We Come in the Age's Most Uncertain Hour

We're on the threshold of what's often called the "Most American of American Holidays," Independence Day, and in that most American of ways we have of doing things that means we are even closer to a three-day weekend because when Crispus Attucks lay dying in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, he took solace that someday there would be a holiday to use as an excuse to get a great deal on a new car or truck. Though perhaps not.

Before it gets really crazy busy with final planning and preparations for that holiday weekend, maybe each of us could look in the mirror and look around at the country we received from our parents and their parents and which we hope to give to our children and theirs. 

There’s been as much gained, I'd argue, as there has been lost through the tears and years. Some of what has changed has been better while some of it has only been different. The dilemma, at least for me, is in deciding which is which, and why.

By many accounts the heat was oppressive and tempers were hot in Philadelphia two hundred and forty-five years ago as that aggregation of malcontents and troublemakers (in the eyes of His Majesty, George III, King of England) gathered to refine, define and catalog their grievances and complaints as they took exception with the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.

Enumerating what they called our ‘unalienable rights’ to include ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ the founders of our republic, who did not agree on very much except that the present state of affairs could not be allowed to continue, concluded the only way forward as a people was to break with the past and declare independence from King and Crown.
   
Out of all of that has come all of this.

And along the way, the original magic and meaning have sometimes been lost in backyard pool parties, car sales, and chicken and burgers on the barbecue. Our politics remains spirited even if our interest isn't and our understanding of the issues is often muddled. 

And it’s not that we all agree with who we are and what we are doing. Far too much of our shared history is not anywhere near complete in the telling of the whole story of us. Just the opposite. It’s been posited we as a nation haven’t been this divided morally, politically, and socially since the Civil War. And that observation and analysis should mean far more than it does.

Some say never have so many had so much of life’s material rewards but, others say never have so many struggled to hold on to what they have. With apologies to Charles Dickens, these are the best of times for some and the worst of times for too many. 

The outcome of last fall's elections (as is always the case though we forget that every time), we were told, would help define the direction and future of our nation. But eight months on, we remain as divided as ever and maybe more so because our issues and interests seem to be so divisive. Common ground is in frighteningly short supply and we're so busy yelling that no one has the time or inclination to listen.

What may be missing is our national sense of self and our confidence and belief in our own abilities to forever adapt and triumph. We demonstrated those traits at the Founding and I would hope we each in our own way, might again find them, both for those whose inheritance we are and for those whose promise is yet to be. 

Enjoy the fireworks and the barbecues but remember there's more to the holiday. 

Happy 4th of July.
-bill kenny

Picture Postcards from the Mild Kingdom

An acquaintance who knows my appetite for the bizarre, and tries to avoid ever being the object of it shared an item with me that thrilled me to the marrow. It combines my love of the arcane dateline with my commitment to the concept of the global playground.

Yes, if you're in Iowa and beset with crop circles, I'm not sure this helps you at all, but the Mel Blanc fan in me LOVES the idea that on the island of Tasmania there's something a bit weirder than the Devil (I've always been a bit disappointed that oh-so-many years ago when I saw a real Tasmanian Devil, it behaved nothing like Mel's and sounded more like Marvin the Martian).

I think in light of the number of poppies the little fellows probably eat before wandering around in circles, the farmers should be grateful the wee beasties (where's Robert Burn when we need him?) don't develop raging cases of the munchies and hit the local 7-11's for Ho-Ho's and sugar-coated donuts. Just cleaning up the discarded packaging alone would take two days a week. Or so I've been told, as I have no personal experience with the snacking while stoned phenomena at all.

Speaking of which, as true where you live as it is where I live: "Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don't change."

But nearly as important, and certainly more germane today is:
"Watch me wallabies feed mate.
Watch me wallabies feed.
They're a dangerous breed mate.
So watch me wallabies feed."
G'day.
-bill kenny

Eventually a Crisis Becomes Routine

We had another nearly nice day yesterday around here. I'm treating June in Connecticut as if it were a chocolate-layer cake, always moist. Seems to be more or less a regional trend but I don't know what it's like where you are. I do know when John Donne rings the bell around here, I'm the only one in my corner. And right now, even though summer has officially started, I'm not working on my tan, that's mostly rust (sorry, Neil).

So, of course, we had some precipitation (if we were to NOT have mist and moisture, I'd fret that something was wrong with the clouds. Oldest children worry about everything and when stuff is going great, we worry that we overlooked something), though certainly not torrents of rain (at least around here), but just enough wet stuff so when you awaken in the morning you knew it was possible the spirit of Gene Kelly had stopped by.

And as I walked from Point A to Point 2 (I majored in neither math nor phonics at Rutgers nor orienteering (come to think of it) which must be why so many people tell me where to go) I passed an office building where the sprinklers were on, making sure the lawn was getting watered. I almost dropped my umbrella in surprise or would have had I had one. I imagine there's a schedule for this kind of stuff and a contract to regulate the relationship between the waterer and the wateree and yet, this is another one of those bridges that becomes a wall.

Instead of an agreement that helps get things done, we have a starting gun in a footrace to see which side can come with a faster reason for why something cannot be accomplished. Or, we have a variant of the Abilene Paradox in which no one party is willing to even attempt to change a relationship even though everyone says they want to change. Instead, they maneuver to have the other come up with reasons for why change is bad so they, themselves, are absolved of any responsibility to change.

Happens every day and more often than you'd imagine. Just watch the evening news and listen to what those who are our leaders say and then watch what they do. Pick an issue and watch the posturing. With both sides claiming to want the same thing on whatever the issue is, you might ask what could be easier to accomplish? Yeah, right. Hold that thought and while you're at it, how about you also hold on to the umbrella and I'll go get a yellow Macintosh and a rainhat to go with it. 

I already have the tartar sauce, so no pressure; but some nights for dinner we like a nice piece of cod, okay?

-bill kenny

One Side's Ice

I came across this the other day and it made me smile especially since I have reached an age where getting up rapidly causes me to have a balance problem and often creates a giddy lightheadedness akin to...well, from various substance inhalation practices from long ago in another life (let's leave it at that).

Parasol, I suspect, sold separately.  
-bill kenny

Making Yourself Up as You Go Along

My wife and I have season tickets to the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA. 

Last season was one we spent watching on television thanks to COVID-19 precautions but fans are back (more or less) in the stands for this campaign and we're happy to be a part of it all.

Yeah, we come for the basketball. And to cheer on people following their dreams. Like Layshia Clarendon, who used to play for the Connecticut Sun and sustained a season-ending injury a few seasons back and is now a member of the Minnesota Lynx.   

This is an amazing story not only during or for Pride Month.

Some people live to make a statement and other people's lives ARE the statement.
-bill kenny

Dude, My Car

I think it's safe to say no one loves automotive transportation more than the star-spangled daughters and sons of the Big Parking Lot between Canada and Mexico. We love cars almost as much as we love guns unless of course you allow us to keep guns IN our cars and then, boy howdy! are we in heaven. 

But and you must have noticed, so many cars on the road look like sisters or brothers or at the most distant, cousins; and it turns out that's not an accident but, rather, by design (pun intended). 

Functional utilitarianism over aesthetics and artifice? Maybe, or maybe a little more magical.
-bill kenny

Transitive Butt Property

I'm too old to fully appreciate the brilliance of the technology that makes our lives what they are today but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy how its magic triumphs over the mundane on a nearly daily basis. 

Our children grew up with all of this connectivity and as they matured, so, too, did the means of tying and joining us all together, though in more recent years (and maybe just me) we don't seem to be that all together. 

I fell across this online article that can only exist in Our Current Era and will look and feel very differently in less than a generation from now because that's how our world moves in terms of speed. 

And while sometimes it's at the speed of light; other times, it's at the speed of smell.
-bill kenny

  

Forward or Failure

Years ago I learned the Pareto Principle, also known as the Law of the Vital Few, more commonly called the 80/20 Rule, that postulates 20% of your actions will create 80% of your outcomes. The same holds true, I suspect, for the population and engagement in any community. 

It's sort of my flavor of the month, again, in explaining who we are as a city and how we got here. Admittedly, I'm being lazy intellectually; to a man with a hammer the whole world is a nail and right now I'm Trini Lopez (ask your grandparents about him). 

Each of us moves from one side of the 80/20 equation to the other but for the most part, the same people are playing the same roles in every situation. If you've ever had children in school, you already know about the PTO parents who were also the band parents who were also the class trip escort parents, and who were the prom chaperones and that list goes on forever. 

It's true in municipal government as well. We see the same people at City Council meetings who attend Board of Education meetings, and we see the same people at the front of those rooms holding the elected positions. And when you look at the tab called "Boards and Commissions" on the city's website you'll be struck by two things: the number of vacancies on so many important citizen committees and how frequently the same names are the ones who offer to serve on a committee of some sort or other. So many people in the same device.

Last Monday's City Council deliberations and decisions under duress on the next budget, judging from comments on various social media platforms, generated a lot of heat but, in my mind, NOT a lot of light. I had a friend in the Air Force who used to suggest 'nothing is impossible to the man who doesn't have to do it,' and that seems especially true around here (present company included).

Despite annoyance and anger bordering at times on vitriol that serving on our City Council seems to generate among so many, we are fortunate to have interested and talented people who are willing to serve. I think we need more of them, and you should think so, too, because that's how we bring about change in our city. The challenge is that our rate and pace of life keeps accelerating and no one has enough time while everyone needs help.

I get concerned when so much effort is devoted to searching for the guilty and figuring out who we should blame for a shortcoming or disappointment instead of trying to fix the problem. I don't have the energy for that (anymore), and I don't see the point in carrying around all the grudges and bruised feelings over slights (real and imagined) that keep us from moving on. Sometimes I fear the long, proud history of New England gets in our own way of trying new things and walking away from our past.  

How much of yesterday do we really need to overcome today in order to have a shot at a tomorrow that is large enough for us and our children and their children? As we travel through today, look around. Everything you pass was created because of choices made, good and bad; buildings, businesses, neighborhoods, families. We cannot go back but neither can we simply stand pat. 

Forward or Failure, 80/20. Your choice.
-bill kenny 

Good Day Sunshine

I get an e-mailed weather forecast from my local CBS TV station, basically because I can and I'm too lazy to look out my window (I guess). And I always smile when I see something like this, from earlier this week with the next-day forecast.

I love the notion of 'abundant sunshine.' It's like 'abundant happiness' or, in my case, 'abundant pony rides for your birthday,' without the 'abundant piles of equine poop to clean up later.' 

I think we should celebrate 'abundance' abundantly, today and every day. 
-bill kenny

A Thought to Start Summer

Just me, or is summer a lot like Christmas? We look forward to it for weeks or more in advance, awaiting its arrival, and then suddenly it's over. I'm not sure how that first sentence would work in Australia where they have both summer and Christmas with the same weather, but that's my cross to bear. 

Today is the largest and longest amount of daylight for this entire year. From here on out, or at least until December, the daylight diminishes. Sorry to harsh your buzz or outdoor plans.

We still have lots to learn, so let's go.
-bill kenny 

Variations on a Theme

My last original thought died of loneliness. Here are some words I first wrote years ago about today. I called it:  

When My Father Was a Hero and Not a Human

When I was in the US Air Force after I was married but before we had children (actually before Sigrid had children) shortly after Easter in 1980 I happened across a tremendous card that was pitch-perfect for my dad for Father's Day.

I was in the Rhein-Main Base Exchange in then West Germany and the thing you have to know about US military overseas shopping opportunities, be they the exchanges (like department stores) or the commissaries (like groceries) when you see it on the shelf, buy it. There's no 'look in the backroom for more' no 'we're expecting another order in a  week.' It really is a case of 'he who hesitates is lunch.'

When I saw the card, I knew it was ideal for two people who had long ago come to the realization they had nothing to say to one other but neither wanted to be the first to admit that because that would be giving up and these two Thick Micks never gave up, ever.

Our relationship, and as I discovered, that of my brothers and sisters as well, to varying degrees, frequently had more turbulence than tranquility. I used to say my father was the angriest man I ever knew until I caught a glance of myself one morning in the mirror. I then stopped saying that.

The card captured all of that and when I got home I signed it, wrote a note whose every word I still remember, addressed the envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in the hand tooled leather carrying bag Sigrid had gotten me for our first wedding anniversary and into which I dropped any number and manner of objects as I went about my life.

I next saw the card some six months later when Sigrid, Frau Ordnung Muss Sein, was cleaning out my bag and held it out to me in soft and silent reproach as we sat in our living room. She pursed her lips and waited for her spaetzen-hirnn husband to grasp what the object in her hand was and then, realizing he did, slowly shook her head.

For my part, chagrined as I was, I insisted it wasn't that big a deal as I could save the card for next Father's Day and thought no more of it. Sadly, the universe did. My father was to die in his sleep of an attacking heart the following May. The words I'd always meant to say but needed thousands of miles of ocean to actually write were never shared.

I became an adult when I bought my first beer legally. I became a man when I took a wife (or more exactly, when she married me). I became a father with the births of our children. When I looked at my dad 'back in the day' I saw him differently than I do now, shaped and formed by a crucible of events controlled and beyond our control each of our lives has contained.

I've learned not very much in almost seven decades here on the ant farm except, you should tell the people you love that you love them when they and you are here so they know it and don't be surprised that they already did and that in their own way they love you, too. 

To my brothers and my brothers-in-law, fathers all, and to you and yours as well and always, Happy Father's Day.
-bill kenny

Freedom Day

This is one of the best explanations I've ever encountered.

And this is just one of the local ways to celebrate ourselves and one another. 

Donald L. Oat Theater, 60 Broadway, Norwich, CT

After all, we are all we have and all we shall ever have.
-bill kenny

FWP

A million or so years ago, I worked with a brilliantly talented woman when we were both enlisted broadcasters in the USAF and working in Germany at the American Forces Network, Europe. She had a sign on her desk that always helped me stay centered, as it read, "I am now starving to death on the salary I once dreamed of making." 

As I learned again and again throughout my working years, that was and will always be painfully true. Our appetites increase geometrically while our compensations are usually more arithmetic and therein lies the problem and challenge.

There's a meme floating around on the Internet about someone struggling because the recharging cord for their iPhone is only three feet long. That's regarded as a poster for FWP, First World Problems.

Sort of like 'all I have for bottled water is Evian as we ran out of Fuji yesterday,' when as a kid we drank from the hose in the backyard during the heat of summer (and while also walking through three-foot-tall snowdrifts uphill, both ways, on our way to school).

I should be concerned rather than merely amused by a news story like this, but I remember Thoreau's, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," and realize, I, like many of them, yearn for the scratch to be able to afford a bell to put on that bicycle.
-bill kenny

Joan Kenny, 1928-2017

I'm just an eyeblink shy of seventy but I'm a kid about things, well, some things. I still sort of expect to get a call from my mother on my birthday congratulating me for something, being born, that she did all the work involved while I had no clue. I've maintained that cluelessness for nearly seven decades and I for one admire my consistency. 

My mom died earlier this month four years ago, shortly before her 66th wedding anniversary and about ten days shy of her birthday which is today. A gentleman never tells a lady's age. I am not a gentleman but my youngest brother is and feels very strongly there's much to be said about saying nothing about age. I wrote these words anticipating the anniversary of her birthday, and am now reduced to celebrating the life of the woman who gave me life. I think she'd find that kinda funny.

Both my wife and I were raised in two-parent families with fathers who filled up the room when they entered and who, when they departed, left vacuums. With both Moms, I think, at least for me, I never fully appreciated how marvelous they were and are, as people, until they weren't sharing a spotlight of attention. My wife's Dad passed a couple of years back after a number of years of declining health, and the distance from here to Germany, compounded and exacerbated the heartache of that moment, I know.

My mom awoke to find her husband of over thirty years dead in their bed from the final in a series of heart attacks he never acknowledged even having, with three children younger than eighteen still under roof and in need of a home. She and my father had, as was so often the case for people of their generation, two families. 

I am 69 and my youngest brother is fifty-four. The 'gremlins', as the oldest children called the youngest with whom we didn't share the house, were in a precarious predicament but we, those who had flown the nest, never fully appreciated the severity of the dilemma Mom found herself in.

Mom at Suzanne's Wedding

But, she worked without complaint or surcease, to make sure those still at home never wanted for any of their basic needs. Whatever any child needed, they would receive and she did without until she had saved enough. And if another child wanted something, then that's where her savings went and she started yet again. 

She and they had a very different relationship with one another than her oldest children had with her or with one another, and some/part/all of that dynamic was shaped by those moments and the decisions made in them all those years ago.

I could always call her for advice about our children, She never volunteered an opinion, but was there when I asked. She always seemed reluctant to do so, as if somehow her offering an insight to someone to whom she gave life could be overstepping her bounds. 

As the Amish say, 'the older I get, the smarter my parents are.' I am reduced to hoping the wisdom is hereditary and stored for safekeeping in a box someplace on a low shelf in the basement--because I sure don't have any on or near me, especially right now. 

Photo by Adam Kenny

I don't know who first said it but it's painfully true, "my mother taught me everything; except how to live without her."
-bill kenny

Ships

Next Monday marks the ‘official' start of summer but before we get there, I have a word or two (okay, more like five hundred) on this Sunday, which is Father’s Day (singular possessive rather than plural possessive while I wonder why it’s a possessive at all but that’s a rumination for another time). 

Being my wife's spouse and our children's father are the two things I do best in my entire life and, between us, most days I am not all that good at either of them. My wife makes the former work for both of us. 

As for the latter, I didn't take classes and while I yearned for an indeterminate probationary period, there was none. And nothing but on-the-job training. Speaking I suspect not only for myself, fatherhood is the hardest job I could ever love and despite what I believed while I was on the giving end, Dad is the highest compliment I can receive in the whole world. 

Of course, all of us who are fathers have people to thank (especially our children without whom technically....) but I won't even try to list all the fathers whom I have had the good fortune to know because that list would go on forever.

True story from when our oldest, Patrick, was our only child. He, in his car seat in the back, and I are stopped at a traffic light (he is about three years old). I am waiting for the light to change. "You know what?" he asks me, "if Mom had married someone else, I would have a different father." Thanks for playing, indeed.   

Father’s Day reminds me to pause and thank the father I argued and too often angrily fought with, whom I shared with my brothers and sisters. I recall an Amish saying that goes, “the older I get, the smarter my father becomes,” and realize its truth and it stings a little.

Damals: Patrick and his sister, Michelle
or as Michelle likes to think of it,
Michelle with her brother Patrick

Both of my brothers are fathers, so I hope they have Happy Father's Days, too. I suspect like dads everywhere they’ve discovered what you learn after you know it all is what counts the most. As they used to say in Freshman Orientation at my imaginary Dad's College: Help Your Kids Do Well and Be Happy.

Admittedly as a dad, you can't do too much about skinned knees or first true loves that break hearts except tell yourself, and your child, 'this, too, shall pass' because you know it will even when they know it won't. All you can wish for your son or daughter is that they are well and happy, two conditions for which they, themselves are most responsible. I used to waste so much energy worrying about what I couldn’t give them, but they grew up never missing what they never had. 

Today, both of our children are adults with lives very much their own and, I hope, have accepted that in his heart, their dotty, doting Dad, like all fathers, loves them maybe without always saying the words. And should/when they choose to have children of their own, I think/hope/pray they'll have good memories from their own childhood to draw upon and help them as parents. 

Happy (early) Father’s Day to Dads everywhere.
-bill kenny

Down at the Edge

Life is a matter of moments and a question of balance. 

Savor each one and don't lose yours.
-bill kenny 

Oft Sighted though Seldom Truly Seen

Today is a special day though not in a boisterous and exuberant kind of way. 

By that I mean when you live your life as I do like every day could be your last, they're all special but that's not what I mean either. 

I'll stop being coy. 

Today is Flag Day. though you'd probably not know it from visiting a Hallmark Store.

We think "flag" on the Fourth of July and mentally if not physically pack it away by noon on the fifth. In the aftermath of 09/11/01, people had them everywhere to the point, I fear, that the flag had no point for many. 

And for far too often in recent years, we've had scoundrels of all political and ideological stripes wrap themselves in the flag, physically as well as metaphorically, while insisting 'love me, love my dog' as if their display of patriotism could somehow overcome the venality (if not actual criminality) of their behavior. 

Some of us salute the flag; others stand when the National Anthem is played or the colors are presented while still others take a knee to remind us of how far we are still from the ideals that we want to believe our flag represents for our nation.

Our men and women in uniform do not defend the flag-they defend the nation the flag represents, warts and all (and have you looked at us in the mirror lately? We are some pretty scary people my friend). 

The flag stands for us and sometimes, I'm chagrined to say, we'll fall for anything.

"You can stand alone 

Or with somebody else 

Or stand with all of us, together.

"If you can believe
In something bigger than yourself
You can follow the flag forever."
-bill kenny

Losing Track While Swapping Out Clips

Life continues to come at me, and all of us for that matter, at the rate of about three hundred WTFs a second, and there's almost nothing we can do if we blink and miss something like I very nearly did again. 

Yesterday, five years ago the Pulse Nightclub shooting/murders happened. (I know: five years ago? Seriously?) Earlier last week, though I'm sure that was just coincidental (where's the big wink emoticon when I need it?), the Governor of Florida with whom I'll probably never be invited to go shoe-shopping, honored the memories of those murdered and those who survived in a typical Ron DeSantis manner.  

All I can offer are words that appeared here four years ago and wonder how many more times a nation that chooses to do nothing about gun violence will shake its head sadly and wonder why there's no way to stop the gun violence. Expect that whole 'thoughts and prayers' schtick would play really well in Austin, Texas, this morning. I called it then: 

Collateral Damage in the Age of Style

There's been so much killing and carnage since it happened I'd almost forgotten. It was one year ago that an impotent, life-long loser murdered forty-nine people in the Pulse Club in Orlando, Florida.

Terror in Orlando

Murder in the Name of the Lord has become practically a daily occurrence and was so even before Pulse but no matter how often it happens, and how great the death and damage, it never, ever starts to feel "normal" or a part of any kind of 'just another day at the End of the World.'

As a card-carrying First Worlder (you didn't get a card? Buddy, you got gypped! We get bargains all over the place and discount everything we see and hear), without ever knowing it or knowing of it, I helped create the world order that has tens of millions, if not more likely hundreds of millions, living in squalor and penury so profound and institutionalized they will never escape it. The world, as they know it, has conspired to leave them with nothing.

The institutions I have created and support have, in turn, constructed protections and insulation for me so that I have as much, or as little (preferably) interaction with or even knowledge of their existence. It's not that I'm not indifferent to their struggle and plight; I am oblivious to it. And they have no personal contact of any kind of me and mine. We are on parallel but separate planets.

Except, of course, we share this one. And because we are our own closed system, one with the other, we guarantee that this dance of death and doom will go on until no one is left standing. When you have nothing to live for it makes death as deliverance attractive. And with nothing to live for, it's easier to find something to die for which is only partial solace unless and until you can make someone else die for it, too.

I'm never sure if God created man in His image and likeness (some things you must take or leave on faith alone), but I'm very sure we created God in ours, leaving me to wonder who will forgive us.
-bill kenny   

Can't Hold a Candle to Gwneyth

To a certain extent, rich and famous people often remind me of panda bears. Everyone loves going to the zoo to look at them even though while you're looking at them they don't seem to be doing anything (because they aren't) aside from munching on bamboo. 

Not that long ago, Gwenyth Paltrow (she of  'consciously uncoupling with Chris Martin' fame) made a media splash for marketing, via her Goop website, a candle that she claimed smelled like her vagina.  I almost hurt myself  NOT having an opinion on any of that because it's really none of my, or (and my point, I think) anyone else's business. 

I am relentless in advocating for freedom but, where I draw the line perhaps, your need to tell me can, will, nor, not ever, exceed my need to NOT know if that's what I choose. That we have so many people famous for being famous is okay as long as we understand celebrities make headlines while heroes and heroines make a difference. 

You can probably guess how I reacted to this 'news item and, no, I haven't checked with Gwenyth about bamboo-scented candles or how to go about steaming them. Check with Will Smith.
-bill kenny

What If ...

Every organized religion, and a couple of the less organized ones, have sacred writings, scriptures if you will. No matter the region, or the religion, it's part of our human genome, the need to be a part of something bigger. 

Be it the Koran, the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the latest roman a clef by Danielle Steel, there's a narrative-a place to go look for details. When you argue a matter of theology and someone says, 'you can look it up!' the texts are what they're referring to.

There's the blood of the Lamb, the descent of the dove, the tongues of fire, the burning bush, and an almost unending number of symbols and signs that The Lord (however you perceive S/He to be) uses to get our attention and pass along the Word.

What if we're the first generation of people on this planet who had a Deity? I don't pretend to know what all of those before us had, I'm just saying we're the first and Our God uses the tools we have today in much the way as in the days of old we've read about. 

Here's how someone the other day speculated God communicate the Ten Commandments if S/He had to use text.

Perhaps:
1. no1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg's
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-X only w/ m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl. ttyl, JHWH. ps. wwjd?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

-bill kenny

The Older I Get, the Better I Was

This is from a very long time ago; I think I still had a full head of hair and far more optimism about who we are and where we're heading than I have now. Back then I called it:

Rocky and Bullwinkle Offer a Teachable Moment

This year the garden my daughter and I have planted in our yard is different from our gardens of the past decade and longer. The selection of vegetables has been restricted in terms of variety and volume (we had so many tomatoes last year it was ironic that it wasn't a local election season if you follow my drift), so this time are planted far fewer types of tomato plants and lettuce. Perhaps the biggest change in the garden she and I have planted this year is that I have planted none of it.

I came home from work one day last week and she and her mother had traveled to "CT's Home Improvement Warehouse", the one with the orange signs (as in 'orange you sorry you didn't choose a different color?') and rented the small roto-tiller, the Mantis, chewed up a patch of the backyard, worked in the compost to prepare the plot and planted the crops.

Since, among my talents, is the inability to understand when to water young plants, I don't even do that part of the garden. I open the back door, walk down the stairs, stand on the concrete landing and admire the fruits of not-my-labor. I never grow tired of this. Between us, had I realized how much fun gardening this way was, I'd have taken it up years ago. Assuming my daughter would have allowed me.

Michelle is very much her mother's daughter in terms of attention to detail (the map she drew of the garden with the layout and distribution of plants is color-coded and seems to also be to scale). In years past, I would draw schematics on white pieces of paper in ink with my recollections of what I thought we had planted and where. Usually in equal parts less than accurate. 

Two, or maybe three, years ago we waited for most of the season for the rhubarb that I thought I had planted to breakthrough. Turns out it may have been elsewhere in the patch but had been mooted when I'd clipped it with the mower.

The garden is in and doing well, or as well as anyone who has only been around for forty-eight hours can be doing, except as I learned yesterday morning, our neighborhood posse of squirrels, the same animals who show up, magically, when they sense Michelle might be home from college on weekends and holidays, and beg, literally, for peanuts, played the 'let's dig up the corn plants' card yesterday with deleterious effect.

Michelle was outraged at their betrayal. To their credit, they were thorough, though I knew better than to offer that observation aloud. The squirrels ate every shoot of every plant, digging them out of the garden so as to enjoy every mouthful. I find it interesting that since pulling this stunt, we haven't seen the little ba$tards. 

They're usually all over the back landing with the first rays of the sun, banging into the blue recycling bins (searching perhaps for something to eat) making enough noise to attract attention, to be followed, they hope, by fistfuls of peanuts being flung in their direction.

This morning and all of today, not so much or so many. My daughter is angry and I think the squirrels know it, and no matter what Animal Planet has taught me, I think they might even know why. In a way, as I've watched her rearrange our garden, and look to replace the corn plants and then safeguard the replacements, I've come to see our little backyard setback as symbolic of Norwich.

We have a plan of development here in the Rose of New England, a relatively stable infrastructure, a good handle on our municipal expenses, and realistic if not fully articulated goals for small-scale economic development. 

We know to realize our plans and benefit ourselves and our children, we must be prepared to accept a certain amount of sacrifice in the now for rewards to be reaped in the future. But delayed gratification is so hard and for so many, it's too hard. 

Yes, we know if we eat our seed corn there will nothing to plant or to harvest. But we're hungry now and someone, somewhere could show up with corn enough for all at harvest time, and then our sacrifice and self-control will have been unnecessary. 

At least that's what we tell ourselves and our squirrels. That, and that they can fly.
-bill kenny

Start Where You Are

Today is the day of days for the Class of 2021 for my across the Chelsea Parade neighbors at Norwich Free Academy with their graduation exercises later this afternoon at Dodd Stadium (fingers crossed for your weather). Congratulations!

As has become traditional on graduation day, I have again NOT been invited or encouraged to deliver any remarks as part of the day's celebrations, but despite popular demand and my spouse's impassioned pleas, I have prepared some anyway, suggesting spite can be a powerful motivator  

Much of what follows may sound familiar; that's probably as much your doing, as it is mine (the difference being that I'm not taking any responsibility (why would I start now?)). If it helps, there will NOT be a test on any of this. You've already been through enough just getting to here. 

The world we are entrusting to you has a few more miles on it than the one we inherited and some of its dents and dings are older than either of us but are now about to become your challenge. I'd say 'good luck,' but you'll need a damn sight more than that, and I hope everyone you've met and everything you've done and experienced, good and bad, up until this moment has provided you with a good start on possessing the tools you'll need to succeed because the alternative is unthinkable.

Don't be overwhelmed by what's ahead or daunted at whatever tasks you'll have before you. As new as all of it is, and will be for you so, too, was it for us, and for those before us. Admittedly, I and my fellow graduates of the Class of 1970 and all the others before and since then have made what must feel like a right hash of just about everything but look on the bright side. If you want to fix the world, you are entering a target-rich environment. 

I, along with everyone else have wished you 'good luck,' but between us, you'll need all of that luck plus agility and mobility not to mention stamina, courage, and insatiable curiosity. 

I and my cohorts when we were you spent a lot of time thinking high school graduation meant we were now entering the real world. Let me save you some steps: you've been in the real world since the day you were born. How much your family and circumstances shielded or prepared you for what's to come is another matter. And as far as preparation goes, if you haven't already figured it out, most of us are making up as we go along. 

I doubt any of you back when you were freshmen could have possibly imagined the world you would live through by the time graduation day arrived so you've learned experience can often be what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. 

Things will start to get faster now as the ride of your life picks up speed. Be what you want to be and take all the time you need to figure that out. I'd remind you of the NFA motto, "Providing Opportunities and Preparing Lives,"  because it's a terrific statement of purpose not just for those Wildcats setting forth this afternoon on their journey but for all those graduating anywhere and everywhere.  

As Neil Gaiman once said (at a graduation he wasn't speaking at either), "Now go and make interesting mistakes; make amazing mistakes; make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules, and leave the world more interesting for you being here." 
-bill kenny

Meanwhile

My recently-acquired new to me computer decided to remind me yesterday about which of us is dominant in our relationship.

And now I am somewhat nostalgic for the computer I couldn't wait to be rid of.

-bill kenny

A Lost Cause

 Not every "If" is Rudyard Kipling's.

There are days that knowing just that is enough.
-bill kenny

Remembering the Original ANTIFA

I wrote this some years ago in a moment of introspection which, thanks to prescription drugs I now have under control. In a post-pandemic Land of the Round Doorknobs, this may prove to be a very important thing. 

2,501 GIs never saw the sunrise on June 7, 1944. I called this at the time:

A World Away

I remember the two days we were there in the late spring of 1984, how blue the sky and the ocean were. That certainly hadn't been the case, the historians traveling with us assured me, forty years earlier. It was soothing to see how the sand seemed to go on forever along the shoreline but, when you turned to face inland from the beaches, how quickly the landscape changed to thick bushes, scrub trees, rocky terrain. 

I found it hard to imagine what it all must have looked like as the landing craft lowered their ramps and men and machines poured from them struggling to cross the water to the beach all in the face of murderous counter-fire.

I was traveling with a US Army Helicopter Company from Hanau, Germany, to walk the beaches of Normandy, France. I had come with a young enlisted US Army videographer, Specialist Four Bob (the Human Sachtler) G. Bobby G was over six feet tall and had, it seemed, enough upper body strength to crush an automobile like a beer can. We called him the Human Sachtler because there wasn't a shot where he needed the camera tripod-between the arms of steel and the ability to control his breathing, he was as steady as a rock.

Walking, as we did for hours in the sand, can wear you out and the fatigue is profound and overwhelming. I could only wonder what, on D-Day, a GI with a seventy-pound rucksack, and all hell in front of and around him, was feeling on what we now call the longest day. We had done interviews earlier that morning with elderly Frenchmen who, as men our present ages and sometimes only boys, had been inadvertent witnesses to history, triangulating linguistically, as they spoke no English and we, no French. 

One of them, to the undisguised scorn of the others, admitted he understood 'some German' and so I would ask him, Auf Deutsch, a question that he would rephrase into French and ask a neighbor who would reply to him and which he'd relay to me in German and which I'd translate into English.

When you read about Normandy and all the planning and staging that led up to it, it feels very different when you can walk the beaches you've read about. There's a taste in your mouth from the salt air and a breeze coming off the water that helps the screams of gulls carry even farther. I wonder if those struggling ashore, from the landing craft or parachuting down onto those maintaining their watch on the Atlantic Wall had a moment in which to take any of that in. On a day when so many would die, was there a final split second to savor life? There was no one to ask except those we visited the next day, friend and foe alike, at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.

When you can struggle to climb to Pointe du Hoc (up the stairs carved into the soft stone and NOT the way the Rangers had to, directly vertical), you can almost, but not quite, grasp what it was like for the soldiers of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, first to seize this emplacement (actually to capture artillery that had already been moved) and then, as the Nazi High Command realized, finally, the invasion wasn't a ruse but the real thing and threw itself at the Rangers trying to drive them over the cliffs and into the sea, how they held their positions for two days.

Today we mark the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the liberation of Europe from the tyrannical, homicidal terror of the Nazi's Third Reich. Young American men had been in Europe decades earlier, in the War to End All Wars that, as it turned out, didn't. And what they couldn't know as they waded ashore and struggled to stay alive long enough to shoot back at those shooting at them, in less than a year, all the shooting in Europe would be over.

How much we've learned as a species in all the years since is a matter of debate and discussion (and for some, despair) as the young men, of all sides, who survived D-Day pass from our earth at a rate of thousands every day, taking with them every memory and meaning we might have shared, assuming we had cared enough to ask.

Santayana noted 'those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it' but those who remember that it was Santayana who said that are, themselves, also few and far between.

-bill kenny  

Fell Off My Calendar

I lost track of time, I guess (who hasn't?), and wasn't helped that my local Hallmark store doesn't offer anything special in terms of a card. All of which means I'm a day late and a dollar short on something important. I'll do better.

In George Orwell's 1984, meaning is subverted through language and NuSpeak is used to not communicate with one another. In that spirit, I'd like to extend to the People's Republic of China, PRC, belated best wishes on the 32nd anniversary of your June 4th Incident. In much the same way as you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, sometimes on the road to capitalism you have to get medieval.

I was living in West Germany when the "incident" happened and unlike many of my (younger) colleagues, I knew there was no need to brace for impact or repercussion. In my lifetime there had been the 1953 Soviet assistance visit to East Berlin, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and the Prague Spring of 1968. Just variations of the same flavor. 

The Notion that is our Nation, the United States of America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, averted its eyes and turned away as Chinese citizens, seeking nothing more than basic human rights, discovered they had a new one, the right to be turned into hamburger helper between the treads of a tank column. And the blood they spilled just made the white shine brighter.

It's been practice, if not policy, for decades (since Nixon 'opened Red China') to 'encourage' capitalism for the PRC in the belief that democracy and all it entails will follow as night, the day. Based on this table of exports, the PRC will be sending delegates to both US national political party conventions real soon. And with the balance of payments the way it is, they can afford to. After you've scrutinized that chart, take a moment to read this and remember it's about ONE company and its trade relationship. The only thing 'American' about these guys may be the greeter at the door. Sam would be spinning.

In the ensuing decades, we've seen the evolution and spread of instantaneous worldwide communications. Just what folks with blood on their hands want when an anniversary rolls around. Can you blame them? And what do you get a government that already had "A Goddess of Democracy?" Be advised, we're taking points off for answers that include any variation of an answer that suggests 'a hose to get the papier-mache off the tank.'

We are the champions of revisionist history here, Winston, And don't forget, he who controls the present controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future.
-bill kenny

Sometimes Lost in the Noise...

It should go without saying but often doesn't: 

Let the day begin.  
-bill kenny