Have You Heard?

“I know that I have less to live than I have lived.

I feel like a child who was given a box of chocolates. He enjoys eating it, and when he sees that there is not much left, he starts to eat them with a special taste.

I have no time for endless lectures on public laws - nothing will change. And there is no desire to argue with fools who do not act according to their age. And there's no time to battle the gray. I don't attend meetings where egos are inflated and I can't stand manipulators.

I am disturbed by envious people who try to vilify the most capable to grab their positions, talents, and achievements.

I have too little time to discuss headlines - my soul is in a hurry.

Too few candies left in the box.

"I'm interested in human people. People who laugh at their mistakes are those who are successful, who understand their calling and don't hide from responsibility. Who defends human dignity and wants to be on the side of truth, justice, righteousness.

This is what living is for.

I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch the hearts of others. Who, through the blows of fate, was able to rise and maintain the softness of the soul.

Yes, I hustle, I hustle to live with the intensity that only maturity can give. I'll eat all the candy I have left - they'll taste better than the ones I already ate.

My goal is to reach the end in harmony with myself, my loved ones, and my conscience.

I thought I had two lives, but it turned out to be only one, and it needs to be lived with dignity.” -Anthony Hopkins

Rhymes with Nifty

I had no older brothers or sisters. Folk music and Elvis Presley never really touched me as a kid.

The Beatles on Ed Sullivan introduced me to rock and roll (though I did already own a copy of "At the Hop" by Danny & The Juniors), and I've been a fan, however it's being defined on any given day, ever since.  

That's why as much as I love retrospective articles on the music I love, they also make me sad as I realize how I've aged (but I find some solace that the albums turning fifty this year will always be forever young). 

"Rock and Roll is the music your parents love to hate."
-bill kenny

Put a Sock In It!

When we were very small children our Aunt Claire, Mom's baby sister, would babysit  us (by us, I mean the oldest three as the younger three hadn't yet been born), and part of the good-night ritual was: 

"Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John,

Went to bed with his trousers on;

One shoe off, and the other shoe on,

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John."

Not sure it helped us go to sleep faster but the memory of it made me smile just now. 

I got thinking about it because I woke up earlier this week to outside temperatures of five above zero which isn't surprising because I live in New England but even though I already knew that it was still a less-than-happy happenstance. 

I've started to sleep with socks on (in addition to pajamas; mom raised crazy children, not stupid ones, at least after I was born) and am telling myself I am warmer. But I've learned there is a not unserious discussion ongoing as to whether it's healthy to sleep with socks on. 

Shari Lewis may have died for somebody's sins, but not mine. Amen.
-bill kenny

Morose and Somewhat Melancholy

I found this in a jacket pocket of a coat I no longer wear (metaphorically speaking). It's from almost fifteen years ago and stings as much now as it did when I first offered it. At the time I called it: 

Caught in Other Nets

I was helping my wife impose ordnung (look it up) on our basement the other day (mostly by staying out of her way). Not surprisingly, she and I have slightly different perspectives on how things are filed, stored, and saved. 

My views on all three are easy to catalog: wrong. All you need do is ask my wife. There's an eye roll and a medium-sized sigh (I used to only rate a small one) and now, as an added bonus from this sentence onward, there will be a vehement denial of the previous two, but don't be deceived.

We've lived in our house for over thirty-three years-George Carlin is right, it's a place for your stuff. Our container is very attractive and spacious though the basement where she and I were working is, I imagine, a little like limbo but without all the unbaptized babies' souls (just as well as the dust bunnies are everywhere and there's always something you taste on the end of your tongues that you can't quite place or name).

We've been putting things in the basement since we moved in. Obvious items that we weren't yet willing to let go of: appliances that operated on 220 volts and fifty cycles and for which, to use here, you'd need a step-up transformer (I have one, make me an offer). There were less obvious items, more saved by the heart than the head. Neatly packed with contents listed on the outside of the carton were many of the toys and bric-a-brac from when our children, now adults, were much smaller.

Some items looked like they were in the same boxes we used when we moved from Kasernenstrasse across town to Ahornstrasse in Offenbach. Without exchanging a word, I knew we wouldn't be placing any of those on the discard pile (I still have in the garage the chalkboard each child wrote on when they had their erste shultag).

It is amazing what you collect over the years and how much of it you can remember when you see it again (and how much you have NO clue about when reunited). Te disquieting part may be how much you become possessed by your possessions. Sigrid had boxes of singles (little records with big holes as I used to call them while she labeled my album collection, big records with little holes) and each dust cover came with a memory and a moment to match.

I think we both knew, and always did, that 'putting things in the basement' is code for pretending to remember who you once were even when you're less than comfortable with who you became. 

Not having to confront that person is a luxury I can afford though I probably enjoy it too much. For a moment we were as we see ourselves instead of as others do and who we really are. I'd chance again without regret, because the moment (however fleeting) seems to linger and abide awhile before disappearing.
-bill kenny

El Malei Rachamim

Today is the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. which serves as the cornerstone for today's observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I'm offering words I wrote several years ago to mark this day because they captured then, and now, my feelings and fears. 

As a child when my mother's mother told stories of "The War" her generation had fought, she rarely mentioned the death camps; perhaps because we were of Irish ancestry and Roman Catholic religion, perhaps for reasons she never had the time or the opportunity to explain. Europe was far away and there's too often a tendency to suggest it's good to let the past remain the past. Not this time.

I'm her age now and the cautionary tale that the Ha-Shoah should have been does not seem to be a lesson we have fully learned. There is mindless murder every day in every corner of the globe because of the color of skin, the choice of a God, the shape of an eyelid, and always some variation of the fear of The Other.

We are NOT much better here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, especially just months after a Presidential campaign whose mendacity and bigotry were such that many of us could shower for the next four years and still never feel clean as we impersonalized and dehumanized those with whom we are/were in disagreement philosophically and politically, rendering them abstractions and making them easier to hate and then hating them deeply and completely. 

As we keep Slouching towards Bethlehem we've continued our journey along the road to perdition and that, I fear, means we will persist in writing off one another and the damages we do to ourselves as part of the overhead of being on the planet. It is as if a person's lifetime is worth no more than an arched eyebrow or a shrugged shoulder.

I have yet to purchase this book but I shall because it's important, at least to me, that someone bear witness to who we were and how easily the danger and horror of all of that did happen and can happen again. Growing faint in the face of evil is to do nothing and doing nothing cannot be allowed, especially when we know that silence is consent and the first chapter in the horror story.

About a minute and a half into this trailer, Keri Lynn explains why she became involved in the Paper Clips Project. This is an old clip and I imagine her place has been taken by other bright and shiny young people who, if we're lucky, will not need to build rafts to save us from the flood of our own hatred but, instead, bridges that allow connections despite our differences.
-bill kenny

If You Liked Kakistocracy.....

I'm looking at the bright side, or trying to. 

The Tangerine Tyrant, the Petulant Peach, the Outraged Orange will be President of the United States for one day less than this time yesterday. 

I learned a new word and since I believe in sharing, now you will too.

Oh, and let me know when the price of eggs that so angered you that you chose a felon for President is actually lower.
-bill kenny 

Jockeying for a Window Seat

I live in the Nearly Rhode Island part of Connecticut as opposed to the Gold Coast piece of the state which has tried repeatedly to elbow Staten Island out of its position as one of the five boroughs of New York City. 

Our downstate brethren have Stew Leonard's, gluten-free polo ponies, the private cell phone numbers of vegan Beemer mechanics on speed dial, and dozens of rapid rail connections into Manhattan every day of the week. 

We country mice have a vacant storefront where Kresge's used to be, huntin' dogs as big as horses, a buddy who works at Tractor Supply Company and Southeast Area Transit, SEAT.

I'm not jealous; okay, maybe a little.
If reincarnation exists, my goal is for jodhpurs and a home in Belle Haven. I've already cased Metro North platforms for a cool place to stand to read the WSJ on my Kindle until my backgammon partner arrives for the ride into The City. In these parts, I'm styling if I own my bowling shoes. Not that I'd wear them on a SEAT bus, at least not on the schedules they've got now.

If you rely on mass transit this side of the Connecticut River, especially if you live beyond the Thames (pronounced like 'thame thit, different day') make like John Alden, call Mayflower, and move, pilgrim. 

I really do miss the real bus and rail lines, no more than when I watch a SEAT bus pass me with next to no one in it, or am riding one because my car is being repaired and I need to allow for three hours to make connections in both directions for a ten-mile ride. It's possibly faster to walk unless and until Connecticut invents pay sidewalks and then you'll need an EZ pass for your Uggs.

If we in Southeastern Connecticut were to push mass transit to its limit instead of limiting its access, what might we have? Bullet Trains named Desire? I'd settle for buses that operate every day of the week at no cost to patrons (how else will we ever wean ourselves from our addiction to automobiles?) and become the connective tissue across our region.
-bill kenny

Decisions and Revisions

Are you familiar with James Clear? 

You really need to check him out. He's not only thoughtful and thought-provoking, but he'll open doors for you to meet people and ideas you might otherwise never encounter. I get his newsletter in my e-mail inbox and it's full of gems, like these:

"I think about decisions in three ways: hats, haircuts, and tattoos.

"Most decisions are like hats.
Try one and if you don’t like it, put it back and try another. The cost of a mistake is low, so move quickly and try a bunch of hats.

"Some decisions are like haircuts.
You can fix a bad one, but it won’t be quick, and you might feel foolish for a while. That said, don't be scared of a bad haircut. Trying something new is usually a risk worth taking. If it doesn't work out, by this time next year you will have moved on and so will everyone else.

"A few decisions are like tattoos.
Once you make them, you have to live with them. Some mistakes are irreversible. Maybe you'll move on for a moment, but then you'll glance in the mirror and be reminded of that choice all over again. Even years later, the decision leaves a mark. When you're dealing with an irreversible choice, move slowly and think carefully." 

"So people don't worry 'bout where you've gone wrong.
'Cause you know if you hurry it takes twice as long."
-bill kenny

Revisiting the Second Amendment

It's not what you think. Well, maybe it is.

Some of us believe the first thirteen words of the Second Amendment are cause for pause and contemplation as to both the Founders' intent and applicability in our modern world. 

Others feel because of the number of words, they're plain unlucky.
And still others seem to think 'Hold my beer (literally).' 

James had better hope Bullwinkle didn't hear about his escapade. And maybe he won't, unless somebody shoots his mouth off.
-bill kenny

Borrowing Good Advice

My last original idea died of loneliness and almost everything I write and say, both seemingly expressions of what I am thinking (please let me have that, okay?) are compilations, combinations, and conflagrations of insights and observations I've accumulated in seven-plus decades here on the ant farm.

I live in Norwich, Connecticut, one of those places in New England where the history comes from. I am, as the natives constantly remind me, NFH (Not From Here), though I'm from here NOW. 

We're a small(ish) city of about forty-thousand with a seven-person City Council that tries to make the best decisions they can and thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-three others of us who not only know everything but know everything better.  

In the course of my readings and ramblings, I've come across some pretty smart folks most of whom wouldn't be caught dead in the same room with me. Not that it keeps me from admiring them; it just means we won't be going shoe-shopping which is just as well as I don't think Norwich has a shoe store, anymore. 

Take Phil Levin, an entrepreneur, with amazing insight into the basic building block of a city of any size, large or small, the importance of picking your neighborhood.  

I love this part right here: "You are going to spend 1000x more time in your surrounding 5 blocks than you will in any other neighborhood in your city. Thinking about all the things that New York City has—or the next city has—is a lot less important than thinking about the things within the five blocks where you live.

Most neighborhoods in your city you might never step foot in. They might as well be on the other side of the country. But the things in your immediate vicinity are the things that are going to dominate your life. So picking and influencing your neighborhood is really important... the neighborhood determines quite a bit about our life and our happiness."

It's possible while he was changing into his sneakers and slipping into that sweater that Fred Rogers was trying to balance Sarah Saturday and King Friday right there in his own neighborhood. We could do worse, and I'm afraid sometimes we see that as the challenge instead of the danger.
-bill kenny

 

Meet the Faces Beyond the Window's :Pane

I try to not be 'too hip for the room,' as we used to say in radio, and cast a wide net in terms of topics. In that spirit, if you don't live in Norwich, Connecticut, today might be a good day to skip this space in the ether. 

Consider yourself duly cautioned. 

This is the text of an email I shared with our Mayor and members of our City Council last Thursday on the "Panhandling" ordinance on tonight's agenda.

"Mayor Nystrom and Members of the Norwich City Council.

I am writing to share my dismay and disappointment with the “New Business” ordinance on your Tuesday, 21 January 2025 meeting agenda.

I’m accused (with some accuracy I concede) of being cynical but to propose this ordinance the day after we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luter King, Jr., who wrote in 1966, “Our nation is now so rich, so productive, that the continuation of persistent poverty is incendiary because the poor cannot rationalize their deprivation,” takes my breath away for sheer audacity.

I’m old enough to remember (vaguely) President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ and his War on Poverty. Sixty-one years later, this proposed ordinance is a through-the-looking-glass effort to wage war on the poor themselves.

With all due respect, it does NOTHING to reduce, eliminate, and/or alleviate the causes of poverty and near-poverty of too many Norwich residents. My parents raised all of us to accept that no one is immune from hard times even in this, the Land of Plenty.

All of us see those who stand at the intersection of Washington Street and the Sweeney Bridge, among other locations, or the entrances to the Norwichtown Commons and other shopping areas throughout our city.

Do ANY of us think those holding those cardboard signs regardless of the elements are there by choice? What sane person would choose to spend a day in the fifteen-degree chill of winter or in the heat through which we suffered last summer?

Your ordinance doesn’t help anyone who lives in a tent or sleeps in their cars (assuming they still have one) or couch-surfs (if they’re lucky) on a friend or family member’s sofa. Its intent seems to me to be to banish ‘those people’ as much as possible from public view.

How shameful and selfish.

Instead of attempting to address underlying causes including a lack of affordable housing, substance abuse, mental health concerns, food insecurity, or the dearth of employment that provides a living wage, this ordinance punishes the poor for being poor and not having the decency to either move somewhere else, preferably out of our collective eyesight and consciousness or die.

We cannot tell ourselves we are the richest nation on earth and in the history of the world and then treat those who, for reasons often beyond their control, have so little of those riches, with contempt and disdain.  

I don’t pretend to have (any) solutions to systemic poverty and inequality of opportunity, but this proposed ordinance is an embarrassment and abomination.
We are better than this; dear God, I hope we are.

Thank you for considering this letter. I hope you do the right thing on Tuesday evening and choose a different course of action.

Respectfully yours,

William Kenny"
-bill kenny

In the Spirit of the Day

Dear Petulant Peach,

Just in case you thought I forgot, I didn't. 

Jail to the Chief.
-bill kenny

 

What More in the Name of Love?

This is part of a long weekend for a lot of people, and that may be how most of us see this. Today is a federal holiday (I almost typed legal as if we had illegal holidays, which only applies to smiles, the last time I checked) in observance of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

I'm not sure many of us don't sometimes get caught up in the 'three dayness' of these weekends while the reason for them gets lost somewhere.

A lot of municipalities across the nation will join hands if only for the day, to honor the life (and death) of a human being remembered for his humanity at a time in our country's history of chaos and uncertainty. By espousing and embodying charity and kindness in a cruel world, he not only helped make a difference but, himself, became the difference. 

We are not the just and fair society we aspire to be, as he (with so many others throughout the history of our republic) hoped we would be, but we are getting there, even if the progress is slow and the journey is long. Next year, Jerusalem. 

Here in Norwich, we'll have another installment of our annual remembrance at City Hall at half past two this afternoon in the David Ruggles Freedom Courtyard. 

I always attend and march to the church (I never go in; I'm sure God has long since forgiven me, but I'm not sure I can say the same) with many of the same faces I see in the grocery store during the rest of the year. But we're always joined by one or two new people and that's a warming thought on what some years has been a cold day. If you can't join us here in the Rose of New England, I hope you can celebrate where you are.

After the speeches, the newspaper editorials, and all the gestures, sincere as they will be, instead of going home or to the mall, why not make the day count for people who are affected by the continuing tragedy that is the wildfires ravaging California. 

I know I cannot even imagine what such a calamity creates in terms of loss, but now is not the time to wring our hands in sorrow or clench our fists in anger that so much sadness can befall fellow Americans. 

Do not hesitate, because there is too much to do--act so that each one can reach one and help those in need of help, because by doing so we help ourselves.

This is the time and we are the people who can help, and what better time to do it than on this day when we honor the life and work of Dr. King?

-bill kenny

Something to Ponder

Tomorrow we celebrate and reaffirm our democracy where every four years the will of some of the people is transformed into the will of all of the people in a nation where anyone can grow up to be the President. 

Even a felon.

Stupidity is nothing to be happy about.
Being proud of your ignorance is a tragedy.
-bill kenny

And Just Like That....

I will be seventy-three in a handful of months. My dad died before he was sixty, so I guess I'm winning although the prizes ranging from a colostomy bag, and a motorized wheelchair to trouser suspenders for easy access aren't especially appealing and make me wish the play-at-home game was being offered as well.  

I'm the first to concede there's more in the mirror than there is up ahead (thank you, James) but I've been looking in mirrors for what feels like about seventy percent of a century and it's not until I look at photos of myself from nearly-now to back in the day that I can the erosion and the collapse. 

When you're not good-looking to start with, you can't afford the ravages of time but as I've learned there is nothing you can do to stop them, or even slow them down. The other day while wandering the aisles of my local Stop and Shop, almost inaudibly (or perhaps because I didn't have my hearing aids in) I heard Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' as I was weighing my purchase of seedless grapes. 

I love that song and the album on which it first appeared, The Wall, and Holy $hit, it was released in 1979 which was forty-six years ago. Waitaminit, take away the five and carry the one and....yep, that is some old music. 

What's that cliche about how 'time flies when you're having fun'. Bad news, sunshine; time starts to accelerate as you age. Don't take my word for it. I've discovered to my horror and chagrin, the wisdom in Joe's glib assertion.

And all I can do is smile, or grimace. Actually, they look about the same especially if you have corrective eyewear.
-bill kenny

Where Did the Bow Break?

I have always loved being a dad, despite the egregious lack of credentials and absence of any semblance of requisite skills. Thanks to modern technology, Sigrid and I knew enormous amounts about our children long before either of them was born (so far in advance, I, of the short attention span, sometimes lose track of their actual dates of birth). 

They were our children well before either of them was a person. As adults now in their own right, they have to struggle with a father who 'knows' they are grown-ups, but who has decided that may be true in another world, though not his.

True to form and family tradition, I was much more comfortable when our children were younger. I had a tough time winning over Patrick or Michelle when they were infants since it was hard to successfully show them how smart I seemed, possibly because I wasn't. 

Since they had no basis for comparison at their age, it should have been really easy and I should have drawn some conclusions when it wasn't. Except I've always been bad at Art, as well as Paul. It was easy being one of the two grown-ups in the house with all the answers, even though in my case I married a grown-up with all the answers instead of being one.

Raising a Child by Andrei Popov

There were the days of learning to tie shoes, to ride bikes, and to drive cars. The medical emergencies of pinched fingers, sprained ankles, and skinned knees. I was never good at matters of the heart--those have always seemed to be the easiest to break and the hardest to heal. For a guy who talks a lot, I've never known what to say especially when the mantra of 'everything will be alright' is revealed so often to be a shining lie.

I used to suggest to our children when the hurt got worse and the heart got harder that there was a reason why things had worked out the way they had(n't). But we all saw that as a tall tale from a short man. 

I'm in that neighborhood again now; knowing I can hope and I can hover but I can't always fix. Or soothe the pain should all the laughter turn to tears.
-bill kenny

Make Some History of Our Own

The Minute Men are part of the history of our region and a national treasure. They were, if you will, the original first responders even before we were a country. In the nearly two hundred and fifty years since we declared our independence, we've had minute men and women of every kind for every challenge. 

Be it in response to attacks of war through economic calamity or catastrophic acts of nature, their response has always been immediate and unquestioning.

I'm thinking maybe we should put some time back on the clock and see if there are still minute men among us. Here in Norwich, we have a target-rich environment for those wishing to extend a helping hand. 

There isn't a Norwich neighborhood that doesn't have a household not in need of a friendly face that can visit with a winter-bound senior citizen for some conversation and some caring or who could read a child an after-school story so a care-giver had fifteen minutes of 'me time' before starting supper. None of that costs any of us anything but its worth is incalculable and impact, beyond measurement.

Speaking of children, the Board of Education has regular monthly, publicized meetings. That might be your chance to go beyond the headlines of one of our local newspapers (the other one, when not ignoring the Board's existence entirely offers little better than drive-by analysis) and to learn more about where the Norwich Public School system is heading and hear firsthand about what our children and teachers are involved in daily. 

And perhaps, most importantly, it's your opportunity to make your voice for informed choice heard.

We spend so much time talking about downtown economic development it's hard to remember it's also where people live and work. Too many of us use the Chelsea District as a shortcut to get us from one place to another. Too late we discover we're nowhere at all.

And sometimes, we're so focused on just downtown that it's hard for someone who lives on Jail Hill or in Taftville (to name just two places) to believe anyone, anywhere cares about his street or her neighborhood. Sometimes we really are ten villages in search of a city. And sometimes we get tired of trying to carry everyone on our back and forget we don't have to do it alone. That's why we've chosen to live in our city, so we can help one another.

A lot of what needs to be done takes resources we don't have (right now), and figuring out how to acquire them will be a critical part of that job. Many cannot happen overnight but will take months, and in some cases, years. But some things in the immediate here and now only take a minute, if we have the time and the desire to help.
-bill kenny

Torrents of Words

I've been hurling words, dangling participles/split infinitives/transitive and passive voice abominations for over seventeen years. If you've been reading them, it probably feels a lot longer. Ouch! 

My bruised and battered feelings aside, I can write for the next seventeen years and never approach the brilliance of this. Enjoy.

“The Way It Works” by Charles Bukowski

she came out at 9:30 a.m. in the morning

and knocked at the manager's door:

"my husband is dead!"

they went to the back of the building together

and the process began:

first the fire dept. sent two men

in dark shirts and pants

in vehicle #27

and the manager and the lady and the

two men went inside as she

sobbed.

he had knifed her last April and

had done 6 months for that.

the two men in dark shirts came out

got in their vehicle

and drove away.

then two policemen came.

then a doctor (he probably was there to

sign the death certificate).

I became tired of looking out the

window and began to

read the latest issue of

The New Yorker.

when I looked again there was a nice

sensitive-looking gray-haired gentleman

walking slowly up and down the

sidewalk in a dark suit.

then he waved in a black

hearse which

drove right up on the lawn and stopped

next to my porch.

two men got out of the hearse

opened up the back

and pulled out a gurney with 4

wheels. they rolled it to the back of the

building. when they came out again he was in a

black zipper bag and she was in

obvious distress.

they put him in the

hearse and then walked back to

her apartment and went inside

again.

I had to take out my laundry and

run some other errands.

Linda was coming to visit and

I was worried about her seeing that

hearse parked next to my porch.

so I left a note pinned to my door

that said: Linda, don't worry.

I'm ok. and

then I took my dirty laundry to my car and

drove away.

when I got back the hearse was gone and

Linda hadn't arrived yet.

I took the note from the door and

went inside.

well, I thought, that old guy in back

he was about my age and

we saw each other every day but

we never spoke to one another.

now we wouldn't have to.

If you learned to read for no other reason but to read this, be glad you did.
-bill kenny

Rethinking 'Deus Ex Machina'

Since I don't suffer from an irony deficiency, I find it nearly humorous when interacting with devices connected to the internet to have to prove to their satisfaction that I, Mr. Flesh-and-Blood Stumblebunny, am really not a machine, to what is really very much a machine.

I'm not sure if I'm auditioning for something or jockeying for a pole position as the machines create a Colosseum for their own amusement (I'd like to be Team Bread, preferably rye with seeds if that's possible). 

I may be the only one disquieted by this type of stuff-no one else I've encountered in the humansphere has voiced any misgivings so, lemming that I am, perhaps I should shut my yap and hold on tighter to my flotation ring as I edge inexorably towards the cliff.     

But, remember you read it here, well, not exactly first that's for sure....all of this now also involves God which makes a great deal of sense to me as a Fallen Away Roman Catholic. The Lord and I have a strained relationship though not necessarily the one Voltaire seems to have had. 

Sacré bleu! If there is a God, that might explain all the 'Il fait vraiment chaud ici !' that François-Marie Arouet is shouting, especially as The Lord is moving in slightly less mysterious ways beyond His current Invisible Friend status according to this Associated Press report is to be believed.

No matter your language or profession of faith (or lack thereof), kneel to confess and then rise cleansed and sanctified. It might remind you of a modern-day literature classic though we've made learning to read optional. Based on recent events, we've already done that with thinking.
-bill kenny