Short Thoughts on the Longest Day

The farther out in space we go, the more alike we look. It’s only when we re-enter our atmosphere that the effects of gravity and tribalism become more pronounced.

Residing as I do in Global City Norwich, I smile as we punctuate our lives with a variety of celebrations of many of the different stories we are as the people who all happen to call this place our home. And yes, I'm always saddened by the often ignorant and arrogant online observations of so many on social media platforms and their reactions to those stories.

I wanted to emphasize the importance of stories because when we speak of History, which is really the story we tell ourselves of who we are and how we came to be, we usually think in terms of capital letters and monumental events, forgetting that all of us are the authors of our own tales of our time here on earth.

In deference to, and respect for, Edward Shepherd Creasy, who authored “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,” almost a century before the beaches were stormed at Normandy on this date on June 6, 1944, D-Day wasn’t just a battle historians concluded ultimately won World War II and saved Western Europe, but may also have been the milestone in our country’s journey of political, social, military, and economic ascendance in a world landscape littered with sometimes petty parochial and ideological loyalties.

We think of larger than life men and monumental moments when we study D-Day, and there are many to choose from, but we risk losing sight of the human element of our own humanity in the details that the day involved, which is what we should remember.

The survivor stories, so many people in the same device, fighting not only for something grand and noble like a Free Europe and, by extension, the free world but also for one another. 

They sought out a protected position where the sea met the shore while being raked by weapons fire without rest or respite. Waves of troops waded onto the beaches and wrote with their blood and sacrifice the first chapters of what was to become our modern, Post-War World where we hoped cooperation would replace confrontation.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to walk the beaches of Normandy and struggled to imagine the carnage and brutality of the conditions on that day and the courage it would have taken to overcome them. It’s a way of learning history that books and classrooms, while important, can’t really touch, but for many of us the stories, more so than the lessons, are all we have.  

And many of those D-Day stories are deservedly well-known, while others less so, but I’m always struck in reading and remembering June 6, 1944, by what we, the inheritors of the world who never saw the dawn on June 7, have done with it. And by how much harder we should still work.  

-bill kenny 

A Petard Would've Been Cheaper

The master of the Art of the Deal, Mr. Three-Dimensional Chess Grand Master, the Teflon Don, has gotten himself caught in a trap of his own creation. 

Unfortunately, most of the rest of us worldwide have also been ensnared.

And meanwhile, those Epstein Files won't release themselves.

Jail to the Chief (and all his anblers).
-bill kenny

If I Were a Good Man

 

"If I were the moon, I'd be cool
If I were a rule, I would bend.
If I were a good man
I'd understand the spaces between friends."

-bill kenny

Immediate Gratification!

I'll keep this short today (I heard that cheer) since brevity is the soul of wit.

Go to Google Search, type "zerg rush," and then hit "enter." You're welcome. 

Yeah, I know; we could be using all this computer power to cure world hunger or create peace in our time, but the gratification with this is more immediate. Trust me.
billl kenny

Stay Strong

I'm having trouble staying out of my own way this week for reasons I can't quite sort out, try as I might. When I was a young man and occasionally lost my driving wheel, I just shrugged and put my shoulder into it and counted on the next day to bring me something better. 

I turned seventy-four last month and know from looking at the mug in the mirror that the tomorrows are more finite than they were five years ago or even five months ago. 

These are hard days for all of us. Spite can be an effective motivator, trust me.

Illegitimi non carborundum. 
-bill kenny

The Way We Were (Not)

One of the things I always liked about Howard Johnson's as a kid growing up was the choice of ice creams for dessert after dinners with Gramma and Grampy. At the time, this was the Sixties (GASP!); there were (I think) twenty-eight flavors. I'd always pick chocolate, but it was nice to know there were so many others. 

Of course, Hojo's as they were then are not now, nor is the world in which they existed close to the one in which I grew up. Progress is what progress does-the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

Thanks to the convergence of technologies we have means of gathering and sharing information we didn't have when I was a kid (we had computers but no one 'normal' ever saw them as they were huge machines the size of rooms, fed by punchcards) all gathering up news and notes we desire and delivering all of it to our desktop or the screen on our smart phone or device.

Remember when we referred to this jumble of wires and ether as The Internet (both with caps)? We were Such Hosers, eh? Now we have news aggregators that are so transparent and seamless we have no idea where the item that just showed up in our news stream actually began. 

Add to that the growing number of readers and netizens who cannot distinguish between opinion and fact (the demarcation is stunningly simple unless you're sadly stupid), and we, as a nation or a neighborhood, descend into discord and disintegrate.

We were Athens-we are becoming Sparta. And don't mistake me, we are each entitled to our own opinions, but we are never allowed to have our own facts, be they on anthropogenic climate change, creationism, or gay rights. 

I suspect you and I have very different views on just these three items, not to mention the deeper and more fundamental issues such as the designated runner starting on second base when a baseball game goes to extra innings.

We can agree to disagree, which is how our parents functioned, or we can hurl invective at each other like the morons we elected to represent us in Dodge City (and they do a fine job, as they seem to be as imbecilic as we are-at least your guy is, mine is a genius (see what I mean?)).

How we view the world has a lot to do with the window and prism (filter) we choose. You pick Fox, and I take CNN. You tune to MSNBC, and I like the Cartoon Network.  For me, it's perspective, and for you it's propaganda. Tomato, tomato; potato, Dan Quayle.

Someday we'll have a meeting of the minds, as Isaac Asimov once feared, but it will be in the middle of nowhere, beyond the city limits of common sense or decency. And the first thing we'll do is argue about how we got there and, more importantly, who is to blame. After we round up everyone who knows more than we do. Leaving just us, as horrible a fate as either of us can imagine.    
-bill kenny

The Wisdom of Higgins

I was stunned when visiting my brother Adam's blog to realize that today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the death of my father. I had forgotten completely the very event I'd have thought I'd go to my grave remembering. Color me surprised.

I know I'm not the only son with a complicated and complex relationship with their dad (I can think of two other sons right off the top of my head in the same boat, but I'll also concede it's a large ocean), but until earlier today, I've tiptoed around this date and our relationship.

Truth to tell, for the first time since his passing, I wasn't in his shadow. That's not a good thing, or a bad thing; it is what it is. It took me all these years to realize, Higgins, from Ted Lasso, captured it perfectly:

"I try to love my dad for who he is and forgive him for who he isn't."
-bill kenny  

But While Everything Is Blooming

I've been a little preoccupied recently (the competition for post-occupation is brutal), but I had an opportunity last weekend to decompress and reassess. I've been working on some things that were important for other people but didn't have much value for me.

I think we all live like that sometimes. 

We give our time to total strangers and then discover we need to shift scheduling priorities, but those to whom we gave the gift of our time now see it as an entitlement, and they have hard feelings when something they've grown accustomed to is rationed or curtailed. What were once vices are now habits, and what began as voluntary is seen as mandatory.

I've gotten a little too old to continue to live for the reflection of approval in other people's eyes-I've discovered that for some time, maybe a few weeks or even months, I'd lost track of that hard-acquired fact. In the last couple of days, the sometimes petulant reaction of those who have no legitimate claim to my time and talents when I've placed myself first has reminded me that self-abnegation is not a virtue others applaud, but, rather, abuse.

We all work our way through valleys that sometimes feel like chasms. This one has been a little deeper and a little wider than I'm used to, but I put that down to having close to a full lifetime's experiences now, unlike when I was a child. 

I'm putting away the things of childhood, and what's left in its place has the attractiveness and the danger of the new and untried. That's a path I haven't walked in a long time. I'm thinking it's high time I went.
-bill kenny   

Better Late than Never

I'm a bit late to the party, but best wishes nevertheless. Sunday was Bob Dylan's 85th birthday.  I almost cannot believe this, even though I'm typing it. For Dylan to be 85, I would have to be...let me do the math on this for just a second, okay? Take away the five and carry the one plus....YIPES! One of us is really old, and I suspect it ain't the kid from Hibbings, Minnesota. And don't get me started on you, okay?

I guess you had to be there in one place, a generation lost in space as McLean sang, to really appreciate how bad pop music was until Dylan and The Beatles, coming at it from different perspectives and different backgrounds, reinvented it and allowed all of us to own it. It was a long, long time ago.

US pop music before Dylan had Pete Seeger, The Weavers, and Folkies and Okies for the most part. Woody Guthrie was idolized, but the guy at CBS (the largest label in the world at that time) was Mitch Miller (and we watched his TV show and oh boy...) while Guthrie lay dying. We also had the Brill Building contingent and a ton of heart throbbers and throbbettes and all the June/Moon/Croon lyrics you could eat with a-- well, you can probably guess what utensil you could eat 'em with.

I was too young to catch the guy who, as Elston Gunn, was the piano player for Bobby Vee and most of the hokey folkie incarnations--I picked up on him first through other folks doing his material and being seduced by his command of the language through Blonde on Blonde before finally stumbling across John Wesley Harding even as the auslanders were unveiling Rubber Soul. I realized the language was so powerful because the ideas it reflected were the foundation of the Next New World.

All of that was eons ago, and the face I shave in the mirror now could barely clear that sink a lifetime ago. Like Leo Kottke, I spoke with Dylan (and Leo as well and knew who they both were when I did; and my feet are still smiling), and was close to tongue-tied (my wife knows how rarely that happens) since all I wanted to tell him was how much his music meant to me even while realizing that he didn't make music for how it made me feel; he made music for how it made him feel. We were along for the ride.

So, as Loudon Wainwright, III, one of those dubbed a New Dylan in the Seventies before we realized there was nothing wrong with the old one, once offered, (a belated) Happy Birthday. I hope we'll always find new and better reasons to celebrate you as you have so often celebrated each of us.

-bill kenny

Arrivals and Departures

I'm always delighted by small children and infants, though I am often annoyed at parents who don't keep better control of them in social environments. I was shopping yesterday, and hadn't realized it was 'bring your mewling child to the store with you' day because I was up to my butt in very unhappy, very young people.

When that happens, I go with the flow and get cranky myself. Don't get me wrong-I'm not angry with the children. A newborn didn't decide to get in the car and drive to the store. Mommy did. Or maybe daddy, but based on what I saw yesterday, more than likely not, though mommy probably wishes she knew where daddy was.

I don't know when we became a country of the very young and the very old, but having been the former and now being the latter, let me tell you that all the other age groups, and food groups for that matter, had best start pulling their own weight.

We spend way too much money on diapers and Depends in these parts. We built this nation for our children-that's the deal every generation worked with the one that followed, except now we sold our children and their children out for offshore bank accounts and left them with no skills, no jobs, and no hope.

We're so busy blaming the New World Order and the changing times that we have no time to look in the mirror and look at ourselves. When Gandhi talked about being the change you want to see in the world, he wasn't talking about the change under the couch cushions in the living room. He was talking about all of us to each of us, for everyone.

If being polite means being less than honest, maybe we should ask one another if that's too high a price to pay for comity. We owe each other the unvarnished truth to build the world we all want to live in. Hurt feelings are a luxury we most certainly can afford if they get us to where we need to be.
-bill kenny   

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

We are a nation (and culture) addicted to fossil fuels. I suppose we had to be addicted to something, and it had to be cheap and it had to be abundant. We became so addicted to it, and shared that addiction around the world so that now everyone has the habit and fossil fuels are no longer the former nor the latter, and yet still addictive.

It wasn't until the seventies when the Arab nations exporting oil realized our dependence was so great we might succumb to the temptation to whore out our own mothers for a tankful of the good stuff for the Winnebago. 

I learned to drive when high test gasoline was less than forty cents a gasoline and the right to always buy it for that price was, we assumed, somewhere in the Constitution. Half a century later, welcome to five bucks plus a pop, and the search for the guilty goes on.

You'd think if we're spending more now on imported oil than we were at the height of the Arab Oil Embargo, that we'd be looking to alternatives to the high costs and dicey supply availabilities we are facing and will face every day of the future as a nation. You might even be tempted to believe the people we elect to represent us in our nation's capital might have more than a passing interest in our future since they share it. But you would be wrong.

First and foremost, they're interested in their own futures, and as we all know, the next election is (always) just around the corner. And when you're running for office, you're only statesmanlike between fundraising dinners on the way to the next baby-kissing contest and county fair. After a while, the audience knows the candidate's stump speech as well, if not better, than s/he knows it themselves. And believes even less of it than they do.

And it must be politics that would have one of the two major parties (the more stupid of the two, in my opinion, and, yes, name-calling never settles anything but I like the feeling), determined to turn the clock back no matter what the rest of the world is up to. 

Meanwhile, the wizards of Washington, so quick to search for the guilty everywhere but in their own mirrors, remain ever vigilant in their dedication to their definition of 'the American Way,' even if neither they nor we have any idea what the hell they are talking about. Just "Drill, Baby, Drill." (and let me know how that works out)

And don't worry about what it all means, because it adds up to nothing written in sand and blown by the wind. We've always been at war with (insert name of your least favorite nation here), and we have the history books to prove it.

If you remember it differently, you remember it wrong, and you've picked the wrong country at a dangerous time to start remembering things wrong. These are times when politicians, finding themselves with cannibals among their constituents, promise them all missionaries for dinner. That way, there's no worry about who would say grace.  
-bill kenny

Two Hooves or Two Wheels?

We've all seen the stickers. I think at one time I may have had one on my bumper, some variant of 'Share the Road with Motorcycles.' I do what I can, when I can.

Driving the other day on Route 12 in Scenic Preston (Preston Chamber of Commerce: that'll be five bucks, please; cash money only and that's per mention so come across quick or the party's over before it starts), I'm heading towards the Pequot Bridge keeping up with the flow of traffic as the intersection widens to three lanes at the light and two of the lanes make a left to go over the bridge towards the back entrance to the Mohegan Sun or to access 395 North or South.

I hear him before I see him so I call him Doug(ie) Doppler (and yeah I know it's bassackwards, but so is bassackwards), a motorcyclist with NO helmet, no leathers, just wraparound shades (the rain finally stops in Southeastern Connecticut and we go all stupid) in the right-hand lane.

I'm on the left because that's where I need to be when I clear the casino ramp) and the guy weaves around to pass on his right the truck in front of him, cuts behind the car in front of the truck so he can ride between that guy and my car, accelerating as he comes alongside, and then darts quickly to his left as his rear tire is parallel to my right front.

He's not in front of me long as he speeds up and slides (don't know what other word to use) between the car in front of me and a bus.

In a flash, he's gone, and I hope he's safe wherever he's going. Meanwhile, I'm alone in my prison on the road, trying to sort out why worrying about motorcycles doesn't seem to be the front lobe priority for those who ride them as they'd like the rest to have. And yeah, I mentioned all the protective clothing, none of which this guy had (or was required to), because Connecticut is a Ride Free State thanks to "Pappy."

I'm hoping all the folks who ride are exercising their freedom of choice and have chosen to sign organ donor cards attached to their operators' licenses. I mean if we're gonna do some outing with motorcycles and watching, I say let's make it interesting and figure out a better and safer way to share the road, since a lot of folks in the motorized boxes don't have to be nice, as we all know, because they've got lots of protection even if they're not paying attention.

I don't ride a motorcycle, but I think my car driver's rule works as well for two wheels as it does for my four. It's NOT my skill or ability on the road that I worry about; it's the other guys', even when it's the other girls,' and as nice as the bikes may be, none of them are a match one-to-one with even a beater. And what's the point of saving fifteen seconds of travel time if you risk being dead forever?

-bill kenny

Nearly Unremarked Upon

Some calendars are always at war with themselves. We had it happen this past weekend with Memorial Day here in the USA and the Feast of Pentecost this past Sunday. I wrote this a very long time ago and think it's survived rather nicely (though how would I know, right?).

Not Just This Wheel's on Fire

As a grade school child, this past Sunday was one of the most difficult days we had all year as Roman Catholics. As a loyal son of Holy Mother Church, I struggled to wrap my head around The Holy Trinity and God as the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost (later changed to Spirit, which I always thought was a great marketing idea, as all I ever thought of was Casper, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to be the point).

Just as I was getting comfortable with the contradiction of three persons in one Godhead, along comes Pentecost Sunday, and when you're a kid, because you don't know the words 'disquieting' or 'surreal,' you say 'weird' (a lot).

 

Now, as a somewhat world-weary adult, I look at the Gospel of John, usually used as part of the Mass, and envy that school kid with his unthinking faith and belief.

John, say the Scripture scholars, was (at best) reconstructing what might have been said at Christ's last Supper, but because of when those same scholars think the Gospel was written, it's very possible that John, himself, heard none of the words spoken he quotes. 

Ironically, and coming full circle, John himself becomes the proof of his own theory that belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, taken on faith alone, by those who did not witness his miracles, is at least as powerful as belief by those who were present.

The tongues of fire, we were taught in catechism (when I was in public school and attended religious instruction in the church basement once a week) and later, when at St Peter's in religion class, were to cleanse our hearts and minds of doubts and questions. over seven decades into this journey, I guess they needed to be lot hotter because the former remain and the latter abound.

But, honoring the notion of symmetry and hoping the truth in the lesson is so simple and obvious, even I can grasp it, I cling to the example of John and his testimony of faith and belief in that which he had not seen. No man alive will come to you with another tale to tell. And you know that we shall meet again, if your memory serves you well.

-bill kenny

The Gunner Sleeps Tonight

This isn't anything you've not read before at this time or in this space. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, I sometimes wonder what repetition causes? Still working on an answer.  

This is a rather difficult time to be an American, I think. Lots of us like to wrap ourselves in the flag, and this is an almost ideal opportunity to do that. Today is Memorial Day, another holiday we've moved to a Monday so we can have a three-day weekend with plenty of time for a barbecue, a run to the beach, and some laps at the Brickyard. 

If we work it right, we don't ever or even have to think of those with whom we grew up and with whom we went to school but who never, themselves, grew old, or whose parents and grandparents, having survived the Depression battled fascism to its knees in a worldwide war and their children and their children who have been engaged in a dozen "smallish" wars for the last half a century that all seem to cost lives.

Every town across the country has observances, as do we here in Norwich, Connecticut. The first, as is tradition, is at Taftville's Memorial Park, starting at 10, this year honoring Herman A. Duhaime, who was listed as Missing In Action on December 2, 1950, during the Korean War, and declared deceased in 1954.
And though I'm not a resident of Taftville, I'm always welcomed as you will be.

 

Later in the day, assuming the weather cooperates, there is a parade organized by the City of Norwich and the Norwich Area Veterans Council that will conclude with speeches and moments of silence at half-past two in a memorial ceremony at Chelsea Parade.

On a day usually filled with backyard barbecues and family softball games, the remembrances help us realize war is not an abstract geopolitical game played out on a grand stage by dominant personalities-it is very local, extremely personal, and heartbreakingly private. Those of our neighbors who choose military service have as many reasons for so doing as there are those who so serve. 

And while today we should mark the ultimate sacrifice of those who have served, we can also spare a thought or prayer for those who have survived as well. They bear scars, often invisible and painful, of their struggles that take a lifetime to heal.

We must never lose sight of all of those whose service makes us who we are and to whom we owe a debt more than we can ever repay. They are a call to arms for each of us to be better than we are for ourselves, our children, and our nation.
-bill kenny

Kyrie Eleison

Memorial Day.

Rex tremendae majestatis. Requiem aeternam, Requiem aeternam.
-bill kenny

Repeat as Needed

I offered this last year as the Memorial Day weekend began and people wished one another 'a happy weekend,' ignoring the solemnity of the occasion. Yeah, I can be a horse's behind on things like this.

Maybe just me, but I think sometimes on Memorial Day weekend, we get a little lost with the mattress sales and such. This is from quite  a few years ago and was called:

 

Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War

I couldn't find a picture of a barbecue grill with a rack of ribs and some burgers, so this will have to do, I guess.

Memorial Day 2026.

-bill kenny

Shouting in a Movie Theater

It's been an intense, if not productive, spring here in The Rose City (a/k/a Norwich, Connecticut) as we make our way towards a final, approved municipal operating budget for the fiscal year starting 1 July. 

If we could focus on that, I'd be happy, but we have distractions like the ongoing and very heated dispute between some, part, or all of our volunteer fire companies and the Chief of the City of Norwich Fire Department and the City Manager. 

Everyone has an opinion, and like noses, they all smell. Mine? I live in the Consolidated City District and am protected by the paid fire department. I've not made a study of fire-fighting, but I'd be willing to bet that the average (or even above average) home fire doesn't care a fart to a pfenning who extinguishes it. Ditto for the homeowner. 

My concern is that we allow these 'issues' fanned into blazes by one or more self-serving alderpersons on our City Council because they enjoy and benefit from the acrimony and aggravation that are the results of their actions, to cause us to lose focus on the core functions of, and reasons for, government, at whatever level you'd like to take this discussion. 

Despite the machinations on Wall Street, here on Main Street, times, as seemingly always, are tough. We have more will than wallet, and maybe that's where we should concentrate and let the side shows take a break for a moment. 

Many Norwich homeowners across the city (present company included; my property taxes have gone up 45% in the eight years we own our home) feel they are at the end of their financial rope and insist the City Council hold the financial line, whatever that is being defined as on any particular day, with 'not one more cent' anywhere in the budget.

We're a funny lot, we really are (though it's probably hard to see the humor right now through the pain). We prefer problems that are familiar (and the more general the description of the problem, the better) rather than solutions or ideas that are not. 

I have changed a lot in the nearly thirty-five years since I nad my family arrived here from Germany. And so has where I live, with about forty thousand others who've also had their share of changes. Sometimes change is hard to see, because it's subtle and gradual, and other times we choose to close our eyes because we are comfortable being blind. 

Some of our Brave New World looks a lot like the old one that technology, access to tools, equality of opportunity, and enhanced diversity were all going to change. The gap between the promise and the performance has grown not only exponentially but also obscenely. 

Everyone talks about 'the children,' like maybe that should be capitalized, but the reality is we've got more children having free or low-cost breakfast in schools than ever before because how we live with one another has shifted from when you and I were school-age. 

We also have health clinics in schools because we need to have them somewhere and can't figure out where else they could be located. And that's just two examples that impact our municipal budget and have feck all to do with fire engines and who gets to drive them.

We've spent, literally as well as figuratively, a generation using government to accomplish programs that have little to do with why we created government in the first place, offering the argument to one another that 'someone has to do it!' 

Unless and until we can agree to define and then refine those tasks our government should be doing and which ones are our responsibilities, we can hold budget hearings until the cows come home (and guess who'll pay the dairy subsidy?) and never fix the fundamental problems. And to finish my opening point, we'll continue to put out our political fires with gasoline and take solace that our mileage may vary, but sadly, never the outcome.

-bill kenny

Everyone's Shadow Is the Same Color

Last November, in our municipal elections here in Norwich, Connecticut, we elected Swarnjit Singh as Mayor by a rather wide margin. Even though Norwich is in the less-than-populous Southeastern Connecticut portion of the state, we are, according to late-2024 census estimates, very cosmopolitan.

I'm sure we're not the only place in Connecticut, to say nothing of the rest of the country and world, where sometimes the things we do speak so loudly I can't understand what we're saying. 

I voted for our current Mayor because he promised to bring new impulses to a city I've called home for almost thirty-five years, which cannot seem to get out of its own way in entering the twenty-first century.

Other people cast ballots for the other candidate, which is their right and duty. But shortly after the election and swearing-in, small-minded, big-mouthed, noise-making generators who disagreed with Mayor Singh's tenure in office (and, in some instances, his existence) surfaced across a plethora of social media platforms.

The mayor is a Sikh, part of a population that is no stranger to prejudice and animus. I've lost count of the number of posters who fear 'sharia law,' which has nothing to do with Sikhs. The tenor and tone of the comments in the seven months since our elections have darkened and deepened and have long since abandoned any pretense of policy disagreement, instead, heading straight for racial and religious prejudice and hatred. 

Earlier this week, finally, an online poster was held responsible for his own actions and (I hope) is now learning that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of that speech. I learned he isn't even a resident of Norwich, causing me to wonder about many things, including the 'nooks and crannium knowledge' he claims to possess (and I think the Thomas' English Muffin guys may want a word as well with him).

From space, we all look alike. We should try harder to remember that.
-bill kenny

Dominus, Go Frisk 'em

I think all of us have, or did have at one time, a copy of The Bible. After the Harry Potter and Twilight Saga novels, it's the most popular book in the history of the world. 

OK. That comparison is a little unfair since the Bible has been around a whole LOT longer than the Chronicles of Hogwarts. Any comparison of the battle between God and the Devil and that of Jacob and Edward always results in the latter two getting their asses kicked.

I still remember enough from my catechism classes to get a little bit weirded out by the contention that more than half of the Old Testament's fulfillment is bogus, according to many scholars. I mean, if that's God's will, I'm not going to criticize Her/Him. I mean, look at what happened to Jesus-and He was a relative. I'm thinking about Stake Your Claim and that's never a good sign. I'll bet Michael Moorcock would agree with me.

Yeah, I know, I'm erring on the side of caution. Could it be true? Yes, I guess; or no, of course not. How come the more we know, the less we're sure about? I'd be a lot better off with two forms of ID, and I'll tell you now that the prayer card you're offering me looks a little hinky. Can't say I recognize that face in that picture that you keep. It's too high, it's too wide. You're so low, you don't know how to get through, you go around.
-bill kenny

Not the E-Mail Kind

I'm a picky eater (and as my wife can attest, a pain in the butt in terms of what I eat and won't eat). High up on my list of latter foods would be SPAM.

When cornered, I'll concede I cannot explain my reticence about eating SPAM, and at seventy-four years of age, I'm quite comfortable going the remainder of my life without having any.

SPAM Musubi a/k/a 'Nope.'

In the interests of full disclosure, I should note I have NEVER eaten a bite of SPAM. My wife, on the other hand, very much enjoys it in all of the variations in which it is offered. I suspect she'll be very interested in the latest addition to the SPAM assortment.   

Say what you will, those bloody Vikings are culinary geniuses. Pass the mustard.
-bill kenny

 

Addiction or Affliction?

I was in my early Forties before I ever owned a mobile telephone. It was one of those flip models, with a teeny-tiny antenna on the top you pulled out before dialing. I don't remember if it texted or took pictures; it may have been a pretty plain vanilla device.

I have no memory of who made it, and there were no 'apps' to download. Those were much simpler times.

And then at some point, I got a Blackberry Pearl, and then what I always thought of as the Blackberry Classic. My mobile phone went from something I tended to forget on my home desk when I went to work in the morning to something a little more ubiquitous, if not also slightly sinister.

All these years on, like so many others, I'm a prisoner of my phone.
I suspect that's why they're called cells.
-bill kenny

Overlooked but Not Forgotten

Yesterday was Armed Forces Day, though you'd not have known it by reading most newspapers or news websites. Unlike almost every other national observance, it's not a big sales day at The Mall. 

We have Veterans Day in November, and later this month we'll observe Memorial Day (with lots of meat cooked over hot rocks and a five-hundred-mile left-turn-only oval road race), but Armed Forces Day is for anyone/everyone who ever wore the colors, past, present, and (the way the world is going), future.

We have huge numbers of highly-trained and well-motivated young men and women,  committed by my generation to military interventions around the world, whose successful outcomes I would pray for, if I prayed, though I cannot tell you what such outcomes would look like (the Stars and Stripes flying over the restored sculptures in the Bamiyan Valley? A Mets game in Mecca?).

The dangers in which we have placed our children and grandchildren have been guns and butter wars (and not quite wars to hear the President tell it), where real men and women suffer real losses while the rest of us watch our Chia pets grow on the kitchen windowsill.

In a half dozen or more locations around the globe, those in uniform have lost their lives in defense of the notions upon which we have built a nation. And for every one who died, close to a dozen have come home wounded either physically, psychologically, or spiritually (or all of the above). 

And we haven't been as eager to bind up those wounds as we were when we sent those who sustained them into the fray. When we see a veteran missing a limb, we discreetly avert our eyes because saying 'thank you' or asking 'how can I help you' would be too embarrassing (for us, not the wounded warrior).

I know, that's what we have the Department of Veterans Affairs for, right? Just continue to compartmentalize the carnage and how we help the survivors-it'll help you sleep, and that's what's important these days, being comfortably numb. 

-bill kenny