The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Somewhere (maybe) in a box of stuff somewhere in our current home's basement, assuming it survived the move from across the Atlantic, and the one before that from Greenland to Germany, and the one before that from Indiana to Sondrestrom... is a piece of foolscap with "To Billy, Study and Play Hard!" signed by Weeb Eubank and Joe Willie Namath shortly after both captured the first Super Bowl title a former AFL football team had claimed, Super Bowl III, triumphing over the then Baltimore Colts by a score of XVI-VII. 

Hey, if the NFL can use Roman numerals to count Super Bowls, I can use them to tally the totals on the scoreboard of the actual contest. 

Anyway, many decades later, I still call myself a NY Jets fan though I cannot tell you the name of their coach, or of his predecessor, or of ... you get my drift or the names of anyone on the team. Let's go corporate entity! J-E-T-S! 

To be honest, there's nothing to root for. The team has plumbed new depths of incompetence and inconsistency, often simultaneously, for so long, I've lost track and around the time the Jets released Namath to allow Richard Todd to take over as quarterback, I also lost interest.

So the other day, the team signed a thirty-nine-year-old as their dream quarterback and there's just so much wrong and illogical in the construction of the first part of this sentence I cannot even start to grasp the euphoria with which the signing was greeted. 

I'll give the team this: they come up with new ways to break their fans' hearts every season. I'll watch them this fall like I'd slow down to look at a wreck on the highway. And then, having glimpsed the debris will accelerate until they disappear in my rearview mirror, slowly sigh and then softly say, 'wait until next year.'
-bill kenny

I Take My Twist with a Shout

I was not yet a teenager when The Beatles took America by storm. Without older brothers or sisters, I didn't have any folk music mutations to struggle through while The Fab Four and all who crossed over the bridge they built from the UK to the US were reinventing pop music.  

I truly believed those groups had invented electric guitars. The vinyl library I have now stretches to a bit over eight thousand albums, and about a thousand or so compact discs, and I've learned a lot of history of the music I love along the way. 

And as the scholar of holler and rock and roll that I am, when I found this very thoughtful piece on The End of the Music Business, I wanted to share it with you.

Not sure if I agree or not with the author's conclusions, but we're still a free country (so far) so I'm thinking, to each his own.
-bill kenny

The Candles on the Cake Started the Fire

I got congratulated a lot the other day on my birthday when it's really my mom who deserves all the credit. I was, literally, along for the ride. I spent part of the day, as a man who pretends the best is yet to come, in the office of one of the half-dozen physicians I see on a regular basis. I like to think of them as "Team Bill". They, on the other hand, are not all that crazy about that moniker. I think the tee shirts were a touch too much.

I know I've stayed too long at the fair when I am happy that my A1C is 6.7. and I feel like I did when I scored 3rd-row tickets for Springsteen on his first German tour. We're talking grin across my entire face. How pathetic is that? It's right up there with taking a nap on the couch in the afternoon sitting on the couch watching the television and being surprised every single time my wife wakes me up that I fell asleep in the first place. Maybe I should skip the jeans and just start wearing the PJs with the feet.

My birthday morning was a bit tense for a moment as my doctor harshed my buzz by talking about scheduling a prostate exam (people often say prostrate exam-I love that) and I wasn't exactly wearing my happy hat, but when he rechecked his records, he confirmed what I'd been telling him-I'd recently had one (and bracing for the unhappy followup as a result of it). Trust me, I said, that's an item you remember.

How ironic as an aging FARC, I'd feel such kinship with a dreidel. I haven't stopped, but I have slowed down and more and more I've become the old guy I spent a large part of my life avoiding. Who says God has no sense of humor? As much as my heart will always beat a little faster for My Generation until it stops beating entirely, I share another Bill's belief. I too, have passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage, I've found that just surviving is a noble fight. I once believed in causes, too, I had my pointless point of view, but life goes on no matter who was wrong or right.

After seven-plus decades of trying to outrun the sound of my own steps in fright and flight, I've learned to appreciate the irony of not having to worry about a legacy when so little was accomplished.
-bill kenny

Across the Universe

Too many years of working late nights by myself at radio stations and sparsely populated offices have given me a life-long habit of talking out loud to myself. Not just sub-vocalization; full-throated out loud. Sometimes I do the voices or approximations of the voices of the people with whom I am having discussions. 

And often I bring up points in those discussions that one or the other of us in real-time failed to offer previously. 

Sort of the same thing with this space which I started filling back in October of 2007, which is a long time to do anything but an especially long time for something like this.

Though I'd acknowledge if you've been a visitor here for any and/or all of that time, it probably feels even longer from your perspective. Just wanted to say thanks.
-bill kenny

Always Room for Dessert

Today is my 71st birthday. As is traditional, I celebrate my Natal Anniversary by wishing for a pony ride. And sadly, also part of that same tradition, the wish is never granted and I spend the day wearing chaps, astride a saddle. 

This is the 31st birthday I've celebrated as a thorn in The Rose of New England. I mention that because a well-meaning acquaintance gifted me with a word-a-day calendar, which, considering the year is nearly four full months old already, I would hope they got at a substantial discount, which not so coincidentally would be ideal for them as they are both very parsimonious and frugal (each of which is a separate entry on my calendar).    

In what seems to be more coincidental than calculated, today's word is actually a compound word, cognitive dissonance, meaning 'the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.' Perhaps, only on my calendar page, there's an illustration accompanying the definition and it seems to be a photo of Norwich, Connecticut. 

I shouldn't be surprised really; I've lived here for three-plus decades. 

How often have you known someone, a Norwich neighbor or family member perhaps, who complained about the absence of businesses in our downtown and then, after a business (Mattern Corporation in this case) bought the decrepit and long-abandoned former YMCA building to renovate and convert into their corporate headquarters, complained about the purchase? While also asking simultaneously loudly and plaintively, 'Why can't Norwich be more like Mystic?" Even though at one time, (or so I’ve been told) even Mystic wasn't like Mystic. Cognitive Dissonance.

How many of us who live nowhere near Occum still cannot understand why the people who do live there are so unhappy with the efforts to create and develop a second business park despite the mixed record of success for the first and so far only one? When I want to preserve my neighborhood, I'm a traditionalist but when someone else does the same thing, they're selfish. Yeah. What's mine is mine but what's yours is negotiable. Cognitive Dissonance.

Is it okay to utter the R-word aloud again? In this case, the R-word is Rotary; specifically, the wildly unpopular now-off-the-table proposal by the Connecticut State Highway Department to place six rotaries on Route 82 a thoroughfare that many of us insist 'traffic is so awful we have to do something!' Well, up until the moment someone attempted to, and then not so much. Meanwhile, we continue to call it Crash Alley and to complain. Cognitive Dissonance.

Not that the 'other rotary,' the Franklin Square Rotary (that visual image is quite challenging or is it just me?) hasn't been without its detractors. So many who insist there's nothing to do or see in our downtown are still very annoyed about all the parking spaces the Franklin Square Rotary took away, even though it didn't do that, and besides, the same folks complaining weren't going into downtown in the first place. Cognitive Dissonance. 

Just for today: try to imagine what Norwich could become if half of us didn't spend our talent, time, and energy trying to convince the other half our efforts to improve our city are in vain. Cognitive Dissonance. 

Now who wants a slice of birthday cake? And where did that horse come from?
-bill kenny

Tuck Around and Find Out

My coal-black heart, while not growing two sizes at the good news, did leap (more or less) for something approximating joy when I learned shortly before noon Monday that the heir of the Swanson TV dinners fortune would be dining alone at least for the immediate future.

His own network, Faux, whom he so obediently served for so long buried his conscious uncoupling more than halfway down the front page of their website. 

But when they did post it, they captured him with his trademark too-stupid-to-comprehend-what-is-happening-to-him look that he has worn for nearly every minute of every broadcast since he first popped up wearing a bowtie seated across from Paul Begala until that fateful night Jon Stewart handed him his ass and within weeks Crossfire was gone from CNN and Tucker had fled for the politically friendly white supremacist environs of Fox.

And now Tucker has learned...you know, I'm not sure what he's learned. Even less than the slack-jawed monosyllabics who watched him. I suspect. Fox News barely and rarely covered the Dominion lawsuit so it's possible his viewers will assume he was a victim of an act of God. Or Chem Trails (more likely). 

It seems Fox will now have rotating hosts though if they could just reanimate Josef Goebbels, and Rupert would spring for the money for a good voice and diction coach to work on the accent, I'm sure most of Tucker's show's scripts are already loaded on the teleprompter and the audience wouldn't miss a beat.

Parting shot? Hey, Fox, do Hannity next.

Game, Set, and Match.
-bill kenny 

But a Dream...

This may creep you out, for which  I apologize in advance. It happens every time one of our children comes to visit us (we live in Connecticut and they live with their partners, respectively, in Virginia and Florida). 

Late last week, our son came to see us as part of a three-day business-connected junket he was on, and his mother and I had a great afternoon catching up with him and hearing about his adventures. Shortly before, but not part of, the Thanksgiving holidays last year, our daughter and her affianced were in town for a friend's wedding and came to call and catch up as well.

My wife and I had actually seen both of our children, together, last summer as part of what I now call "My Reach Exceeded My Grasp" Road Trip where we drove our new (leased) Forester, first to Virginia to see our daughter and recruit her as an additional driver for when we then continued to Jupiter, Florida, to surprise our son for his 40th birthday. Memories to last me a lifetime because as my body explained to my brain for many days afterward, we're not doing that again ever.    

Invariably, after a visit with one of our children, I have a series of dreams, usually for two to four nights (as near as I can remember) about my being a child, growing up with my parents and siblings, but that also have my spouse and our children in them. I'm aware that they shouldn't be which is how even in the dream, I know it's a dream but that doesn't make it any less disquieting as in the dreams I often recall situations that I lived through in some cases well over sixty-five years ago. 

So I'm still a little bit jumpy as I process the differences between real life and surreal life, I guess I'll call it, without disrespecting either. In the midst of that struggle, I came across an article on a related topic, end-of-life dreams, that vexes me greatly since I've pretty much convinced myself that this is all there is in terms of life and hereafter but for obvious reasons, especially with every succeeding Natal anniversary I try to keep an open mind on the subject. 

 I promise, if possible to let you know how that works out.
-bill kenny

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

I was NOT being humorous; I meant it literally. 

Can a man on the moon be all that far behind?
-bill kenny 

A Reminder that There is No Planet B

I offered this a couple of years ago on Earth Day as the COVID-19 pandemic was accelerating and the lockdown to mitigate it was taking hold. 

I offered then as I will again now, that we shouldn't crap where we eat. My larger point is that plagues like COVID-19 and other ecological and environmental disasters we are inflicting upon ourselves will eventually kill us. Earth Day is as good a time as any to recognize our place in the world and acknowledge our world is so much more than just us.

Not that you asked but I accidentally ended up in the first-ever Earth Day Parade in New York City back in 1970 as a pimply prep school know-it-all. And now, a half-century later, don't know about you but I have clear skin and not only still know it all but now think I know it all better. Kidding with the last part of the previous sentence but you knew that.

I've organized a virtual walk for us from Chelsea Parade to Norwich Harbor because this is my space in the ether and that's what I'd like to do. I hope you're wearing sensible shoes, virtual or otherwise, and other items of comfortable clothing because we have some ground to cover.  

Actually, you can stay right where you are, standing or sitting. I've walked this distance so often in the three-plus decades of life here I can do it in my sleep (more or less) and I have no fear of getting lost as so many people I've met along the route have told me where to go. I always grab photos, so let me share some of the places we would be walking to and past if we were walking at all.

Normally, or as close to it as I ever get, I walk down Washington Street using the Shoreline Access that heads down to the Yantic River behind the now-shuttered Christ Episcopal Church (and wouldn't that make a great [place for that community center we're always talking about but never doing anything to make happen?) as I make my way along the Heritage Trail under the Sweeney Bridge, with Thayer's Marine on the opposite shore over on Hollyhock Island, passing under the spur of Route 82 that takes traffic past the Intermodal Transportation Center to Chelsea Harbor Drive. 

Mother Nature has reclaimed a lot of where the Putts Up Dock mini-golf course used to be facing the Marina at American Wharf where I remember the volcano being most especially overgrown. The Norwich Harbor stretches out to our right as we walk towards Howard T. Brown Park. 

No matter the day, the time, or the weather, there's always a large gaggle of seagulls, ducks, swans, and geese near the boat launch, hoping none of us know how to read the signs posted by the CT DEEP to not feed any of the waterfowl. The gulls sail overhead on the wind currents from the harbor and all the other birds do that paddle-in-place thing while waiting for a dropped french fry or random piece of bread.

As you stand near the Chelsea Landing sign beyond the gazebo you can almost see forever down the Thames River, or at least as far as the Thermos Condominiums over on Laurel Hill as the river continues into the Long Island Sound and, in turn, the Atlantic Ocean.

I'd like to think that perhaps someone somewhere on a European shore is gazing upon that same Atlantic at the very moment we are so that in a way we're still all together, no matter how far apart we are. Be it today, Earth Day, and every day.
-bill kenny

History Repeats the Old Conceits

There was once beauty in a worldview that offered clarity and transparency. Somewhere we lost track of it and allowed artistry to be transformed into artifice and truth to be replaced with what Stephen Colbert whimsically called truthiness.  

The white lies became little lies that became The Big Lie and now no one knows where truth ends and falsehood begins.  

In case, you thought or believed I was going help you out of the hole we've fallen into, sorry, Pilgrim, there's just not enough progress in the whole world to ever fill in that space. 

As much as I'd like to offer some helpful or at least hopeful words that there will come a day when we will look back at this time in our history as the nadir of honest dialogue from which we went on to bigger and better things, I think not.

Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch? You're eating it now. Grab a napkin.

-bill kenny

#ItsAlwaystheGuns

Maybe it's a phenomenon of age and the aging process but I'm always surprised to discover something I think of as 'not that long ago' was in terms of the time-space continuum very much long ago.

We're at over one hundred separate and distinct iterations of mass shootings/gun violence here in the Star-Spangled Land of the Round Doorknobs for this calendar year and we're only one hundred and ten days into it. Talk about over-achievers, eh?  

There are so many, and they are so frequent we are perilously close to experiencing a national shortage of thoughts and prayers. 

Meanwhile, lost in the churn, on this date in 1999, what we didn't know at the time, was the catalyst to the uncontrollable senseless epidemic of school shootings and violence we are just barely living through to this day, Columbine.

Cassie Bernall, 17; Steven Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matthew Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; William "Dave" Sanders, 47; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; Lauren Townsend, 18, and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

More than one of them would have had kids of their own and probably would worry about them the same way their parents worried. And to no avail. April 20, 1999.

Don't tell me we 'can't do anything to stop' this when what you mean is 'we won't do anything.' -bill kenny

The Seductive Safety of Stasis

Rummaging through my notes and journals, I fell across words I first offered about a decade and a half ago suggesting to me in the here and now we're often (and again) in the same movie, but with a different cast. See if you agree.

We're fond of history here in Norwich but we may not realize the danger of allowing who we once were to prevent us from becoming who we need to be.

I've heard a lot, though by no means all, of the 'back in the day' stories about Franklin Square, the sea captains who built houses on Laurel Hill, the Sears and Roebuck (whatever happened to Roebuck, anyway?) store that was downtown and Thursday nights so hectic in The Rose City small children clung tightly to a parent's hand lest they find themselves in the street and lost in the throng.

These stories always have a sepia tinge to them, at least to me, and a soft focus in terms of detail. They always bring a smile to the face of the person telling me the tale. Then we fast forward to the present day and no one seems to know what happened, how, or why. People woke up and downtown was a ghost town-the stores were all gone and so, too, were the people who shopped in them.

My Norwich history starts (and stays) a little more black and white, with extreme contrast and hard shadows, coming over the (old) Laurel Hill Bridge into a ghost of a downtown with plywood for windows and not a soul on the sidewalks in the middle of October of 1991.

That was the year of the petition drives at the local supermarkets to 'Keep the Boat Afloat' as Electric Boat was facing massive layoffs in the aftermath of the Seawolf submarine construction cutbacks. The same region that had no plan for the post-World War II migration of the textile mills to the Deep South had even less clue about what to do with the Cold War’s Peace Dividend when those defense industry jobs became fewer and farther between.

And all these years later, where are we? The same old same old. We all accept Eisenhower isn't still the President and your grandfather's advice about never paying more than $15,000 for a house without a basement doesn't even get you a good used car but we're hobbled by our past, even when/if we weren't here to live it or remember it. Instead of it being a step on the ladder to tomorrow, it's a hurdle on the steeple chase we've made of our lives.

Since everyone has an opinion on what 'Norwich needs,' here’s mine: we lack a belief in ourselves and in one another. Not that it will happen (we’d never even agree on the logistics or the staging), but we should stage a municipal trust fall. Seriously. Let’s put the back into ‘I’ve got your back.’ But we won’t because we can’t. Or choose not to.

With apologies to Alvin Toffler, Norwich doesn't suffer from Future Shock. We are smothered by Present Shock and the fear of acting and owning the consequences of that action. Maybe tomorrow will be better we sigh. Unless and until it's not, then still we sit and wait because if we don’t do anything, we can't do anything wrong. Nothing ever happens if we don't make it happen. 
-bill kenny

Whatever Happened to "Pull My Finger"?

Say what you will, last week the Roman Catholic Church dodged a bullet of even more unfavorable publicity. 

Instead, it was the Dalai Lama who made headlines around the world for some semi-sexually-charged creepy behavior that many of us, practicing and already perfect Catholics alike, have come to associate with our guys.   

As a matter of fact, in light of the scandals still surrounding the Diocese in the area of Connecticut where I live, I was surprised our Bishop didn't reassign him to some backwater parish as a reflex action. 
-bill kenny

Sinistra Sinister

Fun fact from my prep school days of Latin ('it'll help you on the English SATs'-everyone), a left-handed person is a sinistra utebatur (almost rhymes with Studebaker, which also no longer exists). 

I've often very quietly theorized that it was a short walk from sinistra in Latin to sinister in English but in light of the southpaw leanings of the love of my life, my theorizing rarely exceeds the decibel threshold of a gnat farting.

Our two children are right-handed, though when he played soccer, our son's dominant leg was his left one. It seemed to me he used the right one basically to help him stand up, but while I love the beautiful game I don't pretend to understand its intricacies and nuances. 

My parents were both right-handed. I have siblings who are left-handed and I think my wife does as well. Not sure there's a method to any of how that works out but I know from forty-six years of life together, things like scissors, ball-point pens, can-openers, and a wide variety of tools are NOT designed with left-handed people in mind.

Here's a highly-readable summary of areas where the struggle is real. 

And to quote a famous lefty, Paul Simon, "I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored. I been John O'Hara'd, McNamara'd. I been Rolling Stoned and Beatled 'til I'm blind. I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded a Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed.
But That's the hand I use; well, never mind."
-bill kenny

   

Operators Standing By (I Can Only Assume)

I think I'm just about out of words to describe my exasperation and animus when the topic of the 45th President of the United States comes up. 

In fairness, to him (and me), I had no words left for him by the time he rode the escalator down in his very own office building into the hearts and minds, more or less, of his fellow Americans.

His shenanigans and machinations from that day until just about now constantly and consistently redefine the German phrase, fass ohne boden even as he remains an arsch mit ohren (aber sehr klein, genau wie seine hände).   

I am always prepared to believe the absolute worst about him and have through the years been only occasionally disappointed, 

This money grab is as real as the day is long and is aimed squarely at those who get upset that their favorite beer now has a rainbow on the cans.  

I bought a pair of the Trump Meets Kim commemorative coins some years back because I knew the day would come when I could see the humor in that 'historic moment.' I still haven't but I can dream, right? 

If the White House Gift Shop were smart, they'd throw in a couple of those fabulously famous Trump Steaks to sweeten the deal. And for those who are enticed by their current offering, remember: call before midnight; that way they'll get your money even faster.
-bill kenny  

The Passage of a Dark Decade

Ten years ago, Boston was celebrating as they do every year a state holiday, Patriots' Day in Massachusetts, and also the traditional running of the Boston Marathon.

Except, a decade ago, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev those evil, ungrateful bastards whom we took in and who repaid that kindness with killing, broke hearts, destroyed lives, and shattered our national illusion of insularity and insulation from the other horrors of the rest of the world and altered forever anyone's memories and imaginings of the Boston Marathon.

Both brothers will be long faded from memory before what they did is forgotten, but better remembered, and hopefully always remembered, is what they failed to do. Just ask Jeff Baumann, who gets stronger every day and whom I fervently hope gets angry and powerful enough someday to kick the ass of Dzorkhar all the way to Boston Harbor and then hold him under until the bubbles stop.

We're another year on, point, in fact, a full decade on, and no sense still makes no sense and people still have holes in their hearts where loved ones used to be. I understand being an angry old man will get me nothing but an even more premature grave and I should take my cue from those who not only survived but triumphed over the tragedy of that day. Perhaps I shall, starting tomorrow.

I have a Facebook friend, a Fenway denizen and Grammy-nominee who spent a lot of years on the Jersey Shore and has now heeded Horace Greeley and gone west, Linda Chorney, who repurposed and molded her sorrow to create a beautiful celebration of a life taken terribly, suddenly and far too soon into a song perfectly suited for today and for all those enjoying it.
-bill kenny

Presented (Nearly) Without Comment

I really am a dinosaur. So much of this life bewilders me and I find myself close to speechless which in the following instance is probably the best recourse since almost anything I might say would trigger one or more persons. 

Offered as an example of what I'll simply call "Seriously?" 

Talk about a long-lost love at first bite. Guten Appetit!
-bill kenny

Doesn't Look a Day Over Thirty-Five

I know, 'wish I could say that about myself.' Since I am already twice that, I'll hold my tongue, which is quite an accomplishment to which those who've met me will attest. 

But the truth of the matter is that I am NOT the Birthday person, here. 

Rather, hoist a glass of something bubbly (or not) to the fiftieth birthday (as of last Monday) of the Universal Product Code. It is as ubiquitous as Chickenman (an old radio joke). And while unarguably not as amusing, vastly more useful.

Since I specialize in finding the grey cloud surrounding the silver lining, I can uneasily foresee a day when a UPC appears on our birth certificates, to say nothing of on our foreheads. 
-bill kenny  

Show Up and Speak Up

Seven-plus decades here on the Big Blue Marble haven’t taught me much, but I have learned that for the most part, people prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not. If you have any doubt, look at some of the reactions and discussions about the City Manager’s proposed budget of $153.225 million.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out newspaper accounts, here’s Matt Grahn’s. And if you’d like more detail, you’ll find the entire proposal (and supporting slides and charts) on the city’s website,  

Since the first public hearing on the proposal is tomorrow night at 7:30, if you’re planning on attending and speaking, this is a good time to review the proposal to better focus your thoughts on suggestions. And if I may, telling the City Council “No!” may make you feel better but isn’t as helpful as we all need to be right now. As the TikTokers say, ‘show receipts.’ 

I think all of us have a sense that many with whom we share our community are still struggling to make ends meet. No one is immune; from small business owners, through single-parent households to towns and cities trying to create budgets that deliver value for the citizens’ tax dollars without bankrupting the very people in whose name the government was formed. I always have déjà vu with budget hearings; we’ve all heard ‘sacrifice’ and ‘tough year’ not just before, but over and over. 

We all know how often in our own households we turn over every dollar before we spend it. That’s why so many insist those whom we elect cannot continue to have us live beyond our means. So share your concerns and ideas. We may agree that together we can do anything but also must concede we can’t do everything.

But which part of not everything should we do, why, and how should we pay for it? Everyone, I believe, has an idea, and tomorrow night is our first opportunity to share them with the members of the City Council.

The Council is short-handed right now, with six rather than seven members. We know them, they’re our neighbors whom we chose from a wide range of candidates in November 2021.  Someone, I suspect a politician, once said 'All politics is local' and when you look at our City Council, I think you’d agree there's not a lot of ideological differences getting in the way of how each of them tries to do a good job, for all of us, in Council Chambers.

The Mayor and City Council define the community and economic development goals of the city, while the City Manager refines that vision into a plan of action and holds accountable the municipal departments striving to achieve those goals. 

All elected and appointed officials work with agencies and volunteers towards, and for, a greater good and a more hopeful and prosperous city. But it takes money, our money. Budgets aren’t a matter of style over substance; they are about deciding what we want and want to pay for. 

For too many years I think we’ve oversimplified, creating false choices between education or public safety, human services versus road repair. We choose noise over nuance. And what changed? Nothing. That must stop. Let’s admit it: We have more wants than wallet. 

But tomorrow night, we can help set the tone, the priorities, and the direction.
Seize the moment. 
-bill kenny 

As NOT Seen on Doc Martin

I watched every second of every minute of every episode of Doc Martin, the prequel movies, the holiday specials, and everything that was bundled together and trundled out to view. I adored every aspect of the show and rewatch it repeatedly as I know there will be no more. Ever.

The acting, the writing, and perhaps most importantly, the setting, a fictitious village in the Cornwall district of Great Britain all had a part in making the show memorable and appointment viewing not just for me but for millions around the world. 

However, I think the show had one serious shortcoming: its depiction of the seagulls and the waterfowl that populate the region. 

Somewhere, I suspect Alfred Hitchcock is smiling (but clutching his sammich with both hands).
-bill kenny 

 

By George

There's not a day that goes by when on one social media platform or another a meme with a George Carlin quote surfaces. They're always good for a smile and maybe, if I'm reasonably focused (something we elderly dotards aren't known for) I'll spend a moment thinking about the point I believe he was making.

I will always believe Lenny Bruce was the funniest comic in my lifetime, but I don't get out much, and much of Bruce's humor was topical as opposed to Carlin's which is closer to timeless. On a much smaller scale, of course, I have a similar problem. Where I live, many people think I'm being funny but I'm actually just mean. I'm grateful they haven't caught on yet.

Carlin was a broadcaster in the United States Air Force, stationed among other places at Lajes Field, Azores. I, too, was a broadcaster in the USAF, spending a year on a rock in the North Atlantic above the Arctic Circle, Greenland. Still waiting for my HBO special. 

I've often theorized that much of Carlin's reputation was built on our belief that he, too, was being funny when in reality his vision was much, much darker. As it happens, I'm not alone in seeing his dark side (sorry, Floyd).  

I think he'd be amused and bemused at the regard and esteem in which we hold him. But he shouldn't be as it's fully deserved.
-bill kenny

The Difference between Roman and Romance

I used to be a Catholic; actually, that's less than accurate. It's like saying I used to be a frighteningly flawed human being. Both of those statements have no past tense, or pretense (literary joke)-they just are and in this case, I am both.

The jaded, faded imitation of a person I am looks at his faith as a child and finds it easy to mock the boy on his way to manhood, but also envies him the beliefs that he had. When I threw the faith of my fathers into the ocean of doubt, I had nothing to hold onto in its place as I never had the courage of my own convictions and could not trust those of any other.

Today is Easter Sunday the most important feast in the Christian liturgical calendar and (pardon my pseudo-theological seminary sermon) precipitant of the article of faith that makes us Christian if that's indeed what we are.

Christmas gets a lot of press, songs, cards, and window decorations, and don't look for a Macy's Day Parade to mark the start or end of Lent because that's not happening. In these parts, Christmas gets marketing help from every wholesaler and retailer imaginable, and why not? Christmas is a lovely story, wonderfully symbolic and simply beautiful if you don't want to think too much about it.

Take a look today at the New Testament of your choice and the foreboding afoot in every verse of every version about the events leading to Easter (those are the versions of my choice). And in one of the most ironic choices of terms associated with any aspect of Jesus Christ, is Good Friday, which marks His Crucifixion and Death (I went back and made the "h" a capital, not because there's hope for me but out of fear that there is no hope).

And as you read the accounts, let's face it, the events of that day are absolutely horrible. The crowd, the occupying forces, everyone, it seems has abandoned the Son of God who is sentenced to die (I'd say 'murdered' but some might argue the state does not murder) in an extraordinarily, excruciating manner.

And it is both that death by Crucifixion and more importantly the belief in the Resurrection that so many commemorate today which is the defining event for every Christian, even the ones who seem more like Simon Peter than even they could ever admit in this life.  I want you to remember this. Come on, try to remember.
-bill kenny

On a Saturday of Significance

I have never been to the Vatican, nor have I stayed at a well-known motel chain, but I know my way around the Stations of the Cross and the Lives of the Saints. I'm always amazed at the number of people who think Christmas is the origin of Christianity-others consider the beginnings to be Easter Sunday.

If the former is The Promise and the latter The Promise Fulfilled then today, Holy Saturday is the act of faith and hope that defines you as a Christian. The belief in the Resurrection which the New Testament portrays as the promised reward for the faithful servant is never so near and yet oh so far as it is today.

The earliest disciples had nothing to go on, unlike those of us of the Brave New World Order. They had witnessed a crucifixion-one of the most egregiously horrific forms of a death sentence at its time. Cowering in an upstairs room, huddled together while fearing any sound and every footfall was possibly a signal someone was coming for them, they had no way to see the glory of Easter Sunday. All they could do was believe.

For them to believe as devoutly as they did between the worst day in the history of the world and its greatest day remains for me as a loyal son of Holy Mother Church, but a FARC  for more years than I care to recall, the day which created the Christian religion, today the test and proof of faith.

From childhood on, I struggled against the suffocation that surrendering to the traditions and the rites seemed to signify. I took no solace in unquestioning and unswerving belief, preferring what I understood the path of Thomas to be and finding no one who could answer my questions, absenting myself from the body of believers. How odd that this declaration of freedom has never created a sense of being free.

Not that I don't envy those of faith and think about the comfort that comes from that and should be a reminder to redouble our efforts to be the best people we know how to be in The Now because The Next, as the New Testament illustrates, can be so lonely and uncertain without a reason to believe.

And either you have a reason, or you become one for someone else.
When you do, every day is Easter.
-bill kenny

Take What You Can Gather from Coincidence

There is, preached Kohelet in the Book of Ecclesiastes, a season for every purpose it says in the Old Testament, seasons for everything, and around the world today within the Christian faith we are within the Paschal Triduum. Monsignor Harding, wherever he is in all of eternity, would be wide-eyed with wonder that, of all I have been given or taught, and of all that I have lost or had taken from me, that would be a term I would hold onto.

I know a lot of Christians who see the birth of Christ, Christmas, as the defining moment of their faith, and if you work retail that's an attractive argument. Growing up in Holy Mother Church in the late Fifties and Sixties, I knew (and had plenty of nuns, Sister of Charity type, if I were to forget) for Catholics it was the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

I can still remember Sister Thomas Anne faintly smiling as she ticked off the three events on the fingers of her right hand: pinkie, ring finger, and middle finger (how ironic is that? (I'm lying, third graders had no concept of the significance of the middle finger not even Bobby D'Alonzo who was a pretty fast crowd all by himself)). 

She paused as she noted the similarity to the Holy Trinity, three persons in the One God. When I watched her do this same explanation, with the pregnant pause in the same place, complete with the slow smile of accidental recognition of her triad point for the next five years, there was still a sign, but the wonder was gone.

And yet, I suspect she, too, is smiling today. It is Good Friday, a day of such momentous import to so many disparate elements of our historical, philosophic, and cultural identity where, no matter your belief, or disbelief, you can take solace from the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God who became the Son of Man and laid down His life. Even if you have hurts that can never heal, you can, if only for today, have hope, knowing there is a tomorrow.
-bill kenny

Language City Don't Mean a Thing to Me

I'm very jealous of my wife, not just because she had the remarkably good fortune and excellent taste to marry me (my crippling modesty is often a burden I admit) but because she switches between two languages, her native German and her adopted English, with the greatest of ease. 

Actually, I'm jealous of anyone who can do that or who can speak more than one language not just because of the experiences and insights they can develop and acquire but because of how much the practice of exercising your cognitive skills in different languages can benefit you. 

I struggle with English, and watching any of the going-on from the seat of government in Washington, D.C., via C-SPAN or, in my case from Hartford, Connecticut, via CT-N, I am not alone. But I've been semi-gobsmacked reading an article that drifted across one of my social media feeds about how "Your Brain Wires Itself to Match Your Native Language." 

We humans are amazingly complex machines, wired to excel which makes so much of what we sometimes do to one another that much more frustrating and disappointing.
-bill kenny

Spring Is the Thing

I have a favorite time of the year, and we’re a little more than ankle-deep in it right now. Yep, I’ll take Spring over all the other seasons, and not because my birthday falls during it (thanks, Mom!), though I just realized that and that is a pretty good reason.

Spring is my favorite season, frankly, more for the promise than the actual performance.

Sitting at a computer keyboard right now I can attempt to make lighthearted sport of the fluctuations in temperature and overall weather we can have during any given week, or in some cases, the same day. Of course, when I’m out walking around in my neighborhood, that jacket I put on for the morning chill does become a bit burdensome when the sun comes out and the breeze pauses, and I feel like I’m inside an EZ Bake oven.

Speaking of walking around, a selling point about spring for me, and combined with the leap forward of the clocks for Daylight Saving Time, is all that extra daylight we have in the evening after dinner. More than enough for a leisurely stroll, in my case a couple of laps around Chelsea Parade and then a wander down Sachem Street with a possible detour to the Lower Falls of Uncas Leap to check on the leftover winter ice.  

In very short order, we’ll start seeing a lot more activity in and around the falls as a lot of folks work to enhance that area and make it a must-see destination (and then some of us will complain about the traffic and the noise and the litter because that’s what we do).

The other evening just past the Blackstone Apartments, a little bit late to the game, but still, I finally saw my first robin of spring although I don’t think he looked very much like Burt Ward (but I didn’t get a good or close look at him). Others will follow no doubt.

I’m not good with the names of the various early Spring flowers (aside from crocuses and daffodils) that push through the ground, though I am happy for their company, and I pay close attention to the still bare branches of the various deciduous trees, especially the ones that line Chelsea Parade, some of whom stubbornly held on to their brown and dead leaves into late fall/almost early winter last year. 

I applauded their perseverance and pluck then and now I strain to spot the soft red glow of buds on those same branches signaling the cycle of life hasn’t so much started as continued.

It's not that I dislike the other seasons, though thirteen months’ service in Greenland almost a half-century ago, probably put me off winter for the rest of my life (strange, when all you have is a sled to worry about, snow is terrific, but when you have a shovel instead, not so much).

I can’t prove this, but in my experience, out walking during the Spring, I see more people with smiles on their faces (especially now that we’ve stopped playing ‘who was that masked (wo)man?), who say Hello back when I say hello to them and who seem to have a little more pep in their step than maybe they did in February.

Spring is about optimism, plans, and projects.

I hope you have enough of the first to see you through the other two.
-bill kenny

Truck Fump

I'm not naive enough to believe an indictment in New York City today will mark the end of the public career of the talentless, narcissistic charlatan and grifter who served one term as President of the United States and whose loss seeking reelection in November 2020 marked the end of an error. 

As I said, today is not the end of the Mango Mussolini, but the beginning of the end.
Farewell, Donny Dorito, there's not a deep enough corner of Hades to which you can be consigned that would satisfy me, but I can dream. 

*

My personal wish is the kleptocrats and greedheads, family members included, with whom you've surrounded yourself all end up in the same place, and quickly.
-bill kenny

 

On This Date....

Forty-six years ago, today I asked a young German woman I was awfully sweet on, Sigrid  Schubert, to marry me. For historians everywhere, the sole reason of note for mentioning this is that she said "yes.". Back when I asked her in 1977, Easter was the third of April.

Sigrid told me later she had at first feared I was breaking up with her-perhaps I should enter one of those poker tourneys if I can bluff like that, except in reality, I have the emotional range of Rainman in a coma, so I should be grateful she held on and waited for the ride to get to...

...Here.

Where she and I are now is, in some respects, not all that far from where we started.

Material conditions have changed-we had a two-room cold-water walk-up off a bus line in Offenbach am Main a 'small' German city with more people in it than who lived in ALL of New London County, Connecticut when we arrived here in the fall of 1991.

Our home today is across the street from a landmark green space in the city of Norwich, Connecticut, an industrial-revolution-meets-the-American-Revolution type of town found so often in New England. That we are here and will be very likely for the rest of our lives, isn't/wasn't part of either of our visions of our future, proving again life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

Our wedding rings have both the date of our engagement as well as that of our wedding. I've stopped taking my ring off aside from that 'testing to see if I can still do it' drill I go through at random moments-and I mention that because I don't like jewelry and aside from my fitness tracker on my right wrist, I don't wear any. My wedding ring is an unwavering constant, not that I need the reminder.

We were, with apologies to Erich Fromm, a coalition of two against the world from the beginning. I'm not comfortable with new people, taking forever to warm up to them with the exception of the two who joined our lives, our children. We became three and then became four and then three again and then back to just two and I am with the person with whom I am most comfortable in the entire world of seven point eight billion or so people.

For me, Sigrid is like breathing out and breathing in, though I have given her many moments where the thought of applying a pillow to my sleeping face must have crossed her mind (so much for breathing). Actually, that's fair-more than fair if I were to be honest and this is as good a day as any to do that.

I usually spend this day examining where we've been and where I hope we're going but this day, and this time, I'm enjoying more of the where we are and what we have, which as it has been for all these years, is one another. She brightens any room and always brightens my world.
-bill kenny

The Richness of the Ritual

As a child, this was a very important Sunday in my house. And I have to be honest, I was almost a teen before I even fully grasped why. Palm Sunday was up there near, though not quite at, Christmas Mass and Easter, and when my first name still had a 'y' on the end of it, I never really followed the reasoning as to why. Behold the Man, indeed.

Palm Sunday always seemed to be the deceptive handshake. The New Testament has accounts of the triumphal entry of the Son of God into Jerusalem, being welcomed by those who would later demand his death as part of the inevitability of a week that had Him crucified on Friday (a more excruciating way to die at the time was unknown) and resurrected on Sunday.

I never impressed any of the nuns at St. Peter's School (later called Saint Mary and Saint Peter Academy) in New Brunswick with my scholastic aptitude or ability to interpret scriptures (I was almost married myself before I caught on to the importance of 'for I know not any man' and Joseph not having Mary stoned and why). To this day, I still experience a dryness in my mouth, a dreadful foreboding as the events of the Passion Week unfold.

I couldn't stop reading about it as a child and I couldn't look away. When Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber cashed in with Jesus Christ Superstar, if nothing else, they linked the inquisition of Christ forever in my mind with a jaunty little music hall number that I can hear even as I type this. Another reason I'm confident of my destination in the next life.

Today is a day for many to visit the church of their choice. Sidewalks are crowded as families make their way to retrieve fronds of blessed palm. My mom's mother had a piece that never left its location, behind a framed black and white photo on the wall. Only now do I realize I have no idea of whom the picture was, nor any idea who I might ask. 

The blessed palm that doesn't end up scotch-taped to auto rear-view mirrors or suspended by a thumbtack alongside the front door will be collected after all the Masses today, at least in the Catholic Church of my youth, and then burned to become the ashes used on our foreheads for Ash Wednesday.

Intro ibo ad alteri Dei. I think I still know the words and know that I always will. I once had the faith to believe in their meaning but I lost that or perhaps threw it over the side to help speed me on my way, and then I lost my way. I have the charts and maps spread out on the floor, but it's starless and bible black and I can't find my way home.
-bill kenny 

Just Lacking the Pink Crustacean

I was going to write something original, thoughtful, and clever about today being April Fool's Day (and shame on you for wondering where I would copy from), and recalled a  cartoon our son Patrick posted many years ago that I always associate with today for no reason at all. I've done it in previous years and you are about to witness it happening yet again. 

Here's the cartoon and below it, the words of half-wit if not actual wit from long ago they more or less inspired. 

I stopped by my local grocery the other day and there's a young man, perhaps all of five years old (on a good day with a strong breeze at his back, downhill) who is, as are they all at that age, thrilled to be alive and shopping with 'Dad!'. I'm typing it that way, 'Dad!' because that's how it sounded every time he said it. And he said it a lot. Madras shorts and an electric yellow short-sleeve shirt, this young fellow, standing before the lobster display case, was as enchanted as if he were at Sea World.

The lobsters, rubber bands around their claws, stacked like so much cordwood on the bottom of the display case were just about at his eye level. He touched the glass, somewhat tentatively, and then realized they couldn't bite him and started to slide his hand along the glass, shuffling his feet and shouting for 'Dad!' over and over and louder and louder like maybe 'Dad!' was deaf instead of ignoring him. He wasn't the least bit sad that the lobsters weren't chasing his hand-besides, he was in no hurry.

After minutes of this, 'Dad!' came over to the display tank where his son announced he'd 'really like to get one of these to take home!' (it's possible all children around the world until they hit double digits, think and talk in exclamation points). 'Dad!' calling his son 'buddy' seemed okay with this idea and suggested getting a second lobster as well 'for mom' while he and 'buddy' shared this one.

'Buddy' nearly went along with this proposal until he considered what his mother might make of a lobster as a pet, which nearly all of us in the area of the display were pretty sure is what 'buddy' had in mind. I say nearly all because 'Dad!' had no clue at all. After telling 'buddy, I didn't know you liked lobster', and in turn being promised by 'buddy' that he'd take of the lobster and 'walk him every day,' all I needed was the fat lady to sing, after fetching the melted butter and lemon.

'Dad!' was now on thin ice (technically he was in the water to his ankles) but seemed to think he had a teachable moment here, somewhere. He got as far as explaining that 'we eat lobsters, bud----' "EAT THEM!" the child shrieked. "WHY WOULD WE EAT THEM?" 

As questions go, this was an excellent one, especially had it been followed with 'how do we eat them?' Instead, the child, now staring at a man he'd never suspected of cannibalism, kept repeating so loudly I'm sure you could hear him in the parking lot (perhaps in Delaware) 'Dad!' 'Dad!' Dad!'

Luckily, Mom (no exclamation point please) arrived from, I think, the cereal aisle and scooped up a now openly sobbing 'buddy' shooting an 'I will boil you for this' look at 'Dad!' while marching towards the deli counter to get the child a please be quiet bribe slice of salami.

I'd tell you what I was thinking of sharing with 'buddy' about where we get salami but mom had a visage that would make a train run on a dirt road and I remembered (just in time) I had absolutely no opinion on lobsters or lifestyles.
-bill kenny.