A Murder of Crows

We are a culture that celebrates ourselves as unique individuals, except that, for the most part, we don't define ourselves by our humanity, but rather by our utility. We are what we do. Our unique specialness is tied to our place in the world instead of the other way around. In essence, we already know what we are; all that remains is agreement on the price.

In economic hard times which, despite some political leaders insistence to the contrary, are still going on for many in our country and for many others around the world (when America gets a cold, other nations are in intensive care), a hidden cost harder to recover from than a bank statement or a bottom line, is the injury to that part of ourselves we can't put a price tag on, our pride in who we are.

We have a lot of people who have done nothing wrong and who are losing their jobs, perhaps their families and homes, places in their local circle of friends and acquaintances, who end up losing themselves. I knew a German in one of the places I worked in the Federal Republic who  teased that "Americans are people who buy things they don't want with money they don't have to impress people they don't like." We're near the point, as a nation, where the bills are coming due. Wer soll das bezahlen? Wer hat das bestellt? Wann man nur wusste.

In the frenzy of election season, where there's more action than date night at Piranha High, the highs are higher and the lows are deeper, at least when the other side is telling the story. But the thing to NOT lose sight of when the edge is off the rhetoric on Wednesday, November 5th, when we realize there is no revolution, just power changing hands, is a few more of us have become the walking wounded. That old coaching admonition to just 'shake it off' only goes so far.

An adult without hope or dignity hurts and then, in turn, hurts others, usually those closest to them, so what began as a personal tragedy too often becomes a community calamity. Sing a song of sixpence for your sake, and take a bottle full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds in a cake and bake them all in a pie. Crow, too often, tastes the same.

-bill kenny

Somewhere Hilton Kaderli Smiles

For many years, on one of our local television stations, we had a meteorologist, Hilton Kaderli, from Oklahoma. Never understood/learned how he ended up in Hartford, Connecticut, but I've watched The Wizard of Oz often enough to respect high winds.  

Whenever we had heavy rain, and I do mean heavy rain, he'd call it what he told us it was called in Oklahoma, a gullywhumper. I always appreciated expanding my vocabulary.

Yesterday, we made up all of our rainfall deficit for this year and maybe some more.

Sdeah reiht edih dna nur yeht. Semoc niar eht fi.
-ynnek llib

Stuck Between Stations

I’m impressed at election time with how signs for candidates appear on lawns and vacant lots across Norwich, much like wildflowers after a spring rain. Between the signs for supporting “Working for Norwich’ and ‘Making Norwich More Affordable,’ I almost can’t see the most prevalent lawn sign of all, For Sale signs on residences and commercial buildings.

My taxes increased by three hundred dollars a month last fiscal year due to re-evaluation and nearly one hundred more a month this year, which revealed two things. We don’t have enough money for any Board of Education to fund our schools to enable our children to compete in the Information Age, and we have negative commercial growth, dooming us to repeat this cycle endlessly.

Tomorrow night at six in NFA’s Slater Museum will be a debate among (I assume) three mayoral candidates, followed by a debate among City Council candidates. There's still time to submit questions at info.lwvsect@gmail.com.

Make the candidates articulate their vision for attracting and revitalizing our commercial and industrial sectors; how they will create spaces and places in our historic downtown that attract new residents, and artisan businesses to populate and reinvigorate our abandoned buildings, with specific targets, goals, and milestones so that we can assess our progress.

Ask them if they support a higher assessed value of a commercial building based on its potential, rather than its current use, resulting in a higher rate and collection of property taxes and mitigation of blight. If not, why not? And if so, how would they implement it? 

Roundabouts seem to be a solution that nobody likes, so what's theirs? How would they mitigate/alleviate traffic flow on Route 82?

Would they support a mill rate stabilization fund, and how would they finance it?

Do they support enhancing and enlarging the collaboration and cooperation between the paid firefighters and the volunteer companies? If not, why not; if yes, how would they facilitate and expedite that interaction?

What do they see as Norwich’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats when marketing our city to new businesses, industries, and families looking for a new home?

And don't let ANY of the candidates leave the stage before they answer the questions fully.

If you don't choose, you lose. And not voting is still a choice. We, the voters, hold the growth of our city in our hands with our ballots. We hear the same bullshite every election. It's like we're stuck between stations. Change channels and make informed choices, maybe for the first time in decades.
-bill kenny

The New Romantics

I spotted the toddler first-I think because I liked being a dad when our kids were young, so even today I scan the two feet from the ground first. And there he was. About three with a Mohawk dyed a shade of sunshine yellow so bright it hurt your eyes, and because he wasn't visible enough from space yet, add alternating electric red stripes the length of the Mohawk. We're talking a thing of beauty.

He was notionally on the hand of his Dad, who was pushing the shopping cart. I say it like that because he was jumping around like maybe a pallet of cane sugar had fallen on him in the store and he'd eaten his way out of the pile that threatened to bury him.

Alongside Dad was Mom, pushing a stroller with a little tiny person who (Dad's perspective again) didn't look old enough to be sitting up in the first place. I chose to NOT say anything to the Mom because I am a mellow fellow. That, and her husband being about six and a half feet tall and no more than 1% body fat, may have influenced my desire to be silent.

The pair had been shopping, I would guess, for most of their lives at Animal Skins R Us, and I smiled, thinking how big a frownie face the PETA folks would have if they could see this pair. But that's not the best part, and when I say best, I mean not best.

Just below the shoulder blade on his left arm, and of course, when you're styled and shaped like he is, it's a sleeveless shirt, he has a tattoo in jet black ink, "Her Stud." 

As the late Billy Mays used to say repeatedly, 'But wait, there's more.' 

On Mom's right shoulder, and she is as slender as the chances of pony rides on my birthday, in very much the same place in the darkest of tints, she has a tattoo with "His Bitch." Hopeless Romantics. And somewhere Norman Rockwell is suddenly not so sad he shuffled off his mortal coil at the moment he did.

-bill kenny

The Upside to the Shutdown

Having endured it on too many occasions, as a federal employee, the kabuki theater that is Washington, D.C., during a government shutdown, I don't have a lot of good to say about it.

Except a plague on both your houses.
-bill kenny

Upcharge for OJ

I was in my neighborhood Mickey D's yesterday morning for breakfast. I always smile when I hit these joints not because I'm happy to be in the places, but rather the contrast between the television portrayal and the reality always cracks me up. 

Do you remember when we were kids and how the cafeteria ladies always wore hairnets if they were on the serving line? What happened to those rules, and who decided a ball cap (if we're lucky, otherwise a visor for the most part) offers the same protection from hair in my food as the old school hairnets? 

When I sat down at my table and looked up, there were two women seated across from one another at a table near a window, heads bowed, hands clasped, saying a prayer before beginning their meals. From their age and attire and the simple silver bands on their left hands, I realized I was looking at two nuns in mufti and not folks who were seeking Divine Help for the Breakfast Burrito.

I flashed on a childhood recollection of 'saying grace' at our family table before tucking in; a prayer that, as we grew older in my parents' house, became more of a race to see who could finish first and get started while the food was still hot since Mom always made a big deal about letting things get cold as you picked at them. I can only hope the Lord grades that kind of behavior on a curve, but fear I know better.

I smiled, here in the present, to realize that it was good that someone (in this case, TWO someones) remembered to say thank you as the rest of us were oblivious to the gift we were receiving on a lovely Saturday morning in Southeastern Connecticut. 

Later I learned that Saturday, is Saint Francis of Assisi Day (the Hallmark store has no cards; I checked) and smiled again as I thought of the two witnesses on their pilgrimage through the world and why, for more reasons than are between Heaven and earth, breakfast is still the most important meal of the day.
-bill kenny

Re-Open the Federal Government

There's some $hit not even Mikey will eat. And the arguments for why our federal government remains closed are currently #1 on this list.

To summarize the 'debate':

Congress/White House: get the feck back to working for all of us.
--bill kenny

Why Wasn't This an E-Mail?

Before I retired, I used to spend a frightening amount of time in meetings. I wasn't the subject of them but more like a prop or part of the G(r)eek chorus. Truth to tell, I spent much of my meeting time wondering why it had been called, since most of what went on could have been a phone call or a group e-mail. 

I thought about those meetings the other day while watching Pete "Hollywood" Hegseth, the Secretary of War on a first-name basis with Johnnie Walker, offer a TED-talk to the most senior career military leadership of the United States.

It was pretty goofy, and his "F. A.....F.O." closing did almost nothing for me except set the tone for the Pumpkin Dotard who followed. 

Seriously? Who voted for these morons?
-bill kenny

Vote for Me ....And I'll Fix Everything

Election season is like Trick or Treat for adults, except we registered voters seem to end up with a lot of Mary Janes and salt water taffy and way too few Dove Bars and Reese's Cups. 

Thirty-three days from now, we'll be knee deep in big muddy hitting levers, blackening circles, chopping chads (sorry, Florida) as the will of some of the people (at party nominating conventions this summer) is transformed into the will of all the people. The miracle of democracy, coming to a ballot box near you. Unless you are someplace that can still vote absentee.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard ." Sing it, H. L.. I'll hold the hymnal while you turn the page. Of course, in this country for the most part, hardly anyone has an opinion on how well democracy works since we rarely get above thirty percent turnout by registered voters in an 'off-year' (= non-Presidential) election.

Living in one of the thirteen original colonies (I still think we should get silk jackets, have colonial colors and maybe a secret handshake; just to shut up those ba$tards from the West Coast with their nice weather and fresh fruit all year round), I'm watching the wheels as I'll have the opportunity to vote for members of the Board of Education, a Mayor, City Council, three french hens, two turtle doves and a porridge in a print tee. Plus, in my town, Norwich, Connecticut, we'll have local referendum questions, though the pygmy pony initiative failed to make the ballot. Again.

You'll have about the same range and scope of choices where you live-but only if you choose to vote. The same folks who'll sit on hold for twenty minutes for a call-in show can't take ten minutes to go vote on Election Day. We may have neighbors who believe you must pay a fee to cast a ballot, or lack a calendar that informs them when Election Day is. 

The same people who call DWTS hundreds of times to get their favorite to the next round don't think it's appropriate to have an opinion on the direction their city, state, or nation should take.

If you don't choose, you lose. And don't tell me you don't have enough information. In this country at this time in our history, if there's one thing we have TOO much of, it's information. The trick is to turn it into knowledge you can use to make an informed decision. Because that's what we're lacking....
-bill kenny

An Enigma Walking

I know none of this is real. Or, perhaps better phrased, it exists as a reality in a manner (ones and zeroes) I could not deconstruct into its present shape on your screen (or mine). It's all vapor and electrons with a heaping helping of whimsy but when I sit in front of the monitor (and there's a reason why they look like windows) and see a note from someone about whom I was just thinking, or just NOT thinking about, I marvel at the sequence of discoveries that had to happen when they did and how they did for all of that to become all of this.

We can use technology to track terrible and terrifying weather to provide otherwise helpless people with the advanced notice that will save their lives. We can see and say greetings to friends and family halfway and more (oh?) around the world from our desktop and develop relationships in cyberspace that rival any we have on terra firma. It's all the same and, yet, very different.

"We can't play this game anymore, but can we still be friends?" Despite, or is it because, the answer is contingent on conditions that are never defined, we often never know. The other day, a note from a FBF, Facebook Friend, whom I shall never in this life meet, who attended a family celebration and met another (mutual) FBF whom I have met only once and will also probably never meet again.

We three are a galaxy, without a sun or a moon, revolving around one another even as we are components of a larger movement comprised of many and more just like, and also unlike, us, to include you.

The only thing we three have in common is...wait for it, one another. And, here's the part that makes me smile, it's true for each of us and for all of us. Based on their posts, adventures, shared photos, and comments, they live out loud and enjoy their lives at max vol. Maybe that's you? 

Or perhaps you are me in your galaxy, the flavorless gelatin guy, not because I do not deserve a flavor but because I don't want to make trouble. But I'm only saying that while building a towering rage at being overlooked/underheard, even as I assure others all is well. There's one in every crowd.

Look at yourself and those around you and see if you too aren't part of a tripod-possibly the most stable and flexible construct we have in our arsenal of social structures. The shades of gray and nuances across the color spectrum are a subset of the larger issue and not essential to the discussion. 

I contend neither white nor black are actually colors at all, since the latter is the absence of light while the former is the absence of color. But like so many who so believe, I see my world only in those two.

It's the mingling with colorful people, some of whom I'm related to by blood and marriage, others via keyboards and mouse clicks, and still others by a variety of means and in a manner defying description, that helps me maintain and retain the fiction of human credentials. All the while, I marvel at those who drink like it's water and dance like no one is watching.

-bill kenny

Trolley Thoughts

On my way home from my primary care physician's office, where I see my doctor more often than I'd like, yesterday, I stopped at the grocery store for some odds and ends. We have a car chock-full of recyclable grocery bags, so of course, after I'd placed some items in the cart, I realized I'd left them all there. Happens with a frequency that's dizzying and discouraging.  

I had a choice: buy a paper sack for a dime or buy yet another recyclable bag that will eventually end up in the tailgate of our car. The last time I checked, which should have been before I went into the store, it was a little tight under the tailgate, so a paper sack it was. 

My health has reached a point that I use the shopping cart as much as a walker as a place to put groceries I'd like to purchase. I am amused by the mundane. Hell, I am a poster child for it, so I find it interesting that grocery stores place their carts at the entrance, along with baskets (if you need just a few items).  

My life experience suggests placing some carts in the middle of the store would be helpful for folks like me who think we are only buying five or so items and then discover we have our hands full to overflowing and we're not done yet. Sadly, no grocer has chased after me to hear any of my other ideas for improving the shopping experience, which would start by placing all the items in the stores in the aisles and on the shelves in alphabetical order.  

In the canned goods and condiments aisle (see? they already do some of my suggestions), there was an abandoned empty cart in the middle of the aisle, near the salad dressings. The shopper had not gone off in search of an item; the cart was alone and unattended. 

Two aisles further along, baked goods section, there was an abandoned cart with a scattering of some items. I decided to assume the shopper had been raptured, which was quite popular on social media platforms earlier in the week, though when I looked up, there was no hole in the ceiling, so perhaps my theory was not completely thought out (unless The Lord moves in even more mysterious ways than previously advertised). 
-bill kenny

Dip a Toe in the Ocean

The first full week of Autumn is history (which means, since I'm a half-full glass kind of guy, winter is closer now than it was last Sunday, BUT the end of winter is also a week closer) and with high school, college and pro football all battling for our attention while the gridlock in Washington DC (Disruptive Contention) continues, there's the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other of daily life on this Big Blue Marble to which to attend.

And we're the ones who do it-and sometimes, inadvertently (and other times maliciously) do it to one another. I tried one day last week to count all the local elections going on across these fifty mostly United States and gave up as the number was staggering. 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't care or that we should become passive; on the contrary. "I am only one, But still I am one. I cannot do everything, But still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."

Part of what makes this country this country and not somebody else's is the tens of billions of hours of volunteer effort that we invest in making where we live a better place. You doubt my number? 

Go to your local town hall and see where the notices of meetings are posted-then find out how many of your neighbors are involved in the various groups that are meeting, and calculate the amount of time those meetings take (And don't forget to add the prep time and the follow-up time). How's that calculator doing now? Yeah, that's what I thought. 

Yeah, I know, there's band practice after school and the falling leaves will not rake themselves-though how cool would that be? And there are a hundred other reasons for leaving all the lugging and tugging to someone else, but I suspect Washington had better things to do a long time ago on a cold winter's night when someone said, 'There's a rowboat across the Delaware in ten minutes, George, be on it.' 

There will always be another river to cross, so let's hope it's always standing room only in the boat as we all put our backs into the oars.
-bill kenny

Nine out of Ten Physicians Recommend

The tenth suggests leeches. 

Also available in children's strength (also known as underage adults).
-bill kenny

Hiding from the Weather

After what seemed to be a very hot, humid, and cranky summer, Fall arrived in New England this past Thursday morning. At least for part of that day and earlier today, rain and cooler temperatures coupled with dark skies made you realize the seasons had, indeed, changed.

I've been noticing the daylight is a little later in arriving and departing a few moments sooner every day. I appreciate the calendar making it official, but I already knew the seasons were changing, and I'm not a big fan of the part of the year we're entering. I don't dislike autumn so much as dread what follows.

But there will be some marvelous days between then and now-bracing mornings, gorgeous foliage, crisp evenings, and I hope that where you are, you and yours have much the same, and more. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

-bill kenny

No Idea What It Means

When I woke up, there it was. 

Μασώμενο Παιχνίδι των Θεών

Chew Toy of the Gods. 

You're welcome, I think.
-bill kenny

No Starch

Belief is a wonderful thing. It's not better than pony rides for your birthday, admittedly, but it's powerful stuff and can get you through some, if not all, pretty hard times. 

I have, in my dotage, worked harder to be a happy idiot, succeeding at least in the latter part of that endeavor. I will attempt to see the brighter side of a double homicide, given the opportunity (unless I'm part of it).

Given lemons, I not only can make lemonade, but I'll build you a two-story condo out of lemon peel with a detached garage made of rind and a backyard spa for under 249K, complete with a full basement. Volume is the answer to your 'how can you do it?' question. You're welcome is the response to your thank you. Moving right along...

I think insistence on seeing the Lighter Side of this Cosmic Joke has helped me more than it has harmed, but it's tiring to try to be so cheerful so often, so when I can get some help, I'm more than grateful. 

And if all I ever get from this is a song I can hear, playing right in my ear, but I can't sing it, and yet I can't help listening, that's fine too. I've always loved words and extra starch. Back by Tuesday.

-bill kenny

Irish Alzheimer's

Based on a nearly-true story.

I still think that somehow I can blame Biden.
-bill kenny

Seconds Out

I mentioned last week that my wife had contracted COVID. Thursday evening, a visit to our walk-in clinic confirmed that I have it as well.

Both of us have several co-morbidities, as our doctors might say. 

None of which are mollified or pacified by a nepo baby as Health and Human Services Secretary who speaks batshit gibberish in a voice so scratchy it makes my throat hurt listening to him talk.

We're recovering because we've had every single dose of the COVID vaccine we were offered. And we will continue to do so.
-bill kenny 

Start or Stop

It happens on a regular cycle, so there's really no reason to be surprised. Usually, within a fortnight of Labor Day, we have a shift in the weather, and the heat and humidity depart, not before dumping a large amount of rain in a short amount of time on the just and the unjust, and the leaves start to turn, and the lawn signs start to spring up.

National elections, where we choose a President, consume oceans of ink. But it's where the road and the sky collide, here at the local level, that the real issues in search of answers get decided. And the only history that gets written is what we choose to write. We can wound with words.

We look at politicians in D.C. or in Hartford as an abstraction, and more often than not, we're right, but those who seek office inside the city limits are our neighbors and acquaintances, if not friends. We can put names to faces and faces to positions on issues that affect us immediately. Our families see one another in the market, at a local community event, or just out for a walk on the weekend.

It's pretty easy for most of us politically to tell a Mike Johnson from a Chris Murphy, even from a distance, but when we're looking for leadership in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, the nuances and differences are more subtle.

It's more a question of degree than dogma, and that's as it should be because this is where we all live, emphasis on the all. Decisions made 'for the common good' really mean for everyone on both sides of the street, up and down the block. And when less than a quarter of all registered voters turn out to cast a ballot, leading starts to resemble shepherding cats.

The Grateful Dead once observed, ‘What a long, strange trip it’s been.’ Amen to that. We thought this time last year was pretty tough and hoped by now we’d be seeing some daylight. Cheer up, the pundits said; things could get worse. So we did, and they did get worse.

I don't pretend to know what has gone wrong or how to fix it, but I doubt demonizing the other guys in DC, belittling the Governor, or polluting the blogosphere with innuendo and insinuation when community leaders prove to be all-too fallible and frail humans is helping.

It most certainly is NOT who we have been since the founding of the Republic. High times on Wall Street and hard times on Main Street. Maybe we don’t need new solutions so much as we need a return to our oldest and truest values.

-bill kenny

Closing the Gate

This is the last summer Sunday of 2025. Back when I was a wee slip of a lad, summers seemed to go on forever. We used to spring out of bed to better get a head start on doing absolutely nothing until late in the afternoon, when, with a little luck, a marathon baseball game would break out on the dirt field up the street from the Girard's house. 

No one kept score, and nobody cared who won or lost. Players would come and go for hours, heading home for dinner or to go shopping with Mom, and then return hours later, sometimes having to be on the other team.

Usually, what we did, depending on how good the player returning really was, he would have to wait to rejoin the game until another player showed up to balance him out. Mid-inning trades were also not unknown. The games went on until the daylight was dying or, more correctly, had died, and then Mr. Girard would back his car out of the carport and turn the headlights on to wash over the field so we could wrap it finally (until tomorrow when it began again).

We did this for years until someone bought the lot and built a house on it. We all hated the people who moved in to live there. And, much later, when the house burned down, I felt a twinge of guilt even though I had nothing to do with what happened-the power of wishing and its consequences, I guess.

As I got older, the summers got shorter, and when our Pat and Mike were smaller, it was fun to watch the cycle begin again with them. We're nearing the 'leaf peeping' that everyone associates with New England weekends in the fall. But for me, it's already too late. 

I hate autumn-I can smell the scent of all things dying even before they actually do, and I'm left with memories of the summer to get me through the winter into the following spring. Enjoy what you have, while you have it.
-bill kenny

An Evergreen...

 ...of a bad joke.

A recession is when you have difficulty finding a job.

A depression is when I do.

Wall Street versus Main Street.
You don't need a dime to call someone who cares; the payphones are all gone.
-bill kenny

Maybe Too Inside Baseball

When I arrived at the American Forces Network Europe Headquarters at Bertramstrasse 6, 6000 Frankfurt am Main, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, as a skeeter wing (Airman with one chevron) in the early autumn of 1976, I had the good fortune of working for a very kind, somewhat eccentric but entirely brilliant former commercial ad executive and US Army band musician, Bob M. 

The latter point is integral to today's tangent. I worked for Bob in Radio Command Information, the in-house production operation responsible for creating the public service announcements (PSAs) instead of commercials that were broadcast on our radio and TV airwaves.      

Many times, one of us on the staff would produce from whole cloth a campaign at the request of one of the plethora of Department of Defense activities we supported. Many other times, Bob would invent the campaign himself, and one of us would supply the voice.

Our audience and client list numbered, I'm guessing, almost fifty years on, into the hundreds of thousands, not counting the local national listeners (whom we knew were out there but we called the 'shadow audience'). There was never a dull moment, no matter how yearned for that might have been. 

Our days were spent, if not happily, then at least dry and warm, cranking out PSA's on everything from shopping in the Stars & Stripes bookstore, through booking a day trip with Information, Tours, & Travel, to seat belt safety and anything/everything in between. 

For me, the most memorable was the annual reunion of (usually US Army officer) graduates of Texas Agriculture and Mining, better known as Texas A & M. Rik Delisle, even then Der alte Ami, and our section leader, was tapped by Bob for what was called 'The Aggie Roundup,' which of course (?) had to include their fight song. To this day, I suspect Rik can hear it in his sleep.   

I thought of all that because of this. And, yeah, Ay Ziggy Zoomba is a close second to the Aggie War Hymn. I know, "today was a long walk," but you had a beautiful view, right?
-bill kenny

Blinders Optional

I wandered down Saturday afternoon from near Chelsea Parade, where we live, to Howard Brown Park for the return of the Taste of Italy. Thanks to the organizers, sponsors, volunteers, vendors, and everyone else who worked so hard to make it all happen. It was a lot of fun, a day where the weather threatened but never delivered, and a delicious experience. 

Its success helps underscore a fundamental point I strive to the point of irritation of others to make: offer people a reason to come to downtown Norwich and they will, because they did on Saturday in droves.

We spend a lot of time in Norwich waiting for 'them' to do something (the something seems to vary from person to person, but is rarely the same across any segment of our population). And then we wonder why it's hard to get anything accomplished. 

Walking from Chelsea Parade down Washington Street towards Brown Park, the litter along the curb runs almost the length of the street. As a matter of fact, almost anywhere you look in Norwich, there's trash at the curb, on the sidewalks and front lawns, or in the streets. 

Some of it happens because when the trash and recycling boxes are emptied and detritus falls on the ground, no one picks it up. We don't need a 'them' to put trash in its place, but if each of us picked up one piece of junk every day, we'd soon have a handle on the litter.

And good luck walking on the sidewalks across from the former Buckingham School all the way to the Sweeney Bridge because they are a nightmare and a safety hazard. All the broken concrete allows weeds and other flora and fauna to grow wild, adding that 'untamed' flavor that urban planners say is so important in modern downtowns these days. 

Actually, there are portions of sidewalk on both sides of Washington that are practically impassable. Berserk bushes, overgrown shrubbery, household garbage, broken glass, discarded fast food containers, dirty diapers, the flotsam and jetsam of life in the 21st Century, strewn like so much junk all across the horizon.

And we don't even see it anymore.
We've become inured to the thousands of discarded cigarette butts near the pedestrian islands across from the Flat Iron building. The next time you're out walking downtown, check them out for yourself. I'm sure they will still be there. 

Squaring away our sidewalks and side streets would take thirty minutes, probably less, out of our week, but we've decided it's not our job to make where we live a better and nicer place to be. We'd rather complain about what we don't have rather than conserve and preserve what we do. Maybe we're afraid we're just not worth the effort. And maybe we're right.

-bill kenny

Like a River Full of Gravity

I wear a lot of T-shirts with a pocket. I don't understand shirts, or any article of outer clothing, that doesn't have pockets (perhaps socks could be the exception). Where else am I to keep all of the fun otherwise?

I have some spiffy sport shirts, and at least one with the guy on the horse, in my wardrobe at the moment. I don't have any of the shirts that feature an alligator, or one with an alligator eating a guy on a horse (I think we'd both remember that one). And while I used to have a lot of rock and roll T-shirts, most of the folks I used to listen to are disbanded or deceased (making me the winner, I think).

I'm not a fan of the 'clever sayings' T-shirts, though I suspect they have a more official-sounding name than that. I find very few of the things folks have on their chest, or lower, and/or back to be thigh-slappingly funny. I see a lot of people of both sexes (or should I say 'of all sexes'?) at the gym in shirts and outfits that really make me feel every day of my seven-plus decades. And one of the reasons I've stopped going.

I recall two guys wandering into the facility while I was cursing the treadmill in the kind of clothes that lead you to believe their households are governed by that 'first one up is best one dressed' rule, and they are late sleepers. On the front of the one guy's black tee shirt in white letters was "Weakness is for Tussies" but with a P instead of a T. On the back was "Balls to the Wall" (without a second S for wall).

The other fellow's shirt back had "Train Like a Maniac," and when he turned around, he had what appeared to be a self-portrait of himself on the front, under his chin. And people wonder why I insist on earpieces and listening to music on my cell phone. I am now so rude that when people speak to me, I NEVER remove the earpieces, but just repeat over and over again, 'I won't hear you, I won't hear you.' Some think I should say can't, but I've chosen that verb deliberately.

I actually do have a shirt with a slogan. I got it years ago, and it's still true. People smile when they read it, though they shouldn't. It says, "I probably don't like you either." In light of how my curmudgeon reputation is spreading, it might be useful to get a shirt with my name and address on one side and 'other side up' to go with it. And then hope all those folks from the Literacy Volunteers keep their funding.
-bill kenny

Brainworms and Billionaires

Congratulations, Bobby Junior. NOW you have my attention. 

Ruining our Health and Human Services with outlandish tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracies and management philosophies borrowed from the Q-Anon playbook. Vaccines for childhood diseases. Tylenol causes  autism (but was developed after autism was first identified). Cutbacks in cancer research. 

When did we make "How Stupid Are You?" into a 'Hold My Beer' contest? 

On every single issue of public health, you manage to come down on the wrong side. Why not let what's left of that worm in your brain have some equal time? It can't be any more stupid and ignorant than you already are. 

As for your lies about 'we were lied to about COVID,' my wife now has COVID. Guess who I'm holding accountable, Scumbag?
-bill kenny

Even the Birds Are Chained to the Sky

We have a forsythia bush in our side yard, near our kitchen, that we planted long ago. It tends to get wildly overgrown in the summer months. My wife is planning to trim it short, back, and sides in the coming weeks. When I'm having my morning coffee during the spring and summer, I can watch sparrows who shelter in it.

I don't know where they nest, and I've never seen sparrow eggs. I have seen their chicks as the parents, probably the mother, I'm guessing, feed them, and I marvel at how insatiable they are. And so confident! They expect to be fed as if it were the most normal thing in nature, and they are. 

This time of year, the leaves on the forsythia turn brown and fall off, leaving more and more bare branches. I watched as a lone sparrow hopped from branch to branch, trying to bury itself in the remaining leaves to little avail.

There's a host of sparrows (I had to look that up) who live in the ivy growing up the outside of the chimney of the house on the other side of the deteriorating brick wall that separates my property from theirs. It, too, is losing its leaves so the birds will need more permanent protection from the elements as the fall gives way, inexorably, to winter.

I don't know if the sparrows 'know' winter is coming or just sense it, so I'm not clear if they can reason their way to realizing spring follows winter. To be honest, some days I'm not sure if I realize it. I know they don't migrate and brave the blasts and snow just like the rest of us. 

I wonder if they know who Bob Dylan is and that he sang of them long ago. Maybe that's why they stick around.
-bill kenny 

Comfortably Numb

Driving through the Norwichtown Commons the other day on my way to the Stop & Shop grocery store, I passed someone drawing just one more puff from her cigarette before entering the Planet Fitness, which is also in the Commons.  

I smoked two/three packs of cigarettes a day for twenty-two (plus) years and have my own definitions of insanity and dependence, as does each of us with a vice, but for Kafkaesque humor, you'd have to go some to top that. I'm thinking perhaps trying to wolf down a Häagen-Dazs giant ice cream cone before crossing the threshold into the fitness center, assuming the H-D guys are still in business and make such an item.

We like the routine, the assurance of the rote drill (I think), and maybe that's where we believe the benefit accrues. It's like small children learning the Pledge of Allegiance long before they have any idea what allegiance means (for some of us, that's true through old age). A whole generation now hits the fitness centers in the same way previous ones frequented the bars and clubs on Saturday nights or the churches on the Sunday mornings that followed.

But for what purpose, and to what end? Behaviorists refer to the ongoing Obesity epidemic in the United States. It surfaces for its fifteen minutes on social media platforms and television news reports, and then we have another double colestro-and-bacon burger from the neighborhood drive-in in and don't forget to supersize the fries, and, what?-Oh yeah, the drink? Gimme a Diet Coke, no ice.

I'm wondering if we're not better off just eliminating the middleman and cutting out the white space. Put a cigar bar in the fitness center--or set up one of those luxurious dessert places in the lobby; call it "Cool Whip and Curls", no one will snicker. Those who wish to indulge can, and the rest of us can pretend to not see any of it, as it'll all be out of sight. 

Look at how often we've used that trick to handle world events that should and could have numbed us. Besides, it keeps us from walking around with our eyes closed-people can get hurt going through life like that.
-bill kenny

You Don't Seem to Notice

The best thing about being a pessimist is that you can only be surprised, and never disappointed. For reasons that predate my arrival in The Rose City, many of us living here wear a coat of disappointment as a sort of shield, lest we get too excited or happy about a possibility working out for the best. 

Some of us seem to enjoy living in a world with little more than varying shades of gray or choosing to not make choices, unaware that by choosing NOT to decide, we still have made a choice and that choice has consequences we often fail to see, or to see in time.

Because we've spent so many years struggling to manage economic development the way a horse runs, looking no more than one footfall in advance of where we are, we've allowed ourselves to be managed by events rather than mastering them. 

As another school year begins for those with children in Norwich Public Schools, we are seeing in classrooms across our city proof that our myopic perspective is limiting our children's horizons and our own possibilities for improvement.

Collateral damage in our continued inability to enhance revenue streams and increase the Grand List has been the death by degrees of many of the school enrichment initiatives that some of our older children had when they were students. Quite frankly, the reductions the Board of Education needed to make, because the money simply wasn't there, went beyond any pretense of 'fat' and cut to the bone.

The size of the classes has changed, the staff available in the schools is smaller, and the limitless possibilities that a quality education is supposed to provide every child at every desk in every school have been sharply reduced. We are a city sending children in the primary grades into schools that lack the tools and talent to enable them to fully succeed, and it's not going to get better in the immediate future.

So that I'm clear, this isn't going to be a tough year for our children--this is another year in what will be a tough life. As Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel write about in 21st Century Skills "(o)ur current Knowledge Age is quickly giving way to an Innovation Age, where the ability to solve problems in new ways...and invent entirely new industries will all be highly prized." 

But if our children are to be in the wave, creating new ideas and offering fresh solutions to local and global problems, we'll need to prepare them better than we're doing and perhaps better than we're able, at least right now.

As is so often the case, there are no quick fixes, no drive-by solutions or instant corrections--to provide our children with the greatest of all gifts, a brighter future. 

This November election cycle, if you think that because you don't have school-age children, you have no stake in this effort, then this would be the moment to rethink that assumption. The time to question everything will be here in a moment; brace for impact.

-bill kenny

Nothing a Night's Sleep Won't Cure

Talk about putting the tire in tired. 

I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted.
-bill kenny

Shrinking the Wolf

My mind can sometimes be a projectionist's fever dream as a panoply of cross-generational imagery, historical, hysterical, some mine and some from before my time, coalesce and collide unbidden and unwanted. I can't watch, but I can't look away either.

There's a photo from the Spanish Civil War, depicting the moment of death of a Loyalist soldier whose name I did not know for decades. It's chased by the jumpy, silent footage of Zapruder's film as President Kennedy's head explodes from the impact of a bullet.

There are the grainy picture postcards from a long-ago, hard-fought and hastily forgotten war (though not by those who were sent to fight it), the first of one man executing another, while in the second, a naked child literally runs for her life.

All of those images pale when recalling street-level video of a brilliantly blue heaven over a lower Manhattan skyline on September 11, 2001 and the startling and sudden appearance of a commercial airliner entering one of the Twin Towers about two thirds of the way up, disappearing inside, forever, while the mind struggles to process what the eyes and neural network have shared. And there's this one that breaks my heart every time I look at it.

Who among us doesn't have a story about where they were when they first learned of the attacks on 9/11? Nearly every story that can be told by this, the twenty-fourth anniversary of those attacks, has been told. The shock and horror never dull, no matter how often the tale is told. It sometimes felt as if history stopped at the moment when the first plane impacted. And when time began again, the Age of Innocent Ignorance was over, and that of the Dark Hard World had begun.

The attacks of 9/11 created for every American, regardless of race, creed, politics, sexual persuasion, or color, including those not yet born, a shared memory in which pre 9/11 America becomes almost mythical.

As often as we speak about the way we were before 9/11, there's a strange quiet when we talk of what has happened in its wake. We talk in abstractions about the Global War on Terror and of the thousands and tens of thousands of men and women in uniform deployed across the world in defense of freedoms we too often take for granted here on the home front.

We'll offer thoughts for the victims of 9/11, but to better understand the price of freedom, perhaps we should visit the memorial at Chelsea Parade to remember the selfless service and sacrifice of Norwich residents Jacob Martir-Guiterrez and Keith Heidtman, who died during Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Their memorial is just a few steps from Norwich Free Academy, where both were students. In such a way does the circle remain unbroken in remembering two young men who ran towards, not from, danger when their nation most needed them because they realized courage is not the absence of fear, but, rather, something more important than fear.

There's a German proverb, "fear makes the wolf bigger than he is." There are already too many wolves in our world without creating more. As Franklin Roosevelt offered to a very different America in a very perilous time, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

We honor Jacob Martir-Guiterrez and Keith Heidtman, not just today, the anniversary of 9/11, but every day, by living fearlessly and out loud and to help one another become better people.

-bill kenny