Keep It Simple

Sometimes simple is the best and other times the best is simple. 

You are not your job or your car.
-bill kenny

 

Stay Frosty

We live in a world of boundless opportunities and Eureka! moments, it seems. Our life question has evolved from 'Can we?' to "Should we?'
And sometimes the journey along that route is a little bumpier than it needs to be. 

Take this wonder (more like ephemera) of the summer of the twenty-first year of the 21st Century and weigh it once again against my 'Can we/Should we?' question.

Stay Frosty.
-bill kenny

   

Truth. Always. Wins.

The ticking sweep of the stop watch's second-hand signals the approaching end to all the lies, half-truths, misinformation, disinformation, gaslighting, and bullshit that has become the province and purview of the GQP about the scale and scope of the Yeehawdist Assault during the Vanilla ISIS 6 January Insurrection 

Hearing them is believing. 

Heroes

So, too, is seeing this.

-bill kenny

Everyone's Shadow Is the Same Color

Last Monday's Norwich City Council filled me with more hope for who we could become than I've had in a long time. 

The agenda item, Resolution #6, with thirteen action points was concise and clear from its very first point, 'the Norwich City Council asserts that racism is a public health crisis affecting our entire community.' I watched the meeting on public access and have rewatched it twice since and heard not one word aiming or blaming anyone or any institution for the way we are. 

Rather, I heard and was inspired by a lot of voices sharing experiences, dreams (dashed and otherwise), and hopes for brighter and better days primarily because the most important step in solving a problem, any problem, is admitting that you have a problem. 

At my next natal anniversary, I will celebrate (though my current social circle suggests I'll be the only one so doing) my seventieth year here on The Big Blue Marble. During all that time, despite my best effort and most strenuous exertion, I remain a white man who will never know life as a person of color, as someone of a religion different from mine, a person whose physical or mental abilities are not as mine or whose sex, sexual preference or orientation is other than my own. 

I tell myself that I am not alone in feeling both empathy and sympathy for all those whose lives differ from mine and think of myself as an 'ally,' but based on the action points outlined in the resolution the City Council unanimously adopted last Monday our world is more likely to change by our actions rather than merely our words. 

Some time back I came across a cartoon of two eagles in easy chairs discussing whether an owl is a predator, concluding that because neither of them had ever been attacked they had no idea what a mouse was complaining about. The smile the cartoon created was quickly followed by a grimace as the realization dawned that too often our reality fails to accommodate the lives and struggles of others we choose to not know. 

Reaction on social media platforms to local newspapers' coverage of the council's actions confirmed my fear that too many of us have bubbles that we refuse to acknowledge or attempt to expand (that is the great thing about being a pessimist; I can only be surprised, never disappointed). 

I'd hope the health equity committee, whose members are community helping hands who've been bailing out the ocean with teaspoons for years, established as part of the adopted resolution will continue their efforts to transform the goal of equal rights, opportunities, and treatment for anyone into the reality of equal rights, opportunities, and treatment for everyone, energized by the importance and urgency so many in Norwich showed up in Council chambers to demonstrate and to represent.

This is the moment, if we so choose, to calculate the distance we've traveled towards a more perfect union and better city and then map a route for what lies ahead and how to continue the journey. Change is incremental but also inevitable; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Now is not the time to be daunted at the size of the task ahead but rather determined to continue the work each of us must do in a process that we all must own. Don't be distracted by gaslighters and their strawman about Critical Race Theory. The goal is Diversity, Equality, and inclusion because everyone's shadow is the same color.
-bill kenny 

Ozymandias

We are all travelers to or from an antique land, as Shelley might have written, and encounter on seemingly an almost daily basis structures and situations designed to impress and intimidate us or someone else. 

I'm always amazed at how often a moment of import becomes so much less than that in the moments that follow it, leading me to wonder 'just how serious is this?' even though I suspect I already know the answer. 

What's real, and what's surreal, and what about cereal as part of the most important meal of the day, breakfast? How important are questions like that and what about the answers? 

Nothing beside remains.
-bill kenny

Passing Through

The older I get the more I fall back on the wit and wisdom of the music I listened to as a young teen. It started as inspiration and is now more or less solace.

I am more than an Anglophile, I am a fanatic Anglophile, so yes I have all the albums The Beatles ever released. In the USA, as well as all the UK releases and European pressings, too. 

Ditto for the Stones, The Kinks, and just about anyone else who wandered across the bridge built from Old Blighty from the fall of 1963 through the Summer of Love. I work hard to listen to 'new' stuff though if I were honest (a rarity and less frequent these days) I'd add 'to me' to the descriptive since I skip over all the MTV stations on my television as most of whatever they offer is beyond my comprehension and often beneath my contempt.

 

If I were to be totally candid much if not all of the new(ish) music I do listen to is from performers and bands who remind me of the favorites I had growing up. And I suspect I'm not alone in that.

I'm mindful of Jethro Tull's admonition about Living in the Past but it's the only way I know how as life in the future can prove to be both a bit trickier than advertised and more difficult to do well enough.
-bill kenny

God's Punchline

So are we a cosmic accident or a cosmic joke? Or somewhere in between?
-bill kenny 

One of My Sisters Is Having a Birthday

I first offered what follows exactly a decade ago and it was as true then as it is now. 

Yeah, every one of us has a few more bumps and bruises (thank you, Life) and a few more grey hairs where we once had grey cell matter but that's fine because that's all part of the play. Today is Kara's birthday. She is one of my three sisters and (to steal her phrase) I love you to the moon and back. Always. At the time I called it:

They Say It's Your Birthday

Today is my sister, Kara's birthday. It's a holiday in her house and probably should be one on her block and across the State of New Jersey (now, Florida), though in light of budget cutbacks everywhere, unlikely to be the case.

The world is a much better place because Kara is in it and our family is fortunate that she is our relative even if, as Einstein predicated, everything is relative. (Could that mean everything is Einstein? I'm asking because it would explain the bramble that is often my hair when I awaken.)

Kara and I shared a small overlapping childhood. I was transitioning away as she was becoming her own person. And in a sense, I suspect, she sees herself more often as Jill and Adam's older sister than as the younger sibling of our brother, Kelly, and sister, Evan, with whom I spent far more years, only because their luck wasn't as good as Kara's.

Kara and her husband, Russ, have their own family that is growing up, though I hope not growing apart, with RJ, Randy, and Jordan all young men on a mission, in different directions at maximum velocity. When next they look, their boys will be grown and gone. 

I've discovered the easiest way to track the passing of time is to look at and to my children as they are better indicators of how far we have all come than any mirror can hope to ever tell me. I imagine I am not the only one who has made that discovery.

Kara should actually be our ambassador to the United Nations as she has a genius for talking people into doing things they would otherwise never, ever consider and, while so doing, convincing them that it was all their own idea in the first place while she is pleased and proud to help them.

I believe she (and my) younger sister Jill can actually pull off the Tom Sawyer painting the fence trick, but it's Kara who organizes the trip to the hardware store to get the brushes and the drop cloths. And she'll even help you muscle them into the van.

I wasn't around when our Mom was a kid-or a teen-or a young woman. I caught up with her as a young mother (and I was, technically, the first reason why she was a young mother) but I have always thought Kara most resembles what our Mom must have been like when we were too small to really remember.

You cannot help but smile when you are with Kara-I am smiling now as I type this, thinking of her because she is relentlessly cheerful no matter the situation. Her children reflect the values she and Russ have instilled in them and are readying themselves to sally forth into the world, and by thus engaging, improve it, all by themselves. 

My brother-in-law has impeccable judgment, excellent taste, and superior good fortune. Happy Birthday, Kara!

-bill kenny

Razor Blades at Close Range

For a number of years after the 2008 presidential election, I'd pass a house in Norwich, near the golf course on the New London Turnpike with a large John McCain lawn sign. It went up in the heat of that campaign for the heart and soul and perhaps spleen of America and was there for what felt like forever afterward; I'm not sure it didn't just fall down. 

I try, though sometimes fail, to update the bumper stickers on my car's back window to reflect my at-the-moment white-hot personal and political passions. I still refer to them as bumper stickers even though they're now on the car's window because I'm a fossil who remembers when cars had metal bumpers and you put sticky stuff with persnickety quips printed on them on the bumpers, but who does that any more? Someone who doesn't want to ever succeed in removing the sticker in its entirety at some later date, I guess. 

My distaste for The Former Guy, a/k/a #Pantload 45, and/or the Orange Shitstain on the Oval Office, has shifted in the course of the last half a decade or so. I went from mocking him as a less than credible candidate to ridiculing him while he held the office to, just last month (or the month before, I've lost track) moving on with the times, even if he can't, and going with 'Trump in Prison,' because he should be and nothing on your back window or porch flag will convince me otherwise. 

I have removed more than a few stickers from the window with a razor scraper and a not inconsiderable amount of reluctance. We are what we eat and what we wear and what we drive, I have come to believe we make changes in any of those areas only under some form of duress. 

So take a deep breath and consider this: Unless the bumper sticker is holding the Volvo bio-diesel station wagon together as your Birkenstock-shod gas pedal foot makes sure you never break the speed limit, get that outdated election year artifact off the car. It's like having a Vote McKinley campaign button on your straw boater as you dance the black bottom. That 70's Show was the nineteen seventies, after all, and they had the decency to stop once they were no longer funny (eventually).

Didn't you get the memo on this stuff? More on point, didn't you read it? Do we actually need Department of Transportation and Highway Safety rules banning trite and no longer necessary or relevant adhesive messages? Does that mean if your child has children of her/his own, it's time for the "My Child Is an Honor Student at Ridgemont Elementary School" to come off the car? What do you think? 

And no, State of Washington drivers, you can't leave the "Fifty Four Forty or Fight" stickers on your back windows. But nice try.
-bill kenny

Words at Ten Paces

Do you remember, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?" 

Check out this bumper crop of newly minted words and armor up because the bruises could be coming thick and fast.

I will confess I always assumed Yeet was part of djeetyet. Beware the silent E. Obviously.

And I like DEI over CRT and will ALWAYS choose JEDI over SJW. Just for FYI, Karen or Ken.
-bill kenny

It Takes a Village, People

We’re funny folks, we Norwicheans (or do you prefer Rose City Residents?), and I don’t mean humorous. 

Half of us (or more) are angry that ‘nothing changes’ (but we never offer you any examples that would define either word) while the other half of us are angry that ‘everything changes’ (see the previous disclaimer for absence of definitions). 

And then there’s the third half of us (third half? Yeah, I know, math has never been our strong suit) who are madder than heqq at the other two halves for always being negative about everything or being naively optimistic about everything (which seems to cover all the bases). 

How else to explain the reaction precipitated Wednesday by the announcement the City of Norwich is now the (proud?) owner of the former YMCA building which has sat abandoned and abused since its abrupt closure over a decade ago. 

Then, as now, in a city where we would bitch if you hanged us with a new rope, we had an outpouring of outrage and indignation almost evenly divided between those who wanted ‘the city’ to do ‘something with the Y’ and those who saw any effort by Norwich’s elected and appointed leaders to do anything vaguely resembling leadership as unwarranted and unwelcome. But look at us now; the Village People would be so proud.

Talk about bringing folks together even if, and most especially because, we cannot agree on what to do much less what to do next, you’d have to go some to top the idea of taking on the rescue and revival of the YMCA (or maybe its razing). 

Everyone has stories about how their kids (or sometimes it was the parents of) learned to swim there, or if it’s where someone else used to shoot hoops on Thursday nights while folks went shopping downtown. The YMCA was for its time a community center and in any number of reinvented forms now would make our city more attractive. 

And standing, as it does, at a gateway to our downtown, you’d think we’d rally around some creative thinking especially if, as is being posited, reclamation/remediation/demolition costs could be borne by American Rescue Plan money that Norwich is forecast to receive.  

A lot of us keep pointing out the city’s less than glory-covered history of private property acquisition (looking at you, Reid and Hughes building as just a most recent example) and I concede there’s a lot of planning still to be done before we ever get to the action and execution part of the project but can we stop finding fault with every effort to improve Norwich like somebody, somewhere, was awarding prizes for the best reason why we can’t/won’t do something?

I applaud the City Manager and the City Council for the effort, even if I’m a little fuzzy on a lot of the specifics (I’m fuzzy on a lot of stuff, so I’m not overly anxious), and encourage and exhort anyone and everyone with an opinion about this decision to not rush to judgment.  

This is the kind of initiative, as someone who’s been told for thirty years he’s not from here, that always reminds me of how often we put the “No” in Norwich. The worst part is we are each the reason why we keep doing that.
-bill kenny

Don't Interrupt the Sorrow

Fifty-two years ago today, we walked on the moon for the first time. If you weren't yet born when that happened, you missed something, you really did. You can read a library of books on how much effort and coordination, time and talents, and money such an effort took, and it's staggering, but here's the thing to remember from 'back in the day'.

Going to the moon wasn't the only thing we were doing as a country, as a tribe, a nation-state on Earth. We had almost 450,000 men under arms halfway around the world in the forests and fields of Southeast Asia in a war that was to be as divisive as any in the history of our nation to that time and whose outcome left us saddened and sullen for decades to follow.

Nearly the same number of young men and women were heading to Upstate New York during this summer, actually in August, for what was advertised as four days of Peace, Love and Music and almost all anyone can remember, whether they were or not, is all the mud and the incredible performances by so many musicians, especially those whose flame flickered brightly from that stage and were then forever extinguished because of self-indulgence or profound bad luck.

Back at the moonwalk, we on Earth watched around the world, with some of our younger brothers and sisters going outside to stand on the porch at Harvey's Lake (Pa) to look up at the moon to see if you could see the astronauts (if wishing could have made it so) as the astronauts seemed to skip and dance across the most desolate place we could imagine.

As a nation we were faced with challenges all around us-but we found the time, actually, we MADE the time, to watch these extraordinary people do this extraordinary thing that NO ONE in our history had ever done before. And just as no man enters the same river twice because both he and the river have changed, there is no way we can ever be those people who watched by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming. 

We did it then, and we can do it now--not because it's easy because it's not, but because it's hard and because if we do not repair and restore our country, we will have no one to blame but ourselves when in another half-century or less we cannot remember anything to be proud of since the Moon Walk.
-bill kenny 

From a Whisper to a Scheme

For the most part, we live in a wordless world. By that, I don't mean a silent one but rather, a world in which you can scrape by with pictures and symbols. I love looking at the tags in shirts--it's like a graduation from Semaphore University. There's no bleach, hang-dry only, wash in cold water, dolphin-free, dry-clean only, etcetera ad Infinitum.

I thought it reassuring that no matter where in the world you travel those symbols are the same until I realized it has a lot to do with the manufacturing process and that almost all the clothes we buy, no matter where in the world we live, are made in the same third-world sweatshops. That's more likely the reason why the care symbology at the collar is the same. 

It's not like I'm going to hold a Geography Bee on where our clothes are made, though I have no trouble finding my way around as nearly everyone, everywhere, tells me where to go. What I am intrigued by is how our technology, not knowing where in the world we will use it, has created its own language to which we have universally adapted. 

Do you remember when you used to yell for 'Help!'. Our machines' clocks do the same thing, sort of, except they flash 12:00--we all know that means there's trouble at the mill and are now conditioned, when we see it, to look around for a cause.

My smartphone does this weird little vamp when it's loading an application. Maybe yours does the 'gimme a minute jitterbug', too. It looks like a vertical bow-tie and then it starts to whirl and twirl in a clockwise direction. 

Someone told me it's NOT a bow-tie at all, it's supposed to be an hourglass. That actually makes more sense to me, since that would have something to do with time, which is what the device is wasting, and not neckwear, of which I have a closetful though I have no idea of its purpose (or didn't) even though most workdays for four or so decades I wore one.

Every time I see a poster for a raffle, there's always the disclaimer at the bottom, 'duplicate prizes awarded in the event of ties' and I keep thinking, today's the day. Good fortune, here I am! Luck be a Lady tonight. And yet all I ever win is a dry-clean only dolphin, two sizes too small, no bleach only.
-bill kenny

You Make Me Wanna...

Suspect this is NOT what the Reader's Digest folks were driving at all those years ago with their notes about 'more picturesque speech', but it's a whole lot easier to remember and more fun to read. Having read the news account twice and the summary of the actual study, I'm surprised it's not louder at all manner of public meetings (and some of the less than private ones, too).

Adds new meaning to that old admonition from Grandma about 'keep a civil tongue in your head, young man!' What? My grandmother was the only one who ever said that? That's how we're gonna play this? Dude...

Of course, true confession time, I do think of some (perhaps) technicolor participles and anatomically difficult aerobic exercises, but I strive to NOT speak them aloud while processing those thoughts-at least not too loudly. And when I do so far (sixty-nine plus years and counting), I've gotten away with it.

Like many of us, I have had instances in the past where my evil twin, Skippy, (what my Imp of the Perverse tends to answer to) has confused inside and outside voice and my ears have heard my mouth say things that I had truly hoped would remain secret.

Now, if I can just work hypoalgesia into a sentence, ideally a limerick, it'll be a banner day.
-bill kenny

Somewhere, John Sebastian Is Smiling

I subscribe to both of our local daily newspapers even though my subscription includes the online versions (and would actually cost less without an actual newspaper being delivered) primarily because fossil that I am, I enjoy spreading the newspapers out on the kitchen table and reading them over coffee.

I very thoroughly read both newspapers always the sports sections after the news parts and saving the comics, as they should be for dessert which, in a roundabout way, makes the sports pages the palate cleanser I guess. 

I don't read all the comics on the comics pages at least in years past I didn't. Strips like "Mary Worth" or "Apartment 3G," as well as "Nancy," and "Cathy," I stopped reading years ago and I'm not suggesting cause and effect but they don't appear in my newspapers anymore so go figure, I guess. 

My current least favorite comic is produced locally and is all about cats, I read it every day even though I never like it so it's kinda like Listerine for my eyes, perhaps. On Sunday I save Prince Valiant for the very last, sometimes I hold off reading it until dinner. It is and has always been my most favorite comic and I've often weighed what I would do if the local paper that carries it were to ever stop. Fingers crossed it never comes to that. 

My current daily favorite to my wife's dismay and disbelief is another local strip, Wallace the Brave. I have no rational explanation for my fondness except it makes me smile very nearly every day and there aren't that many things in life anymore about which I can make that statement. Here's last Saturday's:

And if you don't think both John Sebastian and I roared in reading that, then I can't help you.
-bill kenny  

Do You Smell That?

Not sure when it happened but it's definitely here now. We've become a culture, nearly worldwide, who, because we have all these platforms and means of communication, feel compelled to fill them with something. 

There was a time when our kids were very young when the idea of a 24/7 TV news operation was novel. Many of us wondered what would/could possibly go on a channel like that at all hours of the day and night. At some point as convergence began to close the distances between one form and another, news devolved into noise, not that we really noticed. 

Now, there's not a lot of nutrition in any of what we watch/hear/read-just empty calories. When the President of the United States addresses the nation and it takes longer than one commercial break (three and half minutes) we start to twitch. If he continues to drone on, we head out for the great wide-open. We surf until we find something somewhere, even if we've seen it already, rather than attempt to stretch our attention span and focus. We have so much freedom of choice when it comes to information that we yearn for freedom from choice.

The COVID Variants, the murder of the Haitian President, the condominium collapse in Florida are each just a click of the remote as we seek out new sensations. We are enamored with the 'what' and could care a whit about the why.

Back in the day, I wondered if the wall-to-wall coverage of OJ and AC's speeding Ford Bronco (I originally typed the word news in front of coverage, but I'm not so sure anymore)  was the end of an error (or era). Now I fear it was the lead car in the circus caravan. Buckle up, buttercup; the ride only gets darker from here on out.

-bill kenny 

Weather or Not

Watching weather news and headlines from across the country you have to wonder based on what's gone on in recent years if somehow our nation wasn't built on a vast graveyard of a civilization and people we've worked mightily for the last half of a millennium to never even acknowledge. Think Poltergeist, with Lauren Boebert playing the part of Heather O'Rourke. 

I mean there must be a reason for the extremes we keep having and soon, we'll have someone well-versed and practiced in the art of deception to explain extremes in weather, as Fox, despite popular demand, readies to launch a Weather Channel rival. 

You might not think greenhouse gases and Critical Race Theory have anything in common but I have every confidence you're about to find out you're completely wrong. What could be a better combination than a network devoted to finding liberal conspiracists everywhere and nimbus cumulus clouds for the Ferris Bueller Movie Marathon Memorial Weekend? Here's an idea of what the programming could look like.

Little known fact: Ducks melt at 90 degrees

As they used to say back in the day, 'don't touch that dial!''
-bill kenny   

Let the Dreamers Wake the Nation

As George Santayana admonished, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" and I think one of the things I've come to enjoy about being a thorn in The Rose of New England (a volunteer  position I should point out) is, in looking at the past and reading about it on Mondays as I do in The Bulletin, I've become more confident about our future, despite how uncertain the present can seem to be.

We spend a lot of time talking about days gone by, forgetting that there's about thirty-eight thousand of us or so here in the now, who, by our efforts and presence on a daily and repeated basis, form a bridge from yesterday to tomorrow.

Through everything we do and nearly as often because of everything we don't do (commission and omission-Sister Mary Jean would be proud I've remembered that distinction for all these decades), we add or subtract from our city.

I wasn't born here and, between us, I'm not especially comfortable with the growing probability that I'll die here, but that's pretty much out of my hands so all I can do is my best for every day that remains. And that goes for you, too.

We are a city with a mayor with other elected leaders and formalized subordinate bodies and functionaries in complex and complementary relationships with one another delivering goods and services to us, the citizenry, and residents.

But there's an informal association of significant others, our neighbors, and friends, perhaps in a neighborhood watch, a bowling league, volunteer firemen, a clean-up contingent, or those who coach a kid's soccer team or host scout meetings.

Where we live is the sum of all those activities-not just our bond rating and our reserve to debt ratio. What we are is defined and refined by who we are. Yes, it's important we have trash pick-up, but it's just as important that we keep an eye on our neighbor's house when they go away for a long weekend.

We have a municipal apparatus for the 'big things,’ but we need to have engaged and energized citizens for all the things in between. So, when I write about a City Council meeting, or a public hearing in City Hall, or a neighborhood clean-up, it's to recognize and celebrate those who give of themselves to make where we all live a better place.

Here in Norwich, sometimes faithfully and other times more fitfully, we've been trying to do that which we must, to build a city where we can be all those things we want and choose. And every day brings another opportunity to try again and be better.

I’m certainly not suggesting Norwich is perfect. At least not yet. Perhaps what we need is you, and your head and heart to become engaged and get involved in your neighborhood and on your street. Pursue your passion, now’s your time.

This autumn’s elections are just the turn of a calendar page away and the more choices and voices we have the greater our chances of Norwich becoming even better. You know how you say, ‘Somebody should do something.’ You’re right, somebody should. Why not you?
-bill kenny

Me and My Invisible Friend

I'm getting nervous watching the Supreme Court of the United States blur any and all lines of distinction and separation between church and state as we've seemingly tired of rendering unto Caesar only those things that were Julius' to start with whereas, with Gawd, all things are possible to include using public money for private purposes and personal gain. 

When the public trust becomes a private trough we're not in a good place. 

I have no idea where this story has been (it's close to six years old) but it made me smile, and I hope you smile too because, in most religions, the Supreme Being wants us to be happy. And, at least, in this case, nosh noodles.
-bill kenny

Just Wow

I'm not sure how enthused I am about the Summer Olympics. 

I know I should be but as I've aged (more like milk than wine), my enthusiasms are not what they once were. My passion for baseball, admittedly tied to the on-field fortunes (and misfortunes) of the NY Yankees has been more than diminished so far this season and the recently concluded  European Championships have left me with a gnawing pain of no joy in the pit of my stomach. 

And then, just like that, something comes along, something I'd never previously seriously considered much less considered as a sport, Artistic Swimming, and I'm shocked and awed. 

Actually, it didn't come along just like that but, rather, just like this. 

Wow. Just Wow. 
-bill kenny 

Ennio Morricone Would Approve

I don't watch a lot of movies but the ones I do watch I will drop anything else I'm doing when I come across them on TV and enjoy them. Whether they've just started or are rolling end credits, it makes no difference. You would never confuse me with Gene Siskel except maybe for the eyebrows. 

I love Clint Eastwood movies provided they are either High Plains Drifter or Dirty Harry. All the ones he's received nominations and awards for as the brilliant characters he's played and directed for the last three or so decades? Haven't seen any of those. Kein Lust. I think I prefer him as the cowboy because of the theme music in the movies. Here's some stuff about that I didn't know and now you do. 

As a pre-teen I was fond of what in the music industry was called a one-hit-wonder, I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman by Whistlin' Jack Smith long before I knew anything about Kaiser Bill and as a small child, I had been treated to endless renditions of this Disney ditty.

So maybe I'm just whistling in admiration as I marvel at this skill and talent and hope Molly Lewis is on the threshold of public acclaim she most assuredly deserves. And I'm not just Whistlin' Dixie when I say that.
-bill kenny

Think Alien Meets Thriller

The age of Sentient Machines is not approaching, I suspect; it's already here.

And they use stuff like this to lull us into a false sense of 'aw, shucksness and ain't they cute?'ness that we could one day come to rue.  

Time to start looking for Yoshimi.
-bill kenny

T-t-talkin' 'B-b-bout

Back when our family unit was my wife, my son, and me we had a cozy apartment in Offenbach, Germany, a short walk from (actually a hike up the hill to) Bieberer Stadion where the Offenbach Kickers played football (US translation=soccer) in the second division. It was a long time ago (the Kickers are now somewhere in the 4th Division, somehow, in a recently-constructed multi-million Euros stadium.

Our son's 39th (YIPES!) Birthday earlier this week reminded me of a story (and I have no idea how our children have gotten to such ages. The pictures in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room have them just starting school so I'll have to talk with my wife about how much we're feeding them and how often, I guess.) 

Anyway. My recollection is all we had at that time was Patrick. We had a color television in our living room and Patrick had a small screen black and white TV that Oma and Opa had gotten for him at Neckermann (I think) and that in a very short time, he'd grown less than enchanted with, requesting from us that we think about getting him a color television like we had in the living room.

As I had learned in Dad School, I sat him down and offered him one of my 'back when I was your age' stories that, for me, at least, was both endlessly fascinating and also true about how as a child all we had in our house was a black and white television in the living room. 

Patrick listened to my tale of childhood deprivation and astutely asked, 'were you bad?' because all we had was a black and white TV. And when I explained I wasn't being punished but, rather,  when I was his age all there was black and white television, he shook his head in disbelief so violently I thought he'd sprain his neck.

I hope, should he come across these noodlings today that he has a neck brace at the ready because this right here is a terrible but true snapshot of the way we were. And I'm betting Roger and Pete grow more nervous by the day about that long-ago wish; if it helps, me, too.
-bill kenny  

Another Happy Birthday

Our son has a birthday today and his mom and I hope it is as joy-filled and happy as having him in our lives has made us.  

I love happy endings

-bill kenny

Neither Burger Nor Bun

My car tax bill showed up in the mail on Friday; yours, too, I bet. As Oliver Wendall Holmes once said, “taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” I’d note there’s a world of difference between civilized and civil, but that's probably just the root beer talking. Meanwhile, municipalities struggle to pay for all the goods and services, we, their citizens, want to have. 

It seems like every year, there's all kinds of brave talk in the halls of the state legislature about equity of opportunity and fairness in fund allocations but when all is said and done (actually when it's voted on and the Governor signs it), we've just changed directions of the circles in we keep chasing our tails.

A huge percentage of what cities across the state have to spend is comprised of federal and state dollars. In these parts, we in the Consolidated City District (most especially), are still somewhat in shock at our property taxes, but truth to tell, the amount of revenue the City of Norwich is allowed to generate and collect wouldn't buy us much more than a shoulder shrug in terms of financing our municipal government. 

National and state leaders talk about tightening belts and lowering expectations in light of austere circumstances, et cetera ad infinitum (or so it seems to me), with, this time around, some COVID-19 damages and post-pandemic recovery concerns thrown in for good measure, But we really outdid ourselves this time.

I was most impressed with the nearly-flawless approximation of an infamous Charles Schultz prank involving a one-time, three and a half million Distressed Municipalities Grant in the state budget from discussions and negotiations as early as February for Norwich (among others), until suddenly both houses of the legislature passed the budget, and the grant was no longer there at all. Talk about Charlie Brown getting snookered by Lucy. Just like magic and the football, it just disappeared.

And I understand or at least say I do. Let's face it, budgets, like diets, always have two sticky moments: the start and the end. When you're trying to lose weight, the first five pounds and the last five pounds are the hardest. Those are the pounds you can't talk off, that you can't start losing tomorrow; they have to happen in the now. In the case of our state legislature, they solved their budget-balancing act in the now at the expense of all of us who were relying on them to stay the course and keep their word.

Shouldn't we know by now? What's that  expression, 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.' What number are we up to now? (asking for a friend). 

It wasn't so much short-notice as no-notice on the state's part. So our City Council at the mid-June meeting they had originally intended to approve a municipal budget ended up, instead, performing meatball surgery. The discussion and dialogue I, at least, had hoped for on what should (city) government do and how much of it should be done (and how do we measure that) became instead a 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' approach which didn't do anything but keep our collective noses just above the rising water line (sure hope your tippy-toes muscles are strong because you're going to need them). 

The discussions and decisions we need to have and to make about how to deliver world-class education across our city, funding and financing infrastructure ranging from roads to information technology, determining the shape and size of our public safety professional and volunteer communities, through encouraging economic development; in short, every aspect of reinventing our city for this century and beyond in the face of what all of that will do to our property taxes and community quality of life has now been delayed by circumstances we pretend are beyond our control. 

Except, like it or not, those decisions still need to be made, as unpopular as some will be,  and sooner than we'd like with less and less tolerance for differing and dissenting viewpoints and far less margin for error. 

Remember J. Wellington Wimpy? He of the 'I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today' school of finance? Remember how that worked out? Exactly. 

If we were smart, we shouldn't reach for the ketchup any time soon.

-bill kenny

Batteries Sold Separately

Well, this wasn't one on any of my Word-A-Day calendars, "teledildonics." 

Put that in your Hooked on Phonics pipe and smoke it, my friend. It's just another part of the Brave New World we are creating because we have the time, talent, tools, and treasure to so do. Do we need it? What kind of anachronistic, antagonistic question is that and where do you get off even asking it? 

And speaking of getting off, the age restrictions on membership in the Pudding Club have seemingly been lifted if not entirely eliminated. Oh, to have lived this long and to have seen the mountaintop and maybe the muffin top as well. We have assumed control.
-bill kenny  

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

I love when my smiles come delivered to my very doorstep as this recent edition of one of the newspapers to which I subscribe demonstrates. And my smile is precipitated by the headline, not the content of the story. 

Upcoming Connecticut Weed Bill Makes It a Crime to Get Pets High

I can see it already. "What's the matter, Lassie? Did Timmy run out of Doritos?"
-bill kenny 

Will Always Be an Exit Nine Guy

You already know it's the actual really and truly Fourth of July--the calendar told you that. And we Americans (how arrogant are we that we share this American continent with people from Canada and Mexico-not even mentioning the other American continent, but we are Americans and everyone else is, well, everyone else) can, I hope, find the time for one final reflection on who we are and how we got here (the good parts. We beat one another up waaay too often the rest of the year on who has warts and where they are. Let's have a truce, okay?).

I consider myself a Jersey Guy--I wasn't born there, but we moved there when I was very small and I moved away (not realizing it was forever) back in1975. Now, when I visit relatives (or did, before COVID 19 made leaving your porch a commando mission)--actually that's code for when I visit my brother, Adam (he went from being my 'baby' brother to 'youngest' brother until I, finally, realized he's fifty-four years of age and birth order is now difference without distinction) and his wife, I'm aware that 'this is not my Here' (because I've felt that everywhere I've been my whole life) but it is close to home and I think as uneasy citizens in a nation that's starting to fear it's outlived its usefulness, sometimes close can be good enough because it has to be.

Adam's much more a Renaissance Man than I. Decades ago he came up with a striking figure of speech, "snowglobe," to describe his piece of earth and by definition, all of our claims here (Frodo Lives! Just not around here). He found his Jersey Girl while I had to travel some to find mine, but I had a headstart and used it to my advantage.

I think it's amazing and amusing, with the space of years and distance combined with the differences in growing up, how each of us came to be who we are, where we are, and how similar the snowglobes we've made actually are. 

And, because if you've read me more than once, you know while you can take the boy out of Jersey, you can't take the Jersey out of the boy, you had to guess I'd quote Joyce Kilmer. Or not. 

'Sandy, the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight,
Forcin' a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July.'
-bill kenny

For the Birthday Nation

I have a well-deserved reputation as a curmudgeon which is a four-cent word for asshole when you're not supposed to say that one (though the line of when that is has blurred a lot in recent years), but Happy Birthday, America, even if sometimes I despair that we'll ever celebrate another one. 

Weather conditions have caused a shift of the fireworks over the Norwich Harbor slated for tonight to be rescheduled for this Monday evening but where weather permits, a bajillion places across the country will have them today and good on them.

This picture. is from two years ago because last year, as happened where you live too, COVID-19 changed all the celebratory plans.  

A holiday like July 4th can fool you into concentrating exclusively on Big Deeds by Big Men (look at the size of Hancock's signature on the Declaration), and that's okay because history is defined by critical actions at critical moments, but that's not the whole story.

Unless you have a family tree that traces every person to every beginning, none of us can name anyone who perished on either side of the Battle of Gettysburg, and more than just Teddy went up San Juan Hill but who can name them.

The Battle of Belleau-Wood was more important to the survivors than those who sacrificed their lives but who among us knows any among either? The Normandy invasion just marked its seventy-seventh-anniversary last month but who has ever had a grandparent tell a story of life in those times.

And so it goes. We remember personalities, like Eisenhower but not the kid who jumped off the first LST too far from the shore at Omaha Beach to ever hope to make it. Over a million men and women in uniform have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan but we only know names like Petreaus and McChrystal.

We are a nation of stories and we're starting to close the book on the 2021 celebration of the biggest one we do every year. For most of us, the work-a-day return is around the corner and we slowly accept the idea that the high point of the summer, the Fourth, is now in the rear-view.

But we each have a story and we should tell it aloud to one another or to no one but yourself if that's the only way you can tell it. Yes, the broad strokes on the canvas are important to the scope of the narrative but the filigree and shading that each lonely voice lends to the telling of the tale is what, in the end, causes it to resonate within all of us.

Every life is a song-sing it to the end. The world will wait-it always does.
-bill kenny

The Road to a Very Warm Place

“Without common ideas, there is no common action, and without common action men still exist, but a social body does not. Thus in order that there be society, and all the more, that this society prosper, it is necessary that all the minds of the citizens always be brought together and held together by some principle ideas”- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

We, as a nation, are at least hip-deep in self-delusional, conspiratorial bullshit but that's NOT the worst of it. The worst of it is that we seem to be enjoying the descent into hell. 

Find the time to watch this and if it doesn't frighten you, anger you, and energize you to stand up for what's real and what's true right now, then we may already be beyond redemption on the road to hell.
-bill kenny 

The Sweep of the Second Hand

As if the face staring back at me in the mirror every morning weren't enough of a signal that if I've not yet started I should definitely accelerate the gathering of those rosebuds, I came across an obituary in one of the Sunday newspapers of someone with and for whom I had worked (many years ago).  

I don't think anything signals you've stayed too long at the fair like reading about the passing of a previous acquaintance. I'm not nostalgic about him, or myself, for that matter, as we didn't get along which, considering he was my boss, could and should have been more awkward than it was mainly because while had little regard for his leadership abilities he had none for my ability to do my job.

When he was fired, the term used was 'relieved and reassigned' but we all knew what it meant even though he carried on as if nothing had changed, I didn't feel anything for him. Even after an additional desk was brought into my workspace and he was parked behind it for the three or so months before he retired. 

I absented myself from his farewell party and the actual retirement ceremony because I've made a career out of being an asshole who, if nothing else, is at least honest. Turned out out less than a dozen people attended any of the festivities. 

In the just about two decades that followed I'd see him, on occasion, in the hallways of the Mohegan Sun Arena before or during half-time of Connecticut Sun WNBA games. He never gave any indication that he recognized me so I reciprocated. I don't think it affected the play of anyone on the team in any event. 

Last year there were no home games in a pandemic season and so far this year I hadn't seen him but I hadn't looked until I was caught up slightly short as I sat Sunday morning at my breakfast table reading of his passing and listening to the tick, tick, tick of the sweep second hand of the watch that marks the passage of all of our time.
-bill kenny