Better than an Open Window

I'm not a pet owner or parent or however you describe the relationship you might have with an animal that cohabits with you. I have enough trouble taking care of myself (ask my wife) and our two children can attest to how well I performed as The Dad in their little growing-into-adulthood-productions.

Our daughter has a cat and fish (who probably get nervous when left alone with the cat) while our son and his wife have dogs and cats. On a good day, I can correctly guess which end of their critters poop and which end is okay to pet but that's as far as I can go.  

Our next-door neighbor has two dogs, Keanu and Bruno, both of whom (but most especially Keanu,) bark vociferously at the sight, sound, and/or even scent of yours truly. Between you and me, I think it's my liverwurst after-shave. 

They, like most dogs I've even casually observed, seem to very much enjoy when they get to be passengers in their owner's car, though I've never understood if they call shotgun or take turns or have come to some other arrangement. 

The next time I see them, I will make it a point to not mention Ouka as envy in a dog can be such a sad thing to see.
-bill kenny 

What Is 'Father To' for One Hundred

It's interesting to me how we revisit our parents upon our children, accidentally and incidentally. I was stopping in the local grocery whose name is the non-gerund form of that word plus shop. I guess I lost track of the time as I was surprised at the number of cars in the lot in front of the building.

I don't circle the lot looking for a 'really close' spot-do you know people like that? They always make me smile. If they have a passenger I'll bet they're tempted to have them get out and stand in front of the sliding doors holding them wide open to see if the vehicle will pass through them into the store. That would be cool, would it not?

A mom and a small child of three, maybe four, I'm not really sure (I used to be an expert on small children, being in the biz and having two myself and all, but those days are decades ago) but I think he was a boy, were heading towards the entrance. The mom was going over in her head her grocery list while he was skittering to keep up with her. 

Our moms did it to us--they are holding the child's left hand with their right hand. Due to manufacturing difficulties, the child's hand and arm come just barely to the top of his head--Mom's hand and arm reach only to mid-thigh so one of the two is on tiptoes at high speed where ever we go.

I hailed the woman and pushed a cart from the corral towards her and offered it to her for the child. She glared for just a moment and then relented as she picked him up and put him in the seat and, I watched, buckled him in. 

In twenty years when you see a young man walking down the street NOT dragging his left hand on the ground, that's the toddler I helped out today. Go ahead and wave, he'll be able to wave back as both arms will be the same length.

-bill kenny

Forever Young?

One of the things that stayed with me from The Green Mile was the curse that a long life proved to be for the protagonist (Tom Hanks) and how sad his life became as everyone and everything he knew, had grown up with and grown old with, died, and yet he remained. 

All of that brings me to Ken Scott, biohacker, and fellow geezer. 

I just turned seventy earlier this week and I cannot claim to feel/look any different than I did a year or five years ago (and maybe even more). As a kid, I didn't know anyone at that age who is/was my age now and I still tell my face in the mirror every morning that I'm not that guy because I choose to believe I'm not that guy. I suspect I may be lying to myself.

My shirts fit more snugly because of the laundry, undoubtedly and my jeans are way more Dad jeans than I might have once preferred but that's life, I guess, right? What hair I have left is grey and, ironically, is the only aspect of my body that is thinning, and don't think the irony of that doesn't kill me but WAIT, that's not the word I meant to use. 

I always loved The Who and My Generation but now...
-bill kenny

 

"If You Have a Farm in Vietnam and a House in Hell..."

If it were in my power, most specifically at one this Saturday afternoon, here in Norwich the sky would be so brilliantly and deeply blue and cloudless it would hurt your eyes to look up into it.

Within the last ten days or so, Spring has arrived in these parts, and buds on trees and bushes have burst and started to blossom with new leaves so green and so vibrant it's hard to fully accept they are living and not magical things that have started to cover all those bare limbs that were savaged by so many months of winter weather.

But even if the weather on Saturday the last day of April is even more of what much of April has already been, grey, windy, and rainy, I know where I'll be.

I'll be at Chelsea Parade in Norwich, across from the Norwich Free Academy, and, also, practically across the street from my house. I’ll be alone but certainly not by myself as I spend a few minutes ankle-deep in thought paused at Monument Park before meeting up with all those who'll also be on the Chelsea Parade. 

This Saturday is the Vietnam Veterans Day Commemoration, an annual tradition for far more years than I’d ever pretend to know. It’s a collaborative effort by among others, the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 270, Norwich Area Veterans Council, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and American Legion as well as the Disabled American Veterans, and others (some of whom I fear I’ve forgotten).

There will be many older men, even older than I, who, as young boys, were sent off to a war more than ten thousand miles away over five decades ago and whom we regarded as fortunate if, or when, they returned because over three hundred and ten thousand Americans were wounded during the Vietnam War and over fifty-eight thousand died.

Saturday’s speakers will include local and regional dignitaries as well as Dr. Linda Schwartz, and Father Phil Salois. But as someone whose draft lottery number was 4 in 1974, I don’t ever really come for the speakers, as eloquent as they will be, or for the heartfelt prayers that will be offered.

There wasn't and isn't a city in this country that didn't lose a young man before his time in that war. Norwich isn't alone with its losses, but the Rose City is a bit unique in that we have tried, in the hustle and bustle of the 21st Century, to set aside ninety minutes or so to remember what many worked very hard to forget for a long time and to welcome home those who bore the burden of fighting an unpopular war and who were so often blamed for actions and deeds, not of their doing.

As Michael Casey, himself a Vietnam veteran offered in, “Obscenities,” a collection of poetry he first published in 1972, “If you have a farm in Vietnam and a house in hell, sell the farm and go home.” so many could do neither.

There wasn't and isn't a city in this country that didn't lose a young man before his time in that war. Norwich isn't alone with its losses, but the Rose City is a bit unique in that we have tried, in the hustle and bustle of the 21st Century, to set aside ninety minutes or so to remember what many worked very hard to forget for a long time and to finally welcome home those who bore the burden of fighting an unpopular war and who were so often blamed for actions and deeds, not of their doing.

Saigon fell on 30 April 1975, officially ending US involvement in the War in Vietnam. For those across this country who fought in Vietnam, the date is a footnote because they, themselves, still struggle every day with often invisible wounds from a war so many of their countrymen wanted to forget ever happened. Join us this Saturday and Remember.
-bill kenny

True as of Midnight

The crust of the biscuit and the heart of the matter.

 "And that's all I have to say about that."
-bill kenny

Sleek on the Street

I love cars, almost any car* (*not the Aztec, sorry Pontiac) probably as much for what they are as for what they can do in terms of design, capacity, speed, and distance. 

I do not share that same affection for trucks or motorcycles or any of the weird little wheeled contrivances that come along from time to time and inflame our imaginations and fructify our fantasies for a moment or so (looking at you, Elon).   

As I prepare for the beginning of my seventieth rotation on the Big Blue Marble, there are far too many concessions and admissions I must fully face and own and one of them is that I will never drive a race car. 

But I can admire how one of my favorites is built. And so can you.
-bill kenny

A Saucer of Chaucer

I've read/been told that no language presents as many challenges to learn as English. And it's not just English people telling me, an American, that, if you follow my drift. I know English as a language because my parents spoke it to me as a child; I doubt I'm smart enough to have ever learned it on my own. 

If you're someone for whom English is a second, or third (show-off!) language, here's some cold comfort and small solace. 

Subject to your questions, this concludes my briefing.
-bill kenny 

Somewhere, Johnny Mercer Is Smiling

Growing up we had Coke, Pepsi, and Seven-Up. 

Oh, we had the grocery store brands, too, of course, and we always knew when cousins and other distinguished company were coming to visit because that's when Mom and Dad bought the 'real' brands and not the store brands.   

I look at the soft drink industry now and it's like watching the evolution of 'sneakers' into 'sports shoes.' There's so much churn and so much noise, I'm glad I'm old and don't have to keep track of it all because so much of it is just horseshit. And, no, I'm not talking about the taste of some of them but I suspect that's also an apt description. 

I never 'got' Red Bull to begin with and now all the permutations of all of those types of beverages have set off down the rabbit hole I suspect to never again see the light of day. Not that long ago I think I saw in a store someone selling Coke with Red Bull (and the hits just keep on comin'!). Talk about arguments for learning to not swallow.

Still don't have enough disincentives? 

How about this, the most current, eloquent argument for 'just because we can, should we?' Suspect Francis Albert would have a quibble or two with all of it.
-bill kenny

No Planet B

Happy Earth Day 2022! I would have gotten you a card but I always worry about where it might end up, recycling bin or landfill, and saw no need to take that risk. Anyway. In terms of protecting Spaceship Earth, it seems to me that about all we can do is talk about it because if we're looking to the Fed to set the tone it'll be a little like trying to keep the deck chairs from going over the side of the Titanic (but with the even less actual success, I fear).

This is all the planet there is, as near as I can tell (though I've not made an exhaustive study, admittedly) but I have some history, literally with Earth Day observances. I was almost eighteen when I and a contingent of classmates from the Carteret Academy in West Orange, New Jersey, marched down NYC's Fifth Avenue in the first Earth Day celebration in 1970. 

Okay, we'd gotten lost while in The City for the day (a senior trip of sorts, class not citizens). Not quite sure who it was, but someone figured the parade would be a great chance to meet girls. Who cares why we were there! Still.

I thought then and think now if we work to make the place on the planet upon which we stand and live the very best we can, each of us can rescue all of us. So not just today, but every day, when you see something, environmental or otherwise that causes you to say 'somebody should do something!' please remember you are that somebody.

It should probably and more correctly read, 'Persist.'

Me, I just bear up my bewildered best and some folks even see the bear in me.

-bill kenny  

All We Are Saying....

There's more than enough awful stuff going on in the world today and every day; so much so that I for one can lose sight of the smaller things that are going wrong and/or have gone over the edge and I never even missed them until someone, usually in print in some form, brings me up short.

That's what's happening here, and not necessarily just about bees the size of canned hams (I haven't used a David Letterman reference in a long time and was afraid they were extinct as well), but pollinators of all kinds, everywhere who are having a more and more difficult time just surviving in a world we humans continue to reshape to our liking, oblivious to how much destruction we are causing.  

It's easy for me to say, especially about insects, good riddance to mosquitos, but pretty thoughtless in terms of the impact the absence of that insect would have on everything above and below it in the food chain. 

I'm as guilty, and maybe more so, as the next person of walking through life with my eyes wide shut, seeing what I chose to see when I wish to see it, and why. That, in all candor, is probably not the ideal behavior we're all looking for in the Crown of Creation.

Unless we wanna say, 'see ya later, pollinators,' and I'm not suggesting we should organize a massive bi-continental live concert, Bugg Aid, we need to get our feces amalgamated and soon.
-bill kenny

Book Your Weekend in Downtown Norwich

We're not 'back to normal,' and between you and me I'm hazy on what normal once was but slowly, too slowly for some. bits and pieces of who we were before the COVID contagion are returning, and in the case of the Friends of Otis Library Spring Book Sale, it's all the confirmation I need that spring has returned to the Rose of New England and gathering some new-to-you reads instead of (or in addition to) rosebuds might be a great way to spend this weekend.

I blame my parents for my bibliophilia. I, my brothers, and sisters grew up in a houseful of books, and my wife and I did very much the same in the household in which we raised our two children. Literacy is not a lost art, but in the not too distant future when Carmen San Diego finds Waldo, he'll probably be reading a book, about striped shirts but holding it upside down (that does remind me of someone).

In the world today it's not just television, video games, computers, virtual reality, or smartphones that are changing our relationship with the written word, it's our tendency to look upon books as a rationed resource or a luxury we can't afford.

Neither of those is the case, especially this weekend in Norwich. Starting this Friday morning, at 9 with an Early Bird preview hour (ten dollars gets you first crack at some delectables and collectibles, but I don't think they have a velvet rope), the Friends of Otis Library unlock the basement doors for the return of their Annual Spring Sale.

Aside from that Early Bird business, all three days are free and whatever your heart, mind, and eyes desire can be found if you're willing to do some digging in the stacks and racks. All winter long, the Friends have been sorting and organizing for this Bookanalia. Sports, history, biography, gardening (I choose to believe Spring is finally here), mystery, classics of traditional and modern literature, and categories beyond both my description and imagination are all sorted, stacked, and shelved throughout the subterranean recesses with below bargain-basement prices.

And it's not just books. There are CDs, DVDs, and BVDs (I may or may not have made one of these up) and prices are so low you'll buy twice as much as you planned at a fraction of the cost. On any of the days you stop by the library, and free admission is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday and from noon to 3 on Sunday, you'll learn there is plenty of free parking throughout downtown, despite what all those people who never go there keep saying.

And after your book-buying binge, follow your nose and sate your ravenous hunger (I bought a dictionary at the last sale) and check out one of the restaurants as close to Otis Library as Dewey is to Decimal. You've been reading about all the places that have opened across Down City in recent months, and you're going to the book sale, so why not check the new attractions out? You can work up quite an appetite book shopping (a lot of people don't know that; I think I read it somewhere) why should you be one? Talk about 'the pause that refreshes:' Norwich has terrific places for a quick bite or a full meal. See for yourself.

Put the book sale on your calendar. And if the weather is even close to the spring we feel we are entitled to, it'll be a perfect time to break out one of your purchases and enjoy a sidewalk scene with a coffee and a companion. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
I think he was on to something.
-bill kenny   

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

Indulge me. You can thank me later. 

When you have a spare moment, go here: Low Earth Orbit Visualization | LeoLabs and click.

Subject to your questions, that concludes my briefing.
-bill kenny

A Story Told Too Often

I wrote this a number of years ago because there was nothing else to write that day but the words that followed. Another year on, try as I might, no sense still makes no sense and people still have holes in their hearts where loved ones used to be. 

Today is Patriots' Day in Massachusetts and also the traditional running of the Boston Marathon. That order of precedence, if you will, was altered back in 2013 and forever because of circumstances officially recalled on the one-year anniversary exactly a year previously.

In 2013 as if it could ever be forgotten, at the Marathon, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev those evil, ungrateful bastards whom we took in and who repaid that kindness with killing, broke hearts, destroyed lives, and shattered our national illusion of insularity and insulation from the other horrors of the rest of the world and altered forever anyone's memories and imaginings of the Boston Marathon.

Both brothers will be long faded from memory before what they did is forgotten, but better remembered, and hopefully always remembered, is what they failed to do. Just ask Jeff Baumann, who gets stronger every day and whom I fervently hope gets angry and powerful enough someday to kick the ass of Dzorkhar all the way to Boston Harbor and then hold him under until the bubbles stop.

I understand being an angry old man will get me nothing but an even more premature grave and I should take my cue from those who not only survived but triumphed over the tragedy of that day. Perhaps I shall, starting tomorrow.

No more hurting people

I have the good fortune to have a friend, in the Facebook sense of the word, a Fenway denizen and two times Grammy-nominee who spent many years on the Jersey Shore and has now followed the advice of Horace Greeley and gone west, Linda Chorney, who repurposed and molded her sorrow to create a beautiful celebration of a life taken terribly, suddenly and far too soon into a song perfectly suited for today and all those enjoying it.
-bill kenny

Reprising the Sermon on Exposition Boulevard

These started out as some of my thoughts (or what passes for such) many years back. Some things, like wine improve with age; others, like milk, not so much. You decide.

I used to be a Roman Catholic; actually, that's (much) less than accurate. It's like saying I used to be an alcoholic. Those two statements have no past tense, or pretense (literary joke)-they just are and in this case, I am both. 

The jaded, faded imitation of a person I am looks at his faith as a child and finds it easy to mock the boy on his way to manhood, but also envies him the beliefs that he had. When I threw the faith of my fathers into the ocean of doubt, I had nothing to hold onto in its place as I never had the courage of my own convictions and could not trust those of any other.

Today is Easter Sunday the most important feast in the Christian liturgical calendar and (pardon my pseudo-theological seminary sermon) precipitant of the article of faith that makes us Christian if that's indeed what we are. 

I, of course, didn't actually attend classes at any seminary His Holiness, Pope Francis I, would recognize but I did stay once in a Holiday Inn Express (and have the towel, and the drinking glass 'sealed for your protection' to prove it).

Christmas gets a lot of press and songs and cards and window dressing but don't look for a Macy's Day Parade to mark the start or end of Lent because that's not happening. In these parts, Christmas gets marketing help from every wholesaler and retailer imaginable, and why not? Christmas is a lovely story, wonderfully symbolic, and simply beautiful if you don't want to think too much about it.

Take a look instead today in the New Testament of your choice and foreboding's afoot in every verse of every version about the events leading to Easter (those are the versions of my choice). And in one of the most ironic choices of terms associated with any aspect of Jesus Christ, is Good Friday, which marks His Crucifixion and Death (I went back and made the "h" a capital, not because there's hope for me but out of fear that there is no hope). And as you read the accounts, let's face it, the events of that day are absolutely horrible.

The crowd, the occupying forces, everyone, it seems has abandoned the Son of God who is sentenced to die (I'd say 'murdered' but some might argue the state does not murder) in an extraordinarily, excruciating manner. 

And it is both that death by Crucifixion but more importantly the belief in the Resurrection that so many commemorate today that is the defining event for every Christian, even the ones who seem more like Simon Peter than even they could ever admit in this life. 

I want you to remember this. Come on, try to remember.

-bill kenny

Emphasizing the G in OMG

Perhaps because it's Easter Week or, as of sundown last night, Passover, I've noticed a lot of Facebook Postings either to or about God. Admittedly there are still far fewer pictures of Jesus than of Grumpy Cat, and I certainly don't wish to suggest they are interchangeable images or that anyone is keeping count though someone is, I'm sure. 

Anyway, back to the Lord. 

An important part of many people's faith or the practice of it, better said  I think, is the public testimony and in that sense, all the social media platforms offer an opportunity to do that.  Expressions of faith always discomfit me. I think that's due to a number of personal factors like being a Roman Catholic. No matter how good the Good News is, we were programmed as kids in parochial school to wait for the other shoe to drop. And eventually, it did. I think maybe Catholics in general have a less intimate relationship with the Deity than other religions. 

For my part, I was raised in the faith of my fathers and I didn't leave it so much as it left me so there's that sin of pride thing going on, adding to my problems on the Last Day and the Big Pop Quiz or however the final selections are made. (Add to that now the whole 'you compared Jesus to the Grumpy Cat!?!' I'll never explain that away). With my luck, they'll be a sing-off, and won't that be just ducky?

I suppose if you believe in an All-Seeing and All-Knowing God, S/He would monitor Facebook. I kind of wonder if S/He would have an account. I know S/He has a fan page though a quick run-through raises more questions than anything else since, why not Twitter instead? It's more like a burning bush and that was good enough for Moses. In light of how we've followed them perhaps the Ten Commandments were actually snap chatted. It certainly covers that 'moves in mysterious ways' thing that's always a topic.  

I'm thinking for some of The Flock, the Lord may be a kind of McAfee or Norton virus protection and every once in a while we like to wander off the beaten path just to watch the pop-up window signal us, and Will Robinson, of impending danger. I wonder how many 'likes' all of the loosely affiliated with Divine Providence pages manage to generate on Facebook in a day or a week and how that number compares to how many people are online and playing one of the FB games? 

I mean, how many times can anyone thumbs up a random Mckayla Maroney meme especially since as we all know Jesus is easy.
-bill kenny

Remembering the Solemnity and the Sadness

As a child at Saint Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, it was forcibly impressed upon us by the Sisters of Charity whose charges we were (and for whom many of us became crosses, and yeah, Kelly, I'm talking about you) that there was nothing good about Good Friday. 

When we were old enough to mentally and emotionally comprehend the New Testament accounts of the Passion of Christ I couldn't imagine a more horrible way to die. As I grew older if not up and learned more of our species' history and track record in dealing with one another, I realized we could, and often did, behave like a life form beyond any Redemption.

Christmas gets all the ink and Easter all the lilies and chocolate, but Holy Thursday through the sunrise services of Easter Sunday morning are 'go' time for Christian believers. The events and circumstances of Good Friday, the sundering of the curtain in the Temple in Jerusalem (what a great word 'sundering ' is when you're in fourth grade; actually, it's still pretty cool), the forgiveness of The Good Thief, the testimony of the Centurion Longinus at the foot of the cross and a hundred and more sidebars, nuances, and obscured by time and telling points on the biblical accounts always seemed to make Good Friday the most important of the days leading to Easter. 

Around the world today, processions and reenactments of the Stations of the Cross at or near three o'clock in the afternoon will cap observances for the faithful and faithless alike leaving them Saturday to recoup and regroup before the Promise is redeemed for saints and sinners all with the light of Sunday morning.
-bill kenny

Weather Or Not

I have windows in my house so my relationship to television weather forecasts may be a little different from yours. And now that (fingers crossed) winter is over, my interest in weather is somewhat diminished than what it was in, let's say February. 

That I can influence the weather we will have tomorrow to the exact same degree as I could back in February has an irony that is not lost on me, in all candor. 

As Dylan once suggested in another lifetime, 'you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind's blowing.' Case in point, for this you don't even need to speak the same language. 

I found her through an online magazine article and now, to some degree, I've got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May. I guess you'd say what can make me feel this way?

Well, you can probably guess, right? 
-bill kenny

Ready Or Not

I went for an early morning walk yesterday after the rains in and around my neighborhood, near Norwich Free Academy.

Like a lot of the Northeast, Norwich has spent the last couple of weeks in an unending do-loop of almost spring temperatures punctuated with grey skies, ill winds and chilly temperatures while trying to convince ourselves that eventually the weather would agree with the calendar and spring would be here.

It was the kind of morning with a high haze that, as the sun clears the horizon, after seven or so, burns off quickly leaving a blue so deep and true you could get lost in it just looking at it. One of the things the unkind weather had distracted us from, or at least me, was how much farther along the trees, bushes and grasses are now than a week or so ago.

Where there were hints of red buds, and you could also see light red glow on the tips of branches, now there are light green, tiny leaves pushing their way into the day.

And where there were brown and matted patches of grass at Chelsea Parade (the cut across at Lincoln Avenue to NFA; Sachem has a traffic light and Williams has a cross walk), now there's green or will be if we stop stepping on it long enough to let the grass grow.

I’m not alone in feeling that this has the Spring that Almost Wasn't—and why not? Take the last couple of years; not the kindest time in our history, either nationally or globally and I’m deliberately NOT mentioning COVID-19 or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I think we can all be forgiven for wanting to hunker down a little bit and worrying more about ourselves while hoping the big world outside will sort itself out or leave us alone. Fat chance.

Ready or not, the City Manager's Proposed Budget at Monday night's City Council meeting was the first step in what should be an annual, informative exercise in participatory governance though if the past is prologue, I’m not all that sanguine about that even as I type those words

You can find the budget online, and it’s worth reading, literally because in some shape, size, or form, the discussions and decisions about it we should and will have with one another, with our municipal department heads, and our elected officials determine the quality and quantity of municipal services, from public education and public safety to trash removal and road resurfacing and everything in between, and what we are willing to pay for them.

The city budget is a compact we make with one another, for one another. We owe it to ourselves to do our best to be successful as residents and as a city. Find the time to read the online explanations on the city’s website and look at the impact the proposals will have on your own household and think about what you’d change and why.

Our first opportunity to speak publicly on the proposed budget is tomorrow night at 7:30 in Council Chambers before the members of the Council and one another. We should be prepared to speak and to listen to others when they speak because that's how reasonable people build the future.

And budgets, while developed today, are always about tomorrows. 
-bill kenny

As Opposed to Salt Water Taffy

I'm not sure that this is anything other than an argument for not attending Trivia Nights at pubs or bars, but from the 'did you know?' folder: Did you know that Reece's Pieces are the official candy of the state of New York and that Salt Water Taffy has the same status in New Jersey? 

I know; better question: did you care?  

Here in the Land of  Steady Habits, I assumed (with all the attendant dangers that come with that word) that PEZ is the official candy of Nutmeggers but House Bill 5498, currently being considered by the Government Administration and Elections Committee, would suggest it's a fresh wind that blows against the empire. 

And with the Sea Dogs of Portland in Maine and CR Foster of  Portland on The Other Coast, why not let our Portland be the Golf Capital of the State, even if you're just playing through? 

Jacqueline Glick and classmate Amelia Neubauer the engines for change of the state candy even have themselves a catch phrase not only rivaling 'Fifty-Four Forty Or Fight' and 'Tippecanoe and Tyler Too' but, in my opinion, eclipsing them, '...Laughter, Love, and Lollipops.'

If Millie Small were still among us, I think she'd say, 'and I endorse this message.'
-bill kenny 

I'm Wondering if I'm Gonna See Tomorrow

Sometimes I surprise myself, less than pleasantly, with a random memory that bubbles up from wherever we store memories and hijacks my attention for a moment or so.

For no special reason, I remembered a moment as a small child when my father took me fishing from a pier in Highlands, New Jersey. My mom and dad used to rent a summer bungalow in the same colony as mom's mom and dad, Gramma and Grampy, when our family as I recall was just me and my sister, Evan. 

My Dad worked almost all the time 'in the city' (New York City) and drove down to the shore on Fridays, in the era before the Garden State Parkway, made life simpler if not easier, and it used to take him hours to make the trip. He'd relax by fishing for most of the weekend or taking us to the beach at the end of the path that separated the two columns of bungalows.

He'd buy a small white cardboard container of bait, killies packed in crushed ice, that as the day wore on and the ice melted, the killies would come back to life from their frozen state but we still grabbed them by their wriggling bodies and hooked them through their mouths at the end of the fishing line. 

My Dad did catch and release, though we did eat a lot of fish in our house, we bought it at the store rather than separate it from dancing at the end of a fishing line. I went one step further as I never caught a fish, not once and not ever. Possibly why to this day I have no enthusiasm or interest in the sport at all.

Coda to this otherwise pointless reminiscence: a few years back, my wife and I were invited by our cousins to a memorial service for their mom, my Mom's baby sister, who was the last child Gramma and Grampy ever had. 

The memorial was in a restaurant in Highlands whose name momentarily slipped my mind as I was typing this, but I have it now, a place I remembered from when I was a literal wee slip of a lad spending summers that seemed to stretch on forever in a bungalow by the shore, not realizing at the time that this was indeed as good as it gets.
-bill kenny  

Seeking the Faith of Our Fathers

As a child, this was a big deal Sunday in my house. And I have to be honest, I was almost a teen before I even fully grasped why--Palm Sunday was up there near, though not quite at, Christmas Mass and Easter, and when my first name still had a 'y' on the end of it, I never really followed the reasoning as to why. Behold the Man, indeed.

Palm Sunday always seemed to be the deceptive handshake.

The New Testament has accounts of the triumphal entry of the Son of God into Jerusalem, being welcomed by those who would have Him crucified on Friday (a more excruciating way to die at the time was unknown) and resurrected on Sunday.

I never impressed any of the nuns at St. Peter's School (later called Saint Peter the Apostle I guess to distinguish him from St. Peter who played shortstop for the Newark Bears in the middle seventies) in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with my scholastic aptitude or ability to interpret scriptures (I was almost married myself before I caught on to the importance of 'for I know not any man' and Joseph not having Mary stoned and why) and yet I still experience dryness in my mouth as a  dreadful foreboding when the events of the Passion Week unfold.

I couldn't stop reading about it as a child but I couldn't look away. When Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber cashed in with Jesus Christ Superstar, if nothing else, they linked the inquisition of Christ forever in my mind with a jaunty little music hall number that I can hear even as I type this (and now you can, too). Another reason I'm confident of my destination in the next life.

Today is a day for many to visit the church of their choice. Sidewalks are crowded as families make their way to retrieve fronds of blessed palm (my mom's mother had a piece that never left its location, behind a framed black and white photo on the wall. Only now do I realize I have no idea of whom the picture was, nor any idea who I might ask).

The blessed palm that doesn't end up scotch-taped to auto rear-view mirrors or suspended by a thumbtack alongside the front door will be collected after all the Masses today, at least in the Catholic Church of my youth, and then burned to become the ashes used on our foreheads for Ash Wednesday.

Intro ibo ad alteri Dei. I think I still know the words and know that I always will. I once had the faith to believe in their meaning but I lost that, or perhaps threw it over the side to help speed me on my way, and then I lost my way. I have the charts and maps spread out on the floor, but it's starless and bible black and I can't find my way home. 
-bill kenny

Some People Will Drink Anything

I was alive BEFORE the internet. 

I mention that because between convergence and connectivity it's almost impossible to imagine what life was like pre-worldwide web days. (And it's even harder to remember, trust me on that). 

This would (and could) have never existed 'back in the day,' much less been monetized. 

I hope, albeit against hope, that somehow Leon is seeing a piece of the action, though I suspect he's still happily scooting around the bottom of the tank going, 'damn! Finally got those rubber bands off!" 
--bill kenny

Better than Tea Leaves?

As a kid reading The Iliad and The Odyssey as part of world literature, I was impressed with the notion of the seers and prophets (predecessors to Sears & Roebuck, perhaps), slaughtering different animals, and examining their entrails to attempt divination of the future. 

The Gods of Olympus back in the day were more fickle it seems than present-day followers of Tik--Tok videos. 

I had enough trouble in high school biology class stomaching the smell of formaldehyde as we dissected frogs so the notion of digging around in a recently deceased animal's carcass in search of a way ahead, or the way ahead (if you will) never set my imagination ablaze with an ambition to emulate the Greek Heroes of Yore and Beyond (never to be confused with Bed, Bath and ...).

Still. Facing the future might be a little easier if you had a cheat sheet or some form of Cliff's Notes to help you along the way. What is it Dylan once sang, 'you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows'? True enough but if you're planning on letting a smile be your umbrella then, without a reliable forecaster, you need to be prepared to gargle snow.  

Our daily news reports are filled with doom and gloom about what's ahead, based in no small part on what we've come through, but how do the experts know what they know? And if we knew it as well would we face the future more fearlessly or fearfully? 

Economists speak of inverted yield curves, but wait! There's more. There's a Skyscraper Effect as well as a Lipstick Index, but the one worth watching, according to a former Federal Reserve Chairman, whose reliability is almost legendary is the Underwear Index. 

Scoff if you'd like, oh ye of little faith (or bikini bottoms), but it sounds a lot sexier than the Household Debt to GDP Indicator, among others, and is available in a variety of colors in both boxers and briefs. You may want to check with The Loneliest Monk on inventory.
-bill kenny

Finally!!

It's sort of like Christmas though hopefully without snow in some of the outdoor ballparks. 

Long-awaited, eagerly-anticipated, sometimes-despaired about, and very much something worth cheering for: Major League Baseball Opening Day 2022.  

And yeah, I bought the hat before all the lock-out bullshit and no, I'm not happy about the Designated Hitter making it to the National League I will never warm up to the Extra Innings Runner on Second Base. I'm told 'you can't have everything' but I'm not clear why not.

And, returning to the hat, my wife thinks I might need to have it surgically removed.
She could be right. Play ball!
-bill kenny

Cowboy Up

If you've spent any time in an office environment (admittedly, pre-pandemic for the most part) you're probably familiar with what's considered a classic of the motivational poster genre (a lucrative cottage industry unto itself) that has a basketball at rest at the foul line of a hardwood court, with a backboard, rim. and net above and beyond it. 

Underneath the ball is written, "You'll miss every shot you never take." I worry and wonder sometimes about how life imitates art and vice versa if we informally adopted that as an unofficial Rose City Mantra. (I missed the memo. Again.)

So often, perhaps too often, it seems every attempt to take a chance, try something different or look at a process in a new way is greeted with a chorus of voices working to shout down or drown in whispers whoever wants to try something new. 

In this case, I'm referencing, in particular, the news story from last week about a renewed effort to resurrect the historic (to someone, somewhere, I guess) Reid & Hughes building and the responses that story precipitated on social media platforms. 

Meanwhile, in the same week as the Reid & Hughes story, there was a report about Philly's, A Taste of Philadelphia expanding to both Bennington Vermont, AND New Haven, just steps from the Yale campus. In addition, we've had G.O.A.T.S. open a second location on Main Street, LaStella Italian Market expand and thrive in Taftville, and a half-dozen new, small and micro-businesses open across the city, and not just downtown, not just downtown, but reaction, for the most part, ranged from jeers to muted cheers with scattered misgivings in between. 

The online comments celebrating success right here in Norwich were, eye-opening, to say the least (and yes, I'm being somewhat sarcastic). Somewhere, we've invented a notion, to go with that eye-roll, that there's only a certain amount of success in the city/the world/the universe and it must be carefully rationed and monitored because if Business A succeeds there's less success for someone else. 

So what happens? We decide to 'just wait and see what happens' because, as we tell one another, you just never know. Eventually, the safest bet for each of us is to decide that for me to look good, you (whoever you are) need to look bad and, it follows logically, I can only be happy when you fail. Now that's a philosophy to really light the world, eh?

Yeah, of course, and we both know this, that's just a variant of the old 'if I don't do anything I can't do anything wrong' mindset that has been paying dividends around here for decades, or is that not what's been happening? The fear of making a mistake is, itself, a mistake-a cliche in every sense of the word because it's true. 

Someone once told me failure is a bruise and not a tattoo. Of course, he was wearing long sleeves at the time So I couldn't really check the veracity of that perspective but there's a lot to be said for learning to reward risk and risk-taking. And if things don't go according to Hoyle, figure out where the plan needs to be adjusted, and try again. Stop finding fault like there's a reward for doing it.  

There are opportunities for every imaginable success in Norwich, but each of us, in our own way, has to take the first step and be willing to accept the consequences, positive and negative, of our own actions. 

Time to Cowboy Up.
-bill kenny

The Other J. P.

Today's title is an inside joke, or maybe even more if (as I suspect) he doesn't read this stuff. 

Anyway. Attempting to explain it to you would take up far more time than it's worth so just accept it as the imponderable and probably inconsequential that it is and continue to walk this way, please. (Hands inside the ride.)

Our local supermarket, feeling the competitive pressure no doubt of an Arkansas retail chain in a business where profit margins often disappear, has gone to a form of Robo-shopping I find fascinating. You have it too, I bet; we take a bar-coded rewards card and sweep it across a reader/scanner that releases for our use a handheld device that's tied to our card. I feel like a walkon in Brave New World.

You wander the aisles, grabbing stuff you want, scanning it, and putting it in shopping bags. When you're done shopping, you head to a checkout register and scan one final bar code that tells your handheld sidekick you're past tense, and it transfers your order to the register with the total amount in the display. You pay for your order and out the door you go.

I feel so twenty-first century every time I do it, and I confess I do it every time I shop there. I'll concede the whole process is a bit like Tom Sawyer getting people to paint his fence for him. The groceries don't cost less because we do all the heavy lifting. The system isn't designed to make our lives easier. 

Once upon a time in grocery stores of a bygone era, there were actual employees who took the items a colleague was ringing up, placed them in bags (eggs and loaves of bread on the bottom, canned goods, and automotive supplies such as transmissions on top of them) and placed those bags in your shopping cart and, if asked, would help you get that cart to your mode of transportation and then back to your abode where the unloading and putting away were your job.

We've still got cashiers, baggers, courtesy desk employees, the whole kit, and caboodle, who watch us as we wander the store with what look like Star Trek weapons at the ready. All we need are the communicators over our left breast pockets. And pointy ears, I suppose (check aisle four behind the breath fresheners).

The only part we're missing, but it's probably coming soon, are announcements over the store PA system that the Metamucil truck has arrived at loading dock two and twenty-of-those-of-us-formerly-known-as-customers-but-now-called-morons, are needed to unload it, and to stock the shelves in aisle eleven. Don't laugh-that day is dawning. We'll end up playing rock, paper, scissors to decide who's unloading the home pregnancy tests (they go at the header in aisle twelve beside the KY jelly display. I checked.).

The other day, underscoring the perfect beast isn't quite yet where the Grocer in Charge would like it, I grabbed and scanned (in one motion; I've gotten quite proficient at this) a jar of lightly salted (with sea salt, no less) dry-roasted peanuts but, instead of a little peep and a small green light, I got an electronic squonk and a near zen message in the device display: "The item you have scanned does not exist within your order." 

Oh? Hell is, indeed, other people, JP. 

-bill kenny