The Retelling Never Improves the Tale

I've told this tale so often and every time I do, I tell myself 'This will be the last time. I will escape the shadow and step into the light.' And yet, here I am again, and I truly believe this will be the last time I do this. Until the next time. Here goes: 

You know how Christmas or your anniversary can sneak up on you? It's weird of course, because they shouldn't really. You know when those events are (unless you're an atheist and/or a polygamist), you remember where you were when they happened and yet suddenly there they are and you're surprised.

I have a more elaborate, self-created, challenge. Because of 'fog of life' issues, try as I might, I can't get into focus (for me) a defining moment, the death of my father. When I say he died forty-three years ago 'over the Memorial Day weekend', that's the best I can do in terms of specifics. 

I know and will always know, the moment my wife and I were married-the minute and hour of the births of both of our children, but I'm unable, actually unwilling, to nail down any better than 'over the Memorial Day weekend' as the date of my dad's passing.

I've wrestled with every aspect of that relationship for almost every waking moment and it's all added up to zero. I'm very much writing today to exorcise demons rather than for any other point or purpose. I thought I'd opened this cut up previously and flicked the scab off, but as I sit here, I can feel my throat tighten, the rock in the pit of my stomach grow heavier and the taste of ash in my mouth become more pronounced. Again I'm twelve, not seventy-two, and waiting as I did most days, with dread, for him to come home from the City. And so it begins, never to end.

We, the six children he struggled to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide everything under the sun and in-between, are, ourselves, parents, and in some instances, grandparents. I don't pretend to know the hearts of my siblings, but I'm pretty sure I might speak for at least some of them when I say we have all worked as hard as we could to not become our father. 

And if the years have taught me anything (and that proposition is still subject to debate), it's that his intentions, like those of every parent, were the absolute best. And yet one by one, as we could (when we could) we disappeared, leaving those younger behind to be his children. Until he, himself, suddenly, left and no words could fill the void or cover the silences.

I'm never sure if it's the horrible son or the failed father who's to blame for all that was lost years ago, but I know the face I see in the mirror every morning belongs to the person responsible now for not letting go of the poisons of the past to savor today and secure tomorrow. It wasn't mere coincidence this time some years back that I needed to be talked away from the edge because I'd become addicted to loathing the view when I looked down. I couldn't look but I couldn't look away.

Each of his children will, in the course of this day, try, again, to make peace with the world he gave us and that we lacked the strength to reject aloud while he was here to hear us. Silence equaled consent and thus did we become accomplices in our own victimhood. 

I want to shout at the man whose knowledge often overwhelmed the nuns who tormented, rather than taught, each of us, "If Jesus exists, then how come He never lived here?" instead of nearly choking on the words, knowing I always shall.
-bill kenny

If It Don't Bleed

At seventy-two, I am someone who, in the words of James McMurtry, has 'more in the mirror than there is up ahead.' I can read an actuarial table and have a phalanx of white-coated men and women with just about every combination of initials imaginable working to keep me above ground if not board. 

In February, prepping for a spinal fusion surgery that was considered risky because of so many non-spinal health issues, I drafted a will. Because I have no friends, I asked my across-the-street neighbor and our postman to witness. 

It's not notarized and it's probably not enforceable. Still, it gives those in my family some insight into what I was thinking about in terms of my worldly goods, even if it also leaves unanswered the why portion of the question.   

I'm re-reading Joseph Heller's Closing Time always referred to as 'the sequel to Catch-22' (the greatest book ever written in any language, and yes, Bible, I'm looking at you) and working had to not be morose even as the pages to read dwindle down (I know how it ends and still hate it, but read it anyway. Kind of like life I guess). 

Parallel to that, I encountered this article on 'death cleaning.'
Admittedly, it's NOT the cheeriest of reads but a good one, nevertheless. I strongly recommend some wit and wisdom from George Carlin to help provide perspective before your day, to say nothing of yourself, gets any older.
-bill kenny

Too Many Home Fires Burning

We’re approaching the ‘settle your bill’ portion of the annual exercise that is our municipal budget creation. We all knew going into the process (which shouldn’t have a beginning or an end, just a NOW, because it’s ongoing) that no one was going home happy and as it turned out, we were right. Not enough of anything for anyone.

Many homeowners feel they are at the end of their financial rope and insist the City Council hold to as flat a budget as possible while reviving the annual argument that those who live here with school-age children, as renters but not homeowners, are somehow not shouldering the same amount of the tax burden that they are.

They, and it’s not just them, see public education, and the percentage of the municipal budget needed to fund it, as an expense rather than an investment. And when you’re looking at your tax bills, it’s almost hard to argue with that position so let me point out that it’s not the correct argument we should be having, especially now.

In recent weeks I’ve listened as hard as I can to the ongoing discussions by members of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Board of Education and City Council (intended to facilitate agreement on annual budget requests) especially on one small (relatively speaking) budget item: funding the costs of school resource officers (police dedicated and trained for the school environment) in classrooms as if it were the most normal expense in the world, except in the world in which most of us grew up, there were no police officers in our classrooms.

Twenty-first-century schools have more metal detectors than our airports, for, sadly, very good reasons. Instead of expending the time, talent, and treasure to understand the underlying causes and mitigating them, we've expanded our notion of 'the cop on the beat' to include the hallways between the school cafeteria and the library. I think we’re continuing to ignore a much larger and more important question: how did we become people who need to do this to our children?

We've got more children having free or low-cost breakfast in schools than ever because how we care about one another has shifted from when you and I were school-age, and no one seems to wonder (or care) what causes so much food scarcity that the school meals are the only ones our children can count on.  

Far too much of our Brave New World looks a lot like the old one that the promise of technology, access to tools, equality of opportunity, and enhanced diversity were all going to change. The gap between the promise and the performance has grown not only exponentially but obscenely. We argue about ‘Who started the fire?’ instead of ‘Who will help put it out?’

We've spent, literally as well as figuratively, more than a generation using government to establish programs that have little to do with why we created a government in the first place, offering the argument to one another 'Someone has to do it!'

Unless and until we can agree to define and then refine those tasks our government should be doing and which ones are our responsibilities, we can hold budget hearings until the cows come home (and guess who'll pay the dairy subsidy?) but never fix the fundamental problems. We'll continue to put out fires with gasoline and take solace that our mileage may vary, but sadly, never the outcome.
-bill kenny

A Deserved and/or Otherwise Break Today

Just in case you thought all I was around for was to be decorative (as in 'look at how he avoided that split infinitive.' No, you've never said that? My mistake) here's my stab at being functional: today is National Hamburger Day.

Phew! That was a rather exhausting read, in my opinion. I think the author's need to tell me exceeded my desire to know, but nevertheless good stuff. 

BOOM. And that's not something you can say about a not-quite-TED-talk.
-bill kenny 

Turn Your Eyes to the Bloodshot Sky

Memorial Day 2024.

Chelsea Parade, Norwich, Connecticut

Rex tremendae majestatis. Requiem aeternam, Requiem aeternam.
-bill kenny

The Days Do Go On

 Everyone is fighting a battle. You can't always see the scars.

Bruce Springsteen, from High Hopes

-bill kenny

In the Space Between the Heavens

There are things we never forget. Some are generational: where you were when you heard President John F. Kennedy had been shot; when we first walked on the moon or what you were doing when the World Trade Center was attacked?

Other experiences, and to each his own, are more personal: where I was the first time I saw the woman I was to marry or what I was doing when our first-born told us he'd gotten hired for his first full-time job or our daughter told us she'd been accepted into college.

Life is millions of interconnected moments, each one linking and leading to the next from the previous, and each of our lives is what we do within those moments, both together and alone.

This is the Memorial Day weekend and the above was my feeble attempt to try to make sense of the sacrifice of those who died in uniform in the defense of their country, because it's my country, too. 

Until it got rolled into the great Monday Holiday Law to make More Three-Day Weekends (or whatever its official name is), we wouldn't celebrate Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as our parents called it, until this coming Friday. Good thing we got it moved, eh?

Those hot dogs and burgers aren't going to grill themselves. And those BOGO sales at the strip malls will not last forever and what about the Indy 500? Yeah, everyone's a winner when we make things into three-day holiday weekends. Sure, we lose sight eventually of what the holiday is about (some of us get Memorial Day and Veterans Day mixed up), but that's got as much to do with the rate and pace of change in our lives and society as well as our inability to maintain our focus long enough to complete a thought.

Reinterred Norwich soldiers (nine of fifteen who died) from Andersonville Prison Camp at the Yantic Cemetery, Norwich, Connecticut

Previous generations used to observe, not celebrate, Memorial Day, by visiting the graves of relatives and friends who'd died in uniform and placing flowers and little American flags. I saw someone the other day at the Yantic Cemetery in Norwich, on Lafayette Street behind Backus Hospital, driving his Audi on the walking path between the grave markers while talking on his cell phone. Classy, real classy. And the sports radio on? Nice touch.

Between now and eight o'clock tomorrow night (DST), when you tune into the PBS Memorial Day Concert, try to check the event's website the PBS folks have created. Every time I go there, I learn at least one new 'something' and I visit there a lot.

Here in Norwich, and near where you live as well, there will be observances-ours is Monday and starts with a parade at noon that starts near The Cathedral of Saint Patrick St. Patrick's and concludes at Chelsea Parade with a brief ceremony of remembrance.

There's speeching by a lot of folks who never served a day in uniform (sorry. My eight years in the Air Force makes me cranky sometimes at people who think because they are entitled to their opinion, I, too, should be entitled to it also) with small children scampering between the rows of metal folding chairs that the organizers so meticulously arranged. 

Then those chairs get rearranged as friends (every year, a few less than the time before) sit together and share their own memories as young men trapped in old men's bodies recall their wild youth and a school chum who didn't return from one of our far-off wars, and then there is a wreath laying at the (quite lovely) memorial on the north end. And before we know it, we're living and reliving Gunners Dream.
-bill kenny

No Cattle

Driving earlier this week on a sun-drenched Wednesday, I passed a fellow in an electric blue Miata convertible with the top down, wearing a large hat. The fellow, not the car. I recognized the driver, not that I waved or anything, though the 'You're #1 with me' gesture did come to mind.

I'd worked with him a really long time, and I suspect neither of us recalls that period with any warmth or fondness. He had the Miata then, when it was a new and cute little car that sort of reminded fossils like me of a classic Lotus without all kinds of pieces falling off every time you drove it someplace. 

For over a century, the sun never set on the British Empire and for many years the same was true of British Leyland Motors. The very same nation that built Lancasters and Spitfires to thwart Hitler and his Horde cranked out Austin Metros and Triumph TR7's with little thought of tomorrow. From the two seconds I saw it, the years haven't been kind to either of him or his car and between us, he had far less to lose to start with.

Anyway. What had caught my eye on a beautiful day (and it was), he had the top down, to catch the rays (I'll assume). Except, he had a large hat on in the car, behind the wheel. To me, that defeats the whole purpose of having the top-down. If you wear a hat in a car with the top down, you should also shower while wearing a raincoat. I'm sorry, some rules are needed here. What is the point, otherwise, of having a car with a convertible top?

If you have a sensitivity to the sun, put the top down only at night or when the car is in a garage; leave the top up when you're driving outdoors (and when you're driving indoors and the indoors is a car wash) or just sell the car and buy one with a permanent roof (We have a name for a car whose roof can be lowered or removed, a 'convertible.' What should we call a car whose roof does NO tricks at all and why doesn't that car deserve a name?). 

Or in this person's case, lose the hat that covers your scalp and get one big enough to cover your head. Keep America Beautiful, bozo (and if it's of any solace, that's NOT what I started to type).
-bill kenny

Lucy Says Hello

I've reached the age where I now achieve by standing up the very same effect I once sought while imbibing in a variety of substances under circumstances I'd rather not dwell on or detail. 

I mention that in more than passing because I stumbled across this approximation of at least some of that same sensation.  

Created with Arcane AI

"Newspaper taxis appear on the shore waiting to take you away.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds and you're gone."
-bill kenny

That Same Small Town in Each of Us

I'm hoping the weather, which has been hit-and-miss for most of this spring (and decidedly wet while missing if you're keeping score) cooperates as Memorial Day, this coming Monday, marks the unofficial start of summer

When I was a kid (in the dark days of black and white TV and NO Internet) we called it Decoration Day because so many families spent some part of the day traveling to or at a cemetery decorating the grave of a fallen member of the Armed Forces (World War II, Korea, and the ongoing Vietnam War touched practically every family). We've grown accustomed to having professional armed forces now and often forget that for many years we had military conscription, often referred to as the draft. 

In our War for Independence, we had volunteers but conscription was a process to guarantee manpower. And for decades since then we called everyone regardless of age 'our boys in uniform.' After the draft was eliminated in 1973 and both sexes could serve, maybe because we thought it sounded silly to say 'our girls in uniform', we referred to 'our women in uniform', and once we did that, it made sense to also say 'our men in uniform.' Amazing the process by which we made men out of boys, eh? 

Memorial Day is now a big backyard barbecue day and almost everyone with a product or service to sell advertises their Memorial Day Specials. I suppose that's okay and at some level is actually part of what the holiday is about even when we get too busy to remember.

The Norwich Area Veterans Council in association with the City of Norwich and the Greater Norwich Area Chamber of Commerce hosts its annual Memorial Day Parade and Program, rain or shine, this Monday starting at noon with a parade from the Cathedral of Saint Patrick up Broadway to Chelsea Parade. 

This year's parade honors the Norwich Area Veteran, Bill "Top" Lee, USMC, and the Veteran Supporter of the Year, Ms. Veronica Hoard, and two more deserving people you would be hard-pressed to find.

There will be ceremonies at Chelsea Parade,  with a program of guest speakers and the placing of memorial wreaths on all the markers commemorating America's wars, on the north end of the Parade. It's a moment of reflection with an attitude of gratitude and I hope you can attend.    

A lot of very brave and talented people in this city and region, and across our country, sacrificed their lives so we could cook baby-back ribs or check out the bargains at the car dealerships. But not just the very brave and talented--a lot of frightened, flawed, and ultimately fragile men and women in uniform died so we could complain about the price of gas, politicians we don't like, or how our favorite ball club is off to slow start again. 

After the Chelsea Parade remembrance, I try to visit the Yantic Cemetery, a short walk from my home to spend a moment at the graves marked with American flags. It always feels like far too little but I’m not sure what else I can do.

Yantic Cemetery may not be as poetic, perhaps, as Flanders Field by John McCrae, but its silent eloquence is enough, I think, to remind us all that we live in the greatest nation in the history of the planet in part because of the sacrifice of those who served and how we should each strive a little harder to make our lives deserving of their sacrifice.
-bill kenny

Memories, Just Not Happy Ones

I spent a year at the top (or near the top) of the globe, at Sondrestrom Fjord, Greenland, while in the United States Air Force from 1975-1976. 

I celebrated the Bicentennial in the total daylight of a Greenlandic summer which somehow still didn't compensate for the total night we all endured from around the previous Thanksgiving until shortly before Valentine's Day when the sun actually rose above the horizon and we sort of lost our minds while drinking Jägermeister. 

I have NO photos from my time in Greenland and few happy memories of the days and nights I was there. 

The last month I was there, we had a C-130 crash on the runway, killing all but one of the passengers and all of the crew. We were still recovering from a tragedy where three people stationed on the base rowed out onto the ice cap, following a river that formed as the ice cap melted but without realizing around the bend they hadn't anticipated was a waterfall down an ice wall. 

I don't know how steep a drop the waterfall was just that of the three who fell only two came back to the surface and the third person, Technical Sergeant Jack Perry, drowned and his body was never recovered. Navy divers, with Arctic wet suits were flown in from Keflavik, Iceland, and had no success.  

I hadn't realized how much pain those memories had until I saw this. 
-bill kenny 

Change the Pain to Laughter

Sir Paul McCartney and The Beatles once sang, "Can't Buy Me Love," but these days there's probably not very much he couldn't purchase as it was announced late last week that his personal wealth has topped the one billion pounds (with a B) mark. 

I grew up with their music and while I have a hard time processing that I am seventy-two, I have an even harder time realizing he is eighty-one. And don't get me started on all the infighting, innuendo, and internecine arguing too many of my generation have about 'who broke up The Beatles,' or 'who is the most successful of the former Beatles.' 

For me, all of that is just noise, crap on a cracker. The music will live forever and that's what everyone and anyone should be celebrating. And if, in the course of the last sixty-plus years, Sir Paul has managed to squirrel away a couple of bob, don't begrudge him.  

He helped create the soundtrack to more than one generation's growing-up movies. Sir Paul deserves every penny and more.
-bill kenny

One Is Too Many

Earlier this week the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the New York Stock Exchange briefly topped 40,000. I don't know who Dow Jones is and I have no idea what the 'Average' is averaging, but I see people at intersections with cardboard signs asking for help in god-awful weather so I wonder if one of them might be named Dow. But probably not.

Depends on who you are, and what you consume in terms of news media, but we are more or less living in a remake of Dickens; Tale of Two Cities though distinguishing the best of times from the worst of times is getting harder to do.

The Invisibility of Poverty by Kevin Lee

Over three-quarters of us live 'paycheck to paycheck.' And it doesn't really matter much to the DJIA or the NASDAQ (another acronym I don't understand; and that definition did fuck all to improve my comprehension so I hope you got something out of it.).

Holding on by your fingertips would be those below the paycheck-to-paycheck level at what we call the 'official poverty rate' (for 2022, the last year I found stats) of 11.5 percent, or if you like counting noses, thirty-seven point nine million human beings. In a nation with boundless opportunities and abundant resources, how does this compute?    

As Frank Buchman once noted, 'There's enough in this world for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed.' 
-bill kenny

Call Me Ishmael

Somedays surfing the web is like trying to talk to Queequeg without staring at his tattoos. 

I, for one, did not realize Hermann Melville was a copy editor for the Associated Press but here you go. 

Talk about life imitating art.
-bill kenny

Grandmacore Goes Commercial

The older I've gotten the less often I frequent fast food joints. It's not just an 'eat healthier' thing with me (truth to tell, it never was). I just don't stop in as often anymore (I think one time in the last year and that was to have breakfast, not even a lunch or dinner meal). 

I mean at one point in my life I used to live on their offerings but I watch commercials on TV for any of the major chains and I have close to no clue what would attract anyone to eat there. And judging from a recent news release about an about-to-be-added menu item at Mickey D's maybe Ronald and the guys are sort of stumped as well. 

Speaking of which, whatever happened to Ronald McDonald, anyway? Apparently, this is what happened. I'm guessing instead of a gold watch they gave him some golden french fries (I do love their fries and their hash browns). 

The McFlurry offered at many locations comes from the same ice cream machines that have been a source of vexation for many years for many McDonald's franchisees. It might be worth grabbing some popcorn and camping out near a McDonald's starting Tuesday just to see how this all works out. 
-bill kenny

Something Different

 Ship in a Bottle
by Kay Ryan

It seems

impossible —

not just a

ship in a

bottle but

wind and sea.

The ship starts

to struggle — an

emergency of the

too realized we

realize. We can

get it out but

not without

spilling its world.

A hammer tap

and they’re free.

Which death

will it be,

little sailors?

-bill kenny

Laughter Isn't Always the Best Medicine

I was watching a video on a social media platform of a comic whose clips I ‘follow,’ and in this one, he had the audience eating out of his hand from the moment he stepped on stage and cracked his first joke. There were images from throughout the room of people laughing and applauding. He was very funny.

And then when the laughter subsided, he went ahead and told the exact same joke again. He paused at its conclusion and there was still some laughter but certainly not as much as the first time he told the joke.

After a slight pause, he repeated the joke yet again, and after very little laughter, he told it again and then again until no one in the room was laughing at all.

He smiled at the now-uncomfortably silent audience and asked, “Since we all now know you can't laugh about the same thing over and over again, why is it that we keep crying about the same thing over and over again?"

I’ve lived in Norwich for almost thirty-three years (those who’ve met me have suggested, unkindly, that it seems a lot longer. Everyone’s a comedian), and it appears to me we keep having the same conversations on the same topics over and over.

The part I find puzzling is that so few of us seem aware that we keep doing this. It’s as if we have decided that talking about a situation and doing something about it are the same thing but with what little research I’ve done on this, I believe talking and doing are two entirely different actions, and that’s why we have two different gerunds.    

A phrase I’ve always loved is, ‘People prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not.’ I don’t think that phrase was coined in Norwich but if you look at us and how we behave, it certainly seems that way.

Pick a topic, and since it is budget adoption season, let’s start there.

Most of us have an internal monologue that begins, ‘If only they would cut (insert a department/activity/program here) they wouldn’t need to raise taxes.’ If only we could agree on what should be reduced, and good luck with that, we’d be correct, but one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

If we cannot agree among ourselves (and we don’t very often) how can we expect the seven members of the City Council to do so? But we’ll point the finger at them if/when our taxes increase or there’s a decrease in the services we have like police, public works, or teachers (and guess which finger we’ll use).   

I once read (and have forgotten the context so supply your own), “Greed is wanting the benefits of community without contributing to it.” And that stings, or should, more than a little bit.

We’re quick to say, “Someone should do something,” meaning someone else, not us. For instance, I want the Grand List to grow (of course), but I don’t want that development project in my backyard. And I appreciate our police, but I don’t want to pay for a new police station which they’ve needed for decades. 

And so, it goes. We keep making the same movie. The actors change, and the lines are updated, but the plot remains the same. But it’s okay because we’re about to start talking about what we should do. Just like we did last time. 

So why isn’t anyone laughing? 
-bill kenny

Later than You Think

This Brave New World can attract and repulse in the same breath, or so it seems sometimes. We have ways and means to touch one another's lives that a generation ago didn't exist but we wear the thinnest of gloves to make sure we leave no fingerprints or other evidence of existence. 

I had a phone call the other day from a family member of someone I knew a very long time ago, (another) Bill, from another life, for both of us. The call was to tell me he had died.

I joke about my age (what else can I do?) while acknowledging that I have become a punchline. Hand on my heart, at 72, I don't see myself as old (I shave with my eyes closed) and am always unhappily surprised when I unexpectedly encounter my reflection in a shop window or elsewhere. 

I'm at an age where I don't say 'passed' anymore since, if life is, indeed, a test, then those who are dead have failed to stay alive. Nor do I think of anyone as 'expired' as in library card because Robert Klein disabused me of that notion. Dead is dead; damit, basta, ende.

I hadn't seen this other Bill in about forty-five years and was unaware he and I lived in the same state (of blissful indifference; population: all of us). I spoke (too) briefly to someone who, I believe, was his spouse, though I didn't directly ask and she didn't tell. That wasn't why she called and that's fine.

She called me "Mr. Kinney" which didn't do much to leaven the air of surreality as the phone conversation went on, especially when, in response to my asking 'when is his funeral?' she didn't have an answer and seemed to be flustered at the thought and hurried to end our conversation long before I could get to the "why?" 

I've noticed I rarely get to that question anymore, no matter the subject; I wonder when I'm the topic if there will be a "why?" or even a "huh?" And, true to form, I don't know why I don't know.

He had my name and work phone number in his wallet, she told me but didn't mention how he came to have them or why (there is is again). I'd like to think had he ever called me we would have chatted but we weren't really friends nor were we merely acquaintances. We were, I guess, something in the middle, perhaps familiars, or, what years ago, I called KQs (known quantities).

The advantage of KQs is they're a handy reference and provide Dorian Gray snapshots, which, turns out is also the disadvantage. All the memories of KQs are freeze-dried at a point in the past we've passed out of and so I thought today about AB (Another Bill) as I last saw him, which has even less to do with the here and now than is my usual wont.

After we spoke and she rang off, without ever leaving her full name or a contact number, I got to wondering why, if he had known how to reach me, he hadn't. Seemed an odd way to communicate, by NOT communicating, unless he had concluded we had run out of things to say long before we ran out of the time in which to do it. "And you've blown out all your candles one by one. And you curse yourself for things you never done."
-bill kenny

Swiss Miss Is Already Taken

For more years than I have been on earth (look it up) there was a recipe on the side of the Ritz Cracker Box for 'Mock Apple Pie.' I have neither made nor eaten it, but the box contends that if you follow the recipe you can create a pie that tastes like apples but has none. 

I mention this because Victorinox may be in the market for something that sits on a Ritz as their product, the world-famous Swiss Army Knife, will evolve into an item with no blade. There's no timetable for this transition and I'd hope that while the R&D folks are working away (I was terrified they might eliminate the tweezers, which I love, or the corkscrew which I believe is essential) they have other folks somewhere else in the factory crafting a new name.

I assume they each have one, minus the can opener.

The Swiss Army K probably won't work. I fear the Kellogg's Cereal folks will get snippy and I suspect the drug dealers will not be happy at the prospect of sharing either. Perhaps something simple like 'The Swiss Army Not a Knife' or 'Like Swiss Cheese but with a Different Name' though I fear neither name will actually test well. 

Of course, my challenge is, should I ever bake a Mock Apple Pie, I'll now have to find something else with which to cut it.
-bill kenny 

She Really Does, You Know

Today is Mother's Day--not everywhere in the world, but everywhere and in all the places you or I are ever likely to go or be, so that's a good deal. 

I've heard that florists sell more flowers, that more greeting cards are bought and mailed, and that more telephone calls are made on this one day in the United States than on any other day of the year, all of which underscores how significant so many of us see this day as being.

My mother passed away almost seven years. She grew up as the second oldest child, and second daughter in a large family. In her life, her older sister, all three of her younger brothers, and her husband of nearly thirty years pre-deceased her. She and her husband, my father, had six children in two cohorts. I have no idea how many grandchildren/great-grandchildren she had, but I know she knew and that's what's important. 

She was a breast cancer survivor who could, in light of how often she has been dealt from the bottom of the deck, have been a very different person than the tiny and more fragile-than-I-remember-her-from-the-last-time woman who called me on my birthday or at Christmas for all the years I can remember, before she walked across the street to the beach (she lived in Florida because she hated snow) and who was always ready to offer advice, when asked, on any topic under the sun but who never pushed her viewpoint because she didn't want to seem bossy.

My wife's mom lived farther from us than Florida, in Offenbach, Germany, and was about the same age as my mother. They met a long time ago when Oma New Jersey, as our daughter Michelle called my mother, visited and had afternoon coffee with Oma Germany. 

My wife's mom's husband passed away many years ago after we arrived in the States, but still years ago, and my wife's family is a bit smaller than mine--two younger sisters and a younger brother. Both Moms were born in a world in the throes of the Great Depression, lived much of their teen years in a world at war, and then had and raised their own families in the uneasy truce that followed as the world that was, created terrors and technology that have become the landscape of the world that is, today.

Like your Mom, my mother and my wife's mother weren't in the pages of a history book someplace though, without being indelicate about this, we have an opportunity to have a history only because of them. I've wondered how different, and better, this world would be if Moms were in charge.

Let's face it, they were always wizards patching scraped knees from the playground and broken hearts from the same place. Moms could also assemble that science fair project from stuff under the sink the night before it was due, and they were always available to quiz you before those Friday spelling tests.

Why would 'real world' issues like arms control, the control of the flood of refugees, or affordable universal health care be too hard for them. Moms make miracles happen every day.

"Lift up your hearts and sing me a song,
That was a hit before your mother was born.
Though she was born a long, long time ago,
Your mother should know. Your mother should know."
Happy Mother's Day.

21st Century Ouija Board

Do you remember as a kid knowing someone who had an Ouija board? I think I do but I was such a wuss I never had the nerve to take it for a test drive since I knew I was not prepared to meet someone from the Hereafter (this was before zip codes if you were wondering).

Haven't seen or heard about them in many years, and quite frankly have thought about them even less. Perhaps just that 'put aside the things of childhood,' I guess. I suspect Saint Paul would be stunned that I'm almost quoting him. 

Anyway. I came across an item on the CNN website suggesting that perhaps the Ouija Board has been brought into the Artificial Intelligence age. 

Perhaps AI's not such a bad thing after all. 
-bill kenny

Nearly Real Life

I found a humorous piece in an online magazine I enjoy that would have been even funnier three months ago. Timing, as it turns out, is often everything.

Just last month I celebrated yet another birthday. It happens annually and as much as I complain I hope it keeps happening though when it stops I imagine I'll be the last to know, if even then. As I've aged I've been less and less amused at what happens to my automobile insurance premium.

When I first got my license at about the same time I was learning to shave, my insurance premiums were high because I was a young adult male. Of those three, I am now only one, and yet my insurance premiums continue to escalate. 

I suspect there was a moment I'm guessing at some point in my late thirties when for about forty-five minutes my premiums dipped. I was probably asleep which is why I missed it. 

Anyway, instead of being hysterically funny, it's more painfully accurate.  

Happy motoring. 
-bill kenny

Marlin Perkins Approved

John Lennon had a hit, post-Beatles, with Whatever Gets You Through the Night, his only #1 as a solo artist, which featured Elton John. The deal Lennon had with Elton was if the song reached the top of the USA Billboard magazine charts, he, Lennon, would perform with Elton on stage. 

To fulfill that promise, Elton extended an invitation for Lennon to join him for a show in Madison Square Garden to which he also secretly invited Yoko Ono (Lennon was estranged from her and was on his 'Lost Weekend') which led to their reconciliation.

In a sense, Elton was Lennon's emotional support person and God bless him for being such a good friend. But he was no Wally, that's for sure.

But it does afford me a reason to offer you my least favorite Elton song, so no shedding of crocodile tears.
-bill kenny

Ruminating about Roosevelt

I have some random and not especially original observations before Monday night’s Second Public Hearing on the City Budget. Theodore Roosevelt had some thoughts that I was reminded of while scanning online comments and reactions from a variety of sources about the Norwich City Budget and the process that has gotten us to this point. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Those we've elected to lead our city together with the City Manager struggle to maintain balance on the tightrope between revenues that seem to rise (if at all) arithmetically and expenses that seem to grow exponentially.

Municipal budgets are traditionally predicated on protecting the lives and property of residents and businesses, while also fostering a plan for long-term economic sustainability. While the former rests squarely on the City Manager's shoulders, the latter, by charter, is a shared responsibility with the Mayor and the City Council. I’m not alone I suspect, following the process through now in learning that many of us have different visions of what the city should invest in, as opposed to how it spends our money.

Talking about how each of us sees where we live, and how we propose for all of us to get to that place, is an important conversation that for too many years too few of us were involved in. In the past, public hearings were conducted in large rooms with mostly poor turnout; those who did attend and speak made a noise like a BB in a boxcar. And for the most part, all that ever got said was a variation of 'no.' Aside from being the first syllable in Norwich, I’m not sure that’s enough.

We each have priorities or should. I don’t want to poison your well with mine but here goes: our schools. My wife and I had two children in Norwich Public Schools, and you will not find more vocal supporters of its teachers.

That said, I want us to identify and fund expenses directly supporting classrooms and to take ancillary requirements and non-core competencies, where centralization, regionalization, or privatization would create lowered costs for taxpayers and do just that. 

And since I’m feeling snarky, maybe only having (and paying for) one Superintendent and one Assistant Superintendent at a time would encourage parents, residents, and taxpayers to have the faith in our Board of Education they deserve.

I'm having nightmares about the massive and long overdue school construction/reconstruction project, not about the project itself, but rather the course and shape of elementary school education in Norwich when the construction is completed especially if we continue to throw teachers, arts and music programs and who knows what else under the school bus wheels in the name of economy.

What will our children learn, and from whom? Perhaps we'll hold classes in foraging, led by those who once frequented the Rose City Senior Center but whose lifetimes of contributions to every neighborhood in our city have been weighed and found wanting as we keep frantically redrawing the bottom line.

Everything has a price, and everything has a cost--those things we do, and perhaps, more importantly, those that we choose to NOT do. Nothing ever happens, if you don't make it happen. No one can make you a victim without your consent. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” 
In case you haven't figured it out, we are here and now and we’re all we’ve got.
-bill kenny

Everything You Know is Wrong

Have you ever lost track of time? Gotten so wrapped up in a good book or a conversation and looked at your watch (or, for Gen Z, your phone) and realized it was much later than you assumed? 

I think it's safe to say it happens to all of us. With the possible exception of Alec Schaal who bills himself as a 'Time Traveler' and who may also be an inadvertent argument supporting the USA's attempts to ban TikTok.

As Rod Serling might say, 'submitted for your approval,' this semi-cinematic masterpiece proves Alec's claim. Or maybe not.

"If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying, you are probably hallucinating."
-bill kenny

  

Yom Hashoah

Words are real only in an intellectual sense. They are not material of any kind and as such have no shape, size, mass, or structure. As kids we were told 'Sticks and bones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' which is true, but only so far.

If you're a child in any school anywhere across the United States and don't quite fit in...too nerdy, too jocky, too prissy (one of my all-time favorite words), too bookish, too plain, too and-the-list goes on, we've tagged you with a sobriquet that didn't break any bones when we go to the x-rays but did amazing damage to your psyche.

As a culture, we are quick to anger and slow to forgive. We nurse injuries, real and/or imagined, until we've raised them to grievances and causes and then there's no negotiating with us. When the phrase 'we the people' is uttered I'm not sure about whom we're speaking but am absolutely positive that my definition and yours differ greatly from one another. Sadly, each of us not only sees the other's definition as wrong but we also have unkind thoughts about the person with that definition and very likely the horse s/he rode in on.

Instead of a civil dialogue, at the national, and other, level we have competing monologues. I am not so much listening to you as I am waiting for your lips to stop moving so I can speak my piece. And how dare you then to treat me the same way. We don't know how to disagree without being disagreeable. At one time we used to work on this-now we exult about it.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day , marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghettto Uprising in 1943. When we insist on 'never again' we mean each of us cannot and will not allow the dismissive dehumanization of those with whom we disagree, by word, thought, or deed, to ever occur. 

If I can reduce those with whom I disagree to vermin or a minor form of pestilence, it's just a short step to accepting the conceit of destroying them and that step of that journey can never, ever happen again. Events and catastrophic consequences in the Middle East even as you are reading this should underscore the urgency of why we must learn to live together.

Reasonable people can agree to disagree while working to expand common ground to reach a common goal. 

You needn't be a Survivor or a Child of a Survivor to recognize that political theater and posturing transcends intelligent discussion and acceptable social mores. My visceral reaction is that this is abject crap and to shut down any and all efforts to listen to the views of anyone who comports in such trappings.

Hateful speech and even more hateful actions deliberately provoke people struggling to be the bridges over our chasm-like differences of opinion to STOP all of their efforts to help move us as a society to a more respectful of one another place and space and just drop the gloves and wail on someone who is obviously both arrogant and ignorant.

That angry response and the animus it requires and produces puts a lie to that well-meant and heavily advertised desire/goal of 'never again' condemning each of us to remain chained to a mandala of hate, hurt, and mutual recrimination over our insistence on the right to yell theater in a crowded fire while all around us burn the fires of a Hell of our own creation.
-bill kenny