All Quiet on the Western Front

I started the day with some hope I'd be going home but apparently it was the root beer talking.

The nephrologist spoke to the hospitalist who consulted with the physical therapist (all of whom wear different color scrubs to help you out tell them apart, unless you're color blind, then you,'re screwed) and the decision was I am staying until at least Tuesday.

I'm starting to think they're actually talking to my wife who's saying, "Take your time."

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.

-bill kenny

No Sugar Tonight

Or today either, for that matter. 

I'm enjoying medical care up close and personal in my local hospital. When you look out the window in my room, you can see the cemetery. 

But no worries, right?

See you tomorrow. Maybe.

-bill kenny

Bears Repeating

It's not so much 'guess where I'm headed today' as it is 'why aren't you going, too?' Heat of summer or cloudy skies and rain, it's the 60th Rose Arts Festival and it wouldn't be the same without you.

Rose Arts Festival 2025

As the saying goes....

-bill kenny

Take Us to the Land of Milk and Honey

It really is simple.

It's always almost roll credits time for some.
-bill kenny

Two Hands to Help Ourselves

As a cranky, elderly Yank who woke up one morning and realized he was trapped in the body of an old person, I've discovered that my tolerance for well-intentioned stupidity has been exhausted. 

My problem with controlling my urge to smack dopes with a cricket bat is that I live in a target-rich environment and Amazon is all out 'self-control.' It's not just locally; we are a nation of insatiable appetites who still think the world revolves around us, even though few anywhere else on the globe agree with that. 

At some point, as the Evangenitals would have you believe, the Lawd gave us two hands to take as much as we could and two pockets to put it all in. And to do it quickly because around here, he who hesitates is lunch. 

We want things we don't need to impress people we don't like, and think little to nothing about it. Welcome to Amerika 2025. As long as we put a flag on it, it ain't greed, right?
-bill kenny

Private Party

Very much narrow casting today, to (in general) New England, because that's where American History is made, and more specifically to where I live, the Rose of New England, Norwich, Connecticut. 

We, like many towns throughout the region, aren't suffering from Future Shock but, rather, Present Shock. When the textile mills went south, geographically, in the Fifties because of much cheaper labor (and then, in turn, in the New World Order, went overseas for even cheaper labor), we had no Plan B. 

Quite frankly, the manufacturing era is over. America doesn't make things anymore, aside from TikTok videos and MTV. We devalued and disassembled much of our education system to the point that we no longer have the skills or knowledge to apply for work, even if all the factories elsewhere came back here tomorrow.   

Here in Norwich, it means we have a Grand List mostly of residential properties because, despite all the brave talk, we are less than successful in attracting commercial and business enterprises. Oh, don't get me wrong, we're making progress, but not at a rate and pace that slows the annual mill rate increase on my house, which raises my mortgage payments to pay for taxes that fund the continuing crumbling infrastructure of every kind and constraints on public services.

What we do have is lots of old buildings, and by old, I mean the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century. In a perfect world, or even one just up I-395 a few exits, we'd have a plan for economic tourism that would complement intelligent development. The keyword is plan. Instead, we have hope.

I've been driving past this house since the day I moved to Norwich, over thirty-three years ago, and have watched many gallant and enthusiastic attempts to restore this structure. For all their efforts, and with all due respect to the artist's rendering above, this is what we have now.

This is, to me (unfortunately), TYPICAL Norwich. "Ready, Fire!, Aim." Another old building that has been determined to be historic and so must be 'preserved' but with no one else interested in buying it, the City of Norwich did, and now like the Mercantile Exchange, the Wauregan Hotel and the Reid & Hughes Building (to name just three) the city is in the real estate business, again. We were the dog that caught the car. And now what?

We're back to people buzzing about a developer fixing it up (somehow), but for what purpose and to what end? Where is the infrastructure for Norwich to effectively exploit historic tourism? We spend a lot of time talking about and still don't have a coherent or cogent plan to develop one. 

Neither of the two people nominated by their respective parties for the office of Mayor in this November's election has offered any specifics about anything they will do (or try to do) to improve our Grand List and the community's quality of life. Gibberish and generalities shouldn't be any way to run for office, but look nationally and do not be surprised. 

With apologies to Andy Dufresne, while Hope is a good thing, hope is NOT a plan, and what's needed now, perhaps more than at any time since I've lived here, is a plan. And the courage to implement it.
-bill kenny

Over, Under

These are, with apologies to Thomas Paine, times to try a man's (and woman's) soul. 

MAGA or WOKE, 

DUI or DEI, 

Sekt oder Selters. 

Left Twix of Right Twix.

These are the questions of the hour. But, and again with apologies to TP, the til-now-unresolved question of questions has always been: toilet paper roll, over or under.

And the answer is.

Backwards, forwards, spin around.
-bill kenny

Eyes Wide Shut

This is the opposite of DADT ('Don't Ask, Don't Tell'). 

I had a dream the other night that I had failed to put out our recycling bin and was dragging it down the street while chasing the truck. In light of how little running I can do in real life, I was sort of impressed with the pace I maintained in my dream. 

Actually, what should have impressed me was that I remembered any aspect of that dream because I tend not to do that at all. I'm not alone, though I find this to be of small solace. With apologies to Willie and Prince Hamlet, dreaming is not necessarily everything it's cracked up to be.  

It's a fine line between a coiled spring and a mortal coil, only one of which is available at your local hardware store. But as vexing as it is to NOT be able to remember dreams, a larger question could/should be why do we dream at all, and the answer(s) are not simple or direct.

In the course of all of this, I stumbled across a previously unknown to me quote from Edgar Cayce that I very much enjoy: "Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions." If only.....
-bill kenny

Inhale Deeply

As a kid growing up in Central New Jersey, one of the great hot summer smells was the after-the-rain-stopped-aroma of evaporating rainfall dissipating into steam from the blacktop combined with the scent of the wet grass. That was how I knew it was summer. 

Petrichor is the technical term for the smell of rain. I was an adult before I ever learned it and have marveled over how perfectly it describes something I never even knew had a name. What I didn't know until the other day, is what causes petrichor and how it comes to be made. 

Science tells me it's geosmin and 2-MIB, and that's well and good I suppose, though I will always think of it as the smell of summer and the promise of wonder that it portends. And when I remember the summers of my boyhood I always hear this.
-bill kenny 

Waving Not Drowning

As a consequence of leading a sheltered life, I end up having encounters that while perfectly normal for Hugh or You, are sometimes disconcerting for me. The other day I had the chance for the first time in my life (at least in this one) to 'knuckle bump' with someone. 

I had no idea what he was intending when he put his right fist straight out but I flinched and braced for impact. When nothing happened, I more or less opened my eyes and he was staring at me the same way I stared at my plate years ago when I learned 'calamari' was Italian for squid. Apparently, it takes the place of a handshake in the post-covid world. Who knew? (Not me.)

I never ate lunch, or any other meal, at the cool kids' table, so I appreciated the crash course on hip I received -except I know instinctively that what an old guy thinks is cool, probably ain't. All those trick pygmy pony handshakes from years gone by--the ones that look like they were choreographed by Alvin Ailey or George Balanchine; when I try to do them it's more like Jerry Lewis.

I am a living fossil and the former part of that assertion is subject to discussion I've been told. Since most of that happens after I've toddled off to bed, I've no firsthand knowledge of the respective positions, except to note that Wednesday is rubbish day in my neighborhood, and so far, I haven't awakened on Wednesday mornings and found myself curbside (so far, so good).

I've accepted my role as an aging bebop doofus hipster who became far more decorative than useful decades ago and then, as my looks faded and old age set in, took to staying indoors until the sun went down because I was frightening the neighborhood children. 

They, like our two, are grown and gone, for the most part, so I can wander around to my heart's content secure in the knowledge that anyone I meet will work very hard to avoid even acknowledging me much less exchanging greetings. Which is too bad, really, as I'm getting pretty good with the knuckle-bumping.
-bill kenny

Summer Solstice Safety Tip

Pretty spiffy title today, eh? Thought of it all by myself (for the most part). 

But it's not always just clever wordplay and scintillating wit around here (it can be argued it's never either of those and I would be hard put to argue the opposite). Sometimes there's actual advice you can use (with the same frequency with which a blind pig finds an acorn, but still).

But today's an opportunity for public service, something I'm not noted for, with good reason. With the start of summer today, it's safe to say we'll all be looking for more family time in the great outdoors. 

Here's a picnic tip I stole from Yogi Bear.

But on a surprisingly serious note, for me, some excellent advice for anyone who has a water bug in their family.

You can thank me later.    
-bill kenny

A Question in Your Nerves Is Lit

Today is Juneteenth Day. I could offer you an explanation of the origins and history of the day, but this does the trick nicely. However, for us in Norwich, unlike many urban areas across the country in recent years, we have a more relaxed approach to the day and the events surrounding it.

But it's not all celebrations. There's unresolved sorrow, fear, resentment, anguish, and anger associated with the origins and causes of the system of oppression whose end, in the United States as we knew it came back then one-hundred and sixty years ago on June 19 when slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned the War Between the States had ended months earlier on 9 April and they were now free. 

Juneteenth is a federal holiday, as well it should be, and a celebration of who we are and who we choose to be as a citizenry at an especially fraught moment in our history and heritage. Celebrations help bring different people, and peoples, together, to reflect on who they are, who they were, and who they are on the way to becoming. 

Ideally, each of us sees in one another (or should) a reflection of ourselves as well as a better understanding of our unique talents and gifts; the things that make you, you and me, me. That's why Juneteenth celebrations here in Norwich are so large. Not only all the people who are going to be there are at it, but all those who've come before them and those generations as yet to be born who will fulfill their promises and who will dream their own dreams and then live those as well. 

So celebrate wherever in the world you find yourself today. Sometimes, unless and until you look back it's hard to see how far you've traveled. It can be easy to realize the journey has a distance yet to be accomplished and to feel daunted by the challenge of that task, but it is sweeter and sweetened by the knowledge of where we were and where we are now.
-bill kenny

So these Are the Good, Old Days?

I attended Norwich City Council meetings since the winter of 1993 when those on that Council and the members of the Board of Education differed so strongly on the funding levels for the school system in the proposed budget that the Council's hearings were relocated, as the hearing was just beginning, from City Hall to the gymnasium at Kelly Middle School. 

As I recall, dozens of speakers implored and berated the aldermen (and woman) to reconsider allocations for the Norwich Schools while hundreds of others sat and listened. Nothing changed.

In the three decades since, we've had the same struggles on the same topics at this time of the year, every year. The people in the front of the room have changed and as I've looked around City Council chambers, so, too have those who attend the meetings. 

With cable access coverage of Council meetings, meeting agenda and minutes readily available from the municipal website, extended accounts by at least one local newspaper reporter, and sometimes caustic comments from that newspaper's readers (guilty as charged), the scale and scope of involvement has seemingly expanded.

The issues we come to the Council with haven't really changed all that much--they are the folks to whom we turn for repairing our roads, extending a sidewalk, asking about additional police patrols, understanding why schools close--the daily operation of our city. 

They, in turn, route our concerns and questions to and through the City Manager and his Department directors for answers that more often than not generate additional questions and sometimes don't end with the happy ending we sought.

I'm not sure, even though in theory we vote for City Councils to partner with the Mayor in working on Big Picture issues like long-term economic development and community improvement, that we're comfortable with having anyone actually do that. 

Some divide our city into 'us', never well-defined perhaps because 'we' already know who 'us' is, and 'them', another unknown group who is keeping 'us' from returning Norwich to its days of grace and glory when downtown was jammed on Thursday nights and Eisenhower was President.

If it were only that simple--sitting at the confluence of the Shetucket, Thames, and Yantic Rivers we, of all Connecticut cities, should be most aware no one one steps into the same river twice because both we and the river have changed. 

Yet we want someone, somewhere to make the cost of city government what it was in (pick a year, or better, a different decade) when times were good and the living was easy. This year's budget, in another very austere financial environment, has been painful to watch as it has developed.

We, as a city, a state, and a nation have spent money for decades (at least as long as I've been alive, not that I'm suggesting cause and effect) as if we'll find enough paper money in our trouser pocket or enough change between the couch cushions in the living room to offset the stagnation in the Grand List. 

Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't, I guess. At least not so far. But what never changes is how swiftly and ruthlessly we seek out someone other than ourselves to blame. Every time.
-bill kenny

A (Long) Look Back

Found this while looking for something else. It's from a long time ago; I think I once knew the guy who wrote it. At the time the title was:  

In through the Out Door

On Saturday mornings I breakfast away from the house. I hike to the corner with a pocketful of change and buy one of the two daily newspapers in New London County (we get the other one delivered to the house) square the block back to the house and head for the Golden Arches.

Ours, much like yours, is not at all like the one in the TV commercials with fresh-faced young people eager to serve customers behind sparkling clean counters where every order appears like magic, piping hot and steamy, in seconds. The folks behind the registers, like those of us wandering towards them, are still half-asleep and transitioning from a dream world to the real one and not doing a very good job of it.

When I was a kid, none of these places served breakfast-that was a meal your mom made for you and you ate it at home (after all, didn't she always say 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day'?), but for the last decade or more, the pace and rate of life in these United States have changed so much we load up on empty calories wherever we can get them, and for a lot of the fast-food establishments the breakfast meal is a huge profit center.

There's always a line inside though on a weekend where the temperatures touched ninety degrees and the humidity was so high you were sweating just thinking about the heat, no one really minded standing in the air-conditioned indoors watching the condensation from the outdoors build up on the windows. None of us were in any particular hurry to go back out into it.

I grabbed my grub, found a seat at a small table still large enough so I could spread out my newspaper while eating breakfast, and was probably about halfway through when I felt eyes on me over my right shoulder. 

Looking up slowly, I was about fifteen feet across the restaurant from a blue-eyed boy, head full of wild blond hair, maybe eighteen months old (I'm not good at guessing ages and weights, so running away to join the carnival is one less career option) who was looking at me, then quickly looking away only to look at me again. Peek-a-boo.

I like to think of myself as good with kids (I'm not, as I fear our two would quickly tell you if asked, so don't ask, please; but I like to think I am) so I, too, started to play the game, all the while smiling with what I hoped was a reassuring grin though I've been told by some it is anything but. 

I feared that might be the case when a woman (I refuse to tell you what I guessed her age to be but it didn't reflect her being the mother of a child) came towards me to apologize for Derek, or Daniel or David (the name started with a D, that's about all I got out of it) who explained that perhaps the child was taken by my resemblance to her brother, his uncle, Paul.

That was a name that resonated because my mother's youngest brother's name was Paul. He died decades ago, and far too young, from an illness I was always a little fuzzy about. He and his family had moved to the West Coast when I was in my early teens (= a very long time ago) and I hadn't thought of him or them for at least thirty years until that moment. I do remember as a child fighting fiercely with Paul, whenever we visited Grandma and Grampy (my mother's folks), whom I resembled right down to the constellation of freckles.

I looked into the woman's face but saw no resemblance between her and me, leading me to wonder (to myself) how I could remind her of her late brother or her son of his uncle, especially, since as she added her brother had been killed in Iraq in 2003. My math skills are never regarded as mad but are certainly good enough to have computed that the woman's son had never laid eyes on her brother, at least not in this life.

I offered condolences, more to make conversation than anything else, and said I had forgotten the war in Southwest Asia had consequences this close to home which is when she explained that she and her son weren't from here, but passing through heading for home in New Hampshire. 

She apologized again. I wished them a safe trip and she returned to her table to pack her child up and get ready to leave. Holding him on her left arm as she walked towards the door, I smiled as he waved goodbye to me and, wondering if I'd next see him in another life, I waved so long, but not farewell, to him.
-bill kenny

Illegitimi non Carborundum

I live in a city of a bit less than forty thousand folks (pending a visit from the ICE Shutzstaffel) in the heart of New England (some have repeatedly suggested a different part of the anatomy) also known as Connecticut, "The Land of Steady Habits."

We often, perhaps too often, confuse talking about something with actually taking action and doing it. Part of the reason why, I suspect, is we have figured out that if we don't do anything (about downtown revitalization, the Occum Industrial Park, the stagnation in the growth of our municipal grand list, to say nothing of the heartbreak of psoriasis), we can't do anything wrong.  

Some people in our state see us as losers, which is harsh but it takes one to know one, I guess, but I see us as 'discouraged experts,' when what we need are 'enthusiastic beginners.' If we had a spirit animal it would be Eeyore when what we could use is Tigger. I never get lost when walking because even total strangers are quick to tell me where to go. Hospitality is an acquired skill, it seems. 

Point, in fact, we spend most of our time waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the subordinate clause that follows '..but...' as we allow our enjoyment of the many good things we could have to be marred by our concerns about the bad things that most assuredly are just around the corner.  

A pessimist, I'm told, is somebody who feels bad when they feel good, out of fear that they'll feel worse when they feel better. There's always been more of that than needed and probably more than necessary. Especially here, and especially now.

This a tough time to be a positivist since so much of who we are and how we live seems to be devolving into nativist and tribal groupthink with little room for rational and reasoned discussion. We're in such fear of failing that we've given up trying which is the ultimate failure.
-bill kenny

Farther Fathers

The memories are flashes more than full sequences. 

I can recall a white mug with a round soap in the bottom of it, a brush with the softest bristles I could ever imagine standing on its red handle like a bayonet not yet fixed next to it on the shelf to the left of the mirror and a double-edge single-blade razor that used Gillette Blue Blades (Look Sharp! Feel Sharp! Be Sharp!)-none of that multi-blade $hit or heated shaving gel.

On Sundays, we had every newspaper you could imagine scattered all over the kitchen table from the local (then called) Daily Home News (Nat C worked for it a lifetime later; enjoy the bigger and far better he went on to; breathtaking stuff) through the NY Daily News that, before our parents met and became our parents the Mayor of New York read on the radio during a delivery strike just before World War II ended, through the NY Times, America's newspaper of record and the dreariest newspaper with NO funnies of any kind and hardly even a photograph on the front page.

The good thing about going to church on Sunday was the breakfast that followed and entrance into the kingdom of Heaven (wanted to get that in just in case Monsignor Harding is reading this despite his being dead and all). 

After Mass, there were hard rolls with scrambled eggs and bacon. Actually the bacon was cooked first and the grease used to cook the eggs that were made with milk and fluffed so big they looked like yellow clouds.

Our father died forty-four years ago this past Memorial Day. I've spent part of every day since his death trying to have the last word of a discussion I never started with him, hoping but never believing, I could finally understand him. 

For too many years, I was terrified of him; his wit, his insight, his caustic observations, his heavy hands, his unyielding expectations that each of us be the absolute best it was possible to be, always.

For too many more years, I simply hated him. I vowed to be everything he never was and, instead, along the way became, in so many ways, the person he wanted me to be because he wanted me to be the best me I could. I didn't know that had a lot to do with my inability to see who he was and to know who I am. He was right, of course, you cannot define yourself by who you are not, but only by who you are and what you try to be.

We were six children but really more like two cohorts of three children, each group relatively close in age with disparate interests and ideas. We have all grown to be adults he would have enjoyed-whether he could have ever made us understand that is another matter entirely. 

Our father was very complex, with delights and demons in almost equal numbers. I see him when I see pictures of my brothers and I feel his nearness when I am with my own children, who are confident if not outright cocky, bright if not brilliant, fabulous if not also a little flawed and I realize the hardest job he ever had was in being our father.

I've grown old thinking I could know everything and have had to grow up to accept I will never know everything better. I remember the fights though never the causes. I can recall the antics and reactions but never the background or the final resolutions. I can't tell you if we had a million arguments or just one that lasted for decades but I know now it took two of us to create a blaze that could consume two people so completely. I have scars that will never heal and the realization that I gave as good as I got.

This year, perhaps, I can close the book on the bitterness of memories I can't change and put the shadows of what could have been to bed for the rest of my life. I can do nothing over but my children are proof I can do everything better because of what I learned and from whom. I cannot believe I finally got to this place. Happy Father's Day, Dad, and to you reading this, whoever and wherever you are on this Father's Day as well.

-bill kenny

If You Can Believe in Something Bigger than Yourself

Between now and Election Day, we will hear every single person seeking office in the United States of America invoke the flag in support of whatever it is they are advocating.

That is their right, just as it is mine to arch my right eyebrow and aim a caustic comment or two (I get them by the gross, they're much cheaper that way) in their general direction, certainly no longer in the hope of dissuading them or any adherent from pursuing a particular course of action I'd rather they not, but because it's hygienic and perhaps therapeutic for my own mental state.

I, along with millions of others since before this nation was a nation, have served in its armed forces, worn its uniform, followed the lawful orders of those placed in leadership positions, and done as best I could what was expected of me in defense of my country and my family. In recent days, we've had headlines that might cause some to wonder about the importance of defining and defending both.

The American flag is a symbol of our nation and means to each of us what we wish to see in it every time we look at it. Today is Flag Day and we will hear a lot about 'the flag' and 'our country' before we make decisions this November about who we are and who we shall continue to be.

I'd remind you of the words of Carl Schurz, words about "my country" and how far too often pseudo-patriots have selectively edited and condensed/corrupted his words to support their own agenda. Here's all of it in one place: "(O)ur free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”

It doesn't fit in a post on Truth Social or other social media so you rarely, if ever, hear the whole quote in much the same way as we use the flag to cover a multitude of venalities. Today, Flag Day, it's good to remember our flag shouldn't be a prop for personal or political posturing but rather a symbol of our nation's resolve and unity.
-bill kenny

Happy Birthday, US Army!

And....

For those who observe.  
-bill kenny

Jeff and Rod Touch (Ron) Wood

Interestingly, there are so many more concerns about, today, Friday the 13th in a nation of fifty states, founded from thirteen original colonies than just about anywhere else on earth 

From the notion of seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror while crossing the path of a black cat and not throwing salt over your right shoulder, to dozens of local and regional variants, we all know people who, today, are as quiet and immobile as they can, 'just in case...'

Here's a puzzler, filed under 'Things from England', that suggests if you worry enough about anything, you can, and will, get sick. Like the old saw about how paranoids are convinced people are out to get them and when, because they alter their behavior, people are indeed out to get them, does this mean they are cured?

I visit the snopes.com website to debunk junk I see online or TV. That's where I can check out topics ranging from 'tariffs are paid by the country exporting goods to the United States," 'Amelia Earhart was Barack Obama's Secret Santa' and just about any combination of either of those we could think of. But Friday the 13th is a slippery slope even for snopes. 

After I've suggested you not step on a crack, or do anything else with it, or have any interaction with a ladder of any kind for any reason, I'd offer, in a half-full glass kind of world, perhaps we're all better off if we consider today as the second coming of Thursday the 12th, only supersized.
-bill kenny

Nine Years On...

It's obscenely ironic in an age of instantaneous communication how much of what is important doesn't survive beyond a single news cycle. There is so much information and so many vehicles to share it, that we are inundated and ultimately overwhelmed, as news and events just wash over us. 

Nine years ago, today, the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida was The News for all the worst and wrong reasons. What follows are words I offered a year after it happened knowing that somewhere events just like it would keep happening. At the time, I called it: 

Collateral Damage in the Age of Style

There's been so much killing and carnage since it happened I'd almost forgotten. It was one year ago that an impotent, life-long loser murdered forty-nine people in the Pulse Club in Orlando, Florida.

Murder in the Name of the Lord has practically become a daily occurrence and was so even before Pulse but no matter how often it happens, and how great the death and damage, it never, ever starts to feel "normal" or a part of any kind of 'just another day at the End of the World.' 

Pulse nightclub victims 

As a card-carrying First Worlder, without ever knowing it or knowing of it, I helped create the world order that has hundreds of millions living in squalor and penury so profound and institutionalized they will never escape it. The world, as they know it, has conspired to leave them with nothing.

The institutions I have created and support have, in turn, constructed protections and insulation for me so that I have as much, or as little (preferably) interaction with or even knowledge of their existence. I'm not indifferent to their struggle and plight; I am oblivious to it. And they have no personal contact of any kind of me and mine. We are on parallel but separate planets.

Except, of course, we share this one. And because we are our own closed system, one with the other, we guarantee that this dance of death and doom will go on until no one is left standing. 

When you have nothing to live for it makes death as deliverance attractive. And with nothing to live for, it's easier to find something to die for which is only partial solace unless and until you can make someone else die for it, too.

I'm never sure if God created man in His image and likeness (some things you must take or leave on faith alone), but I'm very sure we created God in ours, leaving me to wonder who will forgive us.
-bill kenny   

Keep the Dog in the Basket

I love rock and roll music and have a very expansive definition of what I consider it to be (hint: does not include any Rastafarian country and western or any variation of crunk polka). I do not play a musical instrument, and I cannot sing, though that doesn't mean I won't try. Forewarned is forearmed.

For me, music sounds like what feelings should be and I applaud any and all who make it, and I most definitely include in that number, Peter Bence.

Treat yourself to this eargasm, and enjoy!
-bill kenny    

Waiting on a Dial Tone

I just realized as I was typing the title for today's epistle that I am truly a fossil. 

I'm not sure how many, if any, of the people I've known and or worked with in all the years we've been back in The Land of the Round Doorknobs, have a landline telephone (we do) so my reference to waiting on a dial tone might be as inappropriate as characterizing someone's complaints as 'sounding like a broken record.' 

It's okay, I suspect I'd look good in high-button shoes and a waistcoat with a handle-bar mustache (channeling my inner Ben Davidson). Despite having a cellphone for (guessing here) about twenty years, I still have difficulty making or receiving calls, especially the former as I wait for a dial tone that is never coming. Some day in the not-too-distant future, no one on earth will know what a dial tone is.   

I made my livelihood with words in one form or another for about fifty years. Spoken or written, I threw them against walls and sometimes they stuck, and sometimes no luck. But the words I seem to return to in search of solace and closure (?) are the words I never shared.  

We all get busy or lose sight of someone who once meant the world to us. Sometimes the dynamics change and what was once a friendship devolves into an acquaintanceship or even less. Sometimes there's collateral damage on the human highway and after we've slowed down to look at it, we resume normal speed and never think about it again.

In recent days, mutual friends shared the sad news that someone I'd known and worked with over four decades ago, and who had reintroduced us through a social media platform a few short years ago, had passed away. Our online relationship had been both thoughtful and thought-provoking (all thanks to him as I certainly couldn't contribute a meaningful thought on a bet).

Just the day before receiving the news of his passing, I sat down to drop him a line and what passed for thoughts in my case and got distracted by the hurly-burly of the day and never finished my note and now, of course, I never shall.

And then, perhaps because there is a Master Clockmaker in our universe, I came across an article that reduced me to tears and also offered me a comfort that I hadn't expected or intended. If you've never encountered a Wind Phone, now you can say that you have. 

And you needn't journey to Japan to use it. Just a reminder from me to you that 'Hello' is the first step in a journey we start anew every day. 
-bill kenny 

Forty Years Runnin' Down the Road

Forty years ago this month, Bruce Springsteen released his seventh album, Born in the USA. He's been in the news quite recently because, as far as I can tell, significant numbers of people who didn't understand the album or the title track back then still don't understand him now.

I think he and Samuel Clemons would have gotten along famously or at least better than Elmo and Donny Dorito. 

Happy Fortieth.
-bill kenny  

Burning Brightly

As a grade school child, today, Pentecost, was one of the most difficult Sundays we had all year as Roman Catholics. As a loyal son of the Holy Mother Church, I struggled to wrap my head around the Holy Trinity and God as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (later changed to Spirit, which I always thought was a great marketing idea, as all I ever thought of was Casper, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to be the point).

Just as I was getting used to the idea of three persons in one Godhead, along comes Pentecost Sunday. When you're a kid, because you don't know the words 'disquieting' or 'surreal', you say 'weird' (a lot). Now, as a world-weary adult, I look at the Gospel of John, usually used as part of the Mass, and envy that school kid with his unthinking faith and belief.

John, say the Scripture scholars, was reconstructing what might have been said at Christ's last Supper-but, but because of when those same scholars think the Gospel was written, it's possible  John, himself, heard none of the words spoken he quotes. 

Ironically, John himself becomes the proof of his own theory that belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, taken on faith alone, by those who did not witness his miracles, is at least as powerful as belief by those who were present.

The tongues of fire, we were taught in catechism (when I was in public school and attended religious instruction in the church basement once a week) and, later, when in parochial school, were to cleanse our hearts and minds of doubts and questions. Seven-plus decades into the journey, I guess they needed to be a lot hotter because the former remain and the latter abound.

But honoring the notion of symmetry and hoping the truth in the lesson is so simple and obvious even I can grasp it, I cling to the example of John and his testimony of faith and belief in that which he had not seen. 

-bill kenny

Do As I Say

We had an Incident in Baltimore Harbor the other day, but with so many oil spills and the like, it's becoming really hard to get as upset about them as we need to to change our habits. 

It seems to me waaay too many of us prefer talking about doing something to actually doing something. And in this case, we've decided that since all ducks are birds, all birds must be ducks. And, before you get cranky I AM NOT downplaying the destruction caused by the incompetence, arrogance, avarice, sloth, and who knows how many other of the deadly sins that have created the latest incident.

But......it's not just the oil industry (multi-national, poly bendable, super attenuated, hyphenated, and poly-unsaturated). When I last went car shopping, do you know how many vehicles, similar to what I bought, got better fuel economy? It's a trick question, not because I didn't tell you what I bought, but because I don't know (either). I didn't ask-because I didn't care. I 'knew' the vehicle got decent mileage and that was fine. I cared more about the cloth seats than I did about the hydrocarbon emissions and hand on your heart so, too, do you.

We read oil spill stories on Facebook or other social media and click on the angry emoji or maybe the sad one and move on. If we were to be as honest with one another as we say we are (and we lie something awful, don't we?), we'd do away with nozzles at the gas pumps, and replace them with HUGE gauge syringes and IV bags to mainline the oil, diesel, kerosene and gasoline, because our appetite for 'the stuff' remains unsated. For every hybrid car sold, there are sales of TEN V-8 models (for all I know; I'm in rant mode. Do I look like I have time to research facts?).

Yeah, we all want wind, solar, and other alternative energy, (okay, not Donny Dorito) unless it costs more than our current fossil fuel fix, or involves changing in any way how we live. That's why Facebook is so great! I just click on the appropriate button and my soul is cleansed. Sorry about the gulls, and it's too bad that all those coastal animals in the marshland ecosystems are being destroyed. Dude, that's so sad I can't bear to watch very much of it on the TV news anymore.

If only we could get to the source of the greed, go deep beneath the waves, and cap the rapacious gluttony that has us chugging down those fifty-five-gallon oil drums like waterfront whores knocking back cheap tequila shots during Fleet Week.

Imagine having a blade in your hand in front of the mirror while staring into the vacant eyes of the junkie whose addiction created this affliction, what would you do? Sure explains the stubble doesn't it? I know! We could start our own fan group, and get everybody to 'like' us! We'll call it "Save the Earth! (for Dessert)" Bet we could get a bajillion hits by lunchtime and still change nothing (if we're not willing to change ourselves).

I'd offer to be the first (to sign, not to change) but I'm booked solid right now with my day job. You see, I lay traps for troubadours who get killed before they reach Bombay. Business is booming.
-bill kenny