Pigskin Ponderings

No one has asked me to do this, but it's important someone makes the effort. I wish to apologize for all the college football games on television since shortly after the last of the Thanksgiving meal leftovers were consumed. 

I have been assured by people who know how to read TV Guide and other trade publications that as of Monday night, we have finally reached the end of this season's broadcast schedule (for the next two hours or so). If there's NO game on the tube right now where you live, go outside and look at nature. Someone will be with you shortly. You're welcome.

If you're under the age of forty it may be difficult to believe this, though it's true, at one time there were hardly any 'college football bowl games' and point in fact, they all happened on New Year's Day, went off with a factory-like precision one after the other that reminded many of Fleet Week traffic in a Times Square brothel. Now, the list of colleges NOT playing in 'post-season' bowl games is half again as short as the other way round.

I'm also not happy with the commercialization of the traditional bowls, the Sugar, the Cotton, the Rose Bowl, et al and the way the sponsor's names are worked into the title. I have no memory of a Fiesta Bowl from back when I was a kid and stuff like the Go Daddy Whatever It's Called Bowl would be better off ignored, except, as Dylan noted, money doesn't talk, it swears.

And now, with the miracle of regional television sports networks, you don't even have to have a winning season to be invited to a money generator like the "Depends Adult Protective Underclothing" Bowl in East Squeegum, Arkansas (you think I jest?), featuring the runners-up of the southwestern division of the Mid-Atlantic and Hyperactive Conference, meeting again for the first time, their traditional rivals from the Dumpster Division of the Southwestern Mid-American and Parts of Rhode Island Association.

My favorite part of many of these telecasts is admiring the creative ways the telecast's technical director and the camera operators develop to NOT show the forty-seven thousand empty seats in a fifty-one thousand seat arena because neither of the teams on the field are located in the same time zone as the facility.

Relentless optimist that I am, and believing in convergence of technologies as I do, we're only years away from being able to stage any athletic contest at whatever level you choose. As an example, the Wabash University Rabid Wombats could square against the Vatican Curia Cardinals in competitive mumblety-peg, without any actual human involvement of any kind, on your Wii, Xbox, or PlayStation.

Perhaps you'd like to see Leonidas take on Patton's Fifteenth Army, two out of three falls on the Plain of Jars? Brought to you by the folks in your hometown who bottle Coca-Cola! Coming right up! 

Give us a chance to finish loading the graphics packages and then hit reset.
We be jammin' now. Ba na na na...Hey!
-bill kenny

Resting Not Sleeping

I've been getting ambushed by our weather for weeks and months now and it's sort of my own fault. Actually, hand on my heart it's entirely my own fault. 

So stunned and saddened by the outcome of our November election (seriously, people chose a convicted felon over a woman of color? In Twenty-first Century America?), I've stopped watching TV news and doomscrolling on mainstream news media sites.

I've been assuming I fear correctly, all the people who hated and killed one another before I began my MSM News Cleanse are still at it, with bodies continuing to pile up. I follow German football which is currently on its winter break while most US professional sports are flat beer in terms of my interest. The Hollywood gossip stuff never attracted me so I do not miss what I do not have.

But skipping local weather really has been screwing me up. I have no idea if I should expect rain or snow this time of year or how cold it can get or if we're finally gonna have that rain of frogs I ordered through Amazon. 

One of the things I've learned is that my avoidance of MSM News Media has a name, an actual grown-up name, news sobriety, and that, when applied correctly can help maintain sanity and, pardon my pessimism but if there's one thing we're gonna need for the next years, aside from a tremendous sense of humor, it will be sanity. 

Here's what I'm talking about.

But considering the number of times I've been caught without an umbrella or with a sweater when a lined jacket would have been better I'm thinking my continuing total abstinence will come to an end, more likely sooner rather than later. 

I think I'll re-immerse myself by starting with the newspaper classifieds and legal notices. See you in the funny pages.
-bill kenny

"Who Controls the Past Controls the Future"

In the spirit of the true meaning of today, the Feast of the Epiphany, for those who observe and for those who do not, let me become yet another 'woke' thorn in the side of the Yee-Hawdists and Meal Team Six assholes who, four years ago defiled our nation's Capitol and said the quiet part of 'f*ck you' out loud to our American Democracy.

Courtesy of the Texas Tribune

You aren't patriots. You aren't freedom fighters. You aren't misunderstood or misguided. You most definitely are not political prisoners or hostages. 

You are suckers who got bamboozled by not only the worst person to ever be elected (twice) to the office of the President of the United States but is also in the Bottom Twenty of all humans since we first crawled from the primordial ooze.  

Those were the days when this platform had Civic Integrity.

Lest you forget, no worries; I won't, ever. And good news! I have home movies!
-bill kenny

A Small Sprig of Time

It's the first Sunday of the New Year. Still has that just-baked aroma. I'm glad I was born a human since I lack any special skills or abilities that would have enabled me to survive anywhere near my current age as any other life form on this planet. 

'Look, Livingston! It's a ring-tailed bandicoot trying to access blogger.com!' Or not. And thus ends my homage to H. h. Munro (I hope it has earned your seal of approval).

No other species divides the rotation of the earth around the sun in quite the rigid and unyielding demarcations we create-and let's be honest here, we are very good at it. Because we wind up with extra hours and fractions of time that accumulate as merrily we roll along, every four years we have a leap year, though this isn't one of those. 

I've never personally known anyone born on the Leap Day (if that's what February 29 is called) but I've read enough stories about the birthday celebrations and such to be happy that my mother had the good sense to wait until Spring to have me.

Meanwhile, it's a new calendar page, but the challenges and opportunities look very familiar, don't they? We need to resolve (assuming you didn't make any resolutions (I always resolve to NOT keep any I might make and therein lies the contradiction) if such a formality is, indeed, required, to move from the 'talking about a problem' to 'finding a solution' (use of the indefinite article is deliberate there). 

I'm always disquieted by folks who tell me they have found 'the' way rather than 'a' way. (Not that I don't admire their confidence; I just don't share it. See: YMMV.)

My concern in this New Year, much like in the one just passed (and many of those before that), is that we get distracted while on the way to addressing a situation, and end up accepting less than our best effort as a solution, and leave undone something we meant to do. 

And then at the end of the day, or the end of a life, we don't reflect on where we started and how we got there, but rather turn the page and begin again oblivious that we've lost a day, but are no wiser or better for its passing.
-bill kenny

Plotting a Final Return

I've reached an age where buying green bananas is an act of supreme optimism. And if my age weren't an issue my litany of medical maladies probably would be. 

In seven-plus decades I've managed to fall and stay in love and help raise two now-adult children (who themselves found life partners) who mean the world to me. When I was a kid I didn't know anyone my age now, and couldn't even imagine how that happened. 

Some of my siblings can still remember my asking our Mom if she had been around for the 'War between the Blues and Greys' (Hey, I was a Civil War buff, take it easy on me). 

I've made fitful stabs in recent years at writing a will or at least a list of Last Wishes. It just sounds so final without any chance of a solitary 'but wait there's more!' but I'll concede, as one of my favorite James McMurtry songs offers. 'there's more in the mirror than there is up ahead.'

I'm selfish (and cowardly) enough to hope I die before my wife because I cannot imagine the pain of my life without her in it and I know I would not wish to live a day without her. I haven't done, said, or thought anything my entire life that will be immortalized in stone on a building, in a book, or even a headstone, so this news account caught my eye. 

Lest you misunderstand, I'm not rushing towards an exit, just holding myself in readiness or as close as I get to that these days.
-bill kenny

Burnt Offerings

The new year has started; the race has begun yet again. What do you have as a balance when you draw the line under the Year 2024? A foggy memory or two of happy times and/or how bad things had been with the always-present hope/belief that the coming year would be better. Yeah. How did that work out?

At some point in the future, some of us may see these as the Good Old Days. At the moment, that seems pretty far-fetched to me. Doesn't it feel like we've been running in place in a bowl of oatmeal? We're not even leaving a hole with each footfall, It just fills in as quickly as we lift our heel up and out to place it forward again.

I should apologize if I'm harshing your buzz but I just want to make sure all of us calculate the total cost of a lifestyle that, for us in recent years may have seemed to grow harder, but is still the desire and dream of many people all around the world. And don't think for a minute whatever we've paid is too much because it isn't, but if we're alive to write this and read it, we've gotten off light.

We began as a place of refuge in locales as diverse as Virginia and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, becoming thirteen settlements hugging the Atlantic Coast. It took us a century, and more, to cross the Mississippi, reach the Pacific Northwest, the Great Southwest, the coast of California, and to both the Aleutian and the Hawaiian Islands. 

We fought natives, the British, one another, and too many others as we reinvented ourselves to reflect people of every race, color, and creed. It wasn't easy and was often less than popular but it was always the right thing to do.

Around the world today and every day, we have the flower of a generation, the crown of creation, whatever turn of phrase you come up with to make yourself feel good about people whose reports of service take up seconds a night on the evening news squared off against as implacable a foe as this nation has faced in its history, and many of us don't know, don't care and/or don't want to know. In case, you thought their sacrifice was forgotten because it seemed to be hidden, it wasn't. You, too are a witness.

No one steps into the same river twice as you and the river have both changed. For all whose final act of 2024 was the forfeiture of their lives in defense of ours, let's promise one another to all do better, together, here in this brave new year.

-bill kenny

We're Strange Allies

I first offered what follows fifteen years ago when I thought I was smart. I wasn't and I'm still not, but the good news is, I am consistent. At least that's what I tell myself. Here goes, again:

Barely a step into this Next Year, rather than rue and regret what has been, perhaps we might mentally better prepare for what is to come (assuming we believe ourselves to have some control over what is to come). I've met those who see themselves as hostages of Cruel Fate or an Indifferent Deity as if we had been plopped down on this orb and abandoned to our own devices.

I'm not sure I can articulate specifically or enumerate to any detail, but I respectfully disagree. Yes, we are each our own Captains, lashed to the mast of the ship that is our life, alone in an ocean of souls, but it's a big ocean and we've all found ourselves here somehow and, at least for me, coincidence isn't really going to ever explain the how much less the why.

Thornton Wilder's The Bridge Of San Luis Rey may have been his contemplation on the value of his own life, speculation that there's a land of the living and a land of the dead, and his belief (or hope) that the bridge between them is love. 

To his own question, would his death matter to God (Wilder was a veteran of World War I, with carnage and brutality never seen in the history of our species, who became in spirit, if not in fact, part of The Lost Generation), he was willing to ask the complementary question: how do we make our lives have a meaning beyond our own lifetimes?

Not the cheeriest of questions to ponder while the old year's days creep slowly to their appointed end and we embrace the next with the same wild-eyed frenzy we did the last, and look at how that turned out. And if the question disquiets you, what of the answer? "Between the idea and the reality. Between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow."

In New England, and across the United States, we are surrounded by memorials in stone, from monuments to buildings, dedicated to the selfless sacrifice of all those who have preceded us--who have set the bar, so to speak, for the rest of us to clear, each in her and his own way. 

Not all of us can be a general, but all of us can be generous. Not every one of us will be President, but each of us can be present when a helping hand is needed, be it next door, around the block, or halfway across the world. 

We each have the power to save the world, at least the small plot on which each of us stands. Where can we be this time next year if we strive to be great at this time this year? We have a year to work on the answer, let's begin.

-bill kenny

And Off We Go!!!

Welcome to 2025. Still has that 'New Year' smell to it and everything! Nothing like the changing of the year to afford you a moment for introspection and to look back and look forward, practically in the same motion. 

We here in Norwich, Connecticut, are good at seeing the half-empty glass so let's celebrate the contents of what every half-full glass may hold.

We generated a lot of heat here in The Rose City these last twelve months. How much light was created from all the flying sparks remains to be seen but we've started to walk the walk, albeit with halting steps.

For the villages that make up Norwich, from Laurel Hill to Occum, or Taftville to Bean Hill and all points in between, we may have finally agreed the City of Norwich looks to the Chelsea District the way the fingers on the hand look to the thumb. Whether or not this is as good or as important as we believe it is, has yet to be proved, but that's something we should be doing in 2025.

Aerial View of Norwich, 1912-Library of Congress

The best thing about unsolicited advice is there's no obligation to take it, so do as you wish with what follows. The more immediately and clearly a vision for downtown redevelopment is DEFINED (by those elected and selected to do so), the more effectively it can be REFINED into a plan with measurable goals and recognizable milestones by those city agencies and private citizens who are building the Next Norwich.

As we demonstrated so often previously, we can continue to miss what we do not have, or we can choose to make the best of what we do have and create a blueprint for downtown economic development that enables interested businesses and others across the private sector to partner with city agencies and enhance the quality (and quantity) of life in the Chelsea District for the benefit of all residents.

Of course, we can also quarrel and quibble about who's driving and who's reading the map while we all take turns honking the horn (myself most especially included) until we've exhausted public enthusiasm (and patience) about redevelopment efforts, and change nothing anywhere for anyone, despite our best intentions. 

We, alone, must decide and then live with the consequences of our decision.

Happy 2025 and Let the Day Begin finally.

-bill kenny