Endings. Abrupt and Otherwise

For those of us who see Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer, this, the Labor Day weekend, in that same spirit marks its end. 

Neither, of course, is true, and that can be easily proven by looking at the calendar, but perceptions of reality and reality are often the same thing, the calendar be damned. 

I benefited during my working career from a lot of people who came before me in terms of demanding and receiving a living wage, a safe workplace, dignified and respectful treatment, and a list of tangible and intangible benefits that runs from here to the horizon. We have people in power right now who are determined to reverse all of that.

Enjoy the Labor Day weekend, but remember what it's about. And why.
-bill kenny

Give Bees a Chance

I have decided that I, too, wish to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, just as much if not more than the current President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, but I'm striving to not be such a whiner about it, most especially after I don't get it (he could follow my example).

Of course, I don't have a brown-noser like Steve Witkoff mispronouncing the name of the committee awarding the prize (it's NOT No-bul, Steve-O, it's No-BELL) serving as my hype guy to boost me as I recount how I stopped a war between Narnia and Oompah-Lumpa Land and brought peace to both Left and Right Twix.

I have my moments, just not particularly lucid, very much like, well, you know who.

But I wonder for a guy campaigning without cessation for a Peace Prize, why he's so keen to rename the Department of Defense. I don't know how Karoline Leavitt can spin that without checking with Edwin Starr first.
-bill kenny 

Cast Upon the Water....

My Uncle Jim (one of Mom's brothers) used to call all dogs 'Sooner,' explaining that they would 'sooner $hit than eat.' My wife and I do not own a dog, or a cat, or a bird, or a fish (descending order of amount of care needed), though both of our children and their spouses have pets.

All of my brothers and sisters, to my knowledge, have pets, mostly or entirely dogs, I believe. Aside from knowing which end to feed and which to pet (for the most part), I know nothing about them or any of the other members of the animal kingdom around the world.

However, I might get interested in a 'static pet,' since all the cool kids (in China)  are adopting them. From what I've gathered from this report, a static pet is the next best thing to NOT having one at all.

Yep, it's the yeast you can do. For companionship and if you tire of it, a snack.
-bill kenny 

Just Me, Huh?

I think I'm becoming a 'Single Issue Voter,' and it's not the one that the NRA keeps mobilizing to stop any meaningful discussion about guns in America. 

Seriously, is no one else sickened by how we're calling it “the first school shooting of the school year?” 

If not, why not? If yes, how do we fix it?

For the ammosexuals in the audience who, instead of working with the rest of us to stop this carnage, keep offering "thoughts and prayers," every time this happens,  don't you think those kids were praying?
-bill kenny 

Sample and Hold

All of my experience with computers has been with non-Apple ones. Like so much else of all the machinery that comprises my scenery, the personal computers in my life have a tendency to do what I tell them instead of what I want. 

I suppose I should be grateful I don't have voice-activated software for them because, in my case, I'd need to replace the Idiot's Guide with the most recent update to Masters and Johnson, since many of my voice commands would be anatomically and electronically nonexecutable.

I stare into the depths of the blue screen of death a half dozen or more times a day-O death where is thy sting, I sing; well, actually it doesn't sound very much like singing when I do it, but you get my drift. I've endured countless admonitions that I've attempted an "illegal operation" as the PC shuts down and goes dark to teach one of us a lesson (all of which is wasted on me).

My favorite PC fantasy in recent weeks (okay, perv, let's try that again) my favorite PC operating fantasy has become the one where whatever I'm doing has stopped doing it-perhaps frustrated by me or just exhausted by my persistent insistence. There's a finite number of times you can hit Control-Alt-Delete (I haven't reached it yet, seemingly, but it's upwards of a hundred because I have done it that often in a single bound). 

There's little in life less worth living than being judged to be nonresponsive. Empires have been overthrown for less, and voyages of exploration have been undertaken to avoid their curse. I used to always click "Send Error Report" no matter what had happened or when it occurred because somehow, I just knew the boys and girls of Microsoft were sitting in their operator cubicles on pins and needles in downtown Redmond, Washington, waiting to read about the background of my latest computational catastrophe. Together, we would become better people and programs.

Not exactly as it turns out.
Slowly, as time went by and the same stupid nonresponsive program messages kept popping up, it crossed my mind that The Gates Gang wasn't especially quick on the uptake, or why else would the same program error keep happening. It wasn't like I was getting any smarter at screwing things up. Nope, not me. I had pretty much flat-lined on the learning curve.

And while I'm still generating computer error messages by the bushelful, I'm no longer providing hours of amusement to those whose pockets are protected from all manner or matter great and small. I always opt now for "Don't Send." It's as close as I can get to going commando in a spam-filled virus virus-infested phishing pool. 

-bill kenny

Johnny Nash Approved

How was your weekend? I bought a new windshield on Sunday. I guess you could call it an impulse buy.

Didn't start the day planning to do that, but while on a short drive past one of the native american casinos, a truck with a trailer in front of me picked up some sort of foreign object and CRACK! went the windshield.

We're leasing the car, and I suspect it's bad form to return it at the lease's end with a cracked windshield, so for the first time in all the years since returning to the USA, I had to file a claim with my insurance company. 

I did it all online in about three minutes, and that includes getting an appointment, at their place, with one of the windshield replacement companies, the one with the catchy jingle, and forking over five hundred dollars as my copay for the glass replacement. 

I spent some time afterward trying to calculate what an automobile might cost if you replaced it a piece at a time. The answer: too much.
-bill kenny

Can See the End

The Germans have a word for it (actually, they have a word for everything and then some, and at this stage in my life, I've heard most of them or what feels like most of them, but I digress). There's a hurry-up in your step now as you try to chase and catch up to you're not quite sure what (but it's covered in fallen leaves). You're afraid of missing it even if you're struggling to define what it is. Torschlusspanik. 

You just awoke with a start from what you thought was a short reverie and learned that those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer are just about gone. When did that happen? A moment ago, it was the second week of June, you were making plans for the picnic and softball on the 4th; the kids, if you had any, were looking forward to complaining, 'there's nothing to do,' after the school year, despite the acres of daylight and sunshine surrounding them. 

And now? Those kids may already be back in school or heading there in the coming days. As for holidays, brace for Labor Day, which puts a bow around the summer. That we all take off (except the mattress stores, who see it as a sales opportunity), instead of honoring the hundreds of millions (literally) whose work and sacrifice built this country, is always ironic, bordering on the obscene at least to me.

I had an appointment for yet more blood tests early (for me) Friday morning. The sky was so blue and cloudless that you get lost looking into it, and the sun was bright and warm on my face. But for the first time since I'm thinking late May, I had to wear a light jacket because of the 'crisp' temperatures. It's about the only time I ever use the word 'crisp.' Unless I encounter someone with a lisp, then I use it a lot because I'm not a nice person.

I had to root around in our hall closet to find it, but now I've moved the hanger into the high rotation area because for the next six weeks or so (fingers crossed) I'll be wearing it more and more, eventually swapping it out for heavier coats until I get to the winterwear. 

Lots of folks rhapsodize about the (approaching) autumn. Not me. I think about how many autumns I've lived through and how very few I still have. As the moroons with their gas-powered leaf blowers resume their annual battle with the inevitability of seasonal changes, I take a moment to think about the adventures I've had and the ones I could have had but for a simple twist of fate and a change of circumstance, and wait for the ever more rapidly approaching dark of evening.
-bill kenny

  

Curtain Call for Summer

It all comes to a head this afternoon at three for the 2025 Little League World Series, and I'm sorry that it has to end because I need to experience the joy of just loving what you're doing, which is what the Little League World Series is all about.

In a world where we pay adult athletes wages that approximate the gross national product of some Third-World nations to participate professionally in a sport our children play for free, there is something about the exhilaration and exuberance of the competition in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, that I find a tonic for my soul. 

The animation and engagement of the television announcers, some of whom, as youngsters, played on these same fields in pursuit of a championship, is contagious and inspiring. If you can listen to the Little League Pledge, almost as old as I am, or even just read it, and not get goosebumps, don't bother checking your pulse; call your coroner, as you're no longer among the living. 

All you can be is reminded of why you chose to follow baseball. Why, in an era of a dozen other sports all grabbing more headlines and world-wide attention, the simple beauty of a contest that, at its most basic, involves striking a small, round leather-bound spheroid with a stick, be it wood, metal or some kind of composite and doing it better than a like number of others attempting to do the same on the other team. 

For a few days, sub-teens serve as role models for adults and an entire team of players, who've just been white-washed and whose run to the Series has ended prematurely and with a drubbing no one would wish on anyone else stand one behind the other along the first and third baselines after the final out and shake the hands of the team sending them home prematurely and tell them 'good game' and really mean it, because the Little League World Series isn't just about baseball, it's about life, as it should be lived. 
-bill kenny

A Post-It Note from the Past

I first offered what follows sixteen years ago, and despite the settling of contents, I still struggle with the same demons. At the time I called it: 

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Papering over Our Differences of Opinion

I keep a wallet filled with foolscap, absolutely crammed. It works out well, unless you were to rob me, as there's rarely any money in it, though not necessarily because of all the foolscap.

Many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a little too tightly wound. That gasp of incredulity you may have just heard from people who've known for decades is legit. The me of Back Then makes the me of Now look comatose; I may have actually slept with my jaw ratcheted closed. I cannot imagine in hindsight why I didn't have a stroke, unless, perhaps, it's because I'm a carrier.

I couldn't let go of my anger. The Air Force, to my relief as their employee, rather than dump me amongst the flora and fauna, decided to send me to the head of the Psychiatric Services Wing at the Rhein Main (Air Base) Clinic, Colonel Doctor R. G.. 

He was terrific-and very funny (because he thought I was, if I'm being honest) and very willing to try to rescue a wild-eyed junior enlisted Sammy Glick impersonator who kept wading out into the deep end.

He came up with the foolscap. Every time something angered me, I was to write it down on a piece of paper and put the paper in my wallet. But every time I'd write something down, his rule was that it had to be on its own, separate piece of paper. No doubling up, no lists. 

By the end of the day, I could, and did, have hundreds of slips of paper in my wallet. I had to review all these slips each night and put them on a separate sheet of paper, listing all the items I was still angry about (I could have put those on a single piece of paper). Then, I'd put that list on my nightstand. 

The night before I would go to see him at the hospital, I had to review the six pieces of paper, and transfer anything I was still angry about, to yet another piece of paper and bring that one piece out to our weekly conversation.

Within a month, I had no lists, simply because I'd review all the slips of paper of all the things that made me angry and realized I had no idea what the heck was written on most of them or what the words I could read actually meant or concluded (after reviewing the note and thinking about it, which he told me later was the key point) whatever had happened to spin me up wasn't that important after all.

How about this week or real soon (and I mean real soon) we all decide to use that approach. Watch the news, read a newspaper, check out a column online--we are REALLY CRANKED about a lot of stuff. 

I know people who tune in to certain TV programs just to yell at the talking head in the vapor box who is making a fortune by yelling at them. I guess they watch because it feels so good when the show is over. 

Others insist on reading columnists' words out loud and follow every line of the writer's argument with a scowl, or a gesture, or a deprecation. And we just keep getting louder and angrier about more things, and more people every day. We don't know how to get off the escalator-and most of us don't even know we're on one.

Passion is fine and necessary. If our ancestors back in the ooze didn't care if they evolved to have legs that carried them from the pond and helped us grow lungs, every day would be Friday, if you follow my drift. 

It's the grinding, though, that is wearing us out, the pitched battles we are waging to benefit who knows who or for what purpose. You wanna feel silly about how we now get along with one another, but you don't want to use the foolscap?

Okay--tell me five things this country was PO'ed about at eight AM on September 11th, 2001. Go ahead, I'll wait. Too hard? Gimme three things, then-how hard could that be? No? 

You want to take a break from all this head noise and hate to concentrate on the real and important tasks at hand instead? Go ahead, I'll make a note of where we were, and we can get back to it sometime real soon.
-bill kenny

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