It's All Within Yourself

As the leaves continue to turn...

And you realize your inevitable absence will be akin to a hole left in a bucket of water when you pull your fist out.
-bill kenny

Don't Tell Billy Corgan

I'm going to insist that it's both coincidental and serendipitous that Smashing Pumpkins are in my neck of the woods (literally and figuratively) in about two weeks' time though I will confess that again this tour I'll be giving them a miss rather than a mile.  

But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy some without all the guitars and vocals I suppose.
.bill kenny

Choices, Chances, and Changes

I'm a fossil still stumbling and struggling to transition from a manual to an electric typewriter but I’m in awe of the promise technology holds. However, it faces a continuing challenge to deliver accurate and honest information in a timely manner.

Compounding our situation is a changing perception of traditional media. Despite our vast information sources, we’ve grown more insular and less informed. Subscriptions to local newspapers have dipped precipitously and we devote fewer minutes listening to and watching both national and local broadcast news opting instead for outlets that validate our own perceptions of reality often in an echo chamber within a hall of mirrors.

Truth and trust, be it between and among people and institutions ranging from community leaders, and public agencies to all levels of government is in increasingly short supply. Too often we speak without thinking and hear without listening. At the end of the day, we may frequently be in error, but we are rarely in doubt; just ask us. Besides, everyone we know says we're right (too bad we don't know more people).

We have projects here and now in Norwich that do not just require open minds and a free flow of facts, they demand them, and too often all we have are open mouths and strong opinions. We look at those we choose for elected office as 'them' instead of 'us' and those labels don't foster or further the construction of consensus.

We don't believe 'they' listen to ‘us’ when we talk about almost any issue we face as a community from constructing (and paying for) new schools, public safety versus economic development on Route 82, revitalizing Down City, to name just three hot button topics. But the list goes on and on and you can find opinions to support yours and all manner of facts (even contradictory) on almost any social media platform.

But the same technologies that have allowed us to be comfortably numb in splendid (and often ignorant) isolation could also bring, and keep, us together and moving towards shared goals.

But we must be present, emotionally, mentally, and physically, and it starts Monday night at 6:30 with an informational meeting and workshop of the City Council at Kelly STEAM Magnet Middle School by the Planning and Neighborhood Services Department and the Norwich Community Development Corporation explaining the rollout of Citizenlab.

Disclaimer: Citizenlab will not whiten your teeth or straighten your hair (or vice versa), but if you click the link and scroll through their website, I think you'll agree it's a way of harnessing technology to make the decision-making vital in a democracy more responsive, inclusive, and transparent. As the song goes, 'you cannot win if you do not play,' and Citizenlab is a tool to help expand and amplify the voices and choices of all of us.

But the keyword in this is 'choice.' Graham Brown once said, "We are what we choose to be."

And we all know the famous Three C's: Choice, chance, and change. You must make a choice and take a chance or nothing changes.

If you want something bad enough, you'll find a way; if not, you'll find an excuse. I’d hope you’ll find your way to Kelly Monday night so we can start to get serious about making choices and changes.
-bill kenny 

   

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

Cheer up they said; things could get worse. So I did cheer up and things got worse.

Two riders were approaching. The wind began to howl.
-bill kenny

Tik-Tok!!

There are only eighty-nine days until Christmas! (Maybe more ! are needed? Or not?) And don't tell me, you haven't even started on your holiday shopping list. 

Fear not and fret not. I have a compilation of thirty Amazon 'gag' gifts (not sure if that means they will make you smile or hurl or perhaps even both) that I think if wrapped beautifully and presented in just the right setting could quite easily be the very last gifts you ever need to worry about getting for anyone.

Remember, it's the thought that counts. At least, I think it is.
-bill kenny

Somewhere, JJ Weeps

Not sure if the Gerber's Baby Foods people were involved in this news story, but I do recall a lot of their stuff looking like it was pre-chewed when I'd open a jar of their offerings for one of our children many lifetimes ago.

I actually developed a theory that suggested baby food was precisely what infants needed as the incentive to get them to try adult food. 

But I digress. Eat up.
-bill kenny 

Photographs and Memories

My dad passed away over forty years ago but when I see him in my mind's eye, I see him as he was the last time I saw him, not as we both are now, four decades on.

 All of us are like that, I think, and I've done no research as to whether any other species are similar or dissimilar in that respect. 

I mention this because I fell over a fascinating article about a photographer who combines his craft with Artificial Intelligence to produce contemporary images of deceased cultural icons. He calls them As If Nothing Happened. 

I think as you'd agree, they are achingly beautiful, absolutely amazing, and very nearly real.
-bill kenny

Wouldn't Make It to Bandstand

I grew up on and with Amerian Bandstand and its Rate a Record. It had to have a good beat you could dance to but more importantly, the song had to be one your girlfriend liked.  

This brings us, all these years on, to the just-released and breathlessly-awaited (by someone I suppose) anthem of the United States Space Force, Semper Supra.

Umm. To be honest, "From the Halls of Montezuma," it's not. Full disclosure, as a veteran of the United States Air Force, a 'zoomie' to my other uniformed brethren, I will concede that "Off We Go" has my perhaps least favorite lyric of any military anthem or hymn, 'we live in fame or go down in flame.'  Perhaps, with time, Semper Supra will grow on me (sed cogito non tantum).

Psssst. Tell Georgia Congressperson Margarine Trailerpark Greed that this is the alternate version. She'll thank you for it. Perhaps.
-bill kenny.

 

And the Sun Took a Step Back...

There are by my rough count about three dozen trees of various ages and sizes along the perimeter of Chelsea Parade, a lovely small spot of green about a two-minute walk from my house, flanked by Washington Street and Broadway here in Norwich, Connecticut.

Today is the first day of autumn, says the calendar, but all but one of the trees at Chelsea Parade are still wearing green. Are you surprised that the one that's not was the one that caught my eye? 

There has been in recent days just a slight hint of a chill in the air, mixed, in my case, with the certain knowledge and dread that as the days shorten and the shadows lengthen, autumn will arrive more rapidly than it did last year (or the year before) as the year turns to winter.

I am not, as you may know, a fan of winter. Some of our more recent ones very nearly killed me, literally, and so by extension, autumn with its riot of colors across the tree line and clarity in the hours before dawn surrenders to General Winter who covers everything in this part of the hemisphere in ice and snow is not a time of year I welcome, because of what follows.

I'm not a child although I am being childish. I grasp the essentialness and significance of the passing and changing of the seasons. Some mornings I morosely wonder and worry how many more will pass me by before they no longer do. 

I take some solace in the realization that when it happens, you'll never know it. You're here and then you're gone. There is nothing like a brisk morning meditation when you can just see your exhaled breath to get you contemplating your own mortality.

I walk a hallway in our home every morning on my way through the kitchen with photos of our children from when they were small-they will always be our children-and I smile looking at those pictures now because I can vividly remember the circumstances of our lives at the moment the shutter clicked. 

And because the camera froze that moment, time, itself, felt no need to tarry and didn’t. Our children are adults with lives much like, and unlike, ours at their current ages when we were working hard to be their parents.

And the snap in the morning air is echoed by the sound underfoot as we make our way to and through another day, almost unheeding of how quickly the time we so dearly prize is slipping from our grasp. And you hope there’s a second sitting for Hemingway’s Moveable Feast.    
-bill kenny

This, That, and Some of the Other

I saw a man yesterday with a Mohawk haircut, but the part that wasn't in the Mohawk was shaved to the naked scalp. He was wearing a three-piece suit that probably cost at least twice what my car is worth. I cannot imagine what he does for a living that allows him to keep that hairstyle as part of what he does for a living. He wasn't a young guy, either. I'm not especially good at guessing ages, or weight for that matter, so I’ve concluded that a career as a carnie is out.

Actually he was closer to being my age and he looked as silly as the guys my age (and older) with whom I didn't go to Woodstock all look now. You’ve seen us too: longish hair, usually gray, frayed, and wispy, maybe in a ponytail with possibly a bald spot (I call mine a solar panel).

And since I’m semi-kvetching, how about the motorist who compensates for his car's driver's side headlamp being burned out by driving with his high beams on and not dimming them as you and he approach one another. Yeah, I remember what the Driver Ed teacher always said: don't retaliate and turn yours on-it makes two blinded drivers but still... Instead, I turn off all my lights which makes it easier for Hi-Beam to see me behind the wheel while I visually suggest he's my #1 special friend, but not in a good way.

I also don't know what to do about the driver who goes up a one-way street the wrong way for a short distance, but always at a crawl because he certainly doesn't want to cause an accident, to pull into somebody's driveway, rather than go around the block. I love when he comes nose to nose with a car traveling the street in the proper direction and they glare at each other like Mr. Upstream Salmon has any comeback at all. 

Or that fellow’s cousin, the driver who backs up a one-way street the wrong way with his car flashers on, though I guess that doesn't count as much. Makes traffic circles and roundabouts seem like a walk in the park.

Speaking of semi-imponderables and changing subjects: How many crumbs from the toaster tray does it take to create an entirely new piece of bread, and can you toast that slice when you've completed assembly? Feel free to discuss (but show your work).

Finally, at the risk of poking the bear (but not caring), the Presidential election is long over. Take the bumper stickers off-and I mean ALL of them, not just for the guy who lost but the guy who won as well.

We cringe when our elected representatives blame one another for everything from Bill Buckner booting that grounder in 1986 to whether our dogs are getting enough cheese and yet here we are, not remembering that a single-edge razor blade can be your friend.

But judging from the number of three-day growths I've seen lately, every bumper in America will continue to be gleaming from sea to shining, or perhaps whining, sea. I can only assume we're working out a way to offer an artisanal mohawk plucking job to those promised chickens in every pot unless your cookbook calls for it the other way around.
-bill kenny

Me to a Tee

This will make sense (I'm hoping) primarily to people who live(d) under my roof. And that's okay. 

And for the record, those aren't nearly all the words I've been known to sing. Just sayin'.
-bill kenny

I'm Gonna Paint You By Numbers

I was yesterday old before finding out that there's a National Toy Hall of Fame (in Rochester, New York) and that every year they induct three fan-nominated toys to join those already enshrined.

This year's nominees include only one with which I am familiar (as a parent not as a child), Skeletor and He-Man from Masters of the Universe. We have every single one of the many members of the MotU family our son, Patrick, used to play with carefully stored in containers in our basement in Connecticut, which, as he now lives in Florida, makes it harder for him to play with but I believe the thinking is that perhaps someday a grandchild may wish to enjoy them.

We have Beanie Babies, our daughter, Michelle's, favorites in a massive wooden toy chest that's parked at the moment under a glass-topped table alongside a window in what once was Patrick's, then Michelle's, bedroom and is now what my wife calls my man-cave but I think of as a fortress of ineptitude.

And even as cries of fake electors and rigged elections are still ringing in our ears, we (yes, you and I) can exercise our right to vote by casting a ballot for the next inductee into the Toy Hall of Fame. I suspect a much more satisfying experience than most of our other trips to the polls in recent years, but hurry as voting ends this Wednesday. 

So, as we used today in New Jersey (and probably still do), vote early and often!
-bill kenny

 

Perfect Timing

As Sunday is traditionally regarded as a day of rest (except during American professional football season it seems) what could be a better day than to introduce to you a person whose job is to do nothing? 

Yep, you read that correctly; Shoji Morimoto in Japan gets paid to do nothing (but different than the day before) 

This is harder than it seems because as the old joke goes, the problem with doing nothing is you never know when you're finished. Doing nothing is a tough job but someone has to do it.
-bill kenny

A Toast

Who hasn't heard the semi-sarcastic compliment that something (or someone, I suppose) is 'the best thing since sliced bread'? 

I've yet to figure out what the best thing might have been before the advent of sliced bread but have learned (because you're never too old to learn something new even though the opposite isn't true) that there was a time, admittedly briefly, when we had sliced bread and then we didn't. What a crumby thing to do! (Ouch!).

Sort of like The Allman Brothers, but with a toaster.  
-bill kenny

What Are Words Worth, William?

Before I celebrated my seventeenth birthday I was making my living with words; writing them, reading them aloud, and taking them apart in an attempt to learn a deeper or bigger truth. How well did I do with any of that?  

Well. You're reading this so you do the math. 

Over a lifetime (so far) with words of various lengths, meanings, and languages, I'm not sure I can describe what if anything I've learned about them. In essence, I'm at a loss for words(?)

I'm not sure if English has the most words of any (other) language but I suspect if it doesn't, it's pretty close to the top since it seems to borrow from just about everyone and we're not troubled at all about the larceny. 

According to Merriam-Webster who somehow has become a sort of gatekeeper for English, we now have an additional 370 words more than we had last year. (Quibble: Yeet is a question in many parts of my home state usually followed by a plate full of food).

Perhaps because of my advanced years, I'm drawn to and nostalgic for the classics and maybe, what we used to call in rock radio, the deep cuts. Especially when I'm angry at someone. It's nice to be able to reach for a more ancient and somehow more caustic pejorative, like one from this list.

That may be why it was suggested I make my words soft and sweet so that they're easier to swallow.
-bill kenny

Play Misty for Me

The high brow expression (delivered with a sneer) I used to hear as a rock and roll kid in grade school that masqueraded as a critique of all the music coming across the bridge built from Britain was 'give a thousand monkeys a thousand paint brushes and one of them will prove to be Picasso.'

That's as may be, but how many keyboards would you need to produce a Jerry Lee Lewis?
-bill kenny 

The Road Less Traveled?

Almost fifty years ago, Billy Preston, who helped reinvigorate The Beatles in their last days as documented in Peter Jackson's Get Back was riding the US record charts with his hit single, "Will It Go Round in Circles." I'll bet WICH radio played it, though I doubt any of us saw it then as a harbinger for the path of future state highway improvement initiatives. 

And yet in September 2022 here we are, though after last Tuesday's Connecticut Department of Transportation (CT DOT) presentation on their proposal for updates on Route 82, and the City Council's deliberations and decision on the way ahead, I'm not sure where we are philosophically or in terms of traffic flow. 

Not that I should be surprised. I'm still struggling to figure out where all the sand it's been suggested I go pound came from but having grown up in Central New Jersey and DTSed every summer until graduating from Rutgers, I admit to being a son of a beach so I guess it all works out.    

In a city with just over 39,000 residents (and less than 24,000 registered voters) it can be a struggle to develop a consensus on what we, as residents of a city, should be doing on any number of topics, much less what we should be doing next. 

But having said that, I'd suggest a not inconsiderable number of us do agree that something needs to be done about Route 82, "Crash Alley," a vital artery in the heart of Norwich. The devil, as you've already guessed, is in the details of what that something should or could be.  

The thing about the proposals for updating Route 82 is that from the first presentation by the CT DOT in 2015, the proposal has always been to build six roundabouts. Every presentation (and I've been to all of them I think) includes promises to continue working with elected city leadership and with affected Route 82 business owners and operators to refine the overall design but then the next presentation retains the six roundabouts. 

What I heard last Tuesday night, and the newspaper reports captured it very well, was frustration from those with businesses on Route 82, among others, who are told the design process is an ongoing conversation but nothing they say ever gets included in the CT DOT's proposal. 

Instead of starting to solve the public safety concerns on Route 82, we had, instead, anger at the decision by the City Council who voted 'yes' (four Democrats in the affirmative and three Republicans opposed as if public safety were now a partisan political issue) on the project's authorization.

Our neighbors who comprise the Council, I suspect, are neither enticed nor seduced by the hundred dollars a month stipend their service on the Council offers nor dissuaded and demoralized by the sometimes unkind comments we yell at them during public hearings or offer on various social media platforms (guilty as charged on both counts) when we disagree with decisions they make on our behalf.  

Seven years on with this I have no idea what the 'right' answer is for updating Route 82 and losing "Crash Alley" forever, but there's probably more than one right answer, assuming we can even agree on the question. A meaningful dialogue with CT DOT that does more than simply acknowledge the concerns of businesses that have been on Route 82 for decades must include hearing their concerns, listening to their stories, and then developing a solution that addresses the public safety concern and doesn't treat affected businesses like collateral damage.

The CT DOT, working with everyone across this city has an obligation to get it right and we as stakeholders must make sure they don't settle for anything less. 
-bill kenny

You're No Bunny

The adage goes 'you learn something new every day,' though I'm hoping the enforcement officials aren't around and about because I'm not sure I want to have to play twenty questions with them if you know what I mean. 

On the other hand, yesterday I learned TWO new things, sort of related to one another, though sharing a common trait with so much of what I've learned in my life, neither is especially useful but at least one of them is cute and fuzzy. 

Did you know that Japan has a Poison Gas Museum?  (The person unhappy that there are only 'five paragraphs of explanation in English' seems to be oblivious that they could be part of the problem). I'm not sure if they have a gift shop or if they do what they sell. Obviously, this is NOT the cute and fuzzy something new. 

This is.  

Somewhere George and Lenny are sitting on a roof contemplating the mysteries of life.
-bill kenny

When Tomorrow Arrives

The Subaru Forester we leased in March is so much smarter than I am it's a miracle it allows me to get in it, not that I do a lot of the driving once I do. 

It's not the most expensive model Subaru makes, it's somewhere in the middle I guess, and has front and rear collision avoidance systems, lane departure and correction tools, cruise control that also brakes for me, and an infotainment system that will read my email to me (but not do any voice impressions of the people who wrote them; maybe that's a the top of the line version?).

Yep, it's a brave new world for an old dog like me struggling to remember the tricks he learned a long time ago when he thought the story went on for an even longer time. Except, it's already been a very long time and I'm not sure it's getting better, though I was heartened by something I fell across the other day about using Artificial Intelligence, not as in SkyNet, but as a practical tool to complement and improve our lives here on the Big Blue Marble even if our time is starting to look like a limited time offer without operators standing by.  

I'm hoping you'll read this and be as filled with hope for us as I was when I finished it. Enjoy.
-bill kenny

The Hurt that Never Heals

I will take to my grave the memory of the television announcement that President Kennedy had been murdered, the images from beyond the horizon of the first halting steps mankind took on the moon, the stream of desperate humanity overwhelming the American Embassy in Saigon as South Vietnam disappeared from the history of the earth, and crazy patterns within the clouds in a sky of beautiful blue as the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated moments after liftoff with no time for goodbyes. 

But even with all of those memories, I will always have room in my heart for the calamities that I will always associate with the murderous cowardice of 9/11/01 and how in the moments that followed it, we were a nation united in our grief before, for reasons I cannot ever comprehend, we decided to return to our lives of self-centeredness, barely remembering the names of those who cannot ever be forgotten.
-bill kenny

    

And So It Grows

Twenty-one years ago tomorrow, everything we all thought we knew changed forever. 

For the thousands in the Twin Towers, in the Pentagon, aboard the airplanes, and for their families, friends, and those who attempted rescues and recoveries of them (and all whose lives had been touched by them), somehow, even more changed or disappeared in the clouds of destruction, never to be experienced again. 

Every year my brother, Adam, devotes a month prior to the anniversary of 9/11 to profiling those whose lives' candles flickered and were then blown out. His celebration of their lights makes cursing the darkness of their absence somehow more bearable. 

So, too, does this from Jennifer Senior, in The Atlantic.
-bill kenny

Nearly Forgotten

I found this under the kitchen cupboard metaphorically speaking where I'd dropped it. Hoping the five-second rule still applies, though I may need to request a Special Master. You be the judge, Aaron and otherwise.

Driving home the other day I passed a woman on Oneco Street near the intersection with Williams Street (I think; I'm really good at driving the streets but not so good at knowing their names) walking her Doberman Pinscher (I assume it's hers; who offers to walk someone else's?) on a leash and she had on a dark blue tee shirt with Shut Up Underpants on the back. I have no idea what was on the front-what with the large dog and all, but when I sat down to write this, her shirt just jumped out at me (which probably isn't really the way I'd like this sentence to read, but, as they say in Congress, who has time for English? (kidding, I hope)).

And the title has the advantage of jumping out at you if you're just surfing the web today, hanging ten, grabbing some churn, and getting jiggy with it (see? all of that was English and I have NO idea what any of it means) and your search engine just found this, and like a moth to a flame, here you are. Hopefully not sans (or ohne) underpants. And if you stop here on a regular basis, I know, 'big whoop'.

I had someone send me some amazing insights-someone with whom I share the same biology and with whom I'm joined by the same air we breathe, but that's about all we have in common. So he's a pretty amazing guy for passing this stuff along but (of course) not as amazing as I am for sharing some of it with you. (why is there no ironic type font?)

He told me this comes from the mind and pen (or keyboard, I suspect) of Regina Brett of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and while I'm only going to pass along a few of her insights, the column itself is right here but before you read it, make yourself a nice cup of coffee, brew yourself some tea, or if it's late enough, maybe have an adult sparkling beverage, because you'll want to savor it, it's that good.

"Life isn't fair, but it's still good."

"Life is too short to waste time hating anyone."

"You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree."
"If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it."
"Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful, or joyful."
"No one is in charge of your happiness but you."
"What other people think of you is none of your business."

" No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up." and my favorite,

"Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does."

We're on the threshold of the weekend so if you get time off, enjoy it. The hustle and bustle and head-noise aren't going anywhere and you really look like you could use a break, so take it. And if anyone says anything, refer them to today's title and let them figure it out.

-bill kenny

If You Can Read This

My father was a school teacher and while I have no memory of his being the one who taught me to read (on less charitable days I also mutter under my breath, 'or anything else' primarily because I'm an asshole), I do remember being the only one who could read 'chapter books in my first-grade class at the Wannamassa Elementary School (which seems to look very much as I remember it from about sixty-four years ago). Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff will live forever in my heart.

Our two children are lifelong learners and avid readers, long ago having eclipsed me in reading for both knowledge and/or pure enjoyment. I would assume since you're here at this space in the ether, that you, too, are a reader but I've learned appearances can be deceiving (living in a garage does not, seemingly, make you a car. Imagine my surprise (and what am I supposed to do with this set of white-wall tires I got for my birthday?)).

Humor aside (yes that was what the previous sentence purported to be), today is International Literacy Day, And the need to highlight the importance of literacy is readily apparent as according to UNESCO, at least 771 million young people and adults worldwide currently lack basic literacy skills.

As "Fast Eddie" (Dr. Edward J.) Bloustein, as he assumed the presidency of the Rutgers University System in the spring of 1971 told us, freshmen, on the green behind Vorhees Hall and surrounding the statue of William of Orange (a/k/a Willie the Silent), "the purpose of an education is to learn the rules of the game better than anyone else so that you can then change the rules." 

If you can't read, you're doomed to failure. If you choose to NOT read, you're already there.
-bill kenny

Starting Here and Starting Now

Old habits die hard. I keep a wallet crammed with foolscap. It works out well unless you were to rob me, as there's rarely any money in it, though not necessarily because of the foolscap.

Many years ago, in a galaxy far away I couldn't let go of my anger and lived mostly in a state of rage. I was lucky to find someone who could help me, but he insisted I had to help myself. He came up with the foolscap.

Every time something angered me, I had to write it down on a piece of paper and put that paper in my wallet. But it had to be on its own, separate, piece of paper. No doubling up. By the end of the day, I could have hundreds of slips of paper in my wallet. 

I then had to review ALL these slips each night and on a different sheet of paper, write down all the items I was still ANGRY about. Then, every week before I saw him, I had to review seven pieces of paper, and transfer anything I was still angry about to a separate, clean sheet and bring that to our weekly conversation.

Within a month, I had no lists. I'd review the slips of paper of all the things every day that made me angry and realized I had no idea what was written on most of them or what the words I could read meant or concluded whatever had spun me up wasn't that important after all. Practical magic. 

How about this week especially as we approach the anniversary of 9/11, we try that? Live your life and allow others to live theirs and try to be more mindful. There was a time in this country when we disagreed with each other without being disagreeable. But not anymore.  

Some people tune to certain TV shows just to yell at the talking head who’s making a fortune yelling back at them. Others of us read a newspaper aloud and follow every line of the article with a scowl, a gesture, or a deprecation. And we keep getting louder and angrier about more things, and more people, every day. We don't know how to get off the escalator-and most of us don't even know we're on one.

Passion is fine and necessary. If our primordial ancestors didn't care if they evolved and developed legs to carry them from the pond and then grew lungs, every day would be Friday, if you follow my drift. It's the grinding though, that is wearing us out; the pitched battles we are waging to benefit who knows who or for what purpose.

Do you want to start to fix how we now get along with one another, but you don't want to use the foolscap? Tell me five things this country was angry about before the airplanes on September 11th, 2001. Go ahead, I'll wait. Too hard? Then give me three things, Still too hard?

Did you say you want to take a break from all this head noise and hate to concentrate on the real and critical issues we face as a nation? Then let’s start to do that, starting today. I'll make a note of where we were and when we started to heal. 
-bill kenny

The Ring Should Be Made of Mashed Potatoes

If you have never read Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it's probable that most of what has been happening for decades here in Middle Earth seems shocking to you. 

It shouldn't be and without meaning to be the spoiler alert, it's going to get worse before it ever gets better, assuming that we live long enough for anything to get better ever again. 

The big difference between us here and now in 2022 and the Roman Empire is that the Roman Empire had decent roads. We, on the other hand, have this and I for one cannot wait for the Olympic Committee to decide whether it should be included as part of the games, though the only question may well be Summer or Winter. Probably along with fart-lighting.

Yeah. Because those are the questions we should be asking ourselves.
-bill kenny

September Thoughts

Leave it to the unofficial closing of another summer to make me nostalgic, bordering on maudlin. Technically, I'm enjoying my 70th Labor Day, though in truth, I have no memory of the earliest ones and I've yet to get a clear sense, despite a reasonable amount of reading, of how old we are before we have memories. 

Is that true for you as well? I'll suddenly flash on something from my childhood and not be altogether sure if it's real, or a remembered clip from a movie--my Mom's youngest brother, Paul, when we visited her parents in Elechester out in Flushing, Long Island, (before the World's Fair and Shea Stadium), always calling me 'droopy drawers' and pulling down my trousers and laughing. I can recall being a small child helpless to prevent this and enraged at my own impotence (though not realizing at the time that's what I felt). 

Growing up, I always heard relatives say I looked like Paul, which made me tighten my jaw and hold on to my pants. I think they said that because we both had freckles and lots of them. I know my coloring made me burn up in the sun as, after twenty minutes without sunscreen, 

I looked like a lobster and when the burn finally faded, I wasn't tanning but peeling. At times later in our lives, my sister Kara reminded me of Paul, especially when she laughed which is a little odd because, by the time she was born, Paul and his family were living out on the west coast and rarely came east. 

I flash forward to that same uncle in the back seat of my car, with my father's step-brother, Father Jim (an actual priest) in the shotgun seat, as we rode to the cemetery in East Millstone, NJ, to bury my father. I think that may have been the last time Paul came east as some years later he was diagnosed with I-no-longer-remember-what from which he died. 

I was in Germany, in the era before cheap long-distance phone calls and the Internet so letters and cards were the bridge from home and I learned we only read you when you write and no one likes to write bad news when it's still news, so I learned of his death months, if not longer after it had happened. 

When I was a kid, we hadn't yet gone back to school, that happened after Labor Day and when the New Year began, I'd always look ahead on the calendar to see when the first Monday in September was, always hoping for the 5th or 6th, as if wishing would make it so. 

This year, if the schools were opening that way, a lot of kids' parents would be deeply bummed and the kids wouldn't understand why. Thank goodness we now structure school calendars by union agreements and not on any educational goals, requirements, or needs.

I've never attended my high school or college reunion--one of the places I worked for some years used to hold worldwide reunions every two years, in different locations around the globe and I never worked up the interest or the passion, or, in all honesty, the courage, to attend any of them. 

I have a growing-more-dim-by-the-day memory of being one of 400,000 at Watkins Glen in upstate New York for the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and The Band, but all three of these bands are long gone with members dead, and the souvenir tee shirt "Ball 'n' Boogie" went from the dresser to the rag bin to the garbage decades ago. 

My cohort grew up in the swamps of Vietnam and in the aftermath of the murder of JFK, MLK, and RFK. We survived Timothy Leary better than he himself did, had parents who didn't understand us (until we became them as it turned out), and stayed up late to watch a man walk on the moon. 

We were part of what sociologists call the Pig in the Python generation and yet, I suspect when the last of us has passed (and we will, which, when we were kids, was inconceivable) we'll have left a hole akin to the one in a bucket of water when you pull your fist out. 

And it'll be our children's children who wrestle with the consequences of our decisions on the environment, on energy, on public policy of all shades, and worldwide diplomatic outreaches, and these days, as hard as we think they are, will be viewed as the Golden Ones as they "hang round 'neath the vapor light." 
-bill kenny 

Labor Day 2022

There once was a union maid, she never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,
And when the Legion boys come 'round
She always stood her ground.

Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.

This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,
She couldn't be fooled by a company stool, she'd always organize the guys.
She always got her way when she struck for better pay.
She'd show her card to the National Guard
And this is what she'd say

You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;
Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies auxiliary.
Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,
A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

Now I'm a union man, amazed at what I am. 
I say what I think, that the company stinks. Yes, I'm a union man
When we meet in the local hall, I'll be voting with them all.
With a hell of a shout, it's "Out brothers, out!" and the rise of the factory's fall.

Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die. Until the day I die.

The union has made me wise to the lies of the company spies
And I don't get fooled by the factory rules 'cause I always read between the lines
And I always get my way if I strike for higher pay
When I show my card to the Scotland Yard and this is what I say:

Oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

Before the union did appear my life was half as clear
Now I've got the power to the working hour and every other day of the year
So though I'm a working man I can ruin the government's plan
And though I'm not hard, the sight of my card makes me some kind of superman

Oh, oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
You don't get me, I'm part of the union.
Until the day I die.
Until the day I die.

-bill kenny

Same Holiday, Different Perspectives

 

Hazel Dickens

Phil Ochs

Sweet Honey in the Rock

-bill kenny

The Bigger the Cushion

I've stopped spending a lot of time online doomscrolling news sites or watching 24/7 TV news stations for hours at a time because the variety and number of problems/challenges facing us just continues to multiply like those brooms Mickey takes an axe to in Fantasia. 

That's why I was relieved, I think, to come across a wire service story in one of my local daily newspapers that suggests someone somewhere is taking a stab at trying to mitigate the Brazilian Butt Lift crisis. 

This is something people do and do so dangerously they lose their lives getting it done. Seriously?
-bill kenny

Paging Ichabod Crane...

I've mentioned more than in passing that I am not a fan of autumn. It's not autumn's fault; my problem comes from what I know follows autumn and there's nothing that will ever change that.

To include the folks who, earlier and earlier every year by my calendar, start putting pumpkin and pumpkin spice in everything imaginable and a few things unimaginable (like pumpkin spice brake pads and calipers this week only $99.99, installed). 

And then you have Duane Hanson.  
-bill kenny