Hoping Something Better Comes Tomorrow

This is from a very long time ago, when times were tough for just about everyone. I had more or less forgotten about it as the years rushed on. I called it: 

The Stick Stays

I'm smiling today partially from the controlled substance pain-killers I'm taking to manage the knee noise, and fear (if you've ever had limb replacement surgery, the adjective you NEVER want to hear is 'spoiled'). 

The pills make my sense of whimsy towards the foibles of others a little deeper, so the clown princess in the oversized SUV who looked me straight in the eye as she backed out across two lanes of traffic on Washington by the bank, and kept coming anyway, gets no more than a shake of the head from me because it's all I can muster. I'm feeling sorry for myself, and I do it well.

In the fast-food place, standing behind a dad and his young daughter, based on the time of day and their clothes, possibly on their way home from Mass (Holy Communion and a McGriddle, who could ask for anything more), I realize from the way he's speaking to the counter person about employment that he doesn't have a job. 

There's a discussion of shift availabilities (all of them) and pay differentials (doesn't sound like many), and he's nodding as she talks while scribbling names and numbers on a Napkin.

It's funny, I think, as we age, it takes us longer to bounce back from the knocks and bruises of everyday life. I remember a coarse witticism about enduring a specific activity for the course of a night, and how you know you're getting old, and how I laughed when I first heard it. 

Same with the rest of our lives, too. In our twenties, we went from position to position with nary a thought--as the decades advanced, each job started to look more like a career until the economic tsunami threatening us at the moment sweeps away savings, self-respect, and maybe home.

The child at his feet was no more than five, with a tiara and a pink fairy-dress that parents think every daughter at that age loves. He's making sure he understands the sequence in which to call the numbers, because 'if you call region before district, they'll tell you there aren't any vacancies,' when the child squeals in delight and holds up her prize.

She's found a dime on the floor-perhaps someone dropped their change from a purchase, or, more likely, it didn't quite make it through the slot in the counter collection box for the supportive housing of parents of children with cancer, the franchise has helped construct across the USA and around the world.

I'm not alone in this latter supposition as the father bends to pick his daughter up and explains to her where the dime really came from and, by inference, where it really belongs. Without hesitation, safe in his arms, the child leans across her father and drops the dime through the slot in the top of the box. 

He smiles as his order is given to him, and both dad and daughter head for the parking lot and home with breakfast and, perhaps, a new hope. 

-bill kenny

Spring, By George

Spring 2026, says my desk calendar, begins/began at 10:46 this morning. I should point out that yesterday, Spring's Eve (did I just make that up?), the temperature climbed all the way to 34 degree Farenheit and predictions are for more of the same today. 

Despite that, my heart is surely not alone in shouting "welcome!" as it's been a long, cold, lonely winter.

But here comes the sun. 

An early morning long ago in Norwich at Chelsea Parade

Here comes the sun, doo da doo doo doo.

Here comes the sun, and I say, It's all right.
-bill kenny

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. You've read the following before; actually, this time a year ago. No, I'm not apologizing for that. As our President says, 'thank you for your attention to this matter.' 

This has been a busy week for anyone who's ever picked up, owned, or been named for anyone in Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. The main event, of course, was Tuesday, Saint Patrick's Day. I'm not sure everyplace on earth paints the median strips on Main Street green as part of the parade or adds food coloring to the beer, but let's face it, Saint Patrick is the 800-pound gorilla in the room for March.

Which is too bad, because today is the Feast of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary (Mother of God) and (sort of) Jesus' step-dad. I'm envisioning an at-the-dinner-table exchange between the Son of Man (when small) and Joseph, with Joseph offering a rejoinder such as, "Then go right ahead and ask your 'real dad' for a new bike and let's see what happens." And then the Curia or the Legion of Decency shows up at my house and slaps the cuffs on.

As a grade-school child, I missed the subtlety that went into the talk-around as the Sisters of Charity explained 'the Annunciation' and when I got older, and it smacked me right between the eyes, I admired even more the cool, collected response Joseph seemed to have had to all of that. 

Today, the Feast of Saint Joseph, is when the swallows come back to Capistrano. I wonder if the village fathers paint the center stripe on their main street a shade of bird droppings white and grey, or if they even have a parade (I think I'd steer clear of the beer, but that's just me). 

As urbane and world-wise as I like to think of myself, I love the story as much now as a doddering fool as I did hearing it as a child. I find it reassuring and, while my belief in a Divine Being fluctuates wildly (and how screwed am I if Her/His belief in me reflects my faith in Her/Him?), I hope (in a faint-hearted, wimpy sort of way) that Paley is right about the Great Watchmaker.

I have known two very dear people who shared the Feast of Saint Joseph as their birthday. They are both from long ago, at the time when I knew everything (and everything better) when I worked for the American Forces (Europe) Network. Bob was my first (and very best) boss in Radio Command Information (together with Sara, Marge, Norm, and Brian). At the same time, Gisela was the record librarian of the most amazing (and amazingly organized) collection of vinyl in the world.

Bob was married to 'local color' as I was to be as well (GIs who married citizens from the country in which they were stationed; usually guys marrying women, but NOT always). He and his wife, Erika, had no children but loved as if she were one, a stray dog they took in and kept all its life, Sandy. 

Erika and Sandy passed away pretty close to one another, leaving a hole in Bob's heart that never healed, filled with a pain of which he never spoke. Bob himself passed many years ago, and I see him at this very moment in my mind's eye in a beaten beige long coat with a beret he wore in every kind of weather.

Gisela was my translator when the letter of permission from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where Sigrid and I hoped to marry) arrived, and I raced frantically from office to office trying to find someone to be my eyes (I was illiterate auf deutsch and vowed to never be that guy again). 

Gisela put her glasses on near the edge of her nose, and would read a line and then look over the tops to give me the English translation. I still recall the shine in her eyes and her warm smile as she reached the conclusion, granting us permission, and she clasped both of my shoulders and hugged me in congratulations.

I remember both of them today, maybe more so than Saint Joseph, perhaps because I don't know how many others remember them, and I'm sad and more than a little frightened when I think about what happens to you when the last person on earth to know you dies. 

So today, I tell a little of the story of their lives, as I knew them, to remind me to celebrate their lives and hope the day comes when we can laugh together about all of that and so much more.
Happy Birthday, Bob, und Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Gisela.
-bill kenny

Closing In...

The older I get, the longer it takes for winter to end.

We're almost there.
-bill kenny 

Celebrating Unattractive Choices

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

History is often the same movie with a different cast. Watching and reading news reports over the weekend that President Trump may not be cracking down on immigrant communities as hard as some of his supporters would like  (yeah, I had to read the headline twice myself) is a variation on a theme that has been the American tune from before the beginning of our nation. I am a verse of that song.

The Irish's arrival in America was, for its time, the largest and most prolonged migration of one ethnic group since the nations of the world began keeping track of such things. Those fleeing Ireland for America were not only family members, but extended families, whole neighborhoods, and, in many instances, entire villages and townships. All were half a step ahead of starvation and destitution.

To remain in Ireland was to die, but fleeing to America was often death of another kind, only more slowly. Having already been made into outcasts in our own country, immigrants hardly noticed how our treatment in the New World often resembled our handling in the old.

And still, we came, by the thousands every month, by the tens of thousands, and into the millions. At one point, very nearly twenty percent of all Americans were of Irish ancestry, which is a statistic offered today, Saint Patrick's Day, to help not just those of us who are and were part of the Irish Diaspora to remember where we came from but to remind all of us how far we have yet to go.

-bill kenny

Be an Exclamation

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. 

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'
Actually, who are you not to be? 

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world. 

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you." -Marianne Williamson
-bill kenny

What Is Lost Can Never Be Saved

"Tell me I'm the only one. Tell me there's no other one."

"Jesus was an only son. Yeah, tell me I'm the only one."
-bill kenny

Celebrating the Life of "Coach" Russ Forsythe

Russ was married to my middle sister, Kara, the father of three sons and a granddaughter. I was very fortunate to know him and have him as a brother-in-law.

"We invite family and friends to join us on March 14, 2026, to celebrate the life of an incredible man, Russ Forsythe.

"The event will be held at 5 Graphics Drive, Ewing, NJ (Simply Fit) from the hours of 2-5 pm.

"Please join us to share stories, laughter, and the many memories as we try to honor his life and legacy.

"All are welcome. (Even RJ)."
-bill kenny

Blinked and Missed It

On Wednesday our temperature topped out at sixty-seven degrees. Today's forecast suggests that if we get to thirty-five, we'll be lucky. Yesterday, the weather forecast called for snow showers AND thunderstorms. At one point, such a prognostication would have astounded me.

However, almost thirty-five years of living in New England has cured me of my wide-eyed incredulity.

All four seasons in the same afternoon? Sure, why not?
-bill kenny  

Herzlichen Gluckwunsche

Today is my wife's birthday. 

Sigrid is remarkable because she is a force of nature as much as she is the love of my life. I am not, as you may have already imagined from any visits to this page, the easiest person with whom to share the planet, much less a life and a bed.

She is my human credential in that she always created and sustained a life for our children and me, and for too many decades, allowed me to put on this 'Hail Fellow, Well Met! Man of the World" artifice every workday morning (and far too many weekends as well), spend all day giving my time to total strangers, and then return home at night to be the person I intended to be when we fell in love.

I will never have enough money, talent, good luck, or any of the conventional advantages and attributes to give her all that she deserves. In recent months, because of health concerns, I transitioned from being her partner to being her patient, a deal that in almost five decades of life together, she NEVER signed up for. She doesn't complain and never has. 

She is the most important part of my life, and that is the only thing that matters to me. As long as she is in my life, it is complete and fulfilling. Happy birthday, angel eyes.
-bill kenny   

Christ on a Corroded Catamaran

DISCLAIMER: Title was my idea, inspired by the lyrical lunacy of Jeff Tedreich, whose politics column on Substack offers analysis of our current administration that rivals that of the late Dr. Hunter Thompson on the presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon. 

His observations over the last couple of years, especially in the wake of the Trump Triumph, have helped keep me sane. You might want to try him.   

Anyway, I loved that turn of phrase and co-opted it. It has nothing to do with anything, which may be the most perfect description of this space in the ether ever created. 

This time last week, our temperatures were struggling and failing to get beyond twenty-five degrees. This past Monday, the outside was sixty-seven, and the skies were gloriously blue. Yesterday it got to about sixty with more wind than I'd like, but beggars can't be choosers.

I know we're ten days away from the beginning of spring, and in New England, that doesn't necessarily mean squat in all honesty, but at the risk of seeming greedy, a guy could get used to this pretty easily.
-bill kenny

History Is Often a Mystery

Any city, large or small, is more than the sum of its brick and mortar structures, its thoroughfares and infrastructure, its public safety systems, or its schools. 

All of those are, of course, important, but what defines who we are is the degree of sacrifice and work we are willing to invest in developing and maintaining all of those material things for the betterment of all the residents who share a zip code.

Where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, we seem to have the same arguments over and over again, and it's not as simple as 'us vs. them,' though it's often reduced to that. More often, we seem to be 'our past keeps me from seeing the present' allied with 'my fear of the future keeps me nailed to the Now.'

We all know people whose perception of who we are as a city is heavily colored by what we once were. Not long ago, I had someone give me directions by telling me to 'go past where the school used to be at the intersection of Sachem and Oneco.' Okay, not exactly GPS, but still accurate, but only if you go back more than a few decades. Odd how yesterday covers a multitude of sins.

So, too, does a fear of what tomorrow may bring that becomes so great we not only choose to avoid risk-taking, but we choose to avoid even talking about risk-taking. We've decided it's better to have a horrible ending than horrors without end, except we have no proof tomorrow will not be a better day than the one we are having. It's another case of 'the pool ain't in, but the patio's dry' and all that means is we'll save a fortune this summer on swimwear.

My family and I moved here in the autumn of 1991, not that three plus decades have brought any revelations or blinding glimpses of the obvious, other than people prefer problems that are familiar to solutions which are not. I arrived here as a relatively young man and parent, but have no illusions I am either anymore, so I have to guard against situations where I become part of the obstacles that keep Norwich from being a place our children and theirs will want to come home to.

I listen with both fascination and dread when people speak of "historic" downtown buildings, some for sale and some foreclosed, as if there were actual history connected to structures whose best days were before I was born. Imagine how alien that must sound to nearly a third of our city, those residents who are under thirty-five.

What the preservationists espouse isn't just a reverence for the past but more a preservation of their past. That doesn't mean those buildings have a place in my or anyone else's present or future, much less that we should mortgage the latter to artificially enhance the former.

When a past isn't shared, perhaps it indicates a time whose past has passed, and that in Norwich, the time is long passed to keep throwing good money, private or public, after bad on little boxes on the hillside or on dreams our children will never see.
-bill kenny   

Crawling Over Rubble Just to Sound Me Out

The calendar says for those of us in the Northeast and most of the rest of the nation, this winter of our discontent is drawing to a close. We just started Daylight Saving Time, and in less than two weeks, the swallows return to Capistrano. 

I know it's been a rocky time for many of us for quite some time, and you have to look hard to find reasons to be cheerful. Dylan offered it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. 

My mother, mom of six of the thickest-headed and strongest-willed children to ever walk the planet, demonstrated her smartness when, without consulting the Internet (there was life before ether. Who knew?), she told us it took more muscles to frown than it did to smile. We believed her because she was our Mom, and it didn't hurt that she was also right, but how did she know?

So we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster. I always wear trousers with pockets, so I have somewhere to put all the fun. We can promise not to miss what we do not have and enjoy our now in the now and look towards tomorrow with hope and not dread. 
-bill kenny 

You Can Call Me Ray....

Sometimes I'm not sure if it's better to believe the calendar or my own eyes. We just started daylight saving time in the wee small hours of this morning. Many of us are already counting down the days to spring (I guess so we can then count down the days until Summer), but when I look out the window, there are more than enough reminders everywhere that winter's last word hasn't yet been spoken.   

Don't know about your house, but in mine, there's always one clock we forgot to move forward on Saturday night, and then didn't see it at all Sunday, so it's actually Monday or Tuesday when we finally get caught up on all the watches and clocks. 

I hate the clock on the microwave, and it shows because I never get it set correctly. You can hear the sounds of my struggling with it as it beeps and bleats in frustration while I manage to do everything but get it to move forward, and eventually, my wife resets it in what seems to be one fluid motion, leaving me to wonder as I always do why we have the forward and back thing with the clocks in the first place. 

I guess I should find solace in the knowledge that we do it whether we understand why or not. And while I'd like to hope the spring ahead means winter is now finally in retreat in the Northeast, what we will have is more daylight in the afternoons. As a kid, I thought it made the days longer and gave us more time, and the elderly adult in me now hopes that kid was right on both counts.   

But having the time is one thing; doing something productive and worthwhile with it is something else entirely different. I'm not going to lecture or hector because your mileage may vary, but there are people and projects in need of your extra time and singular talents, be it on your street, neighborhood, city, or state. 

How many projects around your house have you left undone because you just didn't have the time to get to them? Me too. Maybe tackle cleaning out the basement/attic/garage or shed project? And before you start, call Norwich Public Works and schedule a bulk pick-up.

And if you're already caught up on the around-the-house projects, look no further than the end of your street to find an agency or organization in need of volunteers' time and talents. I'm not talking large-scale projects like leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but down to earth. 
     
Take an hour and invest it: in reading to a child in the local library, or seeing if your neighborhood school can use a helping hand, assisting an elderly neighbor to grocery shop, or just visiting someone who's a shut-in. It will benefit more people than either of us can possibly imagine

Take a hint from your clock and outshine the sun. It's alright.
-bill kenny

It's "D" Not "T"

The last time we had a parade in downtown Norwich was for Winterfest, and look at the snow and cold that followed. I’m not suggesting cause and effect, but I mention that because Norwich’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is this Sunday, and I’m concerned we might have large numbers of very short-bearded men with pots of gold and shillelaghs that we won’t be able to get rid of until Memorial Day. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, but I wanted you to know the possibility is out there.

Weather permitting (a phrase we’ve used almost every day for the last seven weeks or so), the Norwich Saint Patrick's Day Parade steps off at one from Ferry Street, makes its way around Franklin Square and up Franklin Street and then uses Willow Street to march to Chestnut and then, in turn, Broadway before making a left at the Wauregan onto Main Street and finishing up at City Landing.

Here’s the website and a listing of many of the other activities going on in and around the parade itself. Last year’s parade was a great success, not just in terms of marchers but also for cosa a chur ar an tsráid (putting feet on the street) across downtown.

Think of the Parade as another reason to stop and visit somewhere, far too many of us simply drive through on our way to someplace else, sometimes complaining how ‘there’s never anything to do in Norwich.’ Which, I agree, can be true except when it’s not, such as tomorrow.

Everyone is welcome to march, but it’s really more of a brisk walk than a march in terms of distance, so you can smile and wave without breaking a sweat.  And you won’t be alone.

When Irish Eyes are Smiling, let’s hope they brighten and warm up tomorrow afternoon enough to allow both the wearing of the green and the marching of the feet. And though it’s technically early, it’s right on time for Sunday: Beannachtam na Feile Padraig "Happy St. Patrick's Day!"

-bill kenny

Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears

When Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington’s Continental Army at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781, history notes that the British fife and drum corps at the ceremony played a popular tune of the day, “A World Turned Upside Down.” In many respects, such was the state of the empire of King George III.

Upstart colonists, angered by a monarch who “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent …swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” declared their independence in the summer of 1776, proclaiming the function and purpose of government was to protect the ‘uninalienable rights (of)…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ Two hundred and fifty years later, how much happiness can we stand and how much can we afford?

Instead of government at all levels working for us, we toil to pay for it. Pick a program, be it local, state, or federal, and work through its budget, trying to understand how much is overhead and how much is initiative. We’ve been living hand to mouth in Norwich, and elsewhere, for too many years; we’re now eating our own fingers. Something wrong has got to be righted.

Last week, there were news stories about the 1.49% increase in the Rose City’s grand list—an increase that does NOT keep pace with the consumer price index, but all one of our (two) local daily newspapers wants to talk about is the paid vs. volunteer fire department pissing contest. Adult municipal leadership is in criminally short supply.

The Land of Steady Habits, as Connecticut likes to be called, has picked up some terrible fiscal habits, most especially unfunded mandates of all kinds used by Hartford to stick municipalities throughout the state with the check, while special interests celebrate preferred treatment and businesses and the middle class flee our borders in droves.

The government at all levels needs to be repurposed to best support programs delivering the best quality and lowest cost public services for our collective good. The public trust must stop being the public trough.
-bill kenny

A New Past Time

Another Winter Olympics is history, and I watched about the same number of hours on the plethora of NBC stations carrying them as I always do. None. It means I missed the significance of the men's and women's hockey teams' victories over Canada, and the fallout for the men. FOMO ain't so bad.

Someone explained to me that 'hockey is the national sport in Canada.' That got me to wondering what about US, not just us, I mean the USA. When will the summer Olympics add NASCAR? 

How about Monster Trucks? Let's update traditional Greco-Roman wrestling with WWE. And don't tell me we're the only country on earth with dogs running the length of docks, leaping into the air, and landing in the water. I feel a Wide World moment coming on.

Considering the dollars, petro and otherwise, changing hands for the rights to broadcast the Olympics to the farthest corner of the universe, where, I suspect, the reaction is often like it was in my house for the last two weeks, we might seriously consider throwing the competitions wide open, so put those thinking caps on.

I'm holding out, of course, for that most national of all of our past times, regime change. The problem is lining up sponsors. No worries, we've got four years to square this away. What's that? Beer Pong? Brilliant!
-bill kenny

From the Sleep of Reason, Life Is Born

I imagine I've come across stories and features on this topic, or a variant, a thousand or so times over the years, but this time around, Seven Fresh Facts About Babies, 

I have an interest of a more pressing personal nature in sharing.

Welcome, Tiny Tot Trinkley. Your Opa cannot wait to meet you.
-bill kenny

Finally!

I've lived in Norwich for a skosh over thirty-four years. We Norwicheans have a terrible self-esteem problem, possibly because Eeyore seems to be our spirit animal. We spend enormous amounts of time waiting for something simply awful to happen and are always relieved that it does. 

(Even) long(er) time residents than I are fond of reminding the rest of us, "Norwich isn't Mystic." 

It's hard not to be impressed by our command of geography, in all candor.

But now, finally, we have something we can brag about.  

First person who says, "I'll drink to that," gets punched in the nose.
-bill kenny

Meanwhile, Back at the Epstein Files

Regime changes, illegal wars, and confused BS to explain it all are all fine and dandy, but no matter how brightly that shiny object in the Persian Gulf is gleaming, I'm still waiting for something a B-2 bomber can't drop. 

Looking at you, FBI and Department of Justice.

I thought that fighting with meant fighting for. I was terribly wrong.
-bill kenny

World Serves Its Own Needs

So, are we living in the End Times, or "I wish it would end times?"

Left of West and coming in a hurry. With the Furies breathing down your neck.

I suspect FIFA will want its peace prize back now for sure.
-bill kenny