Well, The Telephone Was Ringing....

I have the good fortune of rarely remembering my dreams, which would be a disappointment to oneirologists everywhere if I were a public figure of any import whose existence mattered to anyone at any time anywhere.

I say 'good fortune' because I'm wrestling with one I had recently, which I remember all too well and that disquieted me a great deal. My wife and I were home in her country, though I don't know where, and I actually don't know how I know that, as in the dream we never left the apartment where we lived with a third person whom I never managed to identify.

In the dream we had no children-just one another though I have no memory of whether we were young(er) or old(er) than we are now. And everything in the dream was in shades of brown.

I'm not sure in the dream if I realized it was a dream, which, I'm assured, in itself means something though what or why I do not know. That I could have a dream guide on my cell phone 24/7, iPhone or Android, is curiously of little solace to me but does speak volumes about the entrepreneurial spirit and greed of code writers here in what I fear is becoming the last century.

Nothing looked familiar to me, causing me to wonder if I'd become Pirate Prentice as I kept looking to the skies for Gravity's Rainbow, somehow feeling better that if I had seen it but never heard the roaring across the skies, I was safe until Tyrone Slothrop returned from an outing. And even then it could be a stairway to the stars.
-bill kenny

Bloom Where You're Planted

Each of us can summon a hundred reasons in an instant on why things in our lives haven't gone to plan. But the bottom line is that if you want something badly enough, you'll find a way. If not, an excuse.

Be an exclamation, not an explanation.
-bill kenny

Comcast & the 8th Amendment

 

US Constitution

David Figueroa may not be a Constitutional scholar, but he has some real-world experience with cruel and unusual punishment that they never mention in law school. 

Hopefully, he gets his just desserts.
-bill kenny

Beneath the Bottom Line

Someone told me the Good Book cited money as the root of all evil. I figured that made me a Saint, New Orleans or otherwise, but the real eye-opener was the discovery that it's the LOVE of money that's really at the root. 

Internationally, nationally, regionally, and locally across this country, we've gotten ourselves jammed up trying to understand what happens after you throw money at problems that don't go away, and then you run out of money. 

Many of us are living in spaces and places where there are a lot more for-sale signs on front lawns than vote-for signs across our towns as we head into the last month of summer and towards the post-Labor Day Election Scuffle and Shuffle. 

It's not your imagination; we're living in a hellscape, and if the experts are to be believed, it's not going to get noticeably better any time soon.

We're going to elect 435 congressional representatives, 33 Senators, and 39 Governors come November. I'm guessing those CNN poll-takers opted for 'unseat' because 'running out of town on a rail' wasn't an option. More's the pity.

I'm not sure at the macro level; it's not unlike attempting to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. And with all due respect to those in the political prognostication business, a shift in a seat here or there may mean little more than we've traded up for a tablespoon. 
-bill kenny

August Already?!?

Today marks the start of the eighth month of the year.  I can still recall looking forward to the beginning of 2026. Actually, that's a lie; I dreaded its start. I had just begun kidney dialysis and was struggling with it very much, and feared I was nearing the end of my rope.

Winter passed and then spring, and now we're in the last full month of summer. Much of my life has adapted and adopted a new routine that revolves around a cycler for ten hours or so every day (evening). 

I'm grateful I have health insurance to pay for the bulk of all of my treatments and confess to not knowing how people who have no or only a little health insurance can manage to stay alive if they get sick. I'm aware that for many black-hearted and red-hatted fellow Americans, that worry, among others, makes me a Lib.

Challenge accepted.    
-bill kenny

You Make Your Own Chains

"There are those who think that
Life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance."

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears, and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will."

-bill kenny

Microphone Check, One-Two, One-Two

Do you hate waiting in line more in hot weather than in the cool of the Spring or the Fall? Me, too-not sure why, but I sure do. And once I get steamed, emotionally and physically, it carries over into everything I do for hours afterwards. Talk about all revved up and nowhere to go. Need to learn to savor the flavor while I still have a sense of taste.

It's been a free-for-all weather-wise this summer. We've had low water levels in our rivers, lakes, and streams, but we're not farmers around here, so it's not as critical as in Idaho and Nebraska. Here we have crunchy forests because it's so dry, not dust storms that blow lives and livelihoods away forever.

When I want to feel sorry for myself about how unhappy waiting for anything makes me in the heat, I think about how much closer to the end of my life I am than to the beginning. Especially with a phalanx of physicians and a dialysis machine that I'm on. What if, despite my obstinacy, there is a Hereafter and I'm a walk-on in that movie?

In light of how I have felt about Him for lo these many decades, how can I expect The Lord of All Creation to react to my arrival, probably on a very hectic and crowded day when I'm at my most snippy (rhymes with Skippy) (inside joke).
-bill kenny

Grifters, Grafters, and Circus Clowns

We are having weather in my neck of the woods with the edges still on it. That is to say, in years (and decades) past, we'd have gradual warm-ups or cool-downs and rain and snow in measured and moderate amounts. And not just here, but everywhere. 

I'm familiar with those who argue climate change has been a fact of life since before there was life on this orb and there's a certain amount of truth to that statement of fact, but also true is that we, heedless of the consequences to ourselves and others across the planet have been abusing Mother Nature to the point where she has been striking back here and around the world.

In the United States, we're repealing ecological safeguards and guardrails in the name of 'freeing up capitalists to do what they do best,' which is to poison our waters and pollute our air. For those who think the outbreak of cyclospora is some kind of coincidence, think again. Elmo Musk's DOGE eliminated almost twenty percent of the workforce at the Centers for Disease Control, the people tasked with guarding our health. And yet the tainted lettuce and resurgence of measles come as a surprise to so many. Seriously?

If you like to swim in the ocean and think it feels a little warmer than in past years, be grateful you're not a fish or any other marine life because our oceans are taking the brunt of the heat that greenhouse gases have been allowing to pass through the atmosphere. I'm not a fan of seafood, but even I can see when our food is being poisoned. 

Brain Food

"Anybody here see the noise, see the fear and commotion?

I think we missed it.

Anybody here see the love, see the hate being motioned?

Don't give me no hand me down shoes.

Don't give me no hand me down love.

Don't give me no hand me down world.

I got one already."

-bill kenny

Already Worrying about Winter

I am very much a whiner. I have a natural talent for it and after seventy-four years on the ant farm, I've developed a better than rudimentary skill set for it as well. I have a strong sense of self-a very powerful sense of personal hurt (real and/or imagined) and finely honed feeling of outrage about everything in the universe that's just not working out for me (whether it was supposed to or not).

I am a natural victim and the reason you may not have noticed is because you're one, too, in all likelihood. No shame, my brother or sister-it's what we do and how we roll. Besides, who has time for all this happiness anyway? Don't they say Misery Loves Company? And who of us wishes to be alone?

I offer this as my best effort at a cheering thought because we here in the Northeast and, it turns out across the country, are getting steamed and baked all at the same time this summer. Lovin' Spoonful were right on the money and John Sebastian knew whereof he spoke/sang. 

It's almost August. Six months from now, at least in this area, more likely than not we'll be up to our keisters in snow and ice and these days of what feels like a hundred degrees will seem like fever dreams. Except dreams don't leave footprints in snowdrifts. 

Those are mine and mine alone and while you can't see it from that picture, the snow was about twenty-six inches deep before it stopped. Guess what I was thinking about while slogging through it all? Yeah, you're right, that was too easy, wasn't it?

-bill kenny   

"We Are What We Pretend To Be....

I'm fixated on how we seem to be DEvolving rather than evolving. We're louder, less kind, meaner and actually dumber (in my opinion) than the previous one and we 'r not troubled enough about any of it to change direction. 

I think we're well on our way to being a nation of impatient mind-readers. Don't furrow your brow or make that face (I know 'what face? I wasn't making a face!' Were, too.). 

You may phrase it more elegantly (I would certainly hope so) but, with apologies to Beckett, we're NOT Waiting for Godot but rather hoping the other one shuts up real soon so we can talk.

It's taken me forever to warm to texting on my cell phone. I get hung up on spelling all the words with all the right letters in the proper places with capitalization and punctuation for all. 

Such fastidiousness can make you roadkill with hair on the human highway and more often than I'd like, I've been reminded that he who hesitates is lunch.

I've had follow-up texts as I've been struggling to frame a response to an earlier note. It's hard to count to ten and get a grip on your annoyance while holding a piece of plastic with more computing power than our first three home computers had, put together, while some touch typist is kicking your thumbs.

We're about the same in person-to-person communications, too. Those Sunday morning public affairs programs the major TV networks used to have so the FCC would cut them a break at license renewal time, have evolved into snarkfests where folks who remind me of terriers in need of Ritalin just yap at one another when they're not shredding some 'guest' like an old chew toy.

We're all rushing to get someplace other than here and once we're there, wherever 'there' is, we're off again. My German wife calls it kein ruhe im arsch and she would know as she's married to one (mit ohren).

When you next converse with a real, live person try to listen to the interaction between you, not just to the words but to the silences as well, and you may be surprised at how little of the latter breaks up the stream of the former.

I used to tease acquaintances and associates, disquieted at how rapidly I spoke, that people from my home state of New Jersey couldn't afford a pause to catch our breath or collect our thoughts, because with so many in such a small state, if you stop speaking you won't be heard from again for years. 

So now we talk, type and (for the most part) think in shorthand delivered in staccato, acronym and emoticon all masking, while masquerading as, meaning. Instead of technology and our tools helping language and literature to flower as arts and culture flourish, we've continued to dumb down and throw majesty and meaning over the side.

I came across a quote from Indianapolis' #1 Son, Kurt Vonnegut that makes me smile and think every time I read it. If it does half as much for you, it's worth the inclusion, "...do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."
-bill kenny (Class of '74)

A Blast (Albeit Mild) from My Past

I wrote this over a decade ago and have thought about it on more than one occasion. At the time I called it, 

Probably Legos or Farts

I have had a rather hectic last few days (I know, 'welcome to the club!') and have ended up in places with thoughts not unfamiliar to me though the circumstances by which I've arrived at them this time often is. 

I caught myself yesterday afternoon thinking back to the most amazing moment I have ever had with our son, Patrick Michael, whose birthday was earlier this month.

He would not have been much more than two at the time. And he sat in his car seat in the back seat of our car, a white, four-door BMW 518 (not available in the USA) at a traffic signal by Der Grosse Friedhof (the Big Cemetery) in Frankfurt am Main near Eschenheimer Landstrasse.

"Weiss du," fragte er, als wir miteinander blickkontakt hat in dem ruckspiegel im auto, "wenn Mom jemand anderes geheiratet, wurde ich einen anderen Vater hab?"
"Do you know," he asked waiting for our eyes to make contact in the car's rear-view mirror, "if Mom had married someone else, I would have a different father?"

Not only did I not know that then, or now, I could not even begin to trace the logic process that produced such a question. 

As I learned not that as long ago as I'd like to think, kids and human curiosity are the two greatest engines for change in the world. And one always accompanies the other, though how I would know that to be true is something I am not prepared to answer at this time.
-bill kenny

Illegitimi non Carborundum

If your mind is made up, then don't let yourself get confused with facts about the proposal to bond fifty-five million dollars to construct a downtown police station in Norwich, Connecticut. 

The voters rejected a similar proposal, albeit without having a specific location, for forty million dollars about a decade ago. The discussion at the last City Council meeting precipitated some lively, and borderline illiterate comments on that News Service for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Think for Themselves, Facebook.

The station, finished in the late Seventies while lacking a disco ball, was very much a project of its time-built in the moment and for the moment with little thought given to expanding requirements and future needs and is inadequate according to the people who work there, whom, I assume should know. The Facebook Did My Own Research crowd seem to be unmoved. 

Many of the (mostly anonymous) Facebook experts' comments mention how high their property taxes are while opposing any initiative to make Norwich more attractive (to include downtown police station).  

So many 'not now!' comments. Okay. If not now, then when? 

For decades, the police like other aspects of the municipal workforce were encouraged to improvise and adapt with their present resources whenever budget hearings rolled around. Norwich never has the money for what we need but finds the money for what we want and too often, creates the need after the fact (yes, I'm speaking about the Intermodal Transportation Center among other built projects in search of purposes both in downtown and beyond).

We're talking a lot of money here and we should think about we want and what we'll get for those dollars. In order for the police station to play any significant role in the rebirth of Chelsea and a renaissance across Norwich, let's hear a detailed vision by our elected leaders of what they see our city looking like in a decade, in a score and in a generation. In a perfect world we could all benefit from a dialogue with our elected officials and police station advocates to help us make an informed decision. 

The exigent circumstances that precipitated the original need for a new station have only kept growing for the past decade that we've been 'discussing' this. Closing our eyes to a problem doesn't solve it. 

No one wins unless everyone wins and, in this town, we're still caught up in a zero sum 'for me to look good, you need to look bad' loop that will destroy us all. And then we wonder why we fail....

We can do better, and today (actually this week and I'm not sure why), because I'm feeling revitalized, I refuse to allow us to go down without a fight or at least an intelligent conversation. Illegitimi non carborundum. do NOT let the bastards grind you down.
-bill kenny

Happy Birthday, Kara

Today is my sister, Kara's, birthday. You can be forgiven for not knowing this but only just barely. The world is a much better place because Kara is in it and our family is fortunate that she is our relative even if, as Albert Einstein predicated, everything is relative. Could that mean everything is Einstein? I'm asking that because it would explain the bramble that is so often my hair when I awaken.

Kara and I shared a small overlapping childhood as I was transitioning away as she was becoming her own person. And in a sense, I suspect, she sees herself more often as Jill and Adam's older sister than as the younger sibling of our sister, Evan and brother, Kelly, with whom I spent far more years (but only because their luck wasn't as good as Kara's).

Kara and her husband, Russ, had their own family with RJ, Randy, and Jordan all men in motion and on a mission, in different directions at maximum velocity and then last year Kara suffered the loss of the love of her life and there's a hole in her heart that will never heal.

Kara should actually be our ambassador to the United Nations as she has a genius for talking people into doing things they would otherwise never, ever consider and, while so doing, convincing them that it was all their own idea in the first place and she is just pleased and proud to help them.

She and Jill can probably actually pull off the Tom Sawyer painting the fence trick, but it's Kara who organizes the trip to the hardware store to get the brushes and the drop clothes. And she'll even help you muscle them into the van. Meanwhile, it's Jill who collects the money and, sorry, even though it's a quarter for a chance to paint and you gave her a dollar, she's out of change.

I wasn't around when our mother was a kid, or a teen, or a young woman. I caught up with her as a young mother (and was, technically, the first reason why she was a young mother) but I've always thought Kara most resembles what Mom must have been like when we were too small to really remember.

You cannot help but smile when you are with Kara-I am smiling now as I type this, thinking of her because she is relentlessly cheerful no matter the situation. Her children reflect the values she and Russ instilled in them and have improved the world on their own terms just as their parents, but most especially my sister, taught them to do.

Happy Birthday, Kara!

-bill kenny

The Faces of the Stranger

Crossing the street the other day, I passed two people deep in discussion with one another walking in the opposite direction and heard one of them say to the other, 'and all of them are either midgets or morons.'

I confess to NOT looking around to see if the circus was in town (Congress is back from vacation, so that might be the confusion) as I knew the speaker was offering some pejorative characterizations of people with whom he disagreed and was exercising his vocabulary skills to characterize them.

But reducing the world to two sorts, that's a sweeping statement, when you get down to it. Everyone (else) is a whatever we dislike. Not you and me, mind you-those other folks, whoever they are. What John Kennedy Toole called "A Confederacy of Dunces". And maybe it captures who we are as a species among all the others on this planet.

Heck, for all we know, maybe every life form looks at every other life form as a midget or a moron and behaves accordingly (cats come to mind immediately). All of our lives are alliances of one kind or another, some more fleeting than others. In the primary grades we had a partner for the bus #2 to go home; in high school, we had lab partners, in college, perhaps, study buddies, at work a mentor or someone we regard as one and in our private lives, someone we come home to.

And in each of those situations, we create egoisme a deux, which is how we make our way, forming and breaking bonds every day until a moment the clown car comes to a screeching halt in front of someone we thought we really knew and then how surprised we are as we step out of the back seat to see the look in their eyes and realize we are, sadly, a little too tall to be the former.

-bill kenny

Forget Sheep

Do you have trouble sleeping? I do, at least I have trouble falling back to sleep after I've been awakened. I fell across a trick from Google Health Coach that has me use the word "STAIR" to think of as many words that start with each letter as I can.

After I've exhausted my vocabulary with words beginning with the first "S" I move on to the "T" and so on. To my knowledge I've yet to ever get past the "A" before I've nodded back off (perhaps I just know really boring words?)  

As kids, who among us hasn't tried counting sheep. I mean why would our mothers lie, right? 

But I've come up with something perhaps more state of the art and very definitely more amazing. Enjoy.
-bill kenny

Thinking About Bob

The last friend I was to make as an adult in this life passed away twelve years ago today. I still have the hole in my heart our often-aimless conversations used to fill.  There's a lot of space there now. 

At the time of his passing, I offered words I'm sharing again here. I called them:

The Death of Someone Is Like Reading a Book

We exchanged notes electronically more often than we spoke on the phone, probably about every ten days for the last ten-plus years. 

I met him about eighteen years ago when he was becoming the 'military beat' reporter for The Day newspaper, a daily based in New London, Connecticut, a town across the river from this country's oldest submarine base.

I had nothing to do with submarines and almost as little to do with the training of the contents of them, and yet he always checked in or listened to an idea for a story I was struggling to pitch and more often than not made something out of what we both knew had started as less than nothing.

He was an extraordinarily fair person who not only believed there were two sides to every story but who strove to make sure he had shared ALL sides of every story. He always succeeded. From the first time I met him, I felt like I'd known him my whole life and that we would always know one another.

In a way, we did.

He and I had exchanged notes about a week and a half ago on yet another matter of grave national import; those were the tangents I sent us off on and always did, which was capped by some down-home wisdom as a man who was both a contemporary and a confessor always managed to bring our discussions back to family and futures, home and hearth.

I'm sitting here now typing these words, struggling to remember his, saddened to tears that there will be no more words to ever remember, as my friend Bob died yesterday morning in his home, at the age of 57.

I'm a better human-a husband, a father, a citizen, what-have-you, for having known him. There are no words I can offer to his children and his wife that will ease the hurt they will feel every day of the rest of their lives. I stole this thought and offer it as all that I have or ever will be able to offer: "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal."
-bill kenny

A Dark Anniversary

The feces flinging has already started two and half years in advance to the demolition derby that is the American Presidential election cycle. I've seen, and so have you, the hyperbolic accusations and assertions from both sides as well as their Agents of Endarkenment.

We've both read so often we don't actually 'see' it anymore, comparisons of (name a politiclan) to Adolf Hitler, without a doubt the most abhorrent human being of all time. On this date, eighty-two years ago, a very small number of his military leadership cadre in the most militarized nation on earth, attempted to end Hitler's regime and life as well as Europe's wide-awake nightmare reign of terror. They failed and millions more perished before the mad dog was run to ground. 

Why mention a failure? Because when, not if, you next hear the So-and-So is Hitler comparison, start with this (if you feel better, I've never been able to watch it to the end and it's only a quarter of an hour) and then go back to your pals in the media plutocracy from whatever part of the polit-spectrum they are based and tell them to shut the fudge up (or use peanut brittle if you feel that strongly about it). 

No one they name will ever be Hitler so stop doing that stupidity.

When I was a child, before the age of reason and maybe my memory, we used to have elections based on contrasting visions of our country and how to achieve those differing goals. We had the means-we compared the ways. Now it's a filth fest as we argue about outsourcing vulture capitalism and working on appealing to our core wedge groups.

The best way to choose The Next Leader of the Free World is to evaluate which one best displays those traits between now and the next campaign. Tell the talking heads to go soak themselves and do something too many of us haven't done for a long time and think. 

Here's something to help you decide the unterschied zwischen der Scheiße und der Schuhcreme. Keep it handy and use it often. And perhaps but only perhaps, we can learn again to speak to and not at one another.
-bill kenny

You May Have Wondered ...

...Or perhaps not. 

Today World Cup 2026 concludes as the defending champion, Argentina, and Spain meet in MetLife stadium (assuming the skies over the New Jersey Meadowlands have cleared some more from the smoke). A month's worth of magic moments (and misery, too) and I authored not so much as a prepositional phrase about any of it. 

As someone who is known for pulling over and watching eight-year-olds play PAL Soccer in fall leagues all across the region, I'm not happy that, for the moment, football (to give it its real name) is coming to an end (I don't count MLS and rarely watch it, sorry, not sorry).

I've watched as much football as two eyes and one brain can handle and maybe a little more. I don't really have words, or the right ones, to describe the World Cup, even as we we were one of the three nations hosting it. 

Luckily for me (but more for you), I found someone's words to borrow, Jonathan Wilson, on this World Cup and the world in which we live. Enjoy.
-bill kenny

No Sleep Until the World Series

Major League Baseball's All-Star Game was earlier this week, and it was at least more interesting than the annual (in recent years) National Football League's Pro Bowl (All-Star Flag football) game.  

I'm a Yankees fan (actually a New York baseball fan to include the NY Mets who are having a difficult season to put it mildly) and because my dad was a New York (baseball) Giants fan before they moved to the West Coast with the Brooklyn Dodgers in May of 1957, also a San Francisco Giants fan. 

Mom was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan so in the middle fifties I grew up in a household with two broken-hearted baseball fans as parents. Los Angeles Dodgers are ludicrously in the lead of the National League West Division (I would say 'they should be because they have the biggest payroll in the MLB,' but both the Yankees and Mets aren't too many dollars behind them and don't have the position in the standings they do). 

All professional sports are a conundrum in a way. We, the fans, see the teams as ours, and root passionately for anyone wearing the colors, until they don't (Red Sox fans loved Wade Boggs until he signed with the Yankees and then not so much), 

But the people who own the teams, almost exclusively billionaire white guys, see them as their property to relocate as they see fit and can turn an additional dollar (just in case you thought Horace Stoneham and Walter O'Malley yearned to enjoy the sea breezes of the Pacific Ocean).

I'm a grumpy traditionalist who loathes the designated hitter, the designated runner, the put-a-guy-at second-to-start-the-tenth-inning-if-the-game-goes to extra innings (unless my team wins as a result). The game that was good enough for my father and his father before him (I'm guessing) is more than good enough for me. 

With the exception of umpiring; that can certainly be improved. There's a bit too much personal bias to my taste, so maybe, but only maybe, robot umpires are a step in the right direction for baseball. Play ball!
-bill kenny. 

Time Has Come Today

The days have been getting shorter since the Summer Solstice last month and will continue to do so. both in terms of dawnings and duskings (duskings? Sure, why not) until we reach late December. But since the only constant is change, we may be about to change from falling back this autumn as we've done for decades.    

US Congress takes next step to make daylight saving time permanent. I used the clock resetting stuff every fall to remind myself to swap out the batteries in the smoke alarms, but now that I have the new ones with the ten-year batteries, I'm ambivalent about permanent Daylight Saving Time.

I'll be willing to bet a year or two of stumbling around in the dark, going to school or work in the morning and/or coming home from work and school in cave darkness might cool our ardor for this innovation. Of course, it could do wonders for flashlight sales.
-bill kenny

The World's Only Reliable News

I work hard to gather information from a variety of news sources (not you, NewsMax, and OAN; I said news, and you most certainly aren't). With the world at my fingertips on a keyboard, I'm blessed to live in a moment when information rushes like water through a firehose.

The challenge is sorting the real from the surreal (and at breakfast, the cereal as well). What each of us does with the information to convert it to knowledge has everything to do with us and very little to do with the media operators we encounter.

Thanks to President All the Best Words, we have to navigate through two more, 'Fake News," which can mean anything from a flat-out lie to a story/report with which we disagree. 

Last weekend here in my corner of the Hundred Acre Wood, one of our local newspapers had a front page above the fold story involving a member of the clergy who's been part of the community since before my family and I arrived here in the autumn of 1991 (=a really long time). 

It was not a kind retrospective on the man's career, and reader comments both on the newspaper's website and on their Facebook page were angrily hostile to the article, the writer, and the newspaper, though to my eye, reading them carefully, none of them offered any fact-based counterargument to anything that was in the story.  

All of us who consume news/information are always in danger of building our own siloes (see my comment about the aforementioned NewsMax and OAN). The more sources we sample, hopefully, the broader our perspective becomes. Not that we need to become so open-minded that our brains fall out of our heads, but at one time in this country, we strove to listen to others' points of view. 

Now we just slap them with a label, ANTIFA or MAGA, and move on. Judging saves us a lot of thinking, that's for sure. Red Pill, Blue Pill, if only Nemo and Morpheus had subscribed to the Weekly World News, their lives, and ours, could have been so much better. 
-bill kenny

Work and Other Four Letter Words

This is from seventeen years ago in this very space. I am impressed, even if I say so myself. At the time, I called it:  

Cursing (in) the Darkness, Sitting at the Light

It's early when I go to work, not as early as when my brother Adam heads out, and by the time I do he's gotten most of the chickens fed and the cows milked, which works out well for me since my employment efforts are confined mostly to the mess the back ends make.

At the foot of Washington Street, which is also a state highway whose number I cannot remember, right next to the church with a sign that once advised, "Life is Short, Pray Hard," at the intersection with the Sweeney Bridge, is a traffic signal that captures relationships in and with The Rose City.

The light sits at the junction of a "T". Those coming down the hill who go right AND those coming up the hill who go left, all head in the same direction over the bridge onto what becomes Route 82. 

Maybe that's what happened to Norwich-everyone went for a drive and drove over the one-way bridge and never came back because they can't. The traffic signal is a beacon and often a vexation and, I suspect, not for me alone, a cause for some head-shaking.

No matter the hour, this traffic signal is on duty--no blinking light, red for us and yellow for the other folks. No pause and go, no roll on through and have a nice day. Nope, nada. It works 24/7 every day of the year.

 Once, during a truly awful snowstorm, it was a blinking light (red in both directions-that was very helpful, especially for those struggling to get up the hill), but only that one snowstorm. 

I wasn't sure what to make of the state snow plows NOT heeding the red blinking light as they blew right on through it, so I decided I imagined it (I'll bet you didn't know there's a difference between city snow and state snow). 

Again, as always, yesterday morning, the traffic signal was red when I reached it. It's not on a sensor, and if it's on a timer, it's more of a calendar than a clock, based on my experience. My red signal lasted five and a half minutes at five fourteen in the morning (Yes, my life is so empty that I timed it. In fairness, it's NOT always that long, so add consistency to the list of quirks.).

The part I find funny is that at the time of day I'm there, it's not unusual to NOT see another vehicle for the entire time I'm at the light. Yesterday was a bit weird as the walk/don't walk signal came on, and there were NO pedestrians. 

Eventually (of course), the signal changed; otherwise I'd be trying to type this on a cell phone (and be cited for violating CT's hands-free law). I had f-i-f-t-e-e-n seconds of green light (that amount of time is a constant; go figure). I've driven the street at all times of the day so I have to wonder why, at oh-bright-early, it can't be blinking. 

I'm counting on, eventually, the bulb(s) in the signal, mine (red) and the oncoming (green), just burning out, and motorists can then drive happily ever after or until they reach the next intersection at the Laurel Hill Bridge.
-bill kenny

Play 'Free Bird!'

Just kidding. Don't you dare.

That song and a handful of others on a list that expands and contracts based on who is doing the listing are among those not to be played on a bar's jukebox, under any circumstances. (And it is a rather impressive list, is it not?)

Not sure how this song came to be, but I know it should never be on a banned list.
-bill kenny

Aller Guten Dinge Sind Drei

A recent political passing on the national stage reminded me of an old German expression that translates as 'all good things come in threes,' and leads me to wonder who's next?

Do you suppose Kalshi has a list and odds? Wanna bet?  

Gamble if you want to win.
-bill kenny

I Watch the Patchwork Farms

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

In years past, this was 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 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 in our city for nearly thirty-five years. I don't think the fatigue I'm feeling in terms 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. After all, 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 starting to enjoy the sunrises more than I ever have and to take the sunsets as personal affronts when the days end. I can figure out how and when the night creeps in on a cat's feet, but I cannot stop or slow it. Hoping today's events can fulfill this morning's promise, just as I did yesterday, and hope to as well on the morrow.

-bill kenny

The Dustbin of History

I try to stay out of other states' politics, since residing in The Nutmeg State is already challenging enough without borrowing trouble and mixing it up with folks in places I don't live. 

I must, however, make an exception for Graham Platner and the professional political consultants who advocated for him to become the Democratic Party's senatorial nominee in Maine to oppose the incumbent, Susan ("Yes, I am as close to clueless as possible") Collins. 

Again, not my state, but from what I've learned so far about Platner, which, I suspect, is by no means everything, he's a skeeze and a sleaze and has always been one. It would appear the Maine Democratic braintrust did ZERO vetting of the guy after asking themselves, 'Do we think he can beat Susan Collins?' Nothing else mattered, apparently.

The Nazi-affiliated chest tattoo, the just-above-the-police-calls ideology he offered in public discourse over the last few months, didn't cause anyone to go "huh? It was only when the trickle of rumors about his previous relationships became a torrent of accusations that the folks in charge realized perhaps their Golden Child had feet of clay. 

The murmurings questioning the motives behind the women coming forward bewilder me. They are victims, and it was courageous they spoke up. What kind of person would invent a story where they themselves were the victims of sexual abuse and rape? Believe the women.

Meanwhile, Platner did not go quietly. Instead, he sees himself as a victim of internal politics and, somehow, 'the media' (for reporting on his past, when no one else would?). In the future, as Andy Warhol, once said, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Time's up, Graham. Goodbye.
-bill kenny   

Growin' Up (Behind the Wheel)

I find myself alone with what passes for thoughts at odd hours, almost always in my car, which, doddering curmudgeon that I am, is funny because life and times for my generation go full circle. 

When I was coming of age, the driver's license and the open road (and all they promised, if not always delivered) were a rite of passage. And here I am, very much as I started, a long way from home on a dark highway, lost but making great time.

It was the era of Springsteen's chromed invaders-GTOs, Malibu SSs, Olds 442s, Buick Wildcats, Mustangs, 'Cudas, and Chargers at the top of the list. All those muscle cars had gas lines the size of garden hoses, and all of us, the dweebs included (present!), knew the cubic displacement and the brake horsepower. MPG at a time when gasoline was thirty-five cents a gallon was a nonsense concept and was never explored.

We traveled in packs but were often alone. Our music was transitioning from AM radio to FM, and we struggled to move from converters to tape decks, almost always eight-track, with FM receivers. I remember taking the back seat out of a car to make room for ludicrously sized speakers that were very important to me, but I can't remember why. Because I suspect, just because.

Growing up in the sixties, we were the pioneers who 'experimented' with pot and sex, sometimes at the same time and sometimes not so much. We were all psychedelic capitalists who believed dope got you through times of no money better than money got you through times of no dope. 

Fifty-plus years later, we invented the Real Estate Collapse and Stock Market Meltdown (all caps for a reason) and were absolutely stunned when it happened (now I know why we called it dope).

I watched older neighborhood boys, sent off by my parents' generation, thousands of miles away to places I couldn't say, for causes I accepted as good and true because my government told me it was so. 

A lifetime later, it's my generation sending our children and grandchildren to other eerily familiar wars, and I know just how good we've gotten at lying, but I don't know who we're fooling.

Now that I'm retired, I don't get up with the chickens to go to work the way I did for decades, but I think I prefer to drive in the dawning and the gloaming--when you don't know (or care) where you're going, any road will get you there. 

Those with whom I traveled in the wee small hours always seemed as lost as I, and the roads led everywhere and nowhere. Even now, I keep the windows rolled up, crank the climate control, and turn the tunes up. 
-bill kenny
 

Independence Day Post-Mortem

You probably have one or more in your neighborhood as well: the bozo who purchased a boxcar's worth of what sounded like M-80s for Independence Day but didn't quite use them all up and will now throw them around after dark for probably much of the remainder of this month or until they manage to hurt themselves because of a lack of caution (fingers crossed; and that body part chosen for a reason).

Sorry for sounding so grumpy, post-holiday. 

I hope yours was whatever you wished it to be. Most of the Northeast and large parts of the rest of the country have sweltered for nearly a week as a result of a heat dome and the thunderstorms and lightning it produced. I spent part of the Fourth in an air-conditioned house, rereading an amazing speech by Frederick Douglass, delivered 174 years ago in July 1852.

For those in love with the Bling-Crunk-Rap-Crap I see on music TV where we pretend it's art (at least I do), try this on for size in terms of anger, emotion,  eloquence, and, all these decades later, timeliness. Pull up your pants, home fry, and turn your ball cap around. Your act is so faded.      

THUGLIFE? Please. How in the moment is this: "Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me.

"This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice; I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony."

I hope your Fourth, our Fourth, was good, but that today and all the days that remain are great and greater than the sum of the hours of which they are made and that we finally succeed at that which we have striven our whole lives, a color and bias-free society, grounded by equity, built on equality of opportunity and beholden only to each of its citizens pledged to its success. 
-bill kenny

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