I Hear the Old Man Laughing

I sometimes surprise/disappoint myself. Today is one of those days. 

I've struggled with how to handle a solemn and personal (among the six siblings) anniversary observed today practically every day for the last forty-one years. I really thought I had it in hand this time and yet here I am looking at words I wrote a dozen years ago with the same ache in the pit of my stomach that I felt the moment the Red Cross operator gave me the news. I called it:  

And All This Time the River Flowed...

Do you know how Christmas or your anniversary can sneak up on you? It's weird of course because they shouldn't really. You know when those events are (unless you're an atheist and/or a polygamist), you remember where you were when they happened and yet suddenly there they are and you're surprised. 

I know and will always know, the moment my wife and I were married-the minute and hour of the births of both of our children, but I'm unable, actually unwilling, to nail down any better than 'over the Memorial Day weekend' as the date of my dad's passing.

I have a more elaborate, self-created, challenge. Because of 'fog of life' issues, try as I might, I can't get into focus (for me) a defining moment, the death of my father. When I say he died 'over the Memorial Day weekend,' that's the best I can do in terms of specifics. 

I've wrestled with every aspect of our relationship for almost every waking moment and it's all added up to zero. I'm very much writing today to exorcise demons rather than for any other point or purpose. 

I thought I'd opened this wound up last year and flicked the scab off, but as I sit here, I can feel my throat tighten, the rock in the pit of my stomach grow heavier and the taste of ash in my mouth become more pronounced. Again I'm seven, not seventy, and waiting as I did most days, with dread, for him to come home from the City. And so it begins, never to end.

We, the six children he struggled to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide everything under the sun and in-between, are, ourselves, parents and in some instances, grandparents. I don't pretend to know the hearts of my siblings, but I'm pretty sure I speak for at least some of them when I say we have all worked as hard as we could to not become our father. 

And if the years have taught me anything (and that proposition is still subject to debate), it's that his intentions, like those of every parent, were the absolute best. And yet one by one, as we could (and when we could) we disappeared, leaving those younger behind to be his children. Until he, himself, suddenly, left and no words could fill the void or cover the silences.

I'm never sure if it's the horrible son or the failed father who's to blame for all that was lost years ago, but I know the face I see in the mirror every morning belongs to the person responsible now for not letting go of the poisons of the past to savor today and secure tomorrow. 

It wasn't a mere coincidence that not that long ago I needed a mess of help to be talked off the edge because I'd become addicted to loathing the view when I looked down. I couldn't look but I couldn't look away.

Each of his children will, in the course of the day, try, again, to make peace with the world he gave us and that we lacked the strength to reject aloud while he was here to hear us. Silence equaled consent and thus did we become accomplices in our own victimhood. 

I want to shout at the memory of the man whose knowledge often overwhelmed the nuns who so often tormented, rather than taught, each of us. Instead, I choke on the words, as I always have and always shall.

-bill kenny

In the Space Between the Heavens

This is nothing you've not read before at this time or in this space. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, I sometimes wonder what repetition causes? Still working on an answer.  

Today is Memorial Day, another holiday we've moved to a Monday so we can have a three-day weekend with plenty of time for a barbecue, a run to the beach, and some laps at the Brickyard. 

If we work it right, we don't ever or even have to think of those with whom we grew up and with whom we went to school but who never, themselves, grew old, or whose parents and grandparents, having survived the Depression battled fascism to its knees in a worldwide war and their children and their children who have been engaged in a dozen "smallish" wars for the last half a century that all seem to cost lives.

Every town across the country has observances as do we here in Norwich, Connecticut. The first, as is tradition, is at Taftville's Memorial Park, starting at 10, and though I'm not a resident of Taftville I'm always welcomed as will you be. 

Later in the day is a parade organized by the City of Norwich and the Norwich Area Veterans Council that will conclude with speeches and moments of silence at half-past two in a memorial ceremony at Chelsea Parade. 

On a day usually filled with backyard barbecues and family softball games, the remembrances help us realize war is not an abstract geopolitical game played out on a grand stage by dominant personalities-it is very local, extremely personal, and heartbreakingly private. Those of our neighbors who choose military service have as many reasons for so doing as there are those who so serve. 

And while today we should mark the ultimate sacrifice of those who have served, we can also spare a thought or prayer for those who have survived as well. They bear scars, often invisible and painful, of their struggles that take a lifetime to heal.

We must never lose sight of all of those whose service makes us who we are and to whom we owe more than we can ever repay. They are a call to arms for each of us to be better than we are for ourselves, our children, and our nation.
-bill kenny

First It Was Sticks, then Stones, then Words....

One of the things raising our two children did for me was keep me (relatively) young. Not that I, as a seventy-year-old man walk around in FUBU jeans and I-have-no-idea-what-for-a-shirt. 

As they grew up and I grew old, I discovered more and more we shared less and less of a common vocabulary but that was sort of okay since I can dimly remember doing the very same thing to my parents (I can see my old man grinning as I type that, not so much because it's humorous but because one or both of is an asshole). 

I knew I had reached codger when 'you're welcome' was replaced by 'no problem;' actually when I became angry (not annoyed) that mostly young people responded with that when I did say 'thank you,' somehow curdling the milk of human kindness in my veins when so doing. 

The youngsters have continued to take over and makeover the language and all we geezers can do is become apoplectic at its applications and outcomes I guess. Between spluttering and muttering, I don't know what other courses of action we have. I read with equal parts sorrow and disappointment, not that long ago a paragraph in, of all places, the New York Times about a celestial event of some kind with the phrase, 'and here are the deets.' 

Yeah, that one really pisses me off. As do folks who say 'totes' for 'totally,' because perhaps it's faster? Seriously? We have a marvelous and complex language and we use such a pathetically small percentage of it. And a percentage of what we do use isn't even real. 

But you know that expression, 'cheer up, things could be worse,' they are, it seems. 

I'm starting to think The Loon and The Ox got the better part of the deal by exiting early. K?
-bill kenny 

Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River

"Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain,
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies.
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high."

Speaking of which.

Don't bogart that mouse, Lucy
-bill kenny

A Watched Pot Never Boils

Mission creep is what group dynamics folks describe what the rest of us might well call L.O.S.T, or Line Of Sight Tasking (I'm still not sure what we call group dynamics without making our moms cry). At some point in a project, one of the very bright people who came up with the original idea realizes there's yet another function s/he forgot within the transaction and announces 'someone needs to do/be .....' 

Of course, the first person who makes eye contact inherits this new responsibility with absolutely no authority or means to accomplish it. Don't look up! Oops, thanks for playing.

It's part of our lives as individuals, as well, fretting in the various roles we each play in the drama. I had a plateful (and more) when it was just me, myself, and I. Falling in love and getting married evolved into me, or us, to egoisme a deux and then we added children to the mix. Solo, spouse, parent, while also being a child, sibling, and wearing a half dozen other hats. You can't tell the players without a scorecard, especially when we each are covering numerous positions.

Is there a limit to all this multi-tasking, if that's what this actually is (I like to think that term is better applied to linked tasks vice totally different ones-like a product being both a floor polish and a dessert topping) and when do we reach a limit, how do we know? I remember the 'how to cook a frog in boiling water' semi-urban legend (don't judge; I run with a colorful crowd) that makes me suspect there's no 'top-end.'

In an unrelated conclusion, I've often wondered why so many people insist that frogs' legs taste like chicken not that it ever helps if you wake up with a bullfrog on your mind.
-bill kenny

Get Off the Cross

Driving home the other day I was behind someone with a bumper sticker that you just know has a HUGE story behind it. I've sort of seen the first part before, "My Dog is Smarter than Your Honor Student" but it was the other part, "My God Can Beat Up Your God" that leads me to wonder just how deep some still waters run.

I long ago abandoned in despair the faith of my fathers so there really is no upside to the hereafter-I can appreciate the humor in having painted myself into a corner like this; I'm just never happy about having to sign the painting.

Someone shared a story from a local newspaper with me a long time ago about a faked kidnapping involving a mother, her one-year-old child, and this elaborate charade the woman went through to be able to run off with her new boyfriend, leaving her husband. When asked why she didn't just divorce him, the woman said she wouldn't (couldn't) because of religious reasons.

I can also remember the death threats sometime back against the lives of the two creators of South Park for defaming Islam (I know, 'it takes two guys to come up with that stuff?'). Everybody's a critic, I guess. 

Notice I'm not even mentioning the religious overtones fueling the bonfire of Roe vs Wade Revisited (mainly because I think women's reproductive rights are something women should determine) though I'd be happy if those of the religious persuasion would keep their rosaries off other people's ovaries.

I think so many different cultures around the world have embraced the idea of a deity because the ideal represents a unification of values and belief systems that, no matter the flavor or brand, have more in common sometimes than those who practice them. But I've grown old watching us shift from the idea that we were created in God's image and likeness to vice versa, which scares me more than I care to admit. 

Probably not my place to wonder, but if there are End Times, and they do arrive and all that which is prophesied does come to pass, who among us is going to stand before the angels and archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, the Thrones and Dominations, and explain to God, however you perceive Her/Him to be, exactly what we've been doing down here. 
That should be a hoot.

-bill kenny

You Can Stand Alone

Sometimes our brains play tricks on us with false associations like Santa Claus with Christmas and bunnies with Easter. Or when we talk about firing up barbecues to mark the unofficial start of summer on Memorial Day this Monday. Knowing but not apologizing for sounding like a grumpy old man, we should focus on what’s important about Memorial Day. And it doesn’t involve charcoal.

I've offered these thoughts before, and they still don’t mention baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, or a General Motors automobile. All of those are just some of what Memorial Day makes possible but should never be confused with the holiday itself.

At ten this Monday morning at The Memorial Park in Taftville, around the corner from the Knights of Columbus, there’s a remembrance service dedicated this year to Army Private First-Class David G. Phaneuf one of the twenty-three Taftville residents who gave their lives fighting in one of America's wars. Phaneuf died on February 25th, 1945, serving with the U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima.

The Peter Gallan American Legion Post 104 and the Frederick J. Sullivan Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2212 do a wonderful job of organizing this annual event. And while Taftville's Memorial Park isn't the biggest venue in the city, there's always room for those who attend and certainly room for one more. I always find time to attend, and I hope you will, too.

If tradition is any indicator, there will be remarks by local civic leaders as well as those who've served in uniform around the world in both war and peace and lived to come home to talk about it, as well as words of comfort from a member of our local clergy.

Whle there you may look around at the metal folding chairs, all neatly aligned facing the podium, and wonder how many of those who present last year lived to make it to this year. I know I do, and it catches me up short because memories of sacrifice only survive until the last person who remembers those sacrifices has passed.

But today, the mantra is 'what have you done for us lately?' And new enemies within and without, more formidable than any we have encountered before, require vigilance and sacrifice. We've become less tolerant and quicker to anger at what anyone who disagrees with us has to say. Memorial Day should remind us to believe in something bigger than ourselves.  

With apologies to Thomas Paine’s warnings about sunshine patriots and summer soldiers, these, too 'are the times to try men's (and women’s) souls.' Too many sacrificed their everything so that each of us could have something we can call our own. To be unappreciative and selfish instead of grateful and graceful for what we have is to dishonor their memories and their lives.  

As a reminder of this upcoming holiday (and beyond), let me share the seventy-four words with which Abraham Lincoln concluded his Second Inaugural Address. 

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
-bill kenny

That's Some Bad Hat, Harry

What did you want to be when you grew up? Taller? Thinner? Smarter? More Hair? Present. 

Sorry. forgot I was asking the questions. And how much of a full circle do you think you've lived already or could live (my life has been more of a pinball pattern truth to tell)?

Consider the life of Jonathan Searle who is carrying on a family tradition. 

Not this one. 

This one.

And just when you thought it was safe to read the New York Post.
-bill kenny

Play that Dead Band's Song Again

If you stopped by today looking for the profound, welcome to disappointment, population: you. Perhaps I can interest you in something more casual? I live in hope, I suppose.

Some days this stuff writes itself. Like today.

Enjoy every sandwich.
-bill kenny 

Channeling Mark Twain

One of my favorite put-downs is something/someone being described as 'exciting as listening to golf on the radio,' mainly because in my opinion, there's nothing exciting about golf, on the radio, off the radio, actually anywhere or anytime. 

I'm not alone in my underappreciation of golf, but decades ago, part of my job was to shoot and edit video reports on golf tournaments and that was actually both exciting and fun if not also arduous and exhausting. 

In all the times I covered the sport, I never, ever witnessed a hole-in-one so when I fell across a story about the niche industry that provides insurance coverage for them, I was excited.

How excited, you ask. C'mon, you already know the answer.
-bill kenny

On a Dark Dessert Highway

To quote extensively (and effusively) from Wikipedia,
"A mondegreen /ˈmɒndɪɡriːn/ is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning.^[1] Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense.^[2][3] 

"American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, writing that as a girl, when her mother read to her from Thomas Percy's 1765 book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, she had misheard the lyric "layd him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen" in the fourth line of the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray".

"The creation of mondegreens may be driven in part by cognitive dissonance, as the listener finds it psychologically uncomfortable to listen to a song and not make out the words. Steven Connor suggests that mondegreens are the result of the brain's constant attempts to make sense of the world by making assumptions to fill in the gaps when it cannot clearly determine what it is hearing. 

"Connor sees mondegreens as the "wrenchings of nonsense into sense".^[a] This dissonance will be most acute when the lyrics are in a language in which the listener is fluent.

"James Gleick claims that the mondegreen is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Without the improved communication and language standardization brought about by radio, he believes there would have been no way to recognize and discuss this shared experience.^[11] Just as mondegreens transform songs based on experience, a folk song learned by repetition often is transformed over time when sung by people in a region where some of the song's references have become obscure. 

"A classic example is "The Golden Vanity",^[12] which contains the line "As she sailed upon the lowland sea". British immigrants carried the song to Appalachia, where singers, not knowing what the term lowland sea refers to, transformed it over generations from "lowland" to "lonesome"."

But I enjoy the more musical ones myself, even if the original artists got them wrong. 
-bill kenny

"I'm Buzz Aldrin...

Of course, he did, and so, too, should you. This is World Bee Day, not to be confused with World Spelling Bee Day (cool your jets, LeVar). Though I think an argument can be made that our lives (and lifestyles) without pollinators would spell disaster, so there's that.

But you don't need scholarly tomes, a dab of pop music wisdom will do ya. 

I don't mean to be an alarmist but like so much else involving climate and environment, we're losing the luxury of time on making decisions to save our planet for ourselves and all those who will follow. Half-steps and half-measures will produce only half-assed results. 

Semi-carnally.
-bill kenny

Puck You, RISD

As an undergraduate on the banks of the Olde Raritan half a century ago, I followed Rutgers lacrosse, in the sense that when there were home games I went to where they played with a small group of acquaintances and a large amount of beer and got ossified watching the lacrosse team run around and do whatever lacrosse involves. 

I don't remember much about the games, or Rutgers, or most anything from that era of my life (which upon reflection often seems more like an error) except the drinking of large amounts of beer. I have concluded memory is over-rated. 

I mention all of that because I fell in love with this story from the moment I started reading it. 

And, yes for obvious reasons, you should be able to buy your very own Scrotie kit at Dick's.
-bill kenny

What If?

In case you wondered otherwise, this is my opinion based on what I perceive to be facts (your mileage may and probably will vary). A lot of not just my thinking about who we are and how we do business/live/school/shop/and all the other aspects of peopling has, I concede, been changed forever by the last two years of COVID and the Greek Alphabet of variants in our lives. 

Just wanted to put that out there in case you mistakenly thought you'd find 'the answer' in what follows. Sorry; as we used to say in the Air Force, 'if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' and before you ask, no, I'm not. 

As we've discovered, or should have thanks to projects like The Lofts at Ponemah Mills, Thermos on the Thames, and The Mill at Indian Leap Apartments, when we reimagine Industrial Age factory space for all ages and incomes, sometimes what we see depends on what we look at. 

And, yes, before this goes any further, I am willing to concede that you can accomplish a lot more not just in Norwich, but anywhere, with a bright smile, a big idea, and a bag full of money than you can with just the smile and the idea. As a matter, my evil twin, Skippy, highly recommends making sure the bag is full to the top

That said, back in 2010, we who lived here approved a bond to foster and fuel development in Chelsea. No one in Norwich was more enthused about that bond proposal or more strident and vociferous (some suggested 'obnoxious') in urging its adoption than I.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, including the annual Shakespeare Festival, that help determine the gap between the promise and the actual performance when we speak of the number of new businesses established (and still extant), the expansion of the City's Grand List, and the growth in revenues for Norwich Public Utilities. 

How we've done, as I mentioned earlier, has a lot to do with our frame of mind. Could things be better (however you define better), sure; could they be worse (in light of the last two years, how would that be possible?). I'm not peddling sour grapes, just the w(h)ine of observable facts.

A wise man (well, a wise guy) once told me there are six phases to a project: Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Panic, Search for the Guilty, Punishment of the Innocent, and Praise and  Honors for the Non-Participants, From where I sit, we expend too much energy and emotion at the Searching for the Guilty phase at the first sign that our project isn't going according to Hoyle. 

As a city, we do great beginnings but as we press on and approach the middle our resolve seems to falter, and too often we start looking for the exits to bail out or for scapegoats to blame. Here in the third decade of the 21st Century, Norwich needs to be mobile, agile, and hostile (in the last instance I'm talking about a degree of self-confidence in ourselves that may look like arrogance to others. Between us, living here for thirty years I still don't see the self-assurance we should have). 

Trying to re-engineer and rebuild a perfect downtown one building at a time (from Burnham Square to the Carroll Building where Main meets Water Street) keeps coming up short, I'd argue, because we always run out of patience before we run out of money, and then we run out of money. But here's the thing: it's okay; we can try again. 

The infusion of money from the American Rescue Plan, as earmarked by the City Manager and the City Council, can be the start of a process that's partly economic development and, quite frankly self-help. We don't have to be great to start, we just have to start to be great.

We should be proud of our schools and teachers and our terrific public safety professionals and volunteers as well as world-class public works and public utilities infrastructure. The thing we who live here really need to start to believe in is ourselves. Let's spend one moment less moaning and mooning over what we don't have each day, and one moment more celebrating what we do have.   

The world keeps changing and we need to do the same because unless we keep moving forward we will inevitably fall behind. Entropy or Excellence. We can remain prisoners of our past, or choose to be the architects of our future.
-bill kenny

I Just Read the Daily News

We've all heard the expression, 'no news is good news.' I've never really understood the logic behind that conclusion, unless its opposite is fake news in which case, yes, please with a double helping by all means, and have reached an age where I doubt proof is forthcoming anytime soon. 

Anyway. I'm not sure if this is no news, good news, or something else.  

In an increasingly unstable world, all I can say to Akihiko and Hatsune is good luck.
-bill kenny

Our Next "Mission Accomplished" Banner

I am, as those who have met me can attest, the most caustically cynical person if not on Earth than at the very least in this hemisphere. 

If our paths have yet to cross, let me congratulate you on your good fortune but also point out the laws of probability being what they are, your luck is bound to run out at some point. Thank you in advance for being a good sport.

I was out walking yesterday afternoon on a beautiful day here in The Rose of New England (you are familiar with New England, I hope; we are where the history comes from) and as I made my way around Chelsea Parade, just steps from my house, I saw the flag was at half-staff. 

I think I felt a shiver of pride (did your cynicism warning light just come on? It should have), that at a time when we cannot and will not agree on basic human rights for every single person; where we've decided poverty is the fault of the poor, themselves, as a punishment for not being wealthy; when we've reparsed the meaning of The New Colossus to apply only to those enumerated in the Constitution (or was it the Magna Carta?); where worries about propping up Wall Street overwhelm efforts to rescue Main Street; when lies on a scale and scope not heard since Goebbels was doing public relations for the TeppichKauer fueled ignorant, ill-informed, and aggrieved mobs of almost all white men to storm our Capitol for the first time since the War of 1812; and prostituted our mass media to create echo chambers that allow us to demonize everyone and anyone with whom we disagree from the comfort of our own living rooms, my fellow Americans, we've found something to both celebrate while blaming all those we already hate!. 

It's something we did to, rather than for, ourselves because, let's face it, there are entirely too many of 'those people' (and you know the ones I'm talking about) so we more or less evened out the odds by quarreling and quibbling for so long all while doing as little as possible for as long as possible to address the horror of Coronavirus-19 that it has now killed one million of us. And shows no sign of slowing much less ceasing. 

No wonder we're so proud to call ourselves the greatest country on earth.
-bill kenny

Diamonds and Rust

I'm not a big fan of the neuralgia of nostalgia. At a tick over seventy (still within the speed limit in some states), I realize there's more in the mirror than up ahead but I don't spend a lot of time looking back because that's not where I'm heading.

All of that is a preface and prelude for a short chapter out of the story of my life from over a half-century ago and I wish I could say it makes me smile, but it doesn't but there's always a chance it will with you. 

As with all old stories, it starts with old technology, in this case, America On-Line, AOL. Remember when these were the three happiest words in the English language?  Strange days indeed. Did you know at one point AOL bought Time Warner and seemed to be unstoppable? Yeah, that's another story for another time.  Now, like Netscape, Prodigy, Blackberry, and Palm Pilots, it's another Ozymandias. 

Except, Percy, I still have an AOL email account. I've forgotten about it more often in the last decades than I've remembered it, but it's still around and still receives mail. Not that long ago, and sort of the precipitant for today's meanderings, I had an email from one of the two preparatory schools I attended for high school.  

My father was headmaster of the Lower School and I was, I always assumed, a scholarship child in the Upper School. I (we, my dad and I) commuted from New Jersey and I think aside from George B, who lived in Brooklyn, everyone else lived in Manhattan. That actually changed junior year when my father recruited the very tall son of a fellow who got on the train with us in Metuchen every weekday to attend school and play basketball. Not necessarily in that order as it turned out. 

Lots of things happened fifty-two years ago and among them was my dad leaving his position with the school and our family moving to Rhinebeck, New York, for what felt like about an hour but was at least a week to ten days, and then we moved to East Rutherford, New Jersey, where he took a position at a prep school in West Orange where I, as a sort of sullen BOGO I guess, completed my senior year. That prep school closed after my class graduated and I suspect the real estate overlooking New York City fetched a pretty penny. 

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago in the AOL mail was an invitation from my first prep school to attend a fiftieth reunion celebration that was rescheduled because of COVID-19. By the time, I opened the e-mail the date of the event had passed, not that I would have been even vaguely tempted, but what struck me was a photo attached to the email and how many of the names I could match to the faces in the photo.

And how even farther away than half a century it actually all felt.
-bill kenny  

Love What You've Done with the Place

One of my favorite sentiments if not songs from The Beatles is George Harrison's contribution to SGT Pepper, "Within You, Without You." There's something reassuring (if not also a little ego-deflating) about the idea that 'life goes on within you and without you.' 

For someone like me who has a rather inflated opinion of himself, it always catches me up a little short to realize how much of what exists beyond my control, temporal or otherwise, existed before I arrived on the scene and will continue to do so after I exit stage right, or left.

So as sobering as this article was for me and my ego, taking it to its logical extreme with this little play-at-home extension was truly soul-crushing.   

If it's all the same to you, I'll show myself out now and will create an absence similar to the hole in a bucket of water when you pull your fist out.
-bill kenny

I Know What Word You Thought I Typed

WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined blah, blah, blah, awful stuff, blah, blah, whenever it's Friday the 13th and fear of blah, blah, blah. The End. 

C'mon, none of us ever read disclaimers all the way through anyway so I figured I'd offer you a mock disclaimer, a slice of that mock apple pie made with Ritz crackers, and a tall frosty glass of something other than milk from a cow to wash it all down. Mmmmm. You got a little something on the side of your upper lip there, sunshine.

We've got the most highly developed brain of any species on this planet but we're also the only species who hate and fear one another for reasons such as different religions, skin colors, or political beliefs. So if any other species has the gift of speech (and I guess, the ability to read as well and a thumb that works a scroll ball) now might be a good time for one or more of them to ask aloud, 'how come the bi-peds are the crown of creation., anyway?'

On top of all those misplaced prides and prejudices (you don't suppose Jane is related to Steve, by any chance? I'm trying to imagine Fitzwilliam Darcy having a discussion with Oscar Goldman) we have the mother of all irrationalities, Friday the Thirteenth and the fear of it. 

Of course, it's only irrational if you don't put any stock into any of the literature or folk tales you've heard since you were young. There are seven-point two katrillion jillion websites (a number I just made up and have you ever known me to lie to you?) on every aspect of this day and date combination, and one's as good as the other, or as bad, depending on how you feel.

You might have a lucky number, or a special letter, or maybe a pony ride for your birthday (you ba$tard!), so far be it from me to pooh-pooh, pshaw, or tsk-tsk (I love when I can use classic ancient words; I am, after all, wearing Old Spice. And you thought I was kidding about the pony. And STOP clicking the link!) your values or beliefs. If they help you place your universe in order, that's fine.

I put all the cash in my wallet in order by denomination (Catholics go first, obviously) and then in sequence based on the serial number. My wife used to find this quirk endearing; now, not so much. She's helped me manage my compulsion by making sure I have very little folding money. Everyone standing behind me in lines everywhere as I used to put the bills in order is very grateful.

In a way, I guess it's counter-intuitive to wish you a happy Friday the Thirteenth especially since we'd be here all day on what a 'happy' one might look like. I'd say enjoy, perhaps savor it, as it's the only one we'll have in 2022. I don't know if Hallmark has cards, but, fingers crossed, I wouldn't be surprised. 
-bill kenny 

Redefining Dark Matter

I think we've all heard the expression, 'shit from Shinola.'  I have no idea where it originated or how it came into common (or frequent) usage. I think the best thing about it is it's helped nearly normalize a four-letter word that our folks told us to never use when we were small. As if height had anything to do with it. 

Speaking of expressions, we've all also heard 'death and taxes,' but as I've since learned there's another pairing, a cause and effect if you will, that's as inevitable and unavoidable. 

Buckle up, buttercup; this is a fascinating but disquieting read.  

As Kate well knows, though all of us are full of it, none of us thought you could stack it that high.
-bill kenny

Soft Shell or Hard Sell

The more things change, the more they remain the same. I first offered what follows almost a dozen years ago and it was, at best, my imperfect recollection of a really clever conversation that had happened upstairs in what was The Bulletin's offices in the late-90s when they were Franklin Street. 

The often ferocious reactions to the attempted reclamation and repurposing of 331 Main Street, aka The Y, is what sparked my memory. Anyway, from long ago:

Dave and Dan were standing on the dock near Howard Brown Park, crabbing. They'd known one another for many years and had watched as their city, so bustling in their youth, quietly disappeared one business, one restaurant, and one block at a time leaving nothing behind for anyone. For them, crabbing was more than relaxation, it was a diversion to take their minds off their city's troubles.

Except Dave had other troubles as well. As quickly as he caught crabs and turned around to drop them into his twenty-gallon catch bucket, one of the crabs already in the bucket would make a break for it. Dave spent almost as much time chasing fugitive crabs skittering down the dock and back into the river as he did fishing for them.

Dan took his crabbing at a very different pace. He worked with a small hoop net and bait cage, catching no more than one single crab at a time and when he did catch a crab he'd spend minutes turning it over, examining it from every angle, holding it up to the light, looking at the cheliped, the apron, and the walking legs. Sometimes, after concluding the examination, Dan would drop the crab into a child's sand bucket that was his catch bucket and the most recent captive would settle down in the water coming to rest on top of another unfortunate crab.

At other times, Dan, when he'd finished examining his catch, would simply throw the crab back into the river, rebait his trap and lower his hoop net over the side of the dock and resume crabbing.

As the hours wore on, Dave spent more and more of his time struggling to keep any of the crabs he'd caught in his dockside catch bucket, often first hearing the lid clatter as it was pushed off by one of the crabs, then chasing it down the dock before, with one final leap, it eluded his grasp and reached the freedom of the river. Dan watched Dave struggle, sometimes slowly shaking his head in sympathy, and, as the shadows grew longer in the afternoon sun, he offered his friend some advice.

"You're doing it all wrong," Dan said. Dave stared at Dan for a moment before finally pointing out, "It looks to me like we're both doing the exact same thing so I don't understand what I could be doing wrong that you're not. Point in fact, Dan, I've caught a LOT more crabs than you have but I'm not able to keep them because they never give up trying to escape and eventually get away!"

"Yeah," said Dan, "that's your problem. It's what you're catching."
Dave, by now, nearly furious could feel the gorge rise in his veins as he practically shouted at Dan, "how can there be a problem with what I'm catching? I'm catching crabs-you're catching crabs. We're both catching crabs!" 

"True enough," Dan agreed, "but you're catching all kinds of crabs. I'm only catching Norwich crabs." Dave stared at his friend for a long time. "What do you mean, you're catching 'Norwich crabs?' What the hell is a Norwich crab and how could that possibly make a difference?" Dave demanded to know. 

"It's the most critical difference," said Dan. "With Norwich crabs, when you have one and put him in the catch bucket if he tries to get out, all the other Norwich crabs hold on to him very tightly and keep him from ever succeeding."

When I was told this story now over twenty-five years ago, I thought it was extremely funny. It never occurred to me that it was also true (but it doesn't have to be). 

If we, and by "we" I mean you and me, whoever and wherever we are, don't learn to let go of the hurt and anger from previous failures and choose instead to reach for rewards, despite the risks, at our next opportunity, be it economic development, learning new things like clog dancing, or letting someone into our lives, this story goes from being very funny to being very sad all the way to being our last story and the one that becomes our epitaph. 

Trust me on this one.
-bill kenny 

Imagine a Glass Onion in an Octopus's Garden

I made my living for decades with words (and yes, that probably explains why I had to set up a GoFundMe page in order to retire), but between us, I have no words to describe this.

Aside from surreally beautiful.
-bill kenny  

Som man säger på svenska: Get Back, The Sequel

I live in a house filled with IKEA furniture. From our earliest years as young marrieds in central Germany, my wife and I shopped in IKEA, in Wallau as I recall. There was, and remains, something very 'this is not furniture like my parents have' about what IKEA offers, and for me, that's an inherent part of the appeal.

Of course, grabbing some Swedish meatballs and lingonberries is now one of the attractions when we travel to New Haven to our current nearest IKEA store, though there's plenty of room (with parking) for one, in my opinion where I live in Norwich, Connecticut (and if you're an IKEA site selector, contact these folks to talk about some of the places you could set up shop right here in the Rose of New England). If it helps seal the deal, folks around here love lingonberries (or will once they know what they are). 

Anyway.
As it happens IKEA is not just a great place to buy furniture, it may also be in the running as a great place to sell the furniture you bought from them that you no longer want or need. Or as they could say in Stockholm, Begagnad Reinkarnation (though I'm guessing they probably don't). 

I can see a black-market springing up for previously-used Allen wrenches or as they apparently really do say, insexnyckel. De där fräcka minxarna!
-bill kenny

You're Tethered to Another

I think my wife needs a new mirror and perhaps that's what I should have gotten her for Mother's Day. In the mirror she currently has, she sees what four-plus decades of life with a loon has brought her and what raising two children born in one culture but who grew up in another can do for the lines on her face, the corners of her mouth and her state of mind. 

I think the most telling is when you do so much of it by yourself because the man you married is still sorting out who he is. She's way too hard on herself. I can clearly see, even without my glasses, the most beautiful woman in the world, and I cannot imagine her as anyone else, ever.

When my wife told me she was pregnant with Patrick, our oldest, I was so taken with 'becoming a father' it took me forever to realize the woman I had loved and married was also becoming someone else-someone who could better prepare our son and later our daughter, Michelle, for the world. 

I remember all the small shopping excursions to map where every element of the nursery could be purchased (she was reluctant about buying anything before the births, the tug of cultural superstition being what it was), the calculations and deliberations on what to buy, how many of it to purchase and where to store it/them, and my complete failure to accurately imagine how our lives would change with the birth of a child.

Man Smart, Woman Smarter especially in my case, and thank goodness for that. I can remember Patrick at five or six, clutching a toy in the Wallau Toys "R" Us in West Germany (they had over 55 stores in a reunited Germany; I never got to see Geoffrey in Lederhosen for which I'm grateful), walking past me to ask Sigrid if he might be allowed to take it home and after she agreed and he'd placed it in the cart, I said to him, 'hey buddy, you could've asked me-I'm your Dad, you know.' And he agreed then added, 'but she makes all the decisions' and continued walking down the aisle.

It's true and more than about toys and I wouldn't want it any other way. My wife has treated skinned knees and broken hearts, has reviewed countless hours of homework assignments, repaired 'but those are my favorite jeans' so expertly the kids across the street thought they were store-bought and not only gave us a family, she made us a family. Probably as true in your house as well, my two children and I look to my wife as the fingers on the hand look to the thumb. I can never accurately portray who she is and convey what she means to me.

So today is the day we officially celebrate the wives and mothers we love with the help of the greeting card folks, the candy companies, and all the florists (and now there are candy flowers, edible arrangements-talk about shortening the distance) and if we're very lucky, they know we know that one day is not enough--and a lifetime together is still so often too little.
-bill kenny

Back Then the Alphabet Only Had Fourteen Letters

This is from a long time ago about a time even longer ago(er). Wow. I called it: 

Sayonara Kid, Have a Nice Day

I cleaned out my work desk yesterday for the delivery of a new one. I know what you’re thinking, ‘how empty is this guy’s life that he’s writing about getting a new desk?’ You’re the one reading about it, so you tell me. Et Tu, Brute?

The desk was in the office I first worked in when I arrived from Germany in the fall of 1991 when I wasn’t sure of where I lived (let me clarify: I knew it was Norwich; I just didn’t know the name of the city). I told people I lived in Norwalk because I'd heard of that place, an answer that got some stares and glares when in response to ‘how long does it take you to get here?’ I’d answer ‘about twenty minutes.’ 

That answer always got me the rejoinder, that 'well, take it easy-we don't have the autobahn around here.' (like anyone could mistake two lanes of I-95 North and South for the A3 nach Koln.)

At the time, I couldn’t understand the looks of incredulity as people offered me that advice. I’ve since become inured to them. Point in fact for about two weeks, I couldn’t find the house I lived in after dark, because I got lost. I kept that to myself since I didn't think that had anything to do with how fast I was going.

The desk was, aside from me, the oldest thing in the office and as the years went by, it filled with the detritus of the decade-long daily grind. Actually, I just remembered that wasn't true-the computer on the desk was the oldest thing (third oldest to be honest) and was a 286 something or other with, wait for it, Windows 1.0. No lie.

In the various drawers, I found foolscap with notes and names of people from a decade and a half ago with cryptic additional information that may have once had value but is now long lost and gone. Clearing out a bottom drawer I surprised myself with two framed photos of my children from ‘back in the day’ when they were very much children in primary grades at school and these were the portraits that were done on Picture Day. 

I hadn’t realized how much I missed those kids until I saw them again and smiled because I’d put the portraits away for safe-keeping, so safe I’d lost sight of them. I took them home so my wife could preserve them as I can't even do that right.

I was digging through another drawer, in theory to clear it out, but actually to dump its contents into a container while the old desk goes away and the new desk is moved in. Then the contents of the container will be emptied into the new desk drawer for the remainder of this century or longer and we go round and round and round in the circle game. 

On a small piece of paper, neatly cut out from the return corner of an envelope, I found the address of my Mom’s brother, Uncle Jim, whom we buried two years ago. It stung to realize I’ve been so self-absorbed that staring at it might have been my first time thinking about him since his passing.

New things are nice-in moderation. I have a new office and with it came some new responsibilities and I appreciate greatly the concern the people I work for have for me in going out and getting ergonomically spiffy (I don't think that's the actual term, but could be) furnishings to perhaps encourage me to continue to work for them. 

Like so many across this country, in light of crash and burns in a number of retirement plan investments, I'm now signed up for WUD, so no worries. And I have no life (free-will decision, mine) so having a new and empty desk drawer to put the memories in is only necessary if you make some. Otherwise, I'll be keeping my pencil case there.
-bill kenny