courage to tell the grown-up very non-judgmentally for a child who just got double-crossed 'you didn't say I could have a real pony.' To which he quickly rejoins, 'you didn't ask.'

The announcer proceeds to read advertising copy about sneaky is as sneaky does, trust whatever the bank is to do whatever banks are about, grown-ups eat bugs or some such palaver. What I always come back to is the abject hatred on the first girl's face for all things adult. She isn't close to tears or a tantrum; she's close to homicide.

Either she is an incredibly gifted actress at such a young age, or the producers of the commercial didn't let her in on the joke and what we are seeing in the commercial is her actual animus, spontaneous and unrehearsed.

Sometimes when I follow the news even casually, I expect to see the streets of America littered with plastic pony replicas. We are, I think, as a people the most relentlessly optimistic nation on earth, perhaps unrealistically optimistic. I grew up in a USA that liked Ike, grudgingly extended equal rights to everyone, went in one generation from a chicken in every pot to two cars in every garage and which now finds itself, for lack of a more elegant term, flat-out broke and broken.

The part that doesn't have me worried is that we can't fix what doesn't work, because our history tells me we can. What bothers me is will we choose to repair ourselves? We've conspicuously consumed just about everything this planet has to offer and its riches haven't come close to filling that hole in our hearts. And now the one in our wallet is even larger than that one.

We've conditioned ourselves to find solutions in fifteen, thirty and sixty-second increments and ideas like universal health care, green-house gases, economic reinvestment, don't lend themselves to discussions or explanations that can be jammed in between the blue mountains of a beer can commercial and the soft porn of a shaving cream advertisement. It's not even fair to say we lose interest-we never had any.

Our whole lives guys in suits with briefcases fixed everything. We never asked, because we never wanted to know. We built armies, we went to the moon, we sold each other real estate everyone at the closing knew wasn't worth the money being paid for it, but no one got upset or concerned because the Suits were there and they were fabulous. We, too, were fabulous. Heck, everything was fabulous, unless it was brilliant.

And now the suits are shiny with wear, and in some cases, there are holes at the elbows and the sleeves are ragged. And the property we used to build the grand list to elevate the bond rating for the twenty-year municipal debentures we sold to finance the construction of the new transportation hub of the city that would increase all of our property values, well, bad news on that front as the sub-prime mortgage lenders who shouldn't have advanced us the money they didn't have in the first place are all flopping and twitching on the beach as the tide of prosperity continues to rush out and no one warned us about the undertow. And that's just about the least of our problems.

Except, of course, we were warned, but we thought they were asking if we wanted a pony.
-bill kenny

A Natal Anniversary via the Wayback Machine

Today is my middle of three younger sisters, Kara's, birthday, so many happy returns of the day and if anyone is able to have a happy day, it is she.  As a child who was the firstborn of the second cohort of kids my Mom and Dad had, Kara was about as easy-going as the day is long (July vice January in case you were wondering; and there's a reason, Jill, why I mention January and when we get there on the calendar, I'll return to that thought). 

She and Russ, her husband, had three young men of various ages but of a similar disposition, and made a home for one another for many years in the most central part of Central New Jersey though now she and he call Florida home. Let me take you on a journey down memory lane and retell my most favorite Kara as a Kid story (and yes, you've heard it before and no, I don't care). 

Before Kara was Stella (which is what Adam and Kara's sister, Jill, call her), she was Clarabelle (there is NO point in being the oldest child, with all the embarrassing memories of every other sibling, if those memories are not summoned at the most inappropriately appropriate moments such as birthday celebrations) and this story would be even better if I could remember more of it.

My sister, Kara

I always tell people 'we grew up in New Brunswick', which is true except for the use of the preposition 'in.' We actually grew up near New Brunswick in what was called Franklin Township, on Bloomfield Avenue just off Easton Avenue and about eight minutes, by car (because you went by car or walked everywhere because the bus was sort of a joke, except the passengers were the punchline) from New Brunswick back before J & J reinvented the city in its image and likeness. 

Mom did the grocery shopping at the A & P and got prescriptions filled at the Kilmer Pharmacy in the Acme Market plaza (we never got groceries there) but all the kids' clothes came from PJ Arnold's in downtown New Brunswick and for shoes, she took everyone to Gluck Shoes on Hamilton Street (I think), where she could get Stride-Rite shoes (with the all-important 'cookies' in the insoles for growing feet) for both Kara and Jill. 

I usually had my brother, Adam, and Mom would have the Dynamic Duo. Lost in the mists of (my) memory is exactly how Kara got tagged with Clarabelle--Jill, nearly two years Kara's junior and from the moment of her birth one of the three most intense people in this hemisphere (she has moved up in the rankings as well as weight class in the ensuing years) was, from her earliest age, given to the dramatic gesture, so much so that Mom called her Sarah (Heartburn) an homage, of sorts, to a famous actress of my grandmother's era, Sarah Bernhardt. 

Gluck's Shoes, actually all retail clothiers, haberdashers, foundation garment, and other retailers were unlike anything we have today, with people who waited on you, bringing you the articles you described and helping you with them. The measurement of a child's foot was too important to be left to a self-service operator-and each young clerk, usually, a man, carried a Brannock and swooped in at the moment you sat down, measured both feet, scribbled down the numbers and performed some kind of mathematical maneuver, disappearing into the back and returning with boxes of shoes. And that was that. 

This particular shopping trip my sisters were more than a bit restive, though the specific reasons now elude me, and Mom was verbally nudging Kara who would dawdle and daydream over each new pair of shoes. 'Clarabelle,' she'd say, 'let's make up your mind.-we don't have all day.' (even though we did). 

Jill hated being rushed and would fold her arms in front of her and scrunch her face up and furrow her brow to signal her unhappiness at the unfairness of it all, eventually provoking Mom to decide what shoes she was getting. That, in turn, created more drama, until Mom would bring her up short with 'Sarah, keep going and there will be no new shoes.'' The three of them went through this every time they bought anything, anywhere. All of them knew how it would end, but the game had a life of its own and they went along for the ride.

This particular afternoon, the clerk, certainly eager to please, took to calling both Kara and Jill, Clarabelle, and Sarah, because that's what he thought their names were as Mom never called them anything else. Since both of them were used to Mom's nicknames, they saw nothing amiss, and Mom never even noticed. 

As he was ringing out the purchases, a register with the round buttons where you put in the exact amount and little vertical canoe paddles (that's how they looked to me) popped up in the glass box at the top of the National Cash Register, whose clanging bell made the sale official, he asked me what my name was. 

I was way ahead of him-'Ralphie', I said. And your brother, he inquired. 'Ralphie, too' I offered, perhaps a little too quickly but to this day I think I got away with it. Frankly, Adam, I think that's where the seed was planted that led you to your college alma mater-and you are welcome. 

Anyway, without missing a beat the clerk handed mom two Stride-Rite shoe bags and leaned over the counter to give both Clarabelle and Sara each a lollipop. Happy Birthday, kiddo. Don't take any wooden Stride Rites. 
-bill kenny

Paging Jim Bouton

Speaking for everyone (I have a card in my wallet that allows me to do this; I keep it alongside my "I Don't Have to Wear a Face Mask and You Can't Make Me" card) today marks the start not of the  2020 Major League Baseball Season We Want but of the 2020 Major League Baseball Season We're Gonna Get. And not a pandemic too soon.

It's certainly better than NOT having Major League Baseball (and dear TV guys, lose the fake crowd noise; I hated watching DFB that way, mainly because in the quiet you can hear what the players are saying to one another and the instructions of the coaches and managers) and I've long since reached the point where had they been playing it, I'd have watched kids playing Tee-ball. 

The Washington Nationals host the New York Yankees at seven tonight on ESPN and Dr. Anthony Fauci will be throwing out the first pitch. 

I'll forgive the face mask. This time.

Traditionally the President of the United States is on hand to do the honors of the Nats' opening day first pitch but President Thin Skin has better things to tweet to do and besides his last appearance went over like gangbusters. 

The Lone Ranger's facemask had 2 eyeholes whereas Trump's has 1 asshole.

Besides, as Cadet Bone Spurs should have realized long ago, this is a sport you need balls to play, letting him out for obvious reasons.
-bill kenny

Stalking the Wily Bandersnatch in Search of Fire Engines

There's a fine line between having good intentions and taking meaningful actions and I balance on it for the most part like a circus bear tottering on a unicycle holding a parasol. Not that I'm alone in that respect but more on that in a minute.

In pursuit of my new goal to live forever, I've chosen to shop healthier, though my holy grail of healthy foods, kale doughnuts, continues to elude me. Nevertheless, I persist and sometimes I end up self-owning.

Here's what I mean: about ten days ago while in the produce department of one of our local groceries, I bought one of those containers of already-cut celery. The stalks were about six inches long, packed in what I assume was water, and looked very appealing. If you believe urban myths, celery is a negative-calorie food, but after careful consideration, I think that's mostly in the eye of the beholder. 

Anyway, no-fuss, no muss, just us (actually me) and the container of already-cut celery in my reusable shopping bag along with other fruits and vegetables and a rather large bag of salty snacks that, I believe, were already in there when I opened it  (that's my story and I'm sticking with it). I was already glowing from my healthy choice, but like those TV infomercials say, 'wait! there's more!' 

I was very pleased with my choice of snack and placed the container on the top shelf of our refrigerator when I got home and stole a peek at it the following morning to remind myself of how terrifically healthy I was being. 

Maybe it was the heat, or perhaps the humidity or just the Lockdown Lassitude but it wasn't until this past Sunday while looking for something else in the refrigerator that I came across the still-unopened container of celery, stuck like a statue undaunted, on the top shelf. 

I was chagrined to realize its 'Best By' date was now a thing of the past and not the recent past. I hurriedly placed the container in our kitchen trash bag, hoping, perhaps if I moved quickly enough my brain wouldn't fully realize what my hands had just done but too late. 

I was hoist with my own petard which doesn't even qualify as an aerobic exercise (I looked) and as near as I can tell from standing on the bathroom scale I didn't even lose any weight despite having purchased the celery. There should be somewhere I can go to lodge a complaint. 

Except, looking at recent local headlines, I'm thinking I'd be standing in a queue and you know how impatient I am. Last Friday, while my celery was still in the fridge, the city received eight bids for a proposed fire services study that was originally approved at a somewhat contentious City Council meeting in early May.

I've lived here for almost thirty years and we've had more discussions about studies on our city's fire services than I've had celery stalks. For all I know the newly-submitted bids could be part of the same discussion that was going on when I first arrived, but it's not the study that I think any of us are worried about. 

It's undertaking any actions the study might recommend. That, I suspect, could prove to be politically less appealing than those kale doughnuts. 
-bill kenny

No Lingonberries Were Harmed in the Writing of this Post

The events of the world go by so quickly it's hard to stay current. Here's an item, I almost said tidbit, that might have escaped your notice if not for my eagle-eye. 

You're welcome.
-bill kenny

LI Years On

As we've been learning since late winter, time crawls when you're not having fun. This sort of snuck up on me which is surprising since as a kid I wanted desperately to be an astronaut (I was hooked on Tang; not sure if they still make it now that I think about it) even though I was already in my late teens. 

The sky was the limit. Until it wasn't. This is from a long time ago and I've repaired the time references to reflect that.

Fifty-one years ago today, we walked on the moon for the first time. If you weren't yet born when that happened, you missed something, you really did. You can read a library of books on how much effort and coordination, time and talents and money such an effort took, and it's staggering, but that's not the whole story from 'back in the day.'

Going to the moon wasn't the only thing we were doing as a country, as a tribe, a nation-state on Earth. We had almost 450,000 men under arms halfway around the world in forests and fields of Southeast Asia in a war that was to be as divisive as any in the history of our nation and whose outcome left us saddened and sullen for a decade.

Nearly the same number of young men and women were heading to Upstate New York during this summer, actually in August, for what was advertised as four days of Peace, Love and Music and almost all anyone can remember, whether they were or not, is all the mud and the incredible performances by so many musicians, especially those whose flame flickered brightly from that stage and were then forever extinguished because of self-indulgence or profound bad luck.

Back at the moonwalk, we on Earth watched around the world, with some of our younger brothers and sisters going outside to stand on the porch of the summer home at Harvey's Lake (Pa) and look up at the moon to see if you could see the astronauts (if wishing could have made it so) as the astronauts seemed to skip and dance across the most desolate place we could imagine.

As a nation we were faced with challenges all around us-but we found the time, actually, we MADE the time, to watch these extraordinary people do this extraordinary thing that NO ONE in our history had ever done before. And just as no man enters the same river twice because both he and the river have changed, there is no way we can ever be those people who watched by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming. 

We did it then, and we can do it now--not because it's easy because it's not, but because it's hard and because if we do not repair and restore our country, we will have no one to blame but ourselves when in the years to come we cannot remember anything to be proud of since the Moon Walk.

-bill kenny

Remembering Good Trouble

Some people burn and others blaze. Congressman John R. Lewis did both but more than that his life illuminated a path others could follow to help us as a nation fulfill the promise embodied in our own founding documents. 

His life helped us get this far and now with his passing, we'll have to undertake the next part of the journey on our own.

The best way to remember and honor him is to make sure you are registered to vote this November and then, no matter what, go and vote.
-bill kenny

History Should Not Be a Mystery

I'm from Central, not southern New Jersey so I never really understood the appeal behind the flying of the Confederate flag. Don't come at me with the 'it's heritage not hate' bromide unless you're also willing to concede it is the physical representation of a heritage of hate. 

When I worked for the Department of Defense, on two continents, I'd see the stars and bars on the back windows of trucks and as bumper stickers on cars and reached a point where I just viewed it as an indicator of a first-cousin-screwing toothless gorm and nothing more. 

And if that characterization offends you, think of how your fondness for a symbol that signals it's okie-dokie to own another human being strikes people, especially those whose ancestors were property.  

Now a nearly spineless Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, has contorted himself into knots in coming up with the language that effectively bans that hateful rag of a flag from US military installations without, he hopes, triggering the Grand Klan Wizard, Mr. 'Very Fine People On Both Sides' Trump into firing him. 

To be clear, the flag being banned isn't historical, it's hateful. And needs to join the other flags of those who lost when waging war against the United States.

-bill kenny  

Sir Raymond Is Right

I got up Wednesday morning intending to cut what's left of our grass that hasn't been melted or fried in the heat but an hour's worth of wrestling with the growing-more-balky-by-the-moment gasoline-powered lawnmower convinced me it was time for a new gameplan.

I motored to one of the big box hardware stores and purchased a battery-powered lawnmower (I had intended to replace the gas-guzzler with an electric but was hoping to get one more mowing season than I did) and eventually trimmed the lawn and felt frazzled from a day that was all uphill.

Yesterday was all blue skies and high cumulus clouds with just enough breeze to make you smile and my plan for the afternoon was to enjoy it all. and so I sat on our front porch and admired Sigrid's hanging flower baskets and the way the breeze caused them to swing and sway. 

It was one of the better Thursdays I've had in recent memory.
-bill kenny

The Logic Eludes Me

I'm rarely mistaken for the sharpest spoon in the drawer, and I've reached an age where I wear that derision with as much dignity and grace as I can. So when I look at two competing realities attempting to coexist in the same universe I wonder what I'm supposed to do. 

Here's what I'm talking about:  

I am sort of lying about the 'wondering what to do' part. I know exactly what to do; vote the bastards out on the 3rd of November. And you should, too, but check here first to make sure you're registered to vote. And then count down the days.
-bill kenny

Holding On While Letting Go

On New Year’s Eve, looking ahead to 2020 and wondering and worrying about pitfalls and pratfalls, I thought one of the low points of the year would be having that pesky Leap Day at the end of February, right in the middle of winter.

And now that extra day of cold and snow seems like one of the Good Old Days. Who knew?

News stories and analysis to the contrary, I don’t think COVID-19 created profound inequities in how we provide healthcare to everyone, how we delivered public education throughout our country, how we struggled and failed to see every single person and their true worth or how we focused our measurement of economic progress almost entirely on Wall Street and forgot about Main Street.  

I do think the virus and its impact in our daily lives revealed and exacerbated our institutional and structural weaknesses and I fear that one of the primary reasons we are struggling and failing to adapt and overcome is because too many of us don’t think we need to or that we should have to.

I try and walk through downtown Norwich once every ten days or so, stretching from Amazing Furniture at Burnham Square back through Franklin Square and up Main Street to where Putts Up Dock used to be. The pandemic’s economic impact on our downtown is I’m sure not even half a drop in the nation’s small businesses bucket but I do know a lot of people with a lot of dreams and hard work were (and many still are) in danger of being swept away despite whatever’s happening on the NASDAQ. 

And I fear that it will be a long time before downtown, ours and anyone else’s gets back to where it was in the winter of 2020, assuming that ever happens at all.

Our children’s schools closed their doors in March and household economics played a critical role in how robust the on-line and virtual experiences were for many of our students.  The chain is only as strong as its weakest link and in our community, dreams have to be rationed for the dollars available so I don’t know what that means for the desired return to classrooms at the end of next month. 

I do know that many of the folks who strongly support school systems’ openings have been MIA in supporting the full funding of those same school systems.

I was a patient at Backus Same-Day Surgery on Monday and got an eye-opening experience with living and working with COVID-19, from the pre-screening testing to the precautions and safeguards everyone at Backus goes through I know not how many times a day and despite watching it happen, I still don’t know how they do it.

I think they, and all those whom we call ‘essential,’ realize bravery is not the absence of fear, but action in the face of fear. And I think they don’t see themselves as brave, but just doing what needs to be done. And what needs to be done is for all of us to follow their examples and keep moving forward. 

-bill kenny

Fête Nationale

Today, in 1789, The Bastille a fortress-prison was stormed by the people of Paris, France, fearing they would be attacked by the Royal Government which had imprisoned large numbers of critics in The Bastille as France descended into the chaos of total revolution against an inflexible monarchy whose foundation was the antiquated notion of feudalism.  

As the Thirteen British Colonies had shown just a few years earlier, it was possible to wage war against an empire and win. But as Jacques Mallet du Pan once offered, "like Saturn, the Revolution devours its own children." Some slightly cynical historians have suggested if it were a movie, the French Revolution would be rated "O" for the blood type most spilled as battles raged. 

History, it is said, is written by the winners and today, not just in France but in many places across the globe, the anniversary of the storming of The Bastille is celebrated and commemorated while the oft-grisly and gruesome details are treated with a soft focus. 

"For they marched out to Bastille Day. La guillotine claimed her bloody prize. Hear the echoes of the centuries. Well, power isn't all that money buys."
-bill kenny

Older but No Wiser

We live in a world dominated and predicated by the burning question, what's the most I can get for the least I have to pay. It's true today and was true when I first offered this and called it:

Bow-ties and High Noon

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

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

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

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

My smart-phone does this weird little vamp when it's loading an application (I had to ask someone who knows about phones to describe that process so I could write it down here. I have so little idea of how the device works, when it doesn't work, someone else has to tell me as I cannot figure it out by myself). Maybe yours does that same 'gimme a minute jitterbug', too.

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

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

Squirrel!

If you're outraged at Covidiot's commutation of the Monopoly Moron's prison sentence, do yourself (and me) a favor and stop it. It's not important in the bigger scheme of things. As for General Flynn and his inevitable pardon for crimes he confessed to, fuck him. As a matter of fact, looking at the long list of malevolent miscreants who've served under the flag of kleptocracy of the Mango Mussolini, ignore them.

Stay focused on the real deal. We have a greedy grasping grifter with zero integrity and even less competence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His feckless recklessness and reckless fecklessness are getting people, not just Americans, killed every day. 

Be it from institutionalized racism, malignant xenophobia, craven cowardice or arrogant ignorance, there is no one succeeding right now in anything vaguely resembling the pursuit of happiness. Take solace that his coterie of career criminals will ultimately bear the mark of Cain and find themselves in a lake of fire just a little south of Hades after the November 3rd election, but put a pin in your anger as we slouch towards Bethlehem. 

All of it is no more than some sleight of hand carnival barker's trick. All of the speeches, the tweets, the calculated cruelty to the defenseless, and disenfranchised are nothing more than shiny objects to distract us from the core issue: Trump's manifest and criminal unsuitability for the position he is in. 

Stop firing off social media comments about your anger. Save it, harness it and use it to inspire you to help sign up those who chose to absent themselves from the electoral process in 2016, ignoring the simple fact that elections are decided by those who show up. 

Instead, make sure you, me, them, and EVERYONE who can vote does vote on Election Day to assign the Tangerine Temper Tantrum to the dustbin of history. #8645110320.
-bill kenny     

This Is the Weekend

There's a better than good chance that the weather will not cooperate this weekend for a major event on the East Coast, specifically in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. (You thought I was talking about the Covidiot's visit and rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire? Pshaw!)

Manhattanhenge. 

This has been pretty much a shit sandwich on toasted white bread with Miracle Whip of a year so far so it's really not surprising that the Summer Manhattanhenge may not come off as hoped-for.

But we'll have others. And if you enjoyed Neil deGrasse Tyson's article, then maybe you can chip in a couple of bucks to the folks in whose magazine he wrote it. 

Just sayin'. Nobody rides for free.
-bill kenny  

If It's Too Loud

I have and will always love rock lyrics. They are the hook that keeps me engaged in enjoying music as I grind on in the latter part of my Sixties to whatever comes next. (Assuming there is anything beyond here and hear.)

But sometimes, you have to turn it up to eleven and bang your head. 
You're welcome.
-bill kenny

Y U Mad, Bro/Sis?

Out wandering around yesterday and saw a guy in a Jeep with a very large American flag hanging off the boat hitch in the back who was red-faced and apoplectic while honking his horn and flipping off a sign near a roadway with the simplest question I've seen in recent weeks about how we get along, and fail to, with one another.

The sign asked: "If All Lives Matter Why Do You Get Angry When I Say Black Lives Matter?"

An overhead view of a massive street mural in Oakland

Yeah. I'm thinking he was angry because he didn't know the answer.
-bill kenny

All Those Years Ago

I first offered this all the way back in 2008 celebrating the natal anniversary of our son, Patrick Micheal, after the dot.com bubble burst and before the Orange Covidiot protected statutes of the Confederacy but not the men and women of our armed forces serving in Afghanistan. Strange Days indeed.

What follows is exactly what I wrote, verbatim (you can do your own updates where obvious) but I should, and must, note right here that this version is vastly improved over the original by the presence of Jena in Patrick's life. 

The Birthday Boy with Jena a year ago last Saturday

Back in the day, I called it: 

Memo to My Son

Today is the 26th birthday of my son, Patrick Michael. When I type 'my son' or 'my daughter' (when speaking of his sister, Michelle Alison) or 'my wife', Sigrid Katherina, I smile, not because of a pride of possession mentality but because I am truly the most fortunate person on the planet.

If we've not met, count your blessings-I am NOT likable. Take my word on this-and be assured I could send you a list of folks who could attest to this fact, and that this list would vaguely resemble the census in size and scope, helps underscore my point. Being not likable makes it a difficult stretch to be lovable, and yet, my wife, an otherwise sane and logical person, could not possibly be married to me for over thirty years, but has. 

Our two children are the result of her ability to make someone into something they feared they never could be. She not only raised two children, but she also transformed a self-absorbed obliviot into an Approximate Dad. Considering what she had to work with, she done good.

I was afraid to have children--the actual, 'here's a small human to take care of and worry about for the rest of your life' portion of the program seemed more daunting to me than I could ever handle. I didn't have a lot of happy experiences being on the receiving end of Dad and Lad interactions. 

As a matter of fact, one of the better days of our lives together was when my father got up early to say farewell the day I traveled to the MEPS station to join the Air Force. We were able to pretend for that moment that we had a bond, surety or otherwise.

When Sigrid shared with me she (and we, by extension) was pregnant, it was the early winter of what had been a rough year. Having successfully placed half a world between us, I discovered more guilt and anger when my dad died that Spring than sorrow at his passing. 

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

Their luck came to end with my son's birth and they were pretty good sports about it. As Sigrid's labor continued and the contractions shortened and the delivery preparation's tempo quickened, I was asked where I would be during her stay in the geburtsaal, and I assured the doctors, 'right there with her', which surprised them. 

I attempted to explain with what was better than decent German (I thought) that I had placed the order and had every intention of taking delivery. Maybe my German wasn't that good-it was like playing to an oil painting, no smile, no nothing, gar nichts.

When Patrick was born, after what's considered a spontangeburt (for the male doctors who can NEVER experience pregnancy, in their opinion, the childbirth was accomplished without labor. Sure it was-from your lips to God's ear, Herr Arzt), Sigrid looked she had just run a marathon and was utterly exhausted.

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

The mid-wife placed Patrick Michael on Sigrid's chest, for mother and child bonding and my disappointment knew almost no words. At that moment, I was so jealous of the woman I loved. I asked as politely as I could if, after she had 'had enough of holding him', if I could, and was stunned when she picked him up and fixing me with a stare that bordered on a glare (leading me to suspect that the geburt wasn't quite as spontan as the wizard in the white coat had thought-and just because it was spontan hadn't meant it was schmerzfrei) handed Patrick to me, saying 'I've carried him for nine months, it's your turn now.'

Patrick Michael was, and is, my deal with God. From the moment I held him, I no longer cared what happened to me-and egotist that I am, that's saying something. I know, your children are beautiful, and smart and talented and handsome and sorry-they're not my children and my son and my daughter are the absolute best not only in the world but in the history of the world (there's a barn behind a hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (I think), that might want to argue that point but no chance, sorry). 

I walked him around that delivery room for the next two hours or so, singing I've Been Working on the Railroad (the drum and piano would have cluttered the delivery room) and really working those Fie-Fi-Fiddly-I-Os, making up in volume what I lacked in pitch. I don't know why I sang the song--I'm shaking my head in bemused bewilderment as I type this. It seemed like a good idea at the time; actually, it was a perfect idea.

And point, in fact, I've gone on for way too long--Patrick was born faster than I'm telling you about it. In many ways, his first twenty-six years seem to have sped by at that same clip. He and his sister, have overcome the handicap of being my children, mostly because they've had the good fortune to have the love and devotion of my wife as their Mom. And, yeah, he's made me crazy, angry, frightened, delighted and every emotion in between--because that's what children do.

And as long as you remember to make sure they always know that sometimes they will do things you will not like, but that you will always love them, they will be able to do anything, even leave you when they grow up to be adults of their own. There'll be the moments in the living room watching the ballgame when words aren't needed as you both reach for the pretzel rods. 

Other times, there will be phone conversations that start out about one subject and become all that and that infamous bag of chips. And your eyes will fill with tears as you watch them end the chapter of their childhood and begin to write their own novel as the life you always wanted for them finally begins. 

And it hurts, and maybe the keyboard blurs as I type this because it's really warm and my eyes are perspiring-yeah, that what it is, I'm sure. Sorry if the folks you work with razz you today for having a dotty dad-but you knew that long ago.
Happy Birthday, Patrick!
-Love, Dad.