Looking Back and Forth

I've finally gotten to the point in the holiday festivities where I read the Christmas cards we received (and exchanged) with others. Again this year, as a continuation of the 'Gee, You are an Obliviot' portion of the season, I not only sent no one any cards, I have no idea what the cards looked like that my wife sent on our behalf. 

I used to get angry at Christmas, not at the Savior (I'm crazy; not stupid), and smelled hypocrisy in every greeting card, fruitcake, and holiday cookie. After all, I reasoned (or thought I did) many of these came from people who, the rest of the year would cross the street rather than say hello to me as we passed. But as I've rusted (not mellowed) I've started to see a kind gesture of remembrance as just that and have stopped answering with (a rude) one of my own.

It's not that life is too short, though I found out this year that can certainly be the case--but because life is too important to not enjoy ALL of it, the hopes and the hype, the dreams, and the dread. All of those make our lives singular and remarkable within our families, our places of work, our neighborhoods, our cities and towns, and these United States (with my apologies to Our Town). 

The trials and travails of 2024 will be here in a matter of hours, and in some spots on this orb, that year has already begun, so forgive me if I encourage you to linger for a moment in the Here and Now, not to look at where we were this time last year and where we are today, but to simply celebrate today and tonight for what it is and we are. After all, it's the same procedure as every year, James. Hurrah! Wir leben noch.
-bill kenny

Same Old Lang Syne

Do you make New Year's resolutions? What are their subjects? (These are not trick questions and there are no wrong answers) I stopped a long time ago before I met my wife before we had our children (technically, she had them), and before we came to the Land of Round Doorknobs.

The only resolution I can recall ever making, and the one I encouraged our two children to also make and to keep, is to do the best I can do every day. 

We spend too much time every day interacting with people who did us a favor showing up, be it for work or for whatever else there is. If you have zero passion or reason for doing or being what you are, where you are, spending any amount of time with you is too much work for me with far too little return. In the year that will get here on little cat's feet in less time than it takes to tell you about it, promise to never be that person, never.

The only thing each of us has the power to change is ourselves. And every day is a new chance to do just that. We own that choice and also we own the consequences for what we do, or what we choose to NOT do.

Be an exclamation and not an explanation.

Live out loud and at the top of your voice as more than one person I know is fond of saying. Be happy you are here because you are but a short time here and long time gone, and make sure the rest of us are thrilled about your presence as well.

Leave nothing undone and even less unsaid.

Each of us knows someone (or more than one someone) who departed from us this year and there are words still lodged in our throats and hearts we never said because we thought we had time to say them. We were wrong, and that's part of being human; being wrong but traveling on.

I hope whoever they were, they were so marvelous and amazing that we shall always feel their absence and miss them for all of our days. Make it a point to toast absent friends, accepting that all of this is a part of all of that and that our dance continues even as partners change because they must.
-bill kenny

The Start of the Final Weekend of this Year

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is watching "It's A Wonderful Life". I watch it on television with commercial breaks built around celebrities recounting when they first saw it (one year I watched Garth Brooks talk about the first time he saw it and realized I had NO idea who he was, despite his success in selling records), even though we have it on DVD and I could watch it at any time, along with the original "Miracle on 34th Street". 

Truth be told, I have no idea how to work the DVD, the timer on the thermostat, or the control for anything other than the popcorn setting on the microwave. I'm not a child of the novelty so much as a prisoner of it

I was surprised to read when the movie was first released it was NOT hailed as a classic or celebrated for its art but was seen more as both a commercial and artistic failure. In the decades that have passed, as more of us have had an opportunity to look at its larger message and ponder the implications of the road not taken, the appeal of the movie has, I think, grown. 

When you examine your own life and think of all the choices you've made that have, in sum, resulted in your being here to read this (or to shake your head in dismay and double-click on to something else), that total number is (or should be) overwhelming.

I arrived here because we won the Cold War and NATO cut the overhead. I had lived in Germany since 1976 and had a wife and two children. We had a gemutlich existence in the heart of a moderate-sized German city. Our two children were old enough to realize Dad's German wasn't as good as theirs (actually it was about as good as my daughter, Michelle's, if you forgot that I was in my late thirties and she wasn't quite four). 

And then the Evil Empire held a Going Out of Business Sale and we thought the Age of Aquarius had dawned. Turns out it hadn't and it still hasn't, but that doesn't mean someday it won't; just not today.

Hundreds and thousands of decisions had to be made (or not made) for us to reside in The Rose of Norwich. I cannot imagine how my life has been enriched by the neighbors alongside whom I've lived, by the people I've worked with on a school building and technology committee, the baseball stadium authority, a charter review commission and on the ethics review committee (not all at the same time, but close to it!). I'd hope I've also added something to their lives but know better. I am humbled and grateful for what they have shared with me and realize I am who I am because of every person I have ever met on the way to where I am now.

For some, knowing me has been more of trial and error (emphasis on the latter) than either of us wish to admit. For others, a little contact goes a long way and absence makes the heart grow fonder (and so they are waiting for me to leave so they can like me). I lack the grace and style of Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey, though I've often attempted to lasso the moon for the love of my life. I'm not sure I could stand up to Potter the way George did and that whole 'angel gets his wings' thing gets me confused. The first Clarence I knew of growing up was a cross-eyed lion, so child of the video age that I am, the programs sometimes get edited together and the meanings get diffused.

As 2023 begins its final weekend, I find myself looking forward to 2024 with hope because of what we have endured, persevered and overcome in 2023 and hope it allows you and yours a moment of pause in the next few days to look at where you are and how you got here and to perhaps concede, trials and tribulations to the contrary, indeed, "It's A Wonderful Life."
-bill kenny 

Watching the World Wide Riot

We're not quite yet at the end of 2023 but if you stand on tippy toes and look to your right, you can just about see 2024 comin' 'round the mountain. 

I don't say 'good riddance' because you never know what's up ahead and praising the day before the evening arrives can often prove to be a mistake. 

But here's an interesting device to help you weigh and measure your own take on the rapidly ending year.

I am starting to think the trick in all of this year-end stuff is to remember life is a circle and not a line.
-bill kenny

Closing Time 2023

I grew up with the music of The Sixties (capitalized that way deliberately), most especially the post-Beatles (and all things British) invasion of the pop music charts. I mention that because I can quote rock music lyrics of that era (or epoch) in much the way more religious acquaintances can cite Scripture. 

John Lennon offered, "A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality." When he gave voice to his dreams through his music only then did we discover how many of those dreams we each shared.

As we near the end of another year of tossing and turning, perhaps our resolution, if not revolution, for the New Year might be to decide if we intend to wake up and (more especially) show up when it comes to making a difference or if we intend to treat one another to another heaping helping of more of the same and hope no one says anything that might require someone to actually do something.

I don't intend to fan the flames of communal memory and review the year past through Rose (City) colored glasses, though if you wanted to drink a cup of kindness, feel free, and if there are grounds in that cup of dreams, they came as part of the set. If you're willing to agree we're farther along than we were this time last year, I'll counter by noting we have a long way yet to go.

Somehow as we've struggled to reinvent our street, neighborhood, village, or city, with equal parts economic development, community involvement, and what seems at times to be some sort of alchemy, we've too often forgotten how we got here, separately, and how the only way we can move ahead is by doing so together.

Each of us has a specific reason, not merely emotional and/or physical inertia or exhaustion, that has brought us to Norwich, at this time and which keeps us here. It may be 'only one thing' for you or for me but added together each of our 'only one thing' adds up to many reasons. 

Just as no single drop of rain holds itself accountable for the flood that follows, while we may feel helpless when we feel we cannot do everything, we should realize we can each still do something. But then, as part of that realization, we must also do it.

We are fortunate to live in an area of the country that offers so much so close; from shopping through dining, athletic to artistic and everything in between. Norwich is a wonderful place to raise a family. If history is to be believed we've been doing that for 364 years, each generation in turn mindful of 'each one, teach one.'  

We each have a story to tell, the story of us, the story of how we came to be here and to be here together at this time. So many have waited for so long for "something good to happen in Norwich." Might I suggest perhaps we are the 'something good' we have been waiting for and if that is, indeed, the case, then we have waited long enough.

Let us begin from this instant on, even as 2023 is crawling to its inevitable end, to become the people we believe we can be, living in the city we know we can have. 

This rapidly approaching new year is perfect for a new beginning and for proving that we have a plan, a purpose, and a destination. It is high time we take ourselves along. Happy Next Year! See you on the other side.
-bill kenny

Not Quite 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire'...

...But this is a chestnut of my own creation and I break it out every year in and around this holiday because it's sort of my Christmas story; if you've heard it before, this might be a good time to move on because I'm going to tell it again anyway. 

It's a perfectly logical consequence in a relationship that began forty-seven years ago yesterday, Christmas Day, which was when I first spoke to the person I was to marry. 

I'd note I haven't had much gelegenheit to speak since then, or to get a word in edgewise, but that would probably earn me a black and blue on one of my upper arms.

I had seen the woman on several previous occasions, but could not work up the courage to speak to her. Nevertheless, I knew with absolute certainty I would marry her though if I didn't solve the 'haven't talked to her yet' obstacle, it would be tricky. 

Me and my friend Chris, thick as thieves then and now despite half a continent's distance, had gotten a head start on the Christmas Cheer and had been downing it by the glassful for hours as we made the rounds in the Frankfurt am Main party district, Sachsenhausen. We probably weren't the only lost and lonely people, swarming like flies, but I believe we were two of the better lubricated.

At some point, we came to be in Old Smuggler's a bar near Eschenheimer Tor in mid-town am Main (great restaurants, terrific shopping, none of which we had any interest in). Chris and I were toasting NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as we'd concluded it was in support of the Alliance that he and I found ourselves on the cutting edge of the sword of freedom, not that either of us could actually utter that turn of phrase at that point in the evening.

I got much drunker much faster than Chris, who did a very good job looking out for me which is always necessary since once I got my drunk on I was even more of an ass(et/hole) than when I'm sober. I stopped drinking not because I suffered from alcoholism (I enjoyed it a great deal) but because I got tired of getting the snot beaten out of me mostly by inanimate objects that snuck up and tackled me. To this day, the only chair I trust is the one I'm sitting on, and only when I'm sitting on it.

Through a very crowded Christmas night came this woman who wanted to share our table and whom, in my liquid state, I felt should sit on my lap to save space. When she agreed, I knew it was now or never. (I was successful at falling in love. I hadn't been successful at staying in love. So far). Chris assures me I was very suave when I said to her, 'Now that you're sitting on my lap, don't you think you should tell me your name?' Okay, not how Shakespeare scripted it, but, remember, it was a long time ago.

As I munched on some mandelspekulatius today, my second-favorite Christmas memory of Germany, I tried to imagine how events had to happen in just the order they did for her and me to meet when we did as we did. My brain hurts and again I concede the limitations of a liberal arts education because I lack the mathematical wherewithal to pull off the arithmetic to do the figuring. I just accept some things on faith and how I met your mother is one of those things without question or quibble.

There is a reason for everything we do and everything we fail to do. And as much as I love the 'we're prisoners of an indifferent universe' state of mind, I don't buy it. Hold on and hold out. It worked for me and I would hope no less than the same for you. Love is always a gift, as it can never be earned and Christmas is the season of love and gifts. 

-bill kenny

At the Risk of Repeating Myself

I first offered this sixteen years ago in this space. I don't think I can improve on any aspect of it to include the title.  

"Happy Christmas"

In some places, it's already tomorrow. And that's okay as well because in some places tomorrow is the Second Christmas when you visit with friends (Christmas Day is for your family).

Not to worry, here in the Land of the Round Door Knobs, time's a wastin' and we'd never devote two days to a holiday when one day will do.

So whichever day it is where you are, Frohe Weihnachten.
-bill kenny

Fourth Sunday of Advent

This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and for many (more importantly) the 'so many days until Christmas' countdown has dwindled down to one! (exclamatory marks sold separately at fine stores everywhere)

Maybe today is a good day to see someone in a corner of our lives we normally see through on our way to the many important things we each do and never really acknowledge. We're a pretty crowded ant farm with beepers and briefcases and sometimes the person next to us falls through a crack and we never notice.

Anglicans (Church of England in the UK) call this Stir-up Sunday, not as in get agitated or become more forcefully engaged in the world around us, but for more quiet and comfortable reasons, but I do like that name and the possibilities and connotations.

For some of us, this is the best of the Season of Joy and for others, it's really nothing more than the next to last Sunday in 2017. We are the sum total of all the choices we make and the lives and love we share. We are the reason for this season.
-bill kenny

In the Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen
Snow on snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter

Long, long ago

Angels and Arc Angels

May have traveled there

Cherubim and Seraphim

Thronged the air

But only his Mother

In her maiden bliss

Worshiped the beloved

With a kiss

What can I give him?

Poor as I am

If I were a shepherd

I would give a lamb

If I were a wise man

I would do my part

But what I can I give him

Give him my heart

Give him my heart

-bill kenny

Hand in Hand

When my family and I were new to The Rose of New England, someone told me that 'Norwich will be a really nice city if they ever get it finished.' The implication, I assume, was that we were, and remain, very good at beginnings, but come up a little short on endings (in terms of both quality and quantity).

A lot of that is the nature of the beast, the culture in which we live. In recent years, the only thing we seem to hate paying more than taxes is attention. We've become people who expect a pop-tart setting on our microwaves because the toaster just takes too long.

When it comes to economic development and project management, some of us are like those four-year-olds in the second seat of the mini-van heading for Grandma's for the holidays, 'are we there yet?' And truth to tell, we're not. 

But cool your jets-we didn't wind up with a grand list suffering stagnation and a forest of 'for sale' signs in neighborhoods across the city overnight and the rebound won't happen by the time I start the next paragraph. Though that would be cool, I suppose. 

And, admit it, a piece of you wanted it to be because hope springs eternal, which is good since we need a certain amount of confidence and optimism in the efforts being made by community leaders as they continue to make Norwich a (better) home for those of us who live here and for those who will one day join us.

But hope is not a plan.
A plan has specific, measurable, achievable, realistic targets-which is why SMART communities have plans and too many others have hope but little else. Planning involves candor-we need to be honest with one another, to speak in clear language that doesn't need a decoder ring, and where yes and no are clearly and universally understood. We need to accept that it's okay to disagree without becoming disagreeable-to evaluate an idea and not the person who offers it.

We need to trust one another to bring our individual best effort to the rest of our community so we more successfully turn your idea into our goal. Questions are integral to the process of rebuilding Norwich-and sticking around for the answers, even if that means more questions, is the rest of the equation.

Norwich, like the rest of our country and the world, is becoming someplace else, someplace new and, depending on how we manage change, hopefully someplace better. 

Whether you arrived in the ship they called the Mayflower, or had it on the side of your moving van, we are all here now and each of us owns the next Norwich, whatever it is to be. 

We should welcome people who mean well, but more than that, we need those who do well. You may as well start to roll up your sleeves now because we're going to need everyone's help.
-bill kenny

Everybody's Looking for Heaven

Today, technically tonight at 10:27, marks the start of winter. 

I intend to be fast asleep when it begins and am sad I will not be able to hibernate for its entirety because it is my least favorite season and directly contributes to my dislike of autumn since, as I tell everyone whether they've asked or not, 'I know what happens next.'

Since I hate winter so much and live in a state that has all four seasons, you might assume I would consider moving to someplace where the word has less painful and cold connotations. But then what would I have to complain about until spring? 

But....look what I've found! Not intending to ruin it, but Connecticut is ranked #20 and the description of New Jersey, where I grew up, is so perfectly, laughably on point it's painful. So buckle up those mukluks, Chuck, because there's not a whole lot else you can do.

"Some people run on a mountain trail. Some like it wild and rough. Some like to fly and some like to sail. Some like the downhill stuff."
-bill kenny

   

Very Nearly Merry Christmas

I know your list of holiday errands and chores is so long you don’t have the time to let me wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday. I don’t take it personally.

In much the same manner as a rabbit who distributes chocolate eggs replaced the original meaning of Easter, we've grown old in a culture that has a Jolly Old Elf flying around the world in one night handing out presents that look just like the stuff you once bought for the kids in that store with the giraffe. Funny how art imitates life and then doesn't.

I'm a fossil who grew up in Fifties when we had air raid warnings that involved hiding under our school desks and facing away from the windows (to avoid the flash of atomic incineration), three (if we had a good antenna) TV stations, all black and white all the time, fathers who got up early and went far away to work and moms who made sure we got to school, came home, put on play clothes before we went outside (every time I see trousers at half-mast or tattered-knee jeans, I imagine the reaction of my mother or, more especially, my father, and smile), had dinner, did our homework and got ready for bed when we'd get up and do it all again.

Ours was a nuclear family--now many of us live in an unclear society where anything goes, and nobody knows. Back in the day, I had Sister Rose, Sister Thomas Anne, and Sister Mary Jean, and this time of year, our heads were not filled with thoughts of sugar plum fairies (never did get that line or what they were supposed to be. Fruit cake, I've had; sugar plums, not quite), but we were experts on The Nativity Scene (I felt compelled to capitalize the "T" because I was taught NO other way to write it).

We learned all the hymns, often in what Sister Mary Jean called 'the original Latin' which I realized years later was a private joke she and my father shared and while there's a certain happiness in Jingle Bell Rock, for hard-core jollies, try Adeste Fideles (as sung by someone who thought the Wise Men had given The Child the gift of Frankenstein, since I had no idea what frankincense was).

We've become people who are more familiar with the returns policy at The Mall and online merchants than the hours during which confessions are heard at the local church, or as I heard it called the other day by someone too young to be facetious, "The God Store." Many of us will spend today through Sunday seeking out that special present for our special someone and I wish those of us in that situation the best of luck.

I’m told a friend is a present you give to yourself and there's no such thing as strangers, only friends we haven't met. If both of those are true, since this is after all, Christmas, when miracles can and do happen, as you're heading home whenever your last last-minute shopping expedition ends, rather than follow The Star, seek out someone you’ve passed in your travels whose travails you realize could have been yours and share some of the change, paper and coins, in your trouser and jacket pockets. You'll never miss it, and someone you'll never meet will be grateful for a moment of peace on the ground.

Merry Christmas! 
-bill kenny

If Jesus Exists

I wrote this a really long time ago in the belief that if I could somehow name the dread/fear that haunted me it would somehow hold less power over my life.
That, as it turned out was either wishful thinking or abject bullshit. 

It's said the child is father to the man-sometimes that's not all that's fathered.

Happy Birthday, Dad. 

The Birthday Boy

I don't ever remember celebrating my father's birthday as I grew up. Logic dictates we, our mother (his wife) and my brothers and sisters (his children) must have done so as we did for everyone in our family, and yet every year I struggle and fail to find a single memory of a single moment of that day.

I mention all of this because had he lived, today would have been his one-hundredth birthday (he died forty-two years ago) and I'd like to think that now he would be something I never felt he was while we shared the earth, proud of something, anything, I'd ever done. 

Except even in this case, as was so true in our shared lives, I would be cheating (oh so slightly) as I'd hope he'd be proud of his grandchildren, Patrick and Michelle, who are my wife, Sigrid, and my children.

My most lasting memory of my father isn't really a memory of him at all, but a reminder of how life goes on within you and without you. Many years ago while shopping, Sigrid found what she assured me was 'the perfect card for you to send to your dad for Father's Day.' 

I don't remember the card, though this would be a better lesson for me if I had, but I signed it, after Sigrid had addressed it, put a stamp on it, and had me throw it in my work bag. And that's where the card stayed.

Months later, and well past Father's Day, she was rooting through my bag, in search of something I had promised to bring home but had misplaced. Her theory, more often right was that whatever it was, it could be found in my bag. The body of Jimmy Hoffa, the other gunmen on the grassy knoll, Weapons of Mass Destruction--check in the bag.

Dad in his classroom

What she found that day, and registered a quiet note of disappointment with me because of it, was the card we both thought I had mailed months earlier for Father's Day. Faced with the reality that I hadn't, all I could do was to mumble a promise to do so 'next year'.

You've guessed, of course, that my father died before 'next year' ever happened. As a self-centered oldest child, stiff-necked and incapable of bending, I had clashed with my father nearly every day of my life. 

I think from the time I could talk, all I said to him was 'no.' 

I don't recall what we fought about or why, but they were bitter arguments, often ending in physical contact that made me more fully appreciate the weight of his hands, but I refused to yield anything at any time and we passed months, if not years, exchanging as few words as possible for as long as possible. I had wished him the worst countless times, and when notified by the Red Cross (I was in the Air Force) that he was dead, my first reaction was overwhelming guilt.

We, the three oldest children had moved out and away, but our three youngest, two sisters and a brother, were left to be raised by our mother in circumstances vastly different from ours when were their ages and I made no effort to ever learn or to attempt to mitigate or improve.

I've never spoken to them about those years and know I'll never do so. More casualties in a war that should have ended decades ago, but continues even as I type this and feel the gorge rise in my veins as if "enough" weren't already, and finally, truly enough.

I am, like it or not, my father's son in ways neither of us could have ever seen or imagined. Perhaps he'd be proud of that, and yet I truly hope not. 

Photo by Sigrid Kenny

Life is a sum of all your moments--waking and dreaming; everything you've done or left undone; every word, said and unsaid, and of all your prayers, answered but, most especially and finally, those unanswered.

-bill kenny

Wandering and Wondering

I’ve written before about how much I enjoy walking and how often walking across Norwich has been a source of inspiration (you wondered where this stuff came from, right?).

I love the difference of perspective I get when I’m thundering along at the speed of thought (or what passes for it in my case) able to take in the various aspects of neighborhoods that I’d just glance at through a windshield under other circumstances.

It can be helpful, at least for me, to get a deeper appreciation of a location in the news by going and looking at it, to supplement the exercise of reading a newspaper story (or stories) about it.

That was the case last Tuesday when I tagged along as a fly on the wall for a special meeting of the Commission of the City Plan for a site walk of what’s being called the Occum Industrial Center (residents in the immediate vicinity have somewhat more colorful names for it, I learned) before tomorrow night’s regular meeting which will include a continuation of the Commission's public hearing on the proposed development.

The meeting is open to the public and will be in Room 335 of City Hall, but you can follow along at home via Zoom. You’ll find the agenda (and how to be part of Who’s Zooming Who here.)  

And while you’re on the City’s website, please notice the two vacancies on the Commission on the City Plan (and scads of others on so many other advisories, boards, and commissions) so maybe part of the new you for the new year could be to volunteer to become a part of why Norwich is a great place to come home to. Maybe your involvement could not only make a difference but be the difference.

Walking across the hills and dales of the spaces the proposed business park intends to develop was more than eye-opening. To be honest, most of my visits to Occum (I live near NFA) were to Austin’s Garage because they were wizards with Subarus, so last Tuesday was a very different experience from reading news accounts of the ongoing discussions between the industrial center's proponents and many of those who’ve called Occum home for years, in some cases, decades.

I‘d read about Tarryk Farms, a part of the proposed parcel for development (and was earlier slated to be the Byron Brook Country Club project). It is spectacular and it’s hard to believe so much nature is so near to Norwich (well, the buzz of traffic on I-395 does help give it away a little).

I can see why it’s so attractive for development (highway access and power lines on site) and let’s face it, Norwich desperately needs the tax revenue, but I can appreciate the passion of those Occum neighbors who want a better understanding of what is being proposed and its cost (in terms of flora, fauna, and habitat for all manner of wildlife as well as other concerns).

For some, the Occum Industrial Center is a field of dreams, but others worry it could become a nightmare, and once developed there’s no turning back. Finding
the proper balance means accommodating everyone. 

I don’t know what the answer is or should be, but I do know all of us who live here, not just in Occum, should be better informed about the project and all of its risks and rewards. 

It shouldn’t have to matter to you before it matters to you. 
-bill kenny

Third Sunday of Advent

Despite the recent days of hate and hate-filled utterances making headlines on what seems like a daily basis during this Season of Hope, today, Gaudete Sunday remains a favorite of mine (since my earliest school days).

Before I had memorized the entire Latin Mass, in hopes (forlorn) of becoming an altar boy, I had theorized from what I understood of the roots of the word Gaudete and its proximity to the birth of Jesus that it must somehow be Latin for 'just hold on a little bit longer.' I still think I should get partial credit for grasping the feeling if not the exact meaning.

A lot of the warmth of our human hearts regardless of our beliefs is reflected by the holiday seasons that fall together this time of year somehow reminding us, I hope, that we are when we can see and live beyond our differences all very much the same people.
-bill kenny

The Most Significant Event in American History

We get so caught up in Red State/Blue State stupidity (all I ever think of anymore with that argument is Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy) that we get lost in the tall grass  (and sometimes, the not-so-tall). I think it's the argument we've come to enjoy and have forgotten about the outcomes. 

Today is the 250th anniversary of the moment shit got real in Boston Harbor. Without it, we might not have ever had a country to argue over who exactly is ruining it. 

For some of us, if we didn't have that to argue about, we'd have nothing to say.
-bill kenny

Words Are Weapons

You probably are, or should be, familiar with George Carlin's perhaps most infamous of routines. 

But how about the history of the most popular and frequently used of them all? 

Strange how some words can be so offensive or perceived as such, but others like war, hatred, and hunger are just part of the scenery.
-bill kenny 

What Do You Want from Life?

It's the question, perhaps, of all questions, but there are no easy answers.

 "What do you want from life
To kidnap an heiress
or threaten her with a knife

What do you want from life
To get cable TV
and watch it every night

What do you want from life
Someone to love
and somebody that you can trust

What do you want from life
To try and be happy
while you do the nasty things you must"

Well, you can't have that, but.....
-bill kenny

C to the Third Power

Do you know that expression, ‘Stop me if you’ve heard this before’? Please don’t, because in this case, what I’m about to offer, you have read before, assuming (and I do) you stop by here on a regular or even irregular basis and read anything that’s offered in this space. 

Forewarned is forearmed; I wear glasses-you can make up your own joke.

We're at that point in the calendar where festive feelings and festivals of hope and happiness are everywhere. Less than a fortnight ago, the First Friday’s lighting of City Hall followed the next day with the Norwich Winterfest Parade thrilling the young and young at heart from across the city and around the region. 

We've already observed the first two Sundays of Advent and the Festival of Lights, Hannukah, began last Thursday night and concludes this Friday at sunset. The seven days of Kwanzaa begin on December 26th and last through the start of the new year.  

Most of us look forward to this 'most wonderful time of the year' as an opportunity to renew old acquaintances with friends and family and share memories of happy past times while looking forward to better days yet to come. 

This is a season ideally suited to underscore and reaffirm the importance for each of us, both as individuals and as residents of a city with a rich past and unproven future promise, the importance of Life's 3 C's: Choices, Chances, and Changes.

We each must choose to take a chance, or our lives will never change. Some people feel the key lies in the change, but I believe making and owning that one conscious choice is critical to recognizing an opportunity or a chance and then building on that to create a new circumstance and a different situation, in other words, a change.

Opportunities can be missed or can be golden. They cannot be both and once the Rubicon is crossed the decision is made and managing the consequences becomes the chance to change. Continuing to discuss the ‘would've, could've, and should've been’ is a wasted effort unless we choose to act and embrace change. Nothing ever happens if you don't make it happen.  

Saying 'no' as we did in this city a month ago to a bonding initiative to build a new public safety building is not the last word either on the community's commitment to public safety or on the importance of elected and appointed city leaders in defining and defending their vision of our downtown's growth and improvement. The decision was neither fatal nor final in terms of the steps on a journey we will make choosing to either run toward our future or from it. There's no standing still.

The holiday season should be one of hope and I’ve often described my feelings about that word (hope is NOT a plan). We have three and half weeks left in a year that began, as they all do, with so much promise. How much progress we measure as the days draw down is, of course, important not only because we need to know where we are but to better decide where we go next.

Ray Bradbury, of Fahrenheit 451 fame, once wrote "Living is jumping off the cliff and building wings on your way down."  Isn't it time we trusted ourselves to soar? Choice, chance, and change. 

Or lather, rinse, and repeat. You decide; I already have.
-bill kenny

Marie Antoinette Would Approve

We are continuing to become One World, whether we like it or not. 

And it's not all bad, though I might feel differently if archaeologists discovered Bud Light beer cans inside the Great Pyramid, or someone opened up a Buffalo Wild Wings in the Tower of London. 

Fast Food in the Serengeti, Part 1

And don't snicker, it could happen-look at Paris.   

Fast Food in the Serengeti-Part II

Talking about wishful thinking, "“We are not going to eat donuts every day.”
Ah, Dominique, Tu sais que tu ne peux jamais dire.
-bill kenny

Not Quite Under Milkwood

I was absent the day the briefing was offered about growing old. 

I had successfully avoided the one about growing up (my wife and two children have paid the price for that truancy for many years). I didn't think it was that big a deal especially since aging happened in such small increments over a prolonged and protracted period. 

Wow, was I mistaken.
When I look at the grizzled mug of the geezer in the mirror every morning I sometimes wonder who that is as my memories of what I look like and the realities staring back at me are entirely different. 

Quite frankly, the only thing more demoralizing and depressing about what I now know about growing old (and fuck that whole 'growing old gracefully' bullshit) are the things I think I know about it, which ain't necessarily so.

  "Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night"

-bill kenny

Second Sunday of Advent

In twenty-two days, 2023 will have come to an end. I'm not sure I'm fully grasping that realization even as I type that line. This has been another year I've been forced to concede the face in the mirror has aged and that the man behind the face hasn't nearly as many springs left as he thought he had and more on point, has squandered, rather than saved, those moments of meaning he thought would come along again as easily as they did the first time. 

I've actually felt the dullness of the ache in the pit of my stomach and the shocked realization of regret that the next time can be the last time always brings with it as a constant companion. Like so many over these past twelve months, I've blinked at critical moments and lost sight of the important ones in the rush of the real as the latter became surreal and unreal before disappearing by the dawn's early light. 

This was the year I made a lot of changes and vowed to sort myself out. And here it is, having nearly run its course and my still-to-do list looks a lot like what it was when I started on it as the year was beginning. 

I'm finding no solace or consolation in that the next year will be over even faster than this one, with, I fear, even less to show for it as the distance already traveled never equals the distance yet to go. I'm exhausted, physically and emotionally, and feel like I'm running through soup and sand, my feet never quite lifting from and clearing the ground, as each stride is a broken parody of what it once was with my arms pushing through chilling air I can taste rather than feel. 

The harder I try the farther behind I seem to fall. I started out the year, if I'm lucky, beside you but have spent the year watching you slowly disappear ahead of me, your long and resolute strides taking you over the horizon and when I get to where you were, you're gone with no trace, no track, and no regret. Sic transit humanitas.

This was to be the year we were to do, we were to talk, we were to live large, and to just be. And what happened? We allowed so many others, maybe too many others (who've already given up on their dreams) to creep in as poor players and poison what wells of hope we'd held for ourselves.

Our sense of adventure and excited curiosity has been replaced by dread as the days draw down and this year nears its end. The toast we'll make for much success in the new year assumes both will exist but accepts the implication that neither is promised. But it's what's next that will keep me awake.

-bill kenny

So Bird's Not the Word?

Not sure why, but the other day, 'zany' popped into my head. It was a word we heard a lot when we were kids but was usually used by adults rather than us. We preferred 'goofy,' and  years before 'cool' became cool, things that were cool were 'nifty.' 

Language is amazing-technically, languages are amazing as there are at least seven thousand different languages. And somehow, I realize they explain the methodology but I wanted to interject with a 'somehow' for dramatic purposes, the Oxford University Press every year, in what I suspect resembles a cat rodeo of sorts manages to wrangle out of all of the languages in the world a "Word of the Year." 

For 2023, that word is 'rizz.' I know that's zany, innit, practically kooky (another word from my youth) but the explanation is fascinating even if I'm still a little disappointed that I never got to use last year's WOTY, 'goblin mode.'(not related in any way to pie ala, seemingly) or, as it turns out any of the other relatively recent words of the year. 

With so many languages, you'll not be surprised to discover that other dictionary publishers have their own Word of the Year, 'authentic' was the choice of Merriam-Webster but I've got tot say say it doesn't hit me in the feels the way rizz does. Perhaps nothing ever will, at least until next year.
-bill kenny

Now and Then

I wrote this many years ago. For a mouthy so-and-so, you'd think I might have found more words by now; but they stay stuck in my throat so these will have to do.

If I need more than a dozen words to explain the importance of John Lennon and the music he helped create, and the other music he made possible, I'm too old and you're too young to be having this conversation. And since, chronologically, I got here first, you'll have to leave. 

I was born the year Dwight David Eisenhower took the oath as President. Rock and roll was either very rhythm and blues-oriented (and called 'race music') or was so white it glowed in the dark with melodies from the Brill Building professionals as sung by any fresh face who showed up at the auditions. Little Richard's originals such as Good Golly, Miss Molly were covered and eclipsed by a variety of white artists and never enjoyed the success on pop radio station airwaves they should have, but UK rockers had no way of knowing that. 

People like Sam Phillips and Sun Records helped change all that with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and (of course) Elvis Presley. The seismic shock Elvis set off echoed halfway across the world where tub thumpers, literally, who were part of something the British called skiffle, attempted to emulate the American records they were hearing in the coffee bars and teen clubs.

The perspiring and aspiring musicians who spent hours trying to copy every chord change of every R&B song they heard had no idea that in the USA, the music to which they were so devoted had been co-opted to a large extent castrated by safe-as-houses imitators. Their world then was so different from our world now that words fail, which is why (perhaps) so many of us who came of age in The Sixties turned to music in the first place as a replacement for language.

If all you know of John Lennon is what you've read, you cannot imagine the electricity late-night American Top 40 radio had when The Beatles were on. They built a bridge from the UK for every disaffected rocker to cross, and it mattered not if they could sing, Noel Harrison certainly couldn't, as long as they looked the part. 

The Liverpool lads stuck and stayed when so many others had faded away because they had the talent and the ear of a generation who sought a voice while they, themselves, searched for the sound they had heard years earlier. They may have never realized they had become the object for which they searched-we on other hand never cared and embraced them as the Soundtrack of the World to Be. 

The Beatles 'broke big in America' in the aftermath of the murder of John F. Kennedy and I've never believed that was coincidence. They were the standard by which all other pop music was measured. It felt, for someone in his teens for much of their public career, that The Beatles had been around forever but when they went dark in 1970, they had been a chart presence for far less than a decade. 

Where there were four, only two are alive today. All of them spent, and continue to spend, their solo careers battling unreal expectations, measured by critics and fans alike against an impossible standard no one could match. With Lennon's murder, the death of the public John overshadowed the personal tragedy his two sons, Julian and Sean, as well as the pain and grief his wife, Yoko Ono, and his first spouse now deceased, Cynthia, felt and feel every day of their lives, but most especially today. 

It's tempting when revisiting history to forget it can just as easily be written as his story because in this case, the bandmate, the father, and the husband were all walk-ons in the Beatlemania movie Mark David Chapman so abruptly and completely ended all those years ago. 

For many who never knew the man, except through his music, today is a long day. There's little we can do except enjoy what he gave us while watching the wheels go round and wonder what might have been.
-bill kenny