We Are Strange Allies with Warring Hearts

This close to the Next Year, rather than rue and regret what has been, perhaps we might mentally better prepare for what is to come (assuming we believe ourselves to have some control over what is to come). I've met those who see themselves as hostages of Cruel Fate or an Indifferent Deity as if we had been plopped down on this orb and abandoned to our own devices. I respectfully disagree. 

Yes, we are each our own Captains, lashed to the mast of the ship that is our life, alone in an ocean of souls, but it's a big ocean and we've all found ourselves here somehow and, at least for me, coincidence isn't really going to ever explain the how much less the why.

Thornton Wilder's The Bridge Of San Luis Rey may have been his contemplation on the value of his own life, speculation that there's a land of the living and a land of the dead, and his belief (or hope) that the bridge between them is love. 

To his own question, would his death matter to God (Wilder was a veteran of World War I, with carnage and brutality never seen in the history of our species, who became in spirit, if not fact, part of The Lost Generation), he was willing to ask the complementary question: how do we make our lives have a meaning beyond our own lifetimes?

Not the cheeriest of questions to ponder while the old year's days creep slowly to their appointed end and we embrace the next with the same wild-eyed frenzy we did the last, and look at how that turned out. And if the question disquiets you, what of the answer? "Between the idea and the reality. Between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow."

In New England, and across the United States, we are surrounded by memorials in stone, from monuments to buildings, dedicated to the selfless sacrifice of all those who have preceded us--who have set the bar, so to speak, for the rest of us to clear, each in their own way. 

Not all of us can be a general, but all of us can be generous. Not every one of us will be President, but each of us can be present when a helping hand is needed, be it next door, around the block, or halfway across the world. We each have the power to save the world, at least the small plot of it on which each of us stands.

Where will we be this time next year if we promise to strive to be great at this time of this year? We have an about-to-begin year to work on the answer and make one another forget the question. Onward, together into 2023!
-bill kenny

Give Bees a Chance

I'm pretty sure Joni Mitchell is still collecting royalties for Big Yellow Taxi (probably a hybrid cab if not full-blown electric by now), as well she should. Hopefully more and more of us are paying attention to not only that song but also the continuing struggle we humans are engaged in to maintain a harmonious balance with nature.  

Last time, I checked we could have done better on that score. 

And speaking of scores, or at least snatches of music, meet Bioni, who is taking Mitchell's environmental awareness and concerns to the dance floor. 

Dance music you can pollinate to, and/or vice versa.
-bill kenny

Bless Your Heart

Over the summer, in what proved to be a classic (but totally in character) overreach on my part, I insisted on a road trip with my wife in our brand-new car from our home in Connecticut through Virginia to visit our daughter and her affianced and then a sojourn South to surprise our son and his spouse for his fortieth birthday.  

By the time we'd returned to the Land of Steady Habits. we'd clocked 3,025 miles and a little more wear and tear than I'd imagined would have happened. 

But that's not the point of today's epistle. At some point, not sure where, but I think somewhere in Georgia, maybe, either heading down or back, I finally (and no irony attached to that word) got to eat in a Waffle House. 

I'd only heard about them and had never had the chance to go to one. What is it they used to say in ancient times, 'see Rome and die'? To which I now say, pass the syrup, y'all.
-bill kenny

When the Party's Over

This time next week it'll be next year. Growing up, as a school kid and later as a working adult (or my impression of one) I always found this week, 'between the years' hardest to manage.. Should we look back at the year coming to a close even as we are living it or do we start to lean forward in anticipation of what's to come? 

Without intending to harsh your buzz in light of the last couple of years, I'm afraid the looking forward idea is fraught with more than just a little disappointment and danger. This time a year ago, we thought we were continuing an ascent from the depths of the despair of COVID and as we traded our caution and concern for quiet optimism only to find ourselves with an accelerated rate of inflation that hollowed out our savings as well as our resolve to work together to rebuild better. 

We went from E Pluribus Unum to Don't Touch Mine and from reflexively lending a hand to those in need to rolling up car windows and locking the doors when stopped at an intersection anywhere in Norwich lest someone with a cardboard sign gets too close for comfort. 

I'm not sure when the war on poverty turned into an attack on the poor but here we are. Waiting for the light to change and trying not to make eye contact with someone so far down on their luck that standing in the winter's cold for hours on end is all they think they have left. 

One of those recurring year-end promises we make is to be more generous to those social agencies reaching out to people we call 'less fortunate?' How sobered and saddened should we be that in a year's time the number of 'less fortunate' has continued to grow and the short-staffed and under-funded helping hands are struggling to empty an ocean of despair and heartache with a teaspoon? 

I'm at an age where my efforts are feeble and my talents are mostly imaginary (and the older I get, the better I was) so I do what I can by contributing money to those agencies trying to help, and the operative word so often is 'trying.' 

For me, more often than that not means donating to the Connecticut Food Share, the Gemma E. Moran United Way/Labor Food Center, and St. Vincent de Paul Place because it's unconscionable if not obscene that in a nation with an obesity epidemic (over 40% of us older than 20 are overweight) while we have thirty-four million people, to include nine million children, who are food insecure (a very fancy way of saying we don't know where our next meal is coming from).    

Times are hard for more of us now than in recent memory and anyone struggling as the cost of living especially utilities continues to escalate faces a choice between heat or eat which is no choice at all. We all know someone who needs a hand up, be it a neighbor, a co-worker, or a family member. As we say farewell to the old year and look forward to Sunday's arrival of 2023, let's extend and expand our generosity to reflect both our spirit and our wallet so that we all start the New Year better than we ended this one. Happy New Year!
-bill kenny 

This One Goes Out to All the Redneck Mothers

Not that long ago, I was getting regular gasoline for our Subaru Forester (which gets about 28 miles to a gallon I'm reckoning), and the guy across the pump island was filling his Ford, or perhaps Dodge (it was too big for me to get a surreptitious look at its nameplate) with high test while bitching at nearly the top of his lungs about the cost of fuel. 

The truck looked gorgeous and brand-new and was quite frankly large enough to have its own zip code and, as a factory option, two guys walking in front and behind it with red pennants with a helicopter landing pad somewhere on the tailgate. I've looked at the sticker prices on lots for new trucks. Just a whole lot of zeroes as I recall.    

And don't be fooled by the lull in petroleum prices, gas prices will go back up and so will the volume and velocity of lamentations about the price at the pump and the other thing that will keep going up? Sales of trucks, the bigger the better. 

Don't take my word for it.

C'mon, together with feeling, "M is for the mudflaps you give me for my pickup truck."
-bill kenny

Zweite Weihnachten

In my wife's country, Germany, today is Second Christmas, known elsewhere on the European continent as the Feast of St. Stephen (of Good King Wenceslas fame) and in the United Kingdom, it's called Boxing Day (you wondered how a nation of shopkeepers had a world-wide empire upon which the sun never set for a century? Mindsets like Boxing Day, boyo, that's how).

Here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we will trudge to the mall to return what we found less than thrilling under the tree, or perhaps we'd prefer it in a different size or style, all of which should be fun today if the weather proves to be as adventurous as advertised for the Northeast.

An ocean away people will devote today to celebrating Christmas again, this time more intimately with friends, perhaps dining out or some other social gathering. The first Christmas, yesterday, is for the family while today's expands the circle without losing sight of the focus or the festivities.

At our pace and in our times, I'm hoping that the idea of a Second Christmas makes the leap across the pond and spreads from sea to shining sea. And Currier and Ives are nearing retirement age but still working harder than ever to help keep the hue in human.

-bill kenny

Have Yourself

I've been pecking away at a number of tortured keyboards for, I've discovered, over fifteen years, unleashing a torrent of words across the universe despite popular demand. 

These, in their entirety, are from the first Christmas Day I noted back in 2007. I think they still ring true in my house and hope they do for you at yours whomever you may be wherever you are.  

"Happy Christmas"

In some places, it's already tomorrow. And that's okay as well because in some places tomorrow is Second Christmas when you visit with friends (Christmas Day is for your family).

Not to worry, here in the Land of the Round Door Knobs, time's a wastin' and we'd never devote two days to a holiday when one day will do.

So whichever day it is where you are, Frohe Weihnachten and Merry Christmas.
-bill kenny

Bill's Christmas Story

If you've never visited this space before today, I have a treat for you (sort of). If you're more of a regular guest, I don't know what to say except maybe better luck tomorrow. I offer this tale every year (updated) on this date to the annoyance of my spouse, about whom it is, and the possible embarrassment of my children, because I like to get a rise out of them. 

I originally called it Christmas is all around but you may have a different title by the time you finish reading it (assuming that you do). 

I have a quite lovely black and blue on my upper left arm where someone decided to pinch me not because we have a Christmas tradition like that in my house, but because some of us think we do. It's a perfectly logical consequence in a relationship that began forty-six years ago on Christmas Day which was when I first spoke to the person I was to marry. 

I'd note I haven't had much gelegenheit to speak since then, or to get a word in edgewise, but that would probably earn me a matching black and blue on the other upper arm.

I had seen the woman on a number of previous occasions, but could not work up the courage to speak to her. Nevertheless, I knew with absolute certainty I would marry her though if I didn't solve the 'haven't talked to her yet' obstacle, it would be tricky. 

Me and my friend Chris, thick as thieves then and now despite half a continent's distance, had gotten a headstart on the Christmas Cheer and had been downing it by the glassful for hours as we made the rounds in the Frankfurt am Main party district, Sachsenhausen. We probably weren't the only lost and lonely people, swarming like flies, but I believe we were two of the better lubricated.

At some point, we came to be in Old Smuggler's a bar near Eschenheimer Tor in mid-town am Main (great restaurants, terrific shopping, none of which we had any interest in). Chris and I were toasting NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as we'd concluded it was in support of the Alliance that he and I found ourselves on the cutting edge of the sword of freedom, not that either of us could actually utter that turn of phrase at that point in the evening.

I got much drunker much faster than Chris, who did a very good job looking out for me which is always necessary since once I got my drunk on I was even more of an ass(et/hole) than when I'm sober. I stopped drinking not because I suffered from alcoholism (I enjoyed it a great deal) but because I got tired of getting the snot beaten out of me mostly by inanimate objects that snuck up and tackled me. To this day, the only chair I trust is the one I'm sitting on, and only when I'm sitting on it.

Through a very crowded Christmas night came this woman who wanted to share our table and whom, in my liquid state, I felt should sit on my lap to save space. When she agreed, I knew it was now or never. (I was successful at falling in love. I hadn't been successful at staying in love. So far). Chris assures me I was very suave when I said to her, 'now that you're sitting on my lap, don't you think you should tell me your name?' Okay, not how Shakespeare scripted it, but, remember, it was a long time ago.

As I munched on some mandelspekulatius today, my second-favorite Christmas memory of Germany, I tried to imagine how events had to happen in just the order they did for her and me to meet when we did as we did. My brain hurts, nearly as much as my arm, and again I concede the limitations of a liberal arts education because I lack the mathematical wherewithal to pull off the arithmetic to do the figuring. I just accept some things on faith and how I met your mother is one of those things without question or quibble.

There is a reason for everything we do and everything we fail to do. And as much as I love the 'we're prisoners of an indifferent universe' state of mind, I don't buy it.
Hold on and hold out. It worked for me and I would hope no less than the same for you.
Love is always a gift, as it can never be earned and this is the season of love and gifts. 
Happy Christmas!

-bill kenny

Because We Can?

The fine folks at Guinness World Records keep track of every kind of unique and astounding achievement, though no matter how thorough they are, they never answer the most critical question for me: WHY?  

The person with the most video games? Got it.

Most hula hoops spun simultaneously (not in aggregate). Here you go.

If you're looking for records, you'll find them albeit without context. So what do I make of a once-a-year event underground in Oslo, Norway where people run for twenty-four hours straight?

If ever there was an attempt that screams at the top of its lungs to be asked WHY this is it and Göran Winblad is the one doing the asking.

Tuning up for Everest and K2? I guess I shouldn't ask the question if I can't stand the answer.

"We watched the power fall inside the Olso hall. While all the cold Norwegians cried. Who could say what was left and where was right? By the way, I could play the blues all night."
-bill kenny

No Time for Losers

I spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time this month explaining to the only vaguely interested that when I said I was watching football and they asked me who I was rooting for, NONE of my answers matched their expectations. 

It's not my fault that we're the folks who call what everyone else around the world calls football soccer and that our football, aside from our friends to the Great White North of us, has nothing in common with it. 

And yeah, I can get quite excited watching a match that involves sliding tackles, bicycle kicks, and off-side traps that ultimately finishes 0-0 and after extra time the sides resort to penalty kicks to have a winner. 

And I have little patience for Americans who usually laugh at PKs while watching US football do even goofier things to create a winner. However, despite what some of them, and I, may think about who has the weirdest sport, we're both wrong. Actually, technically we're all wrong. 

Here's the definitive list of 32 Weird Sports from Around the World, more or less.  

I still think playing polo with croquet mallets while driving a golf cart should be included on the list somewhere. Preferably sponsored by Jack Daniels or Wild Turkey (because the participants will have to have imbibed in order to compete). Get the guys from ESPN on the horn.
-bill kenny

Own the Future

A couple of Thursdays ago in The Bulletin was an article on Norwich Envision 06360!, an outreach by the City of Norwich to promote citizen engagement. 

After I'd finished the article and read the comments on the newspaper's website and social media platforms, my hair hurt. No wonder, I keep thinking our spirit animal should be Eeyore; we really do think there are forces beyond our reach aligned against us. 

Thirty-one years of living here have taught me how well we, as a city and residents, do at the beginning of nearly any project, and then, as the bright, shiny object becomes a little less so, how both our interest and enthusiasm dwindle.

Envision Norwich 06360! is (potentially) an almost-ideal opportunity for anyone residing or working in Norwich with computer/internet access to make their voice heard and yet as my great granddad, Phineas, once told me, 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't get him to buy the next round.' 

In late September I wrote a column in The Bulletin about the launch and presentation of Envision Norwich 06360! at Kelly Middle School whose auditorium seats about 800, where that evening, by my count, those involved in its development and deployment outnumbered the interested residents in attendance  (I counted six 'just folks' including myself). So few people turned out, in the words of a former teacher of mine, 'if we'd placed them all in a mosquito's butt they'd have rolled around and made a noise like a bee-bee in a box car.' 

Envision Norwich 06360! is NOT another social media platform where people go to bitch and bellyache (though I suspect given the chance some of us will/shall) but where, should we choose (there's the rub) to become involved, we can find like minds (and also divergent opinions) that, when combined, can create a bigger and better Norwich for all of us, assuming we're comfortable with letting someone's chocolate mix with our peanut butter and vice versa. With Envision Norwich 06360! we can create the change we want in Norwich; it's as simple (and complex) as that. 

But we who live and work here, are critical to the success of the outreach. I read/hear everyday comments about 'them' and 'their' lack of communication on projects across the city. There ain't no 'them,' there's just us and we need to accept and understand communication is just as much an art as it is a science. 

It requires a sender, someone to offer a message, as well as a receiver, someone to hear what is being said and to respond creating the next link in the communication chain. It's a continuous and continuing process. The sender and receiver are equal partners and co-own the dialogue (and any decisions resulting from it) their conversation creates. 

Part of any successful communication is free-flowing, accurate information. I encounter folks who never allow their lack of knowledge about a subject to keep them from having an opinion, and we all lose when the attitude is 'my mind's made up don't confuse me with facts.' 

So do more than listen to the local radio call-in shows that more often than not are echo chambers rather than sources of information and this holiday give yourself the gift of a newspaper subscription (or two) and rediscover the joys of reading for knowledge. 

No matter how smart you are, together we are smarter (if I'm doing the math right). And the more of us who engage with one another on a platform like Envision Norwich 06360!, the greater the ripple in the pond we think of as Norwich becomes, and so much better as decisions reflect our collective ideas and aspirations. 

Anyone can complain (I'm doing it now in case you hadn't noticed). Too many of us speak without thinking. Look around and you can see what that's gotten us. Go to Envision Norwich 06360!'s website, and join, because if you want to make Norwich better you'll find a way and if not, you'll find an excuse.
When it comes to our future, you can be a victim or a victor. Your choice. 
-bill kenny

Paul & Art

Are you familiar with onomatopoeia (hint: it has nothing to do with Yoko)? 

I ask as a sort of intellectual red herring since what I wanted to share today has a lot to do with sounds but not necessarily those of silence. This might be one of my most favorite pieces of research not only for this entire year but for my entire life.  

If your eyelids got heavy and your brain a little fuzzy trying to read it, no matter. I think the point of the paper is that swear words, no matter the language, become swear words in part because of how they sound when you put the various phonemes of the word together. 

And, no, I wouldn't blame you if you slogged through all of it at my invitation and concluded that was time you'l never get back, especially since you're right.
-bill kenny

You'll Never Change, Neither Will I

I don't ever remember celebrating my father's birthday as I grew up. Logic dictates we, our mother (his wife) and my brothers and sisters (his children) must have done so as we did for everyone in our family, and yet every year I struggle and fail to find a single memory of a single moment of that day.

I mention that because had he lived, today would be his ninety-ninth birthday (he died forty-one years ago) and I'd like to think he would be something I never felt he was while we shared the earth, proud of something, anything, I'd ever done. In this case, as was so true in our shared lives, I would be cheating (oh so slightly) as I'd hope he'd be proud of his grandchildren, Patrick and Michelle, who are my wife, Sigrid, and my children.

My most lasting memory of my father isn't really a memory of him at all, but a reminder of how life goes on within you and without you. Many years ago while shopping, Sigrid found what she assured me was 'the perfect card for you to send to your dad for Father's Day.' This was all pre-Internet and global village days, remember, and actually, it was back when it was only she and me and work (and sadly, not always in that order).

I don't remember the card, though this would be a better lesson for me if I had, but I signed it after Sigrid had addressed it, put a stamp on it, and had me throw it in my work bag (a shoulder-strapped book bag, of sorts, that carried, judging from its weight, most of the world's most curious and heaviest items).

And that's where the card stayed. Months later, and well past Father's Day, she was rooting through my bag, in search of something I had promised to bring home but had misplaced. Her theory, more often right than I'd like to admit, was that whatever it was, it could be found in my bag. The body of Jimmy Hoffa, the other gunmen on the grassy knoll, Weapons of Mass Destruction--check in the bag.

What she found that day, and registered with a quiet note of disappointment because of the discovery, was the card we both thought I had mailed months earlier for Father's Day. Faced with the reality that I hadn't, all I could do was mumble a promise to do so 'next year.'

You've guessed, of course, that my father died before 'next year' ever happened. 

As a self-centered oldest child, stiff-necked and incapable of bending, I had clashed with my father nearly every day of life-I think from the time I could talk, all I said to him was 'no.' I don't recall what we fought about or why, but they were bitter arguments, often ending in physical contact that made me more fully appreciate the weight of his hands, but I refused to yield anything at any time and we passed months, if not years, exchanging as few words as possible for as long as possible. 

I had wished the worst for him countless times, and when notified by the Red Cross (I was still on active duty in the Air Force) that he was dead, my first reaction was overwhelming guilt.

The three oldest children had moved out and away, but our two younger sisters and brother were left to be raised by our mother in circumstances vastly different from ours when were their age, and I made no effort to ever learn or to attempt to mitigate or improve. 

I've never spoken to them about those times and know I'll never do so. More casualties in a war that should have ended decades ago, but continues even as I type this and feel the gorge rise in my veins as if "enough" weren't already, and finally, truly enough.

I am, like it or not, my father's son in ways neither of us could have ever seen or imagined. Perhaps he'd be proud of that, and yet I truly hope not. Life is a sum of all your moments--waking and dreaming; everything you've done or left undone; every word, said and unsaid and of all your prayers, answered but, most especially and finally, unanswered.
-bill kenny

Blunt Is the Pain of Hunger

This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and for many (more importantly) the 'so many days until Christmas' countdown has dwindled down to single digits! (exclamatory marks sold separately at fine stores everywhere)

Perhaps today is a good day to see someone in a corner of our lives we normally see through on our way to the many important things we each do and never really acknowledge. We're a pretty crowded ant farm with beepers and briefcases and sometimes the person next to us falls through a crack and we never notice.

Anglicans (Church of England in the UK) call this Stir-up Sunday, not as in get agitated or become more forcefully engaged in the world around us, but for more quiet and comfortable reasons, but I do like that name and the possibilities and connotations.

For some of us, this is the best of the Season of Joy and for others, it's really nothing more than the next to last Sunday of 2022. We are the sum total of all the choices we make and the lives and love we share. We are the reason for this season.
-bill kenny

They're Not All from Pittsburgh

I fall across much more interesting stuff when I keep my mouth shut and my eyes and brain open. 

This is a very recent, and, in light of the FTX meltdown in the news, a timely example of that. 

Grab your coat, let's get out of here.
-bill kenny

Come & Get It

The things you see...

This showed up in my spam folder earlier this week and my heart leaped for joy. albeit only momentarily. 

" From: Marine Corps <manningt@optusnet.com.au>

Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2022 9:55 AM
To: Recipients <manningt@optusnet.com.au>
Subject: A Sgt. USA

Hi,

I am a USMC on a special redeployment.  I am looking for a good-looking and intelligent person for a relationship. Or a person who can accept to take custody of an amount being proceed of araid we carried out here. If you are interested mail me back with your picture. Allcommunication must be through an end-to-end encrypted means. It is important that you musthave WhatsApp for easy communication. And I assure you that your privacy will be protected too.

I got your email contact through an opt-in consumer directory.

I expect your response.

A Sgt. USA
Marine Corps." 

For me, it was the opposite of 'you had me at hello.'

The double whammy of 'good-looking and intelligent' was two bridges too far for me, but perhaps you might be able to get in on the ground floor, or, who knows, even lower. Caveat Emptor. 
-bill kenny

There's Always Next Year

We've all heard the expression 'you learn something new every day.' I've reached the age where I'm relearning a lot of stuff because the little grey cells don't seem to hold on to the knowledge the way I tell myself they once did. I'm actually lying since the truth is the older I get the better I was. 

But some of us, and I emphasize the some of us part do learn, and here's a list of stuff that someone learned in this past year. Wow.

Meanwhile, I have about two weeks to, in essence, catch up. No pressure. Right.
-bill kenny

Lighting More Candles

We’ve all heard the expression ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping this time the result will be different.’ When twenty-six school children and teachers were murdered ten years ago today at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (you just realized it's been a decade, didn't you? I know that doesn't seem possible it's already been that long, and yet it is), part of me wanted to believe we’d find a way to stop doing this to one another. But….
 
When you visit the Sandy Hook Promise website, you'll find "16 Facts About Gun Violence and School Shootings." In what is an epic understatement the page begins with "Gun violence and school shootings are a uniquely American epidemic."
 
The listing is so matter of fact you go numb reading it, struggling to remember that every statistic is a human being, far too often a child with a life that was just beginning with hopes, dreams, and someone who loved them and now they are dead. Forever.
 
We read about random acts of gun violence, pause to extend thoughts and prayers to the victims, and then retreat to our 'thank goodness it can't happen here' safe space, because, here in Norwich, we're special and different. Just like they were in Newtown, Connecticut, a decade ago, in Uvalde, Texas, in May, or Parkland, Florida, three and a half years ago.
 
The carnage is NOT the saddest part. For me, it’s that we choose to mourn those whose lives ended suddenly and senselessly instead of attempting to work to keep it from happening again or more honestly, over and over again. As an adult and a parent, I spend a lot of time fretting over what is and what could have been, often failing badly to see my role and responsibility in moving from the former to the latter.
 
Today is the anniversary of something so many of us couldn't grasp when it happened, and I confess, I still don’t "get it" despite all the passing years. The hurt gets worse as the heart gets harder and that’s small solace and cold comfort.
 
I'm not any smarter today than I was then, except to realize that I'm not any smarter. And I am also no closer to understanding now than I was then. I cannot imagine how long this day is for a parent who suffered the loss of a child, a husband of a wife, or a surviving child of a murdered parent, but I do know that today in Newtown, Connecticut, everyone trying to heal will be hurt all over again.
 
Everywhere we turn today will be accounts recounting everything that everyone will ever know about an unthinkable tragedy that happened ten years ago but there is one thing we, with all our research and analysis, will never know: why.
 
For a small town, whose residents will always have broken hearts that can never heal, today is just the next day in a tragedy that will only end when all memory of what happened has gone. And that will never happen.

Even if you have a problem with God, or in my case S/He with me, perhaps a truce is in order so that you can remember the twenty-six angels who entered heaven this day ten years ago.
-bill kenny

A Week and a Day

According to the calendar, winter is still eight days away, though in these parts (and parts of us are excellent) normally by this time in December we've had some very cold and unpleasant days that lets everyone know we are living in New England as the year ends.

Not unhappily for me, but I'm not seven and not hoping for a sled for Christmas, this year we are (so far) having less than wintry days. Very brisk mornings but temps are in the 'gee, this isn't too bad' range by the time the afternoon starts to fade. I am not complaining, but as a loyal, if fallen away Son of Mother Church, I've been conditioned to believe that we pay for what we receive and arguing 'but I didn't order this' will satisfy no one later in the course of the changing seasons.

I'm concerned because I had an experience the other day that underscores Thomas a Kempis' notion that man proposes, and God disposes. During the summer months around my house, there are swarms of squirrels, but in recent weeks as the days grow shorter, the numbers have dwindled. I have a bag of peanuts (you NEVER know when the elephant parade from the circus will be in town and I was, very briefly, a cub scout, which is nearly a boy scout, except for the shorts and the neckerchief) and in the course of the day, I throw handfuls of peanuts out the backdoor and more than one squirrel and a squadron of bluejays heads toward them.

I watched as one of the squirrels juggled one peanut in her mouth (his? I can never tell one from the other but as long as they can, I guess it's okay) while maneuvering to carry a second peanut. As it (compromise, okay?) wrestled with the second one, a blue jay from the nearby tree hopped down and snatched up a peanut, too, despite a half-hearted attempt by the squirrel to run it off. The squirrel finally satisfied it had both peanuts under control, took off for parts unknown. That's when I began to worry about this not-yet-here winter.

The blue jay came down from the tree again, dropped the peanut it had stolen already, looked around, and finding a much larger one, grabbed that one. Very pleased it flew away. At that moment I became afraid we could be making snow angels around here until Arbor Day.
-bill kenny

Common Sense vs. Cellular Senescence

I have, with apologies to James McMurtry, more in the mirror than there is up ahead and a phalanx of physicians who work overtime and double-time to keep me above ground. And, if I'm being honest, a rare occurrence so savor this moment, as much as I complain about the cost of living I'm terrified by the finality and the cost of leaving.  

I'm at an age where when I pass almost anyone else of any other age I ruefully recall when 'I used to do that' (ranging from jogging effortlessly to eating ice cream without getting any on me) and so here I am wondering just how much of that 'old guy smell' I have, mainly because one of the problems with it is you can't smell it on yourself and how much longer I have on this orb. In the last three weeks, two people with whom I worked a long time ago, passed away. Gives you cause for pause unless, like me, you're an idiot. 

I spend more and more of my time debating between quick and slow in terms of how I'd like to go, pretending in my arrogance that it's a choice that's mine to make at all. And, seriously, just how long is too long to stay at the fair, anyway? Not that I'm the guy you want to ask because every time I visit any of my doctors and I have a ton of specialists not because I'm special but because I'm different, there's a certain amount of pucker factor going on as they start to speak after then put the stethoscope down. 

Yep, that's the big one for me: how long is too long? Seems like the answer keeps changing and that leads to the other question, do you really want to live forever? 
-bill kenny

Ever Onward

Despite all the days of malevolence and hate-filled utterances of what has been at least for me a very long year and most especially now during what we called as kids a Season of Hope, today, Gaudete Sunday remains a favorite of mine (since my earliest school days).

Before I had memorized the entire Latin Mass, in hopes (forlorn) of becoming an altar boy, I had theorized from what I understood of the roots of the word Gaudete and its proximity to the birth of Jesus that it must somehow be Latin for 'just hold on a little bit longer.' I still think I should get partial credit for grasping the feeling if not the exact meaning

A lot of the warmth of our human hearts regardless of our beliefs is reflected by the holiday seasons that fall together this time of year somehow reminding us, I hope, that we are (when we can see and live beyond our differences) all very much the same people.

We have too many horns in the cacophony of life and can most certainly use another light, especially in this, the most hopeful of seasons. 
-bill kenny

The Space Between the Synapses

My most recent original thought died of loneliness (which is no surprise to you, I realize) but before that listening to a TV commercial, I wondered about the turn of phrase "emerging sciences believe..."  

WHAT exactly is emerging science? Is it like rock 'n' roll, "I know it when I hear it"; perhaps more like Jennifer Warnes and heartache (and why wasn't that brought us to by Lasik)? As a kid the rule was you had to define a word before you could use it (remember spelling bees and that desperation dodge, 'would you use it in a sentence, please?'). Now, you just throw out words like small chimps in the zoo fling poo, and try, like them, to not get any on you.

We've seen advertisements for prescription medications-who are those messages aimed at, us or doctors? If it's supposed to be us, I have a problem because the names of many prescription medications are nearly unpronounceable. Who comes up with those and how? 

Is it based on the compounds that go into them or do the drug companies hire marketing and opinion research firms to invent words? 

Coming home the other day I was, perhaps, more hurried than I'd otherwise normally be driving to Norwich. I wasn't reckless-I was accelerated. Out of nowhere, a car came up behind me, then beside me, and then well beyond me, disappearing at the bend in the road. What a driver and a complete maniac!

Later I got to thinking about how motivations are internal and behaviors are external, and while everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey when your insides are out and your outsides are in, you can't see what another person is feeling, only what he/she is doing. 

My high-speed driving didn't bother me because I knew why I was going fast. My trouble was that the 'other guy' (the maniac) who didn't reveal his heart, just kept stomping his gas pedal. Of course, to others on the road that afternoon, I had been his nearly-identical twin. Proving yet again sometimes the things we do speak so loudly that we cannot hear what each other is saying.
-bill kenny

You're Wearing Out My Joie de Vie

People think I'm being funny when I tell them I am a pessimist because that way I can only be surprised and never disappointed. Point in fact, I'm thinking I've lived to a rather ripe old age because people refuse to believe that I'm not joking. 

Sadly, they often turn out to be disappointed, which I find amusing beyond words. 

And if you think I'm being too harsh on the other eight billion of us here on the ant farm, please take a look at this, or to better place it in its correct linguistic setting, Schau dir das an! 

Yep. Es wird nie langweilig! Leider.
-bill kenny

Thoughts Meander Like a Restless Wind

Today, for all those who came of age with The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, marks the 42nd anniversary of the murder of John Lennon by Mark Chapman. I'm offering that link to further prove there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. That our two children were both born after Lennon's murder gives me pause about the world I helped give them. 

John Lennon was a part of the soundtrack of my growing up years from teen through adult. If I were being truthful, and today is probably as good a day as any to try some truth, a portion of his post-Beatles material never spoke to me in quite the same way as his earlier solo work or any of the Fab Four material. 

After his five-year self-imposed silence, his comeback album (which is what everyone called it at the time) in the fall of 1980, Double Fantasy, was, as I referred to it on air at the radio station I worked for, 'a decent EP' (Extended Play), with some material that didn't work for me at all. However, I always felt "Beautiful Boy" was exquisite (even more so when our own was born less than twenty months later). Obliviot that I was, I assumed Lennon and his music would always be a part of my life (and that of any children my wife and I were to have).

How perversely ironic that he sang of 'patience' in that song and less than a month after the album's release, he would be dead. His son, Sean, the inspiration for the song was to grow up without his father (as did all of us, though to a different degree) and has worked every day to live within and without the shadow of the legend and myth his father became. 

The two days over which we have the least control are today and tomorrow ("Nobody told me there'd be days like these"), but in looking at the darkness that both often have in such abundance, Lennon's music should help make our appreciation of the light and this, The Season of Light and Hope, that much more pronounced for all the days that remain whose number is unknown to each of us.
-bill kenny

It Was Dark All Around

Today is the 81st anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor in whose aftermath the United States redefined itself as a nation and within the world of nations until the attacks of 9/11 to which the former is invariably compared. 

America of 1941, and the world for that matter, was very different from our world today and it's with that span of time, I suspect, comes some detachment in looking at history half a world away for those on the Eastern Seaboard. 

I learned something about Pearl Harbor as a child in American History classes, then later at college through my classes and studies, and still later when I encountered men (and women) who had served in World War II (and not always on the victorious side). 

The more I learned, the less I knew which is one of the positive effects of education: because it's when you don't know what you don't know, that you're at your most dangerous both to yourself and to others. That's most especially true in international relations. When the last resort, armed force, becomes the first recourse, we all lose. 

I've never had the chance, yet, to visit the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii (it wasn't the only ship that sank and her Sailors weren't the only ones who died), but I'd hope to do so before I die, as (and this is just a theory) I suspect afterward I wouldn't get quite so much out of it. 

I wandered across the battlefields of World War II while living in Europe from Normandy, France (where every single bar is called June 6, or at least it seems that way), past the ruins in downtown Frankfurt am Main, (West) Germany, as modern a city as you could otherwise ever imagine. 

I visited Dachau, just outside of Munich, walking through the remains and reminders of the prisoner barracks trying to grasp how people had lived (and died) there. I never got used to the fact that no birds were ever heard at Bergen-Belsen in the Luneburg Heide, one of the Nazi interim equations as they made their Final Solution. It was as if God, Himself, had turned His face from us, ashamed of those who insist and persist in our belief that we are created in His likeness.

All of those spaces and places are connected as if in a straight line to Pearl Harbor, Bataan, the Rape of Nanking, and a thousand other geographic locales (more than 20 million men (and women) fought in World War II and the death toll of those who were non-combatants may be higher than that number) as some sort of a perverse demonstration that as noble as we can be and claim to be, the depths of our depravity and indifference towards one another may not yet be fully plumbed.

There has been a lot of darkness and a lot of blood and tears since the last Cautionary Tale we think of as World War II. The rush of all the ensuing years may have served to make us numb to the approaching calamity of what will undoubtedly be the Last World War. We won't have to worry about what lessons we learned, or didn't, as there will be no one left to read anything.
-bill kenny

Stealing a March on Year-End Retrospectives

We've all heard cautionary tales along the lines of  'my grandfather had three shares of what became IBM stock' back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and all of the variants that as you hear them underscore one basic point: the road not taken (or sometimes taken) is the wrong road, sometimes (unless it's not).

Romances not consummated, letters not written, words left unsaid.
We can be a somewhat sad species at times.  

Even rock and roll has had its 'a far, far greater thing' moments. I just didn't realize there had been so many until now. 

If you didn't have a reason to thank a Literacy Volunteer before, now you do.
bill kenny

It May Be Jesus' Birthday...

This is the time of year when you're of two minds about finances. You want to be generous, even magnanimous when gifting family and friends (okay in my case, just family) but you also strive to be fiscally responsible.

My parents had a minivan worth of kids in the era before minivans. So growing up we had a fleet of station wagons, like a Chrysler Newport that I learned to drive that was long enough to have its own helipad on the roof and, innovation of innovation, rear-facing third-row seats that my brother Kelly and I exploited to make faces at the motorists behind us on the highway.

Mom was in charge of Christmas and with that many All I Want lists, some hard decisions had to be made as the Big Day approached. Each of us had a big-ticket item and even those of us too young to know where and how the big-ticket items materialized understood there were limits. 

For instance, I could have a baseball mitt or a dress shirt for school, but not necessarily both. And sometimes, as happened in a family with active children, someone put a knee through a pair of dungarees (we didn't call them 'jeans' then) and emergency purchases had to be made which would cause Mom to offer to everyone, and no one simultaneously, 'that's coming out of your Christmas.'

I thought about that yesterday when faced with having to purchase another and different set of orthotics, this time not because of my compressed discs in the spine but from the plantar fasciitis and bone spur in the sole of my left foot from too many years of compensating for the bends and twists in the spine. 

I found the best price, though still pricey to my uneducated eye, at Jeff Bezos' operation, When I went, reluctantly, to pay for it, discovered I already had an item in my shopping cart for purchase, Except, as I learned decades earlier, with more wants than wallet, I had to pick as wisely and well as possible. 

Yep, those Superfeet Green insoles are coming out of my Christmas.  
-bill kenny

Second Advent

Exactly four weeks from today, the first day of the next year will be drawing to a close. How is that even possible? It feels like only moments ago that two thousand and twenty-two was just arriving, filled with challenge/fueled by hope (and huge amounts of vitriol and 'Stop the Steal' banners) and here we are with the remnants of all of that tracked across the living room carpet like so much of so what.

You remember 2022 (I hate to speak of it in the past but what's done is done and I do not give a damn whose feelings are bruised). We can blame the economy for the politics of anger, though we know the reverse is just as easily as true. For my part, I'm exhausted, physically and emotionally. It's like I'm running through soup and sand, my feet never quite lifting from and clearing the ground, each stride a broken parody of what it once was with my arms pushing through spaces and places I can taste rather than feel. 

And the harder I try the farther behind I fall. I started out beside you but have spent the year watching you disappear before me, long strides taking you over the horizon and when I get to where you were, you're gone with no trace, no track, and no regret. Sic transit humanitas.

This was a year I had to concede the face in the mirror has aged more precipitously than previously and the man behind the face hasn't nearly as many springs left as he thought he had, and more on point has squandered, rather than saved, those moments of meaning he thought would come along again as easily as they did the first time. 

Like many, I blinked and lost sight of the truly important in the rush of the real as it became surreal and then unreal before disappearing by the dawn's early light. The year in which I had vowed to sort myself out has nearly run its course and the next one will be over even faster than this one, with less to show for it as the distance already traveled never equals the distance yet to go. 

The sense of adventure is replaced by dread as the days draw down and the year ends. The toast we'll make for much success in the new year assumes both will exist but accepts the implication that neither is promised. 
-bill kenny

It Must Be Art

Take two minutes and read this. 

I'll wait here while you do that. It's really not that big a sacrifice on my part. I'm retired and, between us, don't have a large number of folks clamoring for my attention or involvement. 

Now watch this and tell me you don't feel just a bit like the guy pushing the elevator door button.

A couple or three "D" cell batteries in one of those pillowcases would have meant a lot more ice cream for the winner. Just sayin.'
-bill kenny

Get Over It

The law of averages being what it is, I will never, ever, meet all of the people in the world who piss me off. Or, in reality, even the most minute percentage of them.

If I'm being honest, I don't have an actual list (I don't have enough paper) but if I did, Amanda Ramirez would be at the top of that list. And why is that, you might ask. Glad you did. 

Here's why.

I'm accused with good reason of being very cynical but let's face it, in Amanda's case, Mother Theresa would be giving her a stare. Some folks are so thoughtlessly self-centered, they make my hair hurt (and I have a bald spot visible from space).  

Amanda, these are people who are having a rough time right now. NOT YOU.
-bill kenny