I Am Still Here

One down and one to go; I’m talking about national political party nominating conventions which were days-long coverage on every TV channel when I was a kid and everybody’s parents used to schedule mealtimes around them. Now they are covered the way seagulls fly over and….keow.

Perhaps it’s the near-hellishly warm weather many parts of the country have had in this, yet another summer of our malcontent. Maybe that’s why we’re just a little brusquer with one another and have less patience than at other times because when you get down to it, these are NOT other times.

Social historians writing for contemporary magazines, ranging from Rolling Stone to The Atlantic and The New Yorker have chronicled the outrage that practically every segment, ('demographic' is the buzzword used in poli-sci circles), we are feeling. We are Cranky with a capital “C,” if I may offer my own descriptive.

I know people who 'only' get their news of the world from a single platform of Main Stream Media, be it the New York Times, Fox News and/or every flavor in the rainbow from one to the other (and if you think those two are polar opposites, then good luck telling me where to put World Net Daily because at first blush, I understand next to none of it.

I like chocolate ice cream (I'm probably not supposed to eat it, but I like it anyway) but I eat other flavors, too. It's about more than freedom of choice of ice cream flavor; it's about NOT missing out and not getting an opportunity to sample every perspective. That's why I read/watch/listen to people with whom I disagree, to stretch my mind while listening to their arguments. But lately, we've been eating ice cream and getting brain-freezes.

Every one of us is in danger of reducing ourselves to rude bumper stickers, be we "MAGAs" or “WOKE.” The only thing more pointless than putting other people in boxes with simplistic labels is allowing someone to do it to you. If all you think of when I say Whitman, is a box of chocolates, Forrest, you need to get another life, because I mean Walt.

“I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end. But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.” That’s from his Song of Myself and is an examination of the American Spirit because despite the title it is about everyone other than the author. It is about you and me, the Americans unborn at the time Whitman wrote it. And perhaps he penned it because he knew someday we'd need it.

We have many words to tell us how we came to this point in the story of ourselves but too few to tell us how to go forward and move ahead. The pages are blank but so, too, are many of the minds who would lead us, leaving us to our own devices. “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

If we've learned nothing else from our history, it's that no matter how we fight (and we were engaged in ferocious national fratricide a little more than a century and a half ago, despite still seeing the flags of losers in too many places), we are still standing and this, whatever, this moment of self-loathing and self-doubt will someday be called, this, too, shall pass.
-bill kenny

And the Ones that Mother Gives You

I filled yet another prescription the other day. It's strange how life evens out. I went for decades paying heath insurance premiums but never needing to do anything medical but that has yet to be my complaint for the last two score of years or more.

How pompous was that? Seriously. What am I, the third runner-up in the "How Did You Like the Play, Mr. Lincoln?" contest. What were our mothers doing, I wonder, while our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation? And yeah, I am the kind of dork who uses score in an actual sentence, just as I say enhance where you might choose to say improve (and be wrong). I got enough Indian burns as a kid for being a bookworm and now I don't care what you think of me.

Anyway, I was picking up a medicine I only take once a month. I do wonder a bit about the sincerity of a physician who comes up with a medication a patient need only take once a month. What's the thinking there? "I want him to get better, but NOT too much better...once a month should be about right. Once a week and he'd probably be cured. Once a day, he'll be leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Egads! I don't want that! I've seen him in tights."

Anyway. I went to pick up the prescription and the pharmacy technician explained my insurance would only authorize a ninety-day day refill of three pills. Somehow, my heart will carry on, I guess. She asked if I had any questions. As it happened, unfortunately, for her, I did.

"What," I asked, "happened to Sandy?" She looked at me blankly. I explained to her Sandy was a dog I had as a pet when we lived in Wanamassa, New Jersey. I didn't add "when I was five years old." I didn't think it was germane to getting an answer to my question. The woman backed away slowly from the counter, which bothered me slightly as we were already on opposite sides of it and she was the one much closer to the drugs.

Fearing, perhaps, she hadn't heard me, I repeated my question only louder adding "Sandy was a Cocker Spaniel who tried to bite me." That is my whole memory of that animal. I hated that dog. She stared at me evenly while demanding to know why I was asking her about my dog. Because, I explained, you gave me permission when you asked if I had any questions.

"I meant about the medicine!" she semi-shouted. I offered easily and breezily it couldn't be my fault if I didn't understand what she meant since I could only hear what she said. The purchase was for less than five dollars-adding a whole new meaning to the phrase cheap thrill and I pocketed the change from a ten. I like to pay in cash sometimes when I'm feeling nostalgic; cash reminds me of when we were a powerful and feared nation and not a bunch of whiners afraid of a few questions about a dog that's been dead for decades.

The technician seemed happy, almost too happy, as I walked away from the counter. I wonder when she'll realize that it's only a ninety-day reprieve. And that it's not Ol' Roy who'll coming back hoping for a quick word with Kristi Noem.
-bill kenny

Tara Reid and Samuel L. Jackson Deserve Equal Billing

Sometimes Ruth is Stranger than Bridget and fact more so than fiction. 

We've had  (I've lost count of) versions of Sharknado, an original idea that I still have difficulty believing anyone thought was a good movie premise to say nothing of its sequels.

It's right up there with Snakes on a Plane, though I think there have been fewer sequels, at least so far, I hope. 

And now, and don't tell me you can't see the cinematic possibilities, we have cocaine sharks, or Tubarões da Cocaína, as they would be called in their native language in their native waters. As Brody told Quint, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat,' to say nothing of munchies.
-bill kenny

I Have Saved All My Ribbons for Thee

I'm in charge of feeding the critters with whom we share the neighborhood. We buy about twenty pounds of unsalted peanuts every month for the squirrels (and blue jays and starlings). The birds take them in their beaks, one at a time though I have watched blue jays slide one peanut down their gullet and then grab a second one, I'm guessing as a mid-flight snack. 

The squirrels take two, every time and are of a size that you'd assume (correctly) can only be the result of someone feeding them as their down-the-street cousins who live wild and free look emaciated by comparison. 

I also stock our bird feeders-we used to have wooden feeders that looked like little houses. That, I concede was more for us than for the sparrows and woodpeckers who could care less. And ironically, they weren't all that fond of those feeders so I went out and got vertical cylinders with very small feeding holes behind a wire cage to (I hoped) discourage the grackles who know a free lunch when they see it and who'd bully the little birds off the feeders.  

The 'new feeders' are wildly successful. I estimate at one point we were going through forty pounds of birdseed a week and by 'we' I mean the birds as my job was to be their butler. I've decided to only fill the feeders on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I've also decided against telling the birds about the new schedule. 

They eat every single seed in the feeders and then hang on them perhaps confusing cause and effect in terms of precipitating a refill. When I do fill the feeders, dozens, if not hundreds of sparrows sit on the overhead utility line and on our neighbor's garage roof, watching very intently. There's more skill than I ever appreciated in being able to perch on a wire and not just a little danger, too.  

They are very patient, waiting until I'm practically back in the house after restocking the feeders before descending on them as if they hadn't eaten anything at anytime in their lives before. It's not quite Hitchcockian, but I will admit, I do keep a sharp eye out as I head back indoors.
-bill kenny

Second Verse, Same as the First

I quote rock and roll the way Evangenitals quote the Bible. In my case, and at my age, what I mostly quote would be considered Old Testament (but not too old), from The Beatles onwards though the more recent stuff from just about anybody that employs auto-tune would not be included.

The irony of ironies and proving God, if S/He does exist, does indeed have a sense of humor, almost all the music our son and daughter grew up loving invariably provoked me to wrinkle my nose and ask sardonically, 'what is this supposed to be?' Like father, like son... 

Not the point of this missive, though you can be forgiven for thinking otherwise. I grew up listening to words of songs and had some spectacular subject matter authors: Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, Ray Davies, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and the list goes on and on. 

Back in my day (and stop leaning on my Gran Torino hood, I just buffed that out, you whippersnapper!), songs told stories. Which is why I found this article engrossing and edifying. 
-bill kenny

From Nine to Thirty-Two

The Summer Olympics of 2024 begins today in Paris, France. 

In the two weeks of the Olympics, there will be three hundred and thirty-two events in thirty-two separate sports including twenty-four different sports on the first day. 

The original Olympics, first held in 776 B.C., and for whom the Paris Olympiad is a commemoration, lasted five days and had nine events. 

I suspect the original games were shorter because there was no television and, more importantly, no official beer sponsors to buy commercials. Speaking of which, here's one I'll bet we don't see.
-bill kenny 

There's a Ghost of a Moon in the Afternoon

I think we're well on our way to being a nation of impatient mind-readers. Don't furrow your brow or make that face (I know 'what face? I wasn't making a face!' You were, too.). 

You may phrase it more elegantly (I would certainly hope so) but, with apologies to Beckett, we're NOT Waiting for Godot but rather hoping The Other shuts up real soon so we can talk.

It takes me forever to text on my cell phone. I get hung up on spelling all the words with all the right letters in the proper places with capitalization and punctuation for all. In today's text-crazy society, such fastidiousness can make you roadkill with hair on the human highway and more often than I'd like, I've been reminded that he who hesitates is lunch.

I've had follow-up texts as I've been struggling to frame a response to an earlier note. It's hard to count to ten and get a grip on your annoyance while holding a piece of plastic with more computing power than our first three home computers had (put together)person-to-person, while some touch typist is kicking your thumbs.

We're about the same in person to person communications, too. Those Sunday morning public affairs programs the major TV networks used to have so the FCC would cut them a break at license renewal time, have evolved into snarkfests where folks who remind me of terriers in need of Ritalin just yap at one another when they're not shredding some 'guest' like an old chew toy.

We're all rushing to get someplace other than here and once we're there, wherever 'there' is, we're off again. My German wife calls it kein ruhe im arsch and she would know as she's married to one (mit ohren). When you next converse with a real, live person try to listen to the interaction between you, not just to the words but to the silences as well, and you may be surprised at how little of the latter breaks up the stream of the former.

I used to tease acquaintances and associates, disquieted by how rapidly I spoke, that people from my home state of New Jersey couldn't afford a pause to catch their breath or collect their thoughts, because with so many in such a small state if you stop speaking you won't be heard from again for years. I

So now we talk, type, and (for the most part) think in shorthand delivered in staccato, acronym, and emoticon all masking, while masquerading as, meaning. Instead of technology and our tools helping language and literature to flower as arts and culture flourish, we've continued to dumb down and throw majesty and meaning over the side.

I came across a quote from Indianapolis' #1 Son, Kurt Vonnegut that makes me smile and think every time I read it. If it does half as much for you, it's worth the inclusion, "...do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."
-bill kenny

Ability, Agility, and Vision

I saw a posting the other day on a social media platform, “Cheer up, things could get worse. So, I did, and they got worse.” I’m not sure they weren’t talking about Norwich (or me, for that matter),

Someone asked me if I ever ‘get tired of rooting for Norwich.’ Which, on the surface is an illogical question (channeling my inner Leonard Nimoy); Norwich is my home. I have lived here longer than anywhere else, and it’s only natural to want good things for my hometown.

I will admit to a slightly exaggerated sense of optimism about our prospects as a city, ‘Pollyannish’ was the term the person used, and, yeah, I guess guilty as charged. I’m not sure what’s wrong with being starry-eyed and laughing (as Dylan once sang) as opposed to relentlessly dreading every new dawn as yet another fresh hell.

But I will confess in recent days, perhaps because of all the heat and humidity we had and maybe just because I’m starting to see through people’s words and focus on their actions, the gap between the promise and performance of our city leaders is growing larger.

I love the aphorism, ‘It’s a wise man who plants a tree under whose shade he’ll never sit.’ I bring it up not because we have too many home fires burning and not enough trees but because we’re still stuck on stupid in the spin cycle of ‘who’s to blame for my tax bill?’

I’ve lived here long enough to remember a raucous City Council meeting when they were acting as the Zoning Board. There was an attempt to place a Home Depot on Route 82. Lots of ‘not in my backyard!’ were shouted. Tempers flared. Long story short, we ended up with a Goodwill Store but I’m sure we all enjoy driving to Lisbon to shop in that Home Depot as well as all the other stores in both of those retail clusters that could have gone anywhere, including here, but didn’t.

And then there’s a business park expansion plan for Stott Road. Some residents claimed City Council approval would ruin their ‘farm view.’  The City Council, afraid of a packed room voted ‘no’ on expansion. Weeks later, the resident who successfully defended their ‘farm view,’ sold land at that very spot to a housing developer. We ended up with houses on a street called “Farm View Drive.”

My point: City Council fecklessness/shortsightedness/cowardice has a long tradition. No one in Norwich leadership has planted trees in the years I’ve followed the politics here.           

At City Hall last Monday for a City Council informational session on the Chelsea Harbor/Downtown Mobility Study. At the presentation's conclusion, there were two (2) questions total from members of the City Council. TWO. 

I believe successful leadership requires Ability, Agility, and Vision. As the Caterpillar said to Alice, 'When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.'

Downstairs, on the ground floor Broadway entrance to City Hall were three easels across from the tax collector's office, filled with photos of properties, houses, and businesses all in tax sales. Dozens and more of our neighbors, businesses, and residents who can't make it here anymore.

And across the street from City Hall, there was a very large-bellied gentleman holding a handwritten cardboard sign, "Norwich is a Shirt Hole." (without the r). Seeking the silver lining as I always try to, all I could think of was kudos to our teachers; all five words were spelled correctly.
-bill kenny 

The Mowing of the Green

I understand the weather but am not thrilled with its existence. That is to say, I whine piteously from some point usually around Thanksgiving until probably close to mid-April about how it's too cold and from around Flag Day until after we put all the white clothing away after Labor Day about the heat. Yeah, as rumor has it, I would bitch if hanged with a new rope.

Our weather in recent summers here in the Land of Steady Habits has been a modified hellscape in terms of both temperature and humidity. We'll have days of ninety-plus degree temperatures with a dew point so high you feel like you're walking in a fog of warm oatmeal that produces huge black clouds that become thunderheads and generate ferocious rain storms generating torrential downpours that flood storm drains and turn potholes into hot tubs that last ten minutes and still don't break the humidity. 

What does happen is my lawn grows like I had moved to the Amazon rainforest and that in turn complicates my life as since I've aged our lawn seems to grow larger every time I cut it and after our recent weather, I could have used a machete for starters. I have an electric mower, battery-powered because I would run over the cord, and had to clear the bottom of the mower carriage of clipped grass ten times before I was finished.

Between busting my behind to grow grass (weeds I can grow; grass, not so much) and then cutting it, I've spent an inordinate amount of time recently wondering why grass at all? Every single house on my street and probably yours too has a grass lawn. How did this happen? Here's how. 

When next I toil on what feels like the Dallas South Forty, I'll take solace from the sage insight of Maxine, whose reputation has little to do with lawn care: "The key to a nice-looking lawn is a good mower. I recommend one who is muscular and shirtless."  
-bill kenny

"C'mon, Man!"

I saved myself a project yesterday afternoon, as I was going to affix this sticker to my car's rear window.

I was neither surprised nor disappointed as with each passing day the pig pile grew larger and the chorus to 'pass the torch' grew louder. Time, the Conqueror, triumphs over all of us. 

He doesn't owe anyone an explanation but he provided one anyway. 

Thank you, Mr. President.

I believe Kamala and Pete can finish the job.
-bill kenny

Everyone But Us, Of Course

Crossing the street yesterday, I passed two people deep in discussion with one another walking in the opposite direction and heard one of them say to the other, 'And all of them are either midgets or morons.'

I confess to NOT looking around to see if the circus was in town (is Congress back from vacation?) as I knew the speaker was offering some pejorative characterizations of people with whom he disagreed, and was exercising his vocabulary skills to characterize them.

I grew up with a man who did that with words borrowed from a language he didn't speak and decades later learned to my delight and relief that I was only a thief and not a-whatever-I-feared-I-was-being- called-at-the-time-I-was-being-called-it. In some respects that felt like a promotion, without the pay raise or the bigger office.

But still, reducing the world to two sorts, that's a sweeping statement, when you get down to it. Everyone (else) is a-whatever we dislike. Not you and me, mind you;  those other folks, whoever they are. What John Kennedy Toole called "A Confederacy of Dunces". 

And yeah, you can download it to a Kindle or whatever other not-a-book-but-works-like-a-book-devices are available and enjoy it this summer as a beach book, but please don't because it's a serious book. You should have socks on while you enjoy it (other clothes as well, of course, but spare me the sandals).

Maybe it captures who we are as a species among all the others on this planet. Heck, for all we know, maybe every life form looks at every other life form as a midget or a moron and behaves accordingly (cats come to mind immediately). 

All of our lives are alliances of one kind or another, some more fleeting than others. In the primary grades, we had a partner for the #2 bus to go home; in high school, we had lab partners; in college, perhaps, study buddies; at work a mentor or someone we regard as one, and in our private lives, someone to whom come home.

In each of those situations, we create egoisme a deux, which is how we make our way, forming and breaking bonds every day until the day the clown car comes to a screeching halt in front of someone we thought we really knew and then how surprised we are as we step out of the back seat to see the look in their eyes and realize we are, sadly, a little too tall to be the former.
-bill kenny

Remembering One Small Step

  "I sail to the moon
I spoke too soon
And how much did it cost
I was dropped from
The moonbeam
And sailed on shooting stars."

"Maybe you'll
Be president
But know right from wrong
Or in the flood
You'll build an Ark."

"And sail us to the moon
Sail us to the moon
Sail us to the moon
Sail us to the moon."

Fifty-five years ago, today.
-bill kenny

A Ready Reference

I hope this helps as that's the spirit in which I'm offering this.

Cut, fold, and keep in your wallet until you need it on Election Day.
-bill kenny

The Beauty Parlor Is Filled with Sailors

Tonight, the orgy of self-congratulation that is the 2024 Republican National Convention concludes, and its climax, as expected, is the nomination for a third time of Donald John Trump to the office of President of the United States. 

I'm still working on how he was nominated once, much less elected. If you resent my disparagement of him, you'd best find somewhere else to stop by between now and November because I loathe this asshole and the nicest thing I can find to say about it is I am grateful he is not twins.

You are of course, free to support him and vote for him; that is your right. But don't tell me you're doing so 'because he's a patriot,' because he isn't but you already know that deep down in your heart, and because you do, you're not a patriot either. 

Anyway. 

His speech, if all of his previous utterances are any indicator will be a potpourri of half-truths and outright lies, punctuated by mind-boggling versions of tales of grievances and injuries both real and imagined that will have no point and even less sense. And his MAGAts, enthralled by his eloquence and intellect will applaud enthusiastically if not rapturously. You will actually become dumber listening to him, so don't.

Instead, read the 2024 GOP Platform, their roadmap for what they intend to do. Read it now as between you and me  depending on the election outcome there will be no opportunity to look at it again. 

And that might be just as well, "Right now I can't read too good, Don't send me no more letters no, Not unless you mail them From Desolation Row."   
-bill kenny

Lettuce Reason Together

You're probably familiar with the expression 'You can't see the forest for the trees.' I experienced it not that long ago on Chelsea Harbor Drive after getting stuck at the traffic light at the entrance to Howard Brown Park across from that hideous parking garage that obstructs the view of the harbor from Water Street.

So many different things happen in that little park- not as many as some would like and probably more than many of the fishermen would like. Still, I’d missed the return of the Norwich Downtown Farmers Market, every Wednesday from ten to two in the afternoon, through October.  Boom! There it was (and will be again today).

Local farmers offer their fruits and vegetables while artists and artisans have handmade products and art pieces. You get fresh air, grab some lunch, and spend a few minutes watching the cars and trucks race down Chelsea Harbor Drive in the Norwich Grand Prix. (Checkered flags sold separately.)

Initiatives like the Downtown Farmers Market are important and not just for farmers. They attract people who might otherwise not have reasons to be downtown (like me or you) and with their engagement and interaction create new or additional opportunities for themselves and others. It’s called change.

The Downtown Farmers Market is also another step back from that paralyzing fear of failure we have here that says, ‘If I don’t do anything, I can’t do anything wrong.’ Of course, not doing anything means nothing changes, and as you’re learning while reading your recent property tax bills the notion of NOT ever changing is not an especially good idea. Stasis is not the natural state of any living thing, and our city is very much a living thing.

We've made attempts at Smart Growth and Economic Development but that’s when the trouble seems to start. Everybody wants to drive but no one wants to study the map, and when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. I for one have had enough scenic detours.

An economic development map needs to define destinations and develop consensus on a path and a timeline with milestones to chart our progress. And we have to stop saying 'we're moving forward' and actually move forward. 

None of this is, or should be, new. There have always been trees in the forest. And we have a history of decision-delay and analysis paralysis. If you were to gather up all the studies, surveys, plans, and proposals for Norwich in just the thirty-three years I've lived here and stack them on top of one another they might reach the moon, but I doubt they could reach a conclusion. That seems to be the way we like it.

Good intentions and well-meaning will not increase the Grand List and while hope as Andy Dufresne once said, "Is a good thing, maybe the best of things," Hope is Not a Plan. Without data, decisions, large and small, too often are based on opinions and beliefs and when that’s the case, your mileage may vary, and with it, the results for which you were hoping.

There’s a saying, not necessarily in a forest although it would be appropriate I suppose, ‘Measure twice and cut once.’ Measuring is knowing when you have enough information to decide. Cutting is making a decision then following through with the consequences, and accepting, understanding, and using them to help take us to where we need to go next.
-bill kenny

Gordon Gecko's Bacchanalia

A German acquaintance in another lifetime once described Americans as "people  who buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like." To be honest, when he said it, I'd never felt so seen.

This is the first day of Prime Time, which, surprisingly, is NOT a celebration of all things Deion Sanders, but actually a logical extension of 'if good is enough than more must be better." 

To be honest, it's why the Good Lord gave us two hands: to help ourselves to as much as we can grab and two pockets to put it all in.

Amen.
-bill kenny 

Starts with a Whisper

Don't expect to hear or see a lot about Project 2025 during the Republican National Convention going on right now in Milwaukee. You can't really blame them for wanting to keep it on the down low.

As The New Republic notes, Project 2025 is “a remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.” 

"The primary document of Project 2025, the magazine explains, lays out what is essentially a “Christian nationalist vision of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not exist.”

In other words, Waiting for the Worms.
-bill kenny

Der Countdown Läuft

I don't usually pay a lot of attention to calendars, but the Quadrennial Convocation of Evangenitals, Corporate Scum, and Ammosexuals a/k/a the Republican National Convention is more or less only a moment away. 

I think I just summarized their entire party platform and saved you three days of viewing. You're welcome!
-bill kenny

Just Put Your Lips Together

I am a whistler and the worst part of that is I don't always realize I'm doing it. 

A couple of days ago, someone shrieked at me to 'pipe down dammit!' while I was whistling what turned out to be Gunter Gabriel's nearly-forgotten (not by me) evergreen Ohne moos, nichts los (nothing happens without money). That I was the only person on earth who would have recognized the tune, including Gunter himself, isn't really the point, nor is it that it's never okay for people in the church's other confessional booth to use that tone of voice. I didn't realize I was whistling under the influence (of being happy). Dammit? In church?

It also happened in a hallway while I was passing through. Not sure why I was whistling Solsbury Hill specifically but I like that song, not that it's ever a requirement or would stop me from whistling. Two different folks doing that askance and aghast look theater made me realize not everything needs to be at maximum volume or velocity.

One of them demanded to know 'What do you think you're doing!?!' Well, I said, I'm whistling but I'm keen to hear what it looks like from where you are. He didn't even attempt a rejoinder-just went right on into another question, 'Why are you whistling?' I was tempted to say because humming is silly but decided against that as more eyes and fish faces were turning towards me.

I don't mind being different. However, I do mind being beaten up for being different and people with no appreciation for good music wouldn't hesitate to thrash me within an inch of my life, or even go metric if they could get closer. Of course, it may well be precisely because they do appreciate music that they'd smack me like a grey haired pinata with a bald spot.

I knew better than to tell them I would next attempt I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman. They'd have probably asked Commissioner Gordon to club me like a baby seal.
-bill kenny

A Choice of Cancer or Polio

You may think I am describing the current state of national politics in the United States as the 2024 Presidential Election grinds on and the Publishers' Clearing House Prize Patrol van circles the block around the White House looking for a parking spot in our nation's capitol district. 

Except you'd be wrong. I don't care if Biden takes naps, or goes to bed at eight PM or drinks his bathwater. Biden on his most awful off-day is infinitely better than an unindicted insurrectionist who's already been found guilty of sexual assault and of thirty-four felony counts.  

But as I said, that is NOT the US Presidential election I am describing in the title of today's polemic. This one is. 

And as unpleasant I find the prospect of the 2024 elections, I'm a little more concerned about 2025.  Another reason perhaps why the root word of history is story.
-bill kenny

Morose Motorist's Meanderings

I fall into mental ruts that are hard to escape. I wrote earlier this week about automobiles and have been sort of fixated on them since them. Doesn't help that I've also been driving, thus reinforcing the depth of that habit. 

I find myself alone with what passes for thoughts almost always in my car, which doddering curmudgeon that I am, is funny because life and times for my generation goes full circle. 

When I was coming of age, the driver's license and the open road (and all they promised, if not always delivered) was a rite of passage. And here I am, very much as I started, a long way from home on a dark highway, lost, but making great time.

It was the era of Springsteen's chromed invaders-GTOs, Malibu SSs, Olds 442s, Buick Wildcats, Mustangs, 'Cudas and Chargers at the top of the list. Gas lines the size of garden hoses and all of us, the dweebs included (present!) knew the cubic displacement and the brake horsepower. MPG at a time when gasoline was thirty-five cents a gallon was a nonsense concept and was never explored.

We traveled in packs but were often alone. Our music was transitioning from AM radio to FM and we struggled to move from converters to tape decks, almost always eight-track, with FM receivers. I remember taking the back seat out of a car to make room for ludicrously sized speakers that were very important to me but I can't remember why. Because, I suspect; just because.

Driving a car was only slightly less important than having one of your own. I can tell you as a parent myself, two times over, I've checked the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) and there's nothing in any of them about teenage vehicular operators. But we grimly pursued the quest for an auto as if it were fire, and our offspring churn and burn in the same way for the same thing.

Growing up in the sixties, we were the pioneers who 'experimented' with pot and sex, sometimes at the same time and sometimes not so much. We were all psychedelic capitalists who believed dope got you through times of no money better than money got you through times of no dope. 

Many years later we invented the Real Estate Collapse and Stock Market Meltdown (all caps for a reason) and were absolutely stunned when it happened (now I know why we called it dope).

I watched older neighborhood boys sent off by my parents' generation thousands of miles away to places I couldn't say for causes I accepted as good and true because my government told me it was so. And now, it's my generation sending our children to other wars that are eerily familiar and I know just how good we've gotten at lying-but I don't know who we're fooling. And now, I try to recall what I traded away to get what I have.

I don't calculate the cost or the worth of those transactions, since those may be numbers that are too unhappy at any hour, but especially in the early ones. I think I prefer to drive in the dawning and the gloaming. When you don't know (or care) where you're going, any road will get you there. 

Those with whom I travel always seem as lost as I and the roads lead everywhere and nowhere. Keep the windows rolled up, crank the climate control and turn the tunes up. It remains what it has always been from the start until now, a dark ride.
-bill kenny

Choice, Chance and Change

Please consider joining me this Monday evening at City Hall in Council Chambers at 6:30, BEFORE the regular City Council meeting. I wouldn't ask if it wasn’t important because you have demands on your time and attention. It’s the third and final presentation on the Chelsea Harbor/Downtown Mobility Study. 

I know, you just read the title and snorted probably more derisively than dismissively but you're wrong. After three-plus decades of living here, I'm as weary and wary as you are of poems, prayers, and promises involving downtown that end up as nothing more than brave words. This time is different and this time different is better.

If you haven't yet, check out the website. As you'll read, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SCCOG) and the City have partnered with VHB, a consulting firm for this study. It's a key component in Norwich's efforts to provide safe and accessible streets for all including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit users of all ages and abilities.

I attended the first presentation at Otis Library in late October with about sixty or so other wide-eyed hopefuls and had hoped for even more people at a session held a month ago in City Hall that offered an update and a progress report. Bygones.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step, but we expend so much energy arguing about why we cannot undertake an action, often choosing sides and attacking one another, that we never even try to put on our shoes and thus remain rooted in place. And then complain  'Nothing ever changes.' 

We take comfort in the unhappiness we create. Even after all my years of living here, I'm still impressed (and more than a little depressed) with how often and facilely we play the victim card. News Flash: No one can make you a victim without your consent. Silence equals consent so speak up and speak out. 

I was and am impressed by the audacity of the study's vision, fueled by an optimism I fear not very many residents of Norwich have (but should) combined with a core conviction that while by ourselves we cannot do everything if we are together we could do something. In this case, that something is to start the resurrection and resuscitation of an urban core that has been allowed to decay and descend into growing disrepair for (I'm only guessing now) at least half a century or more.

We've all witnessed proposals for Chelsea more times than any of us can count (I also liked the Utopia adventure the best). But those in the past were designed by private real estate owners or transportation design engineers looking to inflate real estate prices though rarely values, or to move vehicles as rapidly as possible from Point A to B. 

The Chelsea Harbor/Downtown Mobility Study. is resident-centric. It’s not a ‘build it and they will come’ vision but rather, ‘Here we all are in the same device, let’s make it better.’ As you'll learn Monday night at the presentation, three options are being proposed (but my heart beats fastest for The Rose Bridge because it does the best job of drawing the RITC, Thayer’s Marine, and The Marina, closer together to Chelsea with enough additional greenspace to offer venues for events that have traditionally competed for use of Howard T. Brown Park). However, come, listen, ask questions, and make up your own mind.

You're asking 'Where's the money for this pipedream?' That's an excellent question and part of the answer as I understand it, is the project can be piecemeal, as funding and material/approvals permit, and as wants/needs and desires develop. Isn't it time we stopped wishing great things would happen in Norwich and started making them happen for ourselves?

The presentation is this Monday at  6:30 PM in the City Council Chambers. Please attend and remember The Three Cs: Choice, Chance, and Change. You have to make a choice to take a chance if you want to change. 

See you Monday.
-bill kenny

Free Fallin'

It's a perfectly natural and almost universally experienced fear: the fear of falling. I've conducted more than my share of gravity checks and have a healthy regard and respect for the difficulties folks my age can have with maintaining balance, 

That said, here's a horror story that makes me woozy just reading about it, much less surviving a fall of FOURTEEN THOUSAND FEET.   

And if you're not too unnerved after reading about Emma Carey's adventure, watch this and she'll tell you all about it. 
-bill kenny

Happy Birthday!

This is one of my three most favorite days of the year, the birthday of our son, Patrick Michael. He's a happily married man now, but I knew him when.....this is from a long time ago. I called it: 

The Ticking of the Seconds, Minutes, and Hours

Our son, Patrick Michael, celebrates his birthday today. My wife was responsible for making a husband from a not-especially-promising pile of a man. 

Our son rocketed me from husband to father. At the moment we learned of Sigrid's pregnancy (or should I more precisely say 'when I learned of'), I stopped being afraid to be a father. Patrick has helped make it the best job I have ever had.

He is the firstborn of two parents who were, themselves, first-born. There has been in his life no crap that we have thrown at him that one or the other of us hadn't experienced ourselves when we were children and had vowed 'I'd never do that to my kid when I have kids.' And we lied, and he turned out fine anyway.

Somewhere in our basement in Norwich, Connecticut, is a Benjamin Spock book I bought before Patrick was born in the Stars and Stripes bookstore beside the Exchange in Frankfurt am Main, which, when you walked across the parking lot, ended at the "World Famous Topper Club" (Don't get me started on the what it was world famous for stuff, okay?) and across from the street from the Topper (and the AAFES gas station) on the far side of Bertramstrasse, was #6, where I worked.

I bought the Dr. Spock book because my parents had a Dr. Spock book. Ours wound up in the basement of the apartment we lived in on Ahornstrasse in Offenbach, down the hill from the Bieberer Berg Stadion, home of the Offenbach Kickers, a First Division (Bundesliga) football team fallen on hard times and a fixture with delusions of adequacy in the Zweite Liga (Second Division).

Not too many years later, Patrick played on a team sponsored by OFC in one of the Youth (Jugend) divisions. I think he never really enjoyed playing American soccer, because he was too familiar with how the sport was supposed to be played. 

Time Flies. It must. How else to explain how the child I serenaded with I've Been Working on the Railroad for two hours in the Geburtsaal on the day of his birth is two and forty years today.

We were so foolish when Patrick was born- we didn't know what we didn't know. We had all kinds of books not just Spock, English and Deutsch, on child-raising, like we were building a bookshelf or baking a cake (both of which Sigrid has done, on more than one occasion and, I think at least once, simultaneously). 

Patrick was not much more than a toddler, running at what seemed like the speed of light, when he tripped and fell in the hatbox-sized apartment we had as the rockstar couple before Ahornstrasse and split his forehead open and bled so profusely we had to call an ambulance. Both of us can still see the scar no one else can, because we know where to look and how scared we were for him.

He was the child at the kindergarten just up the street from the apartment house who figured out how to slip the latch on the gate so he could go home 'in case Mommy is lonely' and then he'd go back to school, usually before anyone noticed he was missing (always crossing the street, always at the corner and looking both ways). Sometimes he brought a few chums home as well since he was the 'Ami kind' and had toys and such from the PX of which his playmates could only dream.

One evening he explained to both his mother and I that almost everyone in his class had a little brother or sister and served notice that he wanted in on the action and preferred ein schwester. I'm not sure how much biology he understood at four but decided to NOT chance getting the answer I couldn't stand to a question I refused to ask.

On the day Sigrid gave birth to Michelle, Patrick told me he'd changed his mind and wanted a little brother. It pained me (not at all) to explain all previous orders were considered final. 

When Oma Amerika (my mother) came to visit us, as East Germany was imploding, Patrick left us speechless at a gasthof outside of Wuerzburg by explaining to her (in English) he couldn't eat any more lunch because he was full. To this day, I have no idea where he learned my language but he did a fine job of it and was far better with mine than the dog's breakfast I made of his mother's.

When I was single, I couldn't imagine being married (judging from my social life, neither could anyone else). After we married I couldn't see myself as a father, and today, one of the reasons I am, is celebrating the anniversary of his birth with the woman of his dreams. 

I hope he knows how he has helped shape our dreams and hopes. 

And the best thing that you can do is take whatever comes to you. 

Happy Birthday, Patrick.

-bill kenny