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

Send Me the Pillow You Dream On

I have more free time than is good for me, and what at times feels like an unlimited choice of television programming that is at the same moment entirely unsatisfying. I had a dream recently where one of the sports stations was broadcasting rooster wrestling. I believe I was dreaming, or hope I was, though I thought the competition was sponsored by Nike, so I'm not all that sure. I believe it was being hosted at the Calaveras County Civic Auditorium, but, as I mentioned a moment ago, I'm not all that certain on that detail either. 

However, what I watched, sort of like a wreck on the highway, Saturday afternoon, puts rooster wrestling in the shade. It was the Hush Pillow Fight Championships, on ESPN 8. The namesake sponsor covers all manner of bedclothes, not just pillows.  (I suspect such catholicity was the critical factor for why Mike "The 2020 Election Was Rigged" Lindell didn't land the sponsorship deal).  

It looked to me like the championships were held in a high school gym, and one that had an ice cream sandwich concession, since every shot of the crowd and their reactions had people eating ice cream sammiches. Perhaps Klondike Bar should sign on as a co-sponsor.

The announcers were enthused about the ringside action and very knowledgeable about the scoring for what they referred to as "Three Pounds of Fury," a reference, I assume, to the weight of the pillows. Not sure how much tactics and strategy played a role in the bouts, as it seemed to me the more muscular of the two combatants always won. 

The victors received a PFC Championship Belt and a briefcase with (I am guessing) a cash prize, labeled 'hush money,' while the crowd roared its approval. I'm sure there are franchise opportunities available to get in on the ground sheet, so to speak, but I can only dream what they might cost.
-bill kenny   

Pardon Me Miss, But I've Never Done This....

A month from now, assuming I survive (with a capital A), I'll turn seventy-four years old. As if by magic, in recent months, I've gone from a vibrant and engaged biped (at least in my mind) to a crotchety curmudgeon who could give Miniver Cheevy charm lessons. 

I came of age with manual typewriters and rotary-dial teelphones through whaever we're up to now. I had great hopes as ARPANET became the internet, believing that with a powerful means of sharing information, we might, as a species, become more educated and better-informed. I know, "How'd That Work Out?"

I have all the technological tools of the Twenty-First Century, including a couple about whose purpose I am less than clear, though it would appear, based on very recent evidence, that some of us have redefined their function. 

This showed up over the weekend as a message in WhatsApp or Telegram, perhaps both or just as likely neither. 

My evil twin, Skippy, wonders what happened to going door to door selling magazine subscriptions 'to bring in extra funds.' Probably still works, but the pages stick together.
-bill kenny 

Faithful While Faithless

Raised in the faith of my fathers, I know that today, Palm Sunday, begins the most important week in the Christian calendar, even if you've lost your faith as I have done along the way to here and now. 

If I could think hard enough, what follows might be considered a contemplation. I can't, so it isn't. It may not make sense to you; that wasn’t my intent. I needed to hold the world still for one moment to make sense for me. Your mileage may vary in ways neither of us can contemplate.

Karl Glogauer was the wrong man at the right time.

The protagonist in Michael Moorcock's novel, who travels from the future to the time of Christ, Glogauer, instead, meets a profoundly retarded child of Mary who is, in Moorcock's account, most definitely NOT the Son of God. 

Glogauer then assumes the persona of Jesus of Nazareth, based on his recollection and knowledge of the accounts in the Gospels of the New Testament, culminating in his crucifixion to fulfill those accounts, which shaped history to the moment in the future in which he journeyed into the past to complete the story.

Perhaps the most simultaneously unsettling and reassuring aspect of Behold the Man is not the death of someone else in place of the Son of God but its emphasis and reaffirmation of the importance of the belief that He lived at all. 

For you, for whom today is an Ecce Homo experience, my sincere congratulations are tinged with more than just a little jealousy and envy.

Not everyone has the comfort of your beliefs and the reassurance of your faith. Some may not wish to have it, while others who once did are forced to realize again the distance traveled from then to now, involved a bridge of faith that, once abandoned, has been destroyed and can possibly never be rebuilt.

As even Mark reported, help for one's unbelief is not easily obtained, and perhaps the realization that such assistance can only be given, never earned, is part of why pride becomes the greater sin, especially for those with so little reason to be proud. 

It's the shadow of doubt that creates the chink of vulnerability in an armor of faith that condemns a wanderer to know the path but refuses to walk it again.

Sometimes it's the belief, and sometimes, the believer.
-bill kenny   

Say "No" to Rapists and Racists

If you're not outraged at the mess the Pedo President and his cabal have created not only in this country, but throughout the world, you haven't been paying attention. 

Now the US Treasury is going to put his signature on our paper currency, but even if it's on every bill printed for the next three years, it will still have appeared more often in the Epstein Files. 

Wake up and act up. 

The greedheads who are looting our nation and corrupting everything they touch, as well as the red ballcapped gomers who go along hoping to get along, aren't going to go away unless and until we make them.

As a nation, we were the hope of the world. We can be that again. Together.
-bill kenny 

Lafayette, We Are Here (kind of)

The state of the union, in my opinion, is such that sometimes English fails to capture the frustration, confusion, and anger of any given moment. 

Steve Martin once noted the French have a different word for everything, and in this case, it's a whole sentence, courtesy of retired French Army General Nicolas Richoux. It's spot-on.

‘qu’il aille se faire foutre.’

Merci beaucoup. 'Et je vous remercie de votre attention à ce sujet.'
-bill kenny

By the Dawn's Early Light

I am not a big fan of experimentation (I used to be a huge fan of things created through fermentation but that was another lifetime, one of toil and blood, and I make it a rule to not go there anymore) and plod along for the most part with one foot in front of the other in travel and travail from Point A to something like Point B. It fills up the day and makes the time go fast.

For many years, when I worked (actually for multiple decades when I worked), I would have a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast at my work desk. Cheerios at work were my decompression food, I suspect. When I sleep, I cannot recall if I dream, though my wife has told me there are nights (and early mornings) when I shout out and/or talk or get up, and for which I have no explanation because I have no recollection. My dream world is just black. I use the whole going to work and getting used to being there for the next twelve hours part of the day as the Re-entry to Earth part of the program. And the fuel for this is Cheerios.

I knew someone who called them bagel seeds-suspect the Big G folks wouldn't have been too happy about that, but it makes me smile, and I repeated it to myself every morning and cracked myself up. If I had but a million or so folks with my delightful sense of humor (someone had to say it, and it didn't look like you were about to), I could have my own cable news show or podcast-and oh, how we'd all laugh then. 

I ate my at-work Cheerios in the next-to-last of the red plastic bowls we had when we lived in Germany and used for cereal there. Years ago, Sigrid found very nice and (actually) quite pretty replacement bowls, and the red plastic ones went to the land of their ancestors. As the oldest thing remaining in our house, I get VERY nervous when anything is pitched out 'because it's really old, since' You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,' on that equation.

I always ate my Cheerios without sugar or milk. Actually, and I don't eat a lot of cereals, I NEVER eat dry cereal with anything other than a spoon and my mouth. Why do you think they call it DRY cereal? Besides, what am I supposed to do with the milk? Drop little tiny people in the bowl, so they can be rescued? Perhaps I should get a recording of "Nearer My God to Thee" and use sugar cubes to construct a fake iceberg, then reenact the sinking of the Titanic. 

I used to eat Wheaties, back when Bob Richards was on the cover.  I guess if you had a box with Michael Phelps, using milk would make sense, but for that collector's edition on eBay (I'm assuming with contents), you'd probably have to use the ultra-high temperature stuff that looks like white water. I've never understood how they get the cows to stand still while they heat 'em up, but I suspect they catch them early in the morning.....
-bill kenny

Beat the Drum

The older I am, the better I was, in just about every way imaginable. 

In a few years, I'll be regaling passers-by with tales of my youth from when I was a Cy Young Award-winning pitcher, an astronaut, all while also serving as the President of the United States. But today, you're in luck because my calendar doesn't stretch that far. 

I have waited for this day since about half an hour after the last out of last year's World Series was recorded, and it arrived NOT a moment too soon. Today is the day that whoever you root for starts out in first place in the standings, just like my team, even if we root against one another. 

How can this be? Because today is Major League Baseball's 2026 Opening Day, this is the day Abner Doubleday (historians be damned) has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it. Play Ball!
-bill kenny