Ones and Zeros

I was raised to 'get along by going along,' though my younger siblings have excellent reasons, and the history to support them, to be dubious of that claim. 

It's more than how we pronounce tomato or potato; it's fundamental and integral with how some nearly eight billion of us here on the Ant Farm with cellphones and briefcases can co-exist with one another. 

Right up until we don't and someone claims the tomato is a deep state banana.  

I have a long-ago (almost fifty years) former colleague (I would have told you we got along very well, and if you've met me, you know how close to sainthood he most likely is) whose politics and mine are, for the most part, on two very different paths. 

At some point in our shared past on Facebook, I wound up in a group chat (I suspect) he created. He shares a variety of tidbits each of us encounters along the Internet, ranging from old Red Skelton clips, through Dean Martin Roast outtakes, to classic and nearly forgotten singers and songs, all of which I enjoy and appreciate.

Other stuff, not so much. It's not as in do you say 'partly cloudy,' or 'partly sunny?' Not when the other person says 'snowstorm' and it's ninety degrees. That's where my whole smile and nod coping mechanism, 'let's agree to disagree,' falls apart, and I'm faced with either staying silent or being perceived as unpleasant. 

The latter, contrary to common belief, is NOT my default, though I will concede the former is out of character. So when this was shared: 

Nope, and not even close.

The posting has a tangled and somewhat tortured pedigree. It came from the Kayleigh McEnany Fan Club Facebook Page (and the comments/reactions convinced me I would do well to steer clear of all involved, so I shall.).

Kayleigh, you might recall, was the veracity-impaired last Press Secretary of the FIRST Donald Trump presidency. Based on her FB postings, old habits are hard to break. But wait, there's more! 

What Kayleigh did (I'm guessing) was repost Representative Mike Collins' posting of an item from the Washington Free Beacon, which in terms of bias and reliability makes Der Stürmer look like The New York Times. 

I'm still trying to imagine how Gawd could hate the people of Georgia so much as to make Mike AND Marjorie Trailerpark Greed two of their congressional representatives. I think a rain of frogs would suffice (and their legs taste like chicken!).

We're not talking shades of grey here or a nuanced truth. Factually, the posting is garbage, but it's already been swept out into the ocean/cesspool that is our social media lives. You can only have a disagreement and/or, by extension, an agreement when you have a shared reference and reality, so in this case, the point is moot. 

I grew up/old in a nation where opinions were shaped by facts rather than facts shaped by opinions, and where truth is situational rather than a constant.
-bill kenny. 

Channeling Fulton J. Sheen

As a child, I hated Ash Wednesday, most especially all the mummery of it. The burning of the palm from Palm Sunday creates the ashes the priest places on your forehead in the sign of the cross with his thumb and forefinger, 'remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shall return.'
Thanks, Father. You have a nice day now, too.

As I grew into an adult (got older; maturation was never really a result) it was interesting to see who among us were Catholic based on the number of foreheads with ashes at work and beyond. All I can ever think of when marveling at those foreheads is Dr. Seuss and his Sneetches.

What I really remember is Gary J from beyond where we lived on Bloomfield Avenue, down Appleman near Castleton in Franklin Township, New Jersey. We were all kids playing ball out in the street, and he was (I think) just about the only kid with a clean forehead. I knew, instinctively, this meant he wasn't a Catholic.

In street baseball, you only need two outfielders (unless we ever got to play on the Turnpike at Exit Ten, where it's six lanes wide; that would be sweet!). Standing out there alongside me, he had (too many) questions about those ashes and our foreheads, and I certainly didn't have answers; what was I, the Pope?

Gary didn't understand the significance, the timing, or the whole idea behind Lent and its importance to the kids he hung out with after school. No more than ten myself, I reassured him as best I could and told him to not worry about any of it because it wasn't all that important.

What I didn't tell him was that since he wasn't a Catholic, he was going to Hell. Not that I'd want to see that shocked and scared look on his face again, but I wish I knew now how to find the certainty and reassurance I felt then. It doesn't need to last forever, just 40 days.
-bill kenny

(Nearly) Losing My Religion

When we were kids, tomorrow was a serious day, Ash Wednesday. Today was the final day before we had to give something up, Shrove Tuesday, though I'm not sure any of us understood what the word meant or even the origins of the term. 

There's an 'eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow it's all over' mentality that I find so Funky Western Civilization, which has little to nothing to do with pancakes, which is what today is always associated with. 

It's been decades since I gave something up for Lent (truth to tell, I failed my faith and gave up Lent but then kept on living) and I've rationalized my failure by telling myself that since I always went back to whatever I gave up (usually something to eat as opposed to a behavior change), I hadn't really changed at all, so surrender cost nothing because it was worth nothing.

And then I look around me, and see where we are and where I am in the midst of all of that and realize I didn't run backwards or stop running at all to be here (nor did any of us) but rather, just ran a step slower, a step less resolute, perhaps a shorter footfall until the distance grew inexorably between where we wanted to be (and knew we had to go) and where we were to end up, so far behind we could no longer see those up ahead.

And when the distance between us was too great to ever fill, we stopped and have forgotten how to start again. This makes tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, more important as a beginning than today can ever be as an end.  

-bill kenny

Thought Ernest Had a Second E....

Helau! (I'll explain below.) Bis dann, abwarten und tee trinken, klar? 

I offered this a long time ago, though 'not long enough,' some might say. 

Pshaw!  At the time, I called it:

Jetzt Wird Es Ernst

Reading some notes from around the world online over the weekend, I realized in Mainz, Germany (and elsewhere) today is Rosenmontag followed by Fastnacht Dienstag. Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, it's Mardi Gras in New Orleans. 

Rosenmontag in Dusseldorf, 2025

There are many variations of an 'eat, drink and be merry' mentality as we rush towards Ash Wednesday. Tradition has it, that the ash placed on your forehead by the priest who reminds you to 'remember man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return' is actually made from burning the palm that remained from the previous year's Palm Sunday (the day that starts Holy Week and marks the triumphant arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem). 

As a loyal son of the Holy Mother Church, I know all the rituals and the words that accompany them. My memory isn't the problem; my heart is, but that's not my point today. 

As kids, and even as adults, we sometimes lose sight of where we might best concentrate on the calendar in terms of whatever you might wish to call spirituality. It's easy to celebrate Christmas and to believe in its importance, and of course, the Birth of the Saviour should more often than not pass the "huh?" test. 

But I think the defining points that made me a Catholic and a Christian (or the other way around, I'm never sure which is a subset of what) are the death of Christ and His Resurrection. 

I'm not sure how we in The West (capitalization? Why Not?) have managed to balance the passion of the Christ, His Crucifixion, Burial, and His Resurrection with pieces of chocolate and the Easter Bunny. I'm not even sure this entry will get reposted in the Cadbury Factory newsletter or be read aloud on Easter Monday in Hershey, Pennsylvania, but that's how I see the world. 

I'm neither Cotton nor Increase Mather, early colonial ministers one of whom purportedly said 'the purpose of life is to prepare us to be dead for a long time.' Talk about harshing your buzz. Maybe that's why you never saw a Pilgrim smile. 
-bill kenny

Lots of Heat...

Suspect you couldn't have missed Friday's Fracas in Dodge City. 

Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (The 'extra Y' does not, as Donald Trump believes, stand for "Why Don't You Surrender?"), whose nation, Ukraine, was invaded by Putin's Russia a skosh over three years ago, dared to complain while being extorted by that well-known tag-team of Lower-Egg-Price-Lovers elected last November to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States. 

What a cur! He had the temerity to show up in the clothes he had been wearing for most of every second of every minute of the last three years while his nation has been fighting for its life against the Russian Bear. 

No one in the history of our country, as the Elegiac Hillbilly found so amusing, has ever disrespected the Oval Office's dress code. Well, maybe not.

What is it that's posted in nearly every store across our great nation? "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Obsequiousness, No Media Opportunity!" Now, I guess we're supposed to add suit to that list.

What I watched (but who can believe their eyes these days?) was a mugging in broad daylight. And shame on those of us who averted our eyes, worked overtime to create alibis masquerading as excuses, and by our silence, consented. 

The people of Ukraine deserve to live in peace in their own country, their entire country, not a rump state, dismembered and being stripped for parts by a rapacious pair of grifters allied with a murderer. 

-bill kenny

  

But Here Comes the Sun

We've had some warmer-than-usual temperatures in my neck of the woods after about a month (or what felt like it) of bone-chilling cold with some snow sprinkled in for good measure. 

The last couple of days have been delightful and I would hope a preview of the Spring-to-Come, but I'm not making book on that by any means.

If, however, the temps dip and the clouds darken, I already have my culprit in my Search for the Guilty picked out. Strolling across the parking of our local Stop & Shop yesterday afternoon as the sun was heading home and the warmth of the day was following it, I, bundled in a not-quite-winter-weight-jacket, passed a woman in shorts and a tank top.

Did I mention we've had some warmish days? Thought so.
There was is/was no reason to taunt Mother Nature by dressing for the weather you want instead of the weather you have. All of us will suffer from your hubris, madame. 

Remember, you read it here first.
-bill kenny

Already?

They say time flies when you're having fun. I don't know about you, but I'm still waiting for the fun to arrive.

Tomorrow starts the THIRD month of this year, and it feels like it's been a decade since we had New Year's Eve.  

So, are we having fun yet?
-bill kenny

Sort of like Lark's Tongue

Spouses in houses (or apartments, or caravans) can be strange. Take it from me because I have a fair amount of experience, especially in the area of the strange. 

My wife and I celebrated our forty-seventh wedding anniversary in October, and every day, because I think we're doing something right, brings revelations and surprises. 

For instance, when we first married, I avoided eating chicken as well as rice. My quibble with chicken was I didn't like to pick it up and eat it with my fingers (I liked to eat my fingers separately; I love telling that joke, can you tell?). For her part, she refused to have anything to do with canned corned beef. Wouldn't go near it with a barge pole- contended, not without reason, that it looked like dog food. 

Eons have passed, and now I regularly chow down on chicken breast AND rice, while my bride frequently joins me in supping on corned beef with fried eggs (due to illegal immigrants on Joe Biden's secret submarine in the Gulf of America, eggs are now a luxury items. Sorry, take it up with Elmo and douche brigade from DOGE).   

However. I draw the line at one of her favorites, SPAM. I cannot abide it or even contemplate consuming it in any form or under any circumstances. She has suggested I am laboring under some alternative facts. Judge for yourself. 

Giving the SPAM filter a work-out

Bloody Vikings!
-bill kenny 

Picture This...

 Words can make things so hard. 

And don't get me started on π.

-bill kenny

The Best to You Each Morning

I start my day with a cuppa coffee. I have one every morning. I am not alone in having coffee, though I will acknowledge that it's not very crowded at my kitchen table, where I choose to drink my cuppa while reading my local newspaper.  

When you pull the thread on that link I shared, you come across some mind-boggling numbers: Americans drink 146 BILLION cups of coffee annually, or about 400 million cups every day with each of us averaging three cups daily. 

Folks who live in Michigan, statistically speaking, drink the most coffee per capita while residents of Utah drink the least. 

For most of us, coffee is like breathing out and breathing in, it's what we do/who we are and we give its consumption little to no thought. But drinking coffee is something that we bipeds have been doing for quite some time, but not nearly as long as many of us thought.

As much as I appreciate the history behind the brewed bean (technically a fruit) I still struggle with the mystery of why coffee never seems to taste as marvelous as its aroma. Think of it as the pursuit of my Caffeinated Holy Grail. 
-bill kenny

"Peace in Our Time"

Today is an anniversary you won't find the Felonious Fecal Stain or the DUI Hire running the Department of Defense observing: three years ago today Russia invaded Ukraine.  

For those red-ballcapped foreign policy experts who arrived late to the game after stints as illegal immigration experts, and infectious illnesses experts, among other things, the only argument the Russian Bear historically has ever understood is force. Any attempt at negotiation is perceived as weakness. 

Negotiating from weakness has historical precedent. Neville Chamberlain traveled to Munich in September of 1938 and look how well that turned out. 
-bill kenny

Joyce Kilmer Would Approve

Many, if not most, of us are familiar with the poem "Trees." 

I've always enjoyed it for, among other reasons, because I grew up old near New Brunswick, New Jersey, the birthplace of its author, Joyce Kilmer.

Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918

Halfway around the world, actually 10,334 miles, in Melbourne, Australia it is possible, and perhaps even therapeutic, to do more than look at trees.

Not performative but more transformative and, I'd argue, a better way for us to get along with some of the life forms with whom we share this planet.
-bill kenny

Your Mother Should Know

I came of age before the Internet. 

"Ask your mother," was our generation's "Google it." And if Mom (or Dad) didn't know what you were asking about, it was probably NOT worth knowing. 

Now, with all the information in the history of mankind just a keystroke away, I'm at a loss as to why there's so much UnKnowledge in the world. UnKnowledge is when you believe something to be true no matter how much factual data to the contrary is presented. 

And, yes, the Trump White House would, in my opinion, be Ground Zero for UnKnowledge; from low-flow toilets killing whales who got cancer from windmills while tracking the fifty million one hundred million condoms the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provided to Hamas. And don't come at me with how those undocumented immigrants are driving up the price of eggs.

Turns out, not even the Gulf of Mexico is safe from UnKnowledge and don't get me started on those hosers from the 51st state, Canada. But even though so much of what is online is wrong, we'll never stop looking stuff up there now.

Sure, we could go to the library and actually research a topic, but in an era (or is it error?) where ignorance is just as good (if not better) than knowledge, why bother? Be like Elmo Muskrat who makes up his own facts, and why not? Who better to support his positions than facts he created himself? I look at that and go 'Why didn't I think of that?' 

It's like Firesign Theatre's "Everything You Know Is Wrong" is actually "America For Dummies." Just watch an hour of anybody's TV news (okay, maybe not One America Network; they're full-on crazy), but anybody else's and you'll feel you're on a Gray Line tour of Hitler's Bunker during the Fall of Berlin while on acid. 

And we're only a month into this version of "Make America Great Again. Again." There's forty-seven (or more if the rumors are true, and why woudn't they be?) more months of this to go. Life in these United States right now is, I suspect, akin to be waterboarded, but with UnKnowledge.  

All this time I thought Knowledge is Power. And now there's an energy shortage.
-bill kenny

And I'm Not Waiting Any Longer

Winter's seemingly endless shades of grey, howling winds, and unfriendly weather make me morose (as opposed to less rose; a little English language joke there for you as a bonus).  

I'm nearing the beginning of my seventy-third year of residency here on The Big Blue Marble. The inexorable march of time and the gallant though losing battle with ailments, illnesses, and injuries finds me more often melancholy than is my wont as my Natal Anniversary approaches.

As a kid, when I had the world figured out, I thought I could be the President of the United States, a baseball player, a cowboy, and an astronaut at the same time. As the years have gone by, the number of people I could be has continued to shrink until it's been reduced to just me, as I am.

Not the most impressive or reassuring sight in the mirror every morning, I'll concede, especially when the wired world brings me picture postcards from paths I could have chosen, but chose not to, despite their breathtaking beauty.   

I'm not anywhere. I'm here. For now and I guess forever.
-bill kenny

Ye of Little Faith (and Even Less Talent)

There are a myriad of things I don't "get." 

Mushrooms in any form at any time. Water Chestnuts as part of a meal, any meal. Pineapple on pizza or, as I've been seeing in my local grocery recently, as pineapple pie. RB Leipzig, period (stop, check please).

And amongst and betwixt all of that, Kanye West, or as he is called now, Ye. <sigh> How can I miss him when he never goes away?

My disinterest, bordering on antipathy, doesn't diminish his success in any way. I suspect he doesn't consider a nearly seventy-three-year-old guy so white he glows in the dark to be in his target demo and that's as it should be. 

There are billions of people on this planet, I suspect for whom I care not a feather to a farthing and yet every once in a while, usually when I've forgotten all about him, or nearly, he pops back up and to my dismay I find myself paying him more attention than, for instance, RB Leipzig covered in mushrooms.  

His music does nothing for me, at all. Again, not in his target demo so that's okay. Never understood the whole fascination with The Kardashians and the struggles he has/had with a diagnosis of bipolar and now, I'm told autism. I wish him well with whatever he's trying to work through but in recent days, I'm wondering why he can't work through it quietly and far away.

Ye, not for nothing: being an A$$hole is not a medical condition, and in your case, there's no cure.
-bill kenny

A Funny & A Fact

But you'll have to decide which is which.

The other day, a brown bear was caught short in the woods and squatted beside a bunny who was also engaged in the same activity. "Hey," said the bear, "I notice your backside is sitting right on the ground instead of slightly elevated like mine." 

"That's true," replied the rabbit, "That's because poo doesn't stick to my fur."

"Great!" exclaimed the bear, grabbing the rabbit and using it to wipe his butt.

In case, you were wondering, that was supposed to be the funny. 

Back in the Cold War, I was on the tip of the Sword of Freedom, metaphorically speaking, as an airman working for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) at Sondrestrom Air Base, Greenland. It was surprisingly easy to get a shaving waiver and yet there were very few beards among the men stationed there, and even fewer among the women ("Oh, now he does a joke!").

What actually happened, at least for me when I decided to get a waiver, was the absolute cold would cause my exhaled breath to condense on my whiskers. Between the pain of the freezing combined with the additional pain when thawing, I abandoned the whole beard thing almost as quickly as I adopted it.

But I've watched enough episodes of Blue Planet to have wondered what's the deal with those polar bears I see punching their way through an ice flow and popping up to the surprise and dismay of a penguin who thought it was safe from a predator. 

Here's that fact to go with the previous funny: polar bear fur does NOT freeze. You don't have to take my word for it, either, nor do you need to ask one of them yourself.
-bill kenny

Do I Stutter?

One of the items I check daily in the newspaper delivered to the house is the obituaries. As I've aged, and badly truth be known, I've measured myself against those who've shuffled off their mortal coil. I never evaluate the lives whose passing I'm reading and sentiments like 'So and So led a full life,' never are uttered as I have no idea how true or false that conclusion is.

Growing up I was always impressed with how old grown-ups seemed to be, especially in comparison to me. And when I look in the mirror now, I don't see a nearly seventy-three-year-old man staring back at me but when I come across photos of myself from 'back in the day' I'm stunned at how decrepit I look now.

Do you remember 'The Magic 8 Eight Ball'? I used to always ask 'How old will I get to be?' And the response was always, 'Answer unclear.' And then I learned our mother's trick, not just for that question, but any and all of them. Don't ask the question if you can't stand the answer.

So, that said, how do you feel about finding out how old you'll live to be? Remember, your mileage may vary and objects in the mirror are older than they appear. 
-bill kenny

All of 'Em

Happy Birthday to all Presidents, from George through the current occupant, since when we say today is Presidents' Day I'm assuming we mean ALL of them and not just the ones some of us like some of the time. Democracy as a buffet!

Like any of us would not head straight to the dessert cart. Not around here, Skippy! When you buy a ticket you get the whole ride. But I do know if you have today off in observance of the holiday, you (and I) are a part of the Presidents' Day Posse, instead of that other posse. And for that alone, I'm thankful.

I understand and appreciate our national devotion to George Washington-and despite some contentiousness south of the Mason-Dixon line, I think we can acknowledge the importance of Abraham Lincoln but all the other Chief Executives just getting lumped together is an improvement over being completely ignored in what way, if I may ask?

I do not know if Martin Van Buren has been slighted by history or whether William Howard Taft, who required an over-sized bathtub in the White House because of a personal misfortune was his generation's FDR (judging by his weight, two FDRs) but this is the one-size-fits-all day celebration that all occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue receive. 

And if you decide to join in and party like it's 1845 I have just the toe-tapper you've been looking for.
-bill kenny

Akai Ito

Yoko Ono's Air Talk is one of my favorite ideas; not necessarily as music but for its thoughtfulness and originality of insight. 

I love the hopeful romanticism that no matter how great the separation we are each joined to the other with air though there's the concomitant sadness that no matter how close we are physically, air is always between us.

I've realized the older I get, the more time I spend ruminating on ideas and concepts that in my youth never even registered, so to speak, on my radar. I tell myself I'm getting more introspective and thoughtful but, I know myself too well and recognize that whole belief as the awful offal it is. 

Most of the time, all I have to show for my deep thoughts is a blinding headache. Who says God has no sense of humor, right? Besides, my deep thoughts would barely come to my ankles.

And then I stumble across something like this.     

Bim! Les moulins de mon cœur.
-bill kenny

"...And Saddle Up Well..."

I am a child of the 50's-not like Robert Klein who came of age in them, but I was born as they were getting started. I used to watch The Dinah Shore Show ("See the USA in your Chevrolet") a fifteen-minute black and white TV program every afternoon sitting on a coffee table in my parent's apartment in Electchester, South Flushing, Queens, New York. 

Despite what you may think reading the above paragraph, America wasn't so poor that we couldn't afford half-hour programs and/or color broadcasts. That was how the world was, and those of us just starting out in it accepted it because we knew nothing else (and some of us know even less today).

The other show I can remember watching was the (Original) Mickey Mouse Club, and most days getting into my cowboy outfit to better enjoy The Adventures of Spin and Marty and all its succeeding permutations. I sang along with the theme song I knew by heart, making up in volume what I lacked in pitch. 

I had a six-shooter that never ran out of bullets and a bandana whose color matched my cowboy hat. I'm pretty sure I didn't have spurs (that jingle, jangle, jingle) not because I didn't go rolling merrily along but because Mom was afraid they'd catch on the carpet and I wasn't the most stable of walkers. Still am not.

Speaking of stable, and horses who hang out in the paddock, that might be when my lifelong (so far) desire for pony rides on my birthday first began. I envied Spin and Marty out there on The Triple R Ranch roping and calf-wrestling, to say nothing of campfire-sitting-around, and, of course, snipe hunting. Yessir, pardner, us greenhorns sure were gullible.

What I can't explain is my studious avoidance of every opportunity to visit a dude ranch and bust a few Broncos (Denver or otherwise) or brand a few Longhorns. Not sure how I would be able to persuade 'those little doggies' to move along, come to think of it, but dude ranches are quite the hot commodity, more so now than at any time since Billy Crystal and Jack Palance.  

Well, pardner, that's enough jabber-jawing for one day. Don't squat on your spurs and I hope to spit in your mess kit. 
-bill kenny

What Scares Me Most Is Losing You

I wonder, in light of the journey so far, if he who travels fastest misses the entire point of the sojourn when he has no one with whom to share it. As someone who was very much, and for a very long, unlovable, this is a day of major import and minor miracle for me all at the same time. I'm celebrating my forty-eighth Valentine's Day with the love of my life, Sigrid.

I look at photos of my wife and me back when we were fab and she was, as she still is, beautiful to me. It took zero intelligence to fall in love with her at first sight and something far rarer than intelligence to help us stay in love all these years later. I do find myself looking at her, then and now, and wondering if she still sees me as I was or as I am now, and if the latter, why does she stay?

We have, she and I, grown old together which causes me to smile as I had nothing nearly so grand in mind when I first saw her. Some who knew me back before the day would be amazed that she kept me nailed to one place long enough for all those years to have become all these years, and to some degree, I echo their amazement. 

We share a life that isn't and will never be the one I thought I wanted when I believed things worked out the way we desired (if we only wanted something bad enough). But when I reach the end of every day, including today, I look at her and at our two adult children, Patrick and Michelle, and know that I love and am loved by them and can't complain about some settling of the contents during shipment. Happy Valentine's Day.

-bill kenny

Is There Nothing More Anybody Can Do?

A snapshot into the light. 

A fellow, somewhat worse for wear judging from his clothes and shoes, but most especially his physical demeanor, sorting through his wallet with one hand, the hand he's using to hold the wallet, for bills to feed into the CT Lottery vending machine just beyond the checkouts in a grocery store.

We're not exactly Vegas (baby), with slot machines tucked in alongside church baptismal fonts, but here in Eastern Connecticut, home to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, it's always go time. And this is just the next day in the only life he will ever know. 

In his other hand, but not without a struggle, he's clutching a portable nebulizer. The oxygen mask is cloudy and dimpled with condensation from his heavy exhalation. The side of the lotto vending machine asks in chirpy orange and green letters, "Are You Feeling Lucky Today?"

Not so far, at least that's how it seems to me as I gather up the odds and ends I've purchased while the voice of the self-checkout hectors me to 'remember to take your receipt' because the Forces of Mendacity and Mediocrity (sounds like a grunge band, don't it?) could easily spirit it away. 

The would-be lotto millionaire completes his purchase and scans his ticket to see if he's won. He takes himself and his ducat to the 'solutions center' to redeem it and purchase a few more but different variations of the keno tickets the state likes to offer as well. 

He hurries past me through the double doors of the exit and the Blue Rhino propane tank corral, to just make a bus that was about to pull out. Instead, it halts and opens its doors to let him board.

The doors remain ajar and February chilled air fills the bus as he goes through his pockets in search of the loose change he needs for the coin basket that counts his fare. When sated, it's silent as the driver finally closes the doors, the bus pulls away from the stop and back into the go 'cause it's another day for you and me in paradise.

-bill kenny

A Penny for Your Thoughts

When I was a kid, and this was a school day, we had it off. It was Abraham Lincoln's birthday and living in central New Jersey we observed it while hearing that some states south of the Mason-Dixon line didn't.

Lincoln was celebrated as a person who had made a difference in his time and whose shadow was cast through our own lives. Now, he's been rolled into an upcoming three-day weekend and an excuse for a variety of stores to hold a White Sale on bed linens (gotta love the irony!). C'mon down!

There were a huge number of issues bound up in 'slavery' but that's the headline, the casus Bellum. Dispassionate historians and anthropologists agree slavery wasn't an invention of the New World, but an extension of a practice stretching back thousands of years across the entire world. 

We in the USA still have not yet fully faced up to what was done by some to others. Instead of confronting and resolving, we continue to equivocate and rationalize. It's bizarre we would call the War Between the States (its official name, btw) the "Civil War" since historians agree it was often anything but. 

With other nations picking sides to advance their own agenda, the two sides, bloodied and bedraggled, fought one another from 1861 through the spring of 1865, when the Confederate States of America, prostrate and exhausted, surrendered and, say some, Modern America began. 

And the more we've changed, the more we've stayed the same. Given an opportunity to begin again with 'malice towards none and charity to all' as offered by the soon-to-be-murdered reelected Lincoln, instead, we as a nation veered from that path and have continued to settle old scores and create new wounds through the latter half of the 19th, all of the 20th and, now, the 21st century.

We've institutionalized and internalized treating huge segments of our own countrymen as suspects instead of citizens and recent national political developments suggest there's a dark ride ahead for many of us. And 'charity to all' has been replaced by name-calling and finger-pointing. 
-bill kenny 

I Smell Home Cooking

Suspect your house is a lot like mine in terms of activity and hours in the day to accomplish things. We’re already into February and it was just the other day we wished each other a Happy New Year. 

Of course, as we should know by now, it takes more than wishing to make happy happen. And for any number of reasons, ranging from meteorological to and through fiscal, this is seemingly yet another winter of our discontent. 

The challenge of change, here in Norwich as well as everywhere else, is to never lose sight that it’s a never-ending process and not a product; a journey, rather than a destination. There is no Grandma’s House towards which we’re driving. And the road can and does often feel like it, goes on forever.

Every day, city administrators and their professional staff, joined by, and with, volunteers on advisories, boards, commissions, and committees, all of them our neighbors, begin again as every aspect of municipal government’s ability to deliver goods and services in response to our desires for a particular program (sometimes to complement another one and sometimes in competition with it), is balanced against the ability to afford the delivery of those goods and services.

Governance at all levels shouldn’t be a spectator sport, but because of the pace of our lives, we sometimes do not choose to invest the time in much more than glancing at a headline about a state or local issue. That becomes our level of engagement but elevates the degree of difficulty in arriving at decisions.

We should have a general sense this coming budget season will involve still-more hard choices almost pre-ordained to make no one happy. If politics is the art of the possible, without our informed opinions and observations, we’ll watch elected and appointed officials attempt Mission Impossible. When that happens and we look for someone to blame for the results we don’t like, we should look no further than the nearest mirror.

Almost every weekday there are public meetings on the nuts and bolts operating issues and many of the spice of life aspects that define us as a city--be they the Board of Education, the Historic District Commission, Public Safety, Commission on the City Plan, Public Works and so many others-usually without (hardly) anyone from the public attending.

Check the city’s website and pick a meeting. You might want to take a look at the online posting of recent meeting minutes so you are caught up when you take a seat or click on a Zoom meeting link. 

Odds are you’ll know one or more of the volunteers on the board or committee, so the ‘them’ factor disappears immediately, which leaves only ‘us’ which is as it should be if we are ever going to reinvent ourselves and our city. And since we should strive to speak to, rather than at, one another, why not use this as an opportunity to practice listening as well as speaking.

-bill kenny

I'll Take My Sanity

It's been suggested by armies of doom and gloomers that those who wish us ill have been aided immeasurably by advances in technology and adventures in high fidelity.

We tend to see the Forces of Evil and even the Forces of Not Especially Nice always depicted with earbuds and cell phones as they up-link images of kidnapped kittens to the Dark Web while threatening massive mayhem unless their demands are met.

I think someone is missing a good cross-promotion by not signing an endorsement deal involving, as an example, Third-World rebels and one of the satellite phone manufacturers, because when you see footage on the evening news, the former is always brandishing the latter, along with a Kalashnikov. 

I always wonder if it's sold as an ensemble or if you can buy it a piece at a time, and how soon before Bravo has a show about those involved in creating the look and when will Andy start to talk about it on WWHL?

The crazies have their own websites, though for my money they could also have their own domain and separate Internet and I don't think the rest of us would mind. And I'm talking all the crazies, no matter the religion or the politics. Put 'em in a bag, hit the bag with a bat, and you'd hit the right one. I agree with Sir Winston Churchill who opined, "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." 

Sometimes the reliance on state-of-the-art and beyond technology can create an Icarus effect and the moment of too-close-to-the-sun becomes instead forever-buried-beneath-the-earth, when the tool turns on the user and shifts from fulcrum to petard.
-bill kenny

I Nearly Forgot

The only reason I'm mentioning the Super Bowl at all today is because I do not wish to get fined by the National Football League. At some point today, I will lose track of exactly when one of the pre-game shows will stop because of the actual game.

I'm thinking/assuming during one of the post-game shows will be a passing mention of the final score, unless the game has ended in a tie and the teams are playing even as I type the last of this sentence.

The prospect of that happening makes the threatened snowfall for later this week across my region of these Not Quite United States even gooder. Real pizza, real boneless chicken wings, real football, real challenges, and maybe a return to actually important real news and notes now that this pro football season is finally over. Yee Haw!
-bill kenny