Java Jive

My parents had a percolator coffee pot. Metal with the grounds in a basket that went on a spike that stood in the pot and you put a cover on it after filling the pot with water. There was a glass bulbish top through which the heated water would pop and the darker it got the sooner you had coffee.  

Not actual size

Yeah. Seems like a lot of work, because it was. And then God, or someone, invented Starbucks and the only requirement was that we learned to speak in tongues. 

Well, sort of. 
-bill kenny

We May Be Lost but We're Making Great Time

You take a day off from the noise of the news as I did last week, and you get so far behind they're piping in daylight to you. I thought I closed my eyes but for a moment but when I opened them, we were very definitely no longer in Kansas, and I’d lost both my bike and my little dog.

I was stopped in a local grocery by someone who wanted me to know just how wrong I was recently to encourage people to work harder to get along (my words). That’s not what he read or got out of it, and aside from proving my point I don’t think our two minutes in the produce section benefited anyone.

Dr. Gerry Harvey created The Abilene Paradox which postulates organizations/societies fail because they cannot cope with agreement, NOT disagreement-and because we’ve become a society of people who tell one another what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear, we are getting deeper and deeper in Big Muddy and all of us are too polite to take meaningful action to stop it.  

I’m not sure why we’ve become these people: speaking out in a supermarket to someone who can change no aspect of municipal government as opposed to speaking up at a City Council or Board of Education meeting where there are opportunities to affect meaningful change.  

When you read our history in school, we seem so possessed and driven. But when you dive beneath the surface, the movie's a lot different. We stumbled towards and into Independence--some of the Founders who traveled to Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 weren't firebrands yearning to be free. 

Some of them got hijacked on their way to the Jersey Shore--some were Steve Carlton fans waiting for the founding of the Phillies. KIDDING! (About the Carlton part), but you might’ve guessed where this is going. Accidental Excellence. When we get it right, we don't know how we did it and we can't seem to do it again.

That shouldn’t mean we give up or settle for what we've got. If we used that mentality there'd be BILLIONS of people on the shores of Western Europe, and Africa as well as Eastern Asia (all standing on one another's shoulders by now, I suppose), staring across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans trying to figure out what was going on 'over there.' (And a group of indigenous peoples on the North and South American continents looking nervously over their shoulders.)

And it's that not-giving-up, the-how-does-this-part-go-on-to-that-part of discovery and invention that helps define who we are. We're a nation of loudmouths (I got a megaphone one year for my birthday; I used it to demand pony rides for my next one) who don't always listen to each other's words but who, at the end of the day, somehow, should look into one another's eyes and see the heartbeat behind the polemic and understand the person with whom we are disagreeing isn't evil or ignorant, but just different (and maybe a knucklehead, or is that just me?). 

And they are looking at us in the same way. Walt Kelly's Pogo was on to something, and we could all probably benefit from spending a moment speaking to, NOT at, one another even if in the heat of the moment it’s near the fresh vegetables. Any excuse to lettuce reason together.  
-bill kenny

Too Short Here

Summer, that is. 

Or did you think I meant life?
-bill kenny

In Light of Recent Events

Rain is water that falls from the sky in drops.

Raindrops are formed when water droplets in clouds condense onto each other and grow. When the droplets become too heavy to stay in the cloud, they fall to Earth as rain. 

Raindrops are more than 0.02 inches (0.5 millimeters) in diameter.

Rain is a major part of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on Earth. 

Raindrops typically range from 100 to 1000 per cubic meter. When the drops are smaller, the precipitation is usually called drizzle. 
-bill kenny

Think of it as Means Testing

Here's a hypothetical for all of those who like to wonder WWJD? 

Meanwhile Big Pharma wants to talk to Him about all those lepers He's cured.
-bill kenny

Life Doesn't Just imitate Art

"One thing about television, it brings out personality. People are able to watch me in action. They hear my voice and see my eyes. There's nothing I can hide. That's me. Television brings out your flaws, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your truths.

 The audience either likes you or it doesn't." 

"Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?.

"If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with color and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil."

Twin sons of different mothers.
-bill kenny

Passion Is No Ordinary Word

From well over a decade ago.

I keep a wallet filled with foolscap, absolutely crammed. It works out well, unless you were to rob me, as there's rarely any money in it, though not necessarily because of all the foolscap.

Many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away I was a little too tightly wound (that gasp of incredulity you may have just heard from people who've known for three decades is legit. The Me of Back Then makes the Me of Now look comatose; I may have actually slept with my jaw ratcheted closed. I cannot imagine in hindsight why I didn't have a stroke, unless, perhaps, it's because I'm a carrier).

I couldn't let go of my anger. The Air Force, to my relief as their employee, rather than dump me amongst the flora and fauna, decided to send me to the head of the Psychiatric Services Wing at the Rhein-Main (Air Base) Clinic, Colonel Doctor Robert G--. He was terrific and very funny (because he thought I was if I'm being honest) and very willing to try to rescue a wild-eyed junior enlisted Sammy Glick impersonator who kept wading out into the deep end.

He came up with the foolscap. Every time something angered me, I was to write it down on a piece of paper and put the paper in my wallet. But every time I'd write something down, his rule was that it had to be on its own, separate, piece of paper. No doubling up, no lists. 

By the end of the day, I could, and did, have hundreds of slips of paper in my wallet. No worries had to review ALL these slips each night and put them on a different sheet of paper, all those items I was still ANGRY about (I could put those on a single piece of paper) and then I'd put that list on my nightstand. 

The night before I would go to see him at the hospital, I had to review the (six) pieces of paper, and transfer anything I was still angry about, to yet another piece of paper and bring that one piece out to our weekly conversation.

Within a month, I had no lists, simply because I'd review all the slips of paper of all the things that made me angry and realized I had no idea what the heck was written on most of them or what the words I could read actually meant or concluded (after reviewing the note and thinking about it, which G-- told me later was the key point) whatever had happened to spin me up wasn't that important after all.

How about this week or real soon (and I mean real soon) we all decide to use the G-- Solution. Watch the news, read a newspaper, check out a column online--we are REALLY CRANKED about a lot of stuff. We all know or know of, someone who wants to "fix" things by looking to punch someone in the nose.

I know people who tune in to certain TV programs just to yell at the talking head in the vapor box who is making a fortune by yelling at them. I guess they watch because it feels so good when the show is over (which explains the uptick in cigarette sales I guess). 

There are others who insist on reading columnists' words out loud and follow every line of the writer's argument with a scowl, a gesture, or a deprecation. And we just keep getting louder and angrier about more things, and more people every day. we don't know how to get off the escalator-and most of us don't even know we're on one.

Passion is fine and necessary. If our ancestors back in the ooze didn't care if they evolved to have legs that carried them from the pond and helped us grow lungs, every day would be Friday, if you follow my drift. It's the grinding though, that is wearing us out, the pitched battles we are waging to benefit who knows who or for what purpose. You wanna feel silly about how we now get along with one another, but you don't want to use the foolscap?

Okay--tell me five things this country was PO'ed about at eight AM on September 11th, 2001. Go ahead, I'll wait. Too hard? Gimme three things, how hard could that be? No? Do you want to take a break from all this head noise and hate to concentrate on the real and important tasks at hand instead? Go ahead, I'll make a note of where we were and we can get back to it sometime real soon.
-bill kenny

Subject to Your Briefing

No one I hope would ever confuse the Mango Mussolini with Antigonish though many of the MAGA Morons do confuse him with some kind of national savior. 

I will concede he does resemble George Washington who was first in war and first in peace and never was indicted. Actually, DJT looks just like him, if you close your eyes and hold your nose, just like the GOP is seemingly very willing to do last night as Election 2024 achieved lift-off. 

a/k/a A Waste of Broadcast Bandwidth

"Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today

I wish, I wish he'd go away...

When I came home last night at three

The man was waiting there for me.

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn't see him there at all!

Go away, go away, don't you come back anymore!

Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today.

Oh, how I wish he'd go away..."

-bill kenny (channeling Hughes Mearns)

Strangers in a Strange Land

Remember when we all used to live together in a shared country? (Together being the operative word) We didn’t always get our own way and we tended to favor the notion of having one political party in control of the White House while the other one was in Congress. 

We had infinite and nuanced shades of grey, if not anatomically, then metaphorically. As opposed to the here and now when we have the most abrupt, bruising, and brusque form of non-nuanced conversations in all the years I've been carrying around this bellybutton.

We’ve divided ourselves according to four-letter non-words, MAGA and WOKE and never the twain shall meet. We have clenched jaws, cold eyes, and hardened hearts, but that doesn't mean we can't talk-it just means we won't. Somewhere we decided two diatribes equals one dialogue and I GET TO GO FIRST! (sorry). 

If we yell AT one another long enough, from a distance somewhere in space it may look like we are talking to one another. Respectful disagreement has disappeared. If you don't agree with me you are the most awful person in the history of the planet, as is everyone else related to you, everyone else related to them and everyone any of you know. Except when I do that much finger pointing some of the fingers on that hand point back at me. Hmmm.

Labels such as 'liberal' and 'conservative' are now pejoratives hurled like discount store invective at opposing viewpoints, appropriate or not, and the reaction to the labeling obscures quite nicely any opportunity to see the person we've just tagged. Now all we are is disagreeable when we disagree. 

And we engage in preemptive shouting matches with one another in forums supposedly designed to let us exchange ideas and views. The longer the meeting, the louder the yelling and do not get me started on the understanding (the smoker you drink, the player you get).

We have ongoing arguments over rights and responsibilities and insist the other person ‘needs to read the Constitution’ when, more often than not we’re referring to the Bill of Rights but fail to realize the distinction or the difference (much less the irony). 

Back in the days of not that long ago we used to talk things out and arrive at consensus through reasoned discussion and informed debate. Now the line between responses that range from gee-willikers to jihad makes it almost impossible to discuss anything. 

I mention this because in the fall we have local elections for both Board of Education and seats on the City Council and we owe it to those who have offered themselves as candidates for office to speak in coherent and complete sentences about what we want and what we feel we need and how we propose to work together (that's a key phrase in my house) to achieve the continued development and improvement of our city and our public schools.

We need to acknowledge that you can't shake hands with someone who has balled fists and a closed mind, no matter how hard you try. We need to relearn how to speak to one another, one at a time and then transition to larger groups. With luck and pluck, we might get the hang of how we used to do all this, back when we all lived in the same country at the same time.
It’s worth a try. 
-bill kenny

And if You're Lucky

The farther out in space you go, the more alike we look I've been told. And since I know we all smile in the same language I tend to believe that so I get a little confused and a lot frustrated when and where we start creating differences without distinction for no discernible reason except to be unpleasant.

And take my word as a semi-professional azzhole for most of my life, just about the last thing we need in this world at any time is MORE unpleasantness, and yet,  here we go: Ladies and Gentlemen, the International Chess Federation with a move apparently not subject to a take-back request.

It seems some of us have decided an even more interesting and challenging game than chess is continuing to treat people who have done nothing wrong but be their authentic selves as some form of garbage. 

Bear in mind as the song says,
"Can't be too careful with your company; I can feel the devil walking next to me."
-bill kenny

Some Days

It happens sometimes, sort of like the Taystee Bakers who worked while we slept or said they did, the universe supplies all the elements and I just copy them down and give it a pithy headline. 

Sort of like Mick and Keith meet Mark Barkan.  

Child's play, really.
-bill kenny

Countdown to Ecstasy

Did you have a five-second rule in your house growing up? 

We did. Never really was concerned about the science behind it and in the days before Google, if Mom and Dad said it was so, then it was so. And so it was...

Until we made the acquaintance of Trevor Craig. 

Not the kind of guy I'd invite over for a meal, that's for sure.
-bill kenny

George Carlin Is Smiling

I'm so old (this is where you shout, 'How old are you?') that I remember humor before the thirty-five-second video clip morons raking in huge sums of money on TikTok, which, by the way, is NOT funny. 

I'm ancient school not just old school. 

I treasure  Bob Newhart, yes that Bob Newhart, doing stand-up as well as Elaine May and Mike Nichols (he of 'The Graduate' fame), Shelley Berman, and in my opinion, the greatest of them all, Lenny Bruce, whose fearlessness and fatal flaws inspired and incited a generation of comedians whose work we still enjoy, first and foremost among them the late George Carlin whose monument will always be the Seven Words You Can't Say on Radio and TV.  

But have you ever wondered, where those words came from? Wonder no more. 

I don't know about you, but I'm speechless. Okay, nearly.
-bill kenny

Between the Silence of the Mountains

I talk to myself. A lot.
I always have and at half-past seventy-one, I'm betting I always shall. 

Without sounding like a humble-brag I will note that when i am talking to myself I often raise some interesting perspectives on whatever the situation or issue is with which I am dealing (or failing to deal as is more often the case).

And to come full circle when at moments I raise a new point with myself, I often acknowledge that new point and compliment myself for raising it. I can be very fair-minded; just don't ask any of my family members to verify that assertion. 

I think as a species we are fated to always have more question than answers especially in times of uncertainty, at least in this life. 

Maybe that's what the hereafter is for? 
-bill kenny

   

Joyce Kilmer-Approved

It's only logical that if we have a Man of the Year as well as every variety of Foodstuff of the Year we should also have a Tree of the Year, at least the UK does. 

And now that I've made you aware of the contest I can leaf. (I'll show myself out)
-bill kenny 

Hope vs. Plan

As Andy famously said to Red in The Shawshank Redemption, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" but as experience here on the Big Blue Marble for seven-plus decades has taught me, hope is NOT a plan. 

And, spoiler alert, let's not forget Andy had a plan he used to escape from Shawshank State prison rather than just hope. Because when you get down to it, nothing quite takes the place of having a plan when you're trying to get things done.

It's been busier, in my opinion, this summer across the city in terms of economic development initiatives and activities than in recent memory, and as pleased as that makes me (I chose to live in Norwich, as I too often remind some lifelong residents and constant carpers), to read newspaper accounts of everything from repurposing the YMCA and investing in the Uncas Leap Heritage Park, I still keep bumping into what I call the 'discouraged experts' who have in their years of living here watched a lot of projects get started with great fanfare and then slowly fade away. 

You can find reactions to nearly every news story anywhere on social media often in the form of 'on the other hand' or 'whatabout' critiques sometimes on entirely different and unrelated topics from the original news report and there's a place for constructive, informed criticism as opposed to just more putting the No in Norwich which we do so well because we've done it for so long. 

But timing is everything and in this case, even more than that.
 
There's a state of CT requirement that every municipality must have a ten-year Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD), a roadmap if you will of what the professional planners and economic development experts in concert with our local elected officials and residents exactly like us wish to accomplish to expand the Grand List and enhance the quality of life across our city. 

The POCD must also be updated every decade to reflect changes in conditions, progress made, new goals established, and new challenges to be sought out. Norwich is at the update point right now and everyone who lives and /or works here has or should have, skin in the game and ideas about what can be made better or whole or brand new. 

I love reading every installment of the POCD because it's the story of who we are and how we all came to be here, now. So many people in the same device, and we can decide how this chapter of our story goes.

A great deal of work involving a lot of time and talent has already been invested in defining and updating the POCD, which is on the Planning and Neighborhood Services page on the city's website, online and now is our opportunity to review what's been developed to more fully reflect all of our ideas. If you've always wanted to have a voice, this is the moment to do so.

Too many of us bitch about everything without ever offering suggestions on how to improve anything. Shame on us. The POCD is not a bunch of folks sitting on barstools after a few adult sparklers running their mouths but an aspirational statement of intent and purpose with goals, methods to achieve those goals, and measurement tools to gauge how successfully we are progressing towards achieving them. 

This is how we help define our future. Victims or Victors, you decide. 
-bill kenny

The Slip that Brought Me to my Knees

 Every day we make this choice.

And spend the rest of the day harvesting the consequences.
-bill kenny

A Serviceable Villain

Watched someone in sweats the other day walking towards the end of the shopping center that has a fitness center smoking a cigarette, which she finished and flicked onto the parking lot in front of the entrance before going inside. 

I smoked two/three packs of cigarettes a day for twenty-two (plus) years and have my own definitions of insanity and dependence, as does each of us with a vice, but for Kafkaesque humor, you'd have to go some to top that. I'm thinking perhaps of trying to wolf down a Haagen-Dazs giant ice cream cone before crossing the threshold into the fitness center, assuming the H-D guys are still in business and make such an item.

We like the routine, the reassurance of the rote drill (I think), and maybe that's where we believe the benefit accrues. It's like small children learning the Pledge of Allegiance long before they have any idea what allegiance even means (for some of us that's still true through old age). A whole generation now hits the fitness centers in the same way previous ones frequented the bars and clubs on Saturday nights or the churches on the Sunday mornings that followed.

But for what purpose, and to what end? Behaviorists refer to an Obesity epidemic in the United States and it surfaces for its fifteen minutes on the electronic vapor and vapid box in the corner of the living room and then we have another double cholesterol-and-bacon burger from the neighborhood drive-in and don't forget to supersize the fries and, what?-oh yeah, the drink? Gimme a diet cola, no ice.

Instead of studying and attempting to learn the lessons behind research like this, we watch talk shows where panelists discuss it without resolving the issue and dream of the day we can be in the studio audience, and under our theater seat is a special thank you gift ......pair of Nike Running shoes(?) I think not. There may not be a free lunch like the teachers in school told us, but everyone knows someone with healthy eating tips, and the napkins are recyclable.

I'm wondering if we're not better off just eliminating the middleman and cutting out the white space. Put a cigar bar in the fitness center--or set up one of those luxurious dessert places in the lobby; call it "Cool Whip and Curls", and no one will snicker. Those who wish to indulge can, and the rest of us can pretend to not see any of it as it'll all be out of sight. 

Look at how often we've used that trick to handle world events that should and could have numbed us. Besides, it keeps us from walking around with our eyes closed-people can get hurt going through life like that.
-bill kenny

If There's a God in the the Sky

Walking into the Stop and Shop the other afternoon just in time to catch a sentence fragment of a dad and his young lad on their way out--Little Guy (LG): "Which would you rather be? Eaten by a shark or a pack of coyotes?"--Bewildered Dad (BD): "What?!? Where's your brother? (spies smaller child over by the bottled water exchange rack) David! Let's go, now!"

So, it turns out there are folks who do watch Shark Week and take it to heart. Wish they'd have come up with someone in addition to a fish taco sponsor, at least online. It's like having lunch in the aquarium cafeteria and discovering they have fish on the menu, as has happened to me. You start mentally reviewing the exhibits you passed through before lunch just in case there was one 'closed for renovation' and it turns out you've now stumbled upon the real reason.

I didn't get to hear which choice Dad opted for though I was impressed with the question his child had posed. Thanks to technology conversions including the Internet and nearly unlimited channels of cable TV, our children now have access to untold volumes of information, probably more before they start school than you or I had by the time we graduated from college. 

In theory, this is a good thing, though maybe I'm getting crotchety in my antiquity, but we're not making better choices as we age because we treat all information as knowledge when a lot of it may be just noise. And at the rate of expansion for the world's cumulative knowledge, the good news is NOT that it's not only going to get a lot worse, but, rather, it's never going to get better.
-bill kenny

Distinction With Difference

Have you ever heard the phrase, 'six of one and a half dozen of the other'? (HINT: This goes a lot faster if you nod your head yes) 

How about 'difference without distinction'? That one is a bit more nuanced, I'd agree. That however cannot be said for its converse. 

Wow. Things you never knew, right?
-bill kenny

Armchair Vacations

The summer vacation season is winding down unless you're one of the millions to tens of millions who had neither the time nor the dollars to take a vacation. 

I have a suggestion that will not get you out of the house, but it will also not get you into debt and it will allow you to take a break and it's courtesy of the National Park Service. 

You can go where you want when you want. You don't have to keep your hands inside the car or worry about feeding or not feeding the bears.
Just a mouse click and you're gone.
-bill kenny

And Then There Was One

I grew up in New Jersey (Exit 9 before you ask) and it never occurred to me that there was anything unusual about having a service station attendant pump my gasoline, and (because I am so old it's almost prehistoric) they would also check under the hood and look at your oil and other fluid levels AND clean your windshield. Yepper. No lie. 

I'm not sure why New Jersey required a service station attendant, but they did and still do. In most other states I've driven, you pump your own gas. For the longest time, only Oregon and New Jersey were the hold-outs and now, it's just Jersey.   

And Jersey guys ain't too wild about it either

Now that I'm a geezer, I think I'd like to be coddled a little bit at a gas station so maybe there could be a movement to bring back 'gas jockeys' as I think they were called, or was it 'pump pimps'? No, probably not that one, because everyone deserves to be pampered if not always then at least just a little bit.
-bill kenny

Define Your Terms

You might think it's early to mention the November elections for six seats on the City Council and nine on the Board of Education. Maybe. 

Usually, I spend much of my time considering choices for City Council but as the son of a lifelong schoolteacher, I want to write about the importance of choosing wisely for the next Board of Education. 

The buzzword this election in these post-pandemic times is “parental rights” in relation to schools, children, and education, The phrase is on everyone's lips, even here as Matt Grahn reported recently in The Bulletin. The trouble is, I can’t seem to find a definition of exactly what are “parental rights.”

Nevertheless, one of the two parties' slates for the Norwich Board of Education makes it a prominent plank in their election platform. Their Town Committee Chairman says, "Parental rights is a strong concern, even for people who aren’t parents yet or won’t have children, as they recognize the impact “hands-on” boards of education can have on children locally and all over the country.' (My emphasis added.)

That's as may be, but an article in Chalkbeat which calls itself, 'essential education reporting across America' reports 'Most Americans aren't satisfied with public schools-but most parents like their child's school.' It would seem the difference in evaluations by an adult with children in a public school (a parent) and an adult with no children is startling, to say the least.

Let me offer some personal perspective: Our two children were products of the Norwich Public Schools, attending Buckingham (now a grassy knoll), Kelly (then Middle) School, before enrolling in and graduating from Norwich Free Academy.

Our daughter, the younger of the two, graduated from Kelly in 2001 so my frame of reference is more than a bit dated, but my memories are still fresh about our involvement at parent-teacher conferences, as well as participation in the TPO (or was it PTO?) meetings for one or the other and I or my wife spent many, many evenings enjoying coffee and conversation at Board of Education meetings in the Kelly library (all before the renovations and expansion).

What I do NOT remember is swarms of grown-ups exercising their “parental rights” by attending parent-teacher conferences, participating in PTO meetings, or getting engaged in many, to say nothing of any, classroom activities their child's schools and teachers organized throughout the school year.

I can also recall Board of Ed meetings with fewer than six parents in attendance for a school system with thousands of children enrolled. I'm assuming the meetings too often conflicted with nights Seinfeld was on TV, or a Massachusetts sports team was playing.

Sorry for the snark. Not.

“Parental rights” must be inseparable from concomitant obligations and responsibilities which in our house meant making sure homework was completed (looking at you, Patrick), the next day's assignments were prepared (Michelle), and accomplishing everything my wife and I could do to help our children succeed. 

Between us, I fear that definition of “parental rights” went the way of the dodo and clean air, but I strongly urge everyone who is a parent, or anyone thinking of becoming a parent, to demand of every candidate seeking a seat on the Board of Education a definition of “parental rights” and how they would foster and further involvement and engagement of all parents which is critical to the success of every child in Norwich Schools. 

Do not let them offer you a cliché-make them define their terms.
-bill kenny

Old Rivers Grow Wilder Everyday

When I was a kid I didn't know anyone at the age I am now. Seriously. We were around my mom's parents a lot and I couldn't tell you how old they were (except 'really old') without grasping the concept of age. 

I once asked our mom if she was around for the Battles of the Blues and Greys (Civil War) because I was really interested in the Civil War but the time-space continuum concept hadn't fully seated itself in my noggin, seemingly.  

I mention any and all of that because despite the ugly mug that stares back at me every morning in the mirror with a combination of dismay and despair I can't improve or alter in any way, I don't see myself as an old person even though I am.

And I'm not alone. 

The Red, White, and Blue are going gray and where my parents, and yours, wed for a lifetime, the new media buzzword is gray divorce. Having spent many years convinced I was unloveable, and then (miraculously) having found the love of my life I read and re-read the article because let's face it, life is hard and even harder when you're by yourself. 

Yes, I understand how everything that's put together can fall apart, but matters of the heart are always best when viewed as pairs and in perpetuity.
Loneliness isn't the same as being alone, but it is worse. Far worse.
-bill kenny   

Edison Set the World on Fire

How many cartoons did we watch as kids where, when one of the characters had an idea, a lightbulb lit up over their heads? As of last Tuesday, that image will eventually find itself in the 'Whatcha talkin' 'bout?' Museum of Unshared References Across the Generational Divide, a few exhibits down from 'You sound like a broken record!' Yeah, don't start with me on that one.  

Last Tuesday, August 1st, was the start of the ban on sales of incandescent light bulbs. The same people who want to take away your gas stoves, your guns, your light beer and whatever else is woke wandering around and about, did manage to ban sales of new incandescent bulbs. I know, the rest of the planet will thank them, and by extension, us, but you will hate them for their interference with your conspicuous consumption lifestyle.

And if we can all live a little better in a slightly less imperiled world, isn't that worth the changeover to LED bulbs (and standby, up next will be fluorescents). What do you think? I'm staring at the space just above your head, pilgrim, and ain't nothing shaking but the leaves on the trees.
-bill kenny

Zero Would Be Nice

As a child learning American history (I think it's part of something called 'civics' now for reasons surpassing my understanding) I was always struck by how World War II began for America with airplanes. Actually with swarms of planes, low over the horizon, out of the sun over Pearl Harbor Naval Station in Hawaii.  

Today, seventy-eight years ago, from the belly of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Super-Fortress, the US Army Air Corps dropped the world's first atomic weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and while a second bomb was dropped a matter of days later on Nagasaki to 'seal the deal' the harnessing of the atom into such a terrible weapon of destruction delivered by an airplane effectively ended the second World War. 

As a fan of symmetry, even as a wee slip of a lad, I was struck by the bookend of beginnings and endings.

I've read accounts where some of those who worked on the devices were relieved that the first actual use did not trigger, as they had feared, an unfettered chain reaction they could not stop, destroying the planet. 

Except, as I look around a somewhat beaten and battered world that's lived in the Atomic Age (and in dread of its consequences) even longer than I have been on earth, I wonder about that road to perdition, the slippery slope, and the law of unintended consequences. 
-bill kenny 

Says She Talks to Angels

I stopped scrolling the other day on the PBS website to read a story headlined, "Nearly 7 in 10 Americans Believe in Angels." Considering how fervently American Evangelicals embrace a serial philanderer, liar, and attempted insurrectionist in the person of former President and future felon Donald J (for Genius) Trump, I cannot claim to be surprised though I am disappointed.  

Reading that story in light of this one, from NBC News, "71% of GOP Voters Stand with Trump" I was struck with a quote that I suspect could be applied to both stories, "People are yearning for something greater than themselves."

Real or imagined, sekt oder Seltzers. Accept no substitutes, either ethereal or totally synthetic. Too often we get the heroes we deserve and then complain about them.
-bill kenny

Not My Words

Found this online from A. J. Picard. It's brilliant!  

Every minute someone leaves this world behind.

We are all in “the line” without knowing it.

We never know how many people are before us.

We can not move to the back of the line.

We can not step out of the line.

We can not avoid the line.

So while we wait in line -

Make moments count.

Make priorities.

Make the time.

Make your gifts known.

Make a nobody feel like a somebody.

Make your voice heard.

Make the small things big.

Make someone smile.

Make the change.

Make love.

Make up.

Make peace.

Make sure to tell your people they are loved.

Make sure to have no regrets.

Make sure you are ready.

-bill kenny

Vogelfrei

If I were a bird with the gift of flight, I'd never walk again. 

This is breathtaking. 

"The cold season is coming round
Flocks of birds are homeward-bound.

They are swirling, turning, wheeling
They invade the evening sky
Changing shape and mesmerizing
Safe in numbers; rustling by.

A cloud of starling
Graceful flapping of their wings
Murmuration."- Paul Callus

-bill kenny 

A Mid-Summer's Simmer

We are at a strange place in this our Summer of Way Too Much Heat and Humidity.

I’m not talking about the impact the actions we, the Crown of Creation here on the Big Blue Marble, are having on climate change and the environment because we’re still a couple of years decades away from getting more than a grudging acknowledgment from many that it’s anything other than ‘all politics.’

Besides, if we can’t ’own the libs,’ we can always parboil them, right? As a meme I saw last week on social media noted, “People moaning about the weather; at least it’s not snowing. Imagine shoveling snow in this heat?!?”

No. What I’m talking about is this time a month ago we were all readying three- and four-day holidays (fingers crossed!) for Independence Day and in just about a month we’ll be doing the back-to-school shuffle with thousands of children as we prepare to mark or mourn the end of summer with Labor Day.

Things move so fast; we spend more time looking forward to moments big or small than we do enjoying them while we have them. Show of hands:  At Memorial Day, who had plans for what “we’ll be doing this summer.”? Keep ‘em up, I want to do a quick count. As I thought, just about all of us.

And now as we round the clubhouse turn into the first week of August, how many of those plans (personal, professional, vegetable, or mineral) have come to fruition? Where are those hands now? Is that the sound of crickets I’m hearing?

George Santayana once observed, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." I’m not sure what he’d make of our headlong rush to embrace whatever is new and next without ever wondering if it’s a good fit for our families, our neighborhoods, or our city.

Maybe it’s the high temperatures or the times in which we live, but we’re very quick to judge others’ perceived mistakes while always justifying our own. We want the world, and we want it now, but we never take or make the time to thoughtfully consider all the efforts being made by various agencies and departments across the city to make where we live a better place for all of us to come home to.

Instead of applauding those efforts and initiatives and offering to roll up a sleeve and lend a hand, we point out missteps and shortcomings as if someone was giving prizes to whoever finds the most (Present company very much included).

We can only aspire to get better, by whatever unit of measurement you choose to define it, when we all succeed. The critical skills I believe needed to succeed, communication, cooperation, and collaboration are sometimes hard to find because we’re not good at practicing them. Instead, I see a lot of ‘for me to look good, someone else needs to look bad.’ How about you?        

Those skills aren’t just for use with big projects, like economic development-well, yes, they are but also for smaller steps. Maybe not one of us can persuade Dunder-Mifflin to relocate to the Business Park, but each of us can patronize the businesses we already have across the city and maybe, start making the street where we live a better, nicer, cleaner, and saner place than it was before the summer started.

It’s worth a try.
-bill kenny 

Rhymes with Luck

When we were kids and grown-ups would forget we were around and about (and always underfoot) every once in a while in conversation one of them might slip up and use a Bozo No-No word. Before George spelled it out in detail, we all knew them, no matter the language. To some degree, the song remains the same.  

When that happened, dollars to donuts, the offender would say 'Pardon my French.' I was halfway through the second day of my first-ever visit to France before confirming that not one of the words those grownups had ever said was French, not even in the littlest bit. Jeepers, Wally!

Actually, the biggest and most infamous offender of the not-really French words is, of course, 'the F Word.' But as is so often the case with a problem, there are solutions, or in this case alternatives.  

We can't cure poverty, stop hate, end war, or feed the hungry.
But Kayfabe is right in our wheelhouse.....
-bill kenny