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

.  

Some Mushy Stuff

Today is our son's birthday. This is from a decade ago and was called: 

So Much Like a Man I Just Had to Say

Our son, Patrick, is forty-four years old today. 

The evening we (my wife and I) found out she was pregnant, and the ultrasound indicated the sex of the child Sigrid was carrying, I was a goner. I got the goofiest grin on my face, and when I think about what I looked like when the doctor told us, I smile in that same manner to this day.

Patrick was, and remains to this day, a low-maintenance fellow traveler on the Big Blue Marble, together with the love of his life, Jena, with whom he celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary on Independence Day. 

If he has ever experienced disappointment or distress, and I know that he has, he has never let anyone else feel it. There have been times in our lives when I have hurt, knowing that he was hurting and there was nothing I could do about it. 

I remember the briefing at Dad College where all of this was covered. The curriculum hasn't changed in a long time; ask anyone who is a father, and you'll see what I mean. All of our teachers stressed the importance of understanding the words of Reinhold Niebuhr.

I realize I've learned more from my children than I ever taught them, and no one has tested me more often than my son on what I've learned, or should have. His smile that lights up a room, his ready wit, his unfailing courtesy, and grace (no matter the chaos and catastrophe surrounding him) are traits he has from his mother, as he could have never gotten them from me. He has no idea how fortunate he is that it worked out that way.

I hope he has a wonderful day. Happy Birthday, my darling boy! 

-bill kenny

Matthew 26:11 Vs. Deuteronomy 15:11

We have a situation here in the Rose of New England, Norwich, Connecticut. Many years ago, one of the city's nearly-native sons, John Manuel Andriote, repurposed the 'America is a great melting pot' metaphor to create one closer to home, "Norwich is a saucepan." 

He was right then, and he's right now. You can find the same hopes and hates here that you have all across our nation. We are America in miniature, with opportunities and challenges.

We're currently engaged in a serious discussion about siting a homeless warming shelter in a former church in the middle of a historic residential neighborhood. It would be for winter-time use only, from mid-November to mid-April (advocates estimate that there are about 80 homeless people within our city limits). 

The discussion is just getting started, but there are, as you can imagine, very strong feelings on the issue, from across the city as well as across the street. I don't believe there's a right or wrong answer, but I think we're arguing about a band-aid for a situation requiring major surgery.

I'm struck by "If approved, the new shelter would operate from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. nightly from around Nov. 15 to April 15, Kelly has said." Where do/can homeless people go at any time, day or night, for the other seven months of the year? And why don't we concern ourselves with that?

Meanwhile, we entertain proposals for warming shelters rather than invest in permanent, affordable housing. "A lot of the people who are ...using the shelter have jobs, have cars...Kelly said."

I'm old enough to remember LBJ's War on Poverty, but now we're waging war on poor people. We need to stop chasing temporary fixes and create lasting and equitable solutions. We must cure the ACTUAL illness rather than treat the symptoms. -bill kenny

Uber, Under, Sideways, Down

I recently underwent a procedure (not an operation because it happened in the doctor's office (I think)) involving steroid injections in my spine to relieve my arthritis, which has, as with so much else in my life, only worsened.

Actually, the needle was intended to get as close to certain nerves at the base of the spine as possible. It did get so close on the left side that my leg kicked out uncontrollably while the injection was being administered. The doctor consulted an X-ray screen operated by a technician to see where he was placing the needle; it's not like I was a dart board (I hope).

I mention all of this because the injections and their aftermath meant I couldn't drive myself home. As I keep myself to myself, I don't have anyone, even after thirty-four years of living where I do, that I consider a friend and would impose on to give me a ride to and from the physician's office.

Rather than take a taxi to and from the office, I downloaded the Uber app, which I have never used (I lead a very sheltered life), and was able to use it to get to and from the procedure using what Nathan, the driver, called 'a fifteen-minute friend.' I think he's right. The car was neat and comfortable, and he was a considerate driver and a terrific conversationalist. A fifteen-minute friend. I like that.

Coming home, Ray, a different driver in an obviously different vehicle, was just as delightful as he explained he had a studio apartment practically on the beach in the shore community of Niantic. He drives just to meet people and share experiences.

Terrific time all in all, and I'm no longer afraid to consider ride-sharing if that's what we're still calling this. And perhaps coincidentally and perhaps not, a few days late, I came across this article, making me grateful that I departed and arrived with all the stuff that makes me, me. 
-bill kenny

   

Coming through the Fog

As George Santayana admonished, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," and I think one of the things I've enjoyed about our nation's 250th Birthday is that, in looking at the past, I've become more confident about the future, despite how grim the present is at so many levels.

We spend a lot of time in this neck of the woods, Norwich, Connecticut, talking about days gone by, forgetting that there are close to forty thousand of us here in the now, who, by our efforts on a daily and repeated basis, form a bridge from yesterday to tomorrow. 

Through everything we do and everything we don't do (commission and omission-Sister Mary Jean would be proud I've remembered those), we add or subtract from our city. 

I wasn't born here, and I'm not especially comfortable with the growing probability that I'll die here, but that's pretty much out of my hands, so all I can do is my best for every day that remains. And that goes for you, wherever it is you live.

Each of us is in a formalized environment with financial, emotional, and organizational structures and strictures. We function in a form with a President, a Governor, a Mayor, or a leader with a title of some sort, and there are subordinate bodies and functionaries in a descending order to deliver goods and services to us, the citizenry and residents. 

But there's also an informal association of significant others, our neighbors and friends, perhaps in a neighborhood watch, or a bowling league, or a group of volunteers who coach a kid's soccer team or host scout meetings. Where we live is the sum of all those activities, not just our bond rating and our reserve to debt ratio.

What we are is defined and refined by who we are. Yes, we must have trash pick-up, but it's just as important that we keep an eye on our neighbor's house when they go away for a long weekend. We have a municipal apparatus for the 'big things,' but we need to have engaged and energized citizens for all the things in between. We should celebrate those who give of themselves to make the place where we all live even better.

-bill kenny 

An American Tune for America's Birthday

"Many's the time I've been mistaken

And many times confused

Yes, and I've often felt forsaken

And certainly misused

Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright

I'm just weary to my bones

Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant

So far away from home, so far away from home."

"And I don't know a soul who's not been battered

I don't have a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

Or driven to its knees

But it's alright, it's alright

For we lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the

Road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong

I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong."

"And I dreamed I was dying

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

And looking back down at me

Smiled reassuringly

And I dreamed I was flying

And high up above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea

And I dreamed I was flying."

"We come on the ship they call The Mayflower

We come on the ship that sailed the moon

We come in the age's most uncertain hours

And sing an American tune

Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright

You can't be forever blessed

Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day

And I'm trying to get some rest

That's all I'm trying to get some rest." 

-bill kenny

PS: Happy Anniversary, Jena and Patrick!

A Nation and an Experiment

I'm sharing something I wrote not long ago for this holiday. I called it:

America Is a Dream the Whole World Owns

There are a lot of traditional activities for Independence Day, not that reading these words is in any danger of becoming part of that, and if you've heard me write some of this before, you've been standing too close to the keyboard. 

Before it gets really crazy busy over the next few days, perhaps each of us should look in the mirror and then take a look around at the country we received from our parents and their parents, and which we hope to give to our children and theirs. 

There’s been as much gained as there has been lost through the tears and years, and some of what has changed has been better, and some of it has only been different. The dilemma is in deciding which and what.

By many accounts, the heat was oppressive, and tempers were hot in Philadelphia two hundred and fifty years ago as malcontents and troublemakers (in the eyes of His Majesty, George III, King of England) gathered to refine, define, and catalog their grievances and complaints with the most powerful empire the world had ever seen.

Articulating what they called our ‘unalienable rights’ to include ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ the founders of our republic, who did not agree on very much except that the present state of affairs such as they were in 1776 could not continue, concluded the only way forward as a people on this largely unexplored, new continent whose size and wealth was not yet known, was to break with the past and declare independence from King and Crown.

And out of all of that has come all of this. 

And along the way, the original magic and meaning have been muffled by backyard pool parties, holiday car sales, and chicken-fried steaks on the barbecue.

Our politics is spirited even if our interest isn't; we confuse partisan and patriot far too frequently, and our understanding of issues is muddled and muddied because too many of us have created media echo chambers where all we ever hear/see and read is what we choose, not what we should. 

And, again, it’s not that we all agree with who we are and what we are doing. It’s been reported that we haven’t been this divided morally, politically, and socially as a country since the Civil War. And that should frighten us more than it does and galvanize us into redoubling our efforts to reach out to one another, and yet we continue to shrug our shoulders.

Some say never have so many had so much of life’s material rewards, but others contend that never have so many struggled to hold on to what they have. There's a lot to be said on both sides of that argument, and there’s even more that we're not hearing because we’re just not very good anymore at listening to one another.

What may be missing in our nation is our sense of self, our confidence, and belief in our own abilities to forever adapt, adopt, and overcome. We had those traits at our Founding, and I would hope each, in our own way, might again rediscover them, both for those whose inheritance we are and for those whose promise is yet to be.
-bill kenny

Benjamin Franklin Speaking

This Independence Day holiday finds us as a nation and a people going in different directions, seemingly heedless of others with differing perspectives and beliefs. 

We've forgotten, or seemed to, the United in the name of our country. Too often, we see people with different values as some kind of awful, if not some kind of enemy.

Maybe after the barbecue, and before the softball game sets us up for the fireworks we all always look forward to, we can spend a moment thinking about what we have, who gave it to us, and how we can better safeguard it for those who will follow us. 

Just a thought, or more like a Happy Birthday wish.
-bill kenny

Hear the Drummers Drumming

In the coming days, we'll mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I'm still pondering Thomas Jefferson's words about "...certain unalienable Rights... Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. (and) That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted." I think we form governments, regardless of the manner of actual governance, to do for us collectively what we cannot do for ourselves as individuals.

But maybe I'm missing something, or maybe we all are when we elect/select those who represent us and our interests at all levels of government. Still, the education of our children seems to me to be one of those basic services for which we created government. 

Except, too often we seem to have created governments that most closely resemble a self-licking ice cream cone requiring increased infusions of tax money to explain why less is accomplished. How about for the next two hundred and fifty years, we stop doing that? Deal? 

Our two children are grown and gone, so my experience's 'best used by' date might be a problem for you, but the point won't be. Their first language was other than English when they started school here. They succeeded in both school and life because of their own talents and efforts, and in no small part because of a remarkable public school system of programs and teachers who created an ecosystem that allowed them to grow into who they are today.

But in the decades since our children attended, programs have withered, been eliminated, improved out of existence (pick one) and funding is often more of a rumor, and rather than look at the causes of the financial instability and insolvency that forces decisions like this, and be inspired and incited to demand long term solutions which create real systemic change and reform, we idly and angrily wonder 'gee, what happens to our tax dollars' and continue doing what we've always done, growing angry when the result never varies or improves.

What is permitted is what will continue.
If you want a better place wherever it is you live, you need to make it yourself and join together with the rest of us right now.
-bill kenny

The End or the Beginning?

I have no idea how I lived before the internet. I've checked my birth certificate, and I was around for decades before any of this stuff that we take for granted had ever been thought of. 

Maybe like you, I can go online to look up a particular topic or event, and hours, if not days, later, I will look up to realize I'm still at the computer. Every click becomes a revelation, if not a revolution, and more often than not, the original reason for the search is forgotten. 

Just the other day, I found something online that I had to tear myself away from to tell you about, knowing that when I do (and you try it out), we may never see one another ever again.

Are you ready? Go. 

See you in the next life.
-bill kenny  

Talk about a Short Trip

You may not have yet started to notice, but the days are getting shorter--yes, I know, hot summer nights and all that, but since we've had the solstice, we're already on the downside of the slide to the longest dark day of the year in December. 

I guess the good news might be if you want Santa to bring you a sled, you only have to wait one hundred and seventy-nine days.

And you thought I'd say something chirpy and perky to start your week? Silly rabbit!
-bill kenny

Sunset Doesn't Last All Evening

It happens every summer in the parts of New England that aren't actually parts of any part of New England. When we think of Massachusetts, we think of Patti Page and Old Cape Cod, but for an hour's worth of your drive out to the Cape, it looks more odd than Cod.

Same for Southeastern Connecticut. People think Mystic (curse you, Julia Roberts, and those great cheekbones!) and other touristy locales, but a lot more of the area is quite a distance from having any mystical qualities at all.

I think the weather has caught up with me and cast me down a bit. We get this every June. It rains like the dickens, then it stops, and the clouds part; the sun comes out, and then the cycle starts all over again. Like the Itsy Bitsy Spider has been left in charge and found the keys to the liquor cabinet.

I've started to get a lot better at looking and seeing (physical and cognitive functions together) small strokes and nuances instead of looking at the big picture and struggling for meaning. Something Harry J taught me in video editing some forty-five years ago, 'watch the whole frame,' has uses beyond the box, but I suspect he knew that and just wanted to start small. 

"Know your audience" was another thing he used to say, usually when talking to me. I have a sneaky feeling he was laughing up his sleeve when he said it.

Out walking the other day, I looked overhead, and I smiled to myself. It was early, and maybe nobody else saw the brightness in the day before it was overtaken by the clouds that had chased it across the heavens, but I had seen it. And I knew, proof positive again that all things must pass. But in so doing, they leave a little bit of themselves for all to enjoy. 

-bill kenny

Raising Our Voices Instead of Elevating Our Arguments

Driving through Taftville the other day, heading to the post office, passed a house with three or four lawn signs all reading "Norwich City Council Sucks." Brevity being the soul of communication, I understood almost instantly what the signs meant. The owner still had a 'Get Fired Up-Support Your Volunteers' lawn sign as well, and to my eyes, didn't have a lot of lawn left (which is a clever way to avoid mowing, I guess).

There's been a months-long argy-bargy involving our City Manager and the Chief of the paid fire department, and three of the four volunteer fire departments, about what, I'm not quite sure. It started out as a shouting match of sorts, 'I'm the Boss!' 'You're not the boss of me!' 'Oh yeah? Yeah!' and is now 'We'll see you in court.'    

There is no happy ending to any of this, and that is more than a little sad, as we're doing great things as a small city in Southeastern Connecticut, and I think the only direction we're heading is up. 

We're conveniently forgetting, as is so often the case, not everyone gets everything--it's true in government as it is in any other relationship, so perhaps we might spend a moment and define what our relationship with our city government is, and/or should be.

We form governments, local, state, and national, to do for us collectively what we, as individuals, are unable or unwilling to do for ourselves alone. Some of the tasks are easy--provide for the national defense. Some are harder to define and execute, providing a quality education for our children to enable them to be productive members of our society as they become adults.

The challenge is in the details. Compound all of that by putting a price on each action, and every step of each action, until the municipal budget exceeds one hundred and sixty-seven million dollars. That's a lot of money and a lot of responsibility. 

I voted for neighbors, known and unknown to me, who volunteered to do their best as they saw it on my behalf, no matter how I felt, personally, on any given issue before them. And I believe with possibly two exceptions, all of them are trying to do just that. The open question, regardless of the issue, is: do you do something right, or do something right now?

Politics is often called 'the art of the possible', but we, the people (at all levels of government), can make that art impossible by elevating our expectations and the volume of our voices when speaking about our expectations.

Not helping matters is our representational form of government, where, from the speaker's podium at a city council meeting to and through the curtain at the voting booth, we can drown out one another if we work at it.  

No one wants to have fewer policemen, or more children in a school classroom or a library that can't be open to serve the general public in need of its services, or gaps in our fire protection and public safety.

A lot of us remain very unhappy at the state of affairs in The Rose City and the rate and pace of change and improvement still needed. But we have to work together. To discover and then celebrate the commonality of our shared vision of what we want Norwich to be, and decide how important our differences are in pursuit of a common goal. To stop saying 'this is the way,' and start saying 'let's find a way.' 

Hurling invective at people with whom we disagree will benefit no one. We can disagree without being disagreeable. Sadly, I fear that won't fit on a lawn sign.
-bill kenny

Got Your Weekend Covered

So many people complain that there's nothing to do in Norwich, Connecticut. I no longer waste my breath or time arguing with them, but simply smile smugly because I know they're wrong, and that means all the cool stuff you can do around here will have smaller crowds.  

Except for this weekend. You really need to make a plan to come and join us.

The Rose Arts Festival is a perfect reflection of all the good things and great folks optimists like me see when they look at Norwich. You should really try it as well. See you there?
-bill kenny

The Difference Between Justice and Just Us

Life in Twenty-first Century Amerika can get confusing. 

Subject to your questions, this concludes my briefing.

-bill kenny 

We've Worn Out that Song We Used to Sing

I'm not doing political agit-prop (at least not today). Looking at my country right now, and the shape it's in,  I don't care which party is to bless, or who is to blame. A pox on both their houses (of Representatives and the Senate) if that helps move us forward, and to hell with all of them if it doesn't. I'm starting to wonder as we near the 4th of July if one revolution really was enough.

Remember how our folks told us 'to get a good job, get a good education,' so we did. And that's what we told our kids and watched as they borrowed boxcars of money for college degrees that have qualified them to do what, exactly? 

Fill out crossword puzzles in Esperanto while waiting for a callback on that dental technician job that 145 other folks applied for, or be a gig worker for Uber? Time to downsize those big dreams, sweet-cheeks. Money doesn't talk; it swears, and empty pockets say nothing.

In the last two weeks, our newspapers were saturated with photos of young people just starting out, leaving high schools and colleges to take on the big, bad world. It's a little slow right now; we're telling one another, what with summer and all, things will pick up by the fall. 

Unless they don't, and then what? Don't even start on the why, because all that will do is make you sad and your children mad. Maybe it's always been this way, or maybe I just never noticed how much closer to hopeless we've been sailing for well over a  decade now. 

We're going faster and getting nowhere-burning through our lives and resources so quickly the debt each of us owes is crushing us before we were even born. And still, we get up and go running up the mountain to see what we can see and stay plugged into a game that's long since played out.
-bill kenny  

Leave the Driving to Someone Else

According to some, 'this is the age of miracles and wonders.' And maybe it is, but one of the more amazing things to me, child of the library card since the late 1950's, is how the synergy between convergence and connectivity brings the world to a screen near me 24/7 and 365.

I don't even need to know what I'm looking for, and a search bot will find me something, anything (animal, vegetable, mineral) bring it back to the screen and after I've cast it aside, review other sites it has retrieved for me, and via one or another algorithm,  start to guess what I might like/want or need and finds that. Eventually, an Ethernet happy ending of sorts.

We live in a state well-known for its perceived wealth, Connecticut, one of the Original Thirteen Colonies with astounding affluence along what we call The Gold Coast (though not all that glitters is gold; in some instances it's bling) and crushing poverty and squalor in places such as our capital, Hartford.

Our infrastructure, from interstates to fiber optic networks, is aging (and near failure) as it is across the Northeast, with little investment in any of it since the Korean War. And if you think our bridges are old, you should see our population. 

Actually, you're reading one of them now. I've lived here with my family since the fall of '91 when I was in my late thirties. I was 74 in April and get the senior discount at the local coffee shop. No one was more surprised than I to wake up this morning to find that I'm old. Except, it's been happening for years and not just to me.

But that's why I was mentioning search engines and items of interest at the top. Humor a geezer, willya? It takes us all night to do what we used to do all night, and if I need an extra paragraph or participle to get to my point, what's your rush? I will, in all certainty, probably end up dying in a place I had never heard of until I lived here. There are worse things of course, so don't wish too hard.

It's nice enough-some improvements would be appreciated. A few more pony rides for birthdays wouldn't kill anyone, and while there's always room for Jell-O, there's not a whole heckuva lot of pie from what I've seen. 

Tell you what else we don't have a lot of-and not just us, but almost everyone east of the Connecticut River: mass transportation. If you don't have a car (or a truck) you are so screwed in terms of shopping, working, socializing, living in general.

Never regarded mass transit as mythical or mystical, to say nothing of magical. But we're going to have to start to change how we manage it and how willing we are to use it and make it pay for itself, especially before the kids put us in the home; otherwise, how else are we ever gonna see the grands?
-bill kenny