Charles In Charge

Of course, Halloween is different this year. Everything is different this year in case you hadn't noticed. Halloween is one of those holidays that started out, in my mind, for kids and has assumed a whole new life as an adult drinking-and-let's-get-dressed-up-and-misbehave game. 

So please don't think I'm less than kid-friendly, but most of the moaning about how COVID-19 has 'ruined' Halloween for the kids is coming from adults feeling sorry for themselves. I'm not willing to join that pity-party because nearly-seven decades on the ant farm have taught me when it comes to feeling sorry for ourselves, we bi-peds are remarkably capable at it and incredibly competitive.

Besides, my dim memories as a child in a costume with a mask whose eyeholes didn't align with my own suggest the wee ones might not be as nearly upset about the change in plans as we taller ones might be. As long as there's candy (NO Mary Janes or Charleston Chews, thank you), the tykes should be just fine.

Not that you're going see any of them going Full Charlie, or in this case, definitely NOT Brown.
-bill kenny  

Looking Back while Looking Ahead

When I was very young, and despite your snicker I actually was young once, going through the primary grades of St Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, All Souls' Day which is this Monday was, aside from Good Friday, the saddest day of the year.

When you're nine years old and have transferred to 'the Catholic School' from Pine Grove Manor in Franklin Township because there was finally room in the class near the start of the fall for you and Neil, your next-door neighbor who is now suddenly promoted to best friend, the more you think about the implications of All Souls' Day, the sadder it gets.

As I've aged (badly) I've developed quarrels with the Catholic Church in which I was raised but most of that churn is what I've taken to calling middle-level management. With all due respect to the priests, bishops, and even His Holiness, the Pope, I'm not sure how much of the edifice the one true church (as it calls itself when it finds/feels itself under attack) has created since Jesus Christ founded it, Petrus, would pass the 'R U Serious?" test with the Lord.

We're not grading on a curve, either, guys. Wanted to pass that along. But one of the things I still believe, regardless of my exact grid coordinates in the theological hemisphere, is that there can be nothing more tragic than to be forever forgotten. As a primary grade school student, I used to fall asleep trying to remember every single person I had met in my life; a tough enough job when you're nine but when you're sixty-eight, it borders on the impossible.

But maybe that's what 'heaven' actually is-the memory of you by another person. Look at history-much of it, as Willy the Bard noted, is a tale told by an---well, never mind who's doing the telling, but pay close attention to who's doing the remembering. Is forgotten the opposite of famous? And who prays for the souls of the faithfully departed when no one remains who recalls who they were? When facts fade, faith must suffice. 
-bill kenny

FWP

I think we'd all agree that significant portions of the world are in very sad shape right now. I'm not talking about those parts we might call First World and the COVID-19 pandemic, economic downturn, shortages economy, abrogation of equal rights, and/or a dozen other issues.

Huge segments of the world's population are at or near the subsistence level, that point where living hand to mouth is so precarious that there's an excellent chance you need to keep checking to make sure you still have all the fingers on the hand you started out with after you put it in your mouth.

Those parts of the world didn't need a pandemic for things to turn bad; things were already bad and now they are heading towards unbearable. And then you have the curious case of Bill Gross, Amy Schwartz, Mark Towfiq, and Carol Nakahara. I have every intention of feeling sorry for them this coming Sunday morning at about two (I lead a busy life and can't squeeze then in until then) and perhaps even organizing a telethon.

What? We set the clocks back Sunday morning at two? Oh well.
-bill kenny

Further On Up the Road

It’s hard to believe that by this time next Wednesday we will have gone from knee-deep in election year hoopla to waist-deep in big muddy aftermath, depending on for whom you voted and the results of those votes (and how far along the tabulation process is). 

That will probably be of small solace this week as your social media feeds, your email and snail-mail inboxes, and newspapers fill to bursting with information, letters of support, and endorsements for everyone on the ballot, sometimes to include people of whom you'd not yet heard. 

Here's the thing about all of that: the letters to the editor, comments in the online forums of the newspapers, calls to the radio shows, heated discussions with family and neighbors in your living room or street corner--ALL OF IT MEANS NOTHING if you don't vote. 

Nothing changes if we don't make the commitment to change. You want to blame somebody for the way things are? Start by looking in the mirror and then work your way around the room. It's certainly a target-rich environment, isn't it?

If you've been holding your breath reading this far and waiting for me to tell you either for whom I voted (I cast a mail ballot two weeks ago) or for whom you could/should vote, you can exhale and resume normal speed as neither is going to happen. 

That you vote is all that concerns me. We’re deciding everything from who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation’s capital, who speaks for us in the House of Representatives, who we'd like as our State Senator and our State Representative plus selecting a registrar of voters. 

Voting is serious business. Not everyone around the world gets to do it and a lot of us had friends and family, not to mention complete strangers sacrifice their lives so we could have this moment of choice but no pressure. If you want to vote, you'll make the time and if you don't, you'll make an excuse. 

But should you make that excuse grab your stuff and go sit on the far side of the city, or better yet, the state. Go ahead, start walking. Keep going. If I can still hear you complaining about how things are, and you decide not to vote, you'll need to be so far from me I can't hear you at all. 

Winston Churchill once said “Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”  

While Churchill was many things, prescient wasn't necessarily one of them so I don't think his remarks were intended as a commentary on this or any specific election but your mileage may vary depending on your perspective. 

Do you see government as something done to you or for you? Are you a victim or a victor? There’s the magic of choice in our imperfect form of government. Freedom of choice works best when everyone who can make a choice, chooses to make one.

So, choose, or we all lose.
-bill kenny

Yip, Yip, Yip, Yip

One of the consequences of the pandemic has been a body blow to many aspects of our economy. The number of new filings for unemployment benefits, while less than it was some months ago remains high and if you're a person in search of a job, the statistics aren't an abstraction but something you live with every day. 

Found this on Tumblr, surprisingly NOT from one of the pornbots that tend to follow me for about fifteen minutes and then realize their mistake. 

The good news is they can start Monday.
-bill kenny

Silk Purse or Something Else?

The longer the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying precautions go on, the more intriguing some of the headlines that catch my eye seem to become. Perhaps I've gone stir-crazy as opposed to stir-fry. 

But at least this one is both interesting and in times of plague battling, perhaps even useful.  

Quite frankly, this story has neither of those qualities to recommend it. And at a time when millions of our fellow citizens are facing food shortages, evictions, and worse, I'm not sure "only $6.99" is the marketing hill I'd wanna die on.
-bill kenny

As Applies in the Real World

My Mom, and probably yours as well, unless you're Donald Trump, raised me to believe and practice honesty is the best policy. 

Look to your left. Now look to your right. What do you think? 

Yeah, me too.

Let's adjust the maxim for the times in which we now live. Honesty remains the best policy, but insanity, say many lawyers, is the best defense. 
-bill kenny

I've Heard this One before but with a Ferret Juggler

Sometimes the universe helps a fella out. Like with this news story. 

Thanks!
-bill kenny

Life Goes On

With so much going on in the world and so much of it going wrong, I decided I could use a break from all the buzzing and head noise and so could you.

You're welcome to tell yourself your own John Lennon lyric punchline.
-bill kenny

Frankly, It's Long Past Time

Not sure here in the US of A how cake bakers who get upset about wedding orders from gay couples, or Roman Catholic Supreme Court Justices, both the confirmed beer-drinker one and the sanctimoniously prospective one might feel about what Pope Francis shared yesterday, but this FARC thinks it's about damn time even if it's nothing more than a good first (half) step.  

If all you need really is love, then, just like American Express, NEVER leave home without it.
-bill kenny

No Maybes About It: I Am Amazed

This is the annual celebration of one of the three best days of my life. 

The other two are the natal anniversaries of our children, but this is the biggest and bestest of the three: my wife and I's wedding anniversary.

She can be forgiven if she has slightly less exuberance when this day arrives. Forty-three years of living every single day with O Henry's Red Chief will dampen one's enthusiasms-though it certainly hasn't had that effect on mine. 

I offered what follows some years back in this space and it was then, and will always be, true. Sigrid geboren Schubert, you are the most wonderful thing that has or could have ever happened to me. And I will love you forever and even longer than that.

I Know I Ain't Nobody's Bargain

I was born in April of 1952 but in far more ways than I can explain (and far more than I can ever hope to understand) I think of today as being the day I was really born.

It was on this day in 1977 Sigrid Schubert and I wed in the Federal Republic of Germany, known then as West Germany, at Offenbach am Main's Rathaus at twenty after ten in the morning with Evelyn F, Sigrid's friend, and Chris H, my friend to this very day, as witnesses.

I met her in Sachsenhausen on Christmas Eve night 1976 and I asked her to marry me the following Easter, April 3rd. So suave and debonair was I (not) that she told me later for a moment as I started to ask her to marry me she thought I was breaking up with her. Yep, even then I was Mr. Cool, Calm, and Collected. 

How lucky can one guy get, eh? I've never known what she saw or sees in me aside from a great personality, rapier-like wit complementing a puckish sense of humor, a body like Adonis (Joey Adonis from West Orange over by Prospect Plains), almost hobbled by a nearly crippling sense of modesty that has been my lifelong cross to bear and delusions, (I almost always forgot those) but she is my entire world.  

She is everything I have wanted to be or to do and she makes me a better man by knowing that she loves me, often despite who I am. I can remember the most minute of details of that day and have driven her and both of our adult children to distraction and beyond recounting them incessantly AND also on an annual basis with today as my excuse, so I'll skip them here, but they know what will happen, just not when.

Fur immer und ewig

I hope with all my heart wherever in this world you find yourself that you also have and keep someone who will hold your heart forever as she has mine.  I don't remember often enough to tell her I love her as I should though I will today and I will again vow to be better about that for every day we have together for all the days that remain to us.

Happy Anniversary, angel eyes. 
-bill kenny

Do Something or I Will

I've never understood the glibness of  Pantload45's "Make America Great Again" slogan since the country I was born and raised in was, I thought, already pretty great. I figured the only way it could and would get greater would be if everyone got to share in that greatness. 

After three and a half years of close observation, I've concluded President Bad Hair Plugs and Cheap Dental Veneers and I have vastly different definitions of 'Great."

Making yourself big by making everyone else feel small is no path to greatness. 

Two weeks from today is Election Day. 

Vote.
-bill kenny

Alone and Lonely Are Two Different Words

"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

...for two different concepts.
-bill kenny

Wake Me When We've Won

In 2016, one candidate for President assured the voting populace that in the aftermath of his election 'you'll get so tired of winning!' 

Yeah. I'm thinking maybe we've reached that fatigue point.
-bill kenny

Go Together like Ham and Eggs

Laurel and Hardy, Bonnie and Clyde, Peaches and Herb, Nichols and May, Simon and Garfunkel, Penn and Teller. Soon, joining the pantheon of immortal duos.

High Crimes & Misdemeanors. Wanted for gaslighting in all fifty states.
-bill kenny

Weather or Not

Earlier this week we had rain like you wouldn't believe which was better than okay because we've been running light on precipitation since last winter, I'm told, when we got off easy with the snowfall (not I remember it that way or would have complained had it happened). 

On a day with temperatures climbing to close to seventy degrees, I laced up my sneakers and set off for the Lower Falls at Uncas Leap and was certainly not disappointed by how the rainfall had helped turn the Yantic River's mutterings and murmurings into the early stages of a roar.

Lower Falls at Uncas Leap

The longer the day progressed the more the winds picked up at one point very nearly blowing my FC Bayern Munich ballcap off my rapidly balding skull. The reflected glare might have knocked a bird out of the sky so I held on for dear life. 

I paused to catch a breath and to grab a picture of the flag pole rack and the gusts of wind not stopping at Chelsea Parade. 

Chelsea Parade

Pleased with myself and at the peace in my little piece of the universe I headed for home.
-bill kenny

  

Rhymes with Chump

"This is the most important and crucial period of your lives, for what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well determine which way your life shall go." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The stewardship of the nation is – has been thrown away to somebody who doesn't have a clue as to what that means. … And unfortunately, we have somebody who I feel doesn't have a grasp of the deep meaning of what it means to be an American."- Bruce Springsteen

End the Trump Show. 

Vote November 3, 2020.
-bill kenny

Worlds Apart

Not that you've asked, but it's 137.1 miles from Joseph Perkins Road here in Norwich to the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street in the financial district of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Google Maps suggests it's about a two and a half-hour drive, I'm guessing with a good tailwind. 

Of course, I was thinking it was a lot farther away than that while out walking late Friday morning after encountering cars and trucks bumper to bumper at the intersection of  Crescent and Rockwell Streets with a line of traffic snaking down Rockwell and then left onto the McKinley Street Extension going beyond the intersection with Coles Court and about two car lengths away from all the way back to where McKinley Street Extension ends and Reynolds Road begins.    

It was only when I got there I realized the actual start of all the traffic was where Perkins, McKinley, and Reynolds intersected and that cars and trucks went all the way back down Perkins, to where it intersected with Crescent and in essence, formed a snake eating its own tail. 

The vehicles at the tip of the spear were part of just one of the caravans at various locations and times throughout Norwich in the Farmers to Families program, providing fresh meat, produce, and dairy products to those in need as a result of the coronavirus pandemic (that was going away in the warm weather like a miracle if memory serves me correctly. Except, of course, it didn't and the ripples of the pandemic continue to expand ever wider, impacting more and more of us). 

Around the time the first boxes were being placed in cars, back on Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 28,528.03 points, making someone, somewhere feel a lot better, I suspect. 

There were four distribution sites in addition to the Norwich Free Academy, three of them drive-thru, including United Community and Family Services at 47 Town St., Greeneville Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, at St. Mary’s Church parking lot, 70 Central Ave., as well as boxes for Norwich Public Housing residents, 10 Westwood Park, and for residents of the AHEPA housing complex, 380 Hamilton Avenue, offering 1,200 prepackaged boxes of food and about 200 gallons of milk, Each food box had five pounds of meat, five pounds of produce, and five pounds of dairy products (like butter and cheese) as well as a gallon of milk for each recipient

The US Department of  Agriculture Coronavirus Food Food Assistance Program purchased about four billion dollars of food from large and small producers who'd been hurt by closures of restaurants, and schools precipitated by the pandemic and hired distribution companies who'd also been hit hard economically to package and transport the food across our country. 

Agencies including United Community Family Services, Gemma E. Moran United Way/Labor Food Bank, St. Vincent de Paul Place soup kitchen, Norwich Human Services, as well as U.S. Foods, encouraged by Mayor Nystrom and other public officials, joined forces in what’s intended to be a continuing outreach of neighbors helping neighbors for as long as needed and supplies last. Right now, I'm still angry that we have come to this in the Land of Milk and Honey and see the gallant local effort as little more than trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon and hoping I'm wrong.

You didn't miss reading about any of this or seeing pictures in your newspaper over the weekend because there was no coverage but you can see compassion in action thanks to photographs by Zechariah Stover and Greeneville Neighborhood Revitalization Zone on Facebook. 

As I walked past the rows of cars and trucks near NFA, the faces of those in the vehicles told the same story over and over again, of both hope and fear. Hope, because, help was literally around the corner but fear because what if all the boxes were gone by the time you got to the head of the line? 

I've seen those looks in newsreels of East German citizens back in the days of the Cold War queuing up for food that ran out often before the shop doors opened but never here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, what West Germans always called "Das Land der Unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten," The Land of Unlimited Possibilities. Except right now, it's Hard Times in the Land of Plenty. While some crow loudly about all the gains made in recent years in the Stock Market, Wall Street sure as hell isn’t Main Street. Ask anyone you see in a car hoping there’s just one more food box. 
-bill kenny  

George Banks Meets The Donald

I think it was my dad who told me you had to have a sense of intelligence in order to possess a sense of humor. To this day I've never figured out if he was making a general observation or offering me an oblique compliment. Based on the number of years in our shared time on this orb, I'm guessing the former. 

Anyway. 

I think if he were to have lived to see The Age of Trump, he'd be pretty vociferous and savage in his criticism of #YamTits and his trusty (more or less) companion, #PrettyFlyforaRacistGuy.

Hum if you don't know the words.
-bill kenny

So We've Aged. But Did We Grow?

When we were kids, Columbus Day was a big deal. In New York City the Department of Public (almost dropped the L off that; awkward) Works used to paint the white line on Fifth Avenue purple for the annual parade that was always held on the real date of the holiday, October 12. 

In light of so much I, as a man nearing the end of his sixth decade now knows that as a boy of twelve I didn't about the Rape of Paradise which ensued after Columbus' arrival, it is very possible blood-red might have been a better choice of colors. 

When I was a kid, all I ever cared about was the day off, just like kids across the country. We all recited the rhyme because that's how we knew what we did know about Columbus and since there wasn't a snappy couplet about genocide we didn't hear anything about that aspect of discovering the New World (I also don't remember the Arakawa natives part but some of the little gray cells have had some rough days). 

Looking at the world as it is and how all settlement and civilization has developed, I'm not sure it's just Old Chris we should be putting in the defendant's docket and charging. I'm thinking a look in the mirror, as well as a glance out a window, might increase our catch significantly.

And compounding the cacophony of facts clashing with opinions is the realization that not only did Columbus not discover the New World, but he also wasn't the first. We've spent hundreds of years observing a historical event that is neither historic nor an actual event. Sort of like observing Christmas as Santa's birthday.

And now, as it's the dot on the "i" in Monday holiday, we have another excuse (and sale opportunity) despite all of the concerns about the pandemic we've yet come to grips with, now to go out and buy bedding or is that just me in the last couple of days? Sandwiched between the torrent of 'My candidate for whatever elected office this spot is about while yours eats bugs" commercials we have a steady stream of ads selling mattresses. I'm not sure there's any more of a connection of one to the other than there was to India from Bermuda back in the day. 

Speaking of which, you have to cross an ocean and then half a continent from a basement warehouse at Bertramstrasse 6 in Frankfurt am Main to get to a certain city in Ohio. All I know for sure is such a journey can take decades and cost you more than you ever believed you could pay when you first started. But it's worth every penny, for your thoughts and otherwise.   
-bill kenny

More Child of the Novelist than Child of the Novelty

I'm in the process, perhaps, this week, of getting a new cellphone as I've taken less than good care of my current trusty and trusted companion and it's tottering on the brink of exhaustion. In the autumn of both my life and in a year that could end today and I'd not miss for a moment, the prospect of shopping for a new smartphone does not set my pulse racing but there was a time when I and the world were young and nearly everything was new(ish). 

I don't remember those times, or for that matter writing this over a decade ago, I called it:

Paging Mr. Wizard to the White Courtesy Phone

I no longer ever go anywhere without my smartphone, as promised by my son when I got it. I, who went for weeks without even knowing where my cellphone ever was (hint: in the cubbie where we put the opened mail in our kitchen to the left of the backdoor), now is more likely to nearly forget my wallet than my newest accessory.

And with good reason! My smartphone, probably like yours, has superpowers, if you watch enough of the TV commercials and take a three-credit evening course two nights a week for the rest of your life, "Zen and your Blackberry Tour" or some other such folderol, if only you knew how to harness them. 

That it still takes me forever to figure out how to answer the phone when someone calls me (originally, of course, the whole point behind having a cell phone), is ignored as I struggle to download some Mad Ap that will make me four inches taller, tell me the weather in Dubrovnik or where I can find the nearest gasoline station (that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light just isn't enough of a dead giveaway).

My smartphone can make movies, take pictures (of course!) record conversations if anyone ever talks to me (an untested capability), and allows me to listen to Slacker and surf the web-among other things (the rest I don't think I understand). 

I've even learned how to 'text', not like the kids can, of course. I'm too old for that and you have to take Pilates for Thumbs to get the full effect. And tell me there's nothing better than watching full episodes of a show I missed watching on the TV in my living room instead of on the one and a half-inch diagonal display on my phone. The Marconi Mafia should have lived long enough to see their handiwork. Yes indeed, to a man with a hammer the whole world is a nail

I don't really understand how I can 'miss' phone calls because I wasn't ideally located in the coverage area or was in a 'dead zone' (who came up with that turn of phrase?) but I can still get text messages. My son, who has his patience, I assume, from his foster father as I had none to give him, has explained the concept to me at least a dozen times. And except that I never understand it, he does a good job of it. 

To me, it ranks up there with the mystery of the Thermos bottle. It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. How does it know the difference?
-bill kenny

This Memory Made Possible by a Grant from the SPCA

I've taken after dinner to wandering a pocket park of sorts not that far from my house, Chelsea Parade, where for the ten to twelve minutes it takes me to make a circuit and the return to our house you can see all manner of amazing and amusing persons and situations. All of which reminded of a moment from some time ago when the whimsy got in the way. I called it: 

Someone Had Better Tell Him About the Rabbits

Driving home yesterday afternoon on Washington Street I saw a lady walking with two dogs-one barely a dog at all, in terms of carbon footprint while the other looked like a Great Dane crossed with a Brick House. I flashed on that expression always attributed to people from the South (I wonder if Bridgeport counts if I'm in Norwich) about 'it's not the size of the dog in a fight but the size of the fight in the dog.' while looking at the pair take their mistress for a pull.

She had her hands full. The big one, whom I named Lenny, was slow and plodding just taking it all in. The tiny one, George, was pushing to get ahead and move on--possibly not even sure where he was heading, but making great time while doing it. He barked at every falling leaf while Lenny moved as if in slow-motion while we were back up in the booth reviewing the replay.

It was entirely possible that one of Lenny's umm, movements (quick save on my part) would probably weigh more than George with his leash and collar on, and from the distance that George kept from Lenny it seemed, perhaps, he had come to the same realization. A chopped Honda with a rear spoiler, because that's what keeps the rear wheels on the ground when the nitro kicks in on the 1.8-liter engine, went humpty-bumpty down Washington, windows wide open, the driver sharing his music with the world.

The microscopic rep from the Animal Kingdom was the first to voice his displeasure, I suspect because the bass was so overdriven (cracks seemed to appear in the sidewalk and birds and bugs were plummeting stone deaf and dead to earth) it was probably painful for such sensitive ears. George, as befit his size, actually sounded like a squeak toy as he registered his protest.

Lenny, on the other paw, seemed at first to not notice or mind, as he plodded on oblivious to the SOHC of the Apocalypse heading in his direction, boom chackalacka boom. When the Honda could have been no more than ten feet from him, Lenny let out a HUGE bellow, the force of which may have actually slowed the Honda down and stepped into the street, dragging his dog-walking companion with him.

The Honda hot rod stood on the brakes, at least as good as his subwoofers, and Lenny stood on his back legs with his front paws on the car's hood and howled in a piteously pathetic tone that simultaneously told you he was hurting and promised he wouldn't be in pain alone for much longer. Even I, who have difficulty telling which end of the dog to pet and which not to, knew there was no translation needed from the Dog Whisperer.

The driver fell out, more than exited from, the car, frantic that he'd hit the dog. He should have had such luck, instead, he had the animal's fullest attention. The woman was struggling to control George who was doing that small dog classic barking while straining on the leash routine that translates as 'let me at him and I'll murder the bum!'

Meanwhile, woebegone Lenny yelped for relief from forces he could not perceive. Eventually, the driver realized the sound system was the culprit and turned it all a tick to the left of eleven, the dogs quieted down and he got back into his ride. I was just driving past as I watched George, always quick to hold a grudge I suspect, christen the guy's front tire. I figured as angry as speed racer might be about that later, he should be grateful Lenny hadn't followed George's lead.
-bill kenny

Imagine All the People

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. 

Happy 80th Birthday, John Lennon. 
-bill kenny

Memories of Driving a Stolen Car

This is from a long time ago and could be part of #Pantload45's "Law & Order" tweet anthology series except for the part where it's not. A decade-plus ago, our daughter's car disappeared from out in front of our house. For three weeks afterward, I thought the theft was the worst part. I was wrong. 

At the time, I called this: 

Greetings from Wethersfield Avenue

I had never heard of Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford until shortly after nine this past Sunday morning when a phone call from the Norwich Police Department advised me that the Hartford Police had located my daughter's 1995 Mitsubishi Mirage earlier Sunday and had it towed to a storage lot on that street. I called the number which turned out to be a used parts dealer (= cars, and lots of them) who confirmed the car was there and that I could come and get it Monday.

So yesterday morning my son, Patrick and I, made the trip to the outskirts of The Capital City to see what remained of the car that my daughter had regarded as her own for the last two years until it disappeared from in front of our house three Sundays earlier.

Jim and Betty are quite the pair behind the counter and the decor of the place is early car crash with some post-modern abattoir thrown in. The soda machine vends at seventy-five cents a can which hasn't been the case since what, 1978, or so? The snacks in the neighboring machine look so old through the glass door you know better than to buy them. All around the walls are printed notices that 'loud, vulgar and profane language will NOT be tolerated." I soon learned why.

Jim wears the worst hairpiece I have ever seen. I'm not observant about this kind of stuff at all. One time, years ago, my wife had to tell me that a colleague with whom I'd worked for three years wore a hairpiece because I had no clue. Not this time. This guy's was so bad, I could barely keep myself from staring at it. It looked like a badger had died on his head, and no one wanted to be the first to admit to noticing it. I just played along.

Betty, who spends all day with very nasty people like the guy who came in about ten minutes behind us, is pre-emptively unpleasant (I assume to everyone). In less than one breath, after asking for my driver's license to prove I was who I said I was (there's a lot of faux me's around Hartford, I guess. Who knew?), she explained that I owed her $118 for the tow, the storage, and the municipal fee and all payments were cash only. 

The notion of paying that kind of money for my own property struck me as slightly surreal-and she explained someone had to pay, and the thief could not be found, so why not me? I was struck dumb at that moment not so much by the eloquence of the argument as that I was close to one hundred dollars light on the fee.

Both of them became very nice people once they understood we, too, were nice people, though I think Betty got alarmed when she explained to me 'you can go get the car, but your friend has to stay out here.' I struggled, and failed, to successfully explain Patrick wasn't my "friend" but was my son--and of course, he was my friend but not that kind of friend. She waited until I sort of ran out words and, exhausted from tripping over my own tongue, I nodded as she repeated her point.

We got the money sorted out (= I paid it with help from my friend, my son) and I got to hike, with Jack who seemed able to lift cars without the benefit of a tow-truck, to the far corner of a huge lot with inordinate numbers of cars neatly racked and stacked and in various stages of undress. 

I hated junkyards as a kid--I understand the need and appreciate the savings they provide, but there's something so sad about a car in which you invested so much time and attention, that carried you to Grandma's house and vacations at the shore, now rusting away, unnoticed behind the tall, ugly fence under the big sky.

The car seemed lost besides the mountains of metal surrounding it, but from the outside seemed to be pretty much there. A walk around the car revealed the passenger side lock had been punched in, which is how the thief got in and, sitting behind the wheel with an ignition that had been gutted, I realized I started the car the same way he did, by putting a flat-bladed screwdriver in the starting assembly. The engine roared to life and the only hole in the dashboard was where the radio had been.

When I couldn't get the brakes to stop the car rounding the corner to bring the car to the front of the lock, I had a funny feeling. Hurray for emergency brakes. Popping the hood, Patrick noticed there was literally NO brake fluid in the reservoir and Jim obliged us with a complimentary refill while I struggled to understand what kind of a lunatic would steal brake fluid. Turns out ZERO kind.

From the bubbles in the reservoir when I hit the brakes, to the sticky dark stuff that started dripping on the right front tire and out of a hose in the engine, I realized, albeit the slowest of the three of us peering under the hood, the thief had broken the brake lines and, no matter how many plans we had made for what to do next with the car, all were for nothing.

Patrick went back inside with the title and I signed it over to Jim and Betty for fifty bucks. About half the stuff Michelle remembered being in the car was still in the car, in a brown bag in the back seat and I never did figure out if the Hartford policeman who found the car did this, the wrecker operator or perhaps the thief. 

Patrick and I drove away and I never looked back, not once. Did I mention how much I hate junkyards?
-bill kenny

Revelations Not Quite on the Road to Damascus

I had Breakfast at Epiphany's (of sorts) Sunday afternoon while out walking. I haven't visited the Uncas Leap Heritage Area in a couple of weeks and decided to grab some happy snaps of Lower Falls with my cell phone, hoping the shortfall in rainfall might allow any falls at all. 

I headed down Sachem Street, took the left onto Yantic heading downhill, and made a beeline for my favorite photo perch, past the iron rail fence alongside the sidewalk with a quick right into and through the parking lot created after Public Works took down that eyesore abandoned building (just before you get to the Falls Mill Condominiums) where you can then walk out on the remnants of the rock wall and, when there's water flowing, you can actually feel the spray from the falls just feet away.  

But I was halted in my tracks by the temporary fencing across the parking lot entrance. It was then I had my first Eureka moment. Out of an abundance of caution (there's a lot of that going around right now though probably not nearly enough at least in our nation's capital), the area which is a very popular spot for visitors was closed to help mitigate the possible spread of COVID-19, whose resurgence in our state over the last five days or so has been spearheaded by the uptick of reported cases right here in Norwich.  

I am chagrined to report my first reaction to the barriers was one of annoyance. I wasn't going to be able to take the pictures I wanted to take and ...then I had my second Eureka moment. It was precisely that mentality, that whole 'it's all about me and what I want to do and nobody can tell me otherwise' frame of mind that is behind so much of our ongoing struggle and failure to control and contain a contagion that has killed (as of Sunday) very nearly 215,000 of us. 

You and I might see that death toll as a tragedy but someone else apparently sees it as a 'good job' and in answer to that old question about 'what do you want, a medal?' seemingly the answer is more of a commemorative coin to celebrate the triumph. (I'd love to have Pantload45's nerve in my tooth; every root canal would be like a spa day.)

Talk about sheepish! I watched the press conference live (on the city's Facebook page) Thursday afternoon and listened carefully to all those who spoke and still, on Sunday, was annoyed that I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it (and I've seen this online and elsewhere) because of the 'Nanny State.' 

When I started out for Uncas Leap, I walked past election season lawn signs of well-intentioned (I'm assuming) folks seeking office so we can 'Open Up Connecticut' and 'Get Back to Work!' (I'll confess to thinking less kindly of those same office seekers when they blow up my cellphone with messages on the same topics) and while I realize the 'let's hurry up and get normal as quickly as we can' feels like a typical response, in this atypical time, it's selfish, self-centered, and ultimately, self-defeating. 

Remember as kids when Mom would say, 'at least we have our health,' (well, mine did anyway and she said it a lot)? That's because health has to be Priority One, and Two and, if necessary Three (or until we run out of numbers) for ALL of us, not just some, and it's got NOTHING to do with politics.

Frustrated photo buffs who can't take a picture, pro football fans saddened their team won't play this week, and shoppers annoyed or even angry they have to wear facemasks while in the grocery, we need to all take a breath and a minute to get over ourselves and then try again to be the caring and considerate people we tell ourselves we are. Because we're still not besting this pandemic and we've only ourselves to blame.
-bill kenny 

God's Other Son

I'm a stiff-necked Mick, and the son of one as well. My Dad was the third of four children, all sons, including the oldest, his step-brother, who was a priest and in the era in which he grew up in an Irish family of that size, there was a better than good chance there was at least one priest in the bunch. 

My father was many things but close to first and foremost, he was a devoted and devout son of Holy Mother Church (and if I have to tell which church, one of us needs to visit another blog). His oldest, and namesake, son has an unspoken agreement with the Lord to stay out of one another's way, which, for the most part, I think I've been better at than He.

I'm a FARC, a Fallen Away Roman Catholic, more out of disappointment and sloth than anger and resentment. I see myself as Desplein, the protagonist of Honore De Balzac's short story, The Atheist's Mass (minus any of Desplein's intelligence or medical abilities), and figured I was fated to end my days knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door until a wondrous email from Liberty University popped into my inbox, dare I say it, like a miracle (I did dare). Behold:

I must confess (didja see what I did there?), they had me at "Hi Bill." A post-retirement second career could be waiting for me if I apply myself. How do you like them loaves and fishes eh? 

I'm already planning on operating my church right out of my home so, pardon my pushiness for that tax exemption, but that means you need to clear your breakfast plate off my kitchen table because that's gonna be my altar. 

Yepper, talk about mysterious ways. Let me count them for you. 
-bill kenny

Good Day Sunshine

The days are growing shorter from both ends now and pretty soon it'll get dark about an hour before it gets light (or at least will feel like it). Saturday was a pretty good day for me, leg pain-wise, to pick 'em up and put 'em down as SSGT Griffey used to instruct us eager (and those of us not so) Airmen of the 7022 BMS as we hurried somewhat reluctantly along the surface of just about every square inch of Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, the largest US airbase in the world without a landing strip (true that).

I walked from my house near Chelsea Parade to the Norwich Harbor and returned home by way of Franklin Street. Enjoy.

A view of the Marina from the Historic River Walk

It's probably NOT the Sloop John B, but it's still pretty

I love when you can't tell where the sky ends and the water begins

-bill kenny

I'll Take Schadenfreude for 750, Alex

You could look it up but I already have.

What else could I be referencing except this.

If you were looking for sympathy from me for Pantload45, you need to check between shit and syphilis in the same dictionary you used for schadenfreude.

You reap what you sow and perhaps for the first time in his entire useless and miserable life, Trump is being held accountable for his actions. It's long overdue, and so is karma.
-bill kenny

Herzlichen Gluckwunsche, 'Shland!

Today, thirty years ago, the Federal Republic of Germany and the People's Republic of Germany Germany formally became (again) one nation, Deutschland. Here are some words I offered on an earlier celebration of today. I called it: 

Sometimes We Do Win

Today is Saturday here in Everybody's Gone Surfin', Surfin' USA, but across the pond in Germany, today is a big deal, den Tag der Deutscher Einheit (Day of German Unity).

I lived in West Germany as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics joined innumerable failed nation-states on the dust heap of history and, in stunningly short order after that happened, the Warsaw Pact held a going out-of-business sale and did.

A friend from back in those days, Roger, shared a terrific article that I hope you'll find the time to peruse so that you can experience through the eyes of an elected West German leader who grew up in a 'house divided' what feelings and emotions he had at that time, and today, looking at the danger zones across Europe, what he fears could happen next on a continent he very much loves.

Roger and I worked together in the same place for quite some time back then and though we had gone in different directions sometime earlier, in a way we both wound up returning to the Land of Boundless Opportunities (click the speaker to hear what Germans call our country and remember some of the things we have called ourselves in the years gone by) because of the seismic shifts that happened in Europe as a result of the Fall of the Wall and reunification.

Today is truly Germany's birthday. Herzlichen Gluckwunsche und alles gut. I have a ton of memories from the run-up to this day and know that for many on both sides of what once was a border, hearts are filled with mixed emotions of what was lost but what has also been gained.

I'd hope Vlad the Impaler is able to catch some of the festivities on Eurovision from his Dacha of Domination on the Black Sea or wherever the feckless b*stard is while his minions toil and terrorize in Georgia and the Ukraine.

Whatever gains you've made, komrad, be advised they're short-lived because when you win, only you win; but when we win, so does everyone else. Ask Honecker and his bright red harmonica. Glück auf! (You'll need it)
- bill kenny

Rhymes with Duty

This November, participatory democracy needs all the help it can get. You're being inundated with calls for all hands on deck, feet in the street, or perhaps some other body part on something else. Maybe this will get your attention.

Subject to your questions, that concludes my briefing unless your question is what to do with that fistful of twenty-dollar bills you're holding a little too tightly. And for that, I have no answer.

Register and vote.
-bill kenny

My Last Original Thought Died of Loneliness

I drove past a realtor's office yesterday that was closed and also for sale. I found it intriguing that the firm handling the sale of the realtor's office property wasn't the realtor himself, but someone else. 

It reminded me of the used car dealership I passed someplace awhile back where Route 82 becomes Route 80 before joining up with Route 34 on the way to New Haven, that had all the lights on, and the pennants strung in the lot but no cars for sale. 

It must be exhilarating to be that good at what you do. We've all seen this happen: the only item left to sell in the store is the display model of the product (so awesome is the demand exceeding the supply). I'm always impressed by people who will say to the clerk, 'I'll take it off your hands but I'll expect a discount' (because it's the display model, it seems). Not me-I'm adding a premium to the price, perhaps doubling it and, if met, I'll treble the price because once the display model is sold-I have NO more of the item at all. Why should you get to solve your problem at my expense? 

So for me, I'd be sitting in that real estate office, with all the lights blazing--even though I have no property to sell except the one I'm working in. Talk about approaching the abyss. And what about the used car dealer with no cars? The curse of success! Ideally, he should/would have gotten a car in trade for every car he sold, thus maintaining a balance and equilibrium. I don't know what happened-perhaps someone without a trade-in, but keen for a car showed up and insisted on purchasing one. So much for the spirit of 'Take a Penny/Leave a Penny,' eh?. 

And now, the fellow who's so good at selling used cars is a victim of his own success. He's out of business because he has none left to sell. Would this carry over to, for instance, the unemployment office? So successful are they at placing people seeking a job, that everyone is working--which means they no longer need to. Suddenly the people who work in the unemployment office are the only ones whom the unemployment office is serving. 

And what kinds of positions do you find for people who have been working to find other people jobs? I suppose we could devote an afternoon to a celebratory parade honoring their success at placing everyone, but logistically, when would people be able to march or attend? They'd all be working. 

We have "sin taxes" on cigarettes and liquor and the like, with the theory being if the "sin tax" is high enough, people will stop buying the item and, as a result/reward get healthier. Except what goes in the hole where the money from the "sin tax" was? Or is it syntax? Never mind. 

You see my point, right? Nothing succeeds like success, we always say. So to reduce that expression to an equation, we could write nothing = success. What was it they taught us in algebra, about the values on either side of the equal side being the same, thus, success = nothing. I'm not sure that's what we were intending or was it? 

What if someone misheard and thought the expression was 'nothing succeeds like excess'? Do you feel better if we then write excess = nothing? And if someone tells you if you believe that, they've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, how will you drive there to buy it? And how will we get the time off from work? 

-bill kenny