Visualize Whirled Peas

I'm typing as fast as I can and only hope that spell check saves me from the ignominy of reading like a Hottentot at a Hootenanny. It's my own fault really-I like to live on the edge, walk on the wild side, sail too close to the wind, hang on by just a thread and as many other cliches and bromides as I can get on a 24-hour loan from Billy Bob's Emporium of Previously Used Sentence Components located in Del Rio, Texas.

Went to make myself a little pick-me-up and decided to skip the Java jive and the tea leaves and instead made a cup of chicken bouillon from those cubes that are so dense I've always suspected they are actually made from the matter that comprises a black hole in space. I especially like how there's always one piece of the foil wrap you cannot get off until you're reduced to trying to scrape it off with a fingernail and then, uh-oh, there are bouillon fragments under the nail. Do NOT put that fingertip in your mouth. Ever. If you have to ask why it's too late.

So here I am, struggling with eight fingers (the foil was really hard to get off), putting the cube container back in the pantry, and checking out the label (thank goodness for that Literacy Volunteer!). There's some disquieting news all the way around, starting on the front that tells me there's chicken 'with other natural flavors'. Sure wish we'd be more forthcoming detail on that. And what about the LARGE yellow letters that brag NO MSG ADDED ('contains naturally occurring glutamates' Huh?) or the nutritional information that ONE cube provides 45% of your daily intake of sodium. Let the Morton Salt girl put that in her umbrella and smoke it.

And then atop the screw cap, I saw the fateful advisory, 'Best by August 2007'. OMG. I'm lousy at math (and English as we both know) but I knew there was trouble. The light grew dim and my life started flashing before my eyes. It's been so unremarkable, mine was replaced by the Jimmy Dugan Story and since that's so short, the second reel was the Song of Bernadette (Peters), which was disconcerting especially the excised dance of a thousand veils scene from Barney's Great Adventure).

Just before the darkness enveloped me, I tried to figure out how anyone, even the manufacturer (yeah, Hormel, I'm talkin' 'bout you) would distinguish among good, better, or best in chicken bouillon cubes. Turns out it was getting dark because I was dozing, not because the mortal coil was assuming the shuffle-off position. Talk about relief! Of course, I'm still a little peckish-perhaps a slice of leftover Christmas fruit cake will hit the spot.
-bill kenny

Be. Here. Now.

We're very proud of our history around here but we're in danger of having who we once were, preventing us from becoming who we need to be. I wasn’t born here, but in all the years I’ve lived here, in terms of development, it’s never eaten as hot as it’s served. Here’s a story I’ve told before:

I've heard the 'back in the day' stories about Franklin Square, the sea captains who built houses on Laurel Hill, the downtown Sears and Roebuck (what happened to Roebuck, or Sears for that matter?) store and Thursday nights so hectic small children would cling tightly to a parent's hand lest they get lost in the throngs.

These stories always bring a smile to the face of the person telling me the tale. And then, of course, we wake up in the here and now and no one seems to know what happened, how, or why (actually, we’re long on theories but short on facts).

My Norwich history starts with extreme contrast and hard shadows, coming over the Laurel Hill Bridge (the old one) into a downtown with plywood for windows and not a soul on the sidewalks in the middle of October of 1991.

That was the year of the petition drives at local supermarkets to 'Keep the Boat Afloat' as Electric Boat was facing massive layoffs in the aftermath of the Seawolf submarine construction cutbacks. The same region that had no plan for the post World War II migration of textile mills to the Deep South had no clue what to do with the Peace Dividend when defense jobs dwindled and disappeared, and the search for the guilty (because all problem-solving starts and ends with that step) began.

Three plus decades later, what are we still discussing? The same old same-old. We’ve finally conceded Eisenhower isn't still the President and that your father's advice about never paying more than $15,000 for a house without a basement won’t even get you a good used car but we remain hobbled by our past, even when we weren't here to live through it or remember it. Instead of it being a step on the ladder to tomorrow, that history’s a hurdle on the steeplechase we've made of our lives.

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. By now, we should have all the experience anyone could ever need but instead of learning from it we too often use it as an excuse masquerading as a reason.

Sorry for being blunt but Norwich doesn't suffer from Future Shock. We’re immobilized by Present Shock and the fear of making a decision, taking an action and then having to own the consequences of that action.

We have leaders at every level across our community working in collaboration with one another every day to an extent I’ve never seen before in my limited experience who still face an uphill battle persuading us to trust in ourselves.

Too often the argument is ‘let’s wait for the right moment,’ except this is all the moment we have and will ever have. Far too many of us, discouraged experts, have decided if we don’t do anything, we can't do anything wrong. Except nothing ever happens if you don't make it happen. We must all Be Here Now.
-bill kenny

Remembering the Rutgers Road Runner

Today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day. 

It's probably not marked or annotated on your desk calendar, but maybe if it were, a lot of what is happening in the world would make more sense.

Though I'm sitting at my desk right now, and I'm not sure its absence changes anything.
-bill kenny

A Couple Hundred Thousand Words

We've all heard/read the expression, 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' 

Not quite sure of the count in regards to this since I had to swap out the batteries in the calculator at least twice while trying to maintain a running tally.   

Savoring the creativity of so many is both inspiring and humbling, simultaneously.
-bill kenny

Always Room for Ralph

As a kid I wanted to be an astronaut; NOT 'I thought I wanted to be' I really, really did. My mom got a phone call from Sister Immaculata, the principal of Saint Peter's School, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, about an hour after the lift-off of Alan Shepard.

The good sister was concerned, I was told years later by Mom, about the state of upbringing in our home since, in answer to the question, 'what is your biggest concern for the astronaut?' I apparently answered 'keeping his heartbeat under control,' when the correct answer she was looking for was 'the state of his soul.' It honestly never occurred to me, then or even now.  

As I aged I realized keeping my space close to sane on this planet was enough of a struggle without trying to explore the universe but I still spend a lot of time at night looking up at the sky and the moon and the stars. 

I'm hoping I still have a chance to get near the moon, at least sort of. 

And I wouldn't blame you for pausing while reading this, having clicked on that link above, if you went ahead and signed up to have your name on the flash drive, too. The moon, as was once observed, is a harsh mistress; she's hard to make your own, so the more the merrier would seem to be in order. 

Besides, Alice could use the company.

-bill kenny

I Gotta Automata

I'm of an age, without older brothers and sisters, that I grew up believing The Beatles invented rock and roll music. Not really, perhaps, but at least in spirit and in my opinion. Elvis went into the US Army before my eighth birthday and returned to civilian life shortly before I hit double-digits and I'd had NO knowledge or interest in him as a wee slip of a lad. And between us, if he had hoped Do the Clam was the song that would hook my ear, sorry, no. 

Somewhere I still have the first record Mom ever bought me, Danny and the Juniors' At the Hop, though the only reason I suspect she got it was that I drove her crazy yammering for it. 

When The Fab Four hit our shores, via the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights, I was primed and ready to go. Farewell, Jackie Mason and the Borscht Belt humor, Maria Callis singing operatic arias, and even Ed himself interacting with Topo Gigio. Oh, Eddie! 

It was John, Paul, George, and Ringo and it will be a long, (c)old, lonely winter before it will ever be anyone else ever again. Come Together.
-bill kenny  

And You Were Pissed About Gas Prices?

The rate of inflation in the USA crept up (lept might be a better word) by 7.9% in the past year led, perhaps unsurprisingly by skyrocketing prices for gasoline. 

But, and I think this right here is more telling and ominous than many of us realize especially as the legalization of cannabis spreads across the United States because it's a more sinister signal of out-of-control inflation. 

Thank God, events are coming together to boost the value of my Grateful Dead albums so I can continue to enjoy my retirement undisturbed and unperturbed.
-bill kenny

Bound for Adventure

Sometimes life imitates art (Carney and Linkletter) and sometimes vice is versa. 

A few days ago I was behind someone at a traffic light with a bumper sticker that read 'I may be lost but I'm ahead of you,' which led me to guess the driver was a man and a bit later, passing him, I discovered I was right (never did figure out if he was lost). 

Yesterday in my email was a solicitation to become a driver for Uber. I smiled, and if you've ever ridden with me anywhere, around the block or across the country, you'd smile, too. It's not that I have a poor sense of direction (I didn't until we returned to the USA in '91, hand to God), but I actually have NO sense of direction.

Very early in our American adventure we were driving home in the dark from Waterford, not all that distant from our house in Norwich, and I discovered, somehow I was entering Westerly, Rhode Island, which, for the geographically impaired such as myself is NOWHERE near Norwich. Or Waterford for that matter.

Moving on two or so decades later. After driving to Derby with our daughter so she could purchase a car to replace the one stolen from in front of our house on a Sunday morning (the good Lord helps those who help themselves it seems), I unerringly found myself heading home to Norwich while admiring the view of the NYC skyline because I was driving in the wrong direction seemingly for hours. 

My talent could be genetically transmitted as both our daughter and her brother were both in the car and NONE of us noted anything until one of them mentioned a town we'd just passed while speaking to my wife/their mother on the phone who pointed out her concern at ever seeing us again. For the record, both children's sense of direction seems to have improved in recent years, proving that sometimes you travel fastest traveling without dear old dad.

Anyway, and this will come as no surprise to you, I will NOT be taking the fine folks from Uber or Lyft up on their generous and numerous offers to be if not Gypsy Rose Lee then at least a sort of gypsy cab as I cannot imagine ever knowing, much less hating anyone so much that I'd make them a passenger in my car as we set off on a road trip either from or to Hades. 

My motto then, as it has always been, is 'I drive above and beyond the speed limit so that I can get loster, faster.'  
-bill kenny

Time Has Come Today.

Many years ago I knew someone far more cynical than I (hard to believe, but true), who once explained to me that since Pro is the opposite of Con, Congress will always be on the wrong side of Progress. 

I'm not sure how correct, or incorrect, his logic was in developing that perspective, but I think last week's unanimous vote by the United States Senate to make Daylight Saving Time permanent in these United States starting in 2023 with passage of The Sunshine Protection Act might have given him cause for pause to reassess that conclusion. 

I mean the last time, in my memory, the Senate moved as swiftly and surely (and spoke as if with one voice) on anything was forty years ago in support of  President Ronald Reagan declaring August National Peach Month  

Admittedly, the same unanimity and solidarity were on exhibit as well back in 1970 when President Richard Nixon proclaimed the first National Clown Week, but we don't talk much about that one, do we? Something about low-hanging fruit, or bottles of seltzer, I suspect.

Like you, I wandered around even more out of sorts than my normal for about three days after we sprang forward last Saturday night/Sunday morning. The springing I can still do but more and more I stick the landing less and less. 

And, probably, like your house, there's always at least one clock we didn't 'fix' before turning in (and it's my wife who does the temporal adjustments otherwise every digital display in my house would be flashing 12:00 for a month or more if I were in charge), more often than not it's the one on the range that makes the buzzer sound as you struggle to adjust it not because you're doing anything wrong but because it's in its nature.

Speaking of which, not counting the White Rabbit (and his oversized pocket-watch leading me to wonder what he was compensating for), there's no other creature anywhere in nature with a fixation about time that we bi-peds have. We slice it and dice it into nans of nano-seconds through to and beyond the lightest of light-years (where's Buzz when we need him?) in an attempt I guess to exert some sort of control over something over which we have NO control. 

And when we're all still a little groggy and grouchy from shifting of our circadian rhythms (and not cicada as I was told as a kid by someone who looked like Jiminy Cricket), the notion of ending the forth-and back-of-back-and-forth of clock adjustment is not without a certain amount of appeal. Heck, on more than one evening after supper last week I went for a stroll around my neighborhood, enjoying the still-daylight at seven o'clock. 

But, I'm thinking we should be careful what we wish for. 

We're going to have MORE daylight anyway through the Summer Solstice because of the earth's rotation and tilt of its axis as it circles the sun. After that, through late December, we'll have less and less daylight to start and end the day, again, because of the positional relationship to the sun. None of it has anything to do with a timepiece and our arbitrary designation of an o'clock. 

So how enthused will you be to have to get the kids ready for school in the fall of 2023 when it will be dark not just at five or six but maybe also at seven in the morning and maybe until after the school bus picks them up? And your morning commute? Perhaps making what we call Standard Time, the year-round standard, is better for us both in the long and short of it?    

Even better, instead of worries about springing forward and falling back, we could devote ourselves to making the most of every moment we have, knowing no matter how they are measured, once they are gone, they are gone forever. 

All we have is the space between our birth and our death; what we do in that space is the only thing that's important. 
-bill kenny

Wherever I Lay My Hat

The cost of living, wherever you choose to so do, is expensive; so, too, is the cost of leaving I suppose. When my wife and I purchased our house some years ago, she was the expert on how much we should offer versus how much it was worth and worked closely with the realtor. 

My job was to show up and sign the closing documents. None of what happened at any point in the entire transaction made or will ever make any sense to me but I don't watch HGTV or the DIY Channel so I guess I get what I deserve. 

I mention that because I'm not sure how telling me 'you can bake cookies while taking a bath' would incentivize me to buy a one-bedroom apartment in New York City (unless I found out an elf named Ernie was the prior tenant), but here we are.

It's a pity about those income restrictions said no one I know. As long as the sun shines, I'm fine.
-bill kenny

Going to Target for Peanut Butter

This will not come as news to you if English is not your native language; English is a hard language to learn and an even harder one to master. 

Here are a baker's dozen reasons to smile and grimace practically simultaneously, "13 Fascinating and Funny English Language Mistakes."  

I know, that list didn't include any of my usual suspects either, but remember, equal goes it loose.
--bill kenny

Save Me the Pillow

I've heard of, though never watched, the movie, Snakes On a Plane. What I also had no knowledge of is that snakes are the most common nightmare worldwide.  

Of course, that's worldwide. Here in the Land of the Round Door Knobs, you might think it would be about not finding enough gas to fill the tank of your monster truck that averages 15 miles per gallon of high test, surprise! you'd be wrong. Here in the USA, the #1 topic of nightmares is teeth falling out. 

As you can see on the chart the next nine most nightmarish nightmares are pretty familiar to most of us and run the gamut from snakes, ex-spouses, spiders, weddings, sex, and bears. 

I'm wondering if the researchers awarded double points for those who'd had a nightmare about their ex-spouses' teeth falling out after being chased on vacation by a spider riding a snake at a wedding having had sex with a bear. I believe technically this is called the Yahtzee! Alptraum. 

And you thought it was just Macbeth who doth murder sleep? Dream on!
-bill kenny

I Will Light a Candle for You

Every year on this day I indulge myself. Some might argue as even casual readers of this drivel that I indulge myself every day, but this is not the time for that discussion (which you will lose, by the way). It's purely and simply my way to keep the memories of two of my most favorite people of all time, neither of whom I'd describe as 'friends,' alive because as long as I can remember them, they'll live on. 

That was a disclaimer of sorts. 

If you choose to move on, this would be a really good time to do that, otherwise...(when I first offered it over a decade ago) here is: 

Scared that He'll Be Caught

This ends a tough week for anyone who's ever picked up, owned, or been named for, anyone in Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. The main event, of course, was Thursday, Saint Patrick's Day. I'm not sure every place on earth paints the median strips on the main street green as part of the parade or adds food coloring to the beer but let's face it, Saint Patrick is the 800-pound gorilla in the room for the month of March.

This is too bad because today is the Feast of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary (Mother of God) and (sort of) Jesus' step-dad. I've always envisioned an at-the-dinner-table exchange between the Son of Man (when a small child) and Joseph that has Joe saying "then go right ahead and ask your 'real dad' for a new bike and let's see what happens." And then I imagine The Curia or the Legion of Decency showing up at my house and slapping the cuffs on.

As a grade-school child, I missed the subtlety that went into the talk-around as the Sisters of Charity explained 'the Annunciation' and when I got older and it smacked me right between the eyes, I admired, even more, the cool, collected response Joseph seemed to have had to all of that. 

Today, the Feast of Saint Joseph is when traditionally the swallows come back to Capistrano. I wonder if the village fathers paint the center stripe on their main street a shade of bird droppings white and grey or if they even have a parade. They've already had the festival they normally hold in conjunction with the return, but I'm not sure why it was before the swallows returned unless it had something to do with faith and a lack thereof. 

As urbane and world-wise as I like to think of myself, I love the story as much now as a doddering fool as I did hearing it as a child. I find it reassuring and, while my belief in a Divine Being fluctuates wildly (and how screwed am I if Her/His belief in me reflects my faith in Her/Him?), I hope (in a faint-hearted, wimpy sort of way) that Paley is right about the Great Watchmaker.

I say that, mindful (with apologies to Jackson Browne) that 'I don't know what happens when people die.' And in keeping with that point, I have known two very dear people who shared the Feast of Saint Joseph as their birthday. They are both from long ago, at the time when I knew everything (and everything better) when I worked for American Forces (Europe) Network. 

Bob was my first (and very best) boss in Radio Command Information (together with Sara, Marge, and Brian) while Gisela was the record librarian of the most amazing (and amazingly organized) collection of vinyl in the world.

Bob was married to 'local color' as I was to be as well (GI's who married citizens from the country in which they were stationed; usually guys marrying women but NOT always). He and his wife, Erika, had no children but loved as if she were one, a stray dog they took in and kept all its life, Sandy. 

Erika and Sandy passed away pretty close to one another, leaving a hole in Bob's heart that never healed, filled with a pain of which he never spoke. Bob himself passed a number of years ago and I see him at this very moment in my mind's eye in a beaten beige long coat with a beret he wore in every kind of weather.

Gisela was my translator when the letter of permission from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where Sigrid and I hoped to marry) arrived and I raced frantically from office to office trying to find someone to be my eyes (I was illiterate auf deutsch and vowed to never be that guy again). 

Gisela put her glasses on near the edge of her nose and would read a line and then look over the tops to give me the English translation. I still recall the shine in her eyes and her warm smile as she reached the conclusion granting us permission and she clasped both of my shoulders and hugged me in congratulations.

I remember both of them today, maybe more so than Saint Joseph, perhaps because I don't know how many others remember them and I'm sad when I think about what happens to you when the last person on earth to know you dies. 

So today I tell a little of the story of their lives, as I knew them, to remind me to celebrate their lives and hope the day comes when we can laugh together about all of that and so much more. 

Happy Birthday, Bob und Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Gisela.
-bill kenny

A Seldom Scene

Driving yesterday I passed a fellow (I assume; it was early, a bit nippy and outer clothes were called for) taking a dog for a walk. My Uncle Jim divided the canine kingdom into two types, Sooners (those who'd sooner s*it than eat) and dogs. In all of my years on this orb, I've had no reason to revisit his position, so I don't know what breed this animal was, except small and hairy.

Actually, it wasn't much of a walk, as the person was carrying the dog. As a parent of two children, I recall when ours were more like lurchers, that's the larval stage preceding toddler where the child stands, wobbly-legged but upright, and the mass and momentum of the body dictate in which direction the tyke heads, with just about no control whatsoever. 

If you've been a parent, you know the feeling of your heart in your throat as your little one goes down in a heap and you hear that intake of breath as they suck in as much air as their lungs can hold to fuel the scream that sounds like an air raid siren in Coventry or Dresden. Of course, you pick your child up-you can barely hear their shrieks until you have them next to your ear.

I don't think the dog was crying so I don't get the point of picking the animal up. It has four legs, a low center of gravity, and seems to be designed to traverse the planet using its paws. Heck, Tillman uses a skateboard for crying out loud and doesn't depend on bi-ped power to do much else, I suspect, but open the dog food tins. Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry at the dog-I'm not angry at anyone-but it's against the nature of things, to my mind, to not let natural systems be natural.

Having said that, and invoking the spirit, if not the intellect of Whitman and Rousseau, I would admit I've tried the 'let nature be nature' argument when the snow falls or when the grass in the yard is in need of a machete whack or two to clear a path to the garage. 

My wife, no less devoted to Rilke than am I to Davies, offers me the 'you had better do' glance in place of her once so welcome 'come hither' look and I realize that being a Sooner isn't just a demarcation of the Animal Kingdom.
-bill kenny

With the Morals of A Bayonet Blade

This is a day that, as full of Irish heritage as I am (along with so much else (maybe more?)), I get more than a little creeped out by the celebrations of all that is emerald even when it's not.

There's a claim there are more persons of Irish descent living in New York City than there are in Dublin, but I suspect that's a statement you can make without (nearly) fear of contradiction about almost every ethnicity who've come to settle here in The Land of the Round Doorknobs.

Whether your tastes run from Danny Kaye singing Danny Boy to U2 through The Chieftains or Horslips and how you wash down your bubble and squeak, if you're celebrating being Irish or pretending to be Irish, or you just like to bathe with Irish Spring, I hope your day is a good one. 

When The Gangs of New York was making the rounds, I watched it like a deer in the headlights growing more disquieted and discomfited with each frame. Though I was already old enough to realize history is written by the winners and should have been old enough to know better, I learned of a past of which I had only suspected. 

For cinema, the movie had more than an inconvenient truth or two about alternatives to the 'melting pot' (myth) explanation every child received as part of her/his American history classes in grade schools across this country for most if not all of our growing up years. (And I'm not just talking about Leo's accent.) 

Instead what more of us learned as we aged was that we have as many dirty little secrets as we have truths we hold to be self-evident (and sometimes the former is also the latter but in that case is always unacknowledged). 

The stories of the 1863 draft riots in New York City during the Civil War were as well-known in their time as the number of leaves on a shamrock and the animus and enmity directed at 'the others' (of all stripes) is as true to this day, a century and a half later. 

So whether you're marching down that New York City Fifth Avenue today or in any of the hundreds of slightly out of control celebrations across the nation that we tend to use to get us closer to spring, spare a thought for the Battalion de San Patricio five thousand miles from a home to which they could never return who became a Legion of Strangers to those who would have been their countrymen, but were refused.
-bill kenny

To Joe, from Bill

Dear President Biden,

Greetings from Norwich, Connecticut, the Rose of New England from one of her pointier thorns. 

With tomorrow being Saint Patrick's Day and Sunday's calendar telling me it's the first day of spring, I'm hoping as I'm sure you are, too, that the (second consecutive) winter of our discontent is ending.

We stole a march, literally and figuratively, on most of the rest of the nation with our Saint Patrick's Parade a week ago Sunday under cloudy but not threatening skies with warmer than we're used to and probably deserve temperatures for March, and I'm hoping we've seen the last or nearly the last of the snow and ice. I mention that for a reason. 

I had oil delivered to our house last Monday, not that we have a squeaky boiler but because we use oil for heat, and the price had gone up ten cents a gallon per day every day for the ten days since the previous delivery. Between us, I'm not looking forward to the next delivery.

I know I'm not alone in Norwich or across the Northeast, where the cost of heating your house, be it oil, electricity, or gas (natural or propane) has gone from a cause of concern to now one of alarm. You get briefed on this stuff all the time, so consider me a little subtext on that PowerPoint slide. 

And you don't need me to tell you about the price of gasoline. But you know what? Last night, I slept in a warm bed. got up this morning and had breakfast. I'm not spending the day, an ocean and half a continent away in Ukraine trying to stop T-14 Armata Russian Army battle tanks with thoughts and prayers, digging through the rubble of what was my house trying to find my child, or struggling to escape the ferocity of a war thrust upon me. It's sobering to watch Ukrainians defending their capital practically with their bare hands while realizing fourteen months ago we had Trumpers and Traitors attacking ours. 

Meanwhile, on some, though by no means all, media platforms, a great deal of time and effort was devoted to something called a Freedom Convoy that I thought (hoped might be a better word) at first was responding to the events in Ukraine but since my view of the world is shaped by the windows through which I view it, yet again, I had the wrong end of the stick. 

The Freedom Convoy was as much a protest as it was a parade of grievances, real and imagined, celebrating the participants' victimhood and perceived oppression from COVID-19 preventative efforts and measures that, despite deployment across our country, still could not keep, as of this writing, nearly a million of us from dying. 

I think I understood the 'what' behind the Freedom Convoy, but since most, if not all the measures they objected to had been rescinded some ten days to two weeks ago, I'm not sure I grasped the 'why.' That they repeatedly looped The Capital Beltway in a miles-long column to press their demands seemed, at least to me, to illustrate a definition of circle jerk with which I was previously unfamiliar.      

You don't have an easy job right now, Mr. President, as our leader and I'm thinking neither do we as those relying on your leadership. As a similarly-beleaguered Chief Executive, Harry Truman, observed, "Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better."
-bill kenny

The Good Samaritan Is Shaking Her Hand

The calendar says for those of us in the Northeast and, at least theoretically, most of the rest of the nation, this winter of our discontent on the calendar is drawing to a close. This past weekend saw the start of Daylight Saving Time and this Saturday marks the return of the swallows to Capistrano. 

In previous years the Boys of Summer would be already rounding into shape as the Guys of the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, but due to circumstances well within their control the owners and players are not doing that yet this year. In light of what else has gone to hell in our world, I guess so much for my hope for a start of better things.

It's been a rocky time for many of us for quite some time and you have to look hard to find reasons to be cheerful (if you don't like baseball I'm not even sure it's possible, but to each her/his own, I suppose). 

I'm thinking another thing that separates us from many of the other travelers here on the Big Blue Marble is our capability to make ourselves and one another happy and a willingness to do so. I cannot claim to have ever seen two ocelots doing knock-knock jokes, and can't recall seeing a robin red-breast do a pratfall to cheer up the other birds in a tree, and I've watched a lot of Animal Planet while staying at a Holiday Inn Express.

Dylan offered that it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. My mother, world-renowned mom of six of the most thick-headed and strong-willed children to ever walk the planet, demonstrated her smartness to us all when, without consulting the Internet (there was life before the ether; who knew?), she told us it took more muscles to frown than it did to smile. We believed her because she was our Mom and it didn't hurt that she was also right, but how did she know?

So we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster. I always wear trousers with pockets so I have someplace to put all the fun. We can promise to not miss what we do not have and enjoy our now in the now and look towards tomorrow with hope and not dread. "I'm carving 'em up through the dust in your town. Crawling over rubble just to sound me out. Tend to wonder why?"
-bill kenny

Forwards AND Backwards?

This is from a long time ago. A VERY long time ago. At the time I called it:

Bustin' Broncos on the Mac & Cheese Ranch

Brushing my teeth yesterday morning, that turn of phrase popped into my head. I'm not sure where it came from and when these things happen, I get a little nervous. Has anyone ever said to you, 'what were you thinking?' and you struggled to recount the process that had resulted in your suggestion to drill a second hole in the boat in order to let the water out? 

No one has ever done that with me and I'm finally starting to understand why, and in this case, knowledge is not necessarily power.

I have a brain that's more like Captain Billy's Whizbang, a turn of phrase supposedly from "The Music Man" (I adore every Lullaby on Broadway (but prefer Hackett's Lamb to Charles') as my collection of Iron Maiden attests) with which I have no familiarity and to which I tend to add 'Closet' though I don't know why. 

The lobes are filled with badly-remembered snatches of melodies from decades of rock and roll songs, some of which went plywood in Indiana while others are anthems (C'mon! Let's all Do the Clam!) none of which are improved when I sing them aloud at the top of my lungs, along with film clips projected on the inside of my skull (I can see them when I close my eyes) in random order and with no reason and less rhyme.

I don't even like Mac and Cheese. Well, hardly. I did watch a recipe on TV the other day that added bacon to it and then it was baked, or maybe boiled (I didn't watch that much of it) and now in my head, it runs into a snippet of a TV commercial for a fast-food restaurant where somebody demands 'will somebody please make a bacon latte?' though the ad isn't for coffee.

I've been holding out for decades for pony rides for my birthday but I don't think I'd go out to the North Forty in search of a Chestnut Mare. Besides, my sister, Evan, is the equestrian; I'm more of a pedestrian (and the world is better for both of those choices), so there's not much danger I'll be moving to Montana soon(er or later). 

I think the only way this could turn out well would be if I end up riding Mr. Ed into the sunset-perhaps dueting like Dale and Roy, hopefully without ending up like Trigger.
-bill kenny

More to Save

If you have recently risen from bed and are slightly out of step with the rest of us, perhaps you failed to advance the clocks in your house before retiring (aside from *). If it's of any consolation, you are not probably alone. Some of us deal with the annual 'spring forward/fall back' routine better than others. Some, not so much (sort of The Smothers Brothers with Timex watches).

To me, it's another way we're separate from all the other lifeforms on the planet. Animal, vegetable, mineral, most everything else adapts to the 'gets dark later/gets bright earlier' hot and cold parts of life on the Big Blue Marble, but not us. We impose or attempt to, ourselves on our environment and surroundings.

We create a concept we call "time" and then work on its division into seconds and minutes that added together we call hours and then gather twenty-four of them (no other species does, aside from the rabbit in Through the Looking Glass), pronouncing that to be a day.

We then line up a bunch of days into something we call a week, combining them in various clusters of varying lengths called months concluding here, my dear, with that which we call a year. Not bad for bi-peds with big brains and opposable thumbs (and basic cable).

For the next couple of days, many of us will be out of sorts and/or out of sync and will blame it on the shifting of those damn clocks. I'm not sure that's valid for anyone other than the people working the 11 to 7 overnight shift (who had an hour shaved off their day today, but work nine and get paid for eight at some point this fall), but it sounds great and we all do it. Why we really should be ouchy and grouchy is that so few of us have a plan for what to do with the extra daylight. More's the pity.

We could start a garden, read to a child, go for a walk, visit with a friend, spend more time with a loved one, fly a kite, ride a bike, paint a fence (or a masterpiece) or write a letter. Of course, you could say, we don't need more daylight to do any of those things. And you're right, we don't. 
So why don't we just do them?
-bill kenny  

Her Presence Is My Present

Today is my wife's birthday.  I've told her, and you, ALL of this before but I don't care because it's worth repeating.

Where there had been just she and a husband was to be also a son and then a daughter. She raised them both (it's their father with the case of arrested emotional development), practically on her own since her spouse gave his time to total strangers, not for days on end, but for decades-and, she never missed a beat in creating a home and hearth that was and remains a safe haven for them all.

Not even on the day he came home, on a date of this very month many years ago, to tell her she and the children would be leaving the only home they'd ever known and moving to a country on another continent did she blink, hesitate or look anywhere else but straight ahead.

Adding to the degree of difficulty in the relocation of close to 4,500 miles was a landing in the area first settled by the Pilgrims at about the time of year they, too, had arrived (but she stuck the landing). And she was to discover being a stranger in a strange land meant swallowing the bewilderment, frustration, humiliation, and indignation often created by disinterested bureaucrats who required a rain forest of completed forms before issuing her a card of one color, but called by another, in order to remain with her family.

She is the most headstrong person, if not on the planet, then at least in a specific house at an address in Norwich, Connecticut, despite some stiff competition in that department from a daughter who has both her self-assurance and belief in her own abilities from her mother. That child's older brother has his easy ability to make friends with people he's just met from his mother and she is the reason why neighbors can abide her spouse, I suspect since I came with her and she's wonderful. The neighbors assume there must be something she sees in me that they cannot and do not (she does wear glasses, after all).

There's nothing she cannot repair or mend which is a skill that comes in handy because her husband has a gift for physical destruction that approaches an art form and she has as much patience as each project requires, even if all of them require all of it all the time. The number of events and happenstances that had to happen in a specific and given order, for this woman from Offenbach am Main to meet a dweeb from Central New Jersey and make his world stop completely is incalculable.

The life that she has cannot be the one she thought she was getting when she said yes a lifetime ago and it's certainly not the one she deserves. Sometimes the ride has been very dark (as in dunkel night time, a small child offered in Gerglish decades ago). If the power to make today, her birthday, into a national, or international holiday, were mine, I would use it, but it doesn't make a difference to her that this will never happen. She does not miss what she cannot have.

I can only wish her happiness today, her birthday, and marvel, yet again, that she shares her life with me. I never had a girl who loved me half as much as this girl loves me. You gotta hold on tight to her. She's a real emotional girl.

-bill kenny

Sherwin Williams Finds Nemo

We think of ourselves as skin and bone but we are mostly water.  

Seriously. For lack of a more elegant term, we are basically vertical mud puddles. Perhaps that's why I find this to be so relaxing, reassuring, and plain cool. 

Of course, now I'm thirsty, too.
-bill kenny

Nearly Live from Steve's Garage

Today's title is actually a misnomer. The place started out as John's Garage in East Millstone, New Jersey, and in my memory, looks nothing like that website link might lead you to believe.  

We, my mom and Dad and six children lived in a house my parents rented from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on River Road, literally across the road from the Delaware-Raritan Canal  The rental was part of a project that ran out of money where the state was going to create a huge heritage corridor along the canal but, failing to use eminent domain to acquire the properties bordering the canal, they had zero dollars left for the actual construction but did have all kinds of houses just going to rack and ruin so they rented them out to keep people in them. We were some of those people. 

I was a commuter student, a freshman at Rutgers College, Rutgers University in New Brunswick. My first car was a 1963 Corvair Monza and everything you've ever read about Corvairs was, in my experience vastly understated and entirely true. 

I doubt there was a week that went by when I didn't have the car at John's Garage (with a car wash alongside it), until he sold the garage to Steve, and then that's where we went. The car was so bad and so prone to failing in ways I previously thought unimaginable that at one point Steve, himself, took me aside to ask me if it was possible to find another garage who'd work on the car and if not, would I consider not telling people he worked on it?
Yeah, that's how bad it was.

He had a sign hanging over one of the service bays that read: 

Labor:
$10 an hour.
If You Watch:
$20 an hour.
If You Help:
$50 an hour.

This made me think of that sign.

From a distance, a smile and a grimace look an awful lot alike.
-bill kenny

On the Street Where You Live?

I've mentioned often (far more than necessary suggest some) that I spend a lot of time traipsing the sidewalks and pavement throughout our fair city. There's a different sense of place anyplace when you walk as opposed to driving or riding in a vehicle. 

Between us, I'm not sure how similar or dissimilar bike-riding is to either walking or driving since I'm not the most coordinated cyclist you'll ever meet, though I do have the legs to rock bicycle shorts (even if no one else thinks so).  

Walking across Norwich in the winter months has its own set of challenges, mostly weather-related to start with, ice and snow piling up on sidewalks and at intersections, and then human-related when clearing those sidewalks and walkways become an "I'd Just Rather Not" task for property owners, be they private, commercial, non-profit, and, in some cases, governmental. 

You'd think it's part of being a good neighbor, taking care of your sidewalk and walkways, but if you're curious (and even if you're not), the city has an ordinance, Sections 19 through 19-4.1 and even a 'Frequently Asked Question' on the subject. 

I always get embarrassed when we have directives, ordinances, and laws to tell us basically what we should have learned by third grade when it comes to sharing, taking turns, and looking out for one another. 

It's like that old Petula Clark song where she sings/warns her lover, 'don't sleep in the subway, darling; don't stand in the pouring rain.'  As a kid, I used to wonder what kind of guys she went out with that she had to tell them that.

Anyway, last week I watched a crew add a truncated dome to the sidewalk at Chelsea Parade South and Washington Street on the Chelsea Parade side. You see them on sidewalks everywhere; they're sometimes called detectable warning pavers. They're textured tiles that are part of the tactile paving that helps visually impaired pedestrians detect when they are about to leave the sidewalk and enter the street. 

If you've stood at a corner of Chelsea Parade, any corner, be it with Washington Street or Broadway, it helps to have an extra heads-up so what I was watching happen was a very good thing. 

Except, at the crosswalk of Chelsea Parade and Williams Street, as well as at the crosswalk on the far side with NFA at Crescent Street and even on the corner of Chelsea with Broadway facing Park Congregational Church, where truncated domes are already installed, all of them were partially or totally covered in ice and snow. This was three days after the snow and sleet had stopped.

And it wasn't just there, but on more than half the sidewalk crossings I tracked within a three-block radius of Chelsea Parade (because it's across the street from my house on Lincoln Avenue) where someone who could and should have cleared their sidewalk, including the truncated domes, decided it was just too much to ask, I guess. 

Of course, if you were someone who depended on a cleared sidewalk and/or textured tile to get you safely to and from the grocer, or a health-care provider, or a friend's house, perhaps this lack of consideration for others would matter to you. But maybe, just maybe my point today is that it shouldn't always have to matter to you in order to matter to you.
-bill kenny    

Ariel's Next Car

The Germans have a word for it: schadenfreude; rejoicing at the misfortune of others. It's a state of mind not just confined to Germans as we both know. 

I mention the term because I love the way it rolls off the tongue and because it came to mind when I read as the conclusion to an about month-long soap opera of sorts (unless you were waiting dockside for your ride) about "Burned Cargo Ship Carrying Luxury Cars Has Now Sunk." 

There are few things in life we Americans love more than our cars (and/or trucks), so I appreciated reading the estimated value of lost vehicles is north of  $355 million (I'm assuming that's Due North, and not Kanye and Kim's kid), while also knowing that for many of the near-owners of the lost vehicles, there's no price tag on the hole in their hearts. 

Though Sebastian, Scuttle and I are wondering if the windows are rolled up, might one of the Aventadors be salvageable? Flounder has already called shotgun.
-bill kenny

Only Ankle-Deep in Repentance

You'll have to forgive me, or more specifically my evil twin, Skippy, who is my Imp of the Perverse as Edgar Allan Poe so aptly described (his; not mine). Not really surprising when you look at his body of work. After all, he also had a tell-tale heart in addition to as we all know, a raven with a limited vocabulary. 

Anyway. Not quite a week into the Lenten Season and I found just the report to take your mind off of whatever you're giving up, 2022's Most Sinful States in America, and, shame on you in advance, they are ranked pretty much as you thought they'd be (I keep an open mind on such matters).  

But, scroll down a lot because there's a butt-ton of other factoids on Life in these United States that I found fascinating to include most and least violent crimes per capita, highest and lowest average time spent on adult entertainment sites, and highest and lowest percentage of adults NOT exercising (not as much of a correlation between those two as I might have thought, except for Arkansas. What's that about?).  

We always associate Crockett and Tubbs with Miami Vice, probably because Idaho didn't look right on the marquee.
-bill kenny

Bad Men Need Nothing More to Compass Their Ends

Social media is a strange place to be right now (including here, obviously). It's a shared but individual experience with as many and/or as few co-celebrants in the Church of Me, Myself & I (the only Holy Trinity that's worth anything when you get right down to it) as you can imagine or wish for.

Right now as a shared worldwide reference we have the brutality (live, and in color on the platform of your choice) of Putin's Russian Bear trying to devour its Ukraine neighbor and when (NOT IF) that succeeds it will turn its attention to all of its former members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and we'll be dusting off the maps of Europe in 1938 all over again. Be careful where you step though because the blood of the innocents is already knee-deep in the streets. 

And yet a not inconsequential number of posts on a variety of platforms angrily lament the price of gasoline at the pump (here in Connecticut I watched it go to $4.15 a gallon for regular gasoline yesterday with no end in sight I suspect) and my favorite non-comeback has become someone offering as a counterpoint to that anger some variation of words to the effect of 'I don't mind paying extra if it helps Ukraine stop Putin.' How noble of you; if only someone had asked.

To be clear: there is no correlation between the price of gasoline at anyone's local filling station and helping Ukraine slow, much less stop, the barbaric assault that it is undergoing every minute of every day. Yes, I, too, put a Ukraine flag on my Facebook profile picture and posted a picture of the flag of the country along with the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine. Do you have any idea how effective that is against a T-14 Armata tank? Take a guess.  

This, right here, as we used to say in the US Air Force is taking a piss in a dark blue suit. It gives you a nice, warm feeling and no one notices. John Stuart Mill never met me, or you for that matter, but he knows us better than we know ourselves and certainly deeply understood the relationship between meaning well and doing well.   

Here are some ways to help the people of Ukraine. Pick one, or more and give until it helps.
-bill kenny

Unflavored Air Bubbles

A back in the day story, of sorts. 

Many years ago, as a rock and roll radio disc jockey trying to get a toehold in television, I traveled to a club in Frankfurt am Main, (West) Germany, to interview a hot at that time Los Angles-based punk band. The names of the club and the band are irrelevant to this story.

We arrived for the interview (the videographer and I) during the gear set-up prior to the rehearsal in the late afternoon (punk in its earliest days like its older rock brother required musicians to hump their own gear and set it up as well. 'Be your own roadie' may have been their mantra). 

We interviewed the band shortly after they'd finished setting up and were unwinding with a couple of brewskis, in this case, Budvar Budweiser (the Czech Budweiser beer that everyone else in the world outside of Europe has never heard of).

The folks in the band had worked up quite a thirst and had quaffed a not inconsiderable number of 'Buds' as they kept calling their beer because back home on the patio in the valley they would have been drinking Anheuser Busch Budweiser and calling it the same. 

They weren't and aren't, as the drummer found out halfway through their second number in practice when he fell off the stool and crashed through his drum kit. Two of his fellow musicians laughed so hard they fell down and were singularly unstable for some time to follow. 

No one connected with the band, from management through performers seemed to have a clue as to what had happened, though everyone connected to the club and their European record label (and the two-person TV crew) were very much aware of exactly what had gone on. 

Sometimes it's a fine line between Bud Spencer and Budweiser. And sometimes after all day (and into the night), no one is any the wiser.
-bill kenny

Future's So Bright

I'm old enough to remember when there was a widespread belief and genuine hope that the convergence and connectivity of computers and communications, resulting in the creation of the Internet, would elevate us, intellectually (and perhaps ethically and morally as well). 

Wow. Talk about 180 out. 

Here's just a more recent example I've found of how as a species we are so headed in the wrong direction it would and should be frightening except so many of us seem to be absolutely thrilled that we're making such great time (and so little traffic!).   

I don't know what to do with someone willing to formulate a sentence like "I’d rather die hot than live ugly, so if this is going to take ten years off my life, I don’t care." 

We have truly become God's Punch Line.
I just haven't figured out who's sentient enough to be laughing.
-bill kenny