A Day in the Life

Disclaimer: I spent eight years on active duty in the United States Air Force and a little more than thirty-five subsequent years as a Department of Defense civilian at various times for the United States Army, the United States Air Force, and the United States Navy. When we speak of the 'military-industrial complex,' except that I'm extremely simplex, I am the poster child. 

Last week one of my local daily newspapers, in the regional section (though if I recall correctly it was on the front page of the first section, admittedly below the fold) offered a "Report cites 'outstanding' year for Connecticut's industrial base" that unless you were reading it carefully you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a jobs/prosperity story.

Here in the Land of Steady Habits, but not just here, war and preparations for it are good business, except when they are great business and business is booming right now. Every single year, like clockwork, the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, breezes through the lower and upper chambers of our Congress with rarely a voice raised, ever, to question 'what the fuck do we need all this weaponry for?' much less 'against whom are we planning on ever using it?' It's like all of our representatives were raised by my mom who used to say 'don't ask the question if you can't stand the answer.' 

And here's the obscene part about our national defense spending. The United States in terms of dollars expended is #1 in the world, and we have the foam finger to prove it, outspending the other nine nations in the Top Ten, combined (eight of whom are, more or less, and depending on the day of the week, our allies). 

Meanwhile, the same Congress that makes sure we have all the killingry we could ever want or need, looks at pressing national concerns such as universal affordable health care, college student loan forgiveness/free college and/or trade school, living wages for every worker and a dozen other critical elements of livingry and always asks 'who is going to pay for this and how?' 

I'm thinking this could be the year the Air Force has a bake sale to pay for an F-35 or perhaps the Navy can offer magazine subscriptions to pay for a submarine. Or, as has been the case since forever, probably not.

-bill kenny   

Just In Case You Accidentally Wander into a Voting Booth One Day

At some point last week somewhere in Tennessee I've never heard of, and will in all likelihood never visit, a decision was made to ban a book intended for eighth-graders about the Holocaust because of language (a character in the story, which is entirely mice and cats by the way, because it's an allegory) says 'damn' and because of nudity. Here's the graphic novel, I call it a book, that frightens adults. Boo!   

The same logic from the same people who grow faint at the mention of Critical Race Theory without ever expending any intellectual energy in understanding what it is or why the hell everyone in the United States should have some basic grasp of how we got here. If you want to get folks clutching their pearls, talk about The 1619 Project, but since it will help your argument to have some information on what it is and what it is not, you can read it here. Forearmed is forewarned. 

We were once the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, willing to talk about anything with anyone at any time, 'my country right or wrong; if right, to be kept right if wrong to be made right,' and give you the (Carl) Schurz off our backs, but we've retreated to our own informational biospheres now where nothing that could threaten or upset our perspective is ever allowed to permeate the membrane of mistrust we've constructed for ourselves. 

We blame 'fake news,' 'malevolent social media,' 'bad science,' 'faulty leaders,' but never ourselves. And then we wonder why we are afraid of tomorrow.

-bill kenny

As Not Heard on Joe Rogan

This can be the toughest time of year and not just because/despite the weather for a lot of us, to include folks like me who stare out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of what's next. A number of years ago someone took me on a short helicopter flyover of some of the woodlands and farmlands in this area of Connecticut in the late fall, early winter, and the view from the top seemed to be of another world at times.

I can recall everywhere we went (and you can see a lot of them from the roadways, but there are many, many more as it turns out), seeing rock walls through the forests and brook beds, intersecting at angles, and wondering how odd that must have seemed to the indigenous peoples here when European settlers first arrived. In comparison, the European landmass was the smallest of the continents, and maybe that's where the assertiveness (if not out and out aggressiveness of its natives) developed as they went out into the big world and marked their territory not only to use but, at times, to use up.

I drive through lands demarcated by ancient stone walls every day as I travel through the Real World, and none of the creatures I pass in my travels or travails regard them as immutable boundaries or barriers. They are there and nothing more. I would imagine for a Mohegan or a Pequot, thinking of the tribes in this region of Connecticut, watching an early settler struggle to subjugate the earth to farm crops, engaged in back-breaking labor to maneuver the giant stones they unearthed while tilling, to serve as property markers was too amusing to not smile.

And it's taken us centuries to learn lessons of harmonious, not rapacious, living within a natural order. Reuse and recycle from plunder and leave and work very hard to not spend too much time calculating what has been lost from lessons left unlearned for too long.
-bill kenny

Elevator Prozac

When I was a kid, there was music you heard in department and grocery stores as well as in elevators that you heard nowhere else on earth. It had/has a name, Muzak (often with a lower case m) and it is very much more than some random collection of background sounds while you do your shopping, as I discovered in the early seventies when I authored a research paper on it for Dr. Budd at the Rutgers School of Communication (got a decent grade as I recall, too). 

Now, when I visit my local Stop & Shop I'm as likely to hear The Clash's Police and Thieves as I am some nearly forgotten strings and things rendition of the Yellow Rose of Texas. I tell myself it's because I shop in really hip grocery stores but just as likely it's the people who run those stores are my age, and even if we went to different high schools together, we all grew up listening to the same music which means, for better or for worse, everyone else is gonna grow up listening to the same music no matter how old or young they are. 

I'm not sure that's a good thing in much the same way as I'm never going to believe Motley Crue should be considered classic rock, or that we even need 'classic rock radio stations,' be it over the air or on satellite. Not because I don't love me some classic Beatles or Stones (a double dollop, yes please!) but rather because there are just so many minutes in an hour and hours in a day and when you fill them up with U2 or The Police, the bands who are struggling to be the next U2 or The Police, or Whatever never get heard, so they never get purchased so they never become successful enough to end up as the soundtrack to my journey down the produce aisle. 

As Yossarian asked in Catch-22, 'where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?' I don't have a clue. Don't laugh! I'm being serious about this. And I'm not alone. 

Support local music, of all flavors and stripes, where you live and work. It really is one of the wonders of the world.
-bill kenny

Silence Will Not Protect Us

Today is the anniversary, seventy-seven ago, of the liberation of Auschwitz. which serves as the cornerstone of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

As a child when my mother's mother told stories of "The War" her generation had fought, she rarely mentioned the death camps-perhaps because we were of Irish ancestry and Roman Catholic religion, perhaps for reasons she never had the time or the opportunity to explain.

I'm about her age now and the cautionary tale the Ha-Shoah should have been, continues to be a lesson we on this planet have still NOT fully learned. There is mindless murder every day in every corner of the globe because of the color of skin, the choice of a God, the shape of an eyelid, always the fear of The Other.

We are NOT much better here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as we impersonalize and dehumanize those with whom we are in disagreement philosophically and politically, rendering them abstractions and making them easier to hate and then hating them deeply and completely.

Instead of Slouching towards Bethlehem we have continued our journey on the road to perdition and that, I fear, means we will persist in writing off one another and the damages we do to ourselves as part of the overhead of being on the planet. As if a lifetime is worth no more than an arched eyebrow or a shrugged shoulder.

I rarely recommend movies or records or books, but in the case of this book I would be remiss if I did not because it's important, at least to me, that someone bear witness to who we were and how easily the danger and horror of all of that did happen can happen again. Growing faint in the face of evil is to do nothing and doing nothing cannot be allowed especially when each of us, worldwide, knows that silence is consent and the first chapter in the horror story.

About a minute and a half into this trailer, Keri Lynn explains why she became involved in the Paper Clips Project. I imagine she's graduated from college and is fully immersed in her adult life by now, and I'd hope her place has been taken by other bright and shiny young people who, if we're lucky, will not need to build rafts to save us from the flood of our own hatred but, instead, bridges to allow connections despite our differences.
-bill kenny

The State I'm In

You can be forgiven for not knowing this as it was announced five shopping days before Christmas when we may have had other things on our minds, but the State of Connecticut Office of Tourism has a marketing campaign currently to promote winter tourism, called "The State I'm In." 

As someone born and raised where we had all four seasons, often in the same afternoon (to hear my parents tell it), and who as an adult moving purposefully towards and through his dotage admittedly keeps his enthusiasm for winter activities at about the same level as the mercury measuring the temperature for said activities, I'll admit it is a great name and idea for a campaign (that I also always hum as much of The Band's tune of nearly the same name as I can recall, which isn't very much, sadly, is just a happy happenstance, okay?). After all, if winter is the weather that we have, why not brag about it, since complaining isn't going to change it. 

Admittedly, Norwich is not synonymous with winter sports as such though, like your kids, I'll bet, mine spent many a snowy afternoon hurtling down the hill at Buckingham School on sleds and on one memorable day, a large piece of cardboard whose steering and stepping capabilities were greatly exaggerated, giving that fence just above the sidewalk on Washington Street a real work-out, and probably causing a few moments of anxiety for drivers. 

We didn't visit the Norwich Golf Course that often but whenever it was snow-covered you could be sure following shortly it would also be sled-covered as well (not sure about cross-country skiers, but the more the merrier I think is a good rule) and I expect every neighborhood has a spot for enjoying all of that no business like snow business stuff.

The Connecticut Office of Tourism wants all of us to post photos of our winter wonderland wanderings with #StateImInCT on the various social media platforms we enjoy, not that I, for one, need any encouragement or incitement to so do.

Over a decade ago believing that 'no one makes fun of my old man but me,' I got fed up with the bad-mouthing and self-loathing that goes on too much around here and created a Facebook Page that I called Celebrating Norwich Connecticut because we really and truly do have a lot of very nice things that maybe if we'd stopped bellyaching about what we don't have, we might actually find the time to enjoy.  

So between wintry mixes last Wednesday (the day the skies cleared, though the winds were whipping and the sun came out), I incorporated a stop at the Lower Falls of Uncas Leap at the Yantic River into my walk around the neighborhood. I am really looking forward to the spring and the start of the next chapter in the creation of the Uncas Leap Heritage Park, but in the meantime, I realized yet again how remarkably beautiful the Lower Falls is, especially as the ice builds across the gorge and the moisture in the fall's mist coats the rocks and brush on the far side. 

I can't even imagine how awed the English settlers must have been when the region's natives first shared its beauty and majesty with them. Like the Harbor, Mohegan Park, the Greenville Dam, and at least a dozen other places across Norwich, sometimes words do fail to capture how beautiful where we live truly is, I keep reminding myself this is the #StatetImInCT. You should too.
-bill kenny  

 

Say It Ain't So

Later this week is International Holocaust Remembrance Day (marked this year on Thursday) coinciding with the day the KZ Lager in Auschwitz was liberated in 1945. From that day onward through today (and beyond) there's been a competition between 'how could this have happened?' and 'it can't happen here.'

Sadly, in both instances all answers are wrong. It happened and will continue to happen until the end of time because we as a species have repeatedly demonstrated and proved that it can indeed happen here. 

Some time ago, actually, late last spring, a millennium or so ago in modern-media elapsed time, a frightening report (not just to me as a former member of the active-duty US Air Force, as opposed to the passive-duty one I suppose) was offered by the Associated Press, not known for rabble-rousing, or broad-brushing anything, on the pervasive racism in our armed forces. 

Perhaps because there's only so much a mind can absorb at one time, and we've been going a mile a minute in terms of news stories for quite some time, it seemed to disappear without a trace. Here it is again, and after you've finished reading, take another turn on 'how could this have happened?' and 'it can't happen here,' and see how comfortable your lethal indifference feels now.
-bill kenny 

What Is a Methylated Sandwich?

My wife does crossword puzzles, in ink. She finds it curious that I wonder and worry how she will manage to make corrections when (I assume) she makes mistakes. As it happens (and not a singular occurrence) that is an unshared assumption, at least in my house. 

She also does puzzles on her cellphone as well as on her desktop and, space and time permitting she does actual honest-to-god drag the box out and assemble the thousands of pieces puzzles and finishes them with zero pieces left over. 

It's not a super-power, obviously, but it's pretty amazing and provides me some background to better appreciate the degree of difficulty involved in this. 

Proving, if nothing else, that it's a fine line between time-lapse and collapse.
-bill kenny

So Logos Are No Goes?

Remember when Prudential Insurance used the rock of Gibraltar as their logo? You should, they still do. What about the Hartford and that large buck deer, or moose, or elk, or whatever it is/was? 

We live in a world of symbols and logos and mascots but at least one of us (other than me) has a special place in Hades for the folks who use mascots to hawk insurance. 

Spoiler alert: Liberty Mutual and The General do not have a good time.  

And, I don't care who knows this, the Geico Cavemen were not only terrible mascots but an even suckier, albeit short-lived, TV series. Gimme Yogi or end Gilbert Gottfried in front of me.
-bill kenny

Not in Your Hand

At least in my mind, if not actually on my porch (especially in this weather) I spend a lot of time being that old guy who yells at clouds. The ironic thing in that, to me, being that is how I know, far better than any mirror could ever show me, how badly and rapidly I've aged. 

Back in my day, there were M&M's; of course, there were always M&M's, There was plain and there was peanut and that was all there was to that. Of course, I think we may already be at the designer flavor level now but I can't be sure because I haven't checked in with any Tik-Tok influencers, whatever the fuqq they are. 

But as I've learned in recent days, M&M's are more than candy, they're news. Seriously.

Except, no they're not.

Part of my ever-growing, Richard Cory-like unhappiness with the world as it is has little to do with the world as it ain't but rather our insistence and persistence on making everything on earth say and mean something even when it doesn't and shouldn't.

More and more, I'm thinking bring back 1985.
-bill kenny

Blink and You'll Miss It

Being easily amused and bemused has a flip side. I am and can often be easily provoked into a fit of almost irrational anger that, at some point, I can look back and say 'yeah, my bad. I really lost it.' Strangely enough that never seems to happen when I'm going through it which is what is happening right now.

It was a pretty straight (pun intended) forward headline on CNN dot com, "Fashion designer sues Lego over leather jacket worn by toy Antoni on 'Queer Eye' set." But, hand on my heart, the more often I read the story and tried to follow the exposition of what and who was happening to whom and why, the more confused I became as I parsed the sentences in the report and realized to my dismay (and anger) that all of it was a load of bollocks and that the gorge rising in my veins needed to get either its own attorney to sue someone for something or just look away until the shouting in my head ceased. 

I know, it's just a Lego set, but there's money so that means there's a principle (as well as billable hours). By the time I stopped yelling at the computer screen because of my anger at the story my hair started to hurt from the cubic density of avarice and mean-spiritedness per square foot multiplied by my absolute certainty that this kind of thing will drag on for years until someone pays someone else to go away. 

Right? Wrong? Relative terms and conspicuous in their absence in this case. "Yeah, I'll step back while you go dance the greenback boogie." 
-bill kenny

Approved by Clayton Moore

 

Jay Silverheels says he appreciated the sentiment, if not the execution.
-bill kenny

Hope and Other Four-Letter Words

I'm often on an emotional roller coaster, maybe like you, with cheeriness alternating with cynicism sometimes in the same day, often within the same opinion.
 
I strive to offer a public face of relentlessly cheerful optimism, letting a smile be my umbrella even if I risk gargling snow and being accused of being a 'cheerleader for Norwich' (never sure why that is a bad thing). Conceding the obvious, I plead guilty as charged.
 
Except, deep down in my darkest moments I am more often a semi-professional pessimist, nearly seven full decades here on the Big Blue Marble, who will acknowledge and defend that the inherent appeal of my pessimism is I can only be surprised and never disappointed.
 
Here's one of those sadness and euphoria moments I’m talking about.
Not that long ago there was an article (near the start of the year) on one of my personal favorite 'hope springs eternal' projects, reviving/repurposing/rebuilding the Reid & Hughes Building in downtown Norwich. 

I didn't grow up here (and according to census figures, more and more of us didn't either) so when I pass the boarded-up windows that line the property along Main Street, from just beyond the Chamber of Commerce offices while I make my way to the Otis Library, I don't see anything through a prism of back-in-the-day memories and I-remember-when nostalgia. Sorry to be blunt, I see nothing at all.
 
And apropos memory, mine is not what it once was but I'm pretty sure the Reid & Hughes building was derelict and abandoned when I and my family arrived here before Thanksgiving thirty years ago. Of course, in a downtown lined with broken and battered buildings as Norwich was at that time, that's not really saying much.
 
But don't get me wrong, I wildly cheer all efforts to convert empty spaces into vibrant places anywhere in Norwich, but most especially in downtown where we've always had more wishes than wallet when it comes to transforming potential into kinetic energy. I hope this time something good happens, but it just seems to me that being an optimist sometimes takes more faith than I possess.
 
And maybe that's why the pessimist in me can't help but wonder and worry, having read this news story any number of times, about when, not if, Lucy Van Pelt is going to show up with her football near the new roundabout over on Franklin and promise this time to hold it steady if we're just willing to try to boot it. Again. Honest. This time for sure. Really.
 
I'm trying to convince myself I'm probably a little fatigued from another COVID winter and that's maybe why my flame of enthusiasm is trimmed a little low right now. Perhaps I could take heart from another news story, near the end of last year, about that property we've all seen on I-95 in East Lyme near where the fork for I-395 happens, that's sat empty for decades but has now been sold to a developer who reportedly has both concepts and capital. I mean, it could happen, right?
 
I'll keep my fingers crossed for those folks in East Lyme, but most especially for us. Besides, those crossed fingers will help me explain my terrible typing if not so much my mood swings.
-bill kenny

Putting the TS in T. S. Eliot

Cannot claim to be positively excited at how this new year has gotten started. And yes, I'm concerned that maybe my country is coming apart at the seams, and while we could do something about that we choose NOT to.

After you say 'this will not end well' there's not much left to say.
-bill kenny
 

Be an Exclamation

There's a reason why we have the expression 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' 

Take for example this picture: 

Photo by Claire Bessette

Trust me. 

There are very few places more desolate and relentlessly industrial in all of Norwich than the Market Street Garage. But this afternoon a lot of time, talent, and plain hard work will be recognized as what I regard as a vast improvement on concrete walls and a spectacular celebration of just some of all of those who have made our world a better place is part of Norwich's celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

It's okay sometimes when words fail. It reminds us that Earth, without Art, is just Eh.
-bill kenny

One Is Always the Watcher

Louise Glück, the essayist and Nobel Laureate poet, once offered "Of two sisters, one is always the watcher and the other the dancer." I have three sisters, and don't pretend to have any idea as to how many sets of Capezio shoes they possess among them, nor is it any of my business. 

Today is the birthday of my youngest sister, Jill, whom I have seen so rarely since returning to the United States three decades ago that her good fortune should be the envy of all of our siblings. As it is, I'm fortunate they don't devote a lot of thought to that idea. 

Happy birthday, Jill, with hopes for many, many more!
-bill kenny

The Age of Asparagus

I tend to associate mondegreens exclusively with misheard song lyrics, though not so much with whatever it was Mary's dress was doing in Bruce's Thunder Road but as it happens there are scads of non-musical instances. 

Actually, scads may be a bold-faced lie, unless it's a bald-faced one. 

Of course, it's a little hard to tell with the light in here.
-bill kenny

Not Just from the Streets of San Francisco

I'd like to think Richard Hatch would smile at this; and if not Richard, then Michael Douglas. 

And if not Mike, then at the very least Karl Malden.
-bill kenny

 

Halcyon Half-Hallucinations

This is from so long ago, I wasn't even alive (or maybe awake, I get confused) when I wrote it (and a lot of people are kinda pissed that I am now, so go figure). At the time I called it:  

I'm Lovin' It-Her, Not So Much

There are days when the public relations kids cannot make this stuff up. That's why they have radio, print, and television outlets. Who among us, toiling in the pursuit of persuasion, doesn't want rabid fans of your good or service who will ACCEPT NO LESS than your product, OR ELSE. 

This is one such 'news from the newsroom floor' item and if I'm in the fast-food business I'm riding this palomino pony until the little guy's legs wear down to the nubs and my stirrups touch the ground: "Woman gets violent over lack of McNuggets".

I live for stories like this and am very grateful one of our local (for me) newspapers had it in its online edition earlier this week, though the copy suggests the incident actually happened a week ago. Not sure if I was more surprised that she pleaded not guilty (I realize the presumption and assumption of innocence is the cornerstone of our legal system) or that she was, as I understand it, arraigned on a Saturday. 

Toledo, Ohio, may be suffering a shortage of Chicken McNuggets and that's unfortunate (unless you're a chicken) and, I'll admit, may not speak well for their casual dining industry, but....that their court system is in session on a Saturday morning, is refreshingly reassuring. The system not only works, it works weekends, and, I suspect, is as diligent in running to ground felonious foodies, be they pizza pilferers, doughnut delinquents or even kebabnappers.

This entire incident underscores my belief in law and order, though in this case, I think the attempted order actually preceded (and in no small part) precipitated the encounter with the law. I wouldn't be surprised if Dick Wolf sees some money in all of this. And as I'm working through the various accounts, I've developed a respect for the physical prowess of Melodi Dushane, who has the look of a woman very accustomed to getting her Chicken McNuggets with as many different dipping sauces as she wants. You think I jest? Have a seat, buckaroo, pick a fist and use it, while still seated, to punch something (anything) as hard as you can in an attempt to break it. How'd that work out. Better eat your Wheaties, eh?

I'm wondering if Wendy's, whose chain began in Ohio, have contacted her for an endorsement. I think they're just rolling out a new spicy chicken nugget, and you know how they say 'timing is everything'. If they also offer, as a beverage choice, Hawaiian Punch, we could see some awesome cross-promotional commercials during this Super Bowl. But sit back from the screen.
-bill kenny

The Power of Unarmed Truth and Unconditional Love

Everyone has a favorite quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and between the anniversary of his 93^rd birthday this Saturday and the federal holiday on Monday, we’ll be treated to a lot of them.

Perhaps revealing more about me than it does about Dr. King, my personal favorite is one I’ve always suspected he offered tongue in cheek, but it still makes me smile, "We may have all come on different ships,” he said, “but we're all in the same boat now." Dr. King is known as a civil rights leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize but that’s a line any stand-up comedian would admire for both its humor and truthfulness.

Dr. King was murdered before celebrating his 39^th birthday but his impact in both scale and scope is still being measured by sociologists, political leaders, and, most importantly well-intentioned men and women just like us, every day and everywhere.

I believe he was so intent and intense in living he might be amused by those trying to calculate his import but I think that’s because analyzing the doing is always so much less risky than the actual doing itself. The anniversary of his birthday allows communities across the country to join hands and hearts even if it’s only for a moment, to celebrate his life and to assess our progress as a nation in the ongoing journey for equal rights.

To begin, we're not there. Yet. But I’d hope we're closer today than we were yesterday and choose to believe that come tomorrow, we'll be farther along still. Norwich has always been a city of doers, with a rich ethnic diversity from its earliest days when immigrants took their turns in the mills and factories built along the banks of the three rivers which helped define the city's boundaries and character.

The villages that made up Norwich and the farmlands to the east and northwest of the city all offered opportunities to newcomers and established settlers alike and the city thrived because of who we were and what we made of ourselves in those moments we claimed for our own. It wasn't the first time, I suspect, that we realized we had more in common than the individual differences that separated us and it’s that history and heritage we should remember not just as we honor the 93^rd birthday of Dr. King, but every day.

There are formal observances this Monday, with COVID containment and cautions, of course, starting at a quarter of one across from the Harbor (you wondered why I like that ‘ships’ quote from Dr. King?) at the Market Street Garage, with a formal public unveiling of the Public Art for Racial Justice, PARJE, mural, followed at half-past one with a Freedom March starting in the David Ruggles Courtyard at City Hall with uplifting words from guest speakers and a lot of singing (by unspoken mutual agreement, I only listen during this part of the program) concluding with a program at the Evans Memorial AME Zion Church on McKinley and some prayerful reflection.

I hope you'll make time to take part in the ceremonies and commemorations celebrating Dr. King wherever and however you can. He dreamed a dream for all of us but each of us must make it our own.
-bill kenny

No Argument from Me

I think I stopped following the New York Jets about two days after our dad brought home autographs from both Weeb Eubank and Joe 'Willie' Namath (post-Super Bowl III victory). Are you surprised when I confess to having no idea what became of those autographs? Yeah, me neither.

Dad used to take us to see the Jets when they played in Shea Stadium and every time they scored (which back in the day was fairly frequently and regularly) somebody (I'm guessing a hapless intern), raced up and down one sideline in a cart that had been kitted out to look like a jet. Yeah, we were a lot more clever back in the day. 

In those days, being a Jets fan meant automatically rooting against the New York Giants who played their home games, I always thought, in Yankee Stadium except when that was being rehabilitated (the old one; the new one was decades away from being built) when they played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.  

By the time I joined the Air Force in the spring of 1975, both teams were pretty non-descript and of little interest to me, and by the time I came back from living in Germany in the autumn of 1991, football was something entirely different to me and had little to do with either team or any aspect of the professional league they played in.

The Giants started playing in New Jersey, perhaps on top of Jimmy Hoffa's body for all I know, at some point though I know not when to be joined by the Jets some years later. Considering myself a Jersey Guy, I'll admit it rankled, and still does for that matter, that neither of them incorporates the name of the state in which they play into their official name. Though calling both of them The Incompetents, because that is very much their state of play, would be confusing, admittedly. 

Enter Abdiell Suero who in true Shakespearean tradition wants a rose to be called a rose, no matter how it smells (and in the Meadowlands, olfactory concerns are always an issue) and a whole lot of money for the pain and suffering he has gone through for enduring the thorns of an outrageous commute, apparently. You can read about it here. 

That both teams have played for decades somewhere in the swamps of Jersey and he's only now upset about it does cause my bullshit detector to start flashing, but I'm thinking, like his outrage, a spot of greenbacks might just cure whatever ails it 
-bill kenny

Talking about the Spin Cycle

It's admittedly a little late in the game (or new year) for this, but I think still worth your time. 

And by 'this,' I'm talking about the press conference where the former President of theUnited States admits his complicity in the attempted seditious insurrection of 6 January 2021. 

Actually, I'm not; not even close. 

But, and that should be in all capitals, BUT, that admission would have been hysterical.
-bill kenny

Quarter Pound of Reason

I'm closing in on seventy years of age, through the rate of approach has in recent years slowed considerably (hence, the battalion of specialists I now have) but I'm still a little kid when it comes to the beginnings of every new year and that would include this one. Despite COVID and all the wrangling, it still has that just baked aroma. It won't last I know but while it does, I breathe deeply.

I'm glad I was born a human since I lack any special skills or abilities that would have enabled me to survive to anywhere near my current age as any other life form on this planet. ('Look, Livingston! It's a ring-tailed bandicoot trying to access blogger.com!' Or not. And thus ends my homage to H.H. Munro (I hope it has earned your seal of approval)).

No other species divides the rotation of the earth around the sun in quite the rigid and unyielding demarcations we create-and let's be honest here, we are very good at it. Because we wind up with extra hours and fractions of time that accumulate as merrily we roll along, every four years we have a leap year, though this isn't one of those. I've never personally known anyone born on Leap Day (if that's what February 29 is called) but I've read enough stories about the birthday celebrations and such to be happy that my mother had the good sense to wait until Spring to have me.

Meanwhile, it's a new calendar page, but the challenges and opportunities look very familiar, don't they? We need to resolve (assuming you didn't make any resolutions (I always resolve to NOT keep any I might make and therein lies the contradiction)) if such a formality is, indeed, required, to move from the 'talking about a problem' to 'finding a solution' (use of the indefinite article is deliberate there. I'm always disquieted by folks who tell me they have found 'the' way rather than 'a' way. (Not that I don't admire their confidence; I just don't share it.)

My concern in this New Year, much like in the one just passed (and many of those before that one), is that we get distracted while on the way to addressing a situation, and end up accepting less than our best effort as a solution and leave undone something we meant to do. And then at the end of the day, or the end of a life, we don't reflect on where we started and how we got there, but rather turn the page and begin again oblivious that we are no wiser or better for its passing.

Perhaps this is the year we try "a small sprig of time and as much of prudence, you mix them all together." Thanks for the recipe, Tim Hart. It looks like we'll go the rest of the way without you.
-bill kenny

Laut Und Umlaut

IKEA, the furniture store we all shop in though no one ever admits it is off to a rough start in 2022 with supply chain problems and inflation fueling what is reported to be a nine percent (on average) price hike across their stores. 

Unclear, at least to me, is if this price increase also includes their cafeteria's Swedish meatballs and lingonberries (hint: it had better not). I was yesterday old before I learned that many of the items offered for purchase in IKEA do not have made-up names, but rather borrow the actual names of, as it turns out, rather scenic locations throughout Sweden which presents nearly insurmountable marketing challenges for the Sweden Tourism Department.

I'm thinking they might economize with fewer minuscules, Ø, (a/k/a 'O with a stroke'); I mean if it's NOT an O then just don't write one instead of writing it and then lining through it. Unlike the French who have a different word for everything, IKEA would seem to prefer the same word for the whole universe.
-bill kenny 

Westward Leading, Still Proceeding

I got so caught up in the insurrection Anniversary Specials going on yesterday I blanked on a more traditional January 6 observance. My apologies and if I could I'd give you a gift card to Bed, Bath, and Myrrh.

When I was a wee slip of a lad yesterday was a very big deal, especially for Catholic school kids. Not as in 'yippee! we have it off!' or 'oh, it's a Holy Day of Obligation' but because some of the nuns called it The Feast of the Magi while others, and I think technically this was the correct term, called it The Epiphany and we were made to understand in many ways, it was the beginning of the tradition of gift-giving for Christmas.

I love the song in any and all of the hundred million variations that exist, and, to this day, the chorus actually sends a chill up my spine (I'm padding my resume just in case there's ever an opening on the College of Cardinals, be it in Saint Louis or elsewhere) "We three kings of Orient are, Bearing gifts we traverse afar. Field and fountain, moor and mountain. Following yonder star." 

In much the same way as we pledged allegiance to the flag years before we ever understood the meaning of 'allegiance' none of us knew what 'traverse' meant or what a 'moor' was, but we made up in volume what we lacked in knowledge (a habit many of us have carried into our adult lives, unfortunately).

When you're in third grade, which I once was, you wonder why the cartoon ghost is named for one of the three kings and how many r's and h's are supposed to be in myrrh (and no matter how often and how different you spell it, it never looks right, even when it is) and why anyone would give that as a gift to a baby. 

I can remember the nuns having difficulty explaining the Feast of the Circumcision and happily embracing its new name, Feast of the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas or Feast of the Holy Family. I suspect one or more of those same nuns would have had difficulties explaining to us technically, how Joseph was sort of Jesus' step-dad and exactly what a Virgin birth meant. Good for them that we were years away from those questions--not the case anymore here in the early light of 2022 (and this is progress, in what way do you suppose?).

What I recall from religion class was how the Three Kings followed "The Star" and encountered King Herod who was a puppet of the Roman occupation and paranoid about his own future and the last thing he needed was any whisperings about a Messiah. 

Supposedly he told the Magi to let him know where and when they found the Saviour so that, he, too, could worship Him (but an angel appeared to the kings in a dream and told them to find another way home that skipped Herod). The nuns told us about the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which didn't improve Herod's stock at all, and impressed me most deeply because it meant even then (though I was a little fuzzy on when, exactly, 'even then' was) how dangerous that part of the world was (and has remained).

Someplace, in my childhood is a young believer who thought it was a fitting cap on the Christmas season and read the short story of Jim and Delia and always loved the line, "Forget the hashed metaphor" without ever once understanding it. Hoping you do likewise.
-bill kenny

I Thought Elephants Never Forget

I scoured the Hallmark Store looking for a card appropriate for the occasion and gave thought to a visit to the Mike Lindell website to see if My Pillow was having a sale in connection with today being the first anniversary of the attempt by the YeeHawdists of Vanilla ISIS to overturn the November 2020 election that made the MAGA Muttonheads' Savior, Pantload45, a one-term President, and an all-time loser. 

Somehow, it doesn't seem (yet) to be the stain on the calendar the way it is on our history, but I have my hopes. For all of those who whinged '...but her emails!' raved on about the 'largest inauguration crowd in history,' and vowed to never forget 'the Bowling Green Massacre,' it seems to me you're gambling I've forgotten the Blue-Plate Insurrection Special served up piping hot not just on the steps of The Capitol but also in its hallways as belligerent, nearly-toothless gorms (so white they were visible from space) with no appreciation of history tried to make some of their own. and like everything connected with the asshat who was our collective misfortune to have as the forty-fifth President of the United States, it failed.

But, here's a little something to refresh your (selective) memory. And if you're counting on my forgiving and forgetting any time soon, yeah. NOPE.
-bill kenny 

  

Words into Action

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. That’s a truism that has the advantage of also being the truth. This is how (and more importantly, why) Norwich, I think, so often finds itself still trying to find its place in the world much as it has for over three and half centuries and many of us who live here seem to cycle through the various stages of surprise and disappointment as each old year ends and the next one begins.

The Mayor’s State of the City Address Monday night to mark the first City Council meeting of the new year, perhaps because one is delivered every year, somehow loses its impact as a statement of intent and purpose, and that’s too bad because sometimes we can do with a bit of what Teddy Roosevelt called ‘the bully pulpit.’

I think planting a flag, signaling a direction, sounding a call to action if not to arms is more than worthwhile; the State of the City speech may be the single most important thing the Mayor, any Mayor, can say in a year, topped only by what they do the rest of the year. But it’s not just what the mayor says, it’s what we hear and whether we choose to listen, especially when what we need to hear and what we want to hear are often two different things.

Again, in November we had full slates of candidates seeking seats on both our Board of Education and City Council as well as for the office of Mayor. Some might say we were spoiled for choice but in light of the generosity of those who volunteer for long hours, contentious public hearings where speakers take turns contradicting one another, served with all the lukewarm coffee you could ever want, in what certainly do not look like jobs that are the most fun you can have with your clothes on, I think we’re just spoiled.

Our voter turnout, the pulse if you will of the heartbeat of our democracy and the key to any effort to improve where we call home, remained at about the same level it has been for too many years. Perhaps we should have started a rumor that there was an iPhone or PlayStation giveaway at the polling places? 

See? This is why I’m no good at this political stuff but let’s be honest, too many of us see government as something done to us and not for us, and all the brave talk about regionalization, mill rates, enterprise zones, zoning variances, and the other nouns, verbs, and gerunds of political grammar get lost in what one former Mayor accurately calls ‘corrosive cynicism.’

Those whom we’ve elected will soon enough feel the sting of our disappointment if they fail to guess what we want before we ourselves know what that may be, or how to achieve it. That’s unfair and all of us need to do better. We need to learn to speak and collaborate with one another to better use ideas, ideals, and pragmatic plans to build bridges that join rather than walls that continue to divide

The New Year was just this past Saturday. What could be a more perfect time to begin again than now?
-bill kenny

And Not One Was Stepped On

Our two children had a large amount of both Lego, and in their more formative years, Duplo all around the house. In light of the successes they've had in their lives as adults, I'm assuming the creativity that was nurtured as youngsters paid off. 

I lost track of the number of times I stepped on one or more of their blocks, but I think if this were what they were working on I might not have minded.

Say it with me: Everything Is Awesome!
-bill kenny 

Climbing Up on Solsbury Hill.

I came across an end-of-year article on "The 14 Best Apps You've Never Heard of" by something/someone called Cool Material. There's the usual suspects, weather and travel, and then there's RunPee.

RunPee, you say. What's RunPee? According to Cool Material: "Here’s a hypothetical: You’re at the movie theater and didn’t intend on getting the large Coke with the large popcorn, but it was literally only a dollar more than the regular, so you were like, “WOW, WHAT A BARGAIN!” 

"Before the previews are over, you’ve already downed half the soda. Now you’re filled to bursting with high fructose corn syrup water, and the movie’s about to start. You need a bathroom break, but you don’t want to miss any of the action. What’s a guy to do? BOOM. RunPee. 

"RunPee is an app that tells you the perfect time to run to the bathroom during your movie and gives you a synopsis of what you’ve missed when you get back. You’ll never miss an important scene again. It’s basically the best app since Tinder. iOS Android"

End hunger? Cure disease? Stop War? Why would you ever think technology should be applied to such issues when we have RunPee. You can keep my things, they've come to take me home.
-bill kenny

Not Even a Little Bit Creepy

I'm surrounded by technology I don't understand, and that's probably for the best because while I'm not especially fearful of it, I do know that if much of it were to become (or, in fact, already is) sentient, it would have little to fear from me. If intelligence were dynamite, I'd have barely enough to blow my own nose, if you follow my drift.

As a kid, I loved Disney audio-animatronics. They were as Brave New World as I could have ever imagined (or imagineered, as Walt himself might have said). From what I can figure out from this article, we're way beyond all of that now. 

Somehow, I'm not finding quite as much brave in this Brave New World as I did not so long ago. 
-bill kenny

So Far, So Good

Okay, it just got started admittedly, HOWEVER, this New Year has been pretty good, so far. I'll concede even as this posts at the stroke of midnight that at this moment I am sound asleep and have been for hours (and hope to remain in that state for a couple of hours more). But, all things considered, 2022 has been good. I'll take my small victories where I can find them, thank you, and would strongly encourage you to do the same. 

I hope despite everything that went on and didn't go on, that 2021 was good, and if not good, then kind, to you and yours. I'm welcoming the arrival of 2022 most especially for the hope and promise of what it may bring for us all. I realize a year from now some of us will not be here to read the update to this entry (or write it, for that matter, I suppose) but while the actors and actresses are changed and exchanged on a daily basis (in every aspect of our everyday lives), the play goes on. We change partners but continue in the dance.

With apologies to Dickens, 2021 was the best of years and the worst of years and 2022 will be the same. It's not really about the number of days and/or hours in a year, or a lifetime, but what we do with the space between the beginning and the end. I hope you have all the space you need for that which you need to do and look forward to talking to you for every day of this new year's adventure for as long as we both share the orb.
-bill kenny