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  

Somewhere Santayana Grimaces

Do you know what a bellend is?
See? Learn something new every day.

Here's someone who is a perfect representation of both definitions, as well as being a United States Senator, Josh Hawley. Talk about multi-tasking! Which is pretty easy since he is basically a tool.

Josh does a lot of posturing as the photo on the left suggests and nearly as much running as the right one indicates. He also likes to run his mouth. 

National Guard on college campuses. What could possibly go wrong, Josh? 

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-bill kenny

Still Waiting on My Pony Ride

Today is the 150th running of the "Fastest Two Minutes in the Whole Dam World or Something Like It." It's Kentucky Derby Day, the Race for the Roses, and a hundred or so other cliches that those who follow the Sport of Kings (and I wasn't sure what they meant for quite some time about that growing up) take as seriously as those who follow the World Series, the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup take their sports.

The difference is you don't get to ride a teammate around a track in anything resembling a counter-clockwise direction (I think; and do they change directions in Australia for the obvious reason) which is too bad because I imagine a placekicker riding around on a linebacker would be quite a striking visual.

All I know about the event today is what Dr. Hunter S. Thompson wrote in 1970 when I was barely eighteen. It tore my mind in two; your turn. And, you're welcome.
-bill kenny

Man or Mouse?

We see ourselves as the self-anointed 'Crown of Creation.' I'm surprised more of us don't have dislocated shoulders from patting ourselves on the back on a repetitive and recurring basis. 

That's why I get both dismayed and disappointed when this kind of shit ends up on a serious news site as if it were anything other than a shiny object meant to distract us. 

Were you not amused by the hero America (and possibly the entire world) didn't yet know it needed. Of course you were. Smile and say "Cheese!"
-bill kenny

It's a Long Walk

Today is the birthday of our baby girl, Michelle. She was the smallest and most perfect person I had ever seen on the day of her birth. When I held her head in my right hand as she slept when she stretched out, her feet almost touched the bend of my elbow.

Two days old

She was and will always be my Itty-Bit, my Ichy-Michy even though I am forced to concede neither of those nicknames plays well these days (so I hardly ever use them and never in public. Well, except for you on the Interweb).

At Oma and Opa's

Michelle no longer can sleep in the crook of my arm. There are times when her pace is so frenetic I'm not sure when she does sleep. I more often than not read about her exploits and adventures on things like Facebook when I get up in the morning.

Bet you didn't know I still had this one

She is her mother's daughter. Thelma to her Louise and I marvel at the self-assured and confident little girl who is now a purposeful adult striding through life equipped, or so she believes, to handle whatever is around the next bend.

IKEAing in New Haven

Michelle completed her studies as a music major at Eastern Connecticut, captivated her Kyle as she moved along, and is helping people stay safe and healthy as a member of a hospital in the heart of Old Virginia. 

Wedding Day 2013

And while I know the world will be braced for her, I can't help but believe she'll make her mark. And I hope she'll always remember that no matter how far apart we are, we will always share the same sky and the same moon and stars. 

Happy Birthday, Michelle.
-dad

Choosing Cancer or Polio

There’s a big to-do right now about the movie, “Civil War” described as ‘A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.’ I confess they had me at ‘dystopian.’

The title, of course, is a reference to the original War Between the States, 1861-1865. Today is not a day to write about that war but, rather, the political environment that led to hostilities then, and how history could repeat itself, and to what extent.

I saw a shirt with “We no longer have a difference of political opinion. We have a difference in morality” and realized no matter how you view that, it’s true.

I was thinking about that because, in the freeze-dried, drive-by manner in which we live, we spend about a minute looking at a headline and the cut line on a photo and move on to the 'next news story' as if involved in a marathon sprint contest. Assuming we read a newspaper at all. Whoever talks last or loudest carries the day, even if they're talking trash. Sadly. that was as true in the decade leading up to the Civil War as it is now.

I will point out that in the period just before the winds of war swept everything before them then, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas engaged in a campaign for Senate in Illinois regarded by historians and others as a model of civility and extreme intelligence. Viewed from today’s perspectives it seems more the exception than the rule.

One of my favorite places in the online world is here, both for a closer look at our national history but also for every aspect of that election campaign whose outcome may well have influenced the rush of events producing the Civil War (I’m not sure how accurate that statement is but I take comfort knowing in less than thirty seconds you will have forgotten you read it. Call me cynical.).

Fast forward to the hear and now and scan any national political report today and tell me your flesh doesn't crawl with dazed revulsion at the motion and commotion on both sides of every issue. We've gone from "A house divided against itself cannot stand” to "Fake News and Rigged Elections.”

I’m discomfited that more of us aren’t frightened by the tenor and tone coming at us from all sides and I'm not sure if we allow this hullabaloo to go on like this because we're too tired to stop and think or because we fear if we do stop, we may never start to think again. 

Perhaps it's the fatigue from feeding the white noise generator that is the 24/7 news services that's numbed us to our core. With so many tongues wagging there's no effort made to listen by anyone to anyone else. Somewhere along the line we've added "Nyah, Nyah! Hanny, Nanny, Do-Do" to the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and it seems to be the only part we can remember.

Often enough in the past, we've gone crazy from the heat. Almost two hundred and fifty years can do that to you, but our better angels have always intervened and interceded at critical moments in the life of our nation but this time they are conspicuous in their absence, leading me not so much to wonder about what will happen next, but to dread it.
-bill kenny