A Fresh Wind that Blows Against the Empire

Everywhere we live can be as large and as small as we wish it to be. We control the definition and depth of what, between ourselves, we call 'my little town.' Norwich, as cities go, isn't a large city, especially if you live in a Bridgeport or a Hartford, but it can seem that way when you live in one of its neighbors, all of which are far smaller. 

My point? When we in small cities speak of 'them' in city government, we're really talking about 'us', since many of the elected and appointed leadership in municipalities of a 100K or less are friends and neighbors.

Last Tuesday across these United States, we participated in elections that altered every aspect, or had the potential to alter, of our local governance. In some places, we were choosing a new governor; in many others, state representatives and deciding referenda issues as well.

I defer to the bloviating blowhards of The Left and The Right (caps in these cases are a given; the gowns, not so much) on all the chatter channels to tell me why the residents of Moose Jaw, Montana, voted to outlaw sippy cups and what that means for immigration reform. What we should have learned last Tuesday is how much there is yet to do across this country to better realize the dreams we have for ourselves and our loved ones.

We need to continue to press on, a brick at a time, not through a plate-glass window, but on top of the previous brick, to build the foundation that we will use to construct the bridge that takes us from the here and now to the where we need to go. Everyone can do something-that's the greatest joy of local government-each of us can help.

As I wait for the weather to sort itself out and for whatever kind of winter we're going to have to get here, knowing that as night follows the day, it will, at its own pace and in its own time.
-bill kenny

11/11

Today, Veterans Day, is a holiday, but it is NOT Memorial Day; we honor everyone in uniform, living and dead, past and present. 

When I was a kid, today was called Armistice Day, because it began as a commemoration of the end of "the war," which was later known as World War I for the sadly obvious reason that we had a World War II. There was always a moment of silence to mark the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

We are a nation again at war (and have been, it seems, for most of my seventy-four years on earth). We have every shade and flavor of service personnel serving in places across the globe, some so remote I fear the people who sent them there don't know where they are. Because they are out of sight shouldn't mean they are out of mind. 

Heroes and heroines in uniform are making a difference every day and allowing all of us to somnambulate with our eyes open as we don't see the lives we could have led because of the incessant assault we endure.

It's a new world and a new way of war, but those making the sacrifice are the old souls who have always borne the burden--not just those in places marked with dots on maps of countries we cannot name, but all those who whet the blade of the sword they wield in our name and in defense of everything we are and will ever be.

Find a moment today to think about all who have served and resolve to do better and be better as a resident, neighbor, and citizen. We can use the help, believe me.

We are more filled with self-doubt as a nation than at any time perhaps in our history. Now is the time for courage and steadfastness, but we shall prevail because we must. For anyone, anywhere, now, or then, in uniform who placed service over self, whenever and wherever that is and was, thank you.

Sometimes we forget the very words we meant to say-as long as we don't forget those who earned that gratitude, we will always be worthy of their sacrifice.

-bill kenny

Gig Economy, Anyone?

My first job was as a parking lot attendant/part-time lifeguard in the summer at Sandy Beach, at Harvey's Lake, Pennsylvania.  I tell myself I went on to bigger and better things after that, and maybe I did, but it was fun, and I had some spending money. It certainly wasn't a career, and I never looked far enough down the road to ever consider it that way.

I settled in more ways than one, I suppose, but I have a good life, personally and professionally. I look at Millennials, and whatever we call those who've come after them, and feel for them, as they are better educated than my generation and earn far less than I did when I was part of the workforce. I found this online description: "Millennials make a living through a mix of traditional corporate jobs, specialized technical or financial careers, freelance work, and digital side hustles."

Perhaps if we offered people an opportunity to earn a living wage, they'd take us up on it, and we'd see that legendary rising tide of prosperity lift more boats than is currently the case.<SIGH>

But if you are seeking a side hustle, I may have found just the thing for you.

CHURCHOFGNOME.ORG

Perhaps we can carpool to work?

I call shotgun.
-bill kenny

We Live in the Most Dangerous of Times

If the Shoah, the Holocaust, was an unfinished symphony of genocidal annihilation for Europe's Jews (and it was only unfinished because the rest of the world finally wrested control of the killing factories from the True Believers before they achieved their Endlosung), then on this day, eighty-eight years ago, the first notes of the overture in that murderous symphony, Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), were played.

When you look at the pictures of death and destruction, and listen to the softly told tales of survival, often by the purest of coincidences, if you have a heart, it is sickened and if you have a conscience, it is outraged. But to keep the next exercise of extreme intolerance from ever reaching this point, we all need to retain the memories of the events as well as the circumstances that allowed the events to happen.

The Nazis did NOT leap out of bed eighty-eight years ago this morning and cause the German nation, the land of Luther, Schiller, Liszt and Beethoven, to lose its collective mind and soul. For decades leading up to this day, and not just in Germany, but all across Europe, East and West, the systemic and systematic marginalization of Jews, apartheid before that word was in fashion, was in practice and a part of everyday life. The Nürnberger Gesetze of 1935 helped dull all Germans to the slaughter to come.

The ability to use language in reducing those who are the object of your animus to something somehow less human than yourself so that the acrimony and injury inflicted upon them has no more consequence than stepping on a bug is a critical tool in the creation and construction of the crematoria and concentration camps and no less vital to that than the jackboots and the armbands.

Find the time to go online or to your local library and invest an hour into researching the decay and depravity that began with Kristallnacht is asking a lot, I know. So how about a deal? What if you and I promise one another to take an additional breath before using a racial epithet to characterize someone on the other side of the political spectrum with whom we disagree? 

Or to refrain from suggesting (at the top of our lungs) what a person with whom we are arguing may attempt to do with her/his logic and conclusion, as anatomically difficult as it might prove to be.

Instead of counting to ten, we try to count to eleven, then twelve, and then just keep counting until the gorge in our veins recedes just a bit and our blood has gone off its boiling point. And, most importantly, when we see someone else in mid-screed, we mitigate and mediate to help assure a more rapid return to civil and civic discourse in our interactions with one another.

Germany was not a nation of Nazis on Kristallnacht. Many believe they were in the minority even when in power. It isn't just the sins committed on this day eighty-eight years ago that should live in infamy forever, but, rather, the sins that could have been prevented had two or more people joined and raised their voices in opposition. We must never forget the lesson of what happened next.
-bill kenny

A Belated Sunday Riddle

I started writing this daily back in October of 2007.
A lot has changed since then, and a lot hasn't.  

I got off to a delayed start today because, despite having written 6.975 previous entries, I forgot to write one for today until now. Sorry, your luck has run out, I guess.

Anyway. Here's the riddle: What's the difference between a rut and a grave?
The depth of the habit. Ouch.
-bill kenny

Doing the Banana Slide

My doctors are insistent that I need more potassium and have repeatedly pushed me to make bananas a regular part of my diet. I am not the world's biggest fan of bananas, and to my embarrassment, I don't have a good reason why I don't especially enjoy them.  

The Banana Splits? Loved 'em. Plain old bananas, not so much. 

I believe I could be persuaded to reconsider my position if I lived in Montana and rode shotgun with Steve Braithwaite. Hell, even Chiquita might reconsider.
-bill kenny

Grandma Checks

When we were young children, Mom's mom used to write us checks for birthdays snd holidays. My memory is that they were for five dollars. My Dad would take them to the bank and deposit them (and none of us ever thought about the money again). 

I thought about those checks Wednesday when my health insurance company sent me one to settle a lab charge from my kidney treatment facility, whose lab is NOT part of their network (which means the insurance company pays for nothing, sticking me with the charge). The reimbursement drill happens every other month because that's how often a battery of blood tests is done, and since I'm still above ground, I assume I passed. 

The lab bills the insurance company over three thousand dollars for the tests. The insurance company tells me I owe the lab one hundred and eighteen dollars and sends me a check for three dollars and seventy-one cents. The lab costs are separate and distinct from the renal support treatments, which are billed at over three thousand dollars a day and reimbursed at five hundred dollars a day. 

I have no idea how any of these sums and amounts are arrived at. What I do have is a better appreciation of health insurance since I'm positive I would be dead by now if I had to pay for all of these costs myself. Only occasionally do I wonder how the twenty-eight million-plus Americans without health insurance manage to stay alive.  

I should have paid more attention to those Grandma checks at the time because in my retirement years I sure could use them. To say nothing of having a Grandma.
-bill kenny  

Signs and Portents

In the warmth of the post-Election glow, if I may inject a short infusion of pragmatism: with all the billions spent on campaign literature, signs, advertising, and campaign events, how is it that there's never enough money budgeted by anyone's campaign to pay for the pick-up and clean-up of lawn signs in the days after they burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away?

Tale of two days near where I live in Norwich: a major intersection of two highways where traditionally, on the Monday before the election, candidates and their supporters cluster and hold up their campaign's lawn signs as commuting motorists whiz by in, and towards, every direction as the lawn signs are waved and horns get honked (or vice versa, for all I know). 

Join me now on that same corner, same time of the afternoon-but yesterday when all the laughter has turned to sorrow. The only thing out there was a few lawn signs as opposed to the forest in the days previous. Meanwhile, the other lawn signs, the ones in front of houses that neighbors are surrendering because they can't afford to stay and have no place to go to, will wave in any breeze at anyone.....

-bill kenny

Pete and Roger Say "Hi!"

"People try to put us d-down (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-get around (talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (talkin' 'bout my generation)."

"This is my generation

This is my generation, baby."

-bill kenny

 

For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer from the Audience....

Not sure how finished this election season is nationally, but it's done and dusted where I live. How much will change as a result of how we've voted? Hard to say less than twenty-four hours after the polls closed, but I guess we'll find out together, not that we've been together too often in recent years at any level of our government.

When I was in the Air Force, we had an expression: 'If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' I've used that a lot in recent years when looking at people seeking my vote for office. I applaud their generosity and admire their energy, but telling me that 'I love my city/county/state' isn't really a qualification for elected office in my book. And assuring me you have the answers when I'm still struggling with the questions gets you a shoulder shrug.

I tease acquaintances that I never allow my lack of knowledge on a subject to keep me from having an opinion on it. If you didn't recognize that sentence as attempted tongue-in-cheek humor, please do us both a favor and find something else to read right now. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested many years ago, "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but NOT to his own facts."

As I've aged, I've grown more short-tempered and quite frankly less kind in my daily interactions with others. And I'm not alone. As part of the Baby Boom Generation who blamed our parents for everything we disliked, I'm not happy that my children blame me. Gets sort of awkward, to be honest.

I fear we're running out of grace for one another, and I suspect yesterday's election results will do little to improve that unless we resolve, each of us, to be a better person. I think many of us still want to change the world but have trouble getting started by changing ourselves. Baby steps.
-bill kenny

Did You?

That's today's question. You are today's answer.

Today should be a national holiday because it's Election Day, and nothing's more important than an informed vote. That's your hint to go and cast yours.

Bad officials are elected by good people who decide to not vote.
Don't let that happen today.
-bill kenny

Election Eve

It's almost the first Tuesday in November, and it's time to make your vote count and your voice carry. The letters to the editor, the comments in the readers' online forums of newspapers and social media sites, the calls to the radio shows, the heated discussions with friends and family in your living room or street corner--ALL OF IT MEANS NOTHING if you haven't voted early and don't get thee to a polling place tomorrow between six in the morning and eight in the evening, here in Norwich. 

Nothing changes if we don't commit to change. You wanna blame somebody for the mess we're in? Start by looking in the mirror and working your way around the room.

There's more than enough animus masquerading as discussion to last us through the next century. When you realize how much farther and faster we can come by working together, I can't understand why we work so hard to NOT do more of that. 

Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting. And no time to do it right the first time, but always time to do it over.
-bill kenny

The Sweep of the Second Hand

This time today was yesterday when it was already yesterday. This morning in the wee, dark early hours, we fell back an hour (I've always liked how we keep that straight, 'spring ahead' and 'fall back') across most of the country.

I've never been clear how much of the rest of the world does this time-travel-but-standing-very still-stuff, although daylight saving time is utilized across significant portions of the earth's Northern Hemisphere. 

The why we move clocks forward and back is the part I will NEVER understand no matter how erudite the explanation. We share the planet with a nearly infinite number of other life forms from single-celled amino acids to the full scale and scope of the abiogenesis catalog (now available for only three easy payments...), and none of them have watches, much less the concern for time and its division and measurement that we, Homo sapiens, have.

We look up in surprise and dismay at the time and wonder where it's gone, when it hasn't actually gone anywhere. The end of a television program, a movie, a radio serial or other entertainment, a relationship with another person, or political alliance.

You don't have to be Richard to have misgivings about time and what we do with it. Merely being human will qualify. Until this time, tomorrow.

-bill kenny

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