When Pigs Fly

I spend a lot of time online, and more recently, a significant portion of that time has been devoted to grocery shopping. The jostle in the aisles and more especially the interaction with other folks as we pass one another, elevate my stress levels. 

Besides, the mega stores just keep getting larger as they slowly, like Sherwin-Williams Paint, cover the earth. In the not-too-distant future, I see a moment where you live your entire life in a megastore with an occasional special treat of real daylight through a window if you've been very good.  

A news item like this one does nothing to reassure me about where our world is heading. I guess I should be pacified to learn, "At this point, the root cause of the contamination is unknown, but the FDA is working with Indonesian seafood regulatory authorities to investigate."

I guess the good news about radioactive shrimp would be they're easier to find in the dark. Not that I spend a lot of time looking for them.
-bill kenny

More Gilligan than the Professor

Somewhere, some place, I still have the very first record my mother ever bought me, a copy of Danny & the Juniors' "At the Hop" on ABC-Paramount records. I have no idea why she got it for me.

I was very young, still single digits and short pants (and a Y at the end of my first name), I suspect, and I have no idea where I would have played the single as 'the victrola' as we called the record player back in the day was something we kids were never allowed to go near at the time.

Decades and decades later, I have over 7,500 albums, organized alphabetically and chronologically, a thousand or more compact discs (sorted the same way), and more music streaming services than I have ears with which to listen to them. 

When I stumbled across this article, The 50 Most Influential Albums to Hear Before You Die, I was like a cat with an open box. 

Give my regards to Desert Island Discs. Yes, I have every one of them.
-bill kenny

Beats a Spelling Bee

Decades ago, when I was a college-age human, for a number of reasons caused by a variety of substances, I would often sit up all night watching television. Back in my day, there were some wondrous sights at oh-bright-early in the morning on channels on the dial just above the police calls.

Now that I'm mature, it gets late pretty early around my house, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the odd TV program, and by odd, I mean the stuff ESPN U sticks on when they think we're not watching.

If you speak German, it's helpful while watching this clip from a program called Beat the Star, though not critical. And yes, they are competing to see who can best place their grocery trolley in the return area, a "sport" that is a lost art for most Americans, based on the supermarket parking lots I've been in. 
-bill kenny 

Altitude vs. Attitude

The greatest thing about unsolicited advice is you're under absolutely no obligation to take it. I had this realization at the exact moment I was offering someone a heaping helping of unsolicited advice, which only made the irony last a tiny bit longer, though I believe I did hear God snicker. Served me right.

Years ago, someone introduced me to what he and I came to know as "The General's Rule" (except it applies to beyond just that rank and pay grade). Simply put: "Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it."

Look around here in Norwich, The Rose of New England, as I do on too many occasions when I get on my soapbox and channel Plato, Machiavelli and Lenny Bruce (often at the same time) while offering the finest in unsolicited advice on all manner of topics proving again that the line between surreal and cereal is often a question of how much milk goes in the bowl.

We each have our own ideas on how "they" should address challenges we have here in Norwich (and when you scan state and national news stories, you'll discover we're not so special, unique, or alone in what we face or how we do it). 

To be clear, when I say "they" I mean the neighbors and often friends we know who choose to offer themselves as candidates for elected office because they want to make a positive difference. Until elected to office, "they" were "us." Oops.

Let's face it, the appeal of being on the City Council or the Board of Education doesn't have very much to do with money, prestige, or power. If there are 'perks' to being an elected official, they must be stealth, as I can't see them, and I wear very strong prescription glasses. (Not always strong enough to see someone else's point of view, but close.)

In recent years, across much of New England and here in Norwich, but longer say friends in the Midwest and in the Rust Belt, good economic times have been hard to find, with every 'tough budget' year for cities and towns followed by one that's even tougher.

Trying to maintain municipal services for an ever-larger population without crushing local property owners under an unbearable tax burden or creating incentives to entice new businesses to our community without ignoring those who chose to settle here when there were no rewards requires a skillset few appreciate and fewer still possess.

We may not evaluate those who seek our votes for office in the same way. I choose those whose vision of mission and sense of self convince me their judgment deserves my support on decisions that must be made on behalf of all of us.

You may wish to select those who best represent your position and opinions and who will be your voice in those same decisions. There's no 'right' or 'wrong' way to view or use government, be it local, state, or national. I think the use of the indefinite article as in 'a way' is often preferable to the definite 'the way', but that's a discussion, for perhaps another time. 

What is critically important, every day and not just on Election Day, is open communication and honest dialogue. Anyone can speak-but everyone should listen.
-bill kenny

Checking the Eyelids for Holes

I had a nearly sleepless night Saturday into Sunday. I awoke for some reason shortly after two in the morning with the song, "Itsy-bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" going through my brain. 

That led me to remember the first time I heard at a high school football game while I was still in grammar school, which in turn led me to recall classmates from Mrs. Hilge's third-grade class, as well as Mrs. McGarry in fourth grade.

No idea why. And then I wandered mentally through my prep school years, revisiting some champion bastards, some of whom I wished dead at the time, and would be disappointed to learn today my wish hadn't come true.  

I sorted through my memories of college, working for McGraw-Hill, joining the Air Force, and all the folks I served with, followed by all the people I've known since leaving the service over forty years ago. We're talking lots of people. I suspect there were times I fell asleep, as my life, even in retrospect, isn't that exciting,  

When I awoke shortly before eight in the morning, I was exhausted even though I am pretty sure all I did was dream I was awake when I was actually asleep. As I sleepwalked through most of the morning and the rest of the day, I realized all I'd accomplished was to make for an even longer Sunday.
-bill kenny

Hold My Beer

Do you remember the television show "Can You Top This?" hosted by Wink Martindale (never figured out if that was his real name, but it was memorable and that's what counted, I guess)? 

Some days, otherwise very serious headlines seem to be that, with some stupid human tricks thrown in.

I didn't know what to make of this one when it popped up. Man charged with felony for allegedly throwing sandwich at federal law enforcement officer in DC.
So many questions, so few answers.
Six-inch or foot-long?
What kind of bread?
What toppings?
Inquiring minds DEMAND to know.

And then seamlessly transitioning from the surreal to the cereal, I had this headline: Pam Bondi fires man accused of throwing sandwich at federal agent during Trump DC intervention. 

Bondi, as you probably know, is the Attorney General of the United States, and based on other recent news stories, I had assumed her job principally was not finding the Epstein Files, so I suppose I should be pleased that she's branching out. 

I can't help but wonder what kind of cheese. And for the record, Pam, I like my Deep State toasted, with mayonnaise. 
-bill kenny

Reprise without Reprieve

I'm working through, or trying to, some health challenges that are way more daunting at seventy-three than when I was thirty-three (and assumed I would live forever). This is from fifteen years ago.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Yet Another Last Chance?

I've mentioned before that where I live now is not where I was born. I was born in New York City. My parents and many of their friends moved to New Jersey when I was little more than a toddler. Jersey was one of two places that Eisenhower-era young married New Yorkers (YMNY) moved to when they had a few bucks. 

When YMNY had MORE than a few bucks, they moved to Connecticut, actually to the Gold Coast, not the part of the state in which I live now, east of the Connecticut River and almost in Rhode Island. Until the two casinos came along, this part of the state was known for Mystic, which was on either side of 95 North as folks went to Cape Cod for their summer vacations. 

There a lot of old towns and villages in the new england without capital letters-built along the banks of the rivers that were used to drive the turbines for the textile factories that disappeared in the late Forties and Fifties as cheaper labor in the Deep South shifted the industrial footprint only to be destroyed, itself, by even cheaper labor half a world away. 

Part of that Global Village 'what goes around, comes around' phenomenon we mistakenly think of as 'The New World Order' when the only orders around here are for fries and a shake. 

This new england doesn't suffer from Future Shock, but present shock. There are many people here who hold on to the past so tightly, believing it will return, though they know not how, that they literally and figuratively cannot grasp how much life and times have changed or how far behind they have fallen. 

They watch with a mixture of suspicion and hope as every 'new' person or 'new' idea is presented as The Next Big Thing, and when that definite article proves to be less than advertised, and their feelings change from disappointed to deceived, they neither forgive nor forget.      

Much of what I’ve seen in Norwich in the decades I  have lived here is a changing of the direction of the circles in which we run, as if the running were a plan of some kind. We elect new brooms to sweep old dust-or choose old brooms to leave the dust alone. It seems to make no difference, least of all to the dust. 

We were talking about downtown revitalization when I arrived here in 1991, and we're still doing it-and that's NOT accidental. People prefer problems that are familiar to solutions that are not. In nearly every election, we’ve had a chance to try a new path, for state representative, Congressman, Governor, Senator-you name the office- but we’ve steered clear of any and all new ideas. 

Those of us who didn’t grow up here will never be “from here” no matter how long we live in Norwich. Yeah, my kids went to school with your kids, but I didn't go to school with you, and that's what counts. To some extent, every discussion about this city becomes ‘this is a Norwich thing, and you don’t understand.’ 

Maybe, but here’s something all of us can understand about those of us not from here: we are less wedded to a past we never had and are more willing to risk our present for a more desirable future for ourselves and our families. It’s the New Math: the less you have, the less you have to lose.

It’s not that, as a city, we haven’t meant well in Norwich. We have had hundreds, if not thousands, of people, on a variety of committees, commissions, agencies, and boards, each with a tiny piece of the economic development puzzle, struggling to make a breakthrough and somehow hit a game-winning grand slam home run. 

But just because it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t mean it won’t. And how many times over the years have we been told, or told one another, “Norwich is on the move,” and “Norwich is turning around,” or “this time for sure.”

To be clear: Norwich is a city of great starts. It's the middles we don't do very well, and I’m not sure we’d recognize a successful end if we got bitten by one on ours. 

We're headed towards municipal elections this fall for seats on the City Council, Mayor, and the entire Board of Education, and I've yet to see a hopeful or helpful comment or a semi-constructive, concrete idea by residents and those seeking election that has ANY specifics.

Rather, we're the a$$holes on the bar stools near closing time, eyes glued to the big screen and telling one another how we'd do it if only we could be in charge, but will never lift a finger to help anyone else at any time who has offered to help. How about instead of Put up or Shut up, we try Show up or Give up.
-bill kenny

As the Twig Is Bent

The countdown is accelerating, and by that I mean the back-to-school countdown. 

All the shopping, planning, route-mapping, car-pooling, prospective after-school extracurricular activities integration, scheduling, and meal preparations take on a life of their own, and our children's return to the classroom is no longer an 'if,' but a 'when.'

As someone whose school report card grades often looked like I was crafting a ransom note out of the letters the teachers gave me, and whose own children are long grown and gone, I've watched from a distance as the U. S. Department of Education, at the direction of President All the Best Words, dismantles itself. 

Someone has forgotten, I believe, that the purpose of an education is to create a public equipped with the intellectual tools for critical thinking and analysis. And you can put that in your red ballcap and smoke it. 

I think the demolition of the federal department (leaving Linda McMahon to be the dummy for bridge at Cabinet meetings, not exactly a stretch, I suspect) brilliantly, if unintentionally, complements 21st Century Amerika, where we no longer care if children actually learn anything as long as they try 'really hard' and are well behaved. 

Attention, shoppers! Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And the last time I checked, no one was being awarded a medal for being a BETA or insisting their ignorance (and arrogance) should trump someone else's knowledge. I checked with all the scouting programs, and (surprised!) there's still no merit badge for 'I do my own research,'  but it's a nice dream, so keep at it.  

For generations, we've been shipping children to facilities that resemble warehouses more than anything else in yellow boxes with wheels for as much of the day as we think we can get away with, and then, in more recent years, get pissed at their teachers when the kids don't do well. That most of us can't identify our children's teachers because we've never met them at a parent-teacher conference (or even know where the kids go to school) is beside the point. 

The world in which you and I grew up, the post-Eisenhower era, which ended the Industrial Age (and for those who are post-Jimmy Carter, I hate your youth), has been replaced by the Technology Age. 

We in the Land of the Round Doorknobs use a lot of tech-and have a voracious appetite for more of it, but we haven't let very much of it change how we educate our children unless you think of 'badly' as an educational philosophy.           

Education is/should be the greatest financial investment we make as a nation/society. And more than anything, we need to reverse engineer unbiased measurements and standards to finally make sure No Child (Is) Left Behin,

Let's fill in the hole in the holistic approach for what comes next, and not just in the classroom. I'd like to see it in building design, traffic patterns, urban landscapes, our arts and crafts, and let's enforce it as we do now with other professions, ranging from plumbers to doctors. When was the last time you let your oncologist get away with 'dude, sorry I missed that shadow on your lungs' or had your general contractor explain as your basement fills  with water that "it's my bad." 

Education is built for distance and not speed, designed to last and to prepare us for a lifetime. The Brave New World schoolhouse doesn't have a lot of empty seats for vacant-headed people, and if we don't work to improve our game real soon, we will have difficulty reading the writing on the wall that says our time for coming and going has come and gone. We complain a lot about the cost of education in America wait until we start paying for ignorance.

-bill kenny

Picture Postcards from the Axl Rose Dance School

Some things that are/have been popular and/or highly regarded leave me cold. The appeal of foods like Overnight Oats has always eluded me. Automobiles of any kind in a color I've read called 'clay', but which to me resembles primer, are a non-starter and a hard pass.

I had a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) last week, which always sounds to me, stuck in the tube, like someone banging on a closed garbage can with a hammer. The techs were very nice and asked if I had a preference for the music to be piped through my headphones while I was inside. Anything except Coldplay and Nickelback, I answered. We all smiled as they thought I was the funniest person they'd had all day as a patient. 

I could and should have answered with dozens, if not hundreds, of others, but most especially, Guns N' Roses, as no matter how many trillions of streams they have online or articles I encounter on Slash as the Second Coming of Jeff Beck, I cannot get past Axl Rose. 

This isn't a true confession so much as a set-up for what comes next, as Axl, in his best on-stage crab-dancing days, was the first thing I thought of when I saw this video news feature: "Crab vs.Machine: Robot tests fiddler crab courtship tactics."  

Who knew? Size does matter, not just for humans.
Even in the cold, November rain.
-bill kenny

The Stale Taste of Recycled Air

This is the hardest part of the season for me. The promise of the endless summer that I savored in June has been replaced by a sinking feeling that I've missed out yet again, even when I'm not really sure about what, exactly, I've missed. The days are still very often hot, but the light fades faster than it did a month ago and there's something in the air, different and yet familiar.

In years, more accurately decades, past, this is the time of year when my wife and I would be organizing one or the other (or both) children for the arriving too-fast and too-soon school year (actually, my wife did all of the organizing and the school supplies were assembled despite my assistance). This not-summer much longer but not-yet autumn resonates beyond those of us with school age children.

That the world beyond my doorstep is in shambles and chaos is not helping me manage the malaise that's become my constant companion for reasons I cannot fully understand. We have lived in our house, on our street in our neighborhood and city for almost thirty-four years. I don't think the fatigue I feel of 'same shirt, different day' is a result of any of that but what's harder to sort out is what to do about it.

You may have had it happen to you as well-you look up and you're not where you used to be or where you want to be and have no idea how you got to where you are or what to do next. I used to tease my wife back when it was just she and me as I loaded us into the VW Käfer and just drove, that when you don't know where you're going any road will get you there. Eventually, we were always home and dry, more or less.

I've been around this juke joint for a not inconsiderable number of years, somewhat to my surprise and to the abject chagrin and dismay of more than a few people whom I won't dignify by naming, though they know who they are. I'm thinking that maybe I'm just momentarily becalmed and that in the next moment, or maybe the one after that, the wind will fill my sails and we'll be off again, racing to the horizon and beyond.

I'm enjoying the sunrises more than I ever have and to take as personal affronts when the days end. I can figure out how and when the night creeps in on cat's feet but cannot stop or slow it. Wishing the day's events can fulfill this morning's promise, just as I did yesterday and hope to as well on the morrow.

-bill kenny

Pushed B-52(s) and Bombed Them with the Blues

I took a shortcut the other day shopping for Triscuits in my grocery store. I would assume that big stores have aisles reserved just for specific products, in my case, Cheerios, Cheez-Its, and seedless grapes. 

However, then I remember that I live in a small town and we can't always have all the amenities we want. Some settling and sharing of contents may occur in shipment, and there's not a whole lot any of us can do about it.

By taking the shortcut, I ended up confronting the lobsters in the seafood department. I guess I should tell you that the Gorton's Fisherman needn't brave the dark and rolling sea on my behalf. I eat fish sticks and just about nothing else. 

And if I were to be honest, what I actually eat are tightly compacted bread crumbs that may or may not have fish in/near/close to them. One of the 'great things' people always told me as I was preparing to relocate to The Land of Round Doorknobs was how I could now have all the seafood I liked. I never had the heart to tell them I had all the seafood I liked by the time I was five.

Living in Southeastern Connecticut, where the farther north you head up the coast until you're Down East, the wider the A gets in lobstah, I cannot eat them and have trouble even looking at 'em. I'm a card-carrying carnivore, a fan of pork, chicken, lamb, and beef, whose motto is 'have napkin, will travel.' Fish, shellfish, crustaceans (nattily-attired and otherwise) not so much.

If you and I were to be marooned on a desert island, you should kill me immediately, since I can tell you right now, I'd eat you right after you'd fattened yourself up on all the fish you'd caught. Doubt me? Doze at your peril.

Staring at the lobsters in the glass tank (why do they have to be kept like that? This is somehow more humane than a box with metal sides? ) I was almost going to type forlorn looking but I have no idea what part of the lobster is the face, though I think I know what the mouth is (but NOT why it looks like they're talking all the time) and I've no clue what a forlorn one would look like in comparison to a joyous one. 

I suspect the easiest way to tell them apart is a joyous one doesn't have giant rubber bands around the pincers (claws?) because it's on the floor of the ocean instead of in a glass tank in a supermarket.

I wanted to ask the guy behind the counter if the store feeds the lobsters before people buy them (and if so, what? Soylent Green?), but they were selling so quickly the question was moot. It's strange watching them stacked atop one another, not really grasping the deal with the rubber band and still trying to get at each other in such a confined space. 

If they're capable of thought, are they thinking, 'this is the crappiest day of my life!' Until the hand (and arm) of Fate surprises them and they are momentarily borne aloft and suddenly learn there are worse things in life than being in a glass tank. 

I ducked into the next aisle, Prepared Food, when I realized that for all other carnivorous predators on this planet, we are unprepared food. Yes, Virginia, there is a free lunch. We're eating it now. Praise the Lord and pass the cocktail sauce.
-bill kenny      

The Song Remains the Same

I've had almost countless numbers of folks tell me, as if I were not aware of it, that  'Norwich is not ...' (a town in this region known for having Julia Roberts work in a pizzeria). 

Thanks. I've lived in southeastern Connecticut long enough to recognize the truth in that statement. As a matter of fact, the list of other places that Norwich is NOT is longer than my arm, but I think that's part of the problem residents, old and new, have with our city and with one another. 

With municipal elections around the corner and lawn signs being the seasonal growth industry with "Make Norwich More Affordable," and "Make Norwich Safer," starting to bubble up, let me offer a less than popular perspective that, just to piss off a LOT of people, over the next months for what will seem like an interminable number of times. You know who I'm talking to/about, and you should be grateful I am so patient. 

"How can we be in if there is no outside?" We need to agree on definitions of who we are, as residents and neighbors, and how we chose to be here. I will concede some people have settled in Norwich as a result of losing a bar bet; we can probably remove them from this discussion; but everyone else, old, young, male, female, whatever color/gender/sexual preference in the rainbow you choose to be, all the rest of us are in this together, some more so than others. And if I may, let's define ourselves in positive terms.

As a parent of two young children, when my wife and I settled here in the fall of 1991, neither we nor Norwich is the same as we are today. What we are looking for now, a small city with interesting places to meet, stores in which to shop, and restaurants in which to eat, is different from what those with school children seek, or those working shifts at one of the casinos, or those who lived their lives here and are looking forward to a quiet retirement. And all of us look to those who lead the city to deliver to each of us what we want.

Those who have been here for decades have memories and meanings that we who've arrived more recently can't comprehend or understand. Long-time residents look at downtown and see the ghosts of Norwich Past and fear that none of what once was can ever return. 

Others, travelling through the same downtown to elsewhere, see potential and promise all along the route, even if it's not 'textbook downtown', while still others see only empty storefronts and defeat. The challenge is not that we each see a different Norwich, but that each of our visions of where we live shares a common theme that often has us as victims, powerless to change our own story.

That's where we need to accept that change begins with us and moves from house to house, street to street, and across every neighborhood. We've tried countless variations of "help needs to come from Hartford or Washington or from the lone developer on the grassy knoll." And when all is said, nothing is done. 

Some of us seem to think we must do everything ourselves and wait until the world is ready to find us. Except when you look at the history of here, Norwich has always been at its best when it has been a part of the bigger world. 

It's when we've retreated into our separate villages and eyed those approaching from beyond our city limits with suspicion and distrust that we have failed. We've spent so much time waiting for "our" moment that we cannot even define, much less recognize, it.

It's what we do in the space between our birth and death, choosing to be an exclamation or an explanation, that matters. We have become a city of cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. And nothing brings that out like municipal elections. Every new idea, every different proposal, is examined to see what benefit 'they' derive at 'our expense.' Why does any of that matter? 

When we talk to one another, not at each other; when we choose collaboration over confrontation; no matter who we have been until that moment, we all become citizens of the same city, the city we each call home Yes, Virginia, the cliche is really true: we are all in the same boat, but it's in an ocean of opportunity. Grab an oar and put your back into it.
-bill kenny

Aged like Milk Instead of Wine

I'd characterize myself as a happy-go-lucky biped. I've celebrated seventy-three plus years perpendicular to the ground without anyone ending my existence, not that anyone else would notice. 

Not too shabby, all things considered (<= not that one). And then I find an old post, in this case from fourteen years ago, and wonder what was going on (realizing the tense of the verb is incorrect). Here goes:

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The Misbred Gray Executive

I work for the Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm News Agency. Actually, that's true only in a very broad sense of the word; strictly speaking, it's not technically accurate though it captures almost entirely what I do and, by extension, who I am. I've reconciled myself to being that guy for whatever's left of my life. 

I am in that new retirement plan, WUD, work until dead ,so most of my silver linings come with grey clouds. But I sound so sincere when I argue otherwise as well I should, because that's what I'm paid to do.

Mine is the voice of reason that explains intellectual affronts and assaults on decency with a winsome smile and a sincere look. You believe me because you want to and I let you. 

I've been telling people we can make jet fuel from peanut oil, for many years-many decades actually, if I were to be honest which, in the interests of my own mental hygiene, I avoid doing for as long as I can as often as I can. 

I didn't quite get there yesterday. I was off because I needed to not be at work. That realization came to me last week as such a BGO, Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious, I was breathless with surprise. I'm the guy who's trudged off to work everyday of the week, and I mean everyday, for more years than I care to recount and hoped the people for whom I've worked would like me for so doing.

I secretly think I'm very good at what I do but fear no one else does and will somehow find out that I'm a phony and a fake and, worst of all, a hack. I've visited with people for years who've struggled to help me rearrange the furnishings in the loft above my eyebrows with little success. 

I keep bumping into my childhood and falling over the awful social interactions I had decades ago, wondering when the happy ending will get here, and not willing to accept that no matter how fast I run I cannot relive yesterday. You can't either, but somehow that's of cold comfort to me.

The biggest reason I was terrified to have children was because I feared I would be a failure as a father, having been a colossal cock-up as a son and a brother. Luckily, the woman I married has enough strength to carry herself and her car crash of a husband just deeply enough into the dynamics of familial relationships that our children made it to adulthood in decent shape. I take perverse credit in that success-that is, I'm thrilled I didn't fug 'em both up so much that they ended up like me.

Anyway. I told the people I worked for a full week before I asked for time off that I was taking it and everyone seemed fine and then yesterday morning, prisoner of my own routine, I had to check my work email while home and discovered many of those with and for whom I work didn't realize I couldn't rescue at least three of their ill-fated projects as I do just about everyday at work because I wasn't at work.

That I'm viewed as a piece of furniture by these obliviots shouldn't have upset me as much as it did-I've always known it-and I'm more concerned about why I allowed it to bother me. Actually, "bother me" is a euphemism for going bat-shit. I peeled the paint off the walls in our nearly-an office room off the kitchen with my language and didn't so much drive to work as start and aim the car. 

Once there, it took me about an hour to rescue people who on most days normally recover from nearly-drowning by toweling themselves off and then rushing headlong down the strand back into the water, confident one of their proles will rescue them.

It can be hard to differentiate between those who are waving and those who are drowning. I'm starting to suspect the only clear way to tell them apart is wait about an hour after the bubbles stop. And after yesterday's fire drill, I find myself pondering, "Beware of these, my gentle friends and all the skins you breed. They have a tasty habit-they eat the hands that bleed." A compelling argument for carrying napkins, even after realizing there's no second sitting for life's free lunch.
-bill kenny

Don't Blink!

DISCLAIMER: If flashing lights aren’t your thing, perhaps you should pass on the contents of this space. That’s how it is these days. Menus tell you what has gluten; videos tell you what has strobe.

That said, here's the entire history of information in under sixty seconds.

-bill kenny

Winners and Losers

I am very s-l-o-w-l-y starting to watch television news again and tuning in (for now) to PBS, though the announced dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting may impact my future choices. I guess I am exceptionally obtuse, as I really never noticed the 'woke' agenda and leftist bias of The Newshour and/or All Things Considered, but then again, I don't get out much anymore.

And it's that (overt) assumed pre-defined bias one way or the other that I'm confronted by with commercial over-the-air/cable news providers. Maybe it's the devolution, started in the Seventies, when news divisions went from being a public service in the public interest, per the Federal Communications Commission, to today's yet another profit center for a corporate conglomerate whose core business more than likely has nothing to do with news or public affairs

Now, when I watch, the part that most bothers me is how seemingly every story is reduced to a 'Who won? Who lost?' aspect of the coverage of whatever the story actually is. For every word offered as an attempted explanation of intent and impact, I'm getting hundreds of words on how one side is such and such, and the other is so and so.

Don't Touch that Dial!

I thought we were in this together. 
We weren't? I missed that memo.

So the guys with the button-down shirts got the better of those with the Oxford collars? And all this time, I thought we were trying to clothe everyone. How can we have an outside when there's no inside, or insight, come to think of it? The reports from Dodge City Deliberations and Machinations most nights look more like Seuss' Star-Bellied Sneetches than reasoned discussion and debate for the good of the republic and those who live in it.

And instead of explaining what is going on and why, we get treated to hours of handicapping a horse race that doesn't actually have horses (okay, maybe the rear ends of horses). We have to be content with the politics of posturing and pandering that leave us all just a little unclean and in need of a shower. Pass the soap, but don't dare drop it.

Makes me wonder what we'd look like as a country if the same 'for me to look good, you need to look bad' mindset had made the trip to Philadelphia for that weekend in July of 1776. Who wants to tell Washington we can't pay for that boat across the Delaware, and what was Franklin thinking of? Jefferson said he can go fly a kite.
Speaking of which, there's video of that right after the break, so don't go anywhere.
-bill kenny

News from the Newsroom Floor

Stop the presses! Turns out this is the Epstein that the Department of Justice has no files or lists about. 

Just kidding (as the shuttle bus to Alligator Alkatraz pulls up in front of the house). But not about having to stop the presses (or at least slow them down), for news you could possibly use. Scientists in Barbados overturn hundreds of rocks to rediscover world’s smallest-known snake.

There's no mention in the article as to why the scientists were looking, and I'm not going to ask.
-bill kenny

Not Quite a World Without End

As a child learning American history (I think it's something called 'civics' now for reasons surpassing my understanding) I was always struck by how World War II began for America with airplanes. Actually, with swarms of planes, low over the horizon, out of the sun over Pearl Harbor Naval Station in Hawaii.  

Today, eighty years ago, from the belly of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Super-Fortress, the US Army Air Corps dropped the world's first atomic weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and while a second bomb was dropped a matter of days later on Nagasaki to 'seal the deal' the harnessing of the atom into such a terrible weapon of destruction delivered by an airplane effectively ended the second World War. 

As a fan of symmetry, even as a wee slip of a lad, I was struck by the bookend effect of beginnings and endings.

I've read accounts that some of those who worked on the devices were relieved that the first actual use did not trigger, as they had feared, an unfettered chain reaction they could not stop, destroying the planet. 

Except, as I look around a somewhat beaten and battered world that's lived in the Atomic Age (and in dread of its consequences) even longer than I have been on earth, I wonder about that road to perdition, the slippery slope, and the law of unintended consequences. 
-bill kenny

In Search of Warm Coats

I'm not trying to steal a march on autumn with today's title. 

It's a line from one of my favorite Paul Williams' songs, "That's What Friends Are For." (You might know BJ Thomas' version better, but I prefer the original. I'm keenly aware I'm showing my age. Mox nix).

To me, the greatest thing about the Internet is how swiftly, almost relentlessly, you can find information, or what passes for information. A week or so ago, I had a thought pop into my head, and acting quickly before it died of loneliness, I typed it into a search bar.

What I had thought about were two friends (and a third person, the brother of one of them), whom I had known a skosh over fifty years ago. I gambled on the wisdom of the crowd and found a Facebook group from the area in Jersey where they were all from. In truth, I haven't thought of any of them in decades (many and multiple) and am not sure why I thought of them when I did.

I joined the group and asked about all three with some hope we might reconnect in some manner, and was crestfallen to learn within a day, from someone I'll never meet, that the brother of one of the friends had moved to California years ago and had since died. 

I've never had a lot of friends, either online or flesh and blood. Not searching for pity (I prefer my own company and/or that of my family), just a statement of fact. I like being alone and rarely feel lonely, but in this case, the sense of loss surprised me since the deceased was pretty much a punk whom I tolerated because he was Tom's brother. 

That led me to ponder: How Many Friends Do You Need?
Spoiler alert: two.
-bill kenny

Stupid Human Tricks

Our son is one of the millions, if not billions, of people who enjoy golf. I sort of admire the way it combines eccentric sartorial styles with exercise (not unlike bowling, especially in terms of the shoes and the chicken wings).

There isn't a weekend that goes by without a TV broadcast of a major tournament somewhere in the world for inordinate amounts of money. Heck, there's even a Golf Channel. I like the way the announcers whisper all the stroke-by-stroke action, though I suspect they are acres away from the actual playing surfaces and golfers.   

I'm not denying it's a popular sport, just NOT in my house. I agree with Mark Twain when it comes to my interest in it, but you do you. I might get excited if some slight changes to the game could be made to include croquet mallets instead of clubs, and swinging at the golf balls while driving a golf cart. Perhaps I'd consider a driver and swinger pairing as opposed to just one player; I'm trying to be flexible to grow the sport.

What I didn't know, and you'll think I'm making it up, but I'm not, was that over a century ago, there was a forerunner to my idea, auto-polo, albeit briefly. It seemed to have a whacker and a driver, but was a tad short on airbags, seatbelts, and/or safety helmets. 

Should we resurrect it and truly Make America Great Again? You better honk!
-bill kenny 

Shades of Gray

It's been sneaking up on us for weeks, technically for more than a month. The hours of daylight have already started to shrink, and we're barely into August. The little boy in me (okay, very, very deep inside of me. Happy now?) always feels sad when I realize the getting dark after dinner part is starting earlier and earlier. 

It's not like I'm hurrying to clean my plate so I can be excused to go over to Neil's house and then down the street to Bobby's and call them to come out and play catch. Heck, if those two are in half the shape I'm in, by the time we get to the sandlot, it'll be pitch black. Life called on account of darkness. There's one for the stat books.

As hot and humid as it's been here in Southeast Connecticut (I really hate when I break a sweat early in the morning not doing anything but standing in one place, inhaling and exhaling), I'll whine just as piteously (actually more so) in February when the snow's crisp and even and the temperature is hovering somewhere south of freezing. I'm the person who bitches if he's hanged with a new rope. 

However, the seasonal decline of the light saddens me, especially as I age, because I view life as a finite commodity and don't appreciate reminders that it flows within and around me, particularly the latter aspect.

An acquaintance was observing the other day how grey the skies were where they are right now-which I think is probably a kinder idea in the spring and summer than in the autumn and fall since during the latter many of us peer at the heavens warily and observe 'if it gets any colder, with this sky, it'll snow.' 

Because they are considerably younger than I am, as are most people on earth, I didn't comment on the slightly disappointed tone of unhappiness they had about the weather and its impact on their family's working vacation. You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain, but when you are, you should be kinder than when twenty isn't visible in the mirror anymore.  

I won an all-expense paid stay at Sondrestrom Air Base, Greenland, in the mid-seventies, where in addition to triple-digit below-zero (Fahrenheit) temperature and winds over seventy miles an hour coming off the Polar Cap, we had twenty-four-hour daylight that became twenty-four-hour darkness.

I remember the day in late January when the sun was first visible over Mount Ferguson (not to be confused with Lake Ferguson, or Craig Ferguson for that matter) for no more than about three minutes (maybe), but we didn't care. It was Independence Day, New Year's, and Mardi Gras all rolled into one, reminding us it's not always going to be this grey.  
-bill kenny

And Not a Word about Taylor Ham

I grew up in New Jersey and am in several 'You Know You're from New Jersey' Facebook groups where arguing about 'Taylor Ham' or 'Taylor Pork Roll," can incite near-physical violence among commenters. 

I try to steer clear since I grew up near New Brunswick (now Franklin Township) in what's regarded as Central Jersey, which, according to folks from North and from South Jersey, may not actually exist. For my part, I never heard of or had Taylor in any of its configurations as a kid growing up, so I stay crouched and silent. Mom raised crazy children, but not stupid ones (okay, after me. Happy now?).

Yeah, it can be argued, 'I can pick it out on a map,' and you'd be right. Especially on this 'Eat your way across the USA' map site that I found (never leave home without it and a supply of napkins). And when you bore down to "Northeastern United States," Jeepers, Wally! Look what's conspicuous by its absence.
-bill kenny 

It Was Long Ago and Far Away

Wandering through the archives, I found the long-form version of something I offered (twice) when I was a volunteer columnist for The (Norwich) Bulletin (here's the second go-round) that is as painfully true today as it was some fifteen years ago. At the time, reader reaction online and in the newspaper was that I was some kind of comedic genius. Except I wasn't joking. And and am still not.

"Wednesday, July 28, 2010

If You Think I Mean You, I Do

(If this helps, and it won't, feel free to substitute the name of your town for the name of my town, even if you don't have a body of water bigger than a puddle.)

Dave and Dan were standing on the dock near the Howard Brown Park in Norwich, crabbing. They'd known one another for many years and had watched as their city, so bustling in their youth, quietly disappeared one business, one restaurant, and one block at a time, leaving nothing behind for anyone. For them, crabbing was more than relaxation; it was a diversion to take their minds off their city's troubles.

Except Dave had other troubles as well. As quickly as he caught crabs and turned around to drop them into his twenty-gallon catch bucket, one or more of the crabs already in the bucket would make a break for it. Dave spent almost as much time chasing fugitive crabs skittering down the dock and back into the river as he did fishing for them.

Dan took his crabbing at a very different pace. He worked with a small hoop net and bait cage, catching no more than one single crab at a time, and when he did catch a crab, he'd spend minutes turning it over, examining it from every angle, holding it up to the light, looking at the cheliped, the apron, and the walking legs. 

Sometimes, after concluding the examination, Dan would drop the crab into a child's sand pail that was his catch bucket, and the most recent captive would settle down in the water, coming to rest on top of another unfortunate crab.

At other times, when he'd finished examining his catch, Dan would throw the crab back into the harbor, rebait his trap, and lower his hoop net over the side of the dock and resume crabbing.

As the hours wore on, Dave spent more and more of his time struggling to keep any of the crabs he'd caught in his dockside catch bucket, often first hearing the lid clatter as it was pushed off by one of the crabs, then chasing it down the dock before, with one final leap, it eluded his grasp and reached the freedom of the river. 

Dan watched Dave struggle, sometimes slowly shaking his head in sympathy, and, as the shadows grew longer in the afternoon sun, he offered his friend some advice.

Misty, water-colored memories of the way we thought we were.

"You're doing it all wrong," Dan said. Dave stared at Dan for a moment before finally pointing out, "It looks like we're both doing the exact same thing-so I don't understand what I could be doing wrong that you're not. Point in fact, Dan, I've caught a LOT more crabs than you have, but I'm not able to keep them because they keep trying to escape and eventually get away!"

"Yeah," said Dan, "that's your problem. It's what you're catching."
Dave, by now, nearly furious, could feel the gorge rise in his veins as he practically shouted at Dan, "How can there be a problem with what I'm catching? I'm catching crabs-you're catching crabs. We're both catching crabs!" 

"True enough," Dan agreed, "but you're catching all kinds of crabs. I'm only catching Norwich crabs." Dave stared at his friend for a long time. "What do you mean, you're catching 'Norwich crabs?' What the hell is a Norwich crab, and how could that possibly make a difference?" 

"It's the most critical difference," said Dan. "With Norwich crabs, when you have one and put him in the catch bucket, if he tries to get out, all the other Norwich crabs hold on to him very tightly and keep him from ever succeeding."

When I was told this story some fifteen years ago, I thought it was extremely funny. It never occurred to me that it was also true. 

If we, and by "we" I mean you and me, whoever and wherever we are, don't learn to let go of the anger, hurt and suspicion from previous failures and choose instead to reach for rewards, despite the risks, at our next opportunity, be it economic development, learning new things like clog dancing, or letting someone into our lives, this story goes from being very funny to being very sad all the way to being our last story and the one that becomes our epitaph.
 

Trust me on this one."
-bill kenny