Baruch Dayan Emet

We hurtle through our lives at such a rate and pace that, to me, it's a miracle anything at all is remembered for more than an hour. 

But some things should truly never be forgotten, such as the scale and scope of the atrocities committed eighty years today ago at Babi Yar.  

Only human beings can be this monstrous.

A memorial in Kyiv in memory of those murdered at Babyn Jar.

We call ourselves the Crown of Creation, but I'm not sure.
-bill kenny

Wonders and Worries

As I mentioned last week, we've arrived at that season where the only space on your front lawn NOT covered by autumn leaves probably has a sign urging others to vote for a specific candidate for City Council, Mayor, or member of the Board of Education.

And while we’re all waiting for some form of debates between and among the candidates for Mayor as well as among those running for City Council, let me advocate and agitate for letting those who are Board of Education candidates be heard. Frankly, when was the last time we heard a debate among those folks?

I endorse the notion that there's no such thing as a Republican or a Democratic Party method to educate third graders, but in recent years the City Council has made decisions on policemen versus firemen versus building inspectors versus infrastructure repairs versus long-delayed pension contributions, etc., because of reduced tax revenues and an ongoing rise in municipal expenses in which the operating budget for the Board of Education is well north of 50% of the entire City’s.

We fixate on this twice every year: during budget deliberations and when we receive our tax bills.  The rest of the time we seem to think paying for municipal goods and services is someone else’s problem when we are, in fact, the someone else with that problem.

I'd like to hear what those whom we choose as members of the Board of Education think our priorities should be, and learn a bit more about what, if any, ideas for economies and/or enhancements (and how to pay for them) they wish to share.

Be warned: I’m looking for a candidate who pledges to organize children for weekend redeemable-can-and-bottle drives to pay for field trips and administrator salary increases. Obviously, I was trying to be humorous, though you may have only gotten the trying part.

Meanwhile, with a little more than a month until Election Day, there's NOT a debate by anyone, anywhere on the horizon in Norwich when there should be at least one once a week, anywhere, because we have the blessings of (informed) choice and need to know as much as we can about those who have offered their time and talents in our service.

In recent days I’ve had people tell me to support various people because ‘they love Norwich, and they mean well.’ I had already assumed the former; as for the latter, I’m tired of people who mean well and would like some who are willing to do well, for all of us. Just as a change of pace.  

Here's my point (thanks for reading this far hoping I might have one): Lawn signs/letters to newspaper editors supporting candidates are well and good but we need to pay closer attention to all those ‘for sale’ signs which signal that more and more of us have decided there are no more happy endings, or beginnings, left around here.

Each one of those signs is a surrender that does just a little more damage to the fabric of our neighborhoods, and I wonder and worry that we may never know from any of this year’s crop of candidates how they intend to stop the rush to the exits even as the moving vans circle the block.
-bill kenny

Think This Through With Me

I spend more and more of my life online. Just the evolution of both our society and how I live in it (or try to, if I'm being honest). On a daily basis and more frequently than I first realized until I concentrated on counting the instances, I am asked by a website to prove I'm human. 

You've seen these things. 

I know, big deal. Click it and move on. Food for thought though: artificial intelligence (ie, a robot) is evaluating the answer. So, do I negate the test by wearing a tee-shirt that says "I'm with Them" and please tell me I'm not the only humanoid who finds it ironic if not thigh-slappingly funny that we are actually deploying robots to sure make that we aren't? 

Sort of like that joke about why the thermos is the world's greatest invention. You think I jest?
To review, it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold. But that's NOT why it's the world's greatest invention.

It's the world's greatest invention because I want to know how it tells the difference.
-bill kenny   

Sylvain and Thunders Got Nothin' On Her

The New York Dolls were legendary without, in my opinion (perhaps only mine), actually being very good at any aspect of rock and roll. I've chosen to believe many of us decided that because they were so stunningly different from anything and anyone we'd ever seen, they must be great.

Feel free to use that same logic when pitching kale ice cream to an investor and let me know when you'll be starting up production. 

Anyway, as someone (maybe a kale ice cream investor), once told me everything comes from something else; which, three bowls in (and I don't mean kale ice cream) sounds a lot more profound than it actually is. 

If the New York Dolls were performance art, I'm not sure who this is. 

Except she's brilliant. 
-bill kenny   

Hey, Sports Fans!!

One of the few things that we have in common across the globe (aside from our hatred of those unlike us) is our passion for sports. You name it, and someone plays it and someone else has it as their national pastime.  

But what if we extended the similarities and parallels just a tiny bit more? 

Hypothetically, let's say we were to take all the sports everywhere that were played with balls and standardized the ball. 

With me so far? Good. 

Now, let's make that ball we're going to play all our sports with a bowling ball.

I call dibs on the shoe rental franchise.
-bill kenny 

Something Magical Happens When You Shoot at 90,000 Frames a Second

Not just the hand is quicker than the eye. Trust me on this one.

So, when someone says 'take your time,' feel free to smile. Slowly.
-bill kenny 

You'll Be Tempted to Use a Fork

If you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth. That's not a lie; that is the truth. 

And the irony of that is killing us all.
-bill kenny 

I Always Looked Good in Blue

Thirty-eight years ago this morning, at twenty minutes after nine (or thereabouts), I stopped being in the United States Air Force. It was, more or less, a mutual decision; we both decided to see other people. I offered to turn in the clothes, both the olive-drab (pre-battle dress uniform (BDU) days) utility uniforms and the off-we-go-into-the-wild-blue-yonder blue ones and was thrilled beyond words when they opted to keep their haircuts.

I never really got the hang of the haircuts. When I asked the recruiter in East Brunswick, New Jersey, a wise old Master Sergeant about the haircut we'd get in Air Force basic military training (BMTS) at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas (the largest airbase in the world without a landing strip, I kid you not), he paused and looking very steadily at me offered, 'your hair will be much closer to your head than far away.' Believe it or not, he was right on the money with that.

In the years I served, I learned there were two types of haircuts men got in the military. One was the haircut they got when they needed one and the other was the kind they got when they were told they needed one. You strove to avoid the latter and in my eight years of active (if not enthusiastic) service, I prided myself on never needing to be told to get a haircut.

I was never a big fan of headgear either, I should add. It was the era before everything and everyone had ball caps (except baseball players) and no one I know, in any service, ever enjoyed the bus driver hat (the formal one we've seen in all the photos) or the flight cap for which we had a rather coarse nickname I shan't repeat here but I certainly used enough in my time. It always seemed to me that in the interest of "uniform" appearance, if we all wore the same cover, who cared about the haircuts.

For reasons I never fully understood, I failed to press that argument successfully to those in charge of my every waking and sleeping moment. I always suspected the Air Force was a leisure-time activity of the barbers' union or some other hirsute control conspiracy because no matter the discussion (we never argued in the Air Force; actually, those of us who were jeeps never argued upwards) and no matter how correct your position or research, the famous last words always seemed to be "and you need a haircut." And I certainly never got to say them.

So in honor of a moment of my personal past I've passed out of, I'll walk past a barbershop and not hop up into the chair and ask for the special. I decided long ago that eight (years) was enough. It was a close shave, but I've never regretted not living on the knife's edge.
-bill kenny        

Next Stop, Sweater Weather

Today marks the beginning of Autumn. It says so right here on my desk calendar in Norwich, Connecticut, USA, printed someplace far away where, I suspect, many of those working in that desk calendar-making factory dream of one day visiting us. 

As part of my continuing commitment to the BGO (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious) Project, let me add, in case it had escaped your notice, we had our last sunset after seven o'clock last Wednesday evening (won't happen again until March of next year) so Autumn's arrival isn't really that big a surprise, is it? 

As the days grow shorter and the leaves pile higher on fallow grass, lawn signs for a plethora of candidates for political office spring up practically overnight.  

I smiled walking around in recent days at the number of signs and their size and in which neighborhoods I came across the most. If there is a seasonal growth business, aside from beach cabanas at the shore, it's most assuredly campaign signs.

While we have the good fortune to have volunteers willing to seek office for City Council and Board of Education, it's easy to forget the costs they pay in terms of time and money to become candidates.

And there's more to costs than meets the eye. There are the things you cannot buy because you're paying for campaign materials and there's the time away from family and friends because you're knocking on neighborhood doors and visiting with registered voters hoping to get them to at least hear you out. Conversations require two persons and when one is missing, it's a monologue.

I don't mean to offer that last point flippantly but there's a lot of things we don't too well for the most part and while this isn't a complete list, it's a pretty good start:

push the chair back in under the table when we get up;

put the seat down on the toilet;

come to a full stop at the red light before making a right turn;

not talking on a cellphone while driving;

and not voting in municipal elections.  

We complain about a lack of freedom of choice but I think we actually prefer having freedom from choice. By insisting that 'there's nothing I can do' or that 'no one cares what I think' we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and blame when things fail.

And as we all know, things fail frequently. It's all part of life and why life is a contact sport. You can continue to claim you're a victim or you can listen when a candidate for office stops by and tell them what you'd like them to do for all of us. What are they gonna do? Tell you to shut up? They started it!

We can continue to tell each other that 'it doesn't make any difference' and 'one vote doesn't count,' and guess what? Eventually, we're right. We become our very own self-fulfilling prophecy-aside from maybe winning a tee-shirt, I don't see what the benefit is to that kind of behavior.

Did you ever hear about that city in Connecticut whose residents became more passive in each successive election until they barely reached double digits in voter turnout? You haven't? Neither has anyone else.

Nearly Lapsed Best-By Date

Some days it's hard to put into words how you feel and then, just when you least expected it, you stumble across someone/something in a completely different context who has captured you to a tee and never intended to nor realized they had. 

Yep, the shape I'm in.
-bill kenny 

Chameleons Sold Separately

If you think life's not fair, wait until you get to the afterlife. 

Hey, I don't wanna hear it! Buy a ticket, get the whole ride.
-bill kenny 

In This World of Sin and Woe

Winston Churchill is both famous and infamous for many things, both said and done. I've always enjoyed a quote attributed to him, repeated here in its full context in case someone decides to pay me for by-the-word offerings. 

‘Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

We here in The Land of the Round DoorKnobs have a short-hand form of democracy for the most part. 

At almost all levels of government we have a two-party system; not so much because all of the really great and good ideas come from one or the other but because nuance is lost on most of us and the lesser of two weasels seem to be about the best intellectually we can do on Election Day.

I can reduce it even further with the help of a cartoon:

Sometimes, in thinking about Churchill, I suspect we don't spend enough time considering the effect his drinking had on his thinking.
-bill kenny

So Long, Summer

This is the last summer weekend of 2021, which may come as a shock, I suspect, to millions of the nation's schoolchildren who've been back to the academic grindstone either in-person or via virtual learning for weeks now and are already looking forward to the Thanksgiving break.

Back when I was a wee slip of a lad, summers seemed to go on forever. We used to spring out of bed in order to get a head start on doing absolutely nothing until late in the afternoon when, with a little luck, a marathon baseball game would break out on the dirt field up the street from the Girard's house. No one kept score and nobody cared who won or lost. Players would come and go for hours, heading home for dinner or to go shopping with Mom and then return hours later sometimes having to be on the other team.

Usually what we did, depending on how good the player returning really was, he would have to wait to rejoin the game until another player showed up to balance him out. Mid-inning trades were also not unknown. The games went on until the daylight was dying or, more correctly, had died, and then Mr. Girard would back his car out of the carport and turn the headlights on to wash over the field so we could wrap it finally (until tomorrow when it began again).

We did this for years until someone bought the lot and built a house on it. We all hated the people who moved in and lived there. And, much later, long after many of us have moved away to other neighborhoods when the house burned down, I felt a twinge of guilt even though I had nothing to do with what happened-the power of wishing and its consequences, I guess.

As I got older the summers got shorter and when our Pat and Mike were smaller it was fun to watch the cycle begin again with them. We're closing in on 'leaf peeping' that everyone associates with New England weekends in the fall. But for me, it's already too late. I hate autumn-I can smell the scent of all things dying even before they actually do and I'm left with memories of the summer to get me through the winter into the following spring. Enjoy what you have, while you have it.
-bill kenny

So Now What?

I love gestures and admit to employing a large number of them in the course of my day here on the ant farm and not exclusively behind the wheel of my car though if we've ever encountered one another as Auto-Americans you might find that hard to believe. 

Every year, New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts a gala fundraiser that has become every fashion designers' wet dream. As Bob Dylan once offered, 'Money doesn't talk it swears,' and empty pockets say nothing which explains why neither of us received an invitation to the gala held earlier this week.

I mentioned gestures, and this event was full of them. Cynic that I am, I have to note it was full of something and I'll let you decide exactly what. I never know what to do when the rich and famous offer me suggestions on how to live and why I should make the choices they like, but Jersey punk that I am, at a lot of levels, I don't like it. 

It's just me, I'm sure. I don't appreciate movie stars or rock and roll folks telling me how to vote or which yogurt to buy, so when the glitterati get together, aside from sparkly stuff and fluff, I don't really get anything out of it. So while I enjoyed the moment of 'whoa' from New York's very own AOC...

I do have to wonder who wore it better. 

Besides, I do have a weakness for waffle fries.
-bill kenny

The Way the World Ends

Tonight at sunset marks the end of  Yom Kippur, for those of the Jewish faith, the day of atonement. It is a day of repentance and fasting for personal and community/communal sins committed in the course of the last year in the hope of forgiveness-with forgiveness being the critically important aspect.

I was raised a Catholic and taught to regard Jews as (also) people of the Book (the Bible) but who limited themselves to the Old Testament and a God of Vengeance and Punishment. Jesus, as I remember, we were taught came to fulfill the Old Testament and by so doing and living, and dying, create a New Testament. I think my problem with my church became reconciling the New God with the Old Testament one-after all, what kind of a loving Deity would crucify His own Son?

Almost seventy years on and music such as this to mark the Day of Atonement has convinced me while I may have lost faith in my church, I'm not sure I've abandoned a belief in God if that's Who inspired such beauty, majesty, and ineffable sorrow in one piece of music.

Present-day Israel, surrounded on three sides by enemies and on the fourth by the sea could not be in a more precarious position than the Jewish people themselves have been since the start of The Common Era. And yet, countless persecutions later, they stand, as self-anointed as God's Chosen, and regardless of your own religious beliefs or depth of your persuasion, you have to admire their devotion to Him and their belief in His providence for them.

This prayer marks the end of Yom Kippur, a version of which I first found online over a decade ago as produced and recorded at a synagogue, perhaps the only synagogue to this day (I actually don't know), in Frankfurt am Main. That version was removed though I hope the house of worship still stands as it does so clearly in my memory when I saw it so often from the streetcar window, passing the Sud-Bahnof, on the trip back and forth to work for many of the years I lived in Deutschland. 

I traveled a long way to some nearly-forgotten point in my own past I thought I had passed out of and all it took was an act of faith, though not mine or my own, to return.
-bill kenny   

Down City Delusions and Illusions

I'm a grown man; actually, I'm well past my best-buy date and should know better when I come across a story about downtown that doesn't so much make my heart go pitter-patter as it just elevates my blood pressure. 

So when I first read "A Funding Boost Will Help Downtown Norwich Storefronts Become More Attractive," I counted to ten and then counted again as I could feel the gorge rising in my veins with frustration and anger. 

I've often been accused of being a Norwich Booster and plead guilty as charged but it's time to cut the crap, face ourselves in the mirror, and acknowledge we are going in circles. 

The quote that set me off was this: '"...the Vanilla Box Project has contributed to an increase of 100,000 square feet of occupiable space,” stated an NCDC press release.' I'm almost impressed except four paragraphs later in the same article, '"Norwich author Ken Keeley was looking for a storefront to sell his books, but he couldn’t find a suitable space...We have basically run out of first-floor retail spaces to provide to potential tenants,” Lagrito said.' 

Who, aside from NCDC, evaluated what became of the 2010 bond monies (an audit might be a good start)? The City Council’s change of heart Tuesday night about the City Manager's original ARP funding proposal is nowhere near enough of a start on the need for accounting and accountability. 

Because, in another story the next day about NCDC, “How the Wrong Story Holds Back Development”, this line surfaces, ”A lot of folks believe nothing is happening, but there's a lot happening.” However, neither a definition of ‘a lot,’ nor any examples were offered in the article. 

2001’s Charter Revision was intended to streamline city government, encourage new people with new ideas to offer themselves for public office, and jumpstart a city-wide recovery. What needed to happen was to establish the responsibilities of the Norwich City Council and the Mayor for economic development. The mayor's role was defined, somewhat, in the charter but the function(s) of the city council remains vague. 

Here's what I know with 20 years of hindsight: What we're doing does not work. 

I don't pretend to have the answers; hell, I don't even think I understand the questions but instead of more derelict/absent landlord rescue why not go to local businesses across the city that are successful (struggling to survive but triumphant) and ask them what the city, from permitting to financing and anything in between can do to assist them to grow stronger and more vibrant. 

And then follow-through and follow-up. 

We have elections in November for Mayor and all six seats on the City Council and it's high time that residents, be they life-long or just got here last week, have a better understanding of what can be done, what needs to be done, how to tell the difference between the two and develop a plan with steps from realistic and defined program objectives and responsibilities to and through public on-the-record, truthful progress reports.

I've lived here for thirty years, and we keep doing the exact same things and are always surprised that the results never vary. A mentality of 'we may be lost, but boy, are we making great time!' is not the way forward. Not for Norwich and not anymore.
-bill kenny

One Is One Too Many

You'd think with our big brains we'd be in love with words, but we prefer pictures if not in addition to, than often to, replace words. 

Operation Enduring Freedom began on October 7, 2001, and came to an end on August 30, 2021. The dirty little secret about the war was that we here on The Home Front unless we had/knew someone, a family member, a friend, or someone from our hometown fighting there, had little to no interest in what went on there and even less knowledge for at least a decade if not longer.

Strangely enough, the image of Major General Chris Donahue, US Army, proved to be the last frame of the final reel of the movie we'd long ago lost interest in.

There was a brief, all too brief, mention of the nearly 2.500 US military uniformed men and women who died in Afghanistan. But not a word has been offered about the 25% increase in suicides in the last year in what appears to be an escalating trend that's generating as much interest among the rest of us as the war so many of them fought in.

"Don't they look just like on "SEAL Team", Lord don't they look the best?
When we trot them out at halftime or the seventh-inning stretch.
They stand up in their uniforms and help us sell the show.
Dying by their own hands for reasons we don't know."

But no worries. 

"No one knows, 'cause no one sees.
No one cares, 'cause no one knows.
No one knows, 'cause no one sees it on TV."
-bill kenny

 

In Honor of Infrastructure Week

Or perhaps not. Bigly. 

Wait until history gets through with you #Pantload45.
-bill kenny

And All This Time.....

I'd assumed those were stars in the night sky and not air holes in the lid so we could breathe.

I have a whole new appreciation for picnics.
-bill kenny

 

The Names

Two decades after it happened, I'd have thought by now I'd be a little farther along on successfully grappling with the grief and anger caused by the events of September 11th, 2001, and yet, here I am, on the 20th Anniversary grasping at straws and still no better at expressing my emotions than as when it was happening. 

This is from another Billy, Collins, and was offered at the first anniversary of the catastrophe but whose words and the solace they provide haven't aged a moment.
-bill kenny

Life Loves On

Twenty years ago tomorrow, everything we all thought we knew changed forever. 

For the thousands in the Twin Towers, in the Pentagon, and aboard the airplanes, and for their families, friends, and those who attempted rescues and recoveries of them (and all whose lives had been touched by them), somehow, even more changed and disappeared in the clouds of destruction, never to be experienced again. 

Every year my brother Adam devotes a month prior to the anniversary of 9/11 to profiles of those whose lives' candles flickered and were then blown out. His celebration of their lights makes cursing the darkness of their absence somehow more bearable. 

So, too, does this from Jennifer Senior, in The Atlantic.
-bill kenny

The "What" Isn't the Concern

I was born for the Age of Connectivity (cue the Fifth Dimension quietly singing the corrected lyrics in the background) where all I have to do is enter a keystroke and a world of possibilities and impossibilities is delivered to my screen, wherever I may be and to whatever device I possess. 

First, I found this. 

And then I found this. 

I get what it is: a reminder anyone can be a celebrity but only someone special can be a hero.
-bill kenny  

Two Decades On

Time, we've often heard, is the great healer and I suspect when we're speaking about bruised romantic feelings or literal and figurative scraped knees, that's more often true than not but time does not, and cannot, heal all wounds.

This Saturday is the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, perhaps one of, if not, the darkest and saddest days in our collective consciousness and history. 

What we each most remember of September 11 is usually linked to where we were and what we were doing when at 8:46 AM, American Airlines Flight 11 smashed into the north face of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at over 450 miles an hour, becoming the sonata in a symphony of hate and horror that was to be redeemed by heroism and humanity as that day dragged on and for every day, up to, and including, today.

I don't think it likely that any of us have or will ever forget but learning to live as individuals and citizens of what we so casually call the Greatest Country on Earth, requires we show compassion towards one another and empathy for ideas and ideals like, and sometimes very much unlike, our own, and to display the courage of our convictions in order to live as bravely as those who died in New York City, the Pentagon and aboard Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

We have gone down so many different and diverging paths in the last twenty years and our headlines and news stories reflect, perhaps uncomfortably and far too accurately, the "Pluribus" in our "E Pluribus Unum." I'm not sure how or when we became the too-often querulous and stridently unhappy people we far too often seem to be every time I click on a video clip or open a newspaper.

We may be speaking more often, more angrily, and more loudly than we have at any time since the divisiveness preceding the Civil War, but I fear we're also choosing to not listen even more to one another than, if not at any time in our history, at least in my lifetime.

A cautionary and prophetic historical footnote, from September 10, 2001, about a Gallup Poll released on that day, indicating 55% of us were 'dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States.' 

I don't pretend to know what recent surveys on that subject might reveal, but based on the mutterings and murmurings we each encounter every day, I have little doubt that the anger and dissatisfaction levels are at least as elevated as they were the day before 9/11.

World Trade Towers picture of faces of those who died

Somehow we went from a moment of grief-fueled unity two decades ago to an ever-escalating unending argument not just on who we are as a nation and how we should be better, to a scorched-earth devil-take-the-hindmost intractability on nearly every aspect of our lives. 

We not only refuse to acknowledge the other's point of view we dismiss their perspective as "fake news" and are proud of how our ignorance is just as valid as their knowledge. How can we ever hope to have a shared future when we refuse to overcome our divisive present?

And that desire for a better future for all of us should animate our dialogue and drive the decisions and efforts that are at the essence of who we are as the nation regarded as a shining light for all others and as a people whose belief in ourselves and in our fundamental goodness and righteousness has taken us from one coast to the other, from the darkest depths of the world's oceans and to farthest reaches and starless nights of space. 

We must promise one another that the memories of all those whose lives ended on 9/11 will fuel our efforts to lead our country, and the world, to greater freedoms that more truly and always honor their sacrifice. 
-bill kenny

Excuse Me

Someone I know was complaining the other day about the cost of living in these united states and their spouse suggested they balance it against the cost of leaving. 

I've reached an age where the latter is no longer just idle speculation but, rather, a moment of measured, pragmatic contemplation. 

And if I needed even more of an incentive to cogitate on the manner and speed of a faithful departure, I have it in the form of this news story.

It would only harsh my buzz if I could have afforded to have had one. 
-bill kenny  

Honey Cake, Brisket, and Tzimmes

Shana Tova to those who will celebrate Rosh Hashanah beginning at sundown this evening. 

The seasons are starting to change, summer is ending and fall beginning and with it a rush to ready ourselves, especially here in New England for the winter we so often fear and never quite fully prepare for.

Happy 5782 (cue the noisemakers and the confetti? Probably not). Rosh Hashanah runs through nightfall Wednesday. Judaism is one of the world's most durable and enduring religious persuasions. As a FARC (Fallen Away Roman Catholic), I envy anyone whose faith, especially today in the world we have created, allows them to move forward and carry on; even if I no longer share that ability to believe (but would like to) because of misplaced, stiff-necked pride.

My existentialism of despair, I suppose, will have to provide its own comfort, cold as it is, or at least I hope it will as I have little else and when the day comes that I'm finally sure of my lines, I have every confidence no one will be there.

Rosh Hashanah celebrates a religion in many respects no larger, perhaps, in size than the mustard seed about which a Teacher of another time spoke so eloquently but whose impact by its very existence is, for many, proof of a Divine Providence's steadfast watchfulness in comparison to which, the birds of the sky and the lilies of the field can only dream while, sadly, in so many parts of the world, others who profess to revere a God of their making can only scheme.
-bill kenny

I'd Have Said the Right Thing

There's a cliche I heard a million times growing up that 'clothes make the man.' 

It was usually said by my mother and usually offered while she picked out the clothes I was to wear. Be it to school, to church, to a backyard playdate, packaging was important. I was still the same old stumble-bunny inside but, damn, I looked fine.

What does your brain think when you look at this picture? 

How about 'Come to Campbell's Country'? Or 'Mmm-Mmm, Marlboro'?

Yep, times are tough when you don't weaken. What things look like can be and often is more important than what they are, at least as posited by The New Yorker's Dahlia Gallin Ramirez.

That package for Ground Beef adds credence to that long ago Bob Dylan observation about pumps and vandals.
-bill kenny

Killing Time

This is, unofficially, the last three-day weekend of the summer. Yeah, I know summer doesn't end until...well, until it does, but we all know what I meant so put your hand down as I'm not taking questions. Point in fact I have a bunch of my own, so here goes: 

I saw a man yesterday with a Mohawk haircut, but the part that wasn't in the Mohawk was shaved to the naked scalp. He was wearing a three-piece suit that probably cost twice what my car is worth. I cannot imagine what he does for a living to be able to do what he does for a living. He wasn't a young guy, either. I'm not real good at guessing ages, or weight for that matter, so that career as a Carney is out.

Actually, he was closer to being my age and he looked as goofy as the guys with whom I didn't go to Woodstock together. They have long hair, gray, frayed and wispy, in a ponytail. Nothing sticks it to the man like a Volvo station wagon, Teva sandals, and the green 'we recycle' grocery bag while shopping for tofu and bean sprouts. Fight the Power!

Here's somebody I'd like the 'man' to stick it to. The auto-American cretin who compensates for his car's driver's side headlamp being burned out by driving with his high beams on and not dimming them as you and he approach one another. 

Yeah, I remember what Driver Ed said: don't retaliate and turn yours on-it makes two blinded drivers but still... Our son many years ago gave me a great idea-I turn off all my lights which makes it a lot easier for Hi (no Lois) to see me behind the wheel as I visually suggest that he's my #1 special friend, but not in that way.

I also don't know what to do about the driver who goes up a one-way street the wrong way, slowly because he certainly doesn't want to cause an accident, for a short distance, to pull into somebody's driveway, rather than go around the block. I love when he comes nose to nose with a car coming down the street the correct way and they glare at each other like Mr. Upstream Salmon has any comeback at all. Or that guy's cousin, the driver who backs up a one-way street the wrong way with the car flashers on, so I guess it doesn't count as much.

And help me out on this one-the Presidential elections are over (Spare me the "Stop the Steal" palaver and go peddle those MyPillowcases somewhere else). Take the bumper stickers off-and I mean ALL of them, not just the party who lost but the party who won as well. We can remember all manner of slights, real and/or imagined, but forget that sometimes a razor blade can be your friend. 

But judging from the number of three-day growths I've seen lately, every bumper in America will soon be gleaming from sea to shining, or whining, sea. I can only assume we're working our way to buzz cutting those chickens in every pot unless your diet calls for it the other way round.
-bill kenny

Yet Another Tribe

I like all flavors of music, more or less. I'm not big on Rastafarian country and western or polka thrash metal but just as there are an infinite number of stars in the sky for each of us to wish upon, so, too, is it with music. 

Unless we're talking Insane Clown Posse. Very much an acquired taste, in my book. I'll not only cross the street to avoid them, I'll change the direction I'm going in to keep from ever intersecting with them. Despite, and I admit this freely, the fact they and/or their music and/or followers have never done anything to me. Or for me, to make my point. 

So I can be forgiven I hope for not having the 21st Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, Ohio last weekend on my calendar of events. It wasn't held last year because of COVID concerns, so I'm not sure why considering where we are public safety wise this year it was held but it was. 

I fell across an account of the festivities which more than scratches any itch I might have had for what goes on, but it's a fascinating read, as one person described it, "... like looking through the windows of a house you’ll never live in."
-bill kenny

  

He's a What?

I have a mouth filled with my original teeth. I collected the whole set and have always felt some sense of obligation to keep them in some form of working order ever since. We are very fortunate in that, even in retirement, I can afford to have dental insurance, which is quite an additional expense for many across the country but for me, as my aforementioned dedication to oral hygiene may have made clear, a necessary investment. 

I brush and floss twice a day and use two different kinds of toothpaste. One kind is for 'sensitive teeth,' not that you'd know I have any to hear my language for the most part, and the other for additional teeth and gum protection (as I've aged ('improved' as I like to say)). My teeth and gums are separating more (not sure if there's a moment where the teeth just fall out when I smile broadly, but why should I take that chance?). 

And then I use an oral rinse and swish it around for thirty seconds to a minute, providing my long-suffering wife some of the few moments of silence she has in her entire shared day with me.    

I brush after breakfast and before going to bed at night, actually before I insert the mandibular advancement device that has so drastically reduced my snoring (and improved my mental alacrity which needed all the help it could get) and continues to mitigate to a great degree my sleep apnea. 

Having told you all of this, I was intrigued to encounter an article the other day, Should You Brush Your Teeth or After Breakfast? that suggested I (and by extension, you as well) might be better off brushing before breakfast and making a pretty darned compelling case. 

I will admit I did get tripped up by the title of the source of much of the information, a dental influencer, who is actually a real dentist and whose Instagram profile suggests he is a 'singing dentist' (you can be the judge).

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and now I feel like a ticking time bomb, but with a killer smile and minty, fresh breath.
-bill kenny

The Unfortunate but Not Unexpected End of Another Search for the Guilty

This is from a long time ago, reckoning as Honest Abe once did in scores of years, but I found it the other day and was startled how little has changed since then to now. See for yourself.

I watched a TV commercial for an online bank with a grown-up and two little girls of less than five years of age. He asks the first one if she would like a pony, and when the child eagerly says 'yes’ he gives her a small pony replica. Smiles all around.

He asks the other little girl if she, too, would like a pony and when she responds in the affirmative, he makes a 'chck-chck' sound, and from behind this large dollhouse ambles a real pony, bridle, and saddle. The child is delighted.

The first child not so much. We get some close-ups of her face as we hear the squeals of delight from the other little girl. Eventually, she screws up the courage to tell the grown-up very non-judgmentally for a child who just got double-crossed 'you didn't say I could have a real pony.' To which he quickly rejoins, 'you didn't ask.'

Sometimes I expect to see the streets of America littered with plastic pony replicas and am surprised that I don’t. We are the most relentlessly optimistic nation on earth, perhaps unrealistically optimistic. I grew up in a USA that liked Ike, grudgingly extended sort-of equal rights to everyone, went, in one generation from a chicken in every pot to two cars in every garage, and which now finds itself, angry with one another and looking for (and finding) scapegoats.

I’m not worried that we can't fix what doesn't work, politically, socially, morally, legally, because our history tells me we have in the past and will again. But will we choose to repair ourselves? We've conspicuously consumed just about everything this planet has to offer and its riches haven't come close to filling that hole in our hearts.

We've conditioned ourselves to find solutions in fifteen second or less increments and ideas like universal health care, climate change, economic reinvestment, or diversity, equality, and inclusion can’t be jammed between the blue mountains of a beer can commercial and the soft porn of a shaving cream advertisement. It's not just that we lose interest-we never had any. Our technology allows us to have 24/7/365 access to the information we want to hear rather than what we need to hear.

We’ve plunged recklessly and relentlessly ahead; the devil takes the hindmost because we’ve always been about winning at all costs because when you’re a winner the good times go on forever. Until, of course, they don’t.  

COVID-19 and its aftermath changed and rearranged every aspect of our world with those closest to the ground and with the most to lose suffering the greatest losses despite lawn signs that read ‘thank you essential workers,’ or those organized nightly applause of gratitude and glib reassurances that ‘we’re all in this together.’

Too many have been left flopping and twitching on the beach as the tide of prosperity rushed out and no one warned us about the undertow. Except, of course, we were warned, but we chose to neither hear nor listen.
-bill kenny