Now that the Shine's Worn Off

We’re just about three weeks into a shiny new year that I, among others, couldn’t wait to arrive because it had to be better than its dismal, dull predecessor (right?) and less than a week after it starts it basically said “hold my beer,” and along with you, I watched scenes in high-definition television of what some have suggested (and more) should be considered high treason and insurrection.

We have a republic, said Benjamin Franklin, if we can keep it though in recent weeks and months, we’ve been mostly keeping our fingers crossed (making it hard for me to type though I can’t use that same excuse for my spelling) as we stumble our way forward to later today, where, at the stroke of noon, somewhere in Washington D.C. will be the quadrennial celebration of our continuing peaceful transfer of political power which every U.S. Presidential Inauguration is supposed to be. Except of course when it isn’t.

My point (and I know you’ve been patiently waiting for me to make it), is there's what we know and nearby BUT unconnected to that knowledge, is what we think we know.  They can be, and often are, very different.

We spend more time worrying about what could happen or we believe should happen rather than what is actually happening, fearing a tomorrow we can neither conceive of nor control rather than living in the here and now while working towards the next.

In light of where we are right now, across our country, and here in our city, the singular point is we are all we can rely on to move us forward.  Look at our history; we have always been all we’ve needed when we were in trouble and no matter where your politics places you, we can agree we are at least knee-deep in Big Muddy. That whole 'we share the same biology, regardless of ideology,' refrain I like to hum to myself. 

We had the Revolutionary War: irate letters to the King, pretty easy stuff; dumping tea into a harbor and behaving badly on Breed's Hill, an entirely different level of trouble. Fast forward to a pair of world wars and an ever-more interdependent world. Straight through growing pains that included Civil Rights Marches, Vietnam, JFK, MLK, RFK, Silicon Valley to the present day. And when you look around right now, what do you know? We turned out to always be the people we have been waiting for.

It just takes some time (I admit) to get our attention, but we'll come around. We've figured out it's not just Wall Street in Manhattan, but Bog Meadow Road in Norwich. It's not only the homeless in Asia Minor or the hopeless sleeping on a subway grate in Chicago, but the seldom-seen indigent struggling to make ends meet on the street where you live right here in Norwich. 

I’m at a difficult age, between being born and being gone, but I have a lot of company and I think among us, we can find our way. I know you get tired of reading this, but not as tired as I get of typing it. We are in this together and now that you, too, realize that, let’s agree we may as well do what we always do, and win it together.  
-bill kenny