Bound for a Star with Fiery Oceans

It's amazing and somewhat amusing how a religious devotion, commemoration, and remembrance really evolved into an all-the-candy-you-can-eat-without-barfing exercise, all the way to an adult party-hardy event. Greetings and salutations nevertheless.

There was an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain that sociologists theorize 19th-century Irish immigrants brought with them that helped create our current observance/holiday/day on which to go gluttonous on all manner of sweets. 

Halloween is celebrated in about a dozen countries around the world, gladdening the hearts, I'm sure, of candy manufacturers in the days leading up to it as well as the bottom lines of dentists in the days and weeks following it. 

Remember how our Moms used to go through the goodies, making sure that the apples didn't have unpleasant surprises and throwing all the unwrapped candy away 'just to be safe'. Would it have killed them to pretend the Mary Janes were unwrapped (talk about a dentist's delight- it could take fillings out)--a candy that I don't think I even see at any other time of the year except now. 

And what about candy corn (and I loved it, btw)? If scientists are correct that cockroaches would survive an atomic war, I believe they would do it munching on candy corn, indestructible, indescribable, often imitated but never duplicated. One of the many things I surrendered once my doctors made me understand, as an adult, is that I couldn't be a part-time diabetic. And I miss it more than I can say.

As a parent, I can recall that some of the worst weather of the season always seemed to start about two hours before the kids got organized to head out. So I'll keep my fingers crossed for all the goblins tonight. 

And every child, no matter how young, wanted to trick or treat with her/his friends. Only a baby goes out with a parent. So with a heavy heart and a quiet footstep, the trick was to figure out how far back to trail them as they went from house to house, and no matter how many times a child was told 'no running', what happened? Yep. 

Why was I always surprised when mine paid as much attention to me as I had to my parents? And every neighborhood had a trick-or-treater, usually one of the hyperactive kids from down the street who ate the candy as quickly as he got it. Can you imagine how much magic it was in that house later that same evening? 
-bill kenny

Nipped in the Bud(get)

You might know them better as 'single-serve' 'airplane bottles,' 'shooters,' or 'singles,' alcohol containers. Local vernacular refers to them as 'nips.' They are garbage, whether filled with your booze of choice (which, judging from the discards I see as I walk anywhere, appears to be Fireball in all of its variants) or just empty discards on the highways and byways.

In Connecticut, there's a nickel 'deposit' on each nip sold, payable at the point of purchase. The purchaser doesn't get the nickel back when the nip is consumed, so there's no incentive to not just throw them away. 

In theory, the deposit is aggregated and distributed to the cities where the nips were purchased to finance clean-up efforts from the discards. In the last six months, over fifty-one MILLION (with an M) nips were purchased here in the Land of Steady Habits.

We are a state that believes in recycling, so our soda and beer bottles and cans have a ten-cent per-container deposit redeemable by the consumer, as well as orange juice and tomato/V-8 juice containers. 

Strangely enough (to me), there's no deposit on milk containers or on any other plastic or glass container, beverage or otherwise sold in Connecticut.  My cynical evil twin, Skippy, thinks the state is really missing out on a cash flow there. 

New Haven, home of Yale University and seemingly a lot of thirsty people, with a population of about 134,000, sold the most nips, almost two and a half million. Norwich, the Rose of New England, where I live, is home to just over 40,000 souls but, punching well above our weight class, sold the sixth-largest amount of nips, pocketing almost $67,000.

You would assume that with that kind of money available for clean-up, our streets and sidewalks would be spotless and discarded-nips-free. Reminder: the Feast of the Assumption is August 15th; any other day is on your own time.
Suspect more than one of us would drink to that.
-bill kenny

Victim or Victor?

Growth and adaptation are key to the success of every organism, from a single cell to a government spanning a continent. It shouldn't be that surprising to us, living in Norwich, that our city has changed a great deal in three and a half-plus centuries. That's the thing about change-it relentlessly keeps happening because it's a process and not a product, a journey and not a destination.

Long-time residents will concede that this Norwich is not their grandparents' city, and the youngest among us are looking forward to when their Norwich doesn't resemble the one in which we live now. 

We have decisions about who will speak for us in Hartford and in Washington, D.C. coming up next week. Calling into local radio shows, writing letters to the editors of the only local newspaper that still has an editorial page, and commenting on postings on social media community pages are all helpful but are no substitute for casting a ballot. 

I voted very nearly a month ago by mail. In addition to all manner of officeholders and hopefuls competing for my vote, we have a referendum issue here in The Rose of New England, and it deserves more than a drive-by in terms of your consideration.

We need to reinvigorate neighbors and residents who have become discouraged experts, who have a cloud for every silver lining. There are many among us who can cite numerous examples of 'what didn't work the last time' to talk themselves out of trying the next time, whatever the issue.

Our refusal to let go of the anger and resentment created by past failures keeps us from grasping the promise of the opportunities before us now. Simply put: If we think we can't, we won't. If we don't even try, we'll fail. We'll miss every shot we never take. It's kinda simple: You cannot win if you do not play. Game on.
-bill kenny

On with the Countdown....

This time next week, throughout the country and across the state, we'll be rewriting our history. Again. Elections are peaceful revolutions, or should be. 

We shall have chosen among 'more of the same,' 'less of the same,' or 'something that will prove to be completely otherwise'. Exactly as we wanted, unless it wasn't. 

No one has ever said representational government is neat and tidy-that's a good thing, because it isn't. And while the big mandala continues to spin, smaller and lower-echelon wheels, where much of the real grinding gets done, continue to move as we all move forward.

A better tomorrow only happens if you make it happen.
-bill kenny

Pick Up Every Stitch

As I've mentioned (incessantly), my fondness for Autumn is tempered by what I know happens next, not because Autumn itself has ever done anything to or for me. In New England, we pride ourselves on leaf peeping weekends where excursions travel throughout the region, oohing and ahhing at the multiplicity of colors garbing the branches of deciduous trees as their leaves die.

Sorry. 

That's what they do; hell, it's what we all do. I'm not planning on taking a dirt nap for a while longer yet, but I'll concede I don't have that color thing going for me unless grey is the color you're talking about and the only part of me thinning is the hair covering my scalp. But Sunday morning, for just a moment, wow, it was beautiful, and then it was gone.

Industry left New England in the first decade after the end of World War II. We didn't know it at the time, but the Age of Greed had triumphed over the Age of Need, and those who owned factories that made things got tired of paying the folks who worked in them ein apfel und ei when they could shift everything South 900 miles and only have to pay ein apfel.

Mills that had been in Massachusetts for generations were shuttered as their doppelgangers opened in one of the Carolinas (it all sounds like banjo music to me) and then a generation later, lather, rise, repeat as the new location is somewhere it takes you ten minutes to find on the map, all in the name of value to shareholders. The business of America is business; don't forget your receipt.

In Norwich there are tracts of land, monuments to Mammon, sprawling factories in every corner of the city that have lain fallow for forty years and often longer, slowly disintegrating, releasing toxins into the air and poisons into the earth so that like the salt Rome plowed into Carthage to kill it, nothing will grow. No neighborhood is immune.

There are small ruins that ring the approaches to the city-reminders of what once was, once upon a time. But this time of year, in the early morning, hours before dawn, when stepping outside, the stars seem so bright and so near you can touch them, you remember there's no ground light to dissipate their glow or make them seem as far away as they really are. It's nearly Halloween and colder than a witch's teat, and you know which way the mercury is heading. Dress warmly and mind the shadows.

-bill kenny

One Temporary Escape

Some buy houses for their proximity to schools, shopping, or mass transit, but I, the relentless pragmatist, was keen on walking distance to a cemetery. The Yantic Cemetery is next door to the hospital, where I'm on a first-name basis with the Emergency Department staff. 

Gotta tell ya, it's weird looking out one of the hospital's 4th-floor windows and seeing a person at a grave site who looks like your primary care physician and then realizing you haven't seen your roommate since he went to the OR for tennis elbow surgery yesterday morning. A chill goes up your spine that has nothing to do with naughty nurses or those half-assed (literally) gowns.

Meanwhile, back at Yantic Cemetery, I love reading the headstones and sorting through the relationships. Two plus centuries ago, husbands often outlived their wives because so many of the latter died in childbirth. Often, the child died as well, and those graves are islands of a special sorrow.

There are many headstones of casualties from the volunteer units formed to help preserve the Union in the fight we call, inaccurately and without irony, "The Civil War." Someone, I know not who, always places small US flags on each of the sites-it's very lovely in a slightly sobering way.

 

There's a group of the headstones, I once counted twenty-eight, formed around a cannon that should look out of place in a cemetery but doesn't because it honors those who died at Andersonville and whose remains were repatriated.  

Veterans Day is around the (calendar) corner, and there are few places more appropriate to remember ALL who served for God, Country, or because we're all young and naive still than small-town cemeteries where abstractions and statistics have names and headstones.
-bill kenny

Peanuts and Cracker Jack Sold Separately

Don't look now, the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays are battling in the World Series. The two teams with the best records in their leagues, respectively, ended up facing each other. What's not to like?  

I'm reading a lot of criticism about how bad the TV ratings will prove to be for two 'small market teams,' when we should be celebrating both organizations for building teams that went the distance. In light of how many (and often) clubs hired mercenaries, sorry, free agents (who were anything but) and still came up short, in the case of my Yankees, waaay short, perhaps a moment of silence should be observed. 

As Seinfeld noted years ago, all professional sports fans are really cheering for are the clothes, as the contents of the uniforms change zip codes every off season, and sometimes during it, leaving all of us who cheer as the sole constants in our own universe.

Back in the day I used to frequent a joint where, at the far end near the 19" TV on the arm over the bar, were folks who wagered on every pitch and on what happened after every pitch. Most nights they had no idea what the score was-their game inside the game had nothing to do with The Game. 

Was it illegal? I guess maybe not on an afternoon when the beat cop picked up $20 on a double play ball, but still. Now, of course, almost anything goes in terms of wagering, and the games have truly become afterthoughts.

I'm told baseball is not a 21st-century American sport. On the other hand, neither am I. A whole lot of shit has gone south around here in recent decades, and I'm not sure what's in this bag, but I'm the one holding it, and I'm not happy about it. 

Of course feelings of any kind went out with high button shoes and hoop skirts here in Air Age America, home of the WTF? and OMG! text messages and every type of statistic and metric imaginable. 

I still remember the guy a row down to my left the afternoon my son took me to Yankees Stadium, who spent the whole frickin' game texting on his Crackbery. Seriously. You paid how much for these seats? You cannot fix stupid-but you can whack it a few times to loosen it up.

So find the time to check out the Boys of Summer's Last Hurrah of 2026. They may not be any boys I know, but they're all the guys we got. I've already put my mitt, double wrapped with rubber bands and a baseball in the pocket, under the back mousetrap of the bike, trying to get a head start on Spring training. Mandatory report date for spring training is Friday, 19 February 2027, but who's counting, aside from me?

-bill kenny

Better Not Older

Today is my brother Kelly's birthday. It is a little-known fact that he is 348 years old, though his youthful appearance and childlike innocence and enthusiasm (plus a lot of plastic surgery) belie his age. 

Truth to tell, I have no exact idea as to his age, having seen him only very sporadically since returning to the US three and a half decades ago. My other brother and sisters are very jealous of his good fortune. 

In a large family of children who resemble one another, Kelly was the tall, blond kid who looked exactly like, well, exactly like Kelly. It was an interesting house growing up with a brother who locked himself in the little boy's room while simultaneously locking Mrs. Brennan, the teacher, out at Saint Peter's kindergarten in New Brunswick. I have a memory of her calling the house and our Mom speaking into the telephone in an attempt to coax Kelly out. I believe he eventually decided to exit of his own accord.

But years before that I recall sharing a bedroom with Kelly, and by the dawn's earliest light he would awaken, stand up in the crib, clutch the rails, and shout exuberantly, 'Everybody up! Kelly's belly empy!' 

Kelly might have had a career as a physicist since, at a very early age in a finished basement in the house on Bloomfield Avenue, he managed to flip over a massive TV console (those barge-like furniture styles that said 'muricah in the early 60s ') trying to retrieve a toy car that had rolled underneath it despite the complete absence of leverage or a fulcrum. If only we hadn't lived in a universe with a yellow sun? Perhaps just as well; he has always hated tights.

As it is, Kelly in this universe is more than a terrific deal for his spouse, children, and grandchildren, not to mention the members-only contingent composed of his brothers and sisters. I have no idea how he plans to mark his natal anniversary, but I can safely assume it will be both stellar and steadfast, like the celebrant.
-bill kenny

Horton Hears an Economic Development

There's a story that anyone who's ever graduated from third grade has heard about the three blind men who each touch an elephant at a different part of the animal's body. 

The first touches the trunk and announces the elephant is wiry and agile. The second touches its flank and concludes the elephant is massive and sturdy, while the third one grabs the elephant by its tail and pronounces it to be skinny and weak.

All three are absolutely correct but also completely wrong, both in equal measure. Good news, at least for them, as all three could have lucrative careers as economic development consultants. Because economic development relies on amortization rates, projections of rates of quarterly and annual growth, costs per square foot, return on investment, and a dozen or so other definable variables and variants, it's tempting to see it as a science.

But a strong argument can be made that it's probably closer to being an art and sometimes, fairly or not, it's more luck than skill. One man's ceiling is literally another one's floor (especially in an urban environment), and very often what you see is (exactly) what you get, WYSIWYG, but just as often is dependent upon not only on where you stand but on what you wanted to see when you chose to look.

In a sense, economic development in Norwich is that aforementioned elephant, and in The Rose of New England we spend almost as much time arguing over what is, and isn't, beneficial economic development as we do over whether we are actually experiencing any. And, as is the case with that pesky pachyderm, once you pick a perspective, it colors and shapes everything you see.

Many of us are unhappy at the status of our Grand List, in terms of the ratio of commercial to residential properties. Others are vocal about the nature of commercial development, and for any one person happy about another small business opening in Down City, there are two or more annoyed at the lack of success in marketing our vacant storefronts and Brownfields.

We don't have throngs of shoppers crowding the sidewalks in Franklin Square or small start-ups sprouting from Hamilton Street on the East Side all the way to where Church and Water Streets intersect with Chelsea Harbor Drive or a wave of small retailers lining both sides of Main Street and activity in professional offices and apartments above the ground floor. Yet.

Whether a resident of Laurel, Bean, or Cherry Hill, we benefit from every effort to increase in the grand list, and be it Greeneville, Taftville, or Thamesville, any enhancement in our community's quality of life is always an advantage.

Sometimes it depends on which part of the elephant you touch and how closely behind it you are walking. If you got some on your shoes, I may be able to help you. Step Right Up.
-bill kenny 

Revisiting the Second Amendment

You see it surface in conversations and on bumper stickers, all the time. The Second Amendment has sparked decades of discussion and debate about what the Founders intended and what it should mean in our current American society. I'm not going within ten feet of a position on any of that, believe me. Wouldn't touch it with a barge pole (Mom raised crazy children but not stupid ones).  

I had to fire an M-16 for familiarization in the USAF and have less-than-pleasant memories of marching at least halfway across San Antonio, Texas' Lackland Air Force Base (fun fact: Lackland is the largest USAF installation in the world WITHOUT a standalone runway) in the late spring of 1975 for the opportunity to so do. They didn't even let us keep the paper targets (mine looked brand-new).

The Second Amendment is, for many, the third rail of American politics  But what if we're getting it wrong all these years on and it's not 'the right to bear arms,' but rather the 'right to arm bears?' It would have made this story much more interesting, I think.

And I hope you'll join me in a moment of silence for Ferdinand.
-bill kenny

Maybe I'm Amazed

The first time I saw my wife, Sigrid, in a club in the Sachsenhausen district of Frankfurt am Main, she was wearing a Buffalo Sabers hockey jersey—a souvenir and remembrance of an earlier relationship. 

I never met 'him' and, not surprisingly, we've never talked about him, which is sort of funny since I wouldn't be here, in these circumstances, without him.

She was, and remains, the most beautiful woman I have ever known. Then, her hair was dark and fell to the small of her back, which has been one of my favorite places for a very long time. Now, she wears it much shorter and frets when she finds a grey hair (I'm one of the reasons why she has them), and I say nothing but smile at the wonder of it all.

I was tongue-tied for months after first seeing her, and when I finally did speak, I told her I loved her because that's the way I am, and the way it was. We were engaged at Easter 1977, before about fifty percent of the people currently on earth were even born, and were married forty-nine years ago, today, in the Offenbach Rathaus shortly after ten in the morning.

Chris, who became Moni's husband and then 'becca and David's dad, then a widower, and who now lives in Texas, was my best man. He was the person who discovered my 'translator' (I spoke little to no German at that time) had memorized the ceremony's language in English, and that was the extent of her knowledge of my language. Zwei hundredt deutschmark im arsch, wie Ich mich erinnere...

Evelyn, at the time Rick's wife and still Kevin's mom, was maid/matron of honor, and afterward we all went to a small restaurant not that far from the Rathaus for a celebratory meal that Franz, who passed some years ago, Sigrid's dad, and Anni, her mom, organized. 

Some time later, we visited, as a married couple, one of her aunts who doubted we would ever marry, noting, 'after I have triplets!' (I looked at her husband and thought, 'It must be magic married to this one'). I asked as best I could, 'wie gehts den die drillenge? how are the triplets?' (which earned me neither language skills nor style points; two trends that continue to this day).

Sigrid is the last person I think about before I close my eyes and the first after I open them. She is very much 'like breathing out and breathing in' for me, and I can only wish you, at some time in your life, will find and have someone who makes everything you do, good and bad, worth the waking. 

We have two children, themselves now adults, but always our children-Patrick and Michelle-who have enriched our lives more than words of any language can ever capture.

I have little recollection of my life before our marriage. Admittedly, I'm better off that way. I do recall being mostly unlovable except when I was unbearable. It matters not to the woman who married me. Even after all the years, when she looks at me, I can do anything--a feeling no one else has ever inspired in me. That I have nothing I need to do for her to love me is amazing in ways I cannot explain. 

I'm pretty sure, especially in the years since arriving in the New World, that (at times) this isn't the life she signed up for under 'for better or for worse' and I, too, keep waiting for better days even as they grow shorter.

It still seems to me like we married last week, though. I suspect she feels it's longer than it actually is (because the Germans use the metric system, at least that's why I hope so), and I'm grateful for every day we've had and every memory we've made. 

I hope the years we are yet to have together are even more than the ones we've shared. You are an angel of snow-too lovely to hold but too beautiful not to try.
-bill kenny

Beep!

There's a difference between a city and a community. The former is more of a geopolitical entity, while the latter is, ideally, a state of mind. Sometimes one can be the other, and sometimes not so much. 

I would suggest the latter empowers the former more than vice versa, but we may not agree on that as much as I'd like. We're two weeks away from Election Day (I've already voted by mail and strongly encourage you to register and do the same if you haven't already), whose results will indicate to some extent just how much of a community we actually are. 

Norwich, like so many of the places we each call home, remains a work in progress and can only be better when you get involved. For those who confine themselves to drive-by commentary on social media sites, remember it takes more energy to be a light than a horn. You know who you are.

-bill kenny

Channeling Walt

The unsexy Autumn, the one of grey skies, biting winds, and near-freezing morning temperatures, arrived this weekend in the part of New England where we live. Our oil furnace, which had a quiet summer (and at almost six bucks a gallon for oil, thanks, Mr. Art of the Deal, for which I'm grateful), was working away when I awoke Sunday morning to what appeared to be our first frost of the season. 

We have a persnickety radiator in the bathroom that works when it feels like it and has no relationship to the temperature of the house or the output of the furnace, but it was hot to the touch as my morning began, and I smiled because it doesn't happen that often. 

I also smiled because I'm hoping it saves me an extra visit from the folks who provide our oil and service our furnace, who have, on occasion in the past, had to send out the radiator whisperer to tweak the balky device and get it to work (until the next cold spell).

Sunday's skies were clear and so deeply blue you could get lost staring into them. It made the colors of the leaves still on the trees seem even more vibrant when serving as a background. I've never been a fan of leaf-peeping, mainly because of what happens after all the leaves are peeped, but it was still lovely enough even for a curmudgeon like me to appreciate.   

We had middle sixty-degree temperatures last week, but this weekend we were in the high forty and low fifty area, which the meteorologists tell me is where we should be. I think I should be where the weather suits my clothes and doesn't hurt my face when I'm out walking in it.

Still, grateful for all four seasons and the opportunity to enjoy them.
-bill kenny

The Place Where I Make No Mistakes

There are six phases to most human interaction, be it between people in a family or residents of a city. Those phases are, in order: Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Fear, Search for the Guilty, Punishment of the Innocent, and Rewards and Honors for the Non-Participants. 

I'm not sure you'd call it a Natural Law or a Force of Nature-I suspect like a lot of the fables, failings, and foibles of the human race, it's just evolved over a long period of time, and now it is what it is.

I've lived in Norwich, Connecticut for over three and a half decades (for some, I know it feels a lot longer and your objections are noted) and watched as the Wauregan Hotel, Dodd Stadium, the Mercantile Exchange, the Intermodal Transportation Center, and the Occum Industrial Park, just to name a handful of 'game changers,' were, each in their own way, the magic potion, the miracle ingredient, the silver bullet that would undo decades of decay and indifference and return life and people to Norwich.

And every one of those projects has had, at some point, that six-step cycle with special emphasis, it seems to me, on Search for the Guilty. We're just not able to move past setbacks or course corrections unless and until we have someone to blame. 

And we all know who we mean even if we never say anyone's name. Most people refer to the culprit as 'them,' which is deliciously duplicitous because every 'them' is also an 'us' to somebody else, somewhere else. The current flavor of the month is an Amazon warehouse slated, perhaps, for the Occum Industrial Park. I say current flavor because it's following the same Six Step Solution of so many other projects.

The trouble with any Six Step Solution is, of course, it solves nothing. We get stuck on stupid and stay there. Anytime we try to revisit a situation and explore an alternative resolution, one of us is always reminded of a time back in the day when someone else had that very idea and 'they' (those mysterious sinister forces again) made sure 'we' couldn't make things right. It would almost be funny if it weren't true.

We have trouble remembering that the fear of making a mistake is, itself, a mistake. And walking away from the notion that it's a good thing if we make no decisions because that way we can't have made a bad decision. 

I'd hate to have us fear failing so much we're unwilling to try. Norwich has over 350 years of history, and none of it happened by accident. On innumerable occasions in all those years, someone, somewhere, stopped when others ran, and stood while others cowered and were the new starting point for whatever was to happen next.

We didn't always get it right the first time, but ideally we learn from our mistakes and stop worrying about who is to blame and who is to bless and start over again, when necessary, and keep starting over again until we get it right. 

It doesn't make any difference how you got here-it's where you go now that you are here that's important. And where are you? Next to me. And I'm in the place where I have what it takes. And you do, too. If you choose to.

-bill kenny

No Kings Day

  "I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

"And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.

Donmandias

"The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

-Percy Shelley

No Kings!
-bill kenny

Thanks to All the Literacy Volunteers

Like you, I own a boatload (more like a catamaran, or close to it) of self-help, be-the-best-you-you'll-ever-be books, and I've read enough of them to realize that the deeper you dive, the more likely the one you're currently reading is contradicting something you've read before.

I've actually had self-improvement books from the same writer that, from one offering to the next, walk back insights they previously offered without even acknowledging that they ever held a different position and/or point of view. Talk about putting the 'eat' in caveat emptor...

Here's what I think it all comes down to:

 And you, as always, may be whomever you wish to be

So if you're out tonight and you're on your bike, wear white.
-bill kenny  

J, P, G, & R

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

The rest of the story.
-bill kenny

From the Beginning

I first started writing this blog on 14 October 2007. I have no idea how many thousands of posts I've created or when/if I'll have nothing left to say, but I'm not there yet (sorry).

Strange how little and yet how much circumstances and times have changed, but somehow also remained the same. It's like the same movie with a different set of characters.

Here's what I wrote about. I called it: 

And to Think that I Saw It on Norwich's Streets

Driving past Washington Street this morning, it looks like a growth industry is the hardware business-selling neighbors large plywood sheets and paint so they can erect signs to yell at one another on the issue of spot zoning.

New signs insisting on the right to do with their property what they wish, possibly from those who've sold options to developers, angry at 'the select few' (as their sign says) who insist this commercial endeavor be turned away.

Another sign boasts about the increase in tax revenues and the additional (service) jobs a new mini-sprawl, I meant mini-mall, will bring to Norwich (even though the pharmacy hailed as 'new' will be the existing one from across town).

Jobs, much like Einstein's matter, can neither be created nor destroyed, at least in development models. If we take six inches from the front of the blanket and put it on the back, the blanket is NOT a foot longer. Let's hope we do NOT need a thirty-seven-minute PowerPoint slide show Monday night at Norwich City Hall for that to be understood.

Everyone's signs ignore, or seem to, our inability to look ahead and plan accordingly.

When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.
Right now, most of us think any movement, even the circles in which we are turning, is the same thing as direction. 

Most don't know the difference between smart growth and economic development (all ducks ARE birds but not all birds are ducks) and until we learn that, we're fated to waste a lot of time thinking we're having a contest between 'property rights' and 'NIMBY'. It's not really what it's about.

Meanwhile, those whose agenda is not and will NEVER be that of advancement and enhancement of Norwich's economic basis will prosper while residents remain reactive instead of proactive.
-bill kenny

Crisp and Crunchy

We had glorious weather for much of this holiday weekend in my part of the world-not too hot, breezy, no humidity, glorious skies a deeper blue than the ocean, tempered by the realization that Autumn, as wonderful as it is, will not last until the Spring this year.

I had little use for winter even as a kid. I remember living in Belford, New Jersey, with snow in our backyard so deep, it was over my head. I was also a runt, which had something to do with that, I realized (years later). We had a dog, Sandy, a cocker spaniel who absolutely hated me. 

It was a present from Grandma and Grampy, my Mom's parents, and we always pretended how much we loved the dog when they came to see us (neither of my parents liked the dog; I stayed away from it to the point that it was months after we stopped having it that I noticed it was gone).

The house we live in now has a front lawn and a backyard. They were both great to have when our two children were young, as it gave them and their friends someplace else to play. Our kids are adults now, so we spend a lot of time alone, watching the grass grow and cursing the lawn. This time of year we watch the leaves pile up as the season changes, but there are no trees to speak of on our property.

Do you remember those propeller pods from when we were kids? Another great invention by nature to better assure the perpetuation of all the various species of trees-not that we ever saw it that way when we were smaller. There are so many this time of year, and so many of them land on the walk leading to the house that every footfall sounds like you're walking in Rice Krispies.

The squirrels in the neighborhood love the helicopter pods and can tear through them in a blink to get to the seed in the center. The pods are so numerous that the squirrels have actually been leaving the peanuts we throw to them for later while they gorge themselves on the pods. Unfortunately for them, the blue jays are quite happy to eat their share of the peanuts.

It was cold yesterday morning-crisp is a word my father would use, and so do I, in his honor, and that's the signal the next phase of the journey has started. The darkness comes earlier now, and the shadows lengthen sooner as the afternoons move on. 

Soon the winds will shift and more often come out of the north, pick up in speed and intensity, and the simple joy of crunchy sidewalks while out walking will be gone as the animals and birds spend more time gathering and storing food with one eye fixed on the fall skies as a hazy shade of winter creeps inexorably closer.

-bill kenny

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day

When we were kids, Columbus Day was a big deal. In New York City, the Department of Public Works used to paint the white line on Fifth Avenue purple for the annual parade that was always held on the real date of the holiday, October 12. 

In light of so much, I, as a man of seventy-four years plus now, know that as a boy of twelve I didn't know about the Rape of Paradise which ensued after Columbus' arrival; perhaps blood red might have been a better choice of colors. 

All I ever cared about was the day off, just like kids across the country. We all recited the rhyme because that's how we knew what (little) we did know about Columbus and since there wasn't a snappy couplet about genocide, we didn't hear anything about that aspect of discovering the New World (I also don't remember the Arawak natives part, but some of the little gray cells have had some rough days). 

Looking at the world as it is and how all settlement and civilization have developed, I'm not sure it's just Old Chris we should be putting in the defendant's docket and charging. I'm thinking a look in the mirror as well as a glance out a window might increase our catch significantly.

And to compound the cacophony of facts clashing with opinions is the realization that not only did Columbus not discover the New  World, but he wasn't the first. We've spent hundreds of years observing a historical event that is neither historic nor an actual event. Sort of like being the second skinniest Kardashian at a family reunion.

And now, as it's the dot on the "i" in today's holiday, we have another excuse (and sale opportunity) to buy bedding, or is that just me in the last couple of days? I'm not sure there's any more of a connection between one and the other than there was to India from Bermuda back in the day. .        
-bill kenny

There's No Good Revolution

We are a culture that celebrates ourselves as unique individuals; except, for the most part, we don't define ourselves by our humanity but, rather, by our utility. We are what we do. 

Our unique specialness is tied to our place in the world instead of the other way around. In essence, we already know what we are; all that remains is agreement on the price.

In these challenging times, which are still going on for many in our county and for many others around the world (when America gets a cold, other nations are in intensive care), a hidden cost harder to recover from than a bank overdraft is the injury to that part of ourselves we can't put a price tag on, our pride in who we are.

We have a lot of people who have done nothing wrong and who have lost their jobs, perhaps their families and homes, places in their local circle of friends and acquaintances, who end up losing themselves. 

I knew a German in one of the places I worked while living in the Federal Republic who often teased that "Americans are people who buy things they don't want with money they don't have to impress people they don't like." We're nearing the point on the calendar, as a nation, where the bills are coming due. Wer soll das bezahlen? Wer hat das bestellt? Wann man nur wusste.

In the frenzy of election season where there's more action than date night at Piranha High, the highs are higher, and the lows are deeper; blame is abundant but solutions are hard to come by. At least when the other side is telling the story. 

But the thing to NOT lose sight of when the edge is off of the rhetoric on Wednesday, November 4th, no later than noon (or when the ballot counting ceases), when we realize there is no revolution, just power changing hands, is that a few more of us have become the walking wounded. That old coaching admonition to just 'shake it off' only goes so far.

An adult without hope or dignity hurts and then, in turn, hurts others, usually those closest to them, so what began as a personal tragedy too often becomes a community calamity. 

-bill kenny