The Rub

I spent decades getting up at three in the morning to go to work. No one, aside from myself, made me do that. I retired four years ago today and no matter how late I stay up (realizing that at seventy 'late' is a relative term), I cannot sleep in after seven or so in the morning. 

It's not the dreams or lack of them that leads me to awaken. It's just who I am. And as much as I admire clock radios et al that have snooze buttons, I have no idea of how to use them to say nothing of why. 

I'm beyond a Carpe Diem kind of guy; I wanna grab the day by the throat and throttle it. 

The world goes on around us, eyes open or closed; so keep 'em open and on the prize.
-bill kenny

America Is a Dream the Whole World Owns

Today is the last Wednesday of June 2022. No more and certainly no less. It will never come again but I don't think any of us are all that concerned about that. 

You just double-checked your calendar (don't deny it, I saw you) and your eyes darted to the right counting the days because we are just about to begin another three-day holiday weekend, in this case, Independence Day, celebrated this year on Monday. 

There are a lot of traditional activities on this holiday, not that reading these words is in any danger of becoming part of that, and if you've heard me write some of this before, you've been standing too close to the keyboard. 

Before it gets really crazy busy over the next few days with holiday preparations perhaps each of us should look in the mirror and then take a look around at the country we received from our parents and their parents and which we hope to give to our children and theirs. There’s been as much gained as there has been lost through the tears and years and some of what has changed has been better and some of it has only been different. The dilemma is in deciding which and what.

By many accounts the heat was oppressive and tempers were hot in Philadelphia two hundred and fifty-six years ago as malcontents and troublemakers (in the eyes of His Majesty, George III, King of England) gathered to refine, define and catalog their grievances and complaints with the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.

Articulating what they called our ‘unalienable rights’ to include ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ the founders of our republic, who did not agree on very much except that the present state of affairs such as they were in 1776 could not continue, concluded the only way forward as a people on this largely unexplored, new continent whose size and wealth was not yet known, was to break with the past and declare independence from King and Crown.

And out of all of that has come all of this. And along the way, the original magic and meaning have been muffled by backyard pool parties, holiday car sales, and chicken fried steaks on the barbecue.

Our politics is spirited even if our interest isn't; we confuse partisan and patriot far too frequently and our understanding of issues is muddled and muddied because too many of us have created media echo chambers where all we ever hear/see and read is what we choose, not what we should. 

And, again, it’s not that we all agree with who we are and what we are doing. It’s been reported we haven’t been this divided morally, politically, and socially as a country since the Civil War. And that should frighten us more than it does and galvanize us into redoubling our efforts to reach out to one another, and yet we continue to shrug our shoulders.

Some say never have so many had so much of life’s material rewards but others contend that never have so many struggled to hold on to what they have. There's a lot to be said on both sides of that argument and there’s even more that we're not hearing because we’re just not very good anymore at listening to one another.

What may be missing in our nation is our sense of self, our confidence and belief in our own abilities to forever adopt, adapt and overcome. We had those traits at our Founding and I would hope each, in our own way, might again rediscover them, both for those whose inheritance we are and for those whose promise is yet to be. 

Happy 4th of July and may the 5th and all the days that follow be even more so.
-bill kenny

But It's Darker than You Know

One of my favorite words in German is schadenfreude, rejoicing at the misfortune of others (my next favorite is muckefuck, which is dialect for terrible coffee though I like it more for what it sounds like than what it means). 

As bad as our lives may be at any given time, we can take solace that someone, somewhere has it worse than us. And that thought is more than comforting, it can be a source of delight. 

I've reached an age where I look at almost all of the news of the day as either distortion or distraction. And for MAGAts who argue the 6 January hearings are the latter in terms of 'the hordes of illegals storming the border' (at least on Fauz Gnus or metaphorically), funnily enough, I regard your assertion as a distraction. Just me or have you noticed that almost everything that follows the phrase, funnily enough, isn't actually or usually funny at all?

So our All News All the Time channels are actually All (or Mostly) Noise as part of our new Roman Empire with Gluten-free Bread and Animal-Cruelty-Free Circuses. Doubt me? Spend a day watching the wheels without getting caught under them and we'll compare notes.
-bill kenny

You Say Goodbye

When I lived in Germany, like my German family I answered the phone by giving my phone number. While living on this side of the pond before joining the Air Force, my parents had us answer the phone as many adults of that era did with, 'This is the Kennys.' 

Just about universally, we answer a ringing phone with 'Hello,' and give it no thought at all (I may only be speaking for myself here). Until now.  

Thanks, Ellen.

As for the farewell part, I think adieu is preferable to ahoy, but that is all I will say about that.
-bill kenny 

My Warm Coats Outnumber Them

I've read a great deal of online writing about the impact of the pandemic and the preventative measures undertaken to thwart it have had on social intercourse. Quite frankly I don't get it; any of it.

I had someone tell me not that long ago that they hadn't had a hug in over a year. My first impulse was to quickly (a little too quickly admittedly) step back just in case there was any sort of expectation that I would deliver one. Hard nope on that. 

I am a fan of humanity in the abstract I'm just not really a fan of specifics. I've never been a big handshaker (more of a pepper shaker to be honest) and aside from my spouse and two children and my own brothers and sisters, I'm not a huger or a mugger. I'm more of a shrugger.

I have more 'friends' online than in the real world and have been grateful for the last decade or so that social media exists because it gives me someplace to be and a forum to be in. I didn't have friends from work that I saw outside of work because I didn't have any at work. 

For the most part and true for close to five decades, the people at work tolerated me and I reciprocated. They paid me and I worked for them. Good enough for both of us and, to be honest, much fairer than I deserved.  

I'd never heard of Dunbar's Number until I read this and now all I can say is the only Dunbar I know is a friend of Captain Yossarian from Catch-22. Yossarian is actually one of my heroes and I'd say 'real-life heroes' except he's a figment of Joseph Heller's imagination. 

As for friends, your mileage may vary (when does it not?) but if you're unhappy in your skin with your own company what makes you think you'll do better with strangers who are, strictly speaking, friends you've not yet met.
-bill kenny

Welcome to 1922

(Channeling Rod Serling): Meet Martin Niemöller who had a crisis of conscience almost a century ago on another continent at another time. And who still foreshadowed the USA 2022.

No idea who he was or what he was talking part? You're probably not alone. Those who do not learn from history are fated to repeat it. Another argument for why, with some luck, we'll eliminate history from our schools unless it's restricted to studying the Bible. 

Elections have consequences. Maybe Trump was on to something when he wanted to use the January 6 2021 insurrection as the pretense for eliminating them. After all, history is written by the winners but pretty soon no one who might read it will understand it.
-bill kenny

Napoleon Had Elba (Briefly)

I think it's fatigue, perhaps from the endless roar of head noise masquerading as our news cycle with one catastrophe after the other chasing across the lower part of the television screen. 

From Russia raping Ukraine, the North Koreans (on the verge of starvation) launching ICBMs into the Sea of Japan probably in violation of a fishing treaty, a school/house of worship/a health care facility being ground zero for the latest exercise of unbridled ammosexuality, or the continuing to escalate cost of living in these United States, my state of mind is such that the last thing I want, need, or desire is the incessant barrage of self-aggrandizing email from The Former Guy, #Pantload 45. 

I get four to seven emails from him and Don Jr every day. Hawking golf balls (so on-brand I wonder where the dead animal shot with a large caliber automatic weapon is), something called Trump Gold Cards, and every form of tchotchke under the sun. Every email is a money hustle. How can I miss him if he never goes away? 

He works harder to raise money for himself now than he did for the four years he supposedly worked for the rest of us in the White House. What does he need it for, lawyers' retainers? Let's ask Rudy Guiliani or Sidney Release the Kraken about billable hours.

I know, grifters gonna grift but who the fuqq responds to his pleas by sending him their money? And don't tell me no one does because if that were the case these emails would cease to be sent. Jetzt hatte ich die Nase voll. At the bottom of the most recent electronic epistle:

I think the Evangelical closing was a nice touch, don't you? What do you wanna bet that I will continue to hear from the Mango Mussolini and his Minions, even after all the tumult of the televised hearings because we are a nation with the attention span of a goldfish that chases the Next Big Story and one will surely come along. 

Soon Faux Gnus will break into their regularly scheduled screeds with an update about Amber Heard leading a caravan of illegal Green New Deal immigrants across the southern border with Bill Gates' fake meat from Peach Tree Dishes that not even Gaspacho Police armed with Jewish Space Lasers can stop. We haven't seen this kind of carnage since the Bowling Green Massacre, or Obama's brown suit. Oh, the humanity!
-bill kenny

The Elite of the Elite

I never got Baywatch, the television show. 

It started on the air, I think, while I was living on another continent and by the time it caught on even over there, I was heading back to this side of the pond, and aside from helping David Haselhoff while he was looking for Frieda (after that performance some people wanted to bring back The Wall but make it three meters higher; no accounting for taste, I guess), by the time the ebb and flow of the series ended, I'd watched maybe thirty-seconds total. 

Intending no offense, the movie always seemed to be an answer to a question no one had asked; it and I have agreed to see other people and to smell what other folks are cooking.  

I mention all of this not just because I had a random (and somewhat randy) thought about Louie Anderson's daughter and how everything's better when wet but because of this news nugget from Los Angeles Magazine.

I'm retired but perhaps for you, as Robert Plant wailed oh so many years ago, "there's still time to change the road you're one." Or not.
-bill kenny

A Rose (Arts Festival) By Any Other Name

After a two-year COVID-19 absence that felt a LOT longer, the Rose Arts Festival, a combination of “grassy park by day and city streets by night” offering music, art, road races, and more fun per square foot than we’ve had in these parts in many a day, the Rose Arts Festival, returns this Saturday morning.

Chelsea Parade will be the epicenter for daytime Rose Arts Festival activities and, probably, just about the most populous (if not popular) place in this part of the state Saturday starting at half-past eight with both a 5 and 10K fun run (registration details here) beginning at the Norwich Free Academy along with a pancake breakfast (I like to think of the three events as a Sneakers and Syrup Triathlon, but I might be the only one doing that).

In the spirit of the festival’s return (and because I don’t have my running shoes laced up), let me reprise some previous rhapsodizing about the attractions, activities, importance, and just plain wonderful time waiting for us all, hopefully under cooperative and sunny summer skies.

As you probably remember from previous festivals, the biggest challenge (after finding a place to park) is deciding among dozens (and more) arts and crafts vendors; participating in and/or cheering on those taking part in the Budding Artist, Culinary, and Floral competitions (you can get more information and sign up here ); admiring the various art exhibitions; enjoying practically non-stop (from two stages) music of every genre; and chowing down on the offerings from a still-expanding roster of food vendors. 

Long story short, there will be hours and hours (and hours) of music, exhibits, demonstrations, magic shows, and art. Yeah, it’s a tough life, right? Remember: Fun is NOT optional, it is inevitable; so, consider yourself warned and prepare accordingly.

When it comes to listening to all the live music on tap (and here’s a current listing of those scheduled), in addition to the performances starting at eleven in the morning at Chelsea Parade, as the sun slowly sinks in the West, the Rose Arts Festival moves to Downtown After Dark, with more music in more places than your ears can ever imagine with nearly a dozen more venues throughout Down City starting at seven o’clock in the evening and going until sometime Sunday (I suspect), which is bad news for those who persist in insisting that there's nothing ever going on in downtown (You can keep saying it of course, but by sunrise Sunday everyone will know it’s not true).

Lost in all the music, food, arts and crafts, and fun for the whole family, reacquainting with neighbors from whom we’ve spent years social-distancing, and reconnecting with friends and family (‘so that’s what you look like without a mask’ my circle will say; ‘can you put it back on now and quickly?’), is this one-day celebration is powered by a coalition of volunteers and city departments and officials who took it upon themselves to throw all of us a party. Somehow, saying ‘thank you’ doesn’t seem like enough, does it?

So, if you've been waiting to celebrate the start of summer and the city of Norwich, the Rose Arts Festival Saturday is your chance to do both. Enjoy! 
-bill kenny

Too Short Here and Too Soon Gone

I suspect I'm not alone in wanting, waiting, and wishing for summer, whose arrival says the calendar is today. Except, I actually savor the anticipation of spring becoming summer because I know from seven decades of experience just how quickly summer becomes autumn, and then winter returns. 

Without harshing your buzz, every day until late December from here on out will have just a little bit less daylight than its predecessor. Knowing that I look at today with one laughing and one crying eye. 

If it's sunny, I'll be wearing shades so you won't see my tears.
-bill kenny

A Song for Everyone

 Lift Every Voice and Sing

Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land
Our native land.

-bill kenny

It Won't Be Like This For Long

Another at least twice-told tale. Consider yourself warned.

True story from so long ago: Patrick is our only child. He and I are driving from our home in Offenbach to my work in Frankfurt am Main. He is about three or so in the back seat of our car, in his car seat. 

The car is waiting for the light to change at the intersection of Eschenheimer Landstrasse and Adickesallee, just a block down from the old Frankfurt cemetery. "You know what?" he asked me, in German (as that's all we spoke), looking out the side window at a kebab-laden or a trinkhalle, "if Mom had married someone else, I would have a different father."
Thanks for playing, indeed.

Both of my brothers, Kelly and Adam, are fathers, so Happy Father's Day to them and to you, even if you're not one of my brothers. All three of us are fathers without a reference library as our own father passed away over forty thirty years ago and, quite frankly, set an example before his passing that I suspect none of us would have been interested in following.

I don't know if either of them has, in the course of their own families, had moments where they've wondered 'what would Dad have done?' I had a few, but not as many as being the oldest, perhaps, I should have had. My wife and I are married for going on forty-five years, and all but about eleven minutes of that are because of her hard work and certainly NOT mine. We have two children, a son and a daughter who are grown-ups themselves.

I don't have happy memories of interaction with my Dad and learned many years later he could have said the same about his relationship with his father. I grew up thinking somehow I was the screw-up and judging from the caustic comments, I wasn't alone. 

I was numb, literally, after we learned my wife was pregnant with Patrick because I feared I would forge the next link in that chain, but that fear evaporated in the first moments of his life on this earth and while his sister later brought her own challenges (how could someone so tiny be so insanely defiant I used to wonder as she would glare up at me, no higher than my knees it seemed, and tell me 'no' for hours on end), I kept coming back to Freshman Orientation at Dad's College: Help Them Do Well and Be Happy.

I've since discovered, as have probably all fathers, that it is pretty easy (especially in hindsight) and not unlike the lesson of Dad's College. You can't do too much about the skinned knees or the first true loves that break hearts but tell yourself, and your child, 'this, too, shall pass' because you know it will even when they know it won't. 

All you can wish for your son or daughter is that they are well and happy-two conditions for which they, themselves are most responsible. I used to fret that their father, unlike the parents of their friends, couldn't afford cars for them to drive in high school, ski holidays, or wardrobes from A & F, wasting so much of my energy on pointless worry since both of them grew up never missing what they never had.

Today, Father's Day, both of our children live lives very much their own and have come to accept that, in the heart of their dotty Dad, they will always be his kids. And should the day come they choose to have children, I think (or hope) they'll have good memories from their own childhood to draw upon and smile.
-bill kenny

There's a Feeling that's Lying Here Sleeping

I made the acquaintance a number of years ago of a former enlisted U. S. Navy mass communications specialist (back in the day they were either photographers or journalists and then they became both), Drew, who reinvented his passion for time-lapse photography and videography into a very remunerative business. 

Be warned you can spend forever here admiring his work.  

One of the things it's done is whet my appetite for other artists who work in visual arts employing and deploying time-lapse as their desired means of expression. In my unqualified opinion, there's something even more magical about everyday objects when the lens and focus slow down and also compress the timeline so the flow is like a river. 

As kids, we used to help my dad plant his garden behind the house with eleventeen million kinds of tomatoes. When I became a dad myself, I enlisted the help of our two children in the tomato patch in our backyard. 

Truth to tell, I never liked eating them all that much but I loved growing them. 
-bill kenny

A Little Camouflage and Glue

Fifty years ago today, politics was turned upside down. At the time it seemed like a bad moment for democracy but hindsight suggests it was one of the few shining ones of the last half-century and history itself suggests we may never see a more active and engaged media and mobilized citizenry as we did at that time. 

A half-century ago while on his regular security sweep Frank Wills discovered a lock had been tampered with on a door in the Watergate Office building preventing the door from closing, He closed the door after removing the tape that had been placed across the hasp and continued on his rounds. 

When he returned, the tape had been reapplied. He called the police and what had started out as a third-class burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters became the undoing of the Presidency of Richard Nixon. 

The expression "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes" has been often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, as well as Thomas Jefferson. Scholars suspect it's most likely a variant of a line from Jonathan Swift: "Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it." Watergate is when it started; when it stops is anyone's guess.

And in another fifty years, based on so much casual acceptance of lies as part of the price and cost of politics, no one will remember June 17,1972, or January 6, 2021. Our progress might be considered by some to be truly breathtaking.
-bill kenny

Stop Steering Your Life to Avoid Surprises

Being a grown-up is being consumed by lists and still not actually having any or enough of them.  It's much like planned spontaneity; simultaneously a goal and a contradiction. 

What follows is not mine though I wish I'd found it about fifty years ago when it might have done me some good.  As it is, maybe it'll do you some good and that would be a good start, sort of like starting The Wave at a ballpark when the home team is getting clobbered. 

And when you've gone through the list, check it again and pick a favorite. You will have a favorite, but you may not know that right away. 

Not that you asked but I have two favorites (my blog, my rules): "90% of everything is crap. If you think you don’t like opera, romance novels, TikTok, country music, vegan food, NFTs, keep trying to see if you can find the 10% that is not crap." And this one: "Don't believe everything you think you believe."
-bill kenny

In and Around the Lake

Mom used to tell us when we were growing up that 'opinions are a lot like noses; everybody has one and they all smell.' Our dad had the same expression but used a different body part but that wasn't all that surprising since he was more or less a real nose.

I mention this because all of us, I suspect, have a tendency to regard some (or more) of our opinions as facts whether or not we have anything to support them or not (and I'm not looking at Mar-A-Lago as I type that). 

And living as we do in the age of Social Media with a platform custom-built for whatever our beliefs ecosphere requires, we can spend a lot of time separating the wheat from the chaff on any issue only to discover we're allergic to gluten, and/or someone else's version of the Truth (with a capital T).  

Next Thursday night (the 23rd) at seven in the auditorium of the Kelly STEAM Magnet Middle School is a presentation by the Connecticut Department of Transportation, CTDOT, on its updated plan to its proposal to construct six roundabouts on Route 82 here in Norwich. 

If you live or work in Norwich and/or drive or shop at any of the businesses on Route 82 (which far more than downtown is really Norwich's Main Street, in my opinion) with any frequency you should make plans to attend the presentation. I'd hope you'd need to arrive early because of what could and should be a large amount of interest (and self-interest) filling up seats but three decades of living here have shown me it's never eaten as hot as it's served. We are too often in my experience, all mouth with nothing behind it. Feel free to pleasantly surprise me. 

The CTDOT first offered their roundabout solution to the driving challenges and accelerating accident rates on Route 82, called in many circles "Crash Alley," back in 2015 to a lukewarm-at-best response by the then Norwich City Council, and in the ensuing years absence on their part has not made the Council's heart grow fonder.  

Some within and without the city government, see the proposal to construct six roundabouts, eliminate traffic lights and add a raised median divider as a solution in search of a problem. Others think we are well past the time of saying when 'something needs to be done.' Right now we're at my personal favorite part which is where we think talking about doing something is almost-but-not-quite-the-same thing as actually doing it. Your mileage may vary (automotive reference there deliberate).

I have my own opinion/nose about roundabouts and I will not poison your well while you weigh and measure the arguments and make up your own mind. I will point out that reluctance and resistance to change of any kind usually hinge on what we perceive ourselves giving up instead of what we see ourselves gaining.     

There's actually a five-step chart on common causes of resistance to change that includes mistrust and lack of confidence (in those proposing the change), emotional responses to any change, fear of failure, poor communication where change is viewed as something being done to, rather than with, someone else, and unrealistic timelines to accomplish the change. 

Pardon my cynicism but who does that paragraph sound like? 

We can and should do better. I'm thinking of a proverb that goes 'when the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.' I'd hope to see you and your open mind next Thursday night at Kelly, and maybe later we can both go fly a kite.
-bill kenny

What So Proudly We Hailed

Gather round, kids!
It's time for another Golden Oldie from Uncle Bill's Storybook. I originally called this one:

Sometimes You Lead by Following

I was in the United States Air Force a (very) long time ago, though I didn't actually serve with Orville or Wilbur if you're working on a chronology. And I was barely in the Air Force according to nearly all of the unfortunates who were unlucky enough to have me work for them, holding an AFSC (Air Force Skill Code) of 791X1 (radio/tv production specialist).

This was all post-mandatory conscription for the US Armed Forces. I always hesitate to say "the all-volunteer force" since to me a volunteer is more like the person who hugs Special Olympians at the finish of a track meet or who cooks hamburgers for a 2nd-grade picnic at Rocky Neck State Park or helps sort out the neighborhood's recycling bins before the big Spring clean-up.

I, and all the people with whom I served, got paid which seems to let some of the air out of the volunteer balloon (for me). Yeah, I could say "I volunteered to get paid" which reminds me of a mid-shift at AFRTS Sondrestrom when John D asked our boss TSGT Phil L. 'when will my pay raise be effective?' to which Phil replied, 'when you are.' All of us tittered like school girls.

What none of us there, later on in Germany or in a dozen other locations around the globe working for Uncle Sugar, ever found funny were the too-busy for colors asshats who would rush into a  building before the National Anthem at 0800 or who stayed in the building foyer until the last note of the "All Clear" after "Taps" had sounded and who then evacuated the area like red beans and rice losing to Montezuma's Revenge.

That people who had sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic, couldn't allow seventy seconds in the morning and less than that at sunset to honor the representation of the nation whose constitution they were on record as being willing to die for, drove, and still drives, me crazy (and I'm so close, I can walk and save the gas).

I'm bringing this up today of all days because today is Flag Day. On military posts and bases across the country, ships at sea on the oceans of the world, and in absolute armpit hellholes in far-flung places whose names none of us can remember or pronounce, those who wear our country's uniform are according appropriate honors to our flag today, as they do every day.

In light of the hyper-partisan idiocy that now permeates the political discourse at every level of our democracy, combined with the pig-headed selfish obstinacy with which so many of us pursue our Private Idahos (under the motto, 'devil take the hindmost') perhaps we should find a minute to be mindful and grateful for their service and choose, as do I, to accept as sincere the truth of the words offered by the always thoughtful and thought-provoking Randy Newman.

"You can stand alone, or with somebody else; or stand with all of us, together.
 If you can believe in something bigger than yourself, you can follow the flag forever. They say it's just a dream that dreamers dreamed-that it's an empty thing that really has no meaning. They say it's all a lie, but it's not a lie. I'm going to follow the flag 'til I die. Into every life, a little rain must fall, but it's not gonna rain forever. You can rise above--you can rise above it all--We will follow the flag together. We will follow the flag together. We will follow the flag forever."
-bill kenny

My Heart Is on the Left Side of My Body

I'm impressed and not in a good way by the number of folks who've insisted for nearly a year and a half that the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, was (pick one (or more)): "a peaceful assembly," "small in comparison to the ANTIFA/BLM riots the summer before," and/or "a nothing burger."

I call bullshit. 

To refresh your memory in case you weren't able (willing?) to watch the opening televised salvo of The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol the other evening, here's a little archival number assembled by those known prevaricators and self-aggrandizing bastards of the GOP the New York Times.

The televised hearings resume this morning at ten o'clock, the day before the 76th birthday of the greatest grifter since P T. Barnum. And the only people who don't know that are the ones about to find out. Even the QOP true believers will have to open their eyes to reality at some point. It will not be pretty.

But I expect and suspect the process will be painful. 
-bill kenny

Never Enough Doritos

Because it's not a BIG NEWS story, it's gotten buried and mocked (which is where I come in) but even though I'll drag out every Grateful Dead and Hawkwind joke I know, and more than a few that I don't yet know, we're really and truly at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, complete with validated parking. 

Europe’s first psychedelic drug trial firm to open in London. Wow. And why not? I started using CBD oil some months ago to take the edge off my compressed spinal discs and to dampen the noise if not completely quiet my now worn-out knee replacements from early in the first decade of this century. 

Those are baby steps, I know, and in no way comparable to the ambitious journey that's about to start in the center of London this August and the possible relief to literally millions (and tens of millions) of people who suffer from an almost infinite number of medical maladies for whom successful treatment until now has been beyond elusive. 

So yeah, I'm gonna make Alice B. Toklas jokes because emotionally I'm still about seven years of age, but I'm getting excited to live at a moment where, if we don't kill each other in wars or through disease we could be on the threshold of a dream come true.
-bill kenny

If Tom & Jerry Could See This

Despite my remonstrations against and ruminations about much of the horror our technology hath wrought (so far today, this week, in my lifetime), there are moments of sunshine and smiles. 

Like this one.

But, I gotta admit, there's a beauty and majesty in the classics, too, even upon second glance.
-bill kenny

Joe Cocker Says 'Hi!'

Driving in the middle of the day not that long ago, I passed a fellow in an electric blue Miata convertible with the top down, wearing a large hat. The fellow, not the car. Actually, I knew the driver, not that I waved or gave any sign of recognition, though the 'You're #1 with me' gesture did come to mind.

He had the Miata then when it was a new and cute little car that sort of reminded fossils like me of a classic Lotus without all kinds of pieces falling off every time you drove it someplace. (For over a century the sun never set on the British Empire and for many years the same was true of British Leyland Motors. The same nation that built Lancasters and Spitfires to thwart Hitler and his Horde for the ages cranked out Austin Metros and Triumph TR7s with little thought of tomorrow).

Based on the two seconds or so I saw him, the years haven't been kind to either of them-and between us, he had far less to lose to start with. Anyway. What had caught my eye was, on a beautiful day (and it was and we deserve as many in a row as we can get for as long as we can have them), he had the top down, to catch the rays (I'll assume). 

Except, he had a large hat on in the car, behind the wheel. To me, that defeats the whole purpose of having the top down. If you wear a hat in a car with the top down, it should be the law you must also shower while wearing a raincoat. I'm sorry, some rules are needed here. What is the point, otherwise, of having a car with a convertible top?

If you have a sensitivity to the sun, put the top down only at night or when the car is in a garage; leave the top up when you're driving outdoors (and when you're driving indoors and the indoors is a car wash) or just sell the car and buy one with a permanent roof (We have a name for a car whose roof can be lowered or removed, a 'convertible.' What should we call a car whose roof does NO tricks at all and why doesn't that car also deserve a name?). 

Or in this guy's case, lose the hat that covers your scalp and get one big enough to cover your head. Keep America Beautiful, bozo (and if it's of any solace, that's NOT what I started to type).
-bill kenny

Any Which Way But Loose

When I was (considerably) younger than I am now I had a well-developed sense of direction, at least as I recall. As I've aged I've concluded that like so much else that has happened to me, the older I get the better I was and a sense of direction, together with humor, intelligence, and manners, have all gone the way of the dodo. 

I'm the kind of person who almost arrived in New York City while driving from my home in Norwich to Derby and to this day I have no idea how that happened. And I now have Google Maps and I have no idea how many other aids to assist me and yet I still manage to adapt and overcome while getting loster faster than anyone you will ever know. 

Here's the sad part among all of the sadness: I never think I'm lost. To the frustration (and sometimes anger as well) of my wife who is a brilliant navigator, I'm indifferent to her entreaties as we drive along especially because I know I'm right, no matter what she says. And now, as it turns out, I have science on my side when I'm being obdurate.   

Or, as I tell my spouse in a vain attempt to make her feel better after finally conceding I am well and truly lost, 'but we're making great time."
-bill kenny

Mr. Watson to the Courtesy Phone

Growing up, one of the things that was a universal truth, was the later in the day a phone call came, the less likely it was to be good news. In my family as kids, we knew better than to phone home after 8 PM, no matter what, or no matter where we were. This was in the rotary dial no-such-thing-as caller-ID ear of telephones; and, of course, only landlines (a term we never used because it’s all there was).

With my 70^th birthday in the rear-view mirror I am, all the adult I am ever going to be.

The growing old part worked too well while the growing up part hasn’t really happened at all. I still get nervous entering a darkened room and will search for the light switch even if I'm only passing through. And phone calls now? I’m a cheater when it comes to my cell phone. I don’t turn the ringer on and don’t have it set to vibrate, so I miss every call. And when someone complains I tell them ‘I have a cell phone for my convenience, not yours.’

My wife and I still have a landline in our house and even with, or especially because of, caller ID, when the phone rings in the evening, I am always somewhat startled (wary might be a better word). The telephone takes two rings to display the name and number of the caller, and I stand, transfixed, waiting for that moment.

Despite 'do not call' registries, I get a lot of callers who only want to talk about expired car warranties and credit card balances, for the most part, and I’ve steeled myself to no longer answer the phone when I don’t recognize the name or number.  

However, when it’s the name and number of one of our children in the display, I start making horror movies in my head. I mutter 'please don't be anything bad' at least three hundred times between the second ring, which triggers the display, and the third ring which never comes because I’ve answered the phone.

Both think it's hilarious their old man breaks out in a sweat when they call him after dark. If my wife answers the phone, I pace and fret within eyesight and earshot, lest she forgets to tell me about a cataclysmic catastrophe that has befallen one of them. (So far, so good.)

When we brought them home from the hospital, with that 'new baby smell', I used to sit in a corner of their room and watch them sleep. I was fascinated by their breathing and any and every movement they made while in their crib. I had no need for television-I had found my must-see and did so many times, for many hours, as they grew up.

As an adult, I can understand and internalize the realization that we cannot protect our children, in my case adults, themselves now, from every evil and misfortune in a world that grows scarier by the day but when the evening arrives and the phone rings at night, my rational, inner grown-up is nowhere to be found. And all the me that is there can do is stare at the ringing phone and hope the monster in the dark disappears by the time I answer.
-bill kenny

What Hath Jimmy Buffett Wrought?

Is there anything more popular, universally loved, and ubiquitous when we're naming food entrees than pizza? Maybe, and I'm suggesting only maybe a cheeseburger. 

Love 'em? Heck, who doesn't, right? 

As long as you haven't eaten or are planning on eating anytime soon (or ever again if you view all of it), you might want to check this out and then rethink where on the food pyramid you're placing that next cheeseburger.    

I'd say Guten Appetit, but who are we kidding? 
-bill kenny

The Original Anti-Fascists

What had seemed like a beginning in the near daylight off the coast of Normandy in France, seventy-eight years ago today was actually the end, if you will, of the planning phase of Operation Overlord and years of planning from an embattled outpost, England, left to fight on practically alone after the fall of France in June nearly four years earlier.

This time last week we were all talking about those 'who made the ultimate sacrifice' and 'who paid the ultimate price' and here we are today commemorating an event that marked the beginning of the end of the murderous darkness and mayhem into which first Europe and ultimately the entire world descended that resulted in the deaths of over sixty million people, marked the end of the British Empire, helped redraw the maps of Africa, South East Asia, and the Middle East and redivided much of the world into communist and non-communist spheres of influence.

The personages and personalities we always associate with this event are enormous and epic and their fame is well-deserved but I found an old clip, its source made me smile, that focused more, and more accurately, on the hundreds of thousands of men leading lives quiet desperation, who did what they were trained to do when they were trained to do it, and thought in nothing larger than one-step increments.

They struggled and died by the tens of thousands wading ashore from the landing craft to the beach, getting off the beachhead to an embankment for cover, rejoining a unit, and moving forward, a footfall at a time, until the trickle from the beach became a torrent and that torrent became a flood facing murderous opposition from men who in many respects were their twins, but were on the other side for reasons that had as much to do with accidents of geography and birth as with ideology and politics.

Back in 1984, I had an opportunity to retrace the assault on Normandy with a US Army unit who took their history very seriously. Busloads of us, all living and stationed in Germany, arrived in considerably more style and comfort than the advance party in 1944 to discover every, or seemingly every, bar in the city limits of Normandy is called 6 Juin. 

At the bar (whose name you can guess) across from the church where a US paratrooper's chute had gotten snagged in the steeple and John Steele supposedly died in a hail of bullets from a Wehrmacht defender, spotlights illuminated the church top and a parachute still billowed as a human replica dangled and twisted from the rigging. As it turned out, he didn't die but was captured by the Germans only to escape and rejoin his unit.

Army chopper pilots are tough, hard cases, but even they softened when we toured Pointe du Hoc where the US Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion achieved the impossible and it was but one brief moment in a non-stop amazing story of heroism that went on for weeks that summer as twelve allied nations, Australia, Canada, Belgium, France, Czechoslovakia, Greece, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States pushed inland, driving back an enemy that had nearly half a decade to prepare for just such an attack but had failed to calculate the selflessness of the sacrifice that hundreds of thousands were willing to make so that generations of unborn could have the freedom to do as they wished, even if, too often, that freedom included ignoring the enormity of the sacrifice so many had made for them.

The beaches of Normandy are quite beautiful if you don't mind looking at the remnants of the Mulberry Harbors that the Allies needed to use to stage reinforcements and supplies prior to the final assault on the beaches themselves.

The seagulls and sandpipers run ahead of you, by just inches, often backward staring up at you, the flightless sojourner, walking among the crashing of the waves trying and failing, to imagine the carnage and chaos that covered every inch of these beaches all those years ago.

Our final day there, we devoted to the Normandy American Cemetery, a beautifully sad or sadly beautiful island of peace and calm created to honor those who died for those whom they never met but whose lives were made possible by their sacrifice.

Today, if only for a moment, think about those men and, in looking at the challenges you face in your life, resolve to make a difference as best as you can, in much the way they did, alone and far from home and hearth on a beach half a world away.

-bill kenny

Bagel Seeds by Another Name

I usually (quite often to be honest) have dry cereal for breakfast. Many people call it 'cold cereal' as opposed to oatmeal which is hot I guess though because it has the consistency of wallpaper paste I've never been tempted to try it. Ever.

I don't put milk on my dry cereal. Tangent alert: I worked for a fellow in Germany who earlier in his career had worked for an ad agency in Frankfurt am Main who landed the Kellogg's Corn Flakes account and discovered their biggest challenge was in getting German families in the middle part of the 1950s to STOP putting orange juice on the cereal and instead use milk. I have no idea if the story is true but then I came across this and now I don't know what to think.

Anyway. I don't eat a large variety/assortment of cereals, mostly Cheerios (not the chocolate ones), and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Cheerios, their box says, is good for me. Some people say 'tell it to the marines,' others, like me, say tell me more. Fair enough. 

I'm seventy with enough medical maladies to fill up three people's charts. I always measure twice before even thinking about cutting once and will take very seriously the perspective of Joe Jackson until I shuffle off this mortal coil.
-bill kenny

Past Shipwrecked Daughters of Wicked Waters

Sometimes through all the noise, you have to strain to hear the melody.

Sail on, Sailor.
-bill kenny

Five Years Is but a Moment

Five years ago, today, I said goodbye to my mother as my sister Kara held her cell phone to Mom's head as she lay dying in a hospital bed. I have no idea how Kara had the strength to be able to do that as Mom made an effort to speak to as many of her six children as she could in the time she had remaining.

That, as much as anything in the almost eighty-nine years she lived was Mom: her count, her cadence, her priorities. Always focused, always forward. 

Sigrid found this picture, which she took when Mom came to visit us in Germany in 1989.
We appear to be discussing how much more we should have tipped our hairdresser.

From what I know (or think I know) of my siblings and their lives, I think she taught us well by her example every day for all those years. There's not a day that passes when I don't think of Mom and know that the sadness and tears which always accompany those memories are followed by joyfulness in my heart for being her son.
-bill kenny

The Kids in the Hall

We've all encountered people with sweatshirts or tee-shirts that say 'ask me about my grandchildren.' I, at some point in the past unknown to me, have been apparently fitted with one that says 'tell me about anything; I don't mind.'

I was in the local grocery yesterday afternoon behind a fellow carrying a lot of stuff in his bare hands, without the benefit of a shopping cart or a basket. I've had that happen, where I get ambushed in the baked goods by freshly made oatmeal and raisin cookies while I sort of have my hands already full (A reach exceeds grasp kind of moment). 

Have there been times I've parked the item I originally came into the store to get and bought a lot of other stuff, taken it all out to the car, and then returned to purchase the original item? Yes, guilty as charged.

Not sure what was happening with this fellow. He was pushing a bag of charcoal briquettes in front of him but did not seem to have any meat in his hands you would normally associate with grilling (and I don't care to imagine where else he might have put it). 

When he started mumbling, from where I was behind him (I scrupulously enforce that ATM space rule when I'm in line. It will never be my hot breath you feel on your neck and vice versa) I thought he was talking to the scandal magazines alongside the gum and candy. One of the most sobering aspects of growing old is how, as I've aged, less and less of the headlines or pictured celebrities mean anything to me at all.

Anyway, Marty Mumbles seemed to be talking to the magazine with what looked like Mel Gibson and (maybe) his girlfriend as a thumbnail-sized photo on the cover. The fellow wasn't talking to Mel, as it happened. I looked up to realize, as he stacked his stuff (and '12 Items or less' became a suggestion, exactly when? I missed that memo) as high as he could on the smallest possible amount of space on the conveyor belt, he was actually talking at me. 

There was a reasonable amount of frantic head nodding and eye-blinking, not a lot of eye contact, which was of no help at all in understanding a single word of whatever he was, or wasn't, saying. All the while the cashier was scanning his stuff, he had his back to her, addressing me. I always get these guys so I just bided my time. When she announced the total, I had to point him, using the smile and nod technique (and NO sudden movements) in her general direction so that he realized the ride was just about done. 

Of course, he wasn't prepared to pay and went through his pockets looking for cash, paper, and coins, before defaulting to a credit card, all the while jabbering away to anyone (else) who made eye contact.

When I handed the cashier my sole item, she remarked that she hadn't seen me 'in here with that guy before' as if I made it a practice to collect strangers in the night. I thought about telling her just that and then decided silence, in my case, was golden. Besides, if I dawdled, I'd be late for the cookout, and that would never do.
-bill kenny