Mr. Commerce

As I've aged, the only part of me getting thinner is my hair, and perilously so.  When I was little, barber shops were closed on Sunday and Wednesday (supposedly to make up for being open on Saturday, when most of their customers, boy-kids, were dragged by their moms to get haircuts). 

My dad always insisted on crew cuts. I hated crew cuts; correction on the tense of the verb, still hate crew cuts. I sort of understood the Wednesday closing and, from my own experience, can appreciate how relaxing having a day off in the middle of the week can be.

It was the Sundays off I never understood. It must have been habit or tradition; it wasn't reciprocity, that's for sure. Every picture I've ever seen of Jesus has him with long hair and a beard, so it's not like he had his own barber back in the day. That actually increased my regard for barbers as a kid-they were nice when The Lord may not have been their biggest customer.

I think if you're going to work one or more of the days of the weekend, you should seriously consider consecutive weekdays off as compensation. The locked place over the weekend I stood in front of sparked this train of thought. It was closed because 'he's open on Sundays,' the fellow sitting on the bench told me. 

I wondered why he wasn't closed on Sunday and open on Saturday, as so many of us see Saturday as part of the work week now, and the fellow explained that there was little business traffic on Saturdays. 

Of course not-the store is closed. Who would go to a store that's closed? I suspect people who have no money to spend. And these days, the foot traffic alone could fill a shoe store for millipedes.

-bill kenny

Seasons and Reasons

After what at times felt like a very hot, humid, and cranky summer, Fall arrived in New England last week, and we've been braced for a nor'easter for the last few days. The threat of rain and cooler temperatures, coupled with dark, foreboding skies, made me realize the seasons had, indeed, changed.

The big clue for the last month or so has been how the daylight is a little later in arriving each morning, and that same daylight seems to depart a few moments sooner every day. 

I appreciate the calendar last Tuesday making it official that summer had ended but I already knew the seasons were changing and I'm not a big fan of the part of the year we're entering. I don't dislike autumn so much as dread what follows.

But there will be some marvelous days between then and now-bracing mornings, gorgeous foliage, crisp evenings, and I hope where you are you, and yours have much the same, and more. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

-bill kenny

Channeling Ted Lasso

Belief is a wonderful thing. 

It's not better than pony rides for your birthday, admittedly, but it's powerful stuff and can get you through some, if not all, pretty hard times. I have, in my dotage, worked harder to be a happy idiot, succeeding at least in the latter part of that endeavor. I will attempt to see the brighter side of a multi-car collision (unless I'm part of it).

Given lemons, I not only can make lemonade; I'll build you a two-story condo out of lemon peel with a detached garage made of rind and a backyard spa-all for under 249K, complete with a full basement. 

Volume is the answer to your 'how can you do it?' question. 

You're welcome is the response to your thank you. Moving right along...

I think insistence on seeing the Brighter Side has helped me more than it has harmed (and has definitely kept me from going to prison) but it's tiring to try to be so cheerful so often when I can use some help from those around me. I live in an area with a lot of folks, regardless of the issue, whose minds are made up; don't confuse them with facts. 

If all I ever get from this is a song I can hear, playing right in my ear, but I can't sing it, and yet I can't help listening, that's fine too. I've always loved words and extra starch. Back by Tuesday.

-bill kenny

The Words You Read

I have very little natural intelligence left at this stage in my life, so I find the ongoing conversations about Artificial Intelligence to be particularly interesting, insofar as I can follow the discussions (which is to the end of this sentence, to be honest).  

As is so often the case in the times in which we live, the amount of bogusness and volume of falsehoods, on all sides of the issue, are mind-numbing. I think all I know about AI is that it's not only coming; it's also already here. 

I'm thinking if you're as befuddled as I am, this may help.

And yes, I'm hoping I've successfully curried favor with our soon-to-be-Overlords.
-bill kenny 

Remembering the Power of Us

It happens on a regular basis, so there's no reason to be surprised. Usually within a fortnight (plus/minus a week) of Labor Day we have a shift in the weather, and the heat and humidity depart, not before dumping a large amount of rain in a short amount of time on the just and the unjust, and the leaves start to turn, and the lawn signs start to spring up.

National elections, where we choose a President, consume oceans of ink. This time our race for Governor is draining barrelfuls, but it's where the road and the sky collide; here at the local level the real issues in search of answers get decided. And the only history that gets written is what we choose to write. We can wound with words.

We look at politicians in D.C. or in Hartford as an abstraction, and more often than not we're right, but those who seek office inside the city limits are our neighbors and acquaintances, if not friends. We can put names to faces and faces to positions on issues that affect us immediately. Our families see one another in the market, at a local community event, or just out for a walk on the weekend.

It's pretty easy for most of us politically to tell a Gavin Newsom from a Donald Trump even from a distance, but when we're looking for leadership in Mr. Rogers ' Neighborhood, the nuances and differences are more subtle.

It's more a question of degree than dogma, and that's as it should be because this is where we all live, emphasis on the all, and decisions made 'for the common good' really mean for everyone on both sides of the street up and down the block. But when less than a quarter of all registered voters turn out to cast a ballot, leading starts to resemble shepherding cats.

A lot of us thought this time last year was pretty tough and hoped by now we’d be seeing some daylight. Cheer up, the pundits said; things could get worse. So we did, and they did as well.

I don't pretend to know what has gone wrong or how to fix it, but I doubt demonizing the other guys in DC, belittling your Governor, or polluting the blogosphere with innuendo and insults is helping.

It most certainly is NOT who we have been since the founding of the Republic. High times on Wall Street and hard times on Main Street. Maybe we don’t need new solutions so much as we need a return to our oldest and truest values.

-bill kenny

Not the Happiest of Reads

Some days, like Dr. Swain in Slapstick, I feel Earth's gravity is much stronger than on other days. I don't really believe this, but I like to say it, and I am not surprised to discover I also like to type it.

Maybe it's the weather, the changing of the seasons, the loss of reasons to be cheerful, or just plain old age, but I'm weary to the bone. And I'm not alone.

At one time we told ourselves that to get a good job, you needed to get a good education. We learned that from our parents who themselves had learned it from theirs, and we passed it along to our kids who ate it up with a spoon. 

What we forgot, as it turned out, was that the good job would be in a country other than the one they were raised in and that the term itself, 'good job,' was a relative concept, based on the standard of living being practiced wherever the offshore job express happened to drop anchor.

We reached sundown on the union a lot faster than anyone ever thought. The last couple of decades have just gotten weirder and weirder. Since 9/11 and all that followed it, we are scared of silence. We've basically outlawed it in our social discourse. 

The 24/7 news folks have been around for most of the lives of many of us, but it's only in the last two and a half decades that they are so ubiquitous. Remember when you'd be waiting for an airline flight and the CNN Talking Head would be on, and his mouth was moving on one of those TV's suspended someplace in the departure lounge? You couldn't hear squat, but there he was-like God himself watching over us. We, his flock, couldn't hear him, but no one minded.

I tell myself that I was the last person on earth to get a Facebook account because it would confirm what I already feared-I have no friends, not even virtual ones. But all of us now are members of the lonely crowd. I realized as I'm heading into the clubhouse turn here on the Big Blue Marble that we used to do all kinds of shit before there was anything like Facebook and all social media mutations, and we told no one about it. Think tree in a forest. Now add sound. What? Exactly.

And now, we have 'friends' who tell us when they change their picture or whose status update is that they have no update. Say anything-no matter how foolish, how venal, how incredibly self-serving- don't dare leave us alone with our own thoughts because we stopped thinking a while back and forgot how to start again. 

Thank goodness for the autonomic nervous system, or we'd be dead. Sorry. What? Oh, you needed change for a buck-I won't even tell you what I thought I heard.
-bill kenny

Tired of Being Nice

I came across a terrific quote that I hope improves when shared: "(s)ome dream of great accomplishments while others remain awake and do them." 

We are a culture of often difficult and diffident people who wait for someone else to do something-not so much because then we'll join in, but because it then allows us to shake our heads and wag our tongues should they NOT succeed. And yet, we continue to progress despite the disparagement of those around us who not only know everything, but who know everything better.

Funny how the harder some people work, the luckier they are. You'd think the rest of us might start doing the math and figuring out it's more worthwhile to grab up all the 'doing right things right' instances we have around these parts and attempt to duplicate them so that we all have more, instead of kicking one another in the shins as if that took some kind of special skill.

If you don't have any idea what tomorrow should/could look like, how will you recognize it when it finally gets here? Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, once offered, "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." Because I wear glasses doesn't mean you should have to squint. 

How did we get here, in this place and space? By sitting quietly and doing nothing? Why not try to be an exclamation, not an explanation.
-bill kenny

Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws

I spend about ten hours a day (actually, every night) on a dialysis machine as I have end-stage renal disease and my kidneys do little more than take up space across my lower back. When I turn the machine on, it takes about seven seconds to display its welcome screen: "Hello, William Kenny." 

I always pause at that screen, pondering how many other people before me it has said hello to (and how many after me it will greet). I don't wonder about what happened to them; I already know. I lie to myself and imagine they went out for a coffee and just never came back. 

Every year, for many years, usually starting in late July, my brother, Adam, offers a daily profile on one of the thousands who lost their lives on 9/11. The research is meticulous, and the writing is achingly beautiful. This is from this year's entry on the day of darkness itself. 

So many people in the same device, and yet we, in all likelihood, didn't know one another. We are here for a moment, and then the moment is gone, never to be duplicated or repeated. Now multiply that by one hundred billion, which is a guesstimate of how many humans have existed so far, here on the Big Blue Marble. 

 

And each story is different, as you'll see when you click any human ever and go on your own journey. If each life is a story, turning the page can be the most courageous act any of us ever do.

Fair winds and following seas.
-bill kenny

There's a Time for Meditation in Cathedrals of Our Own

I know several people purse their lips when I tell them I watch/listen to PBS/NPR for my evening national news fix, when I feel brave enough to even watch the news (which I usually don't). 

I can't help it-I grew up in a large household where everything, no matter where in the house it started, spilled over to everything else to the point that I'm not sure how my mom and dad or any of my brothers and sisters could hear one another think. Television news in our house as kids was like going to church.

That's why I enjoy being able to put the noise on pause and simply sit and listen to a grown-up report the day's events with straightforward words and unadorned visuals in reports that last a lot longer than those who've grown up on US commercial broadcasters are used to seeing and trying to follow.

No one shouts at me or yells at anyone else elsewhere in the video frame. It's not peaceful or bordering on soporific, just calm and reasoned. I can hear and listen (the former a physical function and the latter a cognitive process) and make up my own mind in my own time.

You and I have lived for over two decades in the shadow of the Great Nothing, the War without End, the Same As It Ever Was and The Plague, but we can remember another time, a different one-one that was better or one we believed (in hindsight) to be so. 

Those exulting in the efforts to dismantle and defund our Public Broadcasting System still haven't shown, in their explanation of why, what they'd replace it with. For people with so much to say so loudly and so often, they are strangely and sadly silent. Perhaps out of shame? I suspect I shall never know.

"And I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own... For we are always what our situations hand us- it's either sadness or euphoria." And on some days, perhaps an equal mixture of both.

-bill kenny

Just Below the Police Calls

A lifetime ago, I was part of a group of young Turks (we called ourselves 'the Marconi Mafia'; no one else ever did, though) who took it upon themselves to inflict their version of radio on an unsuspecting military audience across Europe who had done nothing to deserve our undivided attention, and yet there we were.  

We, or at least I, thought we were right (and righteous). With the benefit of over forty years of hindsight, it's entirely possible I was less than correct, not that you will ever get me to admit that now. 

I've spent much of the three-plus decades since returning to the USA trying to find radio I could listen to without throwing up. It hasn't been easy. Where we live in Southeastern Connecticut, it's slim pickings, with talk radio on the AM and FM bands being the market leader. Some folks enjoy it; not me, not now, not ever.  

I spend most of my time on Sirius or, as it's known now, Sirius XM, happy for the most part without ever being delirious. But as of this morning, I found 'human-curated radio,' no algorithms, no consultants, no paid blocks, just non-stop, "I wonder what they'll play next?"

It's not coincidental that it's called Radio Paradise.

Enjoy! 
-bill kenny

They Put Jesus on a Cross

You don't have to watch a lot of news, on whatever platform you choose, to assume, as I have, that  America's #1 blood sport is Stomp the Leaders. I'm not sure when the game started, but I don't remember it being as vicious when I first came back to the USA in 1991 but then again I wasn't as callous myself as I am now. 

I confess to not paying much attention as the tone heated up through the years-especially when so many public figures, whom it was fashionable to mock, proved to be so filled with frailties and foibles. Maybe it was just coincidence that the Good Ship Lollipop started taking on water and the dominoes started toppling. Maybe.

When the dust had momentarily cleared, we had a black person as the President and a lot of (other) angry middle-aged white guys unelected to anything other than the big chair in a TV studio. Just me, but we went downhill right after that and still haven't yet reached the bottom. 

Not really surprising that the news cycles all head in the same direction as water down the plynth, especially as the countdown to this year's mid-term elections draws closer. It's physics, really: for there to be an inside there has to be an outside, and if there isn’t, we make one up. 

We no longer have to make any effort to avoid being partisan. As a matter of fact, our corporate media insists and assumes we be even more so. I think I once was the most cynical man on earth. I've since gotten schooled so often by the real wizards I should be buying lunches for the pompous stuffed shirts on the Big Screen.  

There’s safety in numbers when we learn to divide—we are, as a nation, very uncomfortable in our skins these days and we should be. Many of us weren’t getting an especially heaping helping of the Promised Land when times were good-but all of us got something. When the bottom dropped out, and the well-to-do chose to help themselves rather than anyone else, those already at the bottom discovered, gravity be damned, there is farther to fall. 

We naturally assume someone has to be to blame for what happened to our country in these last three or so decades. When what really happened was we traded the red, the white, and the blue for green, a little bit at a time every day-not even consciously or deliberately all the time it just worked out that way. 

We’re sure as hell not gonna ever cowboy up and admit that we did this to ourselves and to one another.
-bill kenny

Shaken, but Not Stirred

Are we the only species on the planet who become as unhappy when we get what we want as when we're denied it? No wonder visitors from other galaxies steer clear of us. We can't even get along with each other when we have agreed that we want the same thing. The devil, and a reasonable amount of turbulence, seems to be in the details.

Have you ever been, or watched an American in a foreign country? From the way many of us behave, it seems we Americans think people in other countries are deaf and stupid, so we SPEAK ENGLISH VERY LOUD and S-L-O-W-L-Y. News Flash: They can hear us fine. They just don't understand us. Can you blame them?

As persnickety as we are, might we also be the only ones on the block who can appreciate who we are and where we are? I have a hard time imagining a dog, purebred or pound puppy, admiring a sunset. Or encountering a box turtle who enjoys cloud watching.

We are capable of many emotions, some perhaps not very admirable (I can't imagine wolves shunning one of their own because 'his den isn't from around here' but they haven't gotten to that on Animal Planet yet) and others so profound you have to assume it's what helps define us.

Yes, we behave crazily sometimes, but that insanity is a component of our humanity just as much as our thumbs and an appreciation for Goethe are all part of the package.

Maybe that's why we seem so fragile and should be handled with care.
-bill kenny

More True Now Than Ever

"Show me an upright, respected man.
I'll have him licking my boots when I put money in his hand."

"There's no one alive who can't be purchased or enticed.
There's no one alive who won't sell for a price.
Money Talks." 
-bill kenny

And the Stars Look Very Different Today

Our lives and times seem much harder than they once were (and getting harder all the time), and I'd suggest they are. But being the Crown of Creation is a full-time job, and like it or not, we are up to the task, despite occasional setbacks and slip-ups...

In case you think we're losing our touch, cast a look and give a listen to this revisited video that NASA has created. I found it years ago, fell in love with it, and then forgot all about it until just a moment ago.

Lilies of the Field? Nice. Selected primates' use of primitive tools. Okay.
We may be lonely, but we are not alone, except with our thoughts......  
-bill kenny

Picture This

Like almost everyone on the planet (seemingly), I have a smartphone as a cellphone. I have no idea how to make or answer calls should the need arise (and when it does, I look around frantically for someone to help me with the technology, usually to no avail).

It's chock-full of applications to facilitate accomplishing the most amazing of feats, most of which, despite all the years of having a smartphone, remain a complete mystery to me. I can sort of use the calendar, given enough time, and, I'm proud to note, can actually use the search function, though I've had no success when I Google 'how does my smartphone work?' 

Truth to tell, I have the phone for the camera. I have delusions of photography. I'm not really a photographer, though I take a metric butt-ton of pictures just about every place and every time I go and post them all over the place. Volume over quality, I guess.   

Ansel Adams, am I not, and while practice makes perfect, it's actually perfect practice that makes perfect, and that's not happening, at least not in my case. However, I fell across a cheat sheet of sorts, with a title seemingly written for me: "How to take better photos on any smartphone."

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I don't doubt that; I'm just unclear on the pixel-to-picture exchange rate.
-bill kenny 

"First-Time Callers..."

Today is National Grandparents Day. It was informally observed for decades until the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who established it as the first Sunday after Labor Day, on Sunday, 7 September 1979. 

To be honest, it could have been celebrated since the founding of the Republic, and until VERY recently I would have had no idea. And by 'VERY recently' I mean since the middle of July. My wife and I became first-time grandparents with the birth of a son to our daughter, Michelle, and her husband, Kyle. 

In this Age of Technology, Oma and Opa have been oohing and ahhing over shared videos on Facebook and devouring all the still imagery we can find. Still, tomorrow, albeit very late in the day, as it's a drive and a half to Virginia, we'll get a chance to see our grandchild in the flesh for the first time. 

We'll only be in Virginia for a couple of days, not long enough to see him grow up and go to college by any means, but hopefully, to share moments of his life we'll remember even though he won't. I think the expression is true: "A grandchild fills a space in your heart you never knew was empty."
-bill kenny 

Maria Muldaur Approved

I live close (relatively) to two of the largest native american casnons in the country, and yet unless I'm using gambling space to get from one point to another in the casino, I've never paid any attention to all the means of gambling, sorry, GAMING, that the places offer. I love how we've substituted an M for the B and neutered the word. You can still lose your life savings in one visit to any of the tables or machines, but it sounds so much more refined to say gaming.  

I have to concentrate when I'm watching stuff on ESPN because across the bottom of the screen, more often than not, are odds on a variety of sports and sporting events. No idea what Over/Under means, but I compensate for my lack of knowledge by having an absence of interest. 

All over my TV for weeks was a blitz of commercials for something called Kalshi, which at first I thought was for a cereal I always thought was called Kashi. It wasn't. Imagine my surprise. The commercial with the golfer and the aliens was, I thought, pretty funny. 

In terms of how Kalshi works, not a clue. I must confess I did not know the golfer was a celebrity; the perils of not getting out much anymore. The other golfer/alien commercial is, for my taste, much darker and funnier, though I still don't understand any of what this is all about. 

I do know casino operators are less than thrilled with Kalshi and with its growing-by-leaps-and-bounds popularity. I realize some people will drink anything and others will bet on the opportunity to watch them do it. But while it's not quite a high-roller's dream, I came across a story on a camel marketplace where you can buy, sell, trade, and God knows what else with camels. 

It's not Ali Baba and the forty thieves, but it does make midnight at the oasis an attractive destination. Unless, of course, you're a camel.
-bill kenny 

Understanding the Price of Freedom...

My mind is sometimes a projectionist’s fever dream as cross-generational imagery, historical, hysterical, some mine and some from before my time, coalesce and collide unbidden and unwanted. I can't watch, but I can't look away either.

All of those images pale when recalling street-level video of a brilliantly blue heaven over a lower Manhattan skyline on September 11, 2001, and the startling and sudden appearance of a commercial airliner entering one of the Twin Towers, disappearing inside, forever, while the mind struggles to process what the eyes had seen

Who doesn't have a story about where they were on 9/11?  Today, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of those attacks, the shock and pain are still fresh. It’s as if history stopped at the moment of the first plane impacting. And when time began again, the Age of Innocent Ignorance was over, and that of the Dark Hard World had begun.

The attacks of 9/11 created for every American, regardless of race, creed, politics, sexual persuasion, or color, including those not yet born, a shared memory in which pre 9/11 America becomes almost mythical. 

As often as we speak about the way we were before 9/11, there's a strange quiet when we talk of what has happened in its wake. We talk in abstractions about the Global War on Terror and of the thousands, and tens of thousands, of men and women in uniform deployed around the world in defense of freedoms we too often take for granted here on the home front.

We'll offer thoughts for the victims of 9/11, but to better understand the price of freedom, perhaps we should visit the memorial at Norwich’s Chelsea Parade to remember the selfless service and sacrifice of Norwich residents Jacob Martir-Guiterrez and Keith Heidtman, who died during Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Their memorial is just a few steps from Norwich Free Academy, where both were students. In such a way, the circle remains unbroken in remembering two young men who ran towards, not from, danger when their nation most needed them because they realized courage is not the absence of fear, but, rather, something more important than fear.

There's a German proverb, "fear makes the wolf bigger than he is." There are already too many wolves in our world without creating more. As Franklin Roosevelt offered to a very different America in a very perilous time, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

We can honor Jacob Martir-Guiterrez and Keith Heidtman, not just today, on the anniversary of 9/11, but every day, by living fearlessly and helping one another become better people.
-bill kenny

Forever in Their Twenties

Tomorrow is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon (and Shanksville, Pennsylvania). Torrents of words have been, and will be, written about a day burned into the memory of the world. 

These words are not part of that but, rather, a remembrance of a different anniversary also tomorrow, September 11, but in 1982, in Mannheim (West) Germany. Two colleagues, Private First Class Bruce Scott, US Army, and Senior Airman Michael Sutton, US Air Force, were among the forty-six persons who perished when a U. S. Army CH-47C "Chinook" helicopter crashed. 

They were very young, as were we all back then, with their careers and lives before them. I work hard to remember them at this time every year, and the hole that will never heal that their absence left forever in the hearts of their family and friends.

-bill kenny

The Sweep of the Second Hand

There's still bright sunshine and a warmth that lingers into the late afternoon (just not as late as it did a month ago), but the calendar has no illusions: another summer has come and gone.

I'm hoping we have a Second Summer as we've had in recent years, and then a lovely fall that mysteriously and miraculously blends effortlessly into a beautiful New England spring. What's that you say? Winter? 

Sorry, I can't hear you, and there's no point in speaking up or repeating yourself; I still can't won't hear you. I understand the restorative powers and the role each of the seasons plays- I don't choose to enjoy winter. Ever since I didn't get that new sled for Nikolaus Tag years ago, I'm over it now.

Truth to tell, considering the speed with which this summer passed (and yeah, they seem to accelerate as I age) and the number of us who had fervent hopes but few plans for what we were to do with it, perhaps what I should learn is to enjoy the days while they are here. 

Anticipation is great (and perfect on burgers), but savoring the flavor of the moment, while in the moment, may be something us old people who think we're not should cultivate and not try so hard to avoid.
-bill kenny

Carry Your Cup in Your Hand

It's hard to believe the golden summer for which we so yearned while slogging through snow and ice this past winter has, for all intents and purposes, come and gone. 

Those plans for vacations we hoped to enjoy have had their 'best used by' dates disappear before our eyes, and here we are at that place on the calendar where we start the next chapter and turn the page.

If you have children in school, the end of summer is old news. If your children are grown and gone, you're still aware of school as the buses wend their way throughout town while elsewhere groups of youngsters of all ages trip and troop across sidewalks and crosswalks, all in the name of learning.

In the coming days, many of us will hit the stores armed with lists of school supplies and struggle to juggle after-school activities, our jobs, and fractious households that don't run themselves. Soon, too many will be back to managing families the way a horse runs: one footfall at a time, rarely, if ever, looking far enough ahead to see if our path is taking us to where we want to go or, instead, leading us over the proverbial cliff.

Now, and when city budget discussions heat up in April, are really the only two times all year we devote any thought to education, which is unfair to children, teachers, parents, actually, to all of us. 

This is not an advocacy for more money for schools-there isn't any more money but, and it's a cliché, if you think education is expensive, try calculating the cost of ignorance.

You and I went to different high schools together. Our schools were so different from the ones our children/grandchildren attend, they could just as easily be from another planet. Actually, without putting too fine a point on it, it was a very different world, and when you look at us now, the society and culture we inherited from our parents and then look at what we are giving to their grandchildren, the 'stuff in the middle' is our doing.

A glance at a newspaper, a TV screen or a computer monitor is all you need to confirm our world is a dangerous and different place now. Gone or going is the industrial age, being replaced often rudely and without ceremony, by the knowledge age. 

This is typed on a workstation keyboard. Our children live in a world of hand-held digital devices that make desktops and laptops look like Gutenberg's press. Access to information, the how-to, and the what-you-do-with-it-next are the world our children and theirs will live in, and lamentations about how that's not what school was like when we were young help no one.

Stasis in life and in learning is foolish and fatal. Everyone with an interest in education, and that should mean all of us, must recognize that the purpose of education should be to learn the rules of life better than anyone else so that you can change the rules. Always a good thing to remember, especially as the seasons change yet again.
-bill kenny

The Remains of the Day

Our current President keeps reminding us that the stock market is at the highest levels in its history, but I've yet to encounter anyone, anywhere who can explain what that's supposed to mean when the price of everything continues to escalate. 

Of course, if you have a red ballcap (made in China) with four words written on it, those aren't questions you ask, which is what the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is counting on, so keep up the good work. 

As for the rest of us, this is Labor Day 2026:        

There's a Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign

Sitting there by the left turn line

The flag on his wheelchair flapping in the breeze

One leg missing and both hands-free

No one's paying much mind to him

The V.A. budget's just stretched so thin

And now there's more coming back from the Mideast war

We can't make it here anymore.

And that big ol' building was the textile mill

That fed our kids and it paid our bills

But they turned us out and they closed the doors

'Cause we can't make it here anymore

You see those pallets piled up on the loading dock

They're just gonna sit there til they rot

Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack

Just busted concrete and rusted tracks

Empty storefronts around the square

There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere

You don't come down here unless you're looking to score

We can't make it here anymore.

The bar's still open but man it's slow

The tip jar's light and the register's low

The bartender don't have much to say

The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards

Some are working two jobs and living in cars

Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink

If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. C.E.O.

See how far 5.15 an hour will go

Take a part-time job at one of your stores

I bet you can't make it here anymore.

And there's a high school girl with a bourgeois dream

Just like the pictures in the magazine

She found on the floor of the laundromat

A woman with kids can forget all that

If she comes up pregnant what'll she do

Forget the career and forget about school

Can she live on faith? Live on hope?

High on Jesus or hooked on dope

When it's way too late to just say no

You can't make it here anymore.

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store

Just like the ones we made before

'Cept this one came from Singapore

I guess we can't make it here anymore.

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin

Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in

Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today

No, I hate the men sent the jobs away

I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams

All lily white and squeaky clean

They've never known want, they'll never know need

Their shit don't stink and their kids won't bleed

Their kids won't bleed in their damn little war

And we can't make it here anymore.

Will I work for food, will I die for oil

Will kill for power and to us the spoils

The billionaires get to pay less tax

The working poor get to fall through the cracks

So let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake

Let 'em eat shit, whatever it takes

They can join the Air Force or join the Corps

If they can't make it here anymore.

So that's how it is, that's what we got

If the president wants to admit it or not

You can read it in the paper, read it on the wall

Hear it on the wind if you're listening at all

Get out of that limo, look us in the eye

Call us on the cell phone tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio or Portland, Maine

Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains

That's done closed down along with the school

And the hospital and the swimming pool

Dust devils dance in the noonday heat

There's rats in the alley and trash in the street

Gang graffiti on a boxcar door

We can't make it here anymore.

-James McMurtry

Song of the Season

There once was a union maid, she never was afraid

Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.

She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called,

And when the Legion boys come 'round

She always stood her ground.

Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,

I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.

Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,

I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.

This union maid was wise to the tricks of company spies,

She couldn't be fooled by a company stool, she'd always organize the guys.

She always got her way when she struck for better pay.

She'd show her card to the National Guard

And this is what she'd say

You gals who want to be free, just take a tip from me;

Get you a man who's a union man and join the ladies' auxiliary.

Married life ain't hard when you got a union card,

A union man has a happy life when he's got a union wife.

The first Labor Day parade

Now I'm a union man, amazed at what I am. 

I say what I think, that the company stinks. Yes, I'm a union man

When we meet in the local hall, I'll be voting with them all.

With a hell of a shout, it's "Out brothers, out!" and the rise of the factory's fall.

Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

Until the day I die. Until the day I die.

The union has made me wise to the lies of the company spies

And I don't get fooled by the factory rules 'cause I always read between the lines

And I always get my way if I strike for higher pay

When I show my card to the Scotland Yard, and this is what I say:

Oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

Until the day I die.

Until the day I die.

Before the union did appear my life was half as clear

Now I've got the power to the working hour and every other day of the year

So though I'm a working man I can ruin the government's plan

And though I'm not hard, the sight of my card makes me some kind of superman

Oh, oh, oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

Until the day I die.

Until the day I die.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

You don't get me, I'm part of the union.

Until the day I die.

Until the day I die.

-bill kenny

A Pause not a Cause

I enjoy holidays as much as the next person, and when I worked, I took them off whether I deserved to or not, so if you have time off for this Labor Day, I hope you enjoy it. 

So, if you were looking for something profound or life-altering in this space today, sorry if you feel disappointed, but I'm only saying that really because I don't mind.
-bill kenny

Lest We Forget

Sometimes important stuff gets lost in the revelry. This is Labor Day 2026, and we need to consider where we are and where we would be if the robber barons and plutocrats of bygone days had had their way. 

Hazel Dickens

Phil Ochs

Sweet Honey in the Rock

-bill kenny