He Hung Up His Eyelids

The other afternoon as we were driving back from grocery shopping, my wife, Sigrid, looked out the passenger window at the grey landscape blending seamlessly into a grey horizon where, somewhere overhead, it met an equally grey sky, and offered a word in her native language, German, to describe it, trostlos (hopeless).

This is the toughest time of year for a lot of us, including folks like me who stare out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of what's next. A number of years ago someone took me on a short helicopter flyover of some of the woodlands and farmlands in this area of Connecticut in the late fall, and early winter and the view from the top seemed to be of another world at times.

I can recall everywhere we went (and you can see a lot of them from the roadways, but there are many, many more as it turns out), seeing rock walls through the forests and brook beds, intersecting at angles and wondering how odd that must have seemed to the indigenous peoples here when European settlers first arrived. 

In comparison, the European landmass was the smallest of the continents, and maybe that's where the assertiveness (if not out and out aggressiveness of its natives) developed as they went out into the big world and marked their territory not only to use but, at times, to use up.

I drive through lands demarcated by ancient stone walls on a daily basis and none of the creatures I pass in my travels or travails regard them as immutable boundaries or barriers. They are there and nothing more. I would imagine a Mohegan or a Pequot, thinking of the tribes in this region of Connecticut, watching an early settler struggle to subjugate the earth to farm crops, engaged in back-breaking labor to maneuver the giant stones they unearthed while tilling, to serve as property markers was too amusing to not smile.

And it's taken us centuries to learn lessons of harmonious, not rapacious, living within a natural order. Reuse and recycle from plunder and leave and work very hard to not spend too much time calculating what has been lost from lessons left unlearned for too long.
-bill kenny

Humbled to the Core

I never know what to make of a news story that, at first reading, strikes me as both disquieting and alarming only to learn as the day progresses it's becoming more of a 'nothing to see here' type of story. 

I'm not sure I'm still not right to be worried when the headline is "Earth's Inner Core May Have Stopped Turning..."  

And I'm sure Hrvoje Tkalcic has only the best of intentions when he offers, "Nothing cataclysmic is happening." And I would feel more reassured except the story suggests to me that a lot of the science I'm assuming is a foundation for these discoveries and conclusions is, in reality, more wild-assed guessing than stone certainty. Yep, I'm feeling a whole better now, how about you? 

I'll tell you what awed me, as in shock and awe, this view, courtesy of the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey, of the Milky Way.  

So much beauty meeting so much science.  All you can do is marvel.
-bill kenny

It's Not Like It's Whipping Post....

Velocity meets virtuosity. Stand by to be stunned.   

"Talk to them of their technique; they'll say 'I hit it with this stick.'
-bill kenny

Somewhere The Pointer Sisters Are Smiling

As a lifelong cynic, I can admire those who can twist language to cover their own nefarious deeds. Take the 'supply chain crisis' (Where's Henny Youngman when I need him? Please!) which is a very sophisticated way of saying 'we choose to charge you more for this item safe in the knowledge there's little to nothing you can do about it.' In other words, greed.

And they're absolutely right. We can't really do much about the cost of a new car, a used car, the parts to keep one or the other in repair, the cost of gas and oil for whichever we choose, and/or ten to a hundred thousand other items we used to purchase nearly unconsciously before COVID-19 and its consequences changed how we live (for those of us who survived; for those who thought it was a hoax and ended up contracting it and dying, congratulations you sure owned the libs). 

We have all kinds of folks in Washington D.C., when not storming the Rotunda or allowing smoking on the floor of the House of Representatives, waxing apoplectic about how much fentanyl is pouring across the border with Mexico. I can't help but wonder why we're ignoring the bacon and Tim Horten's coming down here from Canada but that's for another time. 

But at the intersection of the supply chain crisis and items being smuggled in from Mexico, somewhat surprisingly, we have eggs. Yes, chicken eggs. A variety of avian flu attacks across the star-spangled chicken ranches of our great nation have created scarcities and that's no yolk (see what I did there?), and while prices have started to moderate somewhat, they're still high and are expected to stay elevated for some time to come. 

So unless you're Semolina Piltcherd, climbing up the Eiffel Tower or an elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, get ready for goo goo g'joob with a side order of huevos revueltos.
-bill kenny

By the Waters of Babylon

Today is the seventy-eighth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. which serves as the cornerstone of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As a child when my mother's mother told stories of "The War" her generation had fought, she rarely mentioned the death camps-perhaps because we were of Irish ancestry and Roman Catholic religion, perhaps for reasons she never had the time or the opportunity to explain.

I'm her age now and the cautionary tale the Ha-Shoah should have become does not seem to be a lesson we on the planet have fully learned. There is mindless murder every day in every corner of the globe because of the color of skin, the choice of a God, the shape of an eyelid, and always the fear of The Other.

We are NOT much better here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as we impersonalize and dehumanize those with whom we are in disagreement philosophically and politically, rendering them abstractions and making them easier to hate and then hating them deeply and completely.

Instead of Slouching towards Bethlehem, we have continued our journey on the road to perdition and that, I fear, means we will persist in writing off one another and the damages we do to ourselves as part of the overhead of being on the planet. As if a lifetime is worth no more than an arched eyebrow or a shrugged shoulder.

Growing faint in the face of evil is to do nothing and doing nothing cannot be allowed especially when each of us, worldwide, knows that silence is consent and the first chapter in the horror story.

About a minute and a half into this trailer, Keri Lynn (spelling?) explains why she became involved in the Paper Clips Project. I imagine all these years on, her place has been taken by other bright and shiny young people who, if we're lucky, will not need to build rafts to save us from the flood of our own hatred but, instead, bridges to allow connections despite our differences.
-bill kenny

Another Self-Inflicted Wound

I have no idea how many different ways we can inflict mortal harm on ourselves and/or one another but I'm sure it's a really long list and it seems to grow more expansive by the day.  

Perhaps because I, as often accused, lack imagination when public health officials some time ago were warning people of the danger of ingesting Tide pods, I thought this had to be a joke because no one could be this stupid.   

         

Except, of course, I'd forgotten all about the people who ate tablespoons of cinnamon, or duct taped themselves to walls as some sort of a challenge and how can I forget (and believe me, I've tried) a former President who thought we could successfully combat a disease he'd assured us would disappear like some sort of a miracle by ingesting or injecting bleach or taking a horse deworming medication. 

So I really shouldn't be surprised that dragon's breath, some sort of liquid nitrogen, is starting to thin out the herd. On the upside, it lessens the lines of those covering their faces in hot wax.
-bill kenny

Through the Past, Darkly

I mentioned not long ago I've been at this for quite some time, another roadside attraction on the internet with gerunds and participles. This (slightly edited to minimize dated references) is from almost a dozen years ago, and while its subject, the Vibrant Communities Initiative, was front-page news at the time, it sank like a stone from public sight. I couldn't find a single reference to it anywhere on The Bulletin's website.

It pains me that so much of what we were then, we still are now. Let me revisit a moment when I thought we were moving forward. I’ll bet you can guess what happened.

“For decades we've listened to laments about missed opportunities, bad luck, poor faith, and lack of working capital as the municipal Grand List puttered along at a rate of growth just above that of inflation which basically meant we've had no real growth at all.

“Of course, if you've looked at municipal infrastructure from roads to sewers, class sizes and extracurricular offerings for students in public schools, manning and staffing of public safety agencies, and, most immediately and importantly, your property tax bill, you already knew all of that.

“The small businesses that quietly folded or relocated to another town, the forest of 'For Sale' signs scattered throughout every neighborhood, and the families everywhere who just stopped being our neighbors from one day to the next and disappeared have all become part of who we are and how we live.

“In late September 2011, the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation (CTHP) announced it had awarded one of its $50,000 grants from its Vibrant Communities Initiative (sadly, the page no longer exists on the website) to Norwich to assist in developing an action plan for underutilized historic places and/or for a city-wide preservation plan.

“The grants were intended to stimulate investment in historic preservation projects; for underutilized historic places/structures; and for developing town- or city-wide preservation ordinances.

“For Norwich, with a wealth of historic buildings, the initiative combined with an effort to update the next decade's city-wide Plan of Conservation and Development (the road map by which we determine the future direction of our city for the benefit of all of its residents) all buttressed by an on-hand pool of nearly ten million dollars for downtown building owners and business owners, real estate brokers and anyone interested in locating a business in downtown Norwich,and we had some weight instead of wait.

“By themselves, none of these initiatives would do anything for anyone. And even combined, blended, melded, or whatever word you want to use, nothing was guaranteed in and of itself. But please remember in November of 2010, supporters of the downtown bond initiative spoke about the importance of demonstrating we, the residents, were willing to invest in ourselves, about the signal we would be sending and the tenor and tone we would be defining for ourselves and those whom we hoped to welcome.

“Critical mass describes the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and creates further and future growth. Where we are in ten, twenty, or fifty years is the result of what we choose today. One thing leads to another.”

Or so I thought. 
I wrote those words on September 28, 2011. And what have we accomplished?

If all we ever do is TALK about change then all we ever get is hoarse.
-bill kenny

You Won't Believe Your Eyes

When I was a kid, magicians fascinated me. I never heard them called illusionists which I guess is really what they are. That whole 'the hand is quicker than the eye'  always seemed like an art form unto itself, most especially while I still wore short pants and my first name had a Y on the end of it.  

Seventy years of life here on the ant farm and as much as I'd like to say or think I've seen it all, I know I haven't and now, there's yet another museum in the Capital of the World, New York City, that seems to suggest even if you believe you've seen it all, quite possibly some of what you saw, you didn't.

Okay. After all that, who are you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?
-bill kenny

I Almost Believe They Are Real

I suppose it could be considered a BGO, Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious, but I came across a report the other day online that, brace yourself, suggested that NOT EVERYTHING IS AS IT SEEMS ONLINE. 

Yes, pilgrim, there are lies, and damn lies as Harry Truman might say, and then aside from George Santos you have fabulists who make everything up to include most especially says the Social Catfish, the photos of the person with whom you are communicating.

I know. When the source of this information is something called Social Catfish it's quite alright to wonder just how much of what is going on is actually going on. I'll give them this, I am impressed with the degree of due diligence exercised in compiling a list of the one hundred most used photos. 

Almost all white, all women, all buxom, with some white guys in camo thrown in to slow the doom-scrolling. One thing crossed my mind looking at the top 100: a lot of these folks should file for NILs, Name, Image, and Likeness although that may only apply to high school and college athletes. 

As it is, the compilation has put me off looking at the sides of milk cartons forever. 
Assuming those are real.
-bill kenny

You Only Live Once

I see myself as a cautionary tale who, as fate would have it, is of little to no interest to anyone else. At one time my thug name was God's Punchline. Please do not feel sorry for me, I'm very good at that all by myself and have always been incredibly competitive. It could get ugly and fast. Consider yourself warned.

I push the pedestrian crosswalk buttons while out and always wait until they turn green before crossing. I've gotten better at no longer yelling at people who either don't push at all or don't wait after pushing the button and just rush across the street. not because I've mellowed but because I either can no longer catch up to them and/or if I do catch up to them look so frail and frazzled they just figure I'm one of those old guys who yells at clouds. They're more often than not, correct.  

I have decided to live forever or die trying though with the medical maladies I've collected in just seven decades, the pursuit of immortality seems like a fool's errand. Perhaps just some more of that Irish kamikaze krazy that I exhibit at the worst possible times. 

My idea of living dangerously is cutting the tag off of a new mattress so I'm not sure what to make of these sports aficionados and I use that word very advisedly. Buckle up.
-bill kenny  

Playing It Cool

Our children are musically very talented and I have to assume they get that from their mother as I cannot carry a tune in a bucket. Our son, Patrick, sang in his middle school's chorus while our daughter, Michelle, started violin lessons if I recall correctly (not that I often do) at about the second-grade level and has gone on to basically being able to pick up any instrument and make music with it. 

My musicality consists mainly of being a rock and roll music collector, with a skosh of over 7,000 albums of every musical variety and idiom and yes, I have played ALL of them at least once, and many far more than that.  

Some like it hot, and I am in that number, and some like it cool, and I can relate to that.
And some like it cold.
-bill kenny

Your First Words Have Yet to Be Said

I sort of still recall as a kid, living on Bloomfield Avenue in Franklin Township, New Jersey, making the shocking discovery that people die. 

I used to help a friend deliver the afternoon edition of The Daily Home News, now apparently the Home News Tribune (and more distressingly, judging from the website, a Gatehouse/Gannett abomination of a news operation, similar to what we have where I now live where the motto secretly is 'no news is good news and that's all we ever have, no news.'), and one of his customers no longer received the paper because he'd died over the weekend.

My memory is that we'd seen him earlier in the week working in his yard and he seemed fine, so the notion that people just plop down dead was a disturbing revelation. Since that time, I've learned of and/or witnessed enough people passing from all manner and means to fill a medium-sized city and have spent more and more time as I've aged making the acquaintanceship with new and more medical specialists who work harder with each passing year to keep me on this side of the daisies.     

At seventy years of age, it's no longer a blinding glimpse of the obvious that growing old sucks. I had already concluded that by the time my voice started to crack and nothing in my experience has changed my opinion. 

Every once in a while I run into something with an 'if I knew then what I know now' attitude or, arrogance personified, 'it's a tragedy youth is wasted on the young,' and all I wanna do is sock them in the jaw. In theory, we trade the wide-eyed wonder of youth for the wisdom of age and in my case, I got gypped badly but there's no turning back the clock, or at least there hasn't been until now. 

If you see your body as a machine and accept that machines wear down and break what do you make of this line? "While DNA can be viewed as the body’s hardware, the epigenome is the software." I know, knowing what the hell an epigenome is would be helpful, but this report suggests aging can be reversed, not just theoretically but in reality.    

If you could do your life over, could you and would you? And what, if anything would you do differently? It may soon no longer be a rhetorical question.
-bill kenny

Get Trucked

A glance at any highway or parking lot will confirm what you've long suspected: we are in love with our trucks (I don't actually own a truck, nor have I ever; I just like the sound of 'our trucks'). I do admire, despite their oft-gargantuan height, width, and size most full-size trucks even those whose beds are large enough to fit my not-too-tiny Subaru Forester ('think of the gas mileage' I tell my wife), though I will admit to having less enthusiasm for what the automotive industry calls 'light' trucks (I'm guessing 'small' is considered a pejorative term). 

I don't know. It just seems like a lot of money to pay for something that too often never leaves a paved surface and doesn't hold enough of anything that any friend will bother you to help them move. Unless, of course, that's the hidden appeal of small trucks. 

This brings me to an even nicheier niche small truck; an electric truck, made in China that costs about two thousand dollars and looks like Lego and Hot Wheels had a baby, the Chang Li Explorer.  

I think my favorite part is how you, the purchaser, are basically ALL the dealer prep. And look at the pieces of metal framing and pressed wood you can try to place in the flatbed later to take to the dump. Looks to me like even though the rear window is too small for a gun rack, you might be able to hang a few bullets up there.
-bill kenny 

The Peaceful Valley Just Over the Mountatin

We observed, as a federal holiday, the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., on Monday, but the 94th anniversary of his birth was this past Sunday, January 15th. Dates are important, of course, and serve as pegs from which to hang observances but we can become prisoners of calendars and without thinking reduce events and their meanings to the lowest common denominator in a shorthand we use to manage the increasing and ever-accelerating rate and pace of change in our lives.

We have stolen moments rather than meaningful ones with which we struggle to make sense of the world and how we define our lives both within and without. Reducing meaning and moments to slogans and labels allows us the false luxury of ‘dealing with it’ without getting involved, like fast food for the mind and soul, without any real nutritional or spiritual value.

Our city’s celebration of Dr. King's life was for some (but never enough) of us about 90 minutes of our mid-afternoon Monday at the David Ruggles Freedom Courtyard in front of our City Hall and as important as that time together was/is, how we choose to carry his message and lessons for the rest of the year and in each of our lives is where we need to devote our energy.

If all you perceive Dr, King to be is just a civil rights icon, I think you're missing the bigger flick. Civil rights are Human Rights and an even cursory examination of Dr. King's life and reading of his words can leave no doubt that equal rights for every human being was his purpose and goal.

And in that spirit, we can and must see his words as a call to arms for each of us to find her and his better angels and to become the change in the world we wish to see for ourselves and our children. Such a vision would not only further forge the next link in the philosophic chain from Gandhi to King but would, I believe, liberate each of us to reach and teach those like us as well as those unlike us.

As we should have realized by now, and most especially as news headlines from every corner of the globe make clear every day, it's a fear of 'the other' (be it race, creed, color, sexual orientation or preference, or political ideology) that creates the greatest barrier to equality, freedom, and justice for all.

The ceremonies at City Hall on Monday were, and are, important, for many reasons, as a break in the battle, and a reminder to reflect on what has been left undone in our country about the challenges we still face. As Dr. King, I suspect, would tell us, there is no color, gender, or religious faith-specific solution to what troubles and afflicts us. And whatever we create as a cure will require all of us but that's only fair because that's who it will heal as well.

We should cherish his "I Have a Dream" speech and strive to live it every hour and day of this year and all the years that follow because it has proven, in the decades since he first offered it, to be a fulcrum by which, united, we can change the world. 

And that change, rightly, will be the true legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
-bill kenny

Do You Remember?

Both of our children came home from grade school at ridiculously early ages singing "the wheels on the bus go round and round," which was only fair as that's exactly how the wheels indeed worked on the school buses they rode for all the years they went to Buckingham and Kelly Middle Schools.

I have no idea how many miles, total, by the time you added up the soccer team excursions, for both Kelly and Norwich Free Academy and the NFA Wildcat marching band jaunts to all points across the state for competitions whose successes filled so many NFA trophy cases.    

I took their completely uneventful journeys, from departures through arrivals to returns for granted when so much of their safety and security was the result of their drivers who approached their task as if they were transporting precious cargo because long before any of the rest of us had realized it, they were. 

This is sort of a thank you for taking that pride in your job, whatever your job is.
-bill kenny

(Not Just) Another Monday Holiday

Today across the country there are ceremonies and commemorations honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Ours in Norwich at City Hall starts at a quarter past one this afternoon with some speeching, a little preaching (I suspect, having attended this every year for the better part of a decade) as well as singing followed by a march to Evans Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church for warming words on what is historically a typical New England winter's day and then we'll all go home, back to the lives we lead and the people we are.

I hope this year, unlike others before it, across this country, we can seize a moment from whatever we are doing today to celebrate the dream of Dr. King, make it our own and keep it in our hearts. 

And then as quickly and as hard as we can, strive as he did, to change the world. Again.

-bill kenny 

Purposefully Striding

I spent a great deal of time and, for me, money, in December into January seeing a physical therapist as my Primary Care Physician vamped for time waiting on an MRI of my spine that she'd arranged through a neurology group. 

In recent months/years, the rate of growth and spread of arthritis in my lower back has become both extremely painful and very problematic. I'd been approaching a self-mediation route that had me taking between eight and fourteen arthritis-strength Tylenol a day with a healthy (pun intended) helping of CBD oil.

The therapist's intent was to relax some of the deep muscles in the lower half of my body that cramp up sometimes a dozen times a day and over which I seem to have little to no control. There are days, I go from being in pain after standing for fifteen minutes to being in pain after I sit down followed by more pain when I lie down and start the cycle all over again. It does keep me out of trouble but accomplishes little else.   

I saw him for a half hour at a time twice a week and by the sessions' conclusion earlier this month, between the modified stretches he has me doing and some of the mindfulness techniques he showed me to change my gait, which he described as 'too short, with a near-dragging of your feet' which helped (to me) explain why I fall down and/or lose my balance repeatedly in a daily basis, I had a better insight into why I'm so broken and battered physically. 

Whether anything can be repaired or regained, I'll learn more next week when I sit with the neurologist as she explains the MRI images to me and maps out the route ahead. I mention all of this because, in the midst of practicing my new way of walking, I came across an article that while I didn't fully understand it, what I could grasp made me feel a lot better. 

Not enough to go for a walk, mind you, but at least to think about lacing up my sneakers. 
-bill kenny

Who Needs the Bread When You Got the Dough

As a kid who attended Catholic school from third through eighth grade, I stumbled repeatedly over processing problems with religion as taught by the Sisters of Charity (I have NO idea how they came up with that name). 

To this day I'm still angry about a passage in the New Testament "Again I tell you it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."  Various nuns at various times allowed me to assume that meant Gawd loved poor people (which explained why there were so many of us), except as it turned out that, as was true of so much else of the Catholicism the good sisters offered, was horse pucky at least in terms of the eye of the needle.

That I haven't attended Catholic school in almost sixty years may tell you a little bit more about the depth of my anger than I would like and suggests at least to me that there's more at stake than just a line in the New Testament. All of that is true, I fear, in spades, and very much a topic for another time.  

I came across something called World Inequality Report the other day which made me think about Matthew and the Other Beatles, like Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, in terms of wealth management and who has what. This line jumped out at me: "The richest 10% of the global population currently takes 52% of global income, whereas the poorest half of the population earns 8.5% of it." And those same 10% own 70% of the wealth. 

See, Virginia, there is such a thing as a free lunch. Would you like a napkin? It's nice to know none of those rich folk will be joining the rest of us in heaven, isn't it? Just keep telling yourself that until you believe it.
-bill kenny

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

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

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

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

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

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

You might have a lucky number, or a special letter so far be it from me to pooh-pooh, pshaw, or tsk-tsk (I love it when I can use classic ancient words; I am, after all, wearing Old Spice). If they help you place your universe in order, that's fine.

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

In a way, I guess it's counter-intuitive to wish you a happy Friday the Thirteenth especially since we'd be here all day on what a 'happy' one might look like. I'd say enjoy, perhaps savor it, as we won't have another until October. I don't know if Hallmark has cards, but I wouldn't be surprised that they did, located between the black cats and the extension ladders. 
-bill kenny 

More Songs About Buildings and Food

I was hungry when I started writing this, which is where the food came from (I have less-than-perfect impulse control). 

It's actually a share of a fascinating (well, I thought so) article I found online about "15 Famous Architects Who Have Shaped the Way We Live, Work, and Play."  

And if you're waiting for me to make a joke about people who live in glass houses getting dressed in the basement, well. you were right.
-bill kenny

Why Are We Feeding the Flames?

The farther out in space we go, the more alike we look. That's simple science but you don't have to take my word for it;  you can ask anyone who was ever assigned to the International Space Station (ISS) and had a chance to look out a window. 

Speaking of which, one of the more painful memories of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center was the imagery NASA shared from Frank Culbertson, aboard the ISS, and technically the only American not on the planet that day where the plumes of smoke and ash from Lower Manhattan were clearly visible from his perch in space. From that distance, it truly was impossible to tell any of us from any others of us

I mention the 9/11 attacks because they are a tragedy and calamity on a scale and scope that no matter your age, origin, or circumstances you can understand. It's a very demonstrable example of the courage that emergency responders everywhere and anywhere show on a daily basis often on multiple instances in a single day.  

It takes a special kind of person to run toward danger. I don't know about you, but I knew, even as a kid growing up I'd never be a firefighter. But they would always be some of my heroes

I wanted to note all of that, and that I'm a taxpayer residing in the City Consolidated District (CCD) and am doubly fortunate to have the best of both worlds of fire protection, with the paid department and, if needed, volunteer heroes as well. 

So I'm conflicted about the special election scheduled for Wednesday, 1 February to repeal an ordinance just approved last month by our City Council with four Democrats in favor and three Republicans opposed to mandating automatic aid between the paid fire department of the Consolidated City District (CCD) and the five volunteer fire companies. 

I note the party affiliation of the vote since apparently public safety and prudent governance at some point became a partisan issue. Somehow, I missed the memo.

Having read news accounts and watched the City Council meeting on the city's website, the automatic aid ordinance, or “auto-aid,” required the paid fire department to respond to all structure fires in any of the city’s volunteer districts. 

Our City Manager, John Salomone, and the five volunteer chiefs had already agreed on auto-aid in October and it formally began on 1 November. Their goal, as I understand it, is to improve fire responses in volunteer districts with paid fire crews already on duty and for volunteers to supplement the paid fire department in the CCD. I think we can all agree this is more admirable and prudent. 

The Council ordinance codified what had been agreed to by the volunteer chiefs and the City Manager. So I'm not sure I understand or appreciate what, to me, seemed to be a sudden withdrawal on November 2, by the volunteer chiefs from the agreement they had negotiated with the City Manager after learning about the proposed City Council ordinance that formalized the agreement (Auto-aid was put in place and remains active).

All of us pay for fire protection/public safety and are well-served by the resources we have here in Norwich. The volunteer fire department heroes are a wonderful asset to helping their local community and saving all of us money.  

Some of us, no names please but I am looking at a portrait of our current City Council, see the ordinance as an insult to the volunteers, hence their support for the special election but must be written somewhere in invisible ink because I can't find it.

Instead, I read the ordinance (and its companion on the purchase of fire-fighting apparatus), as an attempt to implement some (though by no means all) of the February 2021 recommendations of the McGrath Consulting Group and to answer their 'core question' that drove their review, "What is best for the individual needing the service?' 

Years ago, someone described Norwich as eleven villages in search of a city. Decades of wrangling about paid versus volunteer fire services has become this third rail of Norwich politics, but it’s a synthetic drama with imaginary heroes and villains and no basis in reality. It continues to create casualties and costs all of us who pay taxes more than we should have to pay or can afford.

The question on 1 February is: "What is best for the individual needing the service?"

Only you can answer that.
-bill kenny

For Dave, Wherever He Might Be

If the Puritans who outlawed the celebration of the Birth of Christ here in the corner of North America they colonized in the seventeenth century could see what has become of their successors, I wonder what they might say. 

Increase and Cotton Mather and oh so many other tight-ass men of the (Protestant) cloth who brought us the Salem Witch Trials and innumerable other horrors and indignities must be spinning in their graves this morning here in the Nutmeg State as today marks the beginning of legalized cannabis sales at very select locations. 

As the TV commercials (for other products) so often intone, 'now available without a prescription.' And good news! That stock you bought in Frito-Lay is about to triple in value and those old Cheech and Chong records are finally funny again.
-bill kenny

A Thousand Words Sold Separately

I admire excellent photography and have had many opportunities to be in the presence of some great visual artists, taking care to stay out of their way while they work. 

Sadly, no matter how close to them I've stood on more than one occasion, NONE of their talent or ability seems to rub off and I'm left grabbing the same inane and uninspired happy snaps with my cell phone, seemingly for all eternity. 

Prepare to be envious, because I know I am.
-bill kenny

A Thought Colder than the Weather

There's been a lot of talk in recent days (to my ears) on the virtues of remaining calm and maintaining one's composure. I had someone the other day suggest I should strive to be a 'mellow fellow.'  

Seriously? 

I cannot imagine living any other way than in the manner I have, and have done, for most of my life. If that bothers you, I would say I am sorry, but we both know I really think you should do something anatomically impossible to accomplish. Seriously.
-bill kenny

I Can Barely Draw a Conclusion

As someone uncontaminated by either talent or ability, I'm in awe of anyone with either or both.

That said, you might have difficulty imagining how close to speechless I am when encountering someone like Katie Acheson Wolford.

I wish there was something, anything, I could do half as well as she can draw. Anything at all.
-bill kenny 

World Serves Its Own Needs

It could be the root beer talking (I try to not hit it too early in the day but sometimes...) as far as I'm concerned the GQP has become a cult masquerading as a political party based on a belief that government of the people, by the people, and for the people just doesn't work. 

In this week's kabuki theater in the House of Representatives, they have made their case. 

 

Schadenfreude ist auch in freude and in my case, zero fuqqs given.
-bill kenny

Something to Do with Toilet Paper

We've all answered the 'does a bear shit in the woods?' question, and its chicken's lips variant, and some of us FARCs have even taken on the Pope's religious affiliation.  

I confess to NEVER having found the Charmin' Bears' TV commercials humorous in the slightest but I will concede this was both entertaining and informational.

I'm still working on whether or not when a tree falls in the forest, no matter the cause and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound. Film at Eleven.

-bill kenny

Turning the Page

I've been doing this online on a daily basis for over fifteen years (yeah, I was surprised to rediscover that) and in the pages of my local newspaper for over a decade.
This (for the most part) is from so long ago, that the original was written in all lowercase letters because the alphabet was still so young. 

In what I can only assume was an unconscious self-own I called it:

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

As a well-meaning friend once told me, when you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there and there are many signposts up ahead. Instead of arguing over who is holding the map, who is steering, and who’s called shotgun, let’s keep our eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel.

Let's promise one another to work to assure our elected officials, federal, state, and local maintain their focus on the "Big Picture" while devoting attention to the finer details as well. In recent weeks, the women and men of our City Council have been struggling and juggling a variety of issues, some great and others less so, that are all important to those of us whom they represent.

It's not easy being an elected official anywhere and I've often thought sometimes, it's a little more challenging than it needs to be in these parts where we often fail to separate the idea from the person advocating for it which leads to a lot of what I call, 'love me, love my dog,' kind of loyalty, which is to say, none at all.

As someone who is not from here but who lives here now, I don't pretend to understand why sometimes we expect the worst. Maybe we’ve adopted a pessimistic mindset because then we can only be surprised and never disappointed. But waiting for the other shoe to drop means it's harder to walk confidently towards a future of our own making, which is what we all want for ourselves and our families.

The City Council we elected in November has a plateful of projects to sort out, not forgetting everyone's favorite annual pastime, the formulation, and passage of a City Budget where we turn out in droves (relatively speaking) to advocate not for specific improvements or enhancements but for decreases in programs that we don't like to reduce our property taxes while somehow maintaining all the services we currently have.

This Council will be temporarily reduced to six members, but the workload won't lessen and the importance of what the City Council, together with the City Manager, do will most certainly not be reduced. Thanks to new tools like Envision Norwich 360!,  we have not only the means of making our desires heard, but a responsibility to do so. Remember, we’re looking for progress, not perfection.

Not that you’ll see either (or both) reflected on your property tax bill-at least not right away, but despite the dogs' barking, the caravan has started to move on. Small steps are how we start on long journeys and great adventures.

Maybe, just maybe, we'll realize the only way we can get to where we want to go is by going there together. And that it's never eaten as hot as it's served is both a truth and a truism, so grab a napkin and tuck in.
-bill kenny

You Can Thank Me Later

It's still the early days of 2023 so I think it's okay to look back at last year (not in anger necessarily though there are plenty of reasons for that) which is all the excuse I need to share with you a retrospective of what's called (NOT BY ME) "The Best of the Internet (2022)." 

You're more than welcome.
-bill kenny  

Endorsed by The Proclaimers?

About a decade ago I had one of my knees replaced and then a few years later, I had the other one replaced as well (my orthopedist considered it a BOGO but unfortunately for me, he was a dyslexic). Even before then I had a hitch in my giddy-up so to speak in terms of how I walked.

According to a physical therapist I've seen recently, my stride is too short and I don't actually pick my feet (high enough) up off the ground so I more or less shuffle when I'm not stumbling. He has some great exercises that I'm guessing in ten years' time could ameliorate some of the self-inflicted damage I've done. 

Looking in the mirror, I'm not sure a ten-year timeline is the best possible use of my planning ability, especially since I no longer buy green bananas. I did find what very possibly could be my next set of shoes, assuming I had the money to buy them.     

Now, if they only came with taps, I'd be the happiest boy in the old people's home.
bill kenny

And So It Begins Again

Perhaps this is the year I say in five words what I used to say in ten.
Or that I use a graphic aid instead of being so graphic.

Don't be disappointed if none of that happens as we go forward. Happy 2023!
-bill kenny