In Search of The Other 73

If this seems like I've resorted to another 'news from the newsroom floor' for inspiration, it's probably because I have. 

And remember, this blog is sold by weight, NOT by volume, so turn it up.
-bill kenny

This Much Madness

I read the news today, oh boy. 

The Department of Defense on Saturday identified the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed in the attack on the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday as they worked to evacuate people to safety.

They hailed from across the country — from California to Wyoming to Tennessee — and had an average age of just over 22. Eleven were Marines, one was a Navy medic and another was a member of the Army. Two of the Marines were women.

Sometimes the sadness of the ending overshadows the hubris that led to the sad ending.

But not in this case. Rest in Power.
-bill kenny

A "My Back Pages" Moment

This is from almost a thousand years ago. Or maybe minutes. I get confused sometimes, but only when I'm awake. You know it's from a long time ago when I used to write nearly whole sentences as titles, kinda like the original for this one:

Papering over our differences of opinion

I keep a wallet filled with foolscap, absolutely crammed. It works out well unless you were to rob me, as there's rarely any money in it, though not necessarily because of all the foolscap.

Many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away I was a little too tightly wound. That gasp of incredulity you may have just heard from people who've known me for decades is legit. The me of Back Then makes the me of Now look comatose; I may have actually slept with my jaw ratcheted closed. I cannot imagine in hindsight why I didn't have a stroke then (though I did much later and then had a group of them), unless, perhaps, it's because I'm a carrier.

I couldn't let go of my anger. The Air Force, to my relief as their employee, rather than dump me amongst the flora and fauna, decided to send me to the head of the Psychiatric Services Wing at the Rhein Main (Air Base) Clinic, Colonel Doctor Robert G. He was terrific-and very funny (because he thought I was if I'm being honest) and very willing to try to rescue a wild-eyed junior enlisted Sammy Glick impersonator who kept wading out into the deep end.

He came up with the foolscap. Every time something angered me, I was to write it down on a piece of paper and put the paper in my wallet. But every time I'd write something down, his rule was that it had to be on its own, separate, piece of paper. No doubling up, no lists. 

By the end of the day, I could, and did, have hundreds of slips of paper in my wallet. No worries-I had to review ALL these slips each night and put on a different sheet of paper, all those items I was still ANGRY about (I could put those on a single piece of paper) and then I'd put that list on my nightstand. 

The night before I would go to see him at the hospital, I had to review the (six) pieces of paper, and transfer anything I was still angry about, to yet another piece of paper and bring that one piece out to our weekly conversation.

Within a month, I had no lists, simply because I'd review all the slips of paper of all the things that made me angry and realized I had no idea what the heck was written on most of them or what the words I could read actually meant or concluded (after reviewing the note and thinking about it, which he told me later was the key point) whatever had happened to spin me up wasn't that important after all.

How about this week or real soon (and I mean real soon) we all decide to use that solution. Watch the news, read a newspaper, check out a column online--we are REALLY CRANKED about a lot of stuff. It's a miracle that sales of boxing gloves haven't gone through the roof. We all know or know of, someone who wants to "fix" things by looking to punch someone in the nose.

I know people who tune in to certain TV programs just to yell at the talking head in the vapor box who is making a fortune by yelling at them. I guess they watch because it feels so good when the show is over (explains the uptick in cigarette sales I guess). There are others who insist on reading columnists' words out loud and follow every line of the writer's argument with a scowl, or a gesture, or a deprecation. And we just keep getting louder and angrier about more things, and more people every day. We don't know how to get off the escalator-and most of us don't even know we're on one.

Passion is fine and necessary. If our ancestors back in the ooze didn't care if they evolved to have legs that carried them from the pond and helped us grow lungs, every day would be Friday, if you follow my drift. 

It's the grinding though, that is wearing us out, the pitched battles we are waging to benefit who knows who or for what purpose. You wanna feel silly about how we now get along with one another, but you don't want to use the foolscap?

Okay--tell me five things this country was PO'ed about at eight AM on September 11th, 2001. Go ahead, I'll wait. Too hard? Gimme three things, then-how hard could that be? No? 

You want to take a break from all this head noise and hate to concentrate on the real and important tasks at hand instead? Go ahead, I'll make a note of where we were and we can get back to it sometime real soon.
-bill kenny

An Off-the-Charts Pairing

We live in a world where not only can't you tell the players without a scorecard but if we don't have a cheat sheet or cheat code for it (remember the library of Rubik's Cube solution books?), we might not even attempt it at all. 

Having a dinner party with both food and wine? Take the guesswork out of it: 

Now if I could only figure out what spice Helaina was seeking, I might try it on my next effort in the kitchen with chicken.
-bill kenny  

The Pokes Were All in Use

There are days that no matter what I can imagine, real-life pops up to say 'hold my beer.' 

I have to assume this is a real story because....well, why the hell would anyone make it up?

I may never look at a pulled pork sandwich in quite the same way again.
-bill kenny

Let's All Speak (but Not at the Same Time)

Remember when we all used to live together in a shared country? (Together being the operative word) We didn’t always get our own way and we had nearly infinite shades of grey, anatomically and otherwise. Now we have the most abrupt, bruising, and brusque form of non-nuanced conversations in all the years I've been carrying around this belly button.

We have clenched jaws and hard eyes and hardened hearts, but that doesn't mean we can't talk-it just means we won't, I guess. Somewhere we decided two diatribes equal one dialogue and I GET TO GO FIRST! (sorry). 

If we yell AT one another long enough, from a distance somewhere in space it will look like we are talking to one another. Respectful disagreement has gone the way of the dodo bird. If you don't agree with me you are the most awful person in the history of the planet, as is everyone else related to you, everyone else related to them, and everyone any of you knows. Wait a minute! When I do that much finger-pointing some of the fingers on that hand point back at myself. Hmmm.

Labels such as 'liberal' and 'conservative' are now pejoratives hurled like discount store invective at opposing viewpoints, appropriate or not, and the reaction to the labeling obscures quite nicely any opportunity to see the person we've just tagged. Now, all we are is disagreeable when we disagree. 

And we engage in preemptive shouting matches with one another in forums supposedly designed to let us exchange ideas and views. The longer the meeting, the louder the yelling and don't even get me started on the understanding.

Back in the day, we talked things out and arrived at a consensus through reasoned discussion and debate. We need to learn once again to speak in complete sentences and respectful tones to one another, one at a time, and then move on to larger groups. 

Eventually, we might get the hang of how we used to do all of this, back when we all lived in the same country at the same time. History needn't be a mystery.
-bill kenny

School Daze

Heading back to school is as much ritual as it is routine. Here's something I've offered in years past as the annual rite begins again  

The weeks of summer rushed by and those ads for back-to-school clothing and supplies started showing up more often in the papers and on TV and were increasingly harder to ignore. The march of the calendar is inevitable and unstoppable. All of that has led to all of this; tomorrow school opens in earnest for the children of Norwich. 

Thousands of youngsters of all shapes, grades, sizes, and abilities from every neighborhood across our city, and in some instances from beyond the city limits, are heading for classrooms, language labs, music lessons, sports practices, cafeterias, study halls, hybrid learning environments, and virtual classroom experiences that, at least for the latter two, we had hoped would be past tense by now as restrictions and precautions from COVID started to be relaxed in the late spring only to have so many safeguards reapplied as we work our way through the Greek alphabet from delta through at least lambda and maybe beyond. 

You'll see them in front of houses bright and early tomorrow morning waiting for school buses, looking for partners to walk home with or pals to hang out with afterward. Who doesn't smile when you see enthusiastic beginners heading to kindergarten (do you remember the last time you felt about anything the way those five-year-olds will?), through those starting their final year at Norwich Free Academy and upon whom a whole world of possibilities awaits.

When all is weighed and counted our success as adults, as parents, as neighbors, and as residents isn't measured so much by the size of the Grand List (though a larger one is infinitely preferable to a smaller one), the number of businesses opening in Chelsea or expanding elsewhere or even the number of bricks piled one upon the other in any one area of the city, but rather, it is how well we can make where we live the place our children and their children want to come home to and to call their own.

With all due respect to the public works and public safety professionals, not just here but across our nation, we spend the bulk of our taxes on education-it's the largest investment we make as citizens and we should expect (and demand) the greatest of returns. 

The neighbors who serve on the Board of Education have a huge, nearly overwhelming responsibility to both us, the people who chose them as our representatives, and to the children whose education they must help oversee (And some of us wonder why so few offer themselves for office at election time?).

In recent decades. times have not been easy around here-shrinking Grand Lists forced tightening budgets helping drive cost efficiencies that closed neighborhood schools while changes in student populations and needs precipitated curriculum reassessment, alterations in instructional delivery, reorganizations, and reinventions. 

I'm not pretending to ignore the impact that COVID-19 and the responses to the challenges of the pandemic have had and continue to have on every student, teacher, and parent. I just don't think we can accurately measure something that is still unfolding when all we can do is continue to keep on keeping on. 

As a fuzzy-cheeked freshman in the Class of '74, at Rutgers College, I can still hear the voice of Dr. Edward "Fast Eddie" Bloustein, University President, as he told us, "the purpose of an education is to learn the rules of the game better than anyone else. And then to change the rules."  Tomorrow is that day. Good Luck!

-bill kenny  

Memory Almost Full

This is from a long time ago, a very long time ago so I'm not sure the links work or the references make any more sense now than they did then (or less sense, depending on how you're feeling). At the time I called it: 

The Kids Are Alright

As school-age children across the USA start to reconcile themselves to the inevitability that the next academic year is beginning (for some) in a matter of days and/or hours, I feel compelled to note, in the interests of good sportsmanship and fair play, the boys of summer (subject to the rules and interpretations of the respective national governing boards) are in the process of crowning the next Little League World Series Champion.

I have NO idea who is playing and (obviously enough) no knowledge about any of the players. Here's the remaining schedule, with the championship game(s) this Sunday, and after you've looked at it, tell me if your interest and/or expectations about any of the contests were altered or changed in any way. I didn't think so.

In a world where we pay grown men and women (though to a far less fiscal extent) wages that approximate the gross national product of some Third-World nations to participate professionally in sports our children play for free, there is something about the joy and exhilaration of the competition that culminates in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, that I find a tonic for the soul.

The enthusiasm and engagement of the television announcers, some of whom as youngsters, played on these same fields in pursuit of a championship, is contagious and inspiring. If you can listen to the Little League Pledge, almost as old as I am, or even just read it and not get goosebumps, don't bother checking your pulse, call your coroner as you're no longer among the living.

For a few days, youngsters can serve as role models for grown men. A team of players, who've just been white-washed and whose run to the Series has ended prematurely stand one behind the other along the first and third base lines after the final out and shake the hands of the team sending them home and tell them 'good game' and really mean it because the Little League World Series isn't just about baseball, it's about life, as it should be lived.
-bill kenny

Walking with Scissors

It can't be just me, because I'll bet you, too, have noticed the number of discarded cigarette butts outside or in the parking lot near a Planet Fitness or other gym-like operation. 

I smoked two/three packs of cigarettes a day for twenty-two (plus) years and have my own definitions of insanity and dependence, as does each of us with a vice, but for Kafkaesque humor, you'd have to go some to top that.

We like the routine, the assurance of the rote drill (I think) and maybe that's where we believe the benefit accrues. It's like small children learning the Pledge of Allegiance long before they have any idea what allegiance means (for some of us that's still true into old age). 

A whole generation now visits fitness centers in the same way previous ones frequented the bars and clubs on Saturday nights or the churches on the Sunday mornings that followed. And, I suspect, for the same reasons.

But for what purpose, and to what end? Behaviorists refer to an Obesity epidemic in the United States and it surfaces for its fifteen minutes of fame on mass and social media platforms on a regular basis and then we go out and order another double cholesterol-and-bacon burger from the neighborhood drive-in, don't forget to supersize the fries and, what?-oh yeah, the drink. Gimme a diet cola, no ice.

I'm wondering if we're not better off just eliminating the middle man and cutting out the white space. Put a cigar bar in the fitness center--or set up one of those luxurious dessert places in the lobby; call it "Cool Whip and Curls", no one will snicker. Those who wish to indulge can, and the rest of us can pretend to not see any of it as it'll all be out of sight. 

Look at how often we've used that trick to handle world events that should and could have numbed us. Besides, it keeps us from walking around with our eyes closed-people can get hurt going through life like that.
-bill kenny

Not That You Asked

I've been at this scribbling stuff down at a keyboard and hurling it against the wall of the World Wide Web in the hopes of something sticking on a daily basis since the middle of October 2007. At the time I started, I hadn't figured out a way to make myself heard in a meaningful way where I lived. 

Some have suggested all those years on, it's impossible to get me to shut me up. 

Those folks can go fuck themselves. 

Like a tiny blade of grass in a great big field. 
-bill kenny 

When the Choices Were Paper or Plastic

Walking into the Stop and Shop not that ago and catching a sentence fragment between a dad and his young lad on their way out:

Little Guy (LG): "Which would you rather be? Eaten by a shark or a pack of coyotes?"
Bewildered Dad (BD): "What?!? Where's your brother? (spies smaller child already outside) "David! Let's go, now!"

So, it turns out there are folks who do watch Shark Week and take it to heart. Puts me in the mind of having lunch in an aquarium cafeteria and discovering they have fish on the menu, as has happened to me. You start mentally reviewing the exhibits you passed through before lunch just in case there was one 'closed for renovation' and it turns out you've now stumbled upon the real reason.

I didn't get to hear which choice Dad opted for though I was impressed with the question. Thanks to technological innovations like the Internet and nearly unlimited channels of cable and streaming TV, our children now have access to untold volumes of information, probably more before they start in school than you or I had by the time we graduated from high school. 

In theory, this is a good thing, though maybe I'm getting crotchety in my antiquity because we're not making better choices as we age because we treat all information as knowledge when a lot of it may be just closer to noise.

There was a "news" story (the quotes will be evident in a moment), about a Canadian woman setting a new world's record for running on all fours (I hadn't realized there was an old record; I really do need to get out more). Very much a reminder that NOT everything that looks like news is news. Sort of like all ducks are birds but not all birds are ducks. Not that most of us know the difference or care to. 

-bill kenny

"I Want This Playing on My Funeral or I'm Not Dying..."

I think you'd agree that as praise goes, that turn of phrase is rather lofty indeed. 

And, perhaps after six or so minutes that seem to fly by listening to this, you'll find yourself in agreement with that sentiment.

In all likelihood, I'll never see the film from which this piece of music is based but what I can hear makes my ears smile and that's fine by me.
-bill kenny.

Gilbert Gottfried Is Really Missing Out

You probably already know that Gilbert Gottfried, he of the most annoying voice on the planet to my ears (with the exception of Alex Jones), was the voice of the AFLAC Duck TV commercials until a series of thoughtless and heartless unfunny tweets about a decade ago cost him his gig. 

I'm sure he's getting by, but it seems to me he might have otherwise been in the running for this side gig as a Dunkin' Donut Duck.  

On the other hand, considering what happened to Fred Baker, perhaps it's just as well.
-bill kenny

After the Goldrush

You might not know (or care) about this to look at me, but I'm a nature freak, in a relentlessly pragmatic way. I admire fall foliage though I am always saddened by what the autumnal color changes portend. I can enjoy the beauty of a spring sunset, admire freshly fallen snow (as long as I'm not shoveling it), and have wandered barefoot across more than my fair share of sandy summer beaches (and to the dismay of the search party, have always returned again). 

I don't wear hiking boots or have a beard and watch cap like Yukon Cornelius nor do I make my own jerky but I do see our various flavors of the great outdoors as a respite and recharging station in our crazy and complex lives.

So when I encountered Bill Reid's column a couple or three Sundays ago in The Bulletin, Exploring the Last Green Valley: A Summer of Wonder and Concern in Birdland, I was ready, as always, to enjoy but then grew increasingly alarmed at his always thoughtful observations.

We have been engaged in an eighteen-month or so struggle with COVID-19, what I call a frontal lobe concern (not having any medical training makes it easy for me to throw these terms around), where we've had only mixed success in attempting to contain and eradicate a contagion that poses a major threat to our existence on the planet. 

There have been countless conjectures on origins (which always seems like arguing about who caused our boat to dash against the rocks when the issue should be fixing the leak). I have no clue and I refuse to add to any of that noise except to suggest that Reid's column on the accelerated spread of a mysterious and fatal illness affecting all manner of wild birds throughout the Northeast (and spreading rapidly) is just another consequence of our (too often negative) impact on our planet.     

Reid's relaying of the Connecticut Audubon Society's recommendations to help contain the spread of this unnamed disease includes STOP the feeding of all birds and providing water in birdbaths and bring all feeders and birdbaths inside and clean them with bleach, to include hummingbird (my wife's favorites) feeders.

What does that remind you of? Think COVID Containment: Social and physical distancing, masking, and other personal protective equipment. But like those precautions and their flaunting, I still see feeders and birdbaths, because I guess, so what, right? 

When I go to Howard T. Brown Park or walk around Spaulding Pond, I encounter people feeding the ducks, geese, seagulls, and any other birds often right beside the DEEP signs pleading with them to NOT do that. 

Seriously?!? To me, Reid's column is yet another alarm bell warning all of us about how we are impacting the world that's home for so many other-than-us species. 

Every selfish. uncaring/unthinking action (or inaction) of ours creates ripples that produce tidal waves of problems for others with whom we share this planet, whether we choose to believe that or not. Our beliefs are inconsequential; our actions however have consequences. 

We need to truly see the Earth as our home and to treat where we all live better than we are, especially since we don't have a Plan or Planet B.
-bill kenny

Take That, Gwyneth

First, she had this.  

Then, she had this.

Like the guy who reads Playboy for the articles, I only check out the candles for the care instructions on the wicks: "Candles are made with 100% natural unbleached cotton wicks, which require special attention. Please take care to trim to 1/8” before every use." 

Sorry, but IKEA has captured my heart, err, something (you know what I mean). Besides, I prefer my conscious uncoupling with a side order of lingonberries.
-bill kenny

Calling Elvis

I was the oldest of my parent's six children and didn't have older cousins to shape my musical tastes growing up. Mom and Dad, if they liked any kind of music, it seemed to be show tunes and Broadway songs played on a large piece of furniture Mom polished at least once a week ('it's a dust magnet' she used to explain to Dad) from Liberty Music Stores in New York City that had everything, turntable, a Garrard gear-driven model, and an amplifier/receiver combination and speakers of some kind on either side hidden behind a mesh screen. It cost a fortune at the time and as I grew up I realized it was just awful for listening to rock and roll.

I was in the Air Force, working for American Forces Network, when today, forty-four years ago, Elvis Presley died. My nominal roommate, Mike, and his girlfriend, Ann (whom he married decades ago) were rushing through the station, grabbing Associated Press wire copy, rummaging through the record library, and basically conducting their own memorial on Elvis' passing when I arrived after an evening with my affianced, Sigrid, whom I married that fall (and with whom I am still married; all her effort and very little of mine unless you count showing up for meals as work).

The joint was jumping and Mike was magic on the air. We lost sight of one another many, many years ago and if he and Ann are still he and Ann, all the best to them and sorry I haven't written. I thought about all of this again just the other day when I came across an article on the Post Office's historic-at-the-time unveiling of a Forever Stamp honoring him. I always believed, had he lived, The King would have approved, as did Mike, too, I suspect.

I'll skip the Return to Sender jokes because as I said, it wasn't Elvis' music with which I grew up, though what I didn't fully appreciate was how much his music would influence the sound of those with whom I did grow up and everyone else's sound as well. 

So if you were one of those "50,000,000 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong" when you see him, wish him a happy birthday and  'tell him I was calling, just to wish him well.'
-bill kenny

Harder than Chinese Arithmetic

I had a dream the other night that somehow I had hordes of live, small insects under the skin in my arms and hands. I don't know if the dream was a portent of something (of what, I don't know and don't want to) or a mash-up of impressions and experiences I'd been collecting that somehow were triggered and just showed up. Thoughts for another time.

Anyway, in the first moments after awakening the following day, I got a visual memory stuck in my brain of a guy, I correctly recalled his name as "Bob," who'd been all over television ads in the early years of the 21st Century, hawking a vasodilator that was cashing in on the newly unleashed profitability of Pfizer's Viagra (but without Bob Dole). 

Of course, I Googled to see what the name of the product was, Enzyte, as it turned out, and got a lot more than I bargained for ('that's what she said!' That <= will make more sense after you read this. Maybe.).  

A sad end to a working stiff.
-bill kenny

Ruth Is Stranger than Bridget

Last Saturday I huffed and puffed for over an hour cutting the grass at our house. It has NOT escaped my notice that as I improve (I never like to type 'age') that some tasks seem to take longer. That morning stroll I make past the Cathedral of Saint Patrick past Little Plains Park and home that was once about forty minutes all told is now about twelve minutes longer and from what I can determine from Google Maps it doesn't seem that Norwich, where I live, has gotten that much larger.  

Same thing with our lawn. By the time I finished on Saturday I was a sweaty sack of mostly wrinkly skin with patches of hair. It felt like I'd been out working on the Lower South 40, whatever that is. That's when Sigrid, watching me inhale and exhale with escalating difficulty, suggested we might consider contracting a service to handle both lawncare and, come winter, snow removal from the sidewalk, as in recent years we've added it seems at least three miles to ours. 

Didn't do a lot of thinking about her proposal until I fell across this:

"To Serve Man." Indeed.
-bill kenny

 

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined blah, blah, blah, awful stuff, blah, blah, whenever it's Friday the 13th and fear of blah, blah, blah. The End. C'mon, none of us ever read disclaimers all the way through anyway so I figured I'd offer you a mock disclaimer, a slice of that mock apple pie made with Ritz crackers and a tall frosty glass of something other than milk from a cow to wash it all down. Mmmmm. You got a little something on the side of your upper lip, sunshine.

We've got the most highly developed brain of any species on this planet but we're also the only species who hate and fear one another for reasons such as different religions, skin colors, or political beliefs. So if any other species has the gift of speech (and I guess, the ability to read as well and a thumb that works a scroll ball) now might be a good time for one or more of them to ask aloud, 'how come the bi-peds are the crown of creation, anyway?'

On top of all those misplaced prides and prejudices (you don't suppose Jane is related to Steve, by any chance? I'm trying to imagine Fitzwilliam Darcy having a discussion with Oscar Goldman) we have the mother of all irrationalities, Friday the Thirteenth and the fear of it. 

Of course, it's only irrational if you don't put any stock into any of the literature or folk tales you've heard since you were young. There are seven-point two katrillion jillion websites (a number I just made up and have you ever known me to lie to you?) on every aspect of this day and date combination, and one's as good as the other, or as bad, depending on how you feel.

You might have a lucky number, or a special letter, or maybe a pony ride for your birthday (you ba$tard!), so far be it from me to pooh-pooh, pshaw or tsk-tsk (I love when I can use classic ancient words; I am, after all, wearing Old Spice. And you thought I was kidding about the pony) your values or beliefs. If they help you place your universe in order, that's fine.

I put all the cash in my wallet in order by denomination (Catholics go first, obviously) and then in sequence based on the serial number. My wife used to find this quirk endearing; now, not so much. She's helped me manage my compulsion by making sure I have very little folding money. Everyone standing behind me in lines everywhere as I used to put the bills in order is very grateful.

In a way, I guess it's counter-intuitive to wish you a happy Friday the Thirteenth especially since we'd be here all day on what a 'happy' one might look like. I'd say enjoy, perhaps savor it, as it's the only one we'll have in 2021. I don't know if Hallmark has cards, but it couldn't hurt to check. But knock on wood first to make sure. 
-bill kenny  

Чизбургер в раю

I'm not sure Jimmy Buffett would approve but the title today is a translation of Cheeseburger in Paradise, or in this case, how one may have been an impediment to a believer in Omsk, Russia, ending up on the far side of the Pearly Gates.

Strange but true. 

She should've listened to Wesley Willis. If that's even possible.
-bill kenny   

Our World According to ARP

Some of my favorite quotes are from 'unknown' (or perhaps better expressed as 'unknown to me,' admittedly a very different set of circumstances), and among my most favorite of favorites is 'Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.'  

Between us, I've never thought of our City Manager, John Salomone as a lumberjack and don't ever recall seeing him wear a flannel shirt, but sharpening an ax in preparation for felling a tree is very much what he was about in his presentation to the Norwich City Council last month for a plan to invest the first half of the city's just-about $30 million dollars of American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds.  

Pay attention to hyperlinks and the universal resource locators, URLs, because you'll need a road map for this part of what I like to call 'Participatory Democracy-The Play-at-Home Edition." At last Monday night's council meeting, there was very strong bi-partisan support for making doubly and perhaps even triply sure that you and I, who seem to see ourselves more as walk-ons in too much of city government, have an actual speaking part. 

Or, to revisit my lumberjack reference, we can channel our inner Paul and Paulette Bunyan, instead of remaining Babe the Blue Ox. You should find or make the time to take a long, hard look at the City Manager's proposal, and the Council's initial responses and adjustments, and then share your thoughts, reactions, and ideas (yes, it would be nice and I'm sure in the works, to do some neighborhood meetings to gather inputs, but don't wait to be asked, take the initiative). 

On the City's website page for the Mayor and City Council, scroll down to 'Send a message to the Mayor and all six City Council members,' and with a few keystrokes, you can make your voice heard, or technically speaking, read. While you're at it, since he did so much of the original research and planning together with the City's Department Heads in creating the initial proposal, it would be a nice idea to also share what you've got with the City Manager, whose email address is cmoffice@cityofnorwich.org. 

I know what you're thinking, 'this seems like a lot of work.' Yeah, that's because it is. It's also a LOT of money that, wisely invested across our city can dramatically improve our community quality of life, both short-term and in the long run. It's a heavy lift requiring all of us to use our legs, our brains, and our hearts rather than put all that strain on our backs. 

And let's face it, when was the last time you were asked for your idea on how to best deploy almost fifteen million dollars? Money doesn't talk, as Bob Dylan noted decades ago; it swears. And aside from a second installment of about the same amount next May, we're not likely to have this kind of hands-on opportunity to shape our own destiny anytime soon. 

Yes, our goal should be to do our best to spend this money wisely but goals without a plan are just wishes. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I'd wish for pony rides for my birthday but haven't we spent long enough looking at the back end of the horse? It's time to saddle up, buckaroos.  
-bill kenny

For All the Sons and Daughters of ....

Almost all of my family, from our daughter and son (and their significant others), through my brothers and sisters to their spouses and children, have beach sand on their soles and in their souls. 

My wife and I live in Norwich, Connecticut, on the Thames River that empties into the Long Island Sound and which eventually finds its way to the Atlantic Ocean. As retirees, we day-trip on various three-hour water taxi junkets (neither Alan Hale nor Bob Denver has yet to make an appearance, so fingers crossed (which makes it hard to type)). 

Much of my family lives in places like New Jersey, where DTS, needs no further explanation, as well as in Virginia not all that far from the Atlantic and various points of interest in Florida where the thread of commonality includes the smell of salt in the air and the sight of seagulls circling overhead.  

I thought of them when I found this. 

Adam and Margaret's Beach, August 2017

As E. E. Cummings once offered, "For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it's always ourselves we find in the sea."
-bill kenny

Channeling Nancy Kerrigan

Some days I just crack myself up. 

You? Maybe not so much. 

I'm sorry, I thought this was a real thigh-slapper, Tonya.
-bill kenny 

All We Are Saying....

Almost three years ago my wife and I bought the house in which we had been renting an apartment for the previous two and half decades. The amount of paperwork for financing and physical inspections as a prelude to purchase still causes my check-writing hand to spasm. 

In the end, we wound up with a three-story house that we love (as well we should and in light of the mortgage had better, very much) with all the sidewalk I could possibly manage to snow blow clear in the winter and enough lawn to keep me mowing until I myself am under the grass. 

I think of us as fortunate, especially when compared to The Weavers in Skippack, Pennsylvania, whom, I suspected have stopped using jam on their breakfast toast for something a little closer to home, literally. 
-bill kenny

How to Make the Cover of High Times

The Land of Steady Habits, Connecticut, legalized the sale and smoking of recreational marijuana just in time for the start of our fiscal year on the first of July. The mechanics of how sales will be handled, and where is still being hashed out (see what I did there?).

For a cash-starved state whose appetite often exceeds its capacity, the tax money generated by sales of Maryjane has already been spent, at least twice if the past is prologue. 

I have no interest in any aspect of the sales or use of The Devil's Flower but I will confess to a desire to invest in Frito-Lay stock since I suspect sales will really sky-rocket to even more historic highs (swidt?). 

From little acorns, mighty oaks do grow. 
-bill kenny

Then and Now

As a child learning American history (I think it's part of something called 'civics' now for reasons surpassing my understanding) I was always struck by how World War II began for America with airplanes. Actually with swarms of planes, low over the horizon, out of the sun over Pearl Harbor Naval Station in Hawaii.  

Today, seventy-six years ago, from the belly of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Super-Fortress, the US Army Air Corps dropped the world's first atomic weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and while a second bomb was dropped a matter of days later on Nagasaki to 'seal the deal' the harnessing of the atom into such a terrible weapon of destruction delivered by an airplane effectively ended the Second World War. 

"In some sort of crude sense...the physicists have known sin...

As a fan of symmetry, even as a wee slip of a lad, I was struck by the bookend effect of beginnings and endings.

I've read accounts where some of those who worked on the devices were relieved that the first actual use did not trigger, as they'd feared, an unfettered chain reaction they could not stop, destroying the planet. 

"...and this is a knowledge they cannot lose."
Robert Oppenheimer

Except, as I look around a somewhat beaten and battered world that's lived in the Atomic Age (and in dread of its consequences) even longer than I have been on earth, I wonder about that road to perdition, the slippery slope, and the law of unintended consequences. 
-bill kenny

So the Couch in Mom's Basement Was Unused All Weekend?

I encountered a person today with whom I have a nodding acquaintance, as literal as it is figurative, who was pretty 'stoked to be back,' and wondered if I'd missed him. Not since I had the scope repaired, I replied, as I always do just to see the blank look of zero comprehension in his eyes, knowing he doesn't get the joke but won't ask me to explain.

And then it was my turn to look blank as he shared with me, unbidden, that he'd been at TERRIFICON over last weekend in the convention center at the Mohegan Sun Casino. 

These happen (or did before the COVID 19 pandemic) on a regular basis around and across the country. He mentioned that as he went on about a lot of stuff I can remember feeling odd about since I thought all this time he was a grown-up. A little strange as a grown-up, but a big person in a big person's body, if you know what I mean. 

I didn't realize I actually knew one of those stereotypical caricatures of a person, with the dark and greasy hair, the small, nervous eyes, and the sweaty palms who lives on a couch in his Mom's basement because to my knowledge, none of that is true in his case and yet.....

I dug around a bit online, of course, and learned these events are a multi-billion dollar business that exists as something a lot bigger than grist for my snark mill so perhaps I need to speak less loudly and cruelly of things about which I know so little. Except I've been this way for sixty-nine plus years so why change now, right? 

I enjoyed comics when I was a kid. I am far more often childish now than childlike but sifting through the websites trying to understand the difference between graphic novels and comics and the thousands of shades of meaning between them, I was overwhelmed with the sound of commerce, as in big business, I was tempted to lie down. That was when I realized that was the purpose of the couch in the basement.

Thanks, Mom, for gathering up the Archie and Jughead comic books all those years ago and getting rid of them. Was Archie hooking up with BOTH Betty and Veronica? And what the heck was that thing on Jughead's noggin? 

Here at Life's Rich Pageant, it's always worthwhile to pack an extra napkin and use it for the spot next to your mouth. On trash day, I'll drag the couch down to the curb and help load it onto the truck. Should be a hoot.
-bill kenny

Making Your Own Place and Space

I've discovered in the decade-plus that these ramblings have been appearing in The Bulletin that a lot more people than I ever imagined actually read my words (Gulp).

 At first, I thought that obligated me to make sure the spell-check function was always in order (My previous computer had a wireless keyboard and after a while when it discovered what I was doing, it ran away) but I've come to realize that whatever form our conversations take, the important thing is that we have them and keep having them.

Some time ago, I mentioned the various agencies, boards, commissions, and committees across the city in need of infusions of enthusiasm and interest in the form of volunteers and reader responses ranged from 'who needs all that aggravation?' and 'where do I sign up?' to 'it wouldn't make any difference anyway.' In the latter instance, whether you think you can or think you can't, you're still right. 

The sky is not the limit; YOUR sky is the limit. And that's the difference.

There are municipal elections this fall for the city treasurer, Mayor, City Council, and Board of Education; and you don't have to be a spectator or a walk-on in someone else's campaign. 

If you feel we are heading in the right direction, then do what you can to strengthen that belief. That can take many shapes from informing yourself as a voter, posting a lawn sign, or contributing to a neighbor who has volunteered to be a candidate. 

And, conversely, if you feel a change in course is what's called for, then you should be part of that change in whatever shape or form you can offer. 

Government is not something done to us, but rather for us. The bumper stickers with 'Freedom Isn't Free' don't have the space to point out a lot of freedom is unglamorous and sometimes tedious, but always necessary, small-scale tasks, quite often unnoticed and even more often unthanked for, like chairing a committee hearing or helping a Saturday morning clean-up crew.   

We view so much of the world and events in it right now through prisms and filters of particular political or ideological perspectives that we often fail to see the expanse between earth and sky or how limitless the horizon stretches before us. We literally cannot see the forest because we fixate on a specific tree.

Here in municipal government, at the most local level of democracy, it should be easiest to create consensus. Yes, as elsewhere we have Democrats and Republicans and each have a platform of ideas that, by design or happy accident, must also appeal to just more than their own members if they hope to have a role in the forward motion of the city. 

But the white space between those ideas in terms of effort and implementation is where each of us can take our shot and make our mark. But you must be registered to vote and then you have to maintain an open mind and heart when weighing and measuring proposals and platforms. 

American democracy isn't for the faint of heart and that's been true from the very start of our country, whose birthday we celebrated a month ago but sometimes we're better at remembering the monumental events than the mundane miracles that made those milestones possible. 

A critical element in recapturing the morale and momentum we had around here before COVID-19 is for each of us to reengage in making Norwich the best place we can for our families and friends to come home to. 

To stop missing and mourning what we don't have and looking instead for allies and cohorts to help us build back better and bigger for everyone. Because, everything we have, are, and will ever be, ultimately comes down to who we choose to become. But first, you have to choose, or we all lose.
-bill kenny

It Doesn't Have to Be a Cape

When I was a kid I adored George Reeves, the original star of the original (black and white) television series, The Adventures of Superman. As a child, I found it perfectly logical and accepted without question that when he donned his disguise which appeared to be nothing more than a pair of glasses, no one, not even his Main Squeeze, Lois Lane, could suss his secret identity. 

My recollection is that it was Jack Larson, who played the cub reporter, Jimmy Olsen, who came closest to figuring it all by observing how odd it was that we never saw Clark Kent and Superman at the same time.  

But as much as I loved Superman, I never wanted to grow up to be him or like him because I knew I couldn't. I wasn't born on Krypton, but in New York City, and no matter how many bath towels or even bed sheets I tied around my neck as a cape, I knew I could never fly. 

And now, here we are, at the start of August of 2021 after hoping by this time last year we'd be well on the peak to normal, sliding and backsliding against COVID-19, continuing to argue among ourselves about where this plague came from instead of doing everything in our power to make it history. 

You don't have to be more powerful than a locomotive or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Just stop being a maskhole and if you aren't already, get vaccinated. 
-bill kenny

The Joy of Leroy

If you have/had children, you have/had LEGOs. 

They are indeed, as the song suggests, awesome, and along with their cousins for younger children's fingers and imaginations, DUPLO, they allow children of all ages to sail and soar anywhere and everywhere they want to be (sorry, VISA). 

But, as CNN reports, they can also reimagine office artifacts from long ago and far away. 

I'm thinking maybe we should give the folks running the LEGO Ideas platform some office space in Washington DC (away from The Capitol gift shop and the hordes of armed tourists), and let them have a crack at solving the infrastructure problem. 

After that maybe they can bridge the gap so many of us feel separates us from one another.
-bill kenny

Jump, Jump

I'm not sure why it's happened but for the last couple of days I've been humming, sort-of-singing, a couple of lines from a favorite and old, of course (because I am, too)) Garland Jeffreys' song. And then because the universe has a tendency to answer when you least expect it to, this showed up.

Best argument in favor of, ever.
-bill kenny