Sunday, February 28, 2021

Not a Moment Too Soon

I realize talking (or typing) about it can jinx it (Shanty Irish, always) but maybe, just maybe, the worst of winter in the Northeast is over (though so far, I, for one, can't really complain though I still shall) not just because the sun is up longer and starts out earlier, just a little bit, but because today is the first spring training baseball game of 2021. 

Thank goodness! 


Taking nothing away from any level of ice hockey and pro or college (men's and women's) basketball (I root for the UCONN women every NCAA tournament and am so spoiled I'm disappointed when they don't win it all) and something that just started to pop up on sports TV stations, the World Axe Throwing League (they had me at (all caps) "AXE THROWING IS ALSO PERFECT FOR GROUP EVENTS OR JUST A NIGHT OUT!"), it's (finally) time for baseball.

And not a moment too soon.
-bill kenny

Saturday, February 27, 2021

Vacci-Nation

The Biden Administration's goal is to have at least 100 million COVID vaccine shots in American arms in the first one hundred days of his administration, regardless of which type is offered.  

I was still a toddler when my mom and dad, living in Electchester in Flushing (Queens) in New York City (thanks to my Mom's dad, Jim) were offered an opportunity for me to receive Dr, Jonas Salk's polio immunization in what was then its earliest days of deployment. Polio was the most terrifying disease you may have never heard of and Salk's vaccine is why. 

I received the inoculation; a child in the next apartment didn't because her parents were afraid of the unknown. She ended up with polio. 

Here we are a lifetime later and an internet universe of social media filled with amateur virologists and epidemiologists who not only know everything about COVID vaccinations but everything better. Pay them no mind and trust the science.  

Very nearly all my loved ones have been vaccinated already and on Tuesday my bride and I will travel about halfway across the state to receive our first of two vaccination shots. There are a million ways to say I love you and getting a Fauci Ouchy is one of the best right now.
-bill kenny   

Friday, February 26, 2021

Steps in the Right Direction

In the third decade of the twenty-first century in the nation that sees itself as the shining city on the hill for the rest of the world, this should not be a headline story at all.

It should serve as a somber reminder that we, as a nation, still have a long way to go on the journey of freedom and equality for everyone and anyone. That journey continues with passage in the Senate followed by President Biden's signature. Remain positive and strong because we'll get there, one footfall after another.

-bill kenny

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Bless the Weather

On Tuesday I got a new camera. It came with a phone, like anyone I'd know would wish to call me or I they. My deepest appreciation to Matt and Samantha, whom I kept falling Sara for no other reason than I'm an idiot for making the process as close to painless as buying a new cellphone with anesthetic can be.

It was a nice day for a walk yesterday so I did and, confronted with the decision to use the phone part or the camera part, well, that was actually pretty easy.


Wednesday felt like Spring though the calendar says we're a month off and my brain knows it's true but don't tell my heart because it very much enjoyed the walk, the weather, and the skies that seemed to go on forever.
-bill kenny

  

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Roots and Wings

Stop me if I've told you before how we came to live in Norwich. Okay, I didn't actually mean you should say stop; it was a figure of speech, a story-telling construct to further the narrative. Glad we got that straightened out before this got really awkward. 

I wasn't born here or even in New England and I didn't marry someone from here. I married someone from there; there, in this case, being Germany which is where I worked until we won the Cold War and by the fall of 1991 NATO had started to reduce the overhead and I was placed in a job at Submarine Base, New London and relocated across the ocean. 

I arrived about six weeks before my family did that autumn so I was the scout in search of a place we would call home. The realtor showed me all kinds of places across the area for (as I remember it) days on end but when I stepped across the threshold of our last stop on that Saturday afternoon, in a house near Chelsea Parade, I knew I was home. 

As we crossed over the old Laurel Hill Bridge and drove past empty and derelict buildings where a downtown once had been it was a somber and sobering moment but I had spent days in the library looking at reviews of schools and other local quality of life concerns (this was all pre-internet, remember, so lots of walking six miles uphill in the snow both ways all day) and while Norwich had lots of history (three or so centuries as a matter of fact) it seemed to this new guy on the block to have even more of a future and I decided then and there we would live here.

When my wife, our nine-year-old son, and four-year-old daughter arrived just before Thanksgiving I had finally figured out, despite what I had been telling co-workers, we didn't live in Norwalk, but, rather, in Norwich. (When I told people I lived in Norwalk they'd ask how long of a drive I had and when I answered 'about twenty minutes,' I'd get lectures about 'we don't have an autobahn here and there are speed limits.')

Our son attended Buckingham School and, for seventh and eighth grade, Kelly Middle School, while our daughter had to wait until the following year to be old enough to attend kindergarten, which was in the portable classroom to the left of the school when entering from the upper parking lot. 

On our half of the street, I always thought of Uncas as the vinculum, we had scads of children for our two as acquaintances, playmates, and, in some instances, life-long friends. Up the street, across the street, as well as next-door on the other side and also next door to their next-door neighbors, too, all these kids all about the same age or close to it with everybody's front and backyards serving as shared playspaces.  

All of them, or very nearly, attended the same schools all the way through Norwich Free Academy, played on the same youth sports teams, made some pocket money delivering the Bulletin (I helped our son on Sundays while Mom handled the money collection from subscribers) and made their versions of life in a small town. 

My wife and I joined the other mothers and fathers attending PTO meetings, signing up for car washes, supporting bake sales, and organizing basket bash raffles as we worked to fill the financial holes in our schools' budgets (even then) because, as the song goes, 'children are our future.'  

The future crept in quietly on cats feet, I guess; the years progressed and all the kids on our half of Lincoln are grown and gone, many now with kids of their own in places and spaces far from here though near in our hearts, The tide of time and lives that create the safe harbor which is our city (or should be) continues to ebb and flow even as the next generation in our neighborhood are learning to ride bikes, shoot driveway hoops, fall in love and grow a little more every day into the promise of their own tomorrow even though for many, far too many for this Dad's heart, that tomorrow will happen elsewhere.

Each of us in our own way makes Norwich a place to come home to; some for a lifetime while for others only for a little while
-bill kenny 

         

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Subject to Your Questions

Not that a certain segment of the American public is even slightly comfortable questioning anything these days, especially if it shows up on Faux Gnus, here goes anyway.

Trust the science and the scientists. This concludes my briefing.
-bill kenny 

Monday, February 22, 2021

Ice, Ice, Baby

If Vanilla Ice gets angry that I kited his song title for today's ramblings, imagine how thrilled he'll be when I tell him John Deacon's bass line is his entire song. He should just chill.

Speaking of which.

Think of this as a freeze-frame, literally.
Just a short walk from my house and available every day of every month of any year. 
-bill kenny 

Sunday, February 21, 2021

I Love a Parade

And to think earlier this season people were complaining about the lack of snow, confusing climate with weather as they sneered 'so much for global warming.' I do enjoy the arrogance of ignorance or is it the ignorance of arrogance of which I'm so fond? 

Moot point (and you can see for miles from it).

Speaking of the sights, I have the good fortune of having a wonderful and historic place to promenade proudly very nearly no matter the weather practically across the street from our house (actually, it's up the street but I was working on an attempted alliteration and needed the practically to close the trifecta).

On a day like yesterday, after the snow and ice had cleared out, I could enjoy this:


Which I most certainly did, especially since seventy-two hours previously, practically from the same spot I had this

Where's Rosebud when I really need it, Orson?
-bill kenny

  

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Alan Eats Here

Pink Floyd made Alan Styles (no relation to Harry)  semi-famous decades ago and still (to my knowledge) he never ended up with a breakfast entree named for himself, proving that fame can be both cruel and fleeting. 

I love going to places, joints, really, where you can get breakfast any time of the day. A lot of places I've frequented in my life, I suspect, the only meal they did a decent job on would have been breakfast. 

One of the great things about social media is being able to look at slices of life from elsewhere but most especially places you have not yet, nor ever, been. I just checked  Google Maps and it would be close to a drive all night situation for me to ever enjoy dining in a Waffle House, but I don't have to imagine the tunes I'd listen to while on the way there.  Road trip, anyone?  
-bill kenny

Friday, February 19, 2021

WOW!

It was a very long time ago when I wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. I wasn't alone-there was a whole generation of us who watched Jules Bergman, 'Science Reporter for ABC', bring us all the rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, later Cape Kennedy, dreaming of being John Glenn.

Our window on the world back then was about fifteen inches diagonal and almost always in black and white. It was our electric fire with a place of honor in the living room. We didn't know any better, or any other, and were happy with what we had. Now we have so much more but there's a hunger and an unease that never leaves us. 


It was a time when you had a transistor radio with a white six-foot earplug and if your mom wrote a note to the teacher, you might be able to take your radio to school and listen in to the launches, but you had to promise to be so much more well-behaved than was humanly possible, it was hardly worth it.

Still, we all sat up, in my case on the upstairs landing of the summer house, catching glimpses of the flickering images in the living room from the TV showing the world as we walked on the moon. And now we have this as of yesterday, that puts me back on those stairs, and it's nice to be numbed again by the majesty of achievement that we humans are capable of when we really and truly try.


We've made a mess of so many things as a species. We're the hit-and-run artists of the cosmos but when we do something gobsmacking and over the top, there's a nonchalant arrogance, or perhaps an arrogant nonchalance that makes me grin from ear to ear. It's hard to be humble, sometimes with good reason, like today.

"Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
-bill kenny

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Downhill Stuff

Hopefully, you've survived our recent rash of the white stuff. I think if I can type this, then I did as well and we can proceed from there. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably live somewhere other than Texas or the East Coast of the United (for the most part) States and have gotten off very lucky this time (and good for you).

A lot of us had a lot of snow in the course of this week, though here in Southeastern Connecticut, it didn't really start to get serious until Super Bowl Sunday. But when it did, it really did. The snow started to pile higher and the wind the Weather Channel had warned us about for hours finally arrived ('hurray!' say the happy faces on the TV, 'we're right!' Well, yeah, even a blind pig finds an acorn) and all that wild guessing sure helped, didn't it?

As the week unfolded and we ended up with some snow seemingly every other day, more and more of us trekked out to the grocery store to get milk and toilet paper. It's what we do here in the Land of Steady of Habits. We may have clogged arteries, but our colons are so clean we can pass a Cadillac. In light of the snow we've had in the years we've lived up here, it's a miracle we have any cows left. And don't get me started on low-Flo toilets. You prepare for Armageddon your way, and we'll do it ours.

Of course, the store was mobbed. Each storm could be the one. Just like the previous one or the next one. You cannot be too careful. When you live in the oldest part of the country you learn to measure twice before cutting off your nose once to spite your face. Tell you what was MOST interesting to me, the number of folks going in and out of the liquor store near the mall where the grocery store is located.

At first, I thought maybe people had gotten confused as to where the gas station was located to get fuel for the snow blowers as that's just a little farther down the street. But as I'm waiting to make my turn against traffic at the light, I'm watching folks in my mirror come out of the spirits shop with every assortment of brown bag imaginable-and in this state, there's not a lot else that comes in brown paper bags except liquor (so much for sweet mystery), leading me to wonder if some of us prepare to get plowed at a more literal level than others.
-bill kenny

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

A Sentiment that Bears Repeating

There will come a day when there will be no need to yammer on about the importance of lending a hand to someone less fortunate, as I did a couple of years back to mark this day,  Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season, and its importance. 

But today, so far, is not that day, so here goes (again). The previous time I called it. 

Help, Lent, and Other Four Letter Words

Our winter weather has afforded me a chance to do something I don't do very successfully or too often: think. (I suspect the former is contingent on the latter). Let’s face it, even though we gripe sometimes (me especially), our lives are pretty cozy. It’s easy to think everyone lives as well because we may not know, or know of, anyone who wakes up in a cold house and has to choose between food or fuel, for themselves and their family every morning.

Certain times of the year, like the Christmas holidays, we’re better able to see those in our community who need a helping hand; but the need for assistance is year-round. And that brings me to now. We all understand the strain the pandemic has precipitated; money is tight, and so are the times. But if you're reading this at the breakfast table or on break at work, trust me when I tell you we are better off than many who live in our state, perhaps even on our street.

I have never needed to make a 'Heat or Eat' decision and I hope, neither have you. New England winters can be bone-numbingly cold in the best of times, but when you're choosing to pay your heating bill or to buy groceries, that’s a no-win decision that can freeze your heart and crush your hope. In a nation that prides itself on how we care for and about one another, Heat or Eat should be a turn of phrase none of us has ever heard or used.

Like you, I do what I can, when I can, for the St. Vincent de Paul Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry but I have no illusions that our spur of the moment donations are anything more than trying to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon. 

Regular, planned contributions to agencies like the Connecticut Food Bank help get the tools such as mobile food banks to those on the front lines in the battle against hunger at a time when over four hundred thousand Connecticut residents every month need some form of assistance from agencies who are supported by the Food Bank. 

That number includes nearly a quarter of a million children who are "food insecure" (= a sociology term for no reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable and nutritious food). Hand-wringing and head-shaking solve nothing because even one child is one too many. The solution isn't in Washington or Hartford, it's in each of us. 

Today is Ash Wednesday, marking the start of Lent, a time of sacrifice. How about this year, instead of giving something up, we give something to those who are helping others? Time, talent, treasure, it's your choice. 

Together, we can change the world, one meal at a time. Become a sustaining donor today and make a difference starting tomorrow.
-bill kenny

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Arm like a Cannon

Pitchers and catchers report for Major League Baseball spring training camp today for the Baltimore Orioles. As a life-long (so far) New York Yankees fan, I detest the Baltimore Orioles because I actively dislike their owner whom I've never met and who is probably a pretty decent guy but he doesn't own the Yankees so I don't like him. But I digress. 

Tomorrow, pitchers and catchers for both the Los Angeles (at Anaheim) Angels and the New York Mets report followed on Thursday by the Minnesota Twins, but the Orioles are, in this Year Two of COVID-19, my first Robin of Spring. 

While I'm hoping for a full and safe Major League Baseball season with players on their homefields in front of actual fans, I'll take what I can get. And before any of us fall in love with some of the high priced pitching talent acquired over the off-season for what might be the GNP of some Third World nation or a hard-throwing rookie coming out of nowhere and stepping off the bus from Kenosha, ask yourself this, no matter who we're talking about 'Is he faster than a Supersonic Baseball Cannon?' 

Yeah. I didn't think so.
-bill kenny

Monday, February 15, 2021

Blame Abe and George

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday showed up on my calendar for last Friday but it has had less meaning for decades, since Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act and we rolled it into the birthday celebrating the Father of Our Country, George Washington (normally 22 February) and then decided to honor everyone who's ever been President to include Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, and the guy who was the subject of a very recent Senate impeachment trial whose name I refuse to type. (Yeah, I'm that petty; my blog, my rules.)

That George spent more than half of his farewell address warning his countrymen about the dangers of political partisanship, I find, in light of where we are today, astounding. That Honest Abe used his Second Inaugural Address to offer "(w)ith malice toward none, with charity for all..." at a moment in our history where we most fervently hated one another (with a ferocity that would cost him his very life a little more than thirteen months later) causes me to wonder why we, you and me and all the lunatic loudmouths and bombastic blowhards on either side of the political fence, can't pipe down long enough to work together to get this cart we're all in out of the ditch we've maneuvered it into. 

To put it into perspective: when Washington and Lincoln were presidents, people disagreed to the point they fired weapons at one another--and you've seen 'em, it took work to shoot at somebody. None of this cap bustin' stuff; serious mayhem was on the agenda. All this pouting and posturing we are up to on Sunday morning talk shows and in the Halls of Congress makes my brain hurt, and when we get all through sorting out who's to blame for all the wrongs and shortcomings, real and/or imagined, maybe we can devote a scintilla of that energy to fixing things. We certainly have a target-rich environment to choose from, don't we? 

Washington, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Stephen Douglas, Lincoln, and hundreds and thousands of others if not millions and tens of millions were so busy building this nation and defending it from attacks from within and without they didn't have the luxury of ideology. 

Today shouldn't be an opportunity or excuse to shop, advertising to the contrary-it's a moment to look at the lives of those who have been President of the United States and whose efforts and sacrifices we honor today (in my case, with one exception).

And even though we don't get a day on the calendar for ourselves, this is when we use their day as a fulcrum to move each of us, and all of us, closer together in order to form a more perfect union. And to stop being so bitchy about it with one another while we're at it.
-bill kenny

Sunday, February 14, 2021

What Scares Me Most Is Losing You

I will never be confused with a hopeless romantic. 

Hopeless? Definitely, incessantly, unceasingly. Romantic? Not a chance and not a trace. So what can I do when staring at the day on the calendar square dedicated to the celebration of love? No better than to reoffer some words from a moment much like today but long ago and pray they still ring true to the one I love. 

I do often wonder, in light of the journey so far, if he who travels fastest misses the entire point of the sojourn when he has no one with whom to share it. As someone who was very much, and for very long, unlovable, this is a day of major import and minor miracle, all at the same time.

I looked at photos of my wife, Sigrid, and I, back when we were fab and she was, as she still is, absolutely beautiful to me. It took zero intelligence for me to fall in love with her at first sight and something far rarer than intelligence to help us stay in love all those years on. I do find myself looking at her, then and now, and wondering if she still sees me as I was or as I am now and if the latter, why does she stay?

We have, she and I, grown old together which causes me to smile as I had nothing nearly so grand in mind when I first saw her. And there are those who knew me back before the day who would be amazed that she kept me nailed to one place long enough for all those years to have become all these years, and to some degree, I share their amazement.


We have a life that isn't and will never be the one I thought I wanted when I believed things worked out the way we desired (if we only wanted something bad enough), but when I reach the end of every day, to include today, I look at her and at our two adult children, Patrick and Michelle, and know that I love, and am loved by, them and I can't complain about some settling of the contents during shipment. Happy Valentine's Day.
-bill kenny

Saturday, February 13, 2021

"We Change Them.”

Three years ago tomorrow, on a day celebrated nationally and internationally as dedicated to every and any concept of love, February 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing seventeen students and staff members and injuring seventeen others. Time does not heal all wounds.


Gun violence remains a uniquely American epidemic on a scale and scope that impacts every aspect of our nation and cuts us to the quick every time we attempt to set off in search of solutions. We can never end the cycle of violence if we never begin to stop the killing

Three years after Parkland, we owe it to every survivor and every victim of gun violence everywhere to never again accept that there's nothing we can do. #NeverAgain
-bill kenny

Friday, February 12, 2021

Even My Back Pages Have Back Pages

I've been at this a long time. Sometimes it feels even longer than it's been like these thoughts (or what seemed to look like thoughts from a distance) thirteen years ago when I first offered them which was not that long after I'd started scribbling stuff every day and throwing it at the Interwebz to see what sticks. 

If you were here then, thanks, and you already know what I called it; and if not, welcome and it was: 

Today's the Birthday of the President Named for the Car?

Yeah, that's the spirit and that's who we named the guy after, that big, long barge of a car. Or maybe not. This used to be the day we honored the man who was President when a still young country had such a determined difference of opinion on something as fundamental as to whom the blessing of liberty was extended that the only way to settle is was by a conflict of arms.

In 1860, after decades of compromise and accommodation over a dozen issues that always came back to the idea of freedom vs. slavery, Abraham Lincoln, failed Congressman, failed candidate in 1858 for US Senate from Illinois, look up the Lincoln-Douglas debates if you despair about our democracy and be of good hope, campaigned as the candidate of the fledgling Republican Party and was elected to the office of the Presidency of the United States. And, practically as he was inaugurated, the United States of America already philosophically and economically divided, took up arms against itself and disintegrated.

It's curious, to me, that we would call the War Between the States (its official name, btw) the "Civil War" since historians agree it was often anything but. With other nations picking sides to advance their own agenda, the two sides, bloodied and bedraggled, fought one another from 1861 through the spring of 1865, when the Confederate States of America, prostrate and exhausted, surrendered and 
Modern America began. 

What we are now is what we were then. Provided an opportunity to begin again with 'malice towards none and charity to all' as outlined by the soon to be murdered reelected Lincoln, instead, as a nation, we veered from that path and continued to settle old scores and create new wounds through the latter half of the 19th, all of the 20th and, now, into the 21st century.

We just concluded another Presidential election but from the rhetoric that's floated around since it concluded (and it is over, by the way), you have to wonder if we've forgotten where we came from and how we got here.

We cannot disagree without becoming disagreeable and when the day ends no one, wins. It's the death of dialogue and debate and a dearth of civility and kindness. The US Presidential elections have become the Greatest Show on Earth, sorry Ringling Bros., and there's barely enough time to clean up after the elephants and the donkeys in the center ring before we open the tent flaps and let the next crowd in for the show.

But I digress. Didja find a good parking spot? We got valet service for the high-end cars, like the Beemers, Benzs, Caddies, Lexus and (of course!) the Lincolns-lemme get somebody to take your keys. No scratches, I promise.
-bill kenny

Thursday, February 11, 2021

Bob Berryhill Approved

I discovered just a few days ago, stored in our basement is/was a surfboard (in a very snazzy case) that is owned by our son. 

According to his mother, who is also my spouse, it ended up there as he moved from place to place over the last just about two decades (technically, I think he's lived in more places in his life, decades shorter than mine, than I have in my whole life. #GOALS), but now that he and his wife are finalizing their move to Florida there's an urgency to developing a plan for us to get his surfboard to him to be part of the move south. 

I checked my Beach Boys record and CD collection and while there's plenty of surf music there's no woodie or other means to get the board to him except my car (I don't want to have to negotiate with Mike Love) so I'm thinking in the not too distant future we'll probably motor down to where he and Jena live, and surf will be finally and truly up. 

But in the meantime, I found this which led me to seek out this, while on the way to this
-bill kenny 

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Snow and Other Four Letter Words

This may sound strange, or worse, considering where we are geographically and on the calendar but I am not a fan of snow and haven't been since I was a small child. Yeah, living in The Rose of New England where we have all four (and more) seasons sometimes in the same afternoon probably puts me in the minority when it comes to the white stuff. And I'll concede my mood this time of year is in direct inverse to how much snow we're getting, becoming moody and truculent as it falls even though I know there's nothing I can do about it. 

When we're where we are now, clearing up from a weekend snowstorm even though we had snow left from the week's previous storm while having to prepare for a forecasted follow-on snowstorm you can feel a little like Jack London's stunt-double waiting for that re-write of To Build a Fire, but this time with a happy ending. 

Acknowledging that it's never going to happen is probably the first step in healing, but in these parts the way a lot of us don't clear our sidewalks after a snowfall, you might be hard-pressed to get too many steps in at all.

Snow is a little like life. Both have four letters and both conceal and reveal. In the aftermath of snow, like we had on Super Bowl Sunday, I like to go for a walk around my neighborhood, though the footing can be treacherous as uncleared sidewalks present challenges because the houses and automobiles I walk past everyday look very different and vaguely unfamiliar when blanketed in white. 

Saturday under brilliantly blue skies I set off to walk down Broadway to City Hall, make the sweeping right turn and head up Union Street back home. Most, though not all, of the sidewalk around Chelsea Parade was more and less cleared though I was intrigued that the side of Chelsea Parade bordering Washington Street, with the only parking spaces for the entire length of the Street, was fully cleared. Somethings are more mysterious the longer you look at them I guess, so I blinked and looked around.

Earlier in the week, I'd noticed two snowpersons (I'm not necessarily 'woke' I just don't want to precipitate a discussion about gender assignments for piles of snow) on Chelsea Parade made from last week's snow. Based on the number of footprints in the snow surrounding them, I suspect a lot of us did what I was planning on doing, traipsing across the Parade and posing for selfies with them. The one on the Washington Street side had what might have been a tie fashioned from a small branch, and a smiley face with two small stones for eyes. 

Both had survived the sunny days and hovering-around-freezing temperatures we'd had since the snowfall so I was unhappily surprised Saturday after crossing over from Lincoln Avenue to see both of them had been wrecked, knocked over, smashed, and trashed, made one with the snow from which they'd sprung and that moment was when the snow revealed to me yet again, lest I'd forgotten, that more often than not, there aren't sinister forces in the universe, or a confederacy of dunces at work to undermine all that we like or love but, rather, we are why we can't have nice things

We are the people who complain when 'the city' disappoints us but have no problems creating disappointments for others. We're the folks who blow our grass clippings out into the street, allow our autumn leaves to clog storm drains, and don't shovel our sidewalks after snowstorms. 

We're quite keen to hold someone accountable as long as it's not us. When it comes to our behavior, we're always very good lawyers; when it comes to others' behavior, we're often even better judges.
-bill kenny

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

The Victims Deserve Justice

The second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump for "high crimes and misdemeanors" with a charge of incitement of insurrection begins later today in the United States Senate. If the then-majority party in the Senate, the GOP, had done their job last January and convicted him of charges of abuse of power and obstruction, we could have avoided the YeeHawdists invasion of The Capitol this January. 

But lacking testicular fortitude at that time, the Senate Republicans felt it better to just move on thus emboldening the Orange Shitstain and dooming us to another year of his criminal neglect and malfeasance.

Schrodinger’s Impeachment
This time around, Senate Republicans have even less stomach and desire to antagonize the Vanilla Isis FuQnuts who are True Trumpers and would like us to just proceed as if January 6, 2021, never even happened.  

People died and no amount of 'let's move on for the good of the country' will fix that. Those who were murdered, and that's what happened to all of those who died, deserve justice and that justice includes punishing the person who incited all of this. And that person is Donald J. Trump
-bill kenny


Monday, February 8, 2021

From My Days in Stand-Up

Dusting this one off because I found it funny once. And maybe twice if we count today. 

Back then I called it: 

F.O.D.

Was sent on an errand by Sigrid, my wife, yesterday morning. I was home because I had bronchitis and since the last two times I've had it I've either ended up in the ER or actually admitted to the hospital, I decided Thursday afternoon to cut to the chase, leave work early and see my doctor during his regular office hours. He was quite pleased to see me though I got the impression he was surprised to discover I could learn things, like how to not be such a knucklehead with my own health.

He gave me a Z-Pack (because the name is too long to ever need to learn to say) and a note telling the people I work for I would not be at work until Monday (the joke being that I won't give them the note until Monday when I'm back at work) and sent me home to put on scruffy clothes, drink lots of fluids and stretch out on the couch.

I decided yesterday I would get cough syrup because I was barking as Sigrid phrased it, "like you are smoking two packs of cigarettes a day", which, since I used to smoke three packs a day (and stopped thirteen plus years ago), is a bit spooky. While I was out, I bought the other daily newspaper in this region (we get one delivered to the house, but it's not my favorite of the two) and I was to swing by the donut place and get a box of Munchkins.

I get that they are the filling knocked out of the doughnut hole-but Munchkins? I like the name but I'm wondering how they managed to get the rights to use it from MGM and whoever owns all the ancillaries connected with The Wizard of Oz. As if with the headache I have from the percussive coughing I'm doing, I have enough room in my brain to worry about this stuff. And for no especial reason, there were ten people in line before me, so I had some time to ponder the mystery of the Munchkins.

We did move rather quickly, all things considered, and it wasn't long before the fellow behind the counter asked me for my order and I told him, Munchkins. Any particular type, he asked, which wasn't a question I expected since it never crossed my mind that Munchkins came in types. No, I told him, but try to avoid giving me too many of the Lollipop Guild because they sing so loudly I can't hear my car radio. He stared at me like he'd never seen a person with bronchitis before.
-bill kenny

Sunday, February 7, 2021

Through the Past, Darkly

Today's back page is almost older than I am. Almost. At the time I called it: 

Watch the Ripples that Unfold Unto Me

Had a pleasant surprise the other evening in my email inbox, a postcard from my past. I had a kind note from Johannes D in Regensburg to chat, briefly, about a Graham Parker project he's working on and to share with me his memories of listening to me on the radio, in another life, on the multiple occasions Graham was kind enough to stop by the station and visit.

The 'station' was American Force Radio, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main in the old days of the two Germanys; in this case in West Germany, known as the Federal Republic of Germany, to distinguish it from the People's Republic of Germany. 

Those were Cold War days, not that I had a walk-on part in any of that as a skeeter-winged Airman in the US Air Force who played records, wrote and produced public service announcements, and interviewed rock and rollers for GI listeners and their families numbering into the hundreds of thousands. 

I had the time of my life. Though to be honest, I had also enjoyed AFRTS Sondrestrom, Greenland even when it went to seventy-five below zero on Christmas Eve 1975 and stayed there for three weeks in the twenty-four-hour darkness. Sure, it was miserable, but we were all miserable.

Being an Airman, even a jeep (junior enlisted personnel), in a primarily Army organization, like AF, was, a day at the beach by comparison and you never had to worry about the sands of time getting in your lunch. Except, of course, they always do. Rock and Roll kids grow old, even if they don't grow up. The number of nights in the week where you can hang with the trolls and the gnomes after the gigs starts to shrink as Neverland recedes in the rearview mirror.

I smiled reading Johannes' note for all that it brought back to me and for all that has escaped forever, never to return, because had I realized then he was listening as intently as he was, I might have tried harder to be better at what I did than I proved to be. 

Maybe worked out more, or harder because "...you can't be too strong. You decide what's wrong. Can't be too hard, too tough, too rough, too right, too wrong."
-bill kenny

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Truth Decay

When we were kids, we'd hear (and say) 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' It would appear, based on headlines I've perused in recent days that a company named Smartmatic would like a second opinion on that cliche and the amount of injury it suffered at the hands and more especially the mouths of Fox News. 

Nothing says 'we're sorry' like 2.7 billion dollars.

I defer to my brother, Adam, on the legal merits of what's been filed but I skimmed it and found it to be gripping. Truth to tell they had me at the start of their introduction,  "The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable..." 

Cynic that I am, it confirms my belief that Fox News was a nest of lies and reaffirms the present tense of the verb as used earlier in this sentence.
-bill kenny

 

Friday, February 5, 2021

A Pinocchio Public Service Announcement

Remember when we were growing up and part of growing up was learning stuff every day? 

And some of the stuff we were learning was useful and some of it like Algebra and Latin maybe not so much but we learned it and to varying degrees, we have retained some vestige of the knowledge we first acquired when we were growing up. 

We've been at this Pandemic Prevention Polka for just about a year now, but we keep screwing up the baby steps stuff. Some of us seem to have a brain so small, as Mr. Roarke the Athletic Director (and a no slouch at either Algebra or Latin) at Carteret Academy once exasperatedly exclaimed during a long, cold, winless prep school basketball season in the winter of 1970, 'if we put it into a mosquito's ass it would roll around and make a noise like a bee-bee in a boxcar.'  

Here it is: 


Subject to your questions, that concludes my briefing.
Figure of speech! Put your hand down!
-bill kenny 

Thursday, February 4, 2021

Cookie Monster Endorsed

This is the time of year when in decades past the card tables were set up outside grocery stores and young women and little girls in brown and green stand politely and patiently waiting for you (in this case, me) to decide how many boxes of Trefoils (or Samoas or Do-Si-Dos) can be purchased for personal, immediate, and gluttonous consumption without looking like the gourmand that you, or at least, I, truly am. 

I like to think of it as the Second Most Wonderful Time of the Year. And, in support of that point, I'd add that the only thing more marvelous than Girl Scout Cookies are MORE Girl Scout cookies. There, I said it (while typing it). AmIRite?

As happened last year, COVID-19 and the precautions to combat it are changing how we'll be again supporting the biggest fundraiser the Girl Scouts have all year but, and it's just a thought from someone admittedly not known for doing a lot it, if you have a hankering for Girl Scout cookies and don't have a local troop to support, please think about buying them from Troop 6000, which is entirely made up of girls from homeless shelters in New York City.

Read the story behind the troop

If you've scrolled down to here waiting on a funny or a quip to close this out, sorry. I'm thinking about how many boxes of Trefoils I can claim with a straight face to my wife are an investment, knowing she has a much smaller number in mind. Buy the cookies, help the kids.
-bill kenny



Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Still Sixteen Ounces to the Pound

I wrote this a decade ago, exactly, for my brother Adam's birthday. The year previously I offered my birthday wishes on the first day of his new position at a new law firm. This year it's been forty-eight hours since he improved his new partners' practice and he's probably already got the code to the copy machine (Us Kenny men are doers, though one of us at one time preferred Dewars). 

What's changed since I first wrote what follows?  He and his bride, Margaret are grandparents multiple times over as their children married and started their own families. And our Mom passed away after a full and fearless life and there's not a day that goes by when we, her six children, don't think of her.

It's really hard for me to believe I have such elderly siblings, but 'there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I suspect this is not one of those things. At the time I called it:

An Ounce of Blood

Today is my brother Adam'birthday. The law of averages being what it is and the population of the earth being what it is, he's probably not the only one. I don't especially care. 

I am the oldest of six. Adam is the youngest. Sandwiched between us are three sisters and another brother, all of whom at various times did so much more than merely take up a seat in the Chrysler Newport station wagon and/or the Renault 10 as we traveled from who we were to who(m) we became.

Joan and Bill (Senior) are our parents. Mom lives in Florida. We buried dad a long time ago. At times, walking away from the grave is easier said than done, and not all the promises we made to ourselves about who we were going to be when we grew up were delivered. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Adam wasn't even yet a toddler when he was hospitalized as part of a medical safari of sorts that his pediatrician put him and my parents through in search of causes (and treatments) for a mystery he couldn't solve. Adam would stand in the crib and howl in pain until Yakky Doodle Duck came on the ward TV. I learned how to do the voices of all the characters to distract him. I still do them, except now to distract me.

Later, I dragged Adam to undergraduate classes while I was at Rutgers. He wasn't a mascot or a talisman or a babe magnet and he wasn't my show and tell. He was my guy. Those were exciting times; there was revolution in the air (I thought) and I wanted to make sure he was a witness. After graduation, my class traded blue skies and clean air for BMWs and stock options. Sell-outs, you say? I saved my receipt if you want proof.

I recall a mad dash behind the wheel of that barge of a station wagon after discovering Adam was having a seizure on the couch in one of the eighty-five or so rooms of a ranch house we lived in, hurtling towards Saint Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick with this tiny person's jaws clamped tight on the thumb I'd jammed into his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. It was about then that I figured out the doctor in Highland Park was full of crap (I had long since concluded he was an a$$hole).

Somewhere and somehow I wandered off and away. Not all who wander are lost but many of us did while others stayed that way. Bob's your uncle but Jack was the role model. For decades I had the same contact with my brothers and sisters those in the witness protection program have. Didn't start out that way but stemming the tide is harder than riding it, even when you know it ends in the sea far from land.

I always told myself there'd be time to catch up/make up for all the missed weddings, the births of children and in some instances, grandchildren--most of that didn't work out and my Air Force salute (shoulder shrug) became my silver bullet signature. Adam grew into the man he was supposed to be.

He found Margaret, Suze, and Rob and forgetting my (broken) promises of that armadillo from Texas and a penguin from Greenland (he was too smart to believe that one but too polite to call me on it), he invited my family to be part of his life on a very important day for him and his family and he remains my guy, often despite me.

I've got lots of IOU's to redeem should the 'really big' reunion be held, and not all of them will or can be redeemed because redemption is rationed and rarely earned. There are bridges to rebuild and fences to mend with almost everyone with whom I grew up. That's for maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it's oh bright early as I post this, and, speaking of early, I can still hear Mom, on seemingly any morning for many years when we all shared the same roof, shouting 'Up and At 'em, Atom Ant!' (don't ask). He probably is already. All I can add is Ayup! and Happy Birthday!
-bill kenny

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

I've Had My Phil

Happy Groundhog Day! (?) I suppose extending felicitations are appropriate as I've never heard anyone wishing anyone else an UNhappy Groundhog Day, though I've seen enough with a possessive and with a plural, though never both. 

I know someone born in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on this date BUT whose name is not Phil though that would seem to have been low-hanging fruit at the time of his nativity.

My brother, Kelly, would be disappointed, somewhat, to learn his name also isn't Bill, as in Bill Murray, which might seem to be an acceptable alternative as a sort of homage to his cinematic tour de force.

I think Kelly is on to something with his regard for that movie since as I've aged I have a growing sense of us living and reliving the same day over and over again. The fear of End of Days may be misplaced as it could, for some of us, actually be more of a new paragraph than the closing of a book.

Look at our world, then at our nation and, then if you promise to NOT blink, look at your own life. What do you remember of where all of this was this time a year ago, a decade on, or perhaps a score of yon years? I'm starting to think the rewind button is stuck and all that changes are the characters while the play rolls on.

Lest you think I'm depressed or distressed, nothing could be farther from the truth. I love this day because it's all the excuse I need to listen to this and smile, at least usually in that order.
-bill kenny

Monday, February 1, 2021

Thoughts Meander like a Restless Wind Inside a Letterbox

Over the weekend, wandering around with the other nitwits on Twitter, I came across a posting inviting people to offer their favorite Beatles' song lyrics. Reading the suggestions and in some instances the very strong reactions in response to those posts, I ended up with Across the Universe stuck in my head.


All in all, not a bad way to spend a Sunday.
-bill kenny


A Childhood Memory

As a child at Saint Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, it was forcibly impressed upon us by the Sisters of Charity whose...