Canine Co-Pilot

Traveling around, taking advantage of the nice day for the month of July (I thought it was scheduled earlier but I'm so wrong about this stuff so often), I was heading from Norwich to Waterford via Route 32 (you can go 395 but there's such a level and pace of traffic it wears me out trying to keep up with it).

It's not really the road less taken, though the volume of traffic pales in comparison to 395 which is just as well as it connects Norwich and Montville and New London as you travel around the not-so-glamorous back entrance to the Mohegan Sun casino.

The only tricky part is just as you're hitting Quaker Hill, because 32 blends with an exit of 395 and I know from experience on both sides of the merge, it's not a day at the beach. For a driver on 32, the merge involves a reasonably extreme over-your-right shoulder scan of your sector, so to speak, as cars entering far faster than your speed are (in theory) trying to slow down as they merge and before they hit the traffic signal (or you).

Conversely, if you're coming off 395 at this exit, all the turtle drivers are to your left and to make it interesting for both you and them, at that traffic signal I just mentioned, there are always a lot of people making the right at the light which means they need to get into that lane, and if they cross in front of you, well, stuff can and will happen.

Which it did yesterday, but funny stuff. It was a guy in a dark Saab, the sedan model (I think that means four doors, right? Anyway, that's what I mean). He was looking to go straight and get into the left lane on 32 coming off from 395. There wasn't a lot of traffic and it was a pretty easy maneuver.

So much so that I had more than enough opportunity to eyeball his shotgun partner, his dog, a big brown one, window rolled down, head out the window (I'd love to know what they are thinking about aside from 'here, kitty, c'mon Kitty') wearing wraparound sunglasses, just like his owner. 

For a moment, I was watching the SPCA version of the Blues Brothers movie. The part of a trimmer, and far more hirsute, Jake, played by the dog. My turn was fast approaching and as I put on my blinker, I murmured a short prayer, "Our Lady of Acceleration don't fail us now."
-bill kenny 

Is Forever Too Long?

I'm seventy-one. I'm not proud of that; I'm not ashamed of it. It's just what I am until I become something else (ideally, older, but that's not as much in my control as I had once hoped). 

I still have ALL my own teeth but have been wearing corrective eyewear for close to thirty years. My hair has been going grey for decades. Our father's hair, he used to tell us, was grey by the time he was nineteen leading him to endlessly quip 'Just because there's snow on the roof doesn't mean the fire's gone out.' I get it now; I didn't then.

My hair is thinning. Just about nowhere else on my body can I make that claim. Some mornings getting out of bed is so arduous I'm tempted to just lie there until lunch or later. I can remember being a kid and not being able to wait until I was all grown up. I was an idiot. If you can, turn back! It doesn't get any better and the ending is just horrible. 

I'm kvetching not just because I always do but because of this happy little headline from CNN.com.: These 8 habits could add up to 24 years to your life, study says. Here's the rub: you get those 'added' years back at the end of your life. 

I'd be a lot more enthused at the idea if I were able to add them back when I was twenty-five. Now we're talking! Tacking them on at seventy-one isn't the thrill the report's authors think it is, believe me. Although two dozen more years of 'early bird specials' does have a certain appeal. 

Or how about this news item from Fortune.com? Harvard scientists have identified a drug combo that may reverse aging in just one week. Who wouldn't sign up to rent a rat suit and stand in for a drug cocktail, right? Sort of like Dunbar in Catch-22 wanting a longer life and when asked why, answers, 'Because what else is there?' After all, what's a heaven for, right?
-bill kenny

Stamped on These Lifeless Things

Bear with me on this for a moment. 

Have you ever been anywhere, and I mean anywhere, that you believed you were the first person to ever be there? Yeah, it's a big planet but there are lots of people and the chances of being the first to be anywhere are just about none. And yet...

"Humans first appeared on Earth at least 315,000 years ago, based on fossil remains found in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. The oldest hominins are thought to have appeared as early as 7 million B.C.E. The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs. They were flaking crude stone tools 2.5 million years ago. 

"The first evidence for cooking appears approximately 700,000 years ago, and the first evidence for clothing appears about 500,000 years ago. The first Homo sapiens, anatomically modern humans, arose alongside other hominid relatives approximately 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago. The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago." (*AI-Generated)

When I was a kid, we used to laugh at the definition of primeval, 'where the hand of man has yet to set foot,' because we were empty-headed prattlers, and look at us now in our declining years, former masters of the universe and world titans. 

I call bullshit. I take that back; rather, I call Ozymandias and Romain Veillon.
-bill kenny

Yellow Was Never My Color

It's a lot different from when we were growing up and used them as essential transportation to get to and from the field (the baseball field, of course, what else was there for a kid growing up in the late Fifties and early Sixties?) or from friends' houses.

You might start out with just you and Neil, and then go a couple of blocks and pick up Bobby, and then all you headed across the development, to the new Levitt houses, where Tommy lived.

I'm talking about bicycles and as kids there was Schwinn and there was Royce Union, and not much else. These were big, clunky solid yoke metal frame bikes, with balloon tires and white sidewalls. You had a mousetrap in the back, and that's where you kept your glove, baseball inside of it, so that the pocket formed just right.

Maybe your dad, or somebody else's dad would remember to get the little can of Neet's foot oil at the hardware store and you'd work that stuff into the glove before putting it into the mousetrap.

Twenty-six-inch tires on those bikes and if you had a fancy one, it had front and rear handbrakes, but ours mostly didn't-you just stood on the pedals hard and the rear wheel broke away and wound up sliding to one side or the other. You stopped all right. 

We all knew somebody whose folks had gotten them a bike with three gears, think of it! but we didn't have bikes like that. Going uphill, you pedaled hard-if it got steeper, you pedaled harder. Screw up, you fell off and walked uphill holding the bike by the handlebars, feeling (and looking) like a dork.

I was thinking about all of that last weekend as the bikers raced across parts of France whose towns can only correctly be pronounced by removing your adenoids. And again this year, one or more people were badly injured along the route, and I keep thinking 'Nobody ever got hurt when we rode to Resko's house' and that was over an hour back in the day (it'd be like three days in 'now' time).

It was not until the LA Olympics in '84, sitting in Germany and watching highlights of the games the Warsaw Pact boycotted, that I first saw Americans go ga-ga for the most European of sports, in my opinion (unless they make sulking an Olympic event.)

The oval track with the impossible angles of banking, the skinny tires that seemed to be made of solid rubber, the 'Disco in Frisco' skin-tight speedo outfits, and most especially those 'Revenge of the Alien' head-shaped helmets, all of it so aerodynamic I thought these guys could fly. 

I was aware of a Frankfurt am Main-based Tour de France cyclist, Didi Thoreau, I think his name was and I couldn't understand how you could make a living as a professional bike rider. I had a movie in my head, where Didi is in Munich, perhaps visiting his fan club (I'm sure he had one) and checking into the Munich Hilton what exactly does he put under "occupation"? 'Professional Bicycle Rider' And if the concierge snickers across the desk while reading it, upside down, in the ledger, does he offer to prove it with a bike strapped to his back?

Then in the late Eighties, Greg Lemond, an American from I have no idea where, won the Tour de France Actually he won it three times, twice AFTER accidentally shooting himself. He recovered, but after those two victories his career seemed to go away (I always wondered where he'd been shot since we're talking a LOT of hours on a bike seat if you follow my drift.)

We'll skip over Lance Armstrong and just point out that "Cheaters never prosper" needed to have one or more asterisks when applied to him, amirite?  And now the 2023 version is history and what does the winner get? A permanent press yellow jersey? The opportunity to write 'winner of the Tour de France' on the hotel check-in registry? I'm wondering if Duna could do that.
-bill kenny

I'm Gonna Owe You Some Words

The cliche says 'a picture is worth a thousand words.' 

I found this story online a couple of days. It's about photos that capture day and night in the same frame. I think you'd agree they sure do. 

Wow! 
--bill kenny

The Time at the Tone

As I walk around Chelsea Parade near the Park Congregational Church at the top of each hour, the bells in the steeple toll to mark the time. When they do, various birds whom I presume live in the rafters (or are vacationing through a pigeon BNB) frantically fly out, just ahead of the sound waves of the pealing bells. 

I would say it happens as regularly as clockwork but then you might think less of me for offering such an obvious pun (what do you mean ‘not possible’?).

My point (I removed my ballcap so it’s easier to see) is the reaction never varies, no matter the time or the season. I often wonder, since the bells’ tolling obviously disturbs and disrupts the birds, why some or all of them don’t relocate. Nope, there they nest and do the fight or flight fandango every hour on the hour.

Even the trees across the street at Chelsea Parade, I’d wager, brace for the tolling of the church bells. Admittedly they have no choice but, nevertheless, I do admire their acceptance and stoicism even as fleeing birds perch among their branches.

Both the birds and the trees remind me of many of the posted opinions/reactions of our Norwich neighbors to last Monday’s start in City Council chambers on the process of seeking voter approval for the construction of a new and more suitable police station, with a projected price tag of a shade under forty-five million dollars.

Of course, there were going to be outcries if the cost had been forty-five cents to say nothing of forty-five million dollars. I’ve already read/heard outrage and apoplexy at ‘spending that kind of money’ from many of the usual suspects on social media and call-in radio. Mostly that’s sticker shock as folks in auto sales say, and, between us, absolutely NOTHING has been decided. But….

I’ve yet to encounter anyone so far with an opinion about the new police station who thinks if we wait maybe another decade as we did the last time around on this same question, perhaps this time the cost will come down.

Not that the continued and repeated mention of the projected cost won’t provoke flights of fancy and fantasy about what to do instead, which, in turn, will spark more arguments about how we could seriously risk having a police station too small to accommodate future requirements and public safety growth, much less one already deficient for our present force.

I should point out that the current station reportedly got a head start on its obsolescence being considered inadequate and too small from the time its construction was completed. I’m expecting we’ll begin the “Search for the Guilty” phase of the problem-solving matrix soon because that’s how we roll around here.

The matrix has six steps: Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Panic, the previously mentioned Search for the Guilty, Punishment of the Innocent, and finally Praise and Honor for the Non-Participants. 

We've seen this movie before. The part of the new police station has been played previously by the Mercantile Exchange, the Transportation Center, and the former YMCA building, among others.  That’s why this should all feel so familiar but more importantly why we must change the ending.

A new police station is required. Whether you fly away or stand stone-like at midnight, you don’t have to hear the bells to know it’s time. The need is now. And nothing changes unless and until we do.
-bill kenny

How Else Do You Make an Ice Cream Float?

It was Dick the Butcher, one of Shakespeare's characters in Henry VI, Part 2, who first suggested a phrase that has infamously echoed through the centuries, "the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers."  

For extremely personal reasons, I don't support that idea but in light of recent events, Dick and Jack Cade might both be smirking. 

I could quote Warren Zevon at this point, but Billy Joel is easier to dance to.
-bill kenny

My Irrepressible Sibling

Today is the birthday of my sister, Kara Forsythe. 

In the course of our shared lives, Kara has been my baby sister, my younger sister, my middle sister, my married sister (excellent move, Russ!), a mom to three sons of her own, and now, a grandmother.

Kara and Kayleigh

Perhaps her greatest achievement, some might say. 

They don't know our birthday girl very well.

Happy Birthday, Stella!
-bill kenny

Short Time Here

Never really had a chance.

Amy Winehouse (14 Sep 1983- 23 July 2011)

And now she never will.
-bill kenny 

Don't Touch that Dial

To quote that famous sage of the imaginary pitch, Dani Rojas, "Football is Life." 

Already started and lasting for an entire month, is our opportunity to live VERY large as the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup kicked off (see what I did there with 'kicked off'?) in 10 stadiums across Australia and New Zealand and runs through August 20.

Here's a little toe-tapping theme music while waiting for the unlimited nachos with queso and the big flat-screen to enjoy all the action on the pitch to arrive. GOL!
-bill kenny 

Stickers or Snickers

I'm not sure why we still call them 'bumper stickers' as most cars don't actually have metal bumpers anymore but some kind of energy absorbing something or other that's the same color as the car body, besides most of us put the stickers on the rear or side windows.

It intrigues me that when you apply a bumper sticker to an actual bumper you almost never get all of it off and the residue and remainder take on a life of its own. Maybe that's why we're all so reluctant to try to remove them whether our candidate won or lost. But the folks who drive around with the winner still on a sticker on their car YEARS afterward flat-out annoy me. 

I mean, seriously. Get over it, you won. Heck, WE all won. Nothing to see here, move along. As much as I detest poor losers, I abhor poor winners even more.

Unless the bumper sticker is holding the Volvo bio-diesel station wagon together as your Birkenstock-shod gas pedal foot makes sure you never break the speed limit, get that election-year artifact off the car. It's like having a Vote McKinley campaign button on your straw boater as you dance the black bottom. That 70's Show was the nineteen seventies, after all, and they had the decency to stop once they were no longer funny (eventually).

Didn't you get the memo on this stuff? More on point, didn't you read it?
Do we actually need Department of Transportation and Highway Safety rules banning trite and no longer necessary or relevant adhesive messages? Does that mean if your child has children of her/his own, it's time for the "My Child Is an Honor Student at Ridgemont Elementary School" to come off the car? What do you think? 

And no, State of Washington drivers, you can't leave the "Fifty Four Forty or Fight" stickers on your back windows. But nice try.
-bill kenny

"I've Got a Head Full of Quandary...

Fifty-four years ago today, we walked on the moon for the first time. If you weren't yet born when that happened, you missed something, you really did. You can read a library of books on how much effort, coordination, time, talents, and money such an effort took, and it's staggering, but here's the thing to remember from 'back in the day'.

Going to the moon wasn't the only thing we were doing as a country, as a tribe, a nation-state on Earth. We had almost 450,000 men under arms halfway around the world in forests and fields of Southeast Asia in a war that was to be as divisive as any in the history of our nation and whose outcome left us saddened and sullen for decades.

Nearly the same number of young men and women were heading to Upstate New York during this summer, actually in August, for what was advertised as four days of Peace, Love, and Music and almost all anyone can remember, whether they were or not, is all the mud and the incredible performances by so many musicians, especially those whose flame flickered brightly from that stage and was then forever extinguished because of self-indulgence or profound bad luck.

Back at the moonwalk, we on Earth watched around the world, with some of our younger brothers and sisters going outside to stand on the porch at Harvey's Lake (PA) and looked up at the moon to see if you could see the astronauts (if wishing could have made it so) as the astronauts seemed to skip and dance across the most desolate place we could imagine.

As a nation, we were faced with challenges all around us but we found the time, actually we MADE the time, to watch these extraordinary people do this extraordinary thing that NO ONE in our history had ever done before. And just as no man enters the same river twice because both he and the river have changed, there is no way we can ever be those people who watched by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming. 

We did it then, and we can do it now--not because it's easy because it's not, but because it's hard and because if we do not repair and restore our country, we will have no one to blame but ourselves when in another half century or so we cannot remember anything to be proud of since the Moon Walk.
-bill kenny

I Read the News Today

Do you remember standing in supermarket check-out lines and on the side just before the conveyor was a magazine rack with everything from Reader’s Digest and Time to the latest Hollywood scandal rags and, my personal favorite, always in black and white, the Weekly World News (WWN)?

You could always count on the WWN to have a picture of a UFO landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier on the cover and inside would be a recurring favorite, the Legendary Bat Boy, meeting H. Ross Perot or shaking hands with a still very-much-alive Elvis Presley. 

It was an extraordinary newspaper/magazine (I never really figured out which) chock full of ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ reporting that would have put McGuffey Readers to shame and about the only thing in it that was legitimate, I suspect, were the little tiny ads mostly for products that were shipped to the recipient in plain brown wrappers (and the ads often highlighted that point). 

Always on page three was the only person who ever got a byline, their star columnist, Ed Anger. His catchphrase when writing about things that angered him was “I’m pig-biting mad!” That was a visual I really could never quite see but knew when he used it he was really mad about something. 

The Weekly World News was totally phony. We just didn’t call it that (which would’ve made Ed, well, you can already guess what it would have made him). Long before former President and future convicted felon Donald Trump called all reporting with which he disagreed ‘fake news,' the Weekly World News was all of that and more. And since he put the phrase in play, it’s been bandied about like a shuttlecock at a badminton tournament, with all sides taking turns using it.

I started thinking about Ed and the gang at WWN when re-reading a pair of articles I’ve been saving about how we here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs gather the information we need and use on a daily basis about our local community, our nation and the world at large. 

The research isn’t fresh out of the oven, but still rings painfully true. From a Poynter article of two years ago, “US Ranks Last Among 46 Countries in Trust in Media,” and Gallup's “Media Confidence Ratings at Record Lows,” from this time a year ago, it seems many of us have decided to not trust the messenger or the message. 

I don’t know about television, but local newspapers struggle to make ends meet even as advertising dollars disappear, and newsrooms shrink. Stop on any social media platform and look at readers’ comments on stories and soon, you, too, will be pig-biting mad, if not saddened to tears by people complaining they can’t read the posted article because they don’t have a subscription, ‘and I don’t see why I should have to pay;’ readers who have friends who gave them the ‘real story and it’s not like what’s in the newspaper,’ and those who just don’t like the story and pronounce it ‘fake news.’   

When I first subscribed to The Bulletin the daily circulation was about 35,000. I don’t know what it is now, but I’ll bet that number is no longer valid. Leading me to wonder, if local newspapers are our windows to the world, what are we looking through right now, and what are we looking at? Leading me to ask: do you have a newspaper subscription? If yes, thank you. If not, why?
-bill kenny 

Hold My Beer

Some time ago, though not in the distant past, our son was back in our neck of the woods for business and came to visit us as well. Since he flew in from Florida, he had to rent a car (I didn't know he was coming until he rang the doorbell), and since he could, he rented a Tesla.

It was nice, if somewhat spartan in terms of appointments, and, in light of what they cost, I thought the fit and finish left something to be desired. Don't tell Car & Driver, or Elon Musk for that matter, and it wasn't like riding in a Yugo, but it wasn't like being in a BMW or Mercedes. Except for...

When our son accelerated, it was like being in a jet, and not a passenger jet but a fighter jet, trust me on that comparison. But all in all, I've never really warmed to the looks of any of the models, head-turning though they are for many. So, to be honest, when the announcement about the Tesla truck going into production was made, all I could muster was a shrug. 

I thought/think it's more goofy-looking than ugly, but then I found this clip on the Rhino Tank which, I concede is not intended to ever be street-legal, though the joy of being able to park wherever you want, and I do mean wherever you want, might be a selling point, especially in our urban areas, with HOV lanes. And the good news is no up-charge for cupholders! I know, "Take my money!"
-bill kenny

 

Sugar in the Evening

For thousands of years (seemingly), all across the Interwebz on every social platform has been some variant of the slogan, "Everything Will Kill You, So Pick Something Fun." 

I don't expect or suspect that many of us picked aspartame, but like Banquo's Ghost, it showed up anyway.  Bingo, I guess.

Or, according to the report, maybe only kind of?
"The designation means that some of the research reviewed by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) shows that there may be a possible link between aspartame and liver cancer, but that science is by no means conclusive like it is for a substance like asbestos or tobacco." 

Up next could be a study on the effects of putting asbestos or tobacco in your coffee or favorite dessert recipe. 

Science Marches On! Even if its direction is often a circle.
-bill kenny

Tie(s) Go to the Runner

More and more we live in a wordless world. I don't mean a silent one but rather, a world in which you can scrape by with pictures and symbols. I love looking at the tags on shirts--it's like a graduation from Semaphore University. There's no bleach, hang-dry only, wash in cold water, dolphin-free, dry-clean only, etcetera.

I thought it reassuring that no matter where in the world you travel those symbols are the same until I realized it has a lot to do with the manufacturing process and that almost all the clothes we buy, no matter where in the world we live, are made in the same third-world sweatshops. That's more likely the reason why the care symbology at the collar is the same. 

What I am intrigued by is how our technology, not knowing where in the world we will use it, has created its own language which we have universally adopted. Do you remember when you used to yell for 'Help!'. Our machines' clocks do the same thing, sort of, except they flash 12:00--we all know that means there's trouble at the mill and are now conditioned, when we see it, to look around for a cause.

One of my first smartphones did a weird little vamp when it was loading an application. Maybe yours did or does the 'gimme a minute jitterbug', too.

It looked like a vertical bow-tie and then it started to whirl and twirl in a clockwise direction. Someone told me it's NOT a bow tie at all, it's an hourglass. That actually makes more sense to me, since that would have something to do with time, which is what the device is wasting, and not neckwear, of which I have a closetful though I have no idea of its purpose (or didn't) even though most workdays for four-plus decades I wore one.

Every time I see posters for raffles, there's always a disclaimer at the bottom, 'duplicate prizes awarded in the event of ties' and I keep thinking, today's the day. Good fortune, here I am! Luck be a Lady tonight. And yet all I ever win is a dry-clean only dolphin two sizes too small, no bleach only.
-bill kenny

Maury Weeps

I realize each of us is fighting battles that perhaps no one else can see. 
Or should, in this case. 

Joel Santiago's pain, as the article reports, can only be assuaged by the judicious application of millions of dollars to the affected area. I very much enjoyed the nearly purple and somewhat prolix prose describing his suffering since he was and is, of course, the real victim who, "lost his opportunity to see his baby girl born, or to bond with her in her earliest stages of development … lost the joys of the many firsts associated with parenthood, including seeing his daughter’s first steps, hearing her first words, and participating in her first birthday and holidays."

I'm imagining Joel will have a brand-new top-of-the-line car, or better yet, sports Ute, the next time he swings by the house of his daughter, Mackenzie, and her mom, whom he shunned.

Depending on the options package he purchased, he could perhaps let her have a peek at the interior and marvel at the life she missed having.
-bill kenny  

Hear the Echoes of the Centuries

"One of the revolutionary days in Paris and now a national holiday, the 14th of July ("Bastille Day") is celebrated with a mixture of solemn military parades and easygoing dancing and fireworks. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, has been commemorated in France for more than a century.

"Paris was in a state of high agitation in the early months of the French Revolution. In the Spring of 1789, the Estates-General refused to dissolve, transforming itself instead into a constituent National Assembly. In July, King Louis XVI called in fresh troops and dismissed his popular Minister, Jacques Necker. 

"On the morning of July 14, the people of Paris seized weapons from the armory at the Invalides and marched in the direction of an ancient Royal fortress, the Bastille. After a bloody round of firing, the crowd broke into the Bastille and released the handful of prisoners held there.

"The storming of the Bastille signaled the first victory of the people of Paris against a symbol of the "Ancien Régime" (Old Regime). Indeed, the edifice was razed to the ground in the months that followed."
-bill kenny

Fast Food for Even Faster Times

When I was a wee slip of a lad, as a treat, and boy did we have to be super-extra-well-behaved, my mom and dad would take us to McDonald's. You pulled up to the place and Dad got out of the car and talked to somebody on the other side of an order window and came back, in seemingly no more than an eyeblink, with a tray stacked with sodas, small bags of fries, and cheeseburgers and/or hamburgers. 

That was the WHOLE menu. Maybe they had coffee. We were kids, what did we know. Then we discovered they had shakes and that was the extra treat. 

Fast forward about sixty (yikes!) years and we have artisanal, gluten-free, beef-tallow-free fries, espresso as well as lattes, and what seems to be about one hundred and forty-five thousand items on their menu. The actual number varies not only from state to state but from Mickey D's to Mickey D's, The only constant is as will always be the case, the McFlurry machine is broken. 

Now, here in the New Frontier, we are a fast-food nation, if not world. It seems to me there are few places on earth, looking at you Antarctica, where there isn't a Mickey D's and across the street, a BK or a Wendy's squaring off against each other.  

But for me and my generation, the benchmark will always be McDonald's. But you can learn something new every day, or at my age every other day, and yesterday I learned that at one time in Germany, McDonald's and the German Rail had a partnership, and Ruth is stranger than Bridget because that wasn't the only oddity in that period involving the Golden Arches.

And all this time you were thinking Grimace's Birthday was a big deal? <sigh>
-bill kenny

Channeling Oscar Wilde

I’ve mentioned I do a lot of walking across Norwich, not as much anymore as when I had younger socks and shoes and I’ve become a semi-expert on what neighborhoods have the best sidewalks, or any sidewalks in some cases, and smoothest pavement. 

When you’re zipping along at a top speed of two sneakers an hour, you pay attention to where you’re walking and are careful of what you might step in. One of the things I keep an eye out for (and used to carry one of those plastic grocery store bags, especially for) is what I call the “curious containers.”

Quite simply, a “curious container” is a box, a bag, a cup, a nip bottle, or a can that at one time had food or drink. When it did, it was being transported by someone on their way somewhere. Curiously, when empty, or nearly empty, it suddenly became too heavy to be carried any longer and the person dropped it like a stone. 

I haven’t read a lot in many, or any, scientific journals lately about how the specific gravity of fast-food containers increases as the contents diminish so I’m excited about the ground-breaking paper on that subject I’ll be authoring as soon as I finish collating my sidewalk strolling research notes.   

I used to do a lot of walking with our children when they (and I) were younger, but they’re both grown and gone and sometimes I think I continue to walk to help me ease the pain of being an empty nester. But now, and this is of interest even if you’re NOT an empty-nester, I have adopted a storm drain just down the street from my house on Lincoln Avenue (and I’m not alone so stop backing away and looking around), and so can you. 

As a matter of fact, the more the merrier. Don’t worry, there are no detailed qualifications, specialized training, or unique skills required to adopt a drain. So far, all I’ve needed are some rubber gloves, a back that lets me bend over, and a bag to put stuff in.

Coinciding with Earth Day, on April 22, our Department of Public Works started its “Adopt A Drain” campaign. You may have read about it in the pages of  The Bulletin, or not, based on the large number of storm drains still looking to be adopted.  

Over last weekend, the program’s coordinator, Emma Robinson, shared a progress report that, as a walker, confirmed many of my impressions about how much ‘stuff’ was removed from around our city’s storm drains. In just the two months the program has been around, we (us drain adopters) have kept over forty pounds of YUCK from entering our waterways and storm drain system. 

Since you were going to ask: YUCK is my term that any of us can use and encompasses everything from a discarded campaign sign, cigarette butts, food wrappers, nips, plastic cups, leaves, fallen branches, and a partridge in a pear tree (just checking to see if you were still paying attention).  

I have no idea how many storm drains Norwich has or how many are still available for adoption (the goal is to have 100 adoptions) and you won’t see any TV commercials with Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” playing in the background, but you can do your part by calling Emma at 860.823.3798 or go online and fill out the form. 

We all know litter hurts, but every little bit helps so how about you do your little bit? 
-bill kenny

It's on America's Tortured Brow

 Little did The Thin White Duke know...

"Sailors fighting in the dance hall

Oh man, look at those cavemen go

It's the freakiest show

Take a look at the lawman

Beating up the wrong guy

Oh man, wonder if he'll ever know

He's in the best selling show

Is there life on Mars?"

In his defense, he wasn't The Thin White Duke then, and none of us could have ever even imagined what we all just saw. 

Sometimes life imitates art and other times surpasses it.
-bill kenny 

It's a Wild World

A piece of my childhood changed, probably forever, very quietly last week as every schoolboy's most favorite serious magazine (not MAD, did you not see the word serious?) National Geographic laid off the last member of their staff.   

As a primary-grade student, in a Catholic school, National Geographic was as close to what I imagined "porn" was, not that I had a great imagination. The color photos of the half-clad indigenous women in faraway and exotic climes were more than enough to fructify prepubescent male fantasies had any of us had any idea what those were. 

When my father ran school trips to Washington D. C., the Nat Geo Headquarters Building was always a must-see stop and was, and still is I suspect, a magnificent museum.   

The magazine's appearance never really changed in all the years I was a devoted if somewhat surreptitious reader and the stories and adventures you could have just by turning the pages speaks to the timelessness of the photography, writing, and editing.

I got concerned some years back when whoever it was that owned Nat Geo sold it to Fox, yes, that Fox and I started bracing for the worst. And then of course, years later Fox sold it as part of the deal, to Disney, where "fairy-tales can come true it can happen to you, but we're keeping an eye on the bottom line and yours ain't cutting it." 

And so, another memory/institution has been hollowed out and more or less sold for parts, even though the operators now in charge insist all the changes will be for the better.  Of course, they will, but who defines 'better?'

The old National Geographic always told the truth, as horrible or ugly as it sometimes was. Nice to see the new guys aren't bothered by pesky traditions like that.
-bill kenny

By Comparison....

Having good days and bad days is not just part of life, it's a matter of perspective and comparison. You may have something happen to you or a loved one that is flat-out terrible/awful/horrible but then 'later that same life' something wonderful happens as a result of that terrible no-good moment. 

I have never actually had that happen to me but I am told it's possible and I've reached an age where parroting someone else's truisms as if they were truth is about the best I can do. And let's face it, I do it well. 

I mention all of that because of this clip, and the question I keep asking is, "Is it finally over?" I think each of us has to answer that for ourselves.

I will concede that from now on I will regard wool sweaters with a more wary ear, eye, nose, and throat because you never can tell.
-bill kenny

On This Spot

When you got up this morning I'll bet you didn't think you would be part of history, and look at you now! Well, don't look too closely because you're not actually a part of history but are so close you can touch it, at least metaphorically if not metaphysically.

What follows I wrote fifteen years ago (pause to allow that to sink in), for a child who, today in the here and now, is a man of forty-one and who together with the love of his life, Jena, is closing on the purchase of their new house. Talk about a short movie. 

Here it is/was:

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Memo to My Son

Today is the 26th birthday of my son, Patrick Michael. When I type 'my son' or 'my daughter' (when speaking of his sister, Michelle Alison) or 'my wife', Sigrid Katherina, I smile, not because of a pride of possession mentality but because I am truly the most fortunate person on the planet.

If we've not met, count your blessings-I am NOT likable. Take my word on this-and be assured I could send you a list of folks who could attest to this fact, and that this list would vaguely resemble the census in size and scope, which helps underscore my point. 

Being not likable makes it a difficult stretch to be lovable, and yet, my wife, an otherwise sane and logical person, could not possibly be married to me for over thirty years, but has. Our two children are the result of her ability to make someone into something they feared they never could be. She not only raised two children, but she also transformed a self-absorbed obliviot into an Approximate Dad. Considering what she had to work with, she done good.

I was afraid to have children--the actual, 'here's a small human to take care of and worry about for the rest of your life' portion of the program seemed more daunting to me than I could ever handle. I didn't have a lot of happy experiences being on the receiving end of Dad and Lad interactions. As a matter of fact, one of the better days of our lives together was when my father got up early to say farewell the day I traveled to the MEPS station to join the Air Force. We were able to pretend for that moment that we had a bond, surety or otherwise.

When Sigrid shared with me that she (and we, by extension) was pregnant, it was the early winter of what had been a rough year. Having successfully placed half a world between us, I discovered more guilt and anger when my dad died that Spring than the sorrow at his passing. 

Nothing that went on during the funeral (I still remember the undertaker referring to my father's widow as 'Mom' and almost snapping his head off), at the cemetery, or during the wake at their house in the middle of nowhere where well-meaning parents of former students kept taking me aside to tell me how wonderful my father had been with their child when their congenital mutton-headed idiot had needed help.

'Bastard!' I wanted to scream-'that's great, because he never found the time for us here at home!' but didn't, because shouting to wake the dead is only an expression and he and I had had nothing to say to one another for far too many years. Why should the afterlife be different? 

And thanks, again, to all of you who told my Mom or one of us, 'if there's anything we can ever do...' because there sure as hell was, and plenty and you sure as hell didn't do anything but make yourselves so scarce I thought you'd entered Witness Protection. Not that I was much better. Maybe that's why we're still so tight to this day, eh?

Sigrid went into labor in the middle of the morning and we drove across town to the Offenbach Stadtkrankenhaus. German physicians in the early Eighties were pretty much an unknown species to me (Sigrid's frauenarzt was cool enough-I still have the black and white Polaroids of Patrick in the womb, ornaments clearly visible) and I was to them as well. 

Their luck came to an end with my son's birth and they were pretty good sports about it. As Sigrid's labor continued and the contractions shortened and the delivery preparation's tempo quickened, I was asked where I would be during her stay in the geburtsaal, and I assured the doctors, 'right there with her', which surprised them. 

I attempted to explain in what was better than decent German (I thought) that I had placed the order and had every intention of taking delivery. Maybe my German wasn't that good-it was like playing to an oil painting, no smile, no nothing, gar nichts.

When Patrick was born, after what's considered a spontangeburt (for the male doctors who can NEVER experience pregnancy, in their opinion, the childbirth was accomplished without labor. Sure it was-from your lips to God's ear, Herr Arzt), Sigrid looked she had just run a marathon and was utterly exhausted. 

I watched while the midwife cleaned up my son and, as she swabbed off the blood, he peed on her. Crying, basically blind, totally helpless in an alien world, he was my son and I laughed out loud maybe in amazement but more likely in joy and thankfulness for what I had just witnessed. 

The midwife placed Patrick Michael on Sigrid's chest, for mother and child bonding, and my disappointment knew almost no words. At that moment, I was so jealous of the woman I loved. I asked as politely as I could if, after she had 'had enough of holding him', I could hold him, and was stunned when she picked him up and fixed me with a stare that bordered on a glare, handed Patrick to me, saying 'I've carried him for nine months, it's your turn now.'

Patrick Michael was, and is, my deal with God. I know, your children are beautiful, smart and talented, and handsome and sorry-they're not my children, and my son and my daughter are the absolute best not only in the world but in the history of the world (there's a barn behind a hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (I think), that might want to argue that point but no chance, sorry). 

I walked him around that delivery room for the next two hours or so, singing I've Been Working on the Railroad (the drum and piano would have cluttered the delivery room) and really working those Fie-Fi-Fiddly-I-Os, making up in volume what I lacked in pitch. I don't know why I sang it--I'm shaking my head in bemused bewilderment as I type this. It seemed like a good idea at the time actually, it was a perfect idea.

And point in fact, I've gone on for way too long--Patrick was born faster than I'm telling you about it. In many ways, his first twenty-six years seem to have sped by at that same clip. He and his sister, have overcome the handicap of being my children, mostly because they've had the good fortune to have the love and devotion of my wife as their Mom. And, yeah, he's made me crazy, angry, frightened, delighted, and every emotion in between--because that's what children do.

And as long as you remember to make sure they always know sometimes they will do things you will not like, but that you will always love them, they will be able to do anything, even leave you when they grow up to be adults of their own.

There'll be moments in the living room watching the ballgame when words aren't needed as you both reach for the pretzel rods. Other times, there will be phone conversations that start out about one subject and become all that and that infamous bag of chips. And your eyes will fill with tears as you watch them end the chapter of their childhood and begin to write their own novel as the life you always wanted for them finally begins. 

And it hurts, and maybe the keyboard blurs as I type this because it's really warm and my eyes are perspiring-yeah, that's what it is I'm sure. Sorry if the folks you work with razz you today for having a dotty dad but you knew that long ago.

Happy Birthday, Patrick! Love, Dad. 

Delayed Gratification

For a number of reasons, we did not have our Harbor Fireworks originally scheduled last Saturday as the capper, so to speak, of the Rose Arts Festival.  

Fingers crossed, Good Lord Willing and the creek don't rise, we could/should/might have them this evening to the delight of the tens of thousands of folks who travel from distances great and small to ooh and aah about them.

Drone footage of the 2019 Norwich Harbor Fireworks

As well they should, they are lovely. And I say that as a very nearly-professional fireworks admirer. No, I don't get paid to watch them, though that would be cool wouldn't it?, but I very much enjoy them and appreciate the craft, hard work, and skill that produces them.

Awesome drone shot by Brian Swope of the fireworks on July 5, 2021

All of that said, I'm hoping my town will join the trend sweeping the country and replace fireworks with drone displays. Many people with variants of PTSD and animals sensitive to loud noises would greatly benefit from a serious rethinking.
-bill kenny

 

Punctual People Are Lost in Their Plight

I retired five years, and a week, ago. The people in whose employ I was might argue I stopped working many years before that. They can take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut. 

But it does bring up an awkward for others never for me, interesting question that I get asked all the time now, 'So what do you do?' I usually offer a variant of the classic Prince Raspberry Beret response (I mean, we're practically twins), except I'm (slightly) taller and not dead (yet) so I've been searching for a more satisfying answer.

I may have found it and it's breath-taking.

“Understanding how the global human system functions is crucial if we are to sustainably navigate planetary boundaries, adapt to rapid technological change such as artificial intelligence, and achieve global development goals,” the researchers wrote.

“Time, it has been said, is the coin of life — and in a globally connected society, it is essential to have a thorough global understanding of how that coin is spent.”
-bill kenny

 

I've Worn Out All the Reasons

Maybe it’s a function of the age I’ve reached or, I fear more likely, of the age in which we live but I’m experiencing an acute patience shortage when looking at the challenges great and small confronting us as a city, a nation, and if the science is to be believed, as a species. 

Too many of us too often, present company included, have our minds already made up so don’t even try to confuse us with facts. As for sources of information, we tend to shop for outlets that confirm our perspective, no matter the issue or its complexity rather than challenge us to think outside our own experiences. 

We take comfort in finding our feelings echoed and amplified. As for the feelings of others especially those with whom we disagree? There’s a phrase going around about them, but I won’t use it here even though we’ve all heard it. 

We’re all always a bit testy at budget time and we’re always unhappy at the City Council’s decision, no matter what it is. We could decide to repair or replace how we make decisions about spending our money but all we do is talk about making changes without really making any. And then, once again we’re dismayed and angry that we keep reliving the same argument every year. 

Despite the anger and unhappiness that service on our City Council seems to generate among so many of our residents, we are fortunate to have interested and talented people who are willing to serve. We need more of them because it's a universal condition across the United States:  No one has enough time, and everyone needs help.

If you've ever had children in school, you already know about the PTO parents who were also the band parents who were also the class trip escort parents, and who were the prom chaperones, and that list goes on forever. It's true in municipal government as well. You see the same (too few) people at City Council meetings, who also attend Board of Education meetings, and they are the ones who offer to serve on a citizen committee of some sort or other. We’re lucky to have so many people in the same device.

The rest of us could all pitch in, but some of us get along better with others (I am more of an acquired taste). I get concerned when so much energy is devoted to tearing people down with whom we disagree. I don't have the strength that (anymore) and it's hard for me to pretend that many of the unkind things I hear and read were NEVER said much less to forgive and forget them. 

And that’s the heart of the matter: carrying around the grudges and bruised feelings over slights (real and imagined) that keep us from starting again. Sometimes I'm concerned that the long, proud history of New England sometimes gets in our own way of trying new things and walking away from our past. How much of yesterday do we really need to overcome today to have a shot at a tomorrow that is large enough for us and our children? 

Look at us right now. Everything we have was created because of choices those before us made, good and bad, whether buildings, businesses, neighborhoods, or families. It’s true we cannot go back but we cannot stand still. We can only go forward, together. 
-bill kenny

I've Often Felt Forsaken

By many accounts the heat was oppressive and tempers were hot in Philadelphia two hundred and forty-seven years ago as that aggregation of malcontents and troublemakers (in the eyes of His Majesty, George III, King of England) gathered to refine, define, and catalog their grievances and complaints as they took exception with the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.

Enumerating what it called our ‘unalienable rights’ to include ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ the founders of our republic, who did not agree on very much except that the present state of affairs could not be allowed to continue, concluded the only way forward as a people on a largely unexplored, new continent whose size and wealth was not yet known, was to break with the past and declare independence from King and Crown.
   
Out of all of that has come all of this.

And along the way, the original magic and meaning have sometimes been lost in backyard pool parties, car sales, and chicken fried steaks on the barbecue. Our politics is spirited even if our interest isn't and our understanding of the issues is muddled and muted. 

And, again, it’s not that we all agree with who we are and what we are doing. It’s been suggested we as a nation haven’t been this divided morally, politically, and socially since the Civil War. And that observation and analysis should mean far more than it does.

Some say never have so many had so much of life’s material rewards but, others say never have so many struggled to hold on to what they have. On the outcome of every election, or so it seems, lies the future of our nation-just as has always been the case because every election is important, and if you choose not to decide, that, too, is a decision.

What may be missing is our national sense of self and our confidence and belief in our own abilities to forever adapt and triumph. We demonstrated those traits at the Founding and I would hope, today, each in our own way, we might again find them, both for those whose inheritance we are and for those whose promise is yet to be. Happy 4th of July.
-bill kenny