Picket Lines and Picket Signs

We had a grey day in this neck of the woods and wilds of Southeastern Connecticut on Saturday, with a chill wind and unkind drizzle, but that didn't keep residents and neighbors from near and far gathering to push back on the Broligarchy that's dismantling much of everything the United States and its government has stood for since the end of World War II. Too many of us seem to have forgotten that silence equals consent. 

Time for some new math. 1 + 1 = a good start, and when you find something to believe in, it's easier to believe in yourself. People turned out globally and locally, and, cynical, old curmudgeon that I am, I have no idea where this is going, but from what I saw and felt on Saturday, no one is going away anytime soon.

Around the corner from my house.

However, for those who only now are getting engaged because your grocery prices haven't gone down, cheap gasoline isn't flowing like honey in the Promised Land or your 401K collapsed but who were unmoved at the calculated cruelty to those seeking a better life on these shores, to people of color, veterans, women, those juggling multiple jobs to survive in the richest nation on earth and those of a gender orientation or identification different from what you would like, welcome but it shouldn't have to HAPPEN to you for it to MATTER to you.
-bill kenny 

S*it Gets Real

The Norwich City Manager presents his proposed budget tonight in City Council chambers at 7:30 in City Hall. Here, again, is the tentative schedule of public hearings and department presentations, all of which will be carried on the City of Norwich website.

I suspect some of us will feel the gorge rising long before tonight's presentation is even close to ending, and as righteous as that indignation and anger may feel, this is what I strongly suggest everyone who has skin in the game in Norwich watch BEFORE authoring comments on the daily nespapers' coverage of the evening, or on any of the innumerable social media platforms we seem to rely on for all of our news and information because those with the training and education are now deemed to be 'fake news.' 

And who says ignorance isn't bliss?  

Instead of putting the 'No' in Norwich at budget time as we always do, let's do better, or at least try.
-bill kenny

A Marsupial from Memory

Found this on a shelf in the cupboard from a very long time ago. Things were weird back then, so I'm perplexed that I am now surprised they're even weirder. 

I'm thinking maybe our English cousins celebrate April Fool's Day a bit longer (and more intensely) than we do on this side of the pond. Or not. You be the judge: submitted for your inspection, "Woman Suffering from Depression to have 'Therapy Pet' Kangaroo Taken Away." 

I realize that in many applications of tough love programs to combat substance abuse, there are animal-based figures of speech, such as cold turkey or get the monkey off your back. And if one fails to get or to stay clean, you've screwed the pooch. 

I don't grasp exactly what therapy pet kangaroo taken away might be as code, and I didn't want to be L7, so I checked in urban dictionary. No joy. The notion that this is an actual, legitimate story from the same people whose language so many of us speak and whose royalty fascinates us (though not enough to emulate George Bernard Shaw or even Robert (I always thought it was a good sized boat) should provide food for thought but I'm more of a dessert tray guy myself.

The old 'what did you say?' story about how the kangaroo got its name has been pretty much been put to bed, which is certainly more than can be said for Irwin, the subject of our newspaper article, leaving me to wonder if somewhere Rolf Harris is smiling or grimacing. From a distance they look very much the same.

-bill kenny

If Dreams Were Thunder

For me, this is the roughest time of the year. The calendar says Spring is here, and when you look outside, you're inclined to agree. Except more often than not, it's brisker and crisper than we'd like, and the breeze is more of a shriek than a whisper.

Major League Baseball 2025 edition has already started in a season that will, as has been the case in recent years, end in November, which is way too long for anything other than a fantasy involving cooking oil, satin sheets and a lady named, well, I'm not allowed to detail any more of that in this space today (or any other).

I love baseball, though I have close to no idea what kind of a Grapefruit League season "my" New York Yankees had, and because the games don't count, I don't either. I've rooted for them most of my life, with a brief interlude elsewhere as I was entering double digits when Joan Payson owned the New York Metropolitans.

I still root for Mr. Met for many of the reasons as first chronicled in Jimmy Breslin's masterpiece, Can't Anybody Here Play this Game? The latest version is a much better team, and its loyal fans should be proud of them.

But that's not really important. What is important, I believe, on MLB's Opening Day, is everyone's team, whoever they are, starts the season in first place. Every pitcher's earned run average is a Hall of Fame worthy 0.00, and you can't help but believe 'this is the year.' All of us know that no one wins the World Series on Opening Day, but, conversely, no one can lose it. And that's as it should be.

The season is still in its infancy, and more so than in recent memory, we need all the optimism and enthusiasm we can gather from whatever sources for as long as we can keep it. 

Opening Day has whetted our appetites for the months ahead. We get from Point A to Point B in a variety of ways but in the same number of days. Whether we live them in hope or in dread is a choice we make and then must own. 

-bill kenny

Show of Hands

Forgive me if I channel my inner Martin Niemöller and then compound that by encouraging you to find yours. With apologies to Thomas Paine, these are times to try any person's soul. 

If you had turned off the news since the November election (my hand is up), you might not have realized the Greedheads are stripping our US of A and selling it off for parts.

It has to stop. Now's as good a time as any. 

Think globally and act locally.
Norwich is doing both, and you can do it, too; just look around.

So much for compromise solutions, summer soldiers, and sunshine patriots.
-bill kenny

So Many Questions....

It's a reflection of her curiosity and her calculation. My wife has a lethal set-up for getting what she wants merely by asking for it. It makes no difference if you and she have met just for the first time in this life or if you've known her for all the years I've made her know me. 

Simple, direct, seemingly without artifice (but with much deliberation and delivery), she opens her eyes just a little wider, tilting her head slightly to her left as she leans forward and offers with a soft Hessicher dialekt, 'I haf a kwestion.'

At least, that's what it sounds like to me. And she always gets an answer and assistance-from the hardware store guy, the shelf-stocker in the refrigerator case at the market, or from one of the swarm of white-coated jargon-spewing health care professionals she fences with on the phone as part of her one woman crusade to understand and overcome the complexities and contradictions of the American health care industry.

She raised two children to adulthood for the most part in a culture and society thousands of miles from where she, herself, had been raised, with the barest of assistance from a man whose heroes, he told her the night they met, were Peter Pan and Yossarian. She heard me clearly but decided to not make an issue of it.

Forty-eight years ago today I asked her to marry me. Both Pete and Yo-Yo would be pleased. She and I find it difficult to believe that it's been that length of time. I still can't believe she said yes. She says 'it feels longer'. I'm thinking that's because the Germans use the metric system. At least, that's why I'm hoping she says that.

My recollection is, after her assent, I asked her if she was sure. Which, come to think of it, sounds exactly like something I'd say. As has happened so often ever since, she assures my recollection is entirely inaccurate. Wie du meinst my dear.

I do remember promising her a marvelous adventure with large amounts of laughter and, I believe, elaborately big dance numbers with Busby Berkley choreography. I may have oversold, ever so slightly, the upside of the matrimonial state with me, but she's never complained at how the movie's turned out, even now when we're closer to the last reel and the closing credits than the previews.

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. Another reason why I love her; she's experienced all of me there is and still loves me. Yay!

-bill kenny

Time to Care if You Dare

I realize I sound a lot like one of those curmudgeons who complains about all 'those punks on my lawn,' but that's only because I am. 

I can remember in past decades when annual City Council hearings on the school's budget requests were shifted to a middle school gymnasium because so many people wanted to attend, and you'd have thought the governor was speaking.

Those days are over, and, not surprisingly, no one is expecting them to return. The expression 'think globally, act locally' works only if we are willing to act and accept the responsibilities of our actions locally. Let's face it, when we look to Hartford and Washington D.C., there's a lot more confrontation and much less collaboration on almost every issue we can imagine.

At the state and federal level, the attitude has become 'for me to look good, you (the other side) need to look bad', always forgetting the dangerous part of the phrase 'zero-sum' is the former. 

To acknowledge we can't afford to continue to do business in Norwich the way we always have is a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but based absence of encouragement or even feigned interest for so many issues ranging from the City's Plan of Conservation and Development, through suggestions on improving the downtown revitalization programs to department work-ups on the annual budget, we have to do better at owning our future.

We must accept the realization that we are the ones who make the final choices on our future and the paths we walk to get there. These are our children, our downtown, our neighborhoods, with our businesses, schools, police, streets and sidewalks (and the thousands of other moving parts that make Norwich, Norwich). 

No one else will care about any of this the way we should. We must stop waiting for someone to step up and, instead, become the someone who does. 
-bill kenny

Thanks for the Pranks

Today, April Fool's is observed around the world and has been with us for the better part of a millennium (Falcon by Ford; to say nothing of Harrison). The origins stretch back to the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, and Canterbury Tales. 

Based on headlines across the globe this week, we've been practicing for today, except no one was aware we were supposed to only be practicing. On every page in every paper and on every screen that flickers are stories that it's reasonable to assume are simply made up, except they aren't. 

It feels like a nightmare at times, from which we should awaken and ask how we are here instead of why. We're even more lost because "if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." And to some extent, that's become the modus operandi. 

Years ago, I abandoned the phrase 'that's the most f*cking stupid thing I've ever heard' because I was saying/thinking it practically non-stop. Today, you can stand the world on its head, and by tomorrow, no one will remember because nothing you did today will seem out of place in a vulgar and venal vale of perdition. 

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. Except now.

-bill kenny

For Pete's Sake

It wasn't a 'hoax,' or a 'nothing-burger, or a 'no big deal.' 

It was a security violation, an exercise in arrogance from people who were/are manifestly unqualified-for-their-positions they hold. The most disquieting aspect of all of this for me is how much and quickly this has become just another day in the Trump White House. 

There are lots of opinions on the WiskiLeaks Houthi Small Group Signal Chat and Cat Rodeo. Most of them are badly mis and uninformed.

As someone who worked in and for the Department of Defense for over forty-three years, we have some serious issues to confront as a nation, and quickly.

IYKYK

SUBJECT: Unauthorized Disclosure by Pete Hegseth via Signal Chat

DATE OF ASSESSMENT: March 26, 2025

REFERENCE GUIDE:

 • Department of Defense Manual 5200.01 Volume 1 (DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1): Outlines protection of classified operational information.

 • 18 U.S. Code § 798: Criminalizes unauthorized disclosure of classified information related to national defense and intelligence activities.

 1. CLASSIFICATION VIOLATIONS ANALYSIS:

A. Hegseth Text: “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(a): “Information shall be classified if it pertains to military plans, weapons systems, or operations.”

Explanation: Mentioning the precise confirmation by CENTCOM directly exposes real-time military decision-making processes. This disclosure significantly compromises the security of operational timing, enabling adversaries to anticipate and counter U.S. military actions.

B. Hegseth Text: “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”

Violation Reference: DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, Enclosure 3: “Specific timelines of military operational deployment and weapon system engagement are classified to protect operational effectiveness.”

Explanation: Mentioning F-18s explicitly reveals precise aircraft types and exact launch schedules, thereby providing adversaries essential information needed to prepare defenses or evade U.S. military strikes, critically undermining operational security.

C. Hegseth Text: “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s))”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(c): “Information related to intelligence activities, intelligence sources, or methods must be protected from unauthorized disclosure.”

Explanation: Revealing specific details about the target’s known location and mentioning the deployment of MQ-9 strike drones exposes critical intelligence gathering and targeting methods. This jeopardizes sensitive intelligence capabilities and sources.

D. Hegseth Text: “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”

Violation Reference: DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, Enclosure 3: “Detailed operational sequences including specific timing for follow-up military actions are considered classified.”

Explanation: Mentioning additional F-18 strike packages and their precise launch times discloses classified tactical sequences, providing adversaries with clear operational patterns that can be exploited strategically to counter or mitigate U.S. strikes.

E. Hegseth Text: “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(g): “Classify information revealing vulnerabilities or specific capabilities of military systems, installations, or infrastructures.”

Explanation: Disclosing the exact moment when drone bombs will definitely drop explicitly reveals critical operational capabilities, timelines, and vulnerabilities, enabling adversaries to prepare countermeasures and potentially neutralize strike effectiveness.

F. Hegseth Text: “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”

Violation Reference: DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, Enclosure 3: “Deployment details of strategic weapon systems, including cruise missiles, are classified.”

Explanation: Announcing the precise timing and use of strategic Tomahawk missiles from sea-based platforms explicitly reveals classified strategic assets and operational timelines. Such information significantly undermines mission security and operational surprise.

G. Hegseth Text: “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”

Violation Reference: EO 13526, Section 1.4(a): “Military plans, operational schedules, and subsequent actions are classified.”

Explanation: Mentioning the existence of additional classified operational details explicitly acknowledges further strategic planning. This information allows adversaries to anticipate further classified activities, thereby enhancing their defensive posture.

H. Hegseth Text: “We are currently clean on OPSEC”

Explanation: This statement falsely claims compliance with operational security despite evident breaches, indicating either misunderstanding or intentional misrepresentation of actual security posture.

I. Hegseth Text: “Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Explanation: Non-sensitive statement expressing support; no violation.

 2. CONCLUSION AND DETAILED ARGUMENT:

The detailed disclosure by Pete Hegseth constitutes classified war plans due to explicit revelations of operational timings, aircraft types, targeting intelligence, weapon system deployments, and strategic sequencing. Each element directly aligns with categories protected by EO 13526 and DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, designed specifically to prevent enemy anticipation and operational compromise. The comprehensive nature of these disclosures significantly threatens mission integrity, operational surprise, and national security.

 3. RECOMMENDATIONS:

Immediate investigation, comprehensive training, and potential legal accountability should be pursued under the guidelines of EO 13526, DoDM 5200.01 Vol. 1, and 18 U.S. Code § 798.
-bill kenny

Tuning Up.....

We are about to enter everyone's least favorite time of the year (and NOT coincidentally why we elect a City Council every two years): the creation of the City of Norwich Annual Budget. The only numbers higher than the ones in any proposed budget usually are the blood pressure readings of so many of our residents and homeowners when they see the budget's impact on their property taxes.

For years I attended all the Department hearings that are scheduled so that the City Council members have some idea as to what tax dollars buy and what they are worth in terms of goods and services. 

Far too often, I was one of about four folks who showed up in chambers to watch the presentations to the Council. Now, I can view them all from the comfort of my own home via the city's website. Here's the schedule for this year's and they're starting sooner than you might think.   

However, and I know this because I've watched this movie FOR DECADES, no one pays any attention to the presentations that the City Manager, Mayor, and City Council use to develop a budget. Instead, they wait until the first public hearing on the proposed budget and howl loud and long, making up in volume for what they lack in knowledge and understanding.

Maybe, just maybe, I can persuade you to try something a little different this time around? Here goes: Not a cheat sheet, not a magic wand, but a serious read that will help make you better informed as a shareholder in this 160-million-dollar enterprise we call Norwich.

Get comfortable with Sustainability, Flexibility, and Vulnerability.
Without understanding the relationship of all three to one another, all we're going to do again this budget season is 'stab it with our steely knives but we just can't kill the beast.'  Are you ready? Here goes nothing, or hopefully, something.
-bill kenny

 

When It Comes to Blame

One of my favorite expressions is "He who abandons a sinking ship that doesn't sink, needs to be a very good swimmer." Or, at least, look presentable in a pair of Speed-O's and a bathing cap. 

I'm also fond of citing The Six Phases of a Project: Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Panic, Search for the Guilty, Punishment of the Innocent, and Award/Honors for the Non-Participants. We use this model of dynamic interaction every day in our interpersonal relationships (how quickly do couples go from 'we're thrilled we're having a baby' to 's/he forced me into this child' all the way to how the child, once born, is treated within the family).

Whatever we do for a living and wherever we do it, the same pattern holds true. We all cheered Digby when he volunteered to lead the team that would turn peanut oil into jet fuel, but once it was demonstrated that it absolutely, positively couldn't be done, all we could do was shake our heads and roll our eyes when Digby's name was mentioned ('I coulda told ya...').

Look to our nation's capital if you want to see a collection of people dedicated to the proposition that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people should go chase itself, Lincoln be damned. 

But, if you watch only one minute of C-Span it'll prove my point, all of them are so publicly polite to one another while privately being disagreeable in the most egregious way imaginable. Thank goodness for The Loyal Opposition and My Distinguished Opponent. Who else would we, currently in charge, blame for all manners of awfulness and illness if we didn't have The Other Guys and Gals?

All, or nearly all, of the 'issues' and 'hot buttons' that have driven our national discourse over the last decade and longer, are still with us like Banquo's Ghost and have actually gained a few pounds and some fellow travelers. We have more wars, less money, more anger, and fewer reasons to be hopeful (to say nothing of frying cheaper eggs) than at any point in my almost seventy-three years here on The Big Blue Marble (I'm not suggesting cause and effect).

I'm sad and more than a little angry not so much that we seem to have lost our way (an unoriginal thought we've often had throughout our history as a nation), but that we're not inclined to want to find our way back to who we are. We've decided, it seems to me, to settle instead of to continue to strive to succeed. It's as if we got to the Mississippi and said to one another, 'y'know, California and The West are fine ideas, but who really needs 'em?'

We don't even hear the cognitive dissonance as the gap between what we say and what we do grows wider. Vox Populi has been replaced with STFU and e pluribus unum is now rendered as nolo contendere and is usually part of a plea bargain for time served coupled with a weepy-eyed televised apology where we 'accept 'full responsibility' whatever the f*ck that means.

If our children ever find out what we allowed to their dreams, they'll murder us in our beds and they'll be right but everything will still be wrong. You can break things only so often and only so badly before they cannot be made whole again. We may be nearing that moment, Armageddon, End Times, Oops!, whatever it's to be called.

But cheer up! We won't have to worry about what the day after that is called because we will not be here to experience it. Instead, we'll blame somebody (just not ourselves) because that's how we're wired.
-bill kenny

That Familiar Feeling

We're fond of history around here and preparations are already underway by the Norwich Historical Society, to celebrate and commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the Founding of the United States, but I think we're at risk of allowing who we once were to prevent us from becoming who we need to be. 

I've lived here in Norwich for over three decades ('feels a LOT longer,' say many of my neighbors), which, for many people I meet, is no more than an eye blink, or so it seems. I've heard a lot of those 'back in the day' stories about Franklin Square, the sea captains who built houses on Laurel Hill, the Sears and Roebuck store that was downtown, and Thursday nights so hectic in the center of The Rose City that small children clung tightly to a parent's hand lest they find themselves in the street and lost in the throng.

These stories, if you will, always have a sepia tinge to them, at least to me, and a soft focus in terms of detail. They make me smile because they always bring a smile to the face of the person telling me the tale. And then, of course, we end up in the present day and no one seems to know what happened, how, or why to Norwich. 

Apparently, people woke up, and downtown was a ghost town; the stores were all gone and so, too, were the people who shopped in them. Might I suggest that evolution and growth involve progress and planning; one of which is relentless and inexorable and the other conspicuous in its absence.

My Norwich history starts (and stays) a little more black and white, with extreme contrast and hard shadows, coming over the Laurel Hill Bridge into a downtown with plywood for windows and not a soul on the sidewalks in the middle of October of 1991. 

That was the year of the petition drives at the local supermarkets to 'Keep the Boat Afloat' as Electric Boat faced massive layoffs after the Seawolf submarine construction cutbacks. The same region that had no plan for the post-World War II migration of the textile mills to the Deep South had no clue what to do with the Peace Dividend either. 

And three-plus-decades later, what are we still discussing? The same old, same old.
We all realize, or should, that Eisenhower isn't still the President and that your father's advice about never paying more than $15,000 for a house without a basement won't even get you a good used car but we're hobbled by our past, even when we weren't here to live it or remember it. Instead of it being a step on the ladder to tomorrow, it's a hurdle on the steeple chase we've made of our lives.

Experience is what we get when we don't get what we want. By now, in terms of rebuilding and redeveloping Norwich, we should have all the experience anyone could ever need but we still dally and refuse to take the situation in which we find ourselves (and which we created) seriously. We think offering excuses and playing the blame game is some kind of a solution. Nope, not even close

Let's be honest with ourselves: Like (too) many of our neighbors, Norwich doesn't suffer from Future Shock. We are smothered by Present Shock and the fear of taking action and owning the consequences of that action. Maybe tomorrow will be better we sigh. Unless and until it's not, then still we sit and wait because if we do nothing, we can't do anything wrong. 

Nothing ever happens if we don't make it happen. Silence is NOT agreement and we've been too quiet for too long.

-bill kenny

Clean Slate (or Nearly)

Today is very nearly Christmas for some of us, though hopefully without snow in the outdoor venues. 

Long-awaited, eagerly-anticipated, sometimes despaired about, and very much something worth cheering for: Major League Baseball Opening Day 2025.  

And yeah, I've had the hat for a couple of seasons and break it out for special occasions like today. And no, I still don't like the Designated Hitter rule for the National League (or the American League, either, to be honest), and don't get me started on the Designated Runner. I understand that 'you can't have everything' but I'm unclear why not.

And, returning to the hat, my wife thinks I might need to have it surgically removed.
She could be right. Play ball!
-bill kenny

The Struggle Is Real

I'm working on developing a better frame of mind to handle what my doctors call my "comorbidities." No matter which healthcare provider I visit I can't swing a cat and not hit a one of those (except if I went to a veterinarian; no cats were injured in the creation of this figure of speech). Progress is slow and prospects for improvement are negligible at best.

Some days are more of a struggle than others.
This already feels like one, left over from yesterday. 

I think the silver lining in the personal black cloud I'm carrying around like Joe Btfsplk is, sadly, I see so many others around me silently struggling as well. Maybe there's something to Carlisle's Haul after all.
-bill kenny

Will, William, and Billy

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps In this petty pace from day to day." Ah yes, the sound and fury of Macbeth. Sorry, not exactly.

On this date, fifty years ago, I awoke before daylight and in one of our last joint moments on this planet, was a passenger as my father drove me to the railroad station in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I boarded a train that (eventually) stopped in Newark where I disembarked and made my way to the Military Entrance Processing Station.

In a cavernously large room with hundreds of other-still-only-half-awake (mostly) young men, I raised my right hand and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The final results aren't yet tabulated, but with the benefit of hindsight (so far) it seems I did okay with foreign but far less than that with domestic.

After enlisting, we were separated by service, and a dozen or so of us were bussed to Newark Airport where we flew to San Antonio, Texas, and met by people wearing Smokey the Bear hats, and Air Force uniforms who did nothing but yell from the time our feet touched the tarmac until they had tucked us into our bunks in our barracks at Lackland Air Force Base. Welcome to BMT, Basic Military Training..  

The following morning we traded our clothes for a wardrobe larger than anything I'd ever owned (or wanted) and received a shearing haircut that reminded me of little else except the pictures of inmates in prisoner-of-war camps and asylums. 

For the next few weeks that felt at times like an eternity, we walked nowhere because we marched in unison (or so it seemed) everywhere. We learned how to make our bunks so that a quarter would bounce off the blanket (take that, Ivan!), how to pick up cigarette butts with our fingers, referred to as 'police call,' to never, ever put our hands in our pockets at any time and to truly believe "Whiskey No Good, PT so good." 

When BMT concluded, I was shipped to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana, for a summer in the Defense Information School that did nothing to prepare me for an assignment north of the Arctic Circle at Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) Sondrestrom, Greenland. From there, I headed south and east to Frankfurt am Main in what was then West Germany and the headquarters of the American Forces Network, Europe (AFN-E).

I decided in September of 1983 to not be greedy and to let someone else serve their country and remained in Germany with my wife and our still infant son, to be joined some years later by a daughter as I worked in Frankfurt, then Schwetzengen and then for the Aerospace Audiovisual Service (Combat Camera) at Rhein-Main Air Base. 

As part of the overhead that NATO trimmed after winning the Cold War, I was relocated (with my family as collateral damage) to, of all places, Connecticut (but not the Gold Coast part but the part more resembling the Jersey Pines) and a civilian position as the public information officer for the US Navy's Submarine Force training command. 

On my first day, I was stopped by what I learned later was a Commander (all the rank insignia looked the same to me at the time) exiting the Commanding Officer's Department Head meeting (I was the special in special assistant as it turned out) who wanted to know where my uniform was.

He seemed surprised I didn't have one and that I was a civilian ('like my wife?' he offered). He asked what my job was. I told him to explain people who look like you to people who look like me. He was less than impressed, a reaction I grew inured to in the course of the over a quarter of a century I worked there until retiring in July 2018. 

I've read a lot about the road not taken, and about the other lives, but for our choices, we could or should have led. I leave all that to those with big brains. For me, today is the next day in the only life I will ever know. Carpe Diem et adducite proximos quinquagintaet vel tristitia vel euphoria!
-bill kenny   

The Stranger Meets The Flies

Our local supermarket, feeling the competitive pressure of an Arkansas retail chain in a business where profit margins often disappear, has gone to a form of robo-shopping that I find fascinating. We have a bar-coded rewards card we sweep across a reader/scanner that releases a handheld device tied to our card. 

You wander the aisles, grab stuff you want, scan it, and put it in bags (you should bring your own recyclable bags). When you're done shopping, you head to a checkout and scan one final bar code that tells your handheld sidekick you're past tense, and it transfers your order to the register with the total amount in the display. You pay for your order and out the door you go.

I feel so brave new worldish every time I do it, assuming I can get it to work. I don't have performance anxiety, but my rewards card does. I can be a little slow in getting the master scanner to release into my care one of the devices and as other shoppers start to pile up behind me, I have to do my best Coolhand Luke impersonation to compensate for the failure to communicate.

This whole process reminds me of Tom Sawyer getting people to paint his fence for him. It's not that the groceries cost less if we do all the heavy lifting, they don't. But this innovation isn't designed to make our lives easier. 

Once upon a time, there were actual employees who took the items a colleague was ringing up, placed them in bags (eggs and loaves of bread on the bottom, canned goods and automotive supplies on top of them), and placed those bags in your shopping cart and, if asked, would help you get that cart to your mode of transportation and then back to your abode where the unloading and putting away were your job.

Here in the new Now, we've still got cashiers, baggers, courtesy desk employees, the whole kit, and caboodle, who stand around as we wander the store with what look like Star Trek weapons at the ready. All we need are the communicators over our left breast pockets. And pointy ears, I suppose (check aisle four behind the breath fresheners).

The only part we're missing, but it's probably coming soon, are announcements over the store public address system that the Metamucil truck has arrived at loading dock two and twenty-of-those-of-us-formerly-known-as-customers-but-now-called-morons, are needed to unload it, and to stock the shelves in aisle eleven. 

Don't laugh-that day is dawning. We'll end up playing rock, paper, scissors to decide who's unloading the home pregnancy tests (they go at the header in aisle twelve beside the KY jelly display; and no, the KY doesn't go on the shelf with the marmalade).

The other day, underscoring the perfect beast isn't quite yet where the Grocer in Charge would like it, I grabbed and scanned (in one motion; I've gotten quite proficient at this) a jar of lightly salted (with sea salt, no less) dry-roasted peanuts but, instead of a little peeps and a small green light, I got an electronic squonk and a near zen message in the device display: "The item you have scanned does not exist within your order." Oh? Seems more Camus than Sartre.
-bill kenny 

Miles of Smiles

I blew it and I apologize. 

Earlier last week was International Happiness Day; technically, its official name is International Day of Happiness. 

Since I am one of the most relentlessly cheerful people on the planet you might assume I'd have known this, and yet where we are. You may not be surprised that nations are ranked by their degree of happiness and despite my presence, we (the country partially around the Gulf of America) finished 24th. 

Let that sink in. Twenty-fourth. This is our lowest rating (yet).  

So, who finished first? Read it and weep, as incongruous as that sounds.
-bill kenny

Cool Cherry Cream....

I'm typing as fast as I can and hope that spell check saves me from the ignominy of reading like a Hottentot at a Hootenanny. It's my own fault really. I like to live on the edge, walk on the wild side, sail too close to the wind, hang on by just a thread, and as many other cliches and bromides as I can get on a 24-hour loan from Billy Bob's Emporium of Previously Used Sentence Components located in Del Rio, Texas.

I went to make myself a little pick-me-up and decided to skip the Java jive and the tea leaves and made a cup of chicken bouillon from those cubes that are so dense I've always suspected they are made from the matter that comprises a black hole in space. 

I especially like how there's always one piece of the foil wrap you cannot get off until you're reduced to trying to scrape it off with a fingernail and then, uh-oh, there's bouillon fragments under the nail. Do NOT put that fingertip in your mouth. Ever. If you have to ask why, it's too late.

So here I am, struggling with eight fingers (the foil was hard to get off), putting the cube container back in the pantry, and checking out the label (thank goodness for that Literacy Volunteer!). There's disquieting news starting on the front that tells me there's chicken 'with other natural flavors'. I wish we were more forthcoming with details on that. 

And what about the LARGE yellow letters that brag NO MSG ADDED ('contains naturally occurring glutamates' Huh?) or the nutritional information that ONE cube provides 45% of your daily sodium intake. Let the Morton Salt girl put that in her umbrella and smoke it.

And then atop the screw cap, I saw the fateful advisory, 'Best by August 2017'. I'm lousy at math (and English, as we both know) but I knew there was trouble. The light grew dim and my life started flashing before my eyes. It's been so unremarkable, mine was replaced by the Jimmy Dugan Story and since that's so short, the second reel was the Song of Bernadette (Peters, which was disconcerting especially the excised dance from Barney's Great Adventure).

And then, just before the darkness enveloped me, I tried to figure out how anyone, even the manufacturer (yeah, Hormel, I'm talkin' 'bout you) would distinguish between good, better, or best in chicken bouillon cubes. Turns out it was getting dark because I was dozing, not because the mortal coil was assuming the shuffle-off position. Talk about relief! Of course, I'm still a little peckish. Perhaps a slice of fruit cake will hit the spot.
-bill kenny

Two Legs Bad

Not sure whether it was sudden, like a meteor hitting the planet, or incremental, like ice covering the globe but we are, most recently, since the November 2024 election, most definitely in the Era of the White Alpha Male. 

When we're deporting brown-skinned people without due process (regardless of their immigration status, due process is accorded to them under the US Constitution) while reimporting Andrew Tate and his brother from Romania, it has a lot more to do with white, alpha males than keeping the streets safe. 

But it's more than just a tech bros over hoes mindset. Of course, it comes with a box of rules.

Owned by pigs. Surprised, right? Yeah, me neither.
-bill kenny

No Winter Lasts Forever

Today's the day.

Seize it.
-bill kenny

No Ordinary Joe

I offer a variation of this every year on this date. So if you've read it before, you are either a glutton for punishment by making a repeat visit to this space or are REALLY unlucky at reincarnation. 

Today is Saint Joseph's Day, the feast of the husband of Mary (Mother of God) and (sort of) Jesus's stepdad. I always imagine a dinner-table exchange between the Son of Man (as a child) and Joseph where he says, "Then go ahead and ask your 'real dad' for a new bike. Let's see what happens." And then The Curia or the Legion of Decency show up at my house and slap the cuffs on.

As a grade-school child, I missed the subtlety that went into the talk-around as the Sisters of Charity explained 'the Annunciation', and when I got older, and it smacked me right between the eyes, I admired even more the cool, collected response Joseph seemed to have had to all of that. 

Today, Saint Joseph's Day, is when the swallows come back to Capistrano. I love the story as much now in my seventies as I did hearing it as a child. I find it reassuring, and while my belief in a Divine Being fluctuates wildly, I hope (in a faint-hearted, wimpy sort of way) that Paley is right about the Great Watchmaker.

I have known two very dear people who shared Saint Joseph's Day as their birthday. They are both from long ago, at the time when I knew everything (and everything better) when I worked for American Forces (Europe) Network and Bob was my first (and very best) boss in Radio Command Information (together with Sara, Marge, Norm and Brian) while Gisela was the record librarian of the most amazing (and amazingly organized) collection of vinyl in the world.

Bob was married to 'local color' as I was to be as well (GIs who married citizens from the country in which they were stationed; usually guys marrying women but NOT always). He and his wife, Erika, had no children but loved as if she were one, a stray dog they took in and kept all its life, Sandy. 

Erika and Sandy passed away pretty close to one another, leaving a hole in Bob's heart that never healed, filled with a pain of which he never spoke. Bob himself passed some years ago, and I see him at this very moment in my mind's eye in a beaten beige long coat with a beret he wore in every kind of weather.

Gisela was my translator when the letter of permission from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where Sigrid and I hoped to marry) arrived, and I raced frantically from office to office in the building trying to find someone to be my eyes (I was illiterate auf Deutsch and vowed to never be that guy again). 

Gisela put her glasses on near the edge of her nose and would read a line and then look over the tops to give me the English translation. I still recall the shine in her eyes and her warm smile as she reached the conclusion granting us permission, and she clasped both of my shoulders and hugged me in congratulations.

I remember both of them today, maybe more so than Saint Joseph, perhaps because I don't know how many others remember them, and I'm sad when I think about what happens to you when the last person on earth to know you dies. 

So, today, I tell a little of the story of their lives, as I knew them, to remind me to celebrate their lives and hope the day comes when we can laugh together about all of that and so much more.

Happy Birthday, Bob und Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Gisela.
-bill kenny