He Who Laughs Last

There are many who consider advertising an art form though not merely as many who believe it a perversion and debasement of an art form. Potato, potatoe, pass the salad, Mr. Quayle.

I think we can all agree whoever came up with the original (and subsequent) infomercials should be bludgeoned like a baby seal. As for home shopping channels, I've yet to find a cable system that will allow me to delete them, along with Faux Gnus, OAN, and Newsmax, but that's just me. Perhaps I need to better emulate Diogenes (who is not a guest commentator on MSNBC) and redouble my search efforts.

Apparently, this television commercial by Molson Coors overstepped when it told viewers the truth under the guise of attempted humor (while taking a potshot at a competitor, Anheuser Busch) and will or has already disappeared thanks to the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau.

Makes we wonder when the guys downtown will get around to these folks.
-bill kenny

    

Rock 'n' Roll Cola Wars (Part Two?)

Alexander Hamilton a famous Revolutionary War patriot, and the first Secretary of the Treasury in George Washington's cabinet, but less than an excellent marksman, founded the New York Post in 1801. 

I wonder if he'd recognize what subsequent owners/publishers have done to it. 

Suppose you're worried about Russian aggression in Ukraine, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the continuing Bit-Coin meltdown, and/or the price of eggs in your local grocer. In that case, you can breathe easier because that's not top of mind at The Post. 

Here's what's got the editors' knickers in a knot at the New York Post: Drinking Coke and Pepsi Lead to Larger Testicles, More Testosterone: study. Yet another example of a newspaper managed by people who hate to write for people who hate to read.  

Whole new meaning to 'Have a Coke and a Smile.'
-bill kenny 

Because We Can

The older I get the more like Miniver Cheevy I seem to become. 

I start most days with a few muttered 'you whippersnappers, get off my lawn!' and other imprecations before looking out the window and yelling at the clouds. It's not much, I admit, but it makes me happy. 

Conversely what hurts my heart is when we do singularly stupid things for no other reason than because we can. 

Let me be clear: you do you, no matter what or how that looks like, and if it angers or annoys a curmudgeon like me, so what. But....in the case of a news report about the goings-on inside of Daimler Benz, all I can ask is SERIOUSLY?? 

Soon I'll be able to Tik-Tok (and when did that become a verb, by the way?) from behind the wheel of my E-Class Benz. Just how much more clever by a half are we as a species going to become before we end ourselves? 
-bill kenny

In Search of a Fifty-Amp Fuse

For reasons too ticklish to explain I have spent a large amount of time in recent days (actually a HUGE amount of time) on the telephone to and with a not inconsiderable number of large behemoth-size organizations. 

I learned long ago that all, or nearly all, of them, are impervious to logic, unmoved by threats or promises, and are singularly disinterested in assisting me (the caller) despite contacting them on what I was led to believe is a customer assistance line.

That I never get to speak to anyone immediately is kind of the overture to a really badly played symphony punctuated by a cacophony of fill music while I'm on hold that makes me want to pierce my own eardrums combined with the pre-recorded assurance that my call is important (just not important enough to hire more human beings to assist) and to please continue waiting. 

If/when I succeed in successfully negotiating the voice menu, which I am always advised has 'recently changed so listen carefully,' and reaching an actual human being, there's always a reminder that 'this call is being recorded to enhance your experience.' 

WTAF? I was taught experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted, so how is recording a phone conversation going to help me? It's more word salad bordering on Bradbury's Firemen from Fahrenheit 451 where just the opposite is what is intended.   

I fell across an article the other day online I'm sharing with you in the hopes you might benefit from it as I know for my part, it's just another ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch.
-bill kenny

Pick Your Citrus

It's not like the first robin of spring or the return of the swallows to Capistrano, but having endured what felt like centuries of professional football (and don't get me started on professional basketball), as harbingers of better things go, we're close enough for me.

You have your Grapefruit League and your Cactus League. I am keenly aware "the exhibition season means nothing" (to you). For those of us who love baseball, it's a chance to practice our skills as fans and to dream and dream on. Play ball (dammit)!!
-bill kenny 

Before Breakfast

I check them every morning in the print edition of the local daily newspaper to which I subscribe and which sporadically appears near though rarely on my front porch. 

I'm referring to the obituaries. 

I'm drawn to them and as I've aged have discovered how young so many of those in the obits are at the time they shuffle their mortal coil. I fully realize that a few short decades ago people the same age who died were I thought rather old. Strange how that works, eh?

We've all read obituaries of the rich and famous and you're not surprised to learn that those do not materialize from thin air but are the work of patient and talented folks who have devoted a great deal of time stretched out across the calendar to create an obituary that can be easily updated when/if the subject passes away.   

It's an art within a craft unto itself I suppose but like so much else, artificial intelligence has been making inroads and is starting to shift the landscape of obit writing. Welcome to Finding Words where, in the parlance of my generation with a few keystrokes you can roll your own. 

I found it to be disturbingly attractive, but your mileage may vary as do opinions. From the Small Solace Department, I'll offer this: no matter how well or poorly written your obituary is, you'll not be around to read it. So I'm thinking spelling and grammar are catch as catch can, right?
-bill kenny

Weather or Not

Hartford’s Samuel L. Clemons, better known to the world as Mark Twain, once noted, “Climate is what we expect, the weather is what we get.” 

I suspect he’d find what’s passing for our current winter weather to be somewhere between amusing and frustrating (perhaps simultaneously) though on that recent morning when the mercury at my house started the day seven below zero I warmed myself by remembering this quote, “Cold!. If the thermometer had been an inch longer, we’d have frozen to death.”

I was smiling that day as I left the house. Years ago, my wife installed a monitor from our weather station on the frame of our backdoor just down the hall from the closet where we keep our outer clothes, coats, jackets, scarves, and mittens. 

Her theory was you could check the outside temperature as you're readying to depart and keep the 'whoa!' sharp intake of a sudden surprise to a minimum when you step out the door from the kitchen to the back landing.

I am so gentrified. We called the back landing a stoop when I was a kid in Jersey, which is what it still is. It's not like I live in the part of Connecticut where I and my stockbroker neighbors have servants who wash our cars with domestic light beer or build a twin-hulled catamaran to challenge for America's Cup. 

I’ll concede we do have a big backyard, but not big enough for a polo pony, so pardon me while I remember NOT to dye my roots or frost my tips but to call things by their real names (I think Royce would have been a good name for the horse, btw).

What’s that song, ‘can you tell a green field from a cold, steel rail?’ This may surprise you, but I can, though I don’t recall anyone asking. What were once vices are now habits. 

Recently worlds collided at various points and times when I’d check the outside thermometer during the week and, like at your house, had the numbers range from the aforementioned seven below zero (that merited a double take) to just north of forty-five. Habit still has me check, though I confess the numbers have no effect on my decision to go outside. 

In terms of Galvanic Skin Response, GSR, the skin on my face could (at least in theory) better and more easily tell a difference in the percentage of moisture in the mid-double digits far easier than a difference in temperature of two degrees (maybe at Kelvin, but only maybe). But I chance a glance every time I pass the display, just in case…

Do I risk some form of a cerebral surprise if I don't check the gauge before stepping outside and, because I do, am I minimizing the possibility of atmospheric ambush? Hand on my heart, no clue, and truth to tell, I don't know why I look, except out of, you guessed it, habit.

In the summer, if/when the display was to be a triple-digit reading (which has happened), I admit I do pause for a moment but I’ve yet to be tempted to disrobe and leave my clothing (neatly) piled on the kitchen floor before heading out for a walk. And that sigh of relief you may have just heard was probably my neighbors, grateful for one less bad habit of mine. 
-bill kenny

Choosing My Confessions

As kids, tomorrow was a serious moment on the calendar, Ash Wednesday. Today was the last day before we had to give something up, Shrove Tuesday though I'm not sure any of us understood what the word meant or even the origins of the term. 

As an adult, I lived for many years in Germany where Rosen Montag and Fastnacht Dienstag are part of the last gasp of Fasching or (as it's called in New Orleans) Mardi Gras or what our Brazilian friends know as Carneval.

There's an 'eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow it's all over' mentality that I find so funky Western Civilization. It's been decades since I gave something up for Lent (truth to tell, I failed my faith and gave up Lent but then kept on living) and I've rationalized my failure by pointing out to myself that since I always went back to whatever I gave up, I hadn't really changed at all, so surrender cost nothing because it was worth nothing.

And then I look around me, and see where we are and where I am in the midst of all of that and realize I didn't run backward or stop running at all in order to be here (nor did any of us) but rather, just ran a step slower, a step less resolute, perhaps a shorter footfall until the distance grew inexorably between where we wanted to be (and knew we had to go) and where we were to end up, so far behind we could no longer see those up ahead.

And when the distance between us was too great to ever fill, we stopped and have forgotten how to start again. This makes tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, more important as a beginning than today can ever be as an end because I think I saw you try.

-bill kenny

The Plain-Spoken Man from Plains, Georgia

Today is a federal holiday from when we rolled Lincoln's Birthday into Washington's and then decided to acknowledge ALL the other people who had ever been president of the United States. Happy another day with no mail delivery day.

President Jimmy Carter was a one-term president at a moment in American history when we desperately needed him to be the president. If you missed Vietnam, Watergate, or Nixon, look them up. It was a tough time for our nation. Trust me, I was there.

I voted for Jimmy Carter twice. Once when he defeated Gerald Ford in large part because we would've voted for anyone other than a Republican in 1976 and the other time when he lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan because we so desperately wanted a president who'd act like a president we decided to elect an actor. And those hostages in the US Embassy in Teheran didn't help Carter much either. 

Carter, after leaving the White House, devoted his life to public service as a private citizen and, I suspect, inspired many of those who had not voted for him while he was active in politics to rethink that decision in light of his service to so many. 

He didn't make his living giving speeches to people who paid him or lending his name to corporate think tanks that pontificate while laundering the profits of their masters He used hammer and nails in support of Habitat for Humanity and did a world of good at a time when good was, and remains a scarce commodity. 

I met him once, a lifetime after the White House as he was a former US Navy submarine officer involved in a historical commemoration and he was as kind and patient as you would imagine anyone would ever be. He is the oldest living US president but is in failing health and over the weekend his family announced he was entering home hospice care which I know means his days are drawing down. 

Thank you, sir, for a life well lived in the service of and for others.
-bill kenny

Sort of a Funny Story...

Sort of a funny story. Went to the hospital Friday morning for a pre-registration prior to a prostate biopsy a week from Monday (all this time you've thought I was a perfect asshole; live and learn, I guess, though not necessarily both simultaneously).

Never got that far. A decline in my blood pressure landed me in the Emergency Department where hours and innumerable tests later suggested my creatinine levels were worrisome so I was awarded an overnight hospital stay and a promise of all the jello I could stand.

Funny. 

For the last two or so years I've thought having cancer was the worst thing that could happen to me and here I was experiencing another 'snatch the pebble from my hand, grasshopper' moment as it happens.

By Saturday afternoon was advised by the nurse that, despite earlier statements made by the doctor that I would be going home, a decision was made I should opt to remain overnight yet again. When I asked to what purpose and for what end, I got nothing resembling a coherent and/or logical answer to my layman's ear. 

I left AMA, which some of us recently learned means Ask Me Anything (not a motto this hospital subscribes to),  but in this case, is "Against Medical Advice." Buried in the release I signed was a veiled warning that my insurance might not pay for this hospital visit and if that is the case I am liable for the full cost. Yeah. 

Since thirty-six hours onwards all anyone seemed to know was that I needed more tests, feel free to charge me, you shiftless, gutless, talentless bastards. Oh! And have a nice day.
-bill kenny

Define "By Popular Demand"

I don't get out much anymore. Admittedly, I do get a little more than some in my neighborhood would like but that's only because I'm able to chew through the restraints. 

One of the (many) things I've noticed as I've aged is how far out of the mainstream I've drifted. I don't pretend to know how or why it happened and I fear it's been more by accident than design but I've been stuck playing short fielder for so long I've lost track of whose team I'm on (and so have they). 

When a news report uses the phrase, 'back by popular demand' I think it should follow as night the day, that whatever it is REALLY is back by popular demand.

As for this item, a beverage, technically, I'm thinking not so much.
-bill kenny

    

Life's Just a Game

Coincidence, Einstein supposedly said, is God's way of remaining anonymous, so I've often wondered what The Lord might make of accidents. How many things have to happen for literally everything we take for granted in our daily lives to exist. 

The Bridge Over San Luis Rey or a random universe with a careless clockmaker? Or does the truth lie somewhere and something in between? For your consideration.

There's a thousand answers that I don't know.
There's a thousand feelings I can't show.
Just right now.
-bill kenny   

The Only White Guy in Palestine

I was born a Roman Catholic but raised guilty (I stole that line from Charlie Behrens who is a genius in my humble opinion)  and have had a rather strained relationship with Holy Mother Church for most of my life. 

I and my brothers and sisters all attended parochial school for elementary school where we had extended encounters with every level of The Church, and if you're confused let me explain how the Roman Catholic Church is sort of like a layer cake. 

There's the Roman Catholic Church of the Pope and the College of Cardinals, as well as the Church of your monsignor and the parish priests but the one that really counts (actually the only one that counts) is the one the nuns operate; that's the Roman Catholic Church where the rubber meets the road. Those of us who interacted with nuns are scarred for life and try to handle survivor's guilt every day. 

Catholics, speaking as one (sort of) don't really understand what most Protestants are about in general, especially evangelical Protestants. Between us, I don't think Jesus would have appreciated American Evangelicals all that much either. 

That might be why the He Gets Us tv ads during the Super Bowl were...different at least for me. 

I grew up watching Jason Kidd make the sign of the cross before attempting a free throw which, to me, was nearly as blasphemous as the centerfielder who crossed himself before stepping into the batter's box or watching the relief pitcher on the mound kiss the cross on the end of his rosary around his neck after a strikeout.   

I've long since abandoned the idea of Divinity as My Invisible Friend but the Jesus in the Super Bowl commercials really creeps me out. I'm hopeful if that is indeed the future of Christianity in the United States, then perhaps there will be some distinctive clothing to go with it so that from a distance I'll have a better idea of who's approaching me on the Road to Damascus.    
-bill kenny

Counting to Forty-Six

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday was this past Sunday, the 12th, but it has had less significance for decades, since Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act and we rolled it into the birthday celebrating the Father of Our Country, George Washington (traditionally, 22 February).

This year, we observe what we now call Presidents’ Day this coming Monday, the 20th, and everyone is looking forward to a three-day weekend without having to think about why we have it.

That’s where I come in.

That George spent more than half of his farewell address warning his compatriots about the dangers of political partisanship, I find, in light of where we are today, astoundingly prescient.

That Honest Abe used his Second Inaugural Address to offer "(w)ith malice toward none, with charity for all..." at a moment in our history where we most fervently hated one another (with a ferocity that would cost him his life a little more than thirteen months later) causes me to wonder why we,(and by that I mean you and me) and all the lunatic loudmouths and bombastic blowhards on either side of the political fence, can't pipe down long enough to try to work together to get this handbasket we find ourselves in to a slightly cooler place than where we are at this moment.

Both of them and all of the men (so far) who’ve been President are in a very exclusive club, all of whom have had an almost overwhelming burden of expectations and hopes of their fellow citizens to carry every moment of every day while in office. And they pressed on and persevered.

To be honest, the litany of lament, the blame game, and pouting and posturing we are up to on Sunday morning talk shows, and in the Halls of Congress makes my brain hurt. Perhaps when we get through sorting out who's to blame for all the wrongs and shortcomings, real and/or imagined, maybe we can devote a scintilla of that energy to fixing things. We certainly have a target-rich environment to choose from, don't we? Pick a problem, find someone to help fix it, and then move on to the next one. Lather, Rinse, and Repeat..

It was Harry Truman, an accidental President if you will (when FDR died, he assumed the office), who once said, ‘it’s amazing how much you can get done when you don’t care who gets the credit.’ You’ve already guessed, without my telling you, that was a long time ago because neither of us could think of anyone who would say something like that aloud these days.

All those whom we celebrate with a holiday on Monday and countless, nameless others were so busy building this nation and defending it against attacks from within, and without they didn't have the luxury of ideology. This shouldn’t be a weekend to shop, a barrage of advertising to the contrary-it's a moment to look at the lives of the forty-six men who have been President of the United States and whose efforts and sacrifices we honor on Monday.

And even though we don't get a day on the calendar for ourselves, it’s when we should use their day as a fulcrum to move each and every one of us closer together in order to form a more perfect union. And stop being so bitchy with one while we're doing it.
-bill kenny

Time Out of Mind

I first offered these words thirteen years ago. 

Times change but my feelings haven't and never will. I called it: 

They Say He Travels Fastest Who Travels Alone

I do often wonder, in light of my own journey so far, if he who travels so fast misses the entire point of the sojourn when he has no one with whom to share it. As someone who was very much, and for very long, unlovable, this is a day of major import and minor miracle, all at the same time.

I looked at photos of my wife, Sigrid, and me, back when we were fab and she was, as she still is, absolutely beautiful to me. It took zero intelligence for me to fall in love with her at first sight and something far rarer than intelligence to help us stay in love all those years on. I do find myself looking at her, then and now, and wondering if she still sees me as I was or as I am now, and if the latter, why does she stay?

We have, she and I, grown old together which causes me to smile as I had nothing nearly so grand in mind when I first saw her. And there are those who knew me back before 'back in the day' who would and should be amazed that she kept me nailed to one place long enough for all those years to have become all these years, and to some degree, I share their amazement.

We live a life that isn't and will never be the one I thought I wanted when I believed things worked out the way we desired (if we only wanted something bad enough), but when I reach the end of every day, to include today, I look at her and at our two adult children, Patrick and Michelle, and know that I love, and am loved by, them and I can't complain about some settling of the contents during shipment. Happy Valentine's Day.
-bill kenny

"It All Happened So Fast"

I like to think I stay up on current events and have an interest in the world beyond the tip of my nose and for the most part, I suppose I do. Perhaps, like you, I get either distracted by or bogged down in minutiae to the point where tracking what's important loses out to what's shiniest. 

I fall victim to the trap of 'if they are the loudest, they must be the smartest," with the saving grace being I never really learn just what I've lost by living that way.

Here's a memory-flogger as disc jockeys used to say back in the days of AM rock and roll radio.

At the time, he was a genius, wasn't he? And now? 

I think Shelley's Ozymandias might be able to teach him a thing or three (assuming he was interested in learning), none of which would have anything to do with gas mileage or with passing on the left.
-bill kenny 

A Penny for Your Thoughts about Lincoln

When I was a kid, and this was a school day, we had it off. It was Abraham Lincoln's birthday and living in central New Jersey we observed it while hearing that some states south of the Mason-Dixon line didn't.

Lincoln was celebrated as a person who had made a difference in his time and whose shadow was cast through our own lives. Now, he's been rolled into an upcoming three-day weekend and we're having a White Sale (gotta love the irony!), c'mon down!

There were a huge number of issues bound up in something as simple and stark as 'slavery' but that's the headline, the casus Bellum. Dispassionate historians and anthropologists agree slavery wasn't an invention of the New World, but an extension of a practice stretching back thousands of years across the entire world. 

We in the USA still have not yet fully faced up to what was done by some to others. Instead of confronting and resolving, we continue to equivocate and rationalize. It's bizarre we would call the War Between the States (its official name, btw) the "Civil War" since historians agree it was often anything but. With other nations picking sides to advance their own agenda, the two sides, bloodied and bedraggled, fought one another from 1861 through the spring of 1865, when the Confederate States of America, prostrate and exhausted, surrendered and, say some, Modern America began. 

And the more we've changed, the more we've stayed the same. Given an opportunity to begin again with 'malice towards none and charity to all' as offered by the soon-to-be-murdered reelected Lincoln, instead, we as a nation veered from that path and have continued to settle old scores and create new wounds through the latter half of the 19th, all of the 20th and, now, into the 21st century.

We've institutionalized and internalized treating huge segments of our own countrymen as suspects instead of citizens and when cell phone camera footage turns up to disrupt the fairytale we've told ourselves about being the greatest country on earth we attack the messengers because it's easier than fixing the problem. 

We put Lincoln on a one-cent piece and named a car after him.
What more could anyone possibly want?
-bill kenny 

Comets & Cats Eyes

I love listening to music and am incapable of making any at all.  

In my wild and wanton youth, I was often forced to concede on many a brew-infested night at Mosco's or Old Queens Tavern in New Brunswick, New Jersey, that just because I couldn't sing never meant I wouldn't sing. Be grateful you were not there.

I collect all forms of pre-recorded music as the post-recorded kind is a bit too pricy for my wallet. I have thousands and thousands of albums and compact discs neatly (more or less) arranged alphabetically by artist and chronologically by release date on shelves that line every wall of a room in our house. My only complaint is that the room is too small. 

I've listened to every one of them many, many times. 

All will be revealed shortly.

Even the ones I bought in error or (many years ago) in a chemically altered state. I think, aside from crunk (and I'm not sure I can define that), I don't actively dislike any kind of music (though Rastafarian country and western doesn't get much of a listen in my house), but I do have a new flavor of the month if you will. 

You can thank me later and just enjoy it for now.
-bill kenny

What's the Opposite of Small Talk?

I never really got 'the rules' of socialization when I was a kid, a teen, a young adult, or a married father of two. Explains my circle of friends and its lack of existence, And now that I'm a geezer I've decided rules are for people who don't know better.  

Leave it to New York Magazine's The Cut to offer me in 2023 what might have been useful to a gawky kid in the summer of 1963. I will point out the obvious: there are WAY TOO MANY rules listed in this article while conceding that among all the chaff, and there's a lot of that, Rule 47 is an overlooked evergreen that everyone should follow. 
-bill kenny

Dun-Dun

There are some news reports you just know will continue to live on as a television show or movie because of some especially memorable aspect of the event or the reporting.  

This is NOT one of those stories.

Dick Wolf hasn't yet decided to adapt this story, but I wanted to use this in case he does.
-bill kenny

The Promise (and Peril) of Tomorrow

The last time I had an original idea it died of loneliness, so I very quickly wanted to offer this one in the hopes you get to read it before its ‘best buy date’.

There's a difference between a city and a community. Sometimes one is the other and sometimes not so much. I would suggest the latter makes the former more than vice versa, but we may not necessarily agree on that and as long as we can disagree without becoming disagreeable, I’m fine with just continuing to talk.

I think discussing community and city when trying to define Norwich is worthwhile because I fear we can’t ever get to what we want our city to be for all of us unless and until we learn to let go of what we hold on to from our past. Even and especially when we’ve forgotten why we’re clinging so tightly.

I think of myself as an old-timer, not as that guy who sits on the porch and yells at cars racing down the street, though some on my block claim they do hear shouting emanating from my house, but as someone who, from all the places in Southeastern Connecticut, chose to settle his family here a little over thirty-one years ago. 

I saw potential and promise, not just at the Harbor, but even among the boarded-up buildings lining downtown. After all, who else was using plywood sheets as plate glass windows? The views of the Thames from the heights along Laurel Hill, as well as from Thamesville, were (and are) beautiful, and there’s gritty history on every corner in Taftville and Greenville, and glorious, contemplative solitude in Yantic as well as Occum. 

We, my wife and at the time our two children who are now, themselves, grown and gone adults, settled into a house near Chelsea Parade (I’d scouted the neighborhood and knew Buckingham School was a short walk down Washington Street and Norwich Free Academy, looking more like a small college than a high school was on the far side of The Parade) and, like so many before us, worked to make Norwich our new home. 

Buckingham, like the Greenville School across town, is long gone, victims of shifting population demographics and a tightening of budgets that eventually closed both. Not long after the closure, the buildings were razed, and, at least in the case of Buckingham, it’s easy to pretend there never was a school.  I think every generation of Norwich resident remembers schools that once were but are no longer, so I do not miss what I do not have.

Last November I, along with many others, voted ‘yes’ to construct new schools for children, most of whom are not yet born, just as so many years ago, other residents had supported the construction of the schools that my children attended, not because it was a Republican or Democratic idea but because it was the right thing at the right time to do for the future of Norwich. 

How we made that decision should be the model we use for every decision we make about our city: the greatest good for the greatest number. No more searching for the guilty, for scapegoats, or for reasons why we can’t or won’t do something. Stop looking for do-overs and vow, instead, to do better.     
-bill kenny

Putting the Auto in Auto-Erotic

We Americans to the amusement and bemusement of much of the rest of the planet deeply and truly love our motor vehicles. If we could, we'd take them into shops and/or schools, and speaking from first-hand experience, don't get us started when somebody's shopping cart dings our parked car. It's not pretty.

Into all of that comes the Rezvani Vengeance, the answer to a question we are all too afraid to ask. 

If you think the vehicle speaks to those of us concerned about safety, perhaps you need to clarify to whom you are asking the question. I found this nugget in the article: "According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, drivers behind the wheel of an SUV are two to three times more likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision than when driving a regular car."

Automobiles as a means of population control? All of this leads me to believe as a shoe-leather advocate, the safest place to be around the Vengeance is inside a building and away from the sidewalk. 
-bill kenny

Thinking about Benny Bell

In the course of seventy-odd years of life here on the ant farm (and yes, some of those years have been far odder than others) I've been (for the most part) clean-shaven. 

Yeah, in recent years, having retired, I do get a bit scruffier than at other times and at the moment am looking at about a week's worth of facial hair. There is no truth to the story that I tend to grow a beard at the bottom of my head to compensate for the bald spot on the top. Though I'll admit it does sound like something that could be true.

Anyway, between being in the Air Force and working for the Department of Defense (and subscribing to the principle 'when in Rome, but not New York') I've shaved I'd guess on average three hundred days a year for about fifty-five years or so. 

For me, shaving has always been like mowing the lawn; no matter how careful and precise you are, you're just going to have to do it again. It was part of a morning ritual that I consistently hated, and the thought of which still annoys me. 

I have old guy whiskers now, which means getting a clean and smooth shave is a lot of work, and that in turn means a lot of nicks and scratches. I take blood thinners, they only work on blood before you ask, so I spend a lot of time and money using styptic pencils and little tiny pieces of toilet paper dotting my face to stanch bleeding. 

I use tubes of shaving cream, or butter, as its manufacturer calls it but I remember my dad had a battered and beaten-up ceramic mug, with a shaving cream disc in the bottom and a bristle brush applicator to start his shaving routine. He didn't have a multi-blade razor but one of those classics where you twisted the bottom and the top would open to accommodate a single double-edge blade. 

The thought of him doing that and the care that went into his daily routine still makes me smile. I never discussed shaving with him (or anything else, upon reflection) and realized years later I was proof that you cannot teach someone who thinks they already know everything.

He shaved every morning, even on weekends and even on vacations. Not sure what he'd make of this proposal, but I'm guessing he'd tap his razor on the side of the sink before rinsing it off under hot running water and putting it back in the medicine cabinet ready to repeat the entire process the next morning.
-bill kenny

These Boys Live Off the Milk of a Silver Jet

My wife came across an online advert for concert tickets for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing a short drive away at the Mohegan Sun Arena. Officially, the show is sold out and these are 'second hand' tickets so to speak being sold by supposedly private persons vice Ticketmaster. I'd love to go, but based on the North of $8000 ticket prices for (way) upper balcony seats (=about five mortgage payments), I just sort of sighed.

When both he and I were much younger men I used to catch him, as "Bruce Springsteen," as "Steel Mill," and as "Doctor Zoom and the Sonic Boom" on many Friday nights at The Ledge which was the Rutgers University's commuter students lounge and one of the ugliest glass and concrete structures to be found anywhere on the banks of the Old Raritan. 

You paid a buck and got in. Beers were a quarter, PBR if I remember correctly and no one seemed especially concerned about IDs of any kind even as Jersey was transitioning from a legal drinking age of 21 to 18 and then a few years back to 21. 

Anyway, brew in hand, we checked out the stage and there he was, the same guy under a different name we'd seen the previous Friday. Could not have been the easiest way to make a living as a  musician in 1970/71 and a lot of us bought his debut, "Greetings from Asbury Park" as a reflex loyalty reaction.

There were, I'm sure, a lot of long road trips with restive audiences there to see the headliner and not the 'future of Rock and Roll' as Jon Landau called him, and gigs where the promoter shorted the band on the gate but once Born to Run hit the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week, it was high clover. Pretty happy to see it all worked out for him.

That's why I think I was, and am, kinda pissed about the controversy surrounding the ticket prices for the current tour, though I'll admit my anger is a little overly dramatic since I'm not buying tickets so I'm not paying those prices. But I had my annoyance under control until I got this email: 

So be of good cheer (and full wallet): if you can't afford tickets for the show(s) for just $12,99 a month (plus tax where applicable) you can listen to each night's performances. And the 15% off CDs and downloads is an especially nice touch; the only thing missing is 'limited time only,' but isn't all of life here on earth just that in the first place? 

Just how much money is too much? I don't know but one thing I do know is you remember being hungry long after you've told them to take away the dessert cart. 
-bill kenny 

And Faithful

I still recall my amazement many years ago when I learned there were actual marijuana seeds in Hartz Mountain Birdseed. It was in an age when this factoid more than passed the 'oh really?' test. 

Stop looking at my album collection and wondering why anyone would need either The Electric Prunes' "Mass in F Minor" or the debut of Lothar and the Hand People. File my interest in aviary nutrition and those records under 'indiscretions of youth' and leave it alone, okay? 

Anyway. 

Because of how the various seeds that made up the bird food were collected, marijuana seeds were part of the mix, literally and figuratively. You didn't have to be enrolled in the local chapter of Junior Achievement to imagine what some of the more enterprising of us figured out that you might be able to do. 

However, it turns out Uncle Sam was one step ahead of us. There were people in the birdseed factory whose job was to sterilize the marijuana seeds. I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what type of a person would have a job like that and how you go about recruiting for it. 

I mention this because I read a story on birth control for elephants and, no joke anywhere in here, why controlling the population in certain locations is critical for the animals and their habitat. I would imagine the recruitment of 'quality-control experts' in that specialty is quite the eye-opener, particularly as I recall my Dr. Seuss since an elephant never forgets.
-bill kenny

Go Hang a Salami! I'm a Lasagna Hog!

No, this isn't an excerpt from the soundtrack of 'Show me Yours and I'll Show You Mine," though you could be forgiven for so thinking.  

It is, and I'll pause as you face-palm yourself, one of my favorite palindromic sentences.

Yeah. I know. 'Gee that was a long walk for not a lot to see.' And you're right. 

As a kid, I always thought the longest palindromic sentence was 'Able was I ere I saw Elba.' But it wasn't even at the time I believed it to be so and it most certainly isn't anymore. This is.

You're long past wondering what this is all about, assuming you ever started. So let me just say for the record, the palindromic sentence I always remember is Madam, I'm Adam.

Happy Natal Anniversary, youngest brother.
-bill kenny

 

For Many, the Groundhog Is More Real than Climate Change

I know someone who was born in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on very this date BUT who's name is not Phil though that would seem to have been low-hanging fruit easily within his parents' reach at the time of his nativity.

My brother, Kelly, would be disappointed, somewhat, to learn his name also isn't Bill, as in Bill Murray, which I would consider to be an acceptable alternative as a sort of homage to his cinematic tour de force.

I think Kelly is on to something in his regard for the movie since as I've aged I have a growing sense of us living and reliving the same day over and over again. The fear of the End of Days may be misplaced as it could, for some of us, actually be more of a new paragraph than the closing of a book.

Take a look at our world, then at our nation, and, then if you promise to NOT blink, look at your own life. What do you remember of where all of this was this time a year ago, a decade on, or perhaps a score of yon years? I'm starting to think the rewind button is stuck and all that changes are the characters while the play rolls on.

Lest you think I'm depressed or distressed, nothing could be farther from the truth. I love this day because it's all the excuse I need to listen to this and smile, at least usually in that order.
-bill kenny 

Remembering a Moment

We always speak of big personalities and events when we think of history. Washington crossing the Delaware, Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address, Eisenhower and D-Day, but the root word of history, story, is best served when we celebrate and honor ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And traditions are important in helping us remember people and events no matter how large or small. 

On February 3, 1943, eighty years ago, at the height of World War II, the SS Dorchester, a converted cargo vessel pressed into duty and refitted as a troop transport ship was torpedoed in the early morning hours as the convoy of which it was a part was sailing from Newfoundland, Canada, to a port in Southern Greenland.

The ship with 904 troops and civilian crew aboard sank bow first in about twenty minutes. The severe list as it sank prevented the launch of some of her lifeboats and the subsequent overcrowding of the remaining lifeboats forced some of those that had been launched to capsize, spilling their unfortunate passengers into cold North Atlantic waters barely above freezing.

Because of the ship’s sudden sinking, no distress signals were sent delaying the start of any rescue attempts. When help did arrive the following day, many who had survived the sinking were floating in their life jackets, dead from hypothermia. In all only 230 men were rescued. The Dorchester sinking was the largest loss of life of any American convoy during World War II.

Among those who died aboard the Dorchester were four US Army chaplains, who helped frightened soldiers to board lifeboats, and gave up their own life jackets when the supply ran out. 

The four, (Methodist minister, Reverend) George Fox, (Reform Rabbi) Alexander Goode, (Roman Catholic priest, Reverend) John Washington, and (Reformed Church in America minister, Reverend) Clark Poling, then joined arms, offered prayers for both the living and the dead, and sang hymns as the ship sank.

Their deaths serve as a courageous example for us today, especially now as our nation so often struggles and fails to find unity and harmony as we face challenges and uncertainties. The Four Chaplains are a reminder of the best of what we can be.

The Peter Gallan American Legion Post 104, at 22 Merchants Avenue in Taftville will conduct a Four Chaplains ceremony this Sunday afternoon at 2 that both honors their selfless sacrifice and celebrates their lives.

Reverend Scott Schuett, Pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lebanon, CT., Reverend Charles Tyree, Pastor of Norwich Alliance Church in Norwich, CT., Rabbi Julius Rabinowitz, Rabbi of Beth Jacob Synagogue in Norwich, CT. and Reverend Phil Salois, Retired Army Catholic Chaplain, and now Chaplain with the American Legion, each representing the faith of one of the original chaplains, will deliver a benediction, representing the final moments aboard Dorchester. 

We think of World War II as the global conflict that it was, playing out on every continent of our world but The Four Chaplains Ceremony, I think, helps us better remember and realize the abstraction of the carnage of war always has a human cost.

The ceremony is both thoughtful and thought-provoking and, having been fortunate enough to attend in previous years, I promise you’ll come away with your own lessons learned of lives truly lived with grace under pressure in a spirit of caring and generosity for others that I fear is too often lost in the crush and noise of our every day lives.

Please join us if you can this Sunday afternoon, if not in Taftville then wherever you are to honor their heroic sacrifice. All history is the sum of our collective remembrances and memories remain our best hope for the future.
-bill kenny