Volunteers of America

Welcome to a 'when I was growing up' tangent. I'd like to think at the end, there will be a lesson in all of this, but if you've stopped by before at any time in the over six thousand and seven hundred of these I've posted, you suspect that might not be true. Fair point. 

I grew up in what we would call the sticks-we didn't at the time, because we didn't know-but it was, sort of. It was housing developments, hundreds of houses into the thousands, built, in this case, in Central New Jersey, in the decade after the end of World War II, when the tri-state area (CT, NY & NJ) looked to "The City" the way the fingers on the hand look to the thumb. 

As more houses brought more people, more amenities and services were added, soon overburdening the original governing infrastructure that had hosted the initial growth. Eventually, the new settlements became their own autonomous government entities. I went from growing up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to growing up in Franklin Township, and now I think it's Somerset, as opposed to Somerset County, without ever moving.

I now live in New England, where everything is a LOT older, and pride in the past can contribute to less agility in coping with the present, never mind the future. Norwich, my hometown for the last thirty-four plus years (I've lived here longer than anywhere else in my life and feel less at ease today than I did when I arrived), celebrated its 365th anniversary last year (yep, a century and more older than the USA). 

As an NFH (not from here), I sometimes get the impression far too many of us still have fond memories of bygone days, which is where we'd like to stay, even though that's not possible (nor should it be).

New England gave the United States of America the Minutemen. Last Saturday was the anniversary of Paul Revere's Midnight Ride. In social studies, because we don't call it history anymore, the other rider, William Dawes, is probably NOT even mentioned. These days, they'd take a page out of Pete Hegseth's book and use Signal, dude. 

We still have Minutemen and women, in that same tradition, pitching in across the country who lend a hand on the Parks and Rec Committee, the Getting Bill a Pony Ride for his Birthday Commission, the Zoning Board, and a hundred other small steps that comprise the journey from where we are to where we want to go.

I spend a lot of words writing about the Rose of New England. If you don't live here (and don't want to move), that's fine if you skip ahead, but you should look around where you live and at all that stuff that's not quite right, and could be done better, because maybe it just needs you offering to help out. We are so much better together than we are each alone; it shouldn't need to be stated, but sometimes we get too busy to remember. 
-bill kenny

Book Your Weekend

If one of your hobbies is complaining about how terrible things are and how little there is to do here in Norwich, put your hand up. In light of this weekend in downtown, please place it over your mouth. Yeah, I'm out of patience with the whiners, mewlers, and pukers. 

I'm done with those who work so hard to find grey clouds around any silver lining, and you can spot them from a mile away as they start with 'well, Norwich certainly isn't Mystic,' ignoring the fact that at one time Mystic wasn't Mystic and its companion troll, 'there's no place to park downtown when there is something to do.' 

I suppose that means I won't see unhappy folks, or their cars, anywhere near the Otis Library for the Friends of Otis Library Book Sale which starts today (with a private showing and a ten dollar admission this morning from nine to ten for those who want a head start on the weekend's steals and deals) and then continues tomorrow, starting at 10 before concluding Sunday, from noon until three.

Technically, the sale could be called "The Gently Used Book Sale, to include, Biographies, Autobiographies, Memoirs, all manner of Fiction as well as Mystery, Arts and Crafts, Classics, Cook Books, Non-Fiction, How-To books (though almost no why-are-we books), History, Gardening, Sports, pony rides (wanted to see if you were still reading), Science Fiction and Books for Children of All Ages. As well as lots of audio cassettes, CDs, DVDs, and Stuff You'd Have to See for Yourself to Believe." Technically. 

And because Otis is situated in just about the middle of downtown, as you pass the restaurants and shops that line or border Main Street on your way through Franklin Sqaure, you can see all kinds of folks, clutching newly-purchased books, mingling with the regular patrons and eating a late breakfast, or lunch, before returning to one of the municipal parking lots that ring downtown and heading home. 

The Friends of Otis Library Book Sale is the perfect excuse to table hop and finally stop into one of those restaurants you promised yourself to hit 'the next time I'm downtown.' Bring some napkins and your reading glasses. Enjoy.
-bill kenny

Me and John Irving

We've had some marvelous weather here in Southern New England in the last week or so (we had a day where the temperature approached ninety, so perhaps 'marvelous' is a bit hyperbolic), and everything, or nearly, seems to be in bloom.

We had our first lawn mowing of the season last Thursday, thanks to the kindness of our son, whose father has become too feeble to push even a self-propelled lawnmower, (as he was unable to shove the snowthrower around on our sidewalk during the winter) and we looked pretty good afterwards, though the air was heavy with the smell of onion grass of which we have much many. 

We have a trio of forsythia bushes that are shaping up nicely and a Prarifire Crabapple Tree that I bought last spring at a home improvement warehouse because it seemed to speak to me, and amazingly, I have not killed (yet). I am heartened that I can help anything grow. 

With all the flowers and trees in bloom, I should be ashamed to complain about the infestation of all manner of bugs, and yet I do. However, I have discovered there's something to be more concerned about than insects, and that's bears. It seems we are having a BOGO on them here in Connecticut. 

I'm keeping my eyes peeled for one riding a bicycle, though I fear, without thumbs, they won't be able to work the bell on the handlebars.
bill kenny

No Plan(et) B

I'm writing this in observance of today, Earth Day 2026. The writing, not necessarily the celebration, may surprise some who believe I create this every day by opening a dictionary over a blank piece of paper and shaking it vigorously and then gathering up the words that have fallen out. I wish it were that easy. 

With so many bright shiny objects of all manner to distract us in recent weeks, you might have lost sight of Earth Day on the calendar this year. Let's face it we certainly have had enough 'other stuff' on our plates, right? But with all that's been changing in our lives, Earth Day is as good a time as any to recognize our place in the world and to acknowledge that our world is so much more than just us.

Not that you asked, but I accidentally ended up in the first-ever Earth Day Parade in New York City back in 1970 as a pimply prep school know-it-all. And now, over a half-century later, I have clear skin and not only still know it all but now think I know it all better. Kidding with the last part of the previous sentence, but I'm hoping you knew that.

Earth is more than our mother and home, but most importantly, it's the only place with chocolate, so please find an activity and help make a difference.
-bill kenny

You Can Leave Your Hat On

Check out my current favorite baseball cap. I bought it from Andy Borowitz's website back in the days when he worked for The New Yorker. All the profits went to Doctors Without Borders. 

I got it very early in the first Trump tragedy in 2017, and hadn't thought about it very often since then, until very recently (like the start of his second term). I avoid online contact with folks outside the USA because I cannot explain, much less defend, the cretinous idiot some of us elected to sit in the White House. 

I'm seriously considering having the ballcap surgically attached to my head, as I see no reason to consider having to remove it until November 2028.
-bill kenny

Seven and Twenty Years On

Cassie Bernall, 17; 

Steven Curnow, 14; 

Corey DePooter, 17; 

Kelly Fleming, 16; 

Matthew Kechter, 16; 

Daniel Mauser, 15;

Daniel Rohrbough, 15;

William "Dave" Sanders, 47; 

Rachel Scott, 17; 

Isaiah Shoels, 18; 

John Tomlin, 16; 

Lauren Townsend, 18,

and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

-bill kenny

Arms Too Short to Box with God....

...or His representative on earth.

Pope Leo XIV said of the apparent tensions with President Trump, "I do not look at my role as being political ... I don't want to get into a debate with him. I don't think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing."

"I will continue to speak out loud against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue, multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems," he said. "Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say, 'There's a better way to do this.'"
-bill kenny 

Even Then...

 "Must be getting early
Clocks are running late
Paint-by-number morning sky looks so phony.

Dawn is breaking everywhere
Light a candle, curse the glare
Draw the curtains, I don't care 'cause it's all right.

I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears, but it's all right

Cow is giving kerosene
Kid can't read at seventeen
The words he knows are all obscene, but it's all right."

"The shoe is on the hand it fits

There's really nothing much to it

Whistle through your teeth and spit 'cause it's all right.

Oh, well, a touch of grey kind of suits you anyway

And that was all I had to say, and it's all right."

-bill kenny

Sailors Fighting in the Dance Hall

The lunar voyage of Artemis II captured my imagination as it did for so many others. As a kid, I thought the 'space program' (I didn't grasp the nuance of all the different programs within NASA) was absolutely amazing, and that little could possibly be cooler than being an astronaut (unless you could also be a baseball player during the summer, AND the President when you weren't an astronaut).

The news has been so sucky for so long, I appreciated the cheering up the mission crew brought to all of us when we needed it most. I'm hoping I'm still above ground when we finally make the leap to Mars, despite how I feel about Elmo Muckox; he is right to insist we explore it.

And perhaps, just perhaps (but still), Mars isn't as barren and desolate as we have always believed. 

Quite frankly, I don't know whether to be thrilled or terrified (or both).
-bill kenny

Townsend's 20/20 Hindsight

 "There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are effaced, by-the-bye.

"And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight.

"Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss."

-bill kenny

Difference between a Rut and a Grave...

For a plethora of reasons, some significant and others not so much, I've been in a funk for the last few days and am struggling to work my way out of it. This is part of that effort. 

While I was remembering a pair of colleagues earlier in the week, Rik and Dave, I had forgotten about a third Amigo, so to speak, from my time in Germany, Wolfgang K., whom I met when he worked for Warner Brothers Records, based in Munich. 

He was a big fan of American Forces Radio (as were many Germans at the time), and the halo effect of that affection, luckily, included me. Wolfgang died on New Year's Eve. 

I think one of the things eating at me is that I have no idea what caused their deaths. Nor am I sure that's what's bothering me, to be honest. My evil twin, Skippy, suggested boredom, but I think that's because he's confused my life with theirs. Meanwhile, I try to work my way up to level ground. 

Hope you're still around when/if I do.
-bill kenny

Ears Burning?

With a two-party system, the choices are too often cancer or polio. We need to do better, and must.
-bill kenny 

Adding Tears to the Waters of Babylon

Today marks the start of Holocaust Days of Remembrance 2026. Considering the unthinking brutality as a species we have visited upon one another since the dawn of time, and started to walk upright, you can be forgiven for wondering why commemorating the Shoah is only a week.

It was on this date in 1945 (Western) Allied troops, technically the US Army with (about) a Canadian brigade, liberated Buchenwald, the last of the Nazi death factories. As a child growing up, I'd heard whispers by the grown-ups, many who'd served in the wartime military, about the camps, never grasping the enormity of the horror.

While living in (West) Germany, I went to Bergen-Belsen (there was a huge NATO tank competition range near there at Fallingbostel) where, even decades after the horror, the early summer sky never seemed as blue overhead as it did on the landstrasse leading to Celle and where I never saw an insect of any kind or heard the song of any bird.

Science dictates they had to be there, in this place where Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, died of typhus, two of the over one hundred thousand people who perished in captivity for the crime of being different. I felt foolish offering you a link on Anne Frank, as you know who she is, unless you don't, which then begs all logic for the establishment of a Holocaust Remembrance Week in the first place.

Intolerance and hatred of the other have a long history in the human race. Some have speculated that the first tool fashioned by the earliest man was a weapon to kill his neighbor. I'd suggest the Shoah marked the successful combining of primitive, superstitious, and mindless hatred with the unfeeling, uncaring, and antiseptic precision of the Industrial Revolution. 

In a perverse, and reverse, triumph, we had ourselves outmachined the machines in dispatching those unlike us with a uniformity and consistency never before seen in our history on this planet.

That it continues to happen, across our actually very small planet daily, in a variety of ways so numerous and subtle we often don't actually feel the hate, brings me to the brink of tears. To have come as far as we have-we, the self-anointed Crown of Creation, and still be able to stoop so low. 

To be so willing to harness the ingenuity and intelligence of millions of years of evolution and education in the service of the most venal and loathsome of all of our emotions is to stand naked before a world whose judgment we have chosen to disregard.

"There on the poplars, we hung our harps; for there our captors asked us for songs. Our tormentors demanded songs of joy. They said, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us. He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."
And thus begins the cycle again, perhaps never to end.
-bill kenny

Brute Force and Ignorance

These are strange days, indeed, except they've been strange for far longer than you or I may have realized. 

Ignorance is inevitable, but arrogance is preventable.
-bill kenny

Beware the Petty Pace

As a kid, I thought I could live forever (not sure what I thought I would look like when I was 'forever old,' but who worries about cosmetic details when you're eleven?) 

At almost-seventy-four, I now know better, and if I didn't, I have it in writing. 

One of the things that makes you feel older, I think, is when people you knew and worked with (in my case), almost half a century ago (let that sink in; it took me a minute, too), die. And in the last week, I had a double whammy.

Two former colleagues, one of them a very good friend and mentor, passed away within a day of one another. Rik helped organize my four-person bachelor party in Sachsenhausen (Frankfurt am Main) when GIs were less than welcome in many establishments. 

All of us were radio and TV weenies and wouldn't have known how to cause trouble, or a bar fight if you gave us the manual, but we spent a lot of time that evening staring at 'kein eintritt' signs and glaring bouncers. Rik relocated to Berlin, then in West Germany, and never left, becoming a trusted voice for millions of radio listeners over the decades.  

Dave was an amiable Texan with a honey in the rock voice and an easy-going personality. He wasn't the first Texan this kid from Joisey ever met, but he made quite the impression. There are expressions of his, almost five decades later, that I smile when I remember. 'Ugly enough to make a train run on a dirt road,' 'If it were a cooperhead, I'd be withering in pain,' and (of course) 'Dignity at all costs!' 

I don't know what happens when we die, but I do know that as long as we remember those who impacted our lives, they live on. 
-bill kenny  

America Needs a Mirror, Not a Wall

Before many/most of us in this nation were born, Hunter S. Thompson recognized the future of My Country, 'Tis of Thee, better than most of us would prefer.  

I don't know when we became these people, and more importantly, I don't know how to reverse it.
-bill kenny

Willie 'The Lion' Smith Approves

REO Speedwagon made themselves somewhat infamous for titling an album, 'You Can Tune a Piano but You Can't Tuna Fish' (somewhere Kevin Cronin weeps). The title made me smile, and overall, I thought it was a great album, but I was also a fan of the late Gary Richrath's guitar work.  

None of which has anything to do with this not exactly You Asked For It by Matthew Krantz.

Seriously. Can your sushi do that?
-bill kenny.

In a Government for Hire and a Combat Site

With the furies breathing down your neck.

You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
-bill kenny 

I Love this Guy

And you should, too. 

Now, thus fortified, seize the day.
-bill kenny

From a Three Hour Cruise to a Two Week War

I don't know who the President's 'little buddy' is, but I'm guessing, based on how much spilled blood and overpriced oil are climbing up his trouser legs, it's no longer Stephen Miller. 

His televised pep talk last Wednesday night about winding down the Iran Not-Quite-a-War-But-People-Are-Dying-So-Yeah-Maybe-It-Is-One might have been more convincing had he not already assured the nation and world two weeks earlier that he was just about already done. 

And I won't mention the previous use of the 'two-weeks' notification when he started on whatever the hell it is he and Pete Kegseth are working on in and around the Strait of Hormuz. 

I think what we need is for the Professor to invent a way to extract oil from coconuts. That should please Thurston Howell, Musk, Bezos, Koch Brothers, and the Tech Bros.
-bill kenny 

Pithy and Pointless

If you are observing Easter Sunday today, best wishes and all the happiness of the holiday. 

Perhaps like me, you have difficulty explaining the relationship that chocolate, a bunny, and the Resurrection of Christ have with one another (unless you just choose to overlook all of it). 

We may not be pulling on the same oar, but we're both in that boat. I think if we put our backs into it, we can still reach shore.
-bill kenny

Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella

We're having our usual early spring weather in Southeastern Connecticut: lots of grey skies, heaping helpings of wind, and either the threat of rain or its actual delivery on just about any day. Great weather if you're a duck.

I'm not complaining (well, maybe a little), and I'll take rain over snow ten out of ten times. However, I will whine about it, because that's how I'm made.

When you sit through all the showers I do this time of year, you can get a little curious about rain, including its smell, origin, and the place on Earth where it hasn't rained in over 2 million years.

Imagine being the Leafguard Gutter guy and working on commission.
-bill kenny

A Moment of Reflection

There is, preached Kohelet in the Book of Ecclesiastes, a season for every purpose under heaven. It says in the Old Testament, seasons for everything, and around the world today, for those of us of the Christian faith, we are within the Paschal Triduum. 

Monsignor Harding, wherever he is in all of eternity, would be wide-eyed with wonder that, of all that I have been given or taught, and of all that I have lost or had taken from me, that would be a term I would hold onto.

I know a lot of Christians who see the birth of Christ, Christmas, as the defining moment of their faith, and I guess if you work retail, that's an attractive argument. As a child growing up in Holy Mother Church in the late Fifties and Sixties, I knew (and had plenty of nuns, Sister of Charity type, if I forgot) for Catholics, it was the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

I can still remember Sister Thomas Anne faintly smiling as she ticked off the three events on the fingers of her right hand: pinkie, ring finger, and middle finger (how ironic is that? 

She paused as she would note the similarity to the Holy Trinity, three persons in the One God. When I watched her do this same explanation, with the pregnant pause in the same place, complete with the slow smile of accidental recognition of her triad point for the next five years, there was still a sign, but, I must confess, the wonder was gone. And yet, I suspect she, too, is smiling today. 

It is Good Friday, a day of such momentous import to so many disparate elements of our historical, philosophic, and cultural identity, where, no matter your belief or disbelief, you can take solace from the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God who became the Son of Man and laid down His life. 

Even if you have hurts that can never heal, you can have hope, if only for today, knowing there is a tomorrow.

-bill kenny

Endorsed by Joe Friday

So much talk about 'fake news' these days. Here's a page from the past that will stop you in your tracks. 

Talk about getting a leg up on law enforcement.
-bill kenny 

Big Doings on the Blue Planet

Having spent the last three months (or more) bleating piteously about the awfulness of our winter (I'm sure much to the simultaneous annoyance and bemusement of those who had real winters), I'm now whining about all the rain and grey skies we've had since Spring officially began.

Yes, I could calculate, assuming a lowered atmospheric and ground temperature, just how much snow the inclement weather I am complaining about would have produced, which would have shut me up quite nicely, thank you, as I'd be outside even now probably with a snow blower and mukluks (the perfect name for a grunge band, imho).

Instead, I got up both yesterday and today with temperatures above freezing (a novelty of sorts) and weather struggling to make up its mind. Poor me. In honor of April Fool's Day, perhaps a snowfall of mini-marshmallows might be a practical joke by Mother Nature, or, in light of how many of us have yearned for Spring's arrival, real snowflakes that look like marshmallows.

We could stand outside and stick out our tongues and hold cups of cocoa, with peppermint swizzle-sticks. Except I dislike peppermint in cocoa nearly as much as I dislike mint in my chocolate ice cream. 

The first three months of 2026 are in the books, their passing marked by this day, a celebration of sorts for pranksters and practical jokers. And we turn to face the Spring, or what we hope will be spring soon enough. I have always found people and places slightly more attractive when the trees' buds are just about to burst and the birds' songs are louder because they are more numerous.

Unless, of course, I've parked my car under a tree and returned to find it covered in something that makes me wish wistfully for snowflakes and mini-marshallows.
-bill kenny