The Days Dwindle Down

Remember all the 'stuff' we were going to do this summer despite COVID-19 as we were working towards the Independence Day holiday weekend?  Well, there's another holiday weekend this time next week but it means the summer is over. Already?

Sunday at Chelsea Parade, Norwich, Connecticut

Already.
-bill kenny 

Talk Is Cheap but ....

I like to think language, rather than our opposable thumbs or big brains (and in my case, exceptionally shiny, white teeth) is what has made us this planet's self-anointed Crown of Creation. 

I'm not always happy with how we use words to obfuscate and castigate instead of to illuminate and celebrate especially at perilous moments in our democracy such as now.

Silence is NOT always golden and can sometimes be fatal.
-bill kenny

Don't Tell Me About Your 401K

Mom used to say, "don't ask the question if you can't stand the answer."

I can think of at least 180,000 answers in the negative.
-bill kenny

It's Come to This

So much for 'Shut up and dribble.' Michael Wilbon nails it.

Citizens, NOT suspects, and certainly not targets. Ever.
-bill kenny

Epitaph for a Douchebag Dynasty

If you haven't had the opportunity to watch any of the Republican National Convention (so far) your very limited time offer is just about over. At some point in the dark of the East Coast, late tonight, I suspect well after it was supposed to actually end, the Clorox Kool-Aid Konvention will be well and truly done and I can only hope that we will go forth and be better people afterward. 

Not that there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening if you watched any of it, by the way, but as the GOP is fond of saying, 'if you're gonna pull an All-Whiter, we're the party to do it with!" 

I wouldn't waste the spit if would take to drown the Beige Buffoon and the Grifters and Grafters whose behavior he's validated just by his existence, but you be you. And if you have an oversized sense of grievance, feel that women need to know their place, believe that the world has changed too Goddamn much already, and what the hell do all these brown and black people want anyway? then the Mango Mussolini is your choice and voice.

So go ahead and climb behind the wheel of that Trumpmobile 2020. It runs on beautiful, clean coal and runs over anything and anyone that gets in its way. And maybe the Founding Fathers would weep to see what has become of their republic, but they were mostly losers, anyway. And around here #WINNING is everything, even if, by design, it's not for everyone.
-bill kenny

Banquo's Ghost Returns Again

At the risk of repeating myself, but doing so anyway, I've noted before that people prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not.  I consider myself fortunate to live in a city that has one paid fire department and five volunteer fire departments with skilled and talented firefighters, but what I perceive as good fortune is not necessarily true for all. I live in the Consolidated City District, CCD, and pay additional property taxes for the fire department that protects me and my neighbors. 

I don't think many, if any, of us are happy about the surcharge on our tax bills but as the current buzz phrase would have it, 'it is what it is.' Having been on a Charter Revision Committee in 1999 that was charged by the then-City Council to amend the charter to address and resolve the disparities between the City and Town property tax rates caused by the differences in fire services I learned it wasn't because of the charter but of the political will, and lack of, by the City Council.  

That was two decades ago so my memory might be a little fuzzy, but I think at that time we on the committee were told more than one once by residents that in their memories of living in Norwich there had been numerous previous studies intended either to spread the tax burden across the entire city or better share fire fighting responses and responsibilities. 

You're welcome to feel I've over-simplified those two positions but I think not; a joke I remember at the time was if all the previous studies were laid end to end they wouldn't reach a conclusion. I don't recall anyone laughing. 

Meanwhile, proving those who cannot learn from history are fated to repeat it, last Monday, as The Bulletin reported a divided-along-party-lines City Council voted 4-3 in favor of expending a little more than $80,000 for an(other) "independent fire services study' by the McGrath Consulting Group, of Wonder Lake, Illinois. 

The article notes all three Republicans voted against the study because "there are more pressing concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic than a study that could be performed in-house by the department chiefs and city staff." 

I don't think any of us had Coronavirus Pandemic on our 2020 Bingo Card, so in terms of other and competing concerns for funding, that point is well taken at least to a degree. But as for the 'performed in-house by the department chiefs and city staff ' part of their objection, and I'm basing this on my almost twenty-nine years of living here, that's disingenuous. 

It's been close to impossible to get everyone who fights fires in Norwich to sit at one table with the City Manager, ever, and work to eliminate what Alderman Joseph DeLucia called, "pervasive issues surrounding the fire service in Norwich (that) have existed for decades.”

We are not the only municipality in Connecticut blessed with both paid and volunteer firefighters; other cities have succeeded in creating hybrid or mixed departments combining both so it’s not like we’re sailing forth into uncharted waters. 

At the risk of you thinking me a cynic, I say we enjoy wringing our hands about our pervasive issues because we don't have the political will to take the actions that previous studies, like the one just commissioned, have outlined. 

We are again confusing talking about solving a problem without actually solving the problem, which is unfair to not only both the volunteer and professional firefighters who protect us but also to one another. 
-bill kenny  

Promises Made. Promises Ignored.

I read yesterday that the Grand Old Party decided it didn't need a political platform as part of its Presidential Nominating Convention. I'm trying to imagine what the world or at least my nation would have looked like had Abe Lincoln and the guys blown off having a party platform in 1860 and just gone with "Slavery, Schmavery" as their campaign slogan. 

Good news, MAGA Muttonheads, I've stolen Stephen Colbert's Late Show suggestion for your exclusive use, until I get caught. I think it sums you up quite nicely and concisely

And the great thing about this purloined slogan, the Beige Buffoon can claim he has no idea where it came from or who I am and this time he'll actually be telling the truth.
-bill kenny 

Tonight's the Night

Last week it was the Democrats and their national convention and this week, starting tonight, it's the reboot of The Apprentice starring The Beige Buffoon for what's left of the party of Abraham Lincoln. I'd say 'A penny for his thoughts,' but in Trump's case, I'd be owed some change.

I don't know about you but there aren't going to be enough hours in the day to watch the RNC abomination on every streaming (and steaming) social media platform east of the sun and west of the moon, Fox News, NewsMax, One America News, and all those other stations operating just above the police calls. And just look at what you'll be missing.

Be warned: I'm not sure afterward how you'll be able to clean your monitor screen from the inside which is where nearly all the damage will be done. 
-bill kenny

Worth Noting

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

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

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

He came up with the foolscap. Every time something angered me, I was to write it down on a piece of paper and put the paper in my wallet. But every time I'd write something down, his rule was that it had to be on its own, separate, piece of paper. No doubling up, no lists. Each anger got its own note.

By the end of the day, I could, and did, have hundreds of slips of paper in my wallet. But, no worries-I had to review ALL these slips each night and then on a different sheet of paper, put all those items I was still ANGRY about (I could put those on a single piece of paper) and then I'd put that list on my nightstand. 

The night before I would go to see him at the clinic, I had to review the (six) pieces of paper, and transfer anything I was still angry about, to yet another piece of paper and bring that one piece out to our weekly conversation.

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

How about this week or real soon (and I mean real soon) we all decide to try it. Watch the news, read a newspaper, check out a column on-line--we are REALLY CRANKED about a lot of stuff. We all know or know of, someone who wants to "fix" things by looking to punch someone in the nose.

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

Passion is fine and necessary. If our ancestors back in the ooze didn't care if they evolved to have legs that carried them from the pond and helped us grow lungs, every day would be Friday, if you follow my drift. It's the grinding though, that is wearing us out, the pitched battles we are waging to benefit who knows who or for what purpose. 

You wanna feel silly about how we now get along with one another, but you don't want to use the foolscap? Okay--tell me five things this country was PO'ed about at eight AM on September 11th, 2001. Go ahead, I'll wait. Too hard? Gimme three things, then-how hard could that be? No? You want to take a break from all this head noise and hate to concentrate on the real and important tasks at hand instead? 

Go ahead, I'll make a note of where we were and we can get back to it sometime real soon.
-bill kenny

Every Crusade Needs Its Rabbit

I have every intention of watching even less of the Republican National Convention next week than I did of the Democratic National Convention earlier this week because the Beige Buffoon makes my hair hurt when I listen to him speak/think. And the prospect of enduring three days of a parade of obsequious assholes unceasingly sucking up to him might cause me terminal lower digestive tract distress.

At the time of the nation's founding, we had dozens of (white) men (only, NO women allowed) qualified to lead our nation but as the decades have rolled on a noticeable thinning of the herd seems to have happened. 

To be clear, I don't necessarily insist on someone whose going to end up on a coin or a stamp or on Mount Rushmore, especially when I'm afraid the Mango Mussolini will eventually be immortalized at Stone Mountain. 

Just a regular Joe will do it for me in November; or, as Steve Buscemi notes, Acceptable Under the Circumstances. And, no, I don't expect there will be a DJT version.
-bill kenny

When You Lie Down with Dogs

To better measure your cognitive abilities. Repeat after me:

Person

Woman

Man

Camera

TV

Roger Stone

Paul Manafort

Mike Flynn

Rick Gates

Michael Cohen

Steve Bannon

Oh, yeah. When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
-bill kenny

Rhymes with Thunder

Or in the case of our most previous presidential election, blunder. 

Reminding me again that not everything that's immoral is illegal. And why.
-bill kenny

It Takes a Lot to Laugh

So much of how we're living our lives right now seems to have changed perhaps forever and as much as we can all understand and appreciate that change is part of life, many of us, present company included, much prefer it as a concept or (better yet) as a spectator sport happening in someone else's life rather than as applied to our own.  

Right now, as we struggle to keep our own boat from being swamped by COVID-19 and its associated circumstances we can be forgiven for losing sight that the slogan/mantra of #AloneTogether also means there's an ocean full of boats each just like our own.  

This past weekend's announcement of the closing of Apollo Cycles in the Sunlight Emporium on Franklin Street about a year after it opened as a consequence of COVID-19 is, I think, a fitting metaphor of the economic and social landscape and the changes we face at this moment, not just here in Norwich but across the Land of Steady Habits and beyond our state's borders. 

As recently as May 2, in the pages of the Bulletin, there was a story on the shop's success entitled "Bike Business Booming During Outbreak" The report noted 'With the coronavirus pandemic forcing families out of work and school, Connecticut has seen an increase in pedestrians and bikers in the state’s trails and parks. (As) an essential business, Apollo Cycles is facing a steady stream of repairs for bikes of all different types and models. Mainly a repair shop, the store also sells refurbished bikes.'  

However, as one of those hair bands once sang, 'every rose has its thorn' and in this case, the coronavirus pandemic, less than one hundred days after that news story was published, created both a national shortage of new bicycles to sell and parts to repair older ones leaving an entrepreneur like Apollo Ziembroski and his shop with not a lot of choices but to close.

I wasn't a customer of Apollo Cycles though I did (s)poke my head in to say 'hi' the day he opened up because that's what neighbors do and I regret the shop's closure not just because I have a bicycle that may someday be in need of repair but because there's one less point of light on our local horizon and no one I know has any idea how much longer this dark night of the pandemic will last or what we will look like when/if it does end. 

Maybe if we spent less time impersonating virologists and constitutional scholars while arguing about the medical implications or impacts on our civil rights of wearing masks in public and maintaining physical distance as public health professionals recommend, we'd see even greater declines in the rates of infection, hospitalization and (I'd hope) fatalities which would then allow us to responsibly rather than rush to reopen our schools, sports leagues, businesses, and public institutions. 

As I write this, just about 175,000 of us in this country have died (that's almost as many people as the populations of Bridgeport and Norwich combined), and arguing among ourselves hasn't saved a soul. 
So maybe we should try something else and soon. Damn soon.
-bill kenny

A Little Bit of Light

There have been a lot of stories (way too many, imho) on media platforms over the last week or so on how we are becoming the "The United States of Conspiracy" which is a nearly criminal use, I think of the connectivity and convergence of technology we currently have and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop any of that crazed crap from spreading far and wide no matter how hard I type on my keyboard or wring my hands.

What I can do is share with you Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir, but more than just sharing the knowledge of it I can also spread and shed the light of joyful noise its existence offers. Enjoy.
-bill kenny 

Nietzsche's Still Got Rhythm

As someone who came of age in the Sixties, I learned long ago the wisdom behind the maxim 'if you can't dance, you can't love.' I had the moves of a sixty-eight year-old white guy from the time I was about fourteen. Thought I was holding them for somebody else until the birthdays finally caught up with me.

Freddy N. sort of nailed it in his own Teutonic tongue-in-cheek way, "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

Like a wave in the ocean, endlessly returning to the shore.
-bill kenny

And They Say Romance Is Dead

Whatever became of wooing? Remember things like 'dinner and a movie,' or making one another mixtapes? Or any and all of the rituals of courtship, period? When did everything become cut to the chase, like this? 

"I say go, she say yes. Dim the lights you can guess the rest."
-bill kenny

Not Alone in the Universe

Remember when we all used to live together in a shared country? Together, being the operative word. We didn’t always get our own way and we tended to favor the notion of having one political party in control of the White House while the other one was in Congress. 

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

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

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

Labels such as 'liberal' and 'conservative' are now pejoratives hurled like discount store invective at opposing viewpoints, appropriate or not, and the reaction to the labeling obscures quite nicely any opportunity to see the person we've just tagged. Now, all we are is disagreeable when we disagree. And we engage in preemptive shouting matches with one another in forums supposedly designed to let us exchange ideas and views. The longer the meeting, the louder the yelling and don't even get me started on the understanding.

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

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

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

You can't shake hands with people who have balled fists (with COVID-19, you're also not supposed to), and knuckle bumping is out as well. We need to learn once again to speak in complete sentences and respectful tones to one another, one at a time and then move on to larger groups. Eventually, we might get the hang of how we used to do all of this, back when we all lived in the same country at the same time. History needn't be a mystery.

-bill kenny

No Sweat

Watched the other day while someone in sweats walked towards the end of our local mall that has a fitness center, was smoking a cigarette, which she finished, and then flicked the butt into the parking lot while opening the door into the gym. I smoked two/three packs of cigarettes a day for twenty-two (plus) years and have my own definitions of insanity and dependence, as does each of us with a vice, but for Kafkaesque humor, you'd have to go some to top that. 

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

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

I'm wondering if we're not better off just eliminating the middle man and cutting out the white space. Put a cigar bar in the fitness center--or set up one of those luxurious dessert places in the lobby; call it "Cool Whip and Curls", no one will snicker. 

Those who wish to indulge can (to their hearts' desires), and the rest of us can pretend to not see any of it as it'll all be out of sight. Look at how often we've used that trick to handle world events that should and could have numbed us. Besides, it keeps us from walking around with our eyes closed-people can get hurt going through life like that.
-bill kenny 

The Alternative is Uninformed Delivery

Did you know that you can go to the postal service's website and sign up for 'Informed Delivery' and you'll get emails on a regular and recurring basis with a preview of mail being delivered to you? Oh, you knew that already? 

So I'm the last person on earth to find out? Again. Okay, I'll learn to adapt I guess. Anyway, I learned about it only about two weeks ago or so and am quite taken by the notion or was until I got this in my email yesterday.

This, in my opinion, is like a highway sign that says "Watch Out!" 
For pedestrians? For trucks entering the roadway? For rockslides? For the electric slide? C'mon some specifics, please, the suspense is killing me.
-bill kenny

After the Storm

Last week's Tropical Storm Isaias left a path of destruction and disruption everywhere it went to include our neck of the woods (literally as well as figuratively speaking) and we all knew neighbors and businesses who were without power perhaps for hours or even longer. 

We are, I think, a bit spoiled here in The Rose of New England, as the ability and agility of everyone with Norwich Public Utilities from planning prior to threatening weather through to the recovery after the storm, is always above and beyond. I think we may take their service for granted though we always say we're grateful (until the next utilities bill arrives when some of us revert to 'what have you done for me lately?') but watching the news on TV from other areas of the state made me happy to be here (even if many of those who know me aren't so happy).

In my neighborhood, I was disquieted at how Isaias' power had shaken and broken so many tree branches and limbs. On Starr Street, I saw power lines holding up a massive tree branch and keeping it from hitting the pavement, as we all made wide circles around it (over by the road to the 6th Grade Academy at Teachers' Memorial School) and elsewhere on the same street, closer to Asylum, was a VERY LARGE tree now uprooted in someone's backyard perilously close to the house. 

I was in for a surprise much closer to home; a tree trunk shattered and scattered on the sidewalk and front yard of a building on Uncas Street, the white one right next to the memorial, that I have walked past hundreds if not thousands of times and, while certainly no arborist (I do occasionally play one on  TV), I would have believed was sturdy and strong as its branches reached high overhead, throwing their shade across the sidewalk. 

And yet, in Isaias' aftermath, well over half the trunk of the tree was now all across the sidewalk and front yard and it was clear, even to me, despite my beliefs the tree had not been healthy or strong in a very long time. The severe challenge from the storm was enough to topple it. I could still see in its branches some of the nests from birds who'd called it home and could only imagine how panicked they had been to discover their refuge and safe harbor clearly wasn't anymore.

I think, maybe, we're a lot like those birds in the wake of the storm at least in many respects when it comes to how we're handling and living with COVID-19. We've seen ourselves as a prosperous and successful nation even as more and more of us have less and less of the bounties and blessings we tell one another was promised to all of us. 

Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, we had and have a far more fragile healthcare delivery system, a more tenuous technology support network and infrastructure, and a less open to all and even-handed economy than we assumed/believed. The stresses and strains that the pandemic generated have revealed our belief in a level-playing field for everyone, regardless of whatever artificial artifices we invent, is nowhere near reality. 

COVID-19, like Isaias, will at some point pass. What will remain of it and from it are the lessons we choose to learn and what we do with the knowledge we've gained.  
-bill kenny

Revisiting a Classic

There've been some stories lately here in the Northeast as more and more of us take to the woods on weekends seeking respite from COVID-19 protections about some close and even closer encounters with animals like bears who live all the time in the woods. It seems they're not as fond of tourists as has been advertised.

Reminded me of that joke as a kid where two guys are out hiking in the forest when they spot a bear and the first one bends over and reties the laces on his sneakers and the other one asks him why since neither of them can outrun the bear and the first guy explains I don't have to outrun the bear; just you. Ba rump bump bump.

It would appear the National Park Service may have heard that very same joke.

Speaking of jokes.

I suspect Coldplay get tired of hearing that one, though not as tired as I am of hearing them.

But as Lyle Lovett once sang, "So meet a bear and take him out to lunch with you/And even though your friends may stop and stare/Just remember that's a bear there in the bunch with you/And they just don't come no better than a bear."
-bill kenny

The Ever Present Past

I'm wondering and worrying that the time may come when we, or someone like us down the road, look at this point in our history and thinks it's 'The Good Old Days." It's hard to imagine but imagination has never been my strong suit.

Others have been far better at seeing what's next, maybe being, as this excerpt from Carl Sagan illustrates, a little too good at seeing what's up around the next bend.

The good news would seem to be we need not fear the future as everything he warned us about has already happened.
-bill kenny

Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV

It's really hard for me, the unapologetic fossil that I am, to believe it's been forty-six years since Richard Milhous Nixon resigned the Presidency of the United States. Those were, in words the late John Lennon was to sing early in the next decade, strange days indeed. 

Nixon, always a pragmatist had watched his enablers desert him as the ripples in the political pond widened from the Watergate burglary swamping his ship of state, announced his intention the night before, August 8, 1974, in a televised press conference covered by all three major networks (this was all pre-cable, remember) and departed office the following morning. Try as I might, I don't recall jubilation, rioting, or anything other than a sigh of relief that, as Gerald Ford who succeeded him phrased it, 'our long national nightmare is over.' 

It wasn't of course and many of the effects of the resignation and the schism it created in our nation exist and persist to this day with nearly all of us (except those 160K plus already dead from the #TrumpVirus) choosing sides even when there shouldn't be an us or them.

I can't help but wonder just how much stranger things have to get around here before we see a repeat of Marine One lifting off from the White House Lawn this time starring the Beige Buffoon, but a part of me wants the satisfaction of voting the Incompetent Greedy Grifter OUT of office in November. But the other part of me, just wants the head noise to end and soon.

-bill kenny 

The Visual Aid to Support the Point

The expression goes, "Bloom where you are planted." 

Discovered yesterday on Williams Street it's very true.
-bill kenny

By George

There was a time when social media was fun.

That was ONCE upon a time, apparently.
-bill kenny

Oppenheimer's Deadly Toy

Seventy-five years ago today in the early morning of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. 

"The bomber’s primary target was the city of Hiroshima, located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea. Hiroshima had a civilian population of almost 300,000 and was an important military center, containing about 43,000 soldiers.

"At approximately 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima time the Enola Gay released “Little Boy,” its 9,700-pound uranium gun-type bomb, over the city.

"Tibbets immediately dove away to avoid the anticipated shock wave. Forty-three seconds later, a huge explosion lit the morning sky as Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above the city, directly over a parade field where soldiers of the Japanese Second Army were doing calisthenics." 

The bombing marked the beginning, suggest some historians, of what we've come to call our modern era. I'm still not sure they didn't mean (t)error.  

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

We're left to await the whimper.

Three-quarters of a century onwards, it seems to me we're older but no wiser.
"Between the idea And the reality; Between the motion And the act; Falls the Shadow."
-bill kenny

Temporary Reality

It's probably just me (again) but it's a little disconcerting watching television and seeing all the commercials during newscasts for 'Back To School' supplies, dormitory outfitting, clothing, shoes, blueberry muffins (just checking to see if you were still following along) because the newscasts the commercials are sandwiched around are giving me the very distinct impression that the traditional back to school countdown we go through every year at this time is not what is actually going to happen, and perhaps shouldn't be happening at all.

If you watched Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who participated in Governor Lamont's COVID Daily Summary  Monday afternoon, you saw and heard a message, not unlike the one shared Sunday morning by Doctor Deborah Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force  with CNN's Dana Bash. 

My takeaway from both doctors, and the busload of infectious diseases doctors and virologists who've been here, there, and everywhere around the dial and within the pages of nearly every newspaper and magazine for months is that we are nowhere near ready for a return to any form of our normal, be it new, used, gently-preowned or otherwise. 

If you're someone who believes the suggested precautions of responsible physical distancing, mask-wearing when you can't physically distance, and soap-and-water hand-washing are 'fake news,' 'alarmist' or are somehow in some way an infringement on your 'rights,' I hope you can take solace that the coronavirus probably doesn't care what you believe. 

If your argument is 'but the guidance keeps changing,’ good news! That means science evolves as new facts are learned. It’s called knowledge and knowledge is, or should be, power. Not too many centuries ago we believed the earth was the center of the universe (some of us believe we still are) and many once thought the earth was flat. And look at us now, all science and stuff. Ain’t it grand? 

Whether it's 'opening up' the stores, churches, beaches, and other aspects of what we used to think of as our everyday lives and economy, or 'letting the kids go back to school,' don't pretend either is a simple either/or proposition. 

As Governor Lamont's Monday briefing emphasized in terms of 'return to school' the number of positive tests per 100,000 residents will weigh heavily into how any return is handled. His briefing slide Monday had three tiers (with appropriate safeguards across all three) with 'in-person' being less than 10 positives per 100,000; 'hybrid' (remote and in-person) for rates ranging between 10 and 25 positives and 'remote' for any and all rates higher than 25 positives per 100,000.

Dr. Fauci's preference would be in-person instruction with students and teachers in classrooms for many reasons to include psychological, to support socialization between and among students, as well as nutritional, because so many students of all grades rely on schools for breakfasts and lunches but even as he offered that he also added that the principal determinant should always be the safety, health, and welfare of each child and every teacher.

So do parents buy back to school clothes and do teachers prepare for classroom instruction in less than a month's time?. Right now, we need to acknowledge that our reality is both temporary and subject to frequent change. I was once told 'the purpose of education is to learn the rules of the game better than anyone else so you can change the rules.' 

Right now, the rules are in flux and all we can do is all we are doing.
-bill kenny

 

Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?

Hint: this game until recently was a lot more fun.

When Kennedy was President, we aspired to go to the moon. Now, #Winning.

-bill kenny

But We Continue to Wonder Why This Happens

I didn't grow up in a house with guns, handguns, or rifles. We thought of ourselves as living in the sticks, though with the exception of the last house that both my mother and father lived in (which was NOT technically at the end of the earth, though you could see the end of the earth from their driveway) but we were more suburban than urban or wilderness.

There were a lot of us and all of us were varying degrees of headstrong and opinionated so it may have been for the best that we weren't any more weaponized than we were (and quite often we were already more weaponized than we needed to be).   

I get the whole Second Amendment thing, despite what any ammosexuals might think of my cognitive abilities. After all, it's not that hard to learn by heart, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." especially when it suits your purposes to not consider the first thirteen words (as they are inconvenient for so many GI Joes and Janes). 

What I don't get is how I live in a country with more guns than people and what so many of those people think is 'reasonable and responsible' to own in terms of guns. And if you're one of those RWNJs whose convinced the Deep State gummint is comin' for your guns then I don't think we have anything more to say to one another.

One hundred Americans die from gun violence every day of the calendar year. 
E.V.E.R.Y. day.

This time one year ago was just another day like E.V.E.R.Y. other day here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs. Only the locale changed. And all we did afterward is all we do E.V.E.R.Y. single time it happens. Nothing. 
-bill kenny

Fanning the Flame of Memory's Candle

You have a lot to think about these days, I know, with a lot of worries and what-might-happens on your plate so it's okay if you didn't remember an anniversary today. It's not like Hallmark ever offered a card that we could send to one another as a save-the-date reminder or something.

Today, three decades ago, Saddam Hussein invaded and overran in very short order, the Kingdom of Kuwait which led the United States, with other nations and varying degrees of enthusiasm and commitment, to respond by initiating Operation Desert Shield which was to become Operation Desert Storm to restore democracy (= to safeguard supplies of oil) in an area of the world that had and continues to have almost no idea, and even less use, for the notion. 

This is a remarkable read (and I look forward to Part Two as well), so I hope you do.
-bill kenny    

Not Quite the Wild Kingdom

I realize a lot of folks actively dislike the "Flo" TV commercials for Progressive insurance but she's been the mascot or spokesperson for over a decade and if she weren't helping them sell insurance, they'd have long since packed her apron and shuffled off to Buffalo.

As a kid, we had a Flo-like ubiquitous character for, of all things, toilet paper, the much-maligned Mr. Whipple. If you grew up with the Charmin' Bears, you may have never heard of him, though we're all familiar with where bears would use Charmin'. 

At the top of my list for most annoying TV icons are the dynamic duo pitching Liberty Mutual which, I'm sure, is a wonderful insurance company, Limu Emu and Doug (and that's two-plus minutes of your life you will never get back). They are, however, if reports are to be believed, no match for Kevin and Carol from Down Under. 

I'm wondering if Rod Hull's estate has expressed any interest in taking any possible future collaboration on the road.
-bill kenny