At almost one and seventy years of age, I'll take good advice anywhere I can find it, even from one of the more contentious of our Founding Fathers. And if you don't think there's a fair amount of controversy around many of the rich, white slave-owning guys who created this country you must be living in Florida.
Anyway, good advice is good advice, even when the source provokes second glances.
And in any event, it's better advice than Pet Clark once offered.
-bill kenny
I watched the leaves turn brown and fall from the trees leaving bare branches.
The clouds grew dark overhead and snow covered the ground.
But all of that is in the past and today is the start of another season of wonder.
And if you have to ask what season that might be, you need to move on, now.
Let me play you off. Speaking of which, play ball!
-bill kenny
I’ve lived here long enough to be familiar with the names we’ve given to places in and around here and surprising myself when learning that sometimes I call a place by a name I’ve heard but that’s not its ‘real name.’
For instance, I call the pocket park separating Broadway and Union Street, just beyond the Cathedral of Saint Patrick, ‘Little Plains Park,’ because everyone I know calls it that. But it’s also known as Union Square Park, (because of the Soldiers’ Memorial in it). It was only when someone passing through not that long ago stopped me while looking for it that I learned that.
I renamed the Regional Inter-Modal Transportation Center on Hollyhock Island, the Samuel Beckett Bus Station for two reasons: everything eventually gets a name, and for about a decade and a half, the project had seemed like something out of Waiting for Godot. And no matter how you feel about its existence, cost, value, purpose, or function (and some of the names other people call it), I think my name is accurate and memorable despite discussions to the contrary.
Speaking of which, the property transfer approved last Monday by the City Council with Mattern Construction for the company to rehabilitate, resuscitate and transform the long-abandoned YMCA on Main Street from an eyesore at a gateway to our city into their new corporate headquarters (with plans to convert the excess space into a restaurant or pub) should send ALL of us who root for Norwich into raptures of delight.
I did hear/read a lot of joyful noise but also a fair amount of jabbering from that flock of YeahBut Birds who nest everywhere. You hardly know they’re around until a project (just about any project) is about to launch and then you can hear/read their unhappiness.
While you and I should be happy the YMCA property will return to the city’s tax rolls for the first time in over a hundred years, I read ‘Yeah But…insert personal grievance masquerading as a reason here.”
Why
is optimism always in such short supply around here and why can’t we ever seem
to have a kind word to say about anything being undertaken in this city?
Let me start. This project is great news; thank you to all involved in getting it this far..
The Mayor and City Council are working together with the talented professionals across city government and with the citizen volunteers on the various agencies, boards, commissions, and committees who do so much of the heavy lifting to create a development plan with clearly defined goals and the means of achieving them.
And an almost identical cast of players, the Council, Mayor, City Manager, and Department Heads are also wrestling with the next budget at a time when there are a thousand good reasons to just throw up their hands at the enormity of the challenge and all of them could use a break, but they won't get one.
And
(and you knew this was coming, didn’t you?) when we sit on our hands at
public meetings, assuming we show up at all, we've chosen a side in the ongoing
outsider versus insider debate, a debate that none of us can ever win. We can
do/are doing important things as a city-look around and celebrate what we
already have, but we need to understand all of our progress happens when we move forward together.
-bill kenny
I'm forever reminded that one of the consequences of finger-pointing is three fingers on the hand end up pointing back at yourself. My tip: wear mittens and no one will ever know.
Three categories but fewer outcomes.
Moms always have/had their own home remedies for most of what ailed us as kids growing up. Somewhere in Mom College they had to minor in emergency medicine in order to graduate and luckily for all of us who made it to adulthood, they passed.
In turn, as an adult and parent (the jury is still out on both of those assertions, btw), I've tried my hand at applying what I remembered from Mom's Medicine Bag to the aches and ouches of our two children when they were in need.
You've heard of Doctors Without Borders? I'm a member of Dads with No Clue (I've no doubt you've seen our handiwork on every street corner across the country).
As it happens, many (I started to type all but that is a statement too far) of the 'my mom used to do this' remedies I inflicted on our children and that were inflicted upon me, were in all likelihood not helping the matter at hand very much.
However, in the interests of further muddying the waters, I will share our daughter's cure for hiccups that works for me, every-single-time: a spoonful of peanut butter. Take up thy stethoscope and walk.
-bill kenny
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."- Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption.
"Come Hungry. Leave Happy"-International House of Pancakes.
Sometimes two good ideas cannot exist simultaneously.
Hope they remembered to tip their server.
-bill kenny
As much as I love the lyrics of rock and roll music and the driving beats of the classic tunes, it's the riff that makes the songs memorable.
This is one of those items found on YouTube that I can watch all day and when I can't watch it, I save it for later when I can watch it.
-bill kenny
Some days I can see the path before me so clearly and simply it's almost as if I could sleepwalk to reach it. Other days, I blindly put one footfall after the other and hope the direction I think I'm going in is the one I need to be heading.
There are days when faith really isn't enough but it still has to be because that's all there is.
-bill kenny
They say money can't buy happiness, but creating a budget that clocks in at a shade under ninety-three million dollars to operate a school system can sure generate a lot of comment, and not all of it kind (and as my evil twin, Skippy, notes, even less of it informed).
Disclaimer/Disclosure: Our two children attended Norwich Public Schools (NPS) and, in turn, Norwich Free Academy (NFA), after arriving from Germany in the autumn of 1991. Our son enrolled in third grade and a year later our daughter started Kindergarten. Both attended the now-demolished Buckingham School on Washington Street.
I never lost sight of the fact that many (other) people's taxes helped pay for our children's educations and while I'm not pretending to believe local taxes should be compared to "Take a Penny/Leave a Penny," to a certain extent they are. And speaking of...Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: 'Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.'
I think/hope we can agree that taxpayer-funded education is an inherently important and vital investment in however you choose to define civilization. And since we are on the topic of self-evident truths, let's also concede that the Norwich Neighbors who volunteer to serve on the Board of Education (BOE) are secular saints.
The Board's meetings and those of all its standing committees, including Budget Expenditure and Policy (among many others) are open to the public. You can find the agenda for upcoming meetings, the minutes (and videos) of previous meetings on the Norwich Public Schools website, and all manner of videos showing our tax dollars at work on their YouTube Channel.
For all the years we had children in Buckingham and Kelly (BTW, Before The Web), I was a faithful in-person attendee of BOE meetings but even back in those dark days, parental much less taxpayer involvement and engagement was on the sparsely-attended side. Let's face it, about the only time of the year most adults, parents and/or otherwise, in Norwich pay any attention to school budgets is when dollars are mentioned.
Cast a glance at just about anything, from gasoline to groceries and utilities, and you'll see higher costs. Is it really a surprise that our schools with over 3,200 students in their care would also face the same increases you and I have? We can argue all day about why costs and expenses are escalating but as taxpayers, we know the wisdom of Harry Truman's immortal, 'the buck stops here' because we are where the road and the sky collide.
While reading online comments and reactions about the proposed budget (spoiler alert: universally unhappy) I recognized many of the names and know they don't have school-age children and so probably don't attend BOE meetings. They know who they are.
I reviewed the March 14 Board of Ed online meeting that approved the proposed budget to get a better appreciation view of the scale and scope of challenges the Board had to weigh and prioritize. It's not great cinema and doesn't pretend to be, but it's an eye-opener or was for me, in trying to understand how tough a job the superintendent and staff, together with the Board have in doing what's right for our children (and they are all our children) and doing what's best for those of us paying taxes.
It's an impossibly difficult tightrope to walk, and as budget deliberations begin, we all need to maintain both a sense of perspective and balance. I recall a sentence from an old Plan of Conservation and Development that still applies today, “The future of Norwich depends on the ability of City leadership to bring together disparate opinions around a common vision."
-bill kenny
I subscribe to both a print and online version of one of our daily newspapers. The other one I just subscribe to as an online version. I read the print one with breakfast even though I have a smart(er than I am) phone as well as a tablet. I grew up with newspapers at the breakfast table and at my age, changing is just another new trick this old dog will not attempt.
I read everything, basically to get me through the meal, including the legal notices which are often not the most fun you can have with your clothes on as an exercise in phonics and meaning. As a reward for cleaning my plate, and kind of a dessert that breakfasts could really use come to think of it, I treat myself to a quick perusal of the advice column.
I enjoy the columns because more often than not they make me feel better about my own life. Sometimes I try to imagine what the person who wrote to Dear Abby or Ann or whoever was thinking when they sent the note off since when it arrives in my newspaper, it can often be starkly stupid if not downright dumb. (And that characterization is why the very short-lived Dear Bill Advice to the Lovelorn syndicated column went plywood in Indiana).
Other times, based on how I react to the letters, I try to imagine how the columnist must have reacted prior to composing an answer and attempting to be helpful. Sometimes I'm surprised, but I'm never disappointed.
Here's one that I knew, from the opening line, was going to be a doozie (I'm old; I'm allowed to use fossil-like words), though I applaud the attempt at something more elegant than "I'm cheating on my spouse." See for yourself.
As John Prine once noted (though I'm not sure he'd made this lady's acquaintance), "You are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't." Perhaps more so now than at any other moment.
-bill kenny
Spring starts on the East Coast at 5:24 this afternoon and even though it comprises, technically less than twelve hours of today, I will think of this as our first day of Spring, just not our first FULL day of Spring. Sue me, but the line forms back there.
No matter its length and the weather (or not) that accompanies it, I fully intend to enjoy it, hopefully short of bodily harm.
Many years ago when we rented an apartment in the house we were to eventually buy, my wife planted a fantastic variety (and quantity) of different kinds of flowers, annuals, perennials, bicentennials, etc. And then landscapers the house's owners hired showed up and covered everything she'd planted with I-don't-honestly-know-what but as a result, all of her flowers disappeared.
Your eyes are not about to deceive you. What you're about to read you've read before. I make no apologies or excuses. My space in the ether, my rules.
Every year on this day I indulge myself. Some might argue as even casual readers of this drivel that I indulge myself every day, but this is not the time for that discussion (which you will lose, by the way). It's purely and simply my way to keep the memories of two of my most favorite people of all time, neither of whom I'd describe as 'friends,' alive because as long as I can remember them, they'll live on.
That was a disclaimer of sorts.
If you choose to move on, this would be a really good time to do that, otherwise...(when I first offered it over a decade ago) here is:
Scared that He'll Be Caught
I think at some point in every office across the country, wherever the copiers were situated was (and/or still is) a sign with some variation of this printed on it:
And we all laughed because it's funny, mon. But technology has come a long way.
Check this out and prepare to be gob-smacked.
Even though I'm procrastinating on buying new print cartridges, I couldn't resist this.
-bill kenny
This is a day that, as full of Irish heritage as I am (along with so much else (maybe more?)), I get more than a little creeped out by the celebrations of all that is emerald even when it's not.
There's a claim that there are more persons of Irish descent living in New York City than there are in Dublin, but I suspect that's a statement you can make without (nearly) fear of contradiction about almost every ethnicity who've come to settle here in The Land of the Round Doorknobs.
Whether your tastes run from Danny Kaye singing Danny Boy to U2 through The Chieftains or Horslips. If you're celebrating being Irish or pretending to be Irish, or you just like to bathe in Irish Spring, hope the day is a good one.
As you'll discover momentarily, today's musings are brought to you by the letters N, S, F, and W as in, well NSFW.
If you've been spending your NFL-less weekends watching the XFL in the hopes of finding some form of a sport, I found you a subject that not only belongs on FS1 and/or FS2 (and all this time I thought Fox just couldn't do news right; HA!) but I wouldn't be surprised in light of what the International Olympic Committee has approved for additions in 2024 to see it sooner rather than later at a Five Rings Extravaganza near you.
I'm not sure it rivals the intensity of World Combat Juggling (and you thought I had made that up; well, you're half-right. Somebody made it up but a lot of other folks are involved in it) and I have no idea how you would train for, much less score this but I think it's pointing us all in a new direction for competitive sports.
And possibly padded trousers.
-bill kenny
For a guy who doesn't cook, and yet has never missed a
meal (as you'd know from looking at me), I spend a fair amount of time in
supermarkets. Not that I do heavy shopping in terms of grocery purchases, but I'm a
specialist at 'grabbing odds and ends' (sometimes odd beyond description), and
those 'ooh! this looks like it would be great!' items that far too often we
didn't need.
I used to just scoop items up with my two hands, but they filled too quickly so then I’d take a basket when I'd enter the store which was supposed to keep me from going overboard except about halfway through, the basket was overflowing, and I had to double back to get a shopping cart. I think if groceries could put some carts near the middle of the store for those of us who overachieve in the gathering portion of the hunter/gatherer reenactment, there’d be a lot more smiling faces, mostly men, in grocery stores.
I use the self-checkout and bagging registers, put the bags in the cart, push the cart to the car, unload it, and return it to one of the cart corrals in the parking lot.
Shopping areas have cart corrals all over to make it easier for us to return the carts and where at some point(s) during the day, someone gathers them together and brings them back into the store where the whole process begins again. Like the Circle of Life (but without Elton John).
Except, and you know this because you see it too, shopping carts end up everywhere across the parking lot EXCEPT in the corrals. As an Oldest Child, I have some strand of DNA that compels me, when returning my cart, to drag another renegade one along with it back to the corral. Yeah, I concede it's like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon but if we each did it our shoreline might have a lot more beach if you follow my drift.
There's a theory that's surfaced in recent months that argues returning our shopping carts is a litmus test of our ability to self-govern. The theory may also suggest some of us have way too much time on our hands, but the main point (and no argument here) is that returning the cart is pretty easy to do and something we can all admit we should do.
It's not illegal to NOT return the cart (which explains why I've found them wheels up on the sidewalk on Sachem Street and at someone's side door while walking down Broadway), and no one is punished for failing to bring the cart back to the corral. It's just the right thing to do.
I admit there's no reward, except at one store where you rent the cart for a quarter and get it back when you return it, except to know you've done a good deed. And as not just my mom used to say, the reward for doing a good deed should be the knowledge that you've done one.
I think I like the idea of the shopping cart return as a
gauge of how considerate and kind we are towards one another, and as a
practical matter, if we'd all get better at doing it, we'd all be driving more
cars and trucks with fewer dings.
-bill kenny
The ripples in the economic pond from the implosion/collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank are being experienced across the nation and around the world. Even those who've never ordered delivery are revisiting their belief in the Domino Theory and it hasn't been the happiest of times.
I don't pretend to know anything about finance from cause to effect. I can barely count to one hundred which is why I am always grateful our son, Patrick, became our financial advisor otherwise my retirement plan would have been WUD (Work Until Dead).
What I do find a bit deceitful and duplicitous are the public statements from a variety of folks intimating through their language, and exploitation of it, that the mess is some kind of an unavoidable natural-like catastrophe. That's a lie.
This wasn't a rockslide or a tidal wave or a hurricane; it was homemade, man-made avarice. The 'crisis' was caused by good old-fashioned greed, not The Almighty Working in Mysterious Ways His Wonders to Perform. Simply put, our all-too-human desire to get something for nothing, or close to nothing. To sell one another Mars Gas in drycleaning bags, sorry Firesign Theater, and tell each other they are pearls of great price. Thank goodness, no banker is left behind.
They say laughter is the best medicine. Let's see. Take two and call me in the morning.
-bill kenny
The calendar says for those of us in the Northeast and, at least theoretically, most of the rest of the nation, this winter of our discontent is drawing to a close. We just changed over to Daylight Saving Time and in less than a week the swallows return to Capistrano.
The Boys of Summer are already rounding into shape as the Guys of the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, and not a moment too soon, so this second weekend of the third month should (and/or could), I hope, be the start of better things.
I know it's been a rocky time for many of us for quite some time and you have to look hard to find reasons to be cheerful (if you don't like baseball I'm not even sure it's possible, but to each her/his own, I suppose). I'm thinking another thing that separates us from many of the other travelers here on the Big Blue Marble is our capability to make ourselves and one another happy and the will to do so. I cannot claim to have ever seen two ocelots doing knock-knock jokes, and can't recall seeing a robin red-breast do a pratfall to cheer up the other birds in a tree, and I've watched a lot of Animal Planet while staying at a Holiday Inn Express.Today is my wife's birthday.
Sigrid is remarkable because she is a force of nature as much as my wife. I am not, as you may have already surmised from any previous visits to this page, the easiest person with whom to share the planet, much less a life and a bed.
She is my human credential in the sense that she creates and sustains a life for me and our children which allows me to put on this 'Hail Fellow, Well Met! Man of the World" artifice every morning, give my time to total
The future arrives a little earlier tomorrow morning than it did today as we change over to Daylight Saving Time. I'm never sure what to do with this extra hour of daylight I will have--I'm equally at a loss as to what to invest the extra hour of sleep in at that moment in the fall when we move the clocks back.
There's a growing movement to decriminalize Psilocybin mushrooms which causes some anxiety among steak-eaters who aren't necessarily the world's best listeners (I think that has to do with tartare, but what do I know?).
I'm thinking this makes a more reasoned argument if you've had a few mushrooms, though a nice London Broil (what do they call it in the UK?) might also do the trick.
"The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here."
-bill kenny
There's something about tongue-in-cheek advice that is lost on the printed page or flicker-free screen. We'll have heard/read facetious insights like 'Never make snow angels in a dog park' that are obviously not intended to be taken seriously but sometimes the purpose of art is to conceal art and the humor can be so dark that it's not visible from space or even closer to the point of impact.
The bluebird of Elon Musk's Twitter has been in the news for months for pretty much all the wrong reasons, but I still have an account (@waterloosunset (an homage to The Kinks' Ray Davies)) and travel across the platform not so much in search of enlightenment (too many trolls no longer under the bridge for that to happen) but for a grin and a smile from the Wendy's (https://twitter.com/Wendys) account and, more recently, the National Park Service (https://twitter.com/NatlParkService) who may, in my opinion, be trying to see how many of us actually read what they post.
I loved "If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down, even if you feel that friendship has run its course." Not just nature appreciation insights but relationship advice. A Twitter Twofer that got them mentioned on CNN. Or how about this bon mot? "Did you know that if you hold an ermine up to your ear, you can hear what's like to be attacked by an ermine?"
And one of my favorites and words to live by not just in the Great Outdoors is "To avoid crowds, visit areas that are less crowded." Indeed.
-bill kenny
We’re about to enter the most contentious part of the calendar across the state, municipal budget formulation season with hearings, creation, and adoption. And here in Norwich, without having to pretend to be psychic, I can already predict we will be using phrases like 'a very challenging year,' and 'filled with difficult choices.' As I said, I'm not channeling Kreskin, but rather, recycling quotes from across the years and a variety of those who have served on City Councils offered previously.
Part of the challenge (actually, I suspect it's MOST of the challenge) confronting the City Manager who formulates/creates a draft budget and the (currently six) members of the City Council including the mayor who refine and approve it, is finding an affordable balance between what we. the residents want/expect/demand of city government in terms of goods and services, and what we are willing/able to pay.
Every year, no matter the political composition, the Council is faced with our insistence that while we all want to go to heaven, no one wants to die. They must decide and it’s never easy. It's the classic conundrum: what's the most we can have for the least we must pay?
For some perspective, the rate of inflation in 2022 across the United States was 6.5% while the city's Grand List of taxable property grew by 2%. I think we can all guess what the gap between those two figures means as budget deliberations begin, and 'good news' is NOT the phrase that comes to mind.
Enlarging and enhancing the grand list is critical to growing our community and complements the other primary function of municipal government, controlling and managing expenses. That's why the (unsuccessful) efforts to create a second business park will, in hindsight, be regarded, I think, differently than they are currently.
Some online commenters suggested the City Council's decision was another example of keeping the No in Norwich, but as someone who doesn't live in Occum, I understand how Norwich neighbors who do felt and why. It just means it’s time for a different and better idea.
The need to find/create revenues did not go away because of the vote that night, but the urgency increased. And while we as a city have more wants than wallet to fund them again this budget season, it doesn't mean we can avoid making hard, but informed choices.
But to be informed, we must choose to be engaged. Shutting our eyes and ears while opening our mouths accomplishes nothing. None of our city government is a mystery, it all happens right in front of us, but we must choose to be witnesses and ideally participants instead of playing the victim card as often as so many of us do.
On the city's website is the schedule of every department hearing (for everyone who requests our money from our City Council) including the public hearings, where/when we turn up and turn out to speak (and hopefully listen as well) about the budget process, all the way through to final adoption of our budget early in June.
All
of it happens in Council Chambers and is carried on public excess access television
and can also be viewed on the city's website. Show up and speak up because we can no longer afford silence.
-bill kenny
I thought something to reflect that we are in the season of Lent might be appropriate (and I can sense the hair on the back of your neck standing up as I type "appropriate" but that's more a you problem than a me problem. I hope.).
As long as it's not singing big mouth bass McDonald's trots out every year, I believe we can survive a little light-heartedness as we approach the commemoration of the Passion and it's a fun video. See for yourself. Pass the tartar sauce.
"Just look at the world around you, Right here on the ocean floor.
Such wonderful things surround you, What more is you lookin' for?"
-bill kenny
When we say 'one in a million' we might actually be on to something, in terms of the estimated number of words in the English language. (Babbel respectfully and dramatically disagrees with that estimate, by the way.)
I'm chagrined to report, as an American, our star-spangled average vocabulary is a fraction of either of those estimates (and I couldn't think of a good word to use instead of fraction, Shame on me.). Time to lower the thesaurus to half-mast I guess.
In recent times, based on folks like Scott Adams and Kyle Rittenhouse I've developed a fondness for a hybrid word, dictim, someone who is BOTH a dick and who plays a victim.
It's not gender-specific if you'd wondered based on my two examples, as we could also include Congressperson Margarine Trailerpark Greed who, after following David Hogg (a survivor of the Parkland School Massacre) around with a camera crew, taunting him and (more recently) shouting LIAR at the President of the United States during his State of the Union Address delivered before a joint session of Congress at the invitation of her colleague, the Speaker of the House, then complained while dining out she was yelled at by an 'insane woman and her son'.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a true dictim.
She makes me (almost) wish I had her nerve in my tooth.
I know I'll tire of my current favorite word but I am of good cheer as Dictionary.com has just released its own version of recently-added, newly-minted English language words, and some of them....well, read for yourself.
-bill kenny
I'm not talking about the citizens' hotline, I'm talking about decibels. And why, you ask, to which I respond HUH? because decades after I stopped attending rock and roll concerts, because of the decades that I did, there are times when my hearing seems to fade in and out.
The loudest band I've ever heard was Motorhead in Darmstadt's Böllenfalltor Stadion (now called Merck-Stadion am Böllenfalltor) and while I'm no longer sure, I believe they were so loud that day the volume knocked birds out of the sky.
Anyway. As it turns out, they might have been my loudest experience but it was just a piffle in comparison to what's regarded as the World's Loudest Sound.
-bill kenny
Just me, or have you noticed no one ever lies anymore? They misspeak or offer some other variation masquerading as a reason (with apologies to Kelly Anne Conway's Alternative Facts). But we just never ever use the word lie anymore, it's just bad form.
And because no one ever lies anymore, I'm developing a problem in determining when we tell the truth, especially since it's becoming harder and harder to tell them apart.
-bill kenny
For those who haven't yet seen it, here's today's cartoon:
F*ck around and find out, Scottso.
And BTW, it's not 'cancel culture', a$$hole; it's called consequences.
-bill kenny
Somewhere my father is smiling, admittedly NOT something he did large amounts of in or because of my presence while we shared this plot of earth together.
He had lots of stories, or more exactly excerpts of stories, he told about growing up whose whole point seemed to me, a kid who was not a fan of his from the moment I arrived, to hear him tell it, to underscore just how crappy everything me and my generation were doing was fated to turn out and thus by extension how shit everything after that was going to be.
With some luck, I'll turn seventy-one near the end of next month (Dad didn't live to see his 58th birthday) and for all the miracles and wonders I've lived to see and sort of enjoy, I have to admit, he's got a point. Entropy is the order of the day and the way of the world.
It's not a conspiracy, it just is.
The silver lining in this cloud of mediocrity?
In the future, today will be remembered as perfect. You read it here first.
-bill kenny
With apologies to Kermit the Frog who once lamented "It's Not Easy Being Green," it actually is kind of easy this time of year most especially here in Norwich where the Annual Saint Patrick's Day Parade and Festival is very nearly upon us.
Each year it gets a little bigger and better, thanks to the helping hands of the volunteers of Norwich Events Organization and all those who turn up to cheer the marchers, or march themselves, or enjoy the continuing comeback of a little more of our downtown that grows more attractive with each event.
Rain or Shine, the Norwich Saint Patrick's Day Parade will
step off at one Sunday afternoon from Ferry Street, wending its way around
Franklin Square putting that Rotary through its paces, up Franklin Street, and
then use Willow Street to march to Chestnut and then, in turn, Broadway before
making a left at the Wauregan Hotel onto Main Street to finish up at City
Landing.
Pro tip: I bring a compass even though I never get lost because everyone tells me where to go but I mention the march route to underscore what will be readily apparent: no matter where you choose to enjoy the parade from, you're guaranteed an eyeful of marchers and an earful of music.
And if you need it, here’s the official website, with a map of the route and a list of the activities
going on around the parade itself, including the locations with sparkling adult
beverages and food trucks because as well know marching (and just watching it)
can make you thirsty and hungry.
Turnout across downtown from participants and spectators grows every year and since one of the important points of events like this is feet on the street, or troighean air an t-srà id, the more the merrier.
The day’s events are a great reason to stop and visit
someplace too many of us still drive through on our way to someplace else while
complaining ‘there’s never anything to do in Norwich.’ Except not this Sunday,
or quite finally any other day of the week if you’ll take the trouble to look.
And while you’re downtown enjoying the goings-on check out what's new (or new to you) since your last visit and you’ll see for yourself how the heart of Norwich is beating stronger than ever.
I've yet to miss a parade (and with my last name where else
do you think I would be) and every year I meet people who do not live in
Norwich but have heard about the parade and the family-fun-filled festival that
follows (say that three times fast) with authentic food and beverages (for one
and all) and decided to try it on for size and were very pleased they had come.
Everyone is welcome to march though it's really more of a
brisk walk than a march in terms of distance, so you can smile and wave without
breaking a sweat. And you won’t be alone.
Sunday's parade is led by this year’s Grand Marshall, Deanna
Rhodes, City of Norwich Director of Planning and Neighborhood Services, who'll
be joined by a variety of local and regional agencies and organizations to help
celebrate the day.
Quite frankly, it really won't be a party
without you, so grab something green and plan on being there. And Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
-bill kenny
