Picture This

Thanks to smartphones, everyone and anyone can be a photographer.
Not necessarily an Ansel Adams, or in my case, Gomez Addams, but we can dream, can't we?  

I admire great pictures. FULL DISCLOSURE: I consider any photograph I like 'great,' so there's a circular circulation thing going on there, and I have known some very talented photographers willing to be seen in public with me. 

But today, I wanted to share these images because they're breathtakingly beautiful.
-bill kenny

Better Living through Chemistry

There's been a generational changing of the guard with (illegal) drugs in America. When I was a wee slip of a lad, not that I or anyone I knew ever partook of The Herb, in the late Sixties and early Seventies "drugs" was marijuana and if you were flush, hashish. Stop asking about those Uriah Heep and Lothar and the Hand People albums in my collection, okay?

It was all very social and sociable, both communal and community at the same time. You rarely heard anyone say 'I have weed, I'll see you later' but more often, 'We have weed, man am I hungry.' I've been told marijuana may have been responsible for the spread of fast-food places to all sorts of off-campus locations across the country. 

Don't know if it's true, but will point out that I lost more than one friend who went for a shake and an order of fries and never returned. Funny. Once governments at all levels figured out how to tax it, marijuana was legalized. Sort of like the miracle at Cana.

The Eighties saw the spread of Chutes and Ladders and pharmaceuticals like Quaaludes, perhaps the dumbest drug ever created (until fentanyl). We cranked up the crazy in the Nineties with just enough malice and mayhem to require a separate category for 'hard drugs' like morphine, heroin, methamphetamine and the ever-ubiquitous crack.

And as the drugs got harder, so, too, did the people who dealt them because it became a multi-billion dollar business. The head shop with the dime baggies under the counter between the patchouli oil and the electric bongs gave way to the cigar boats we first saw on Miami Vice, which, in turn, were co-opted by narcotics submarines and human mules. 

It was we who helped create the appetite for self-destruction that fuels businesses which create cascades of cash, and the violence needed to protect that cash and all the trappings and trimmings that go with it, while at the same time funding a "war on drugs" that siphons off nearly as much money as the disease it purports to be battling. 
-bill kenny

Der Bingle Was Right

I came across a thought from Dr. Robert Anthony, who enjoys a reputation as a relentless optimist, prompting an acquaintance to offer wryly, 'he's never been to Norwich.' That would be funny if it were not also true.

I've adopted the good Doctor's mentality as my own, because in the dog days of summer, I can use all the help I can get and because the last time I had an original idea, it died of loneliness. Here's his most (to me) memorable observation: "Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy."

Seriously.
Who does that sound like? Anyone we know? 

Having arrived here almost thirty-five years ago with my family, I believe I've been here long enough to consider myself from Norwich, but I'm still not used to the cheery cheerfulness with which we expect things to fail.

The poets say "it's always darkest before dawn," and often it seems our clocks are stuck at a minute before daybreak. To make matters worse, assuming that's possible, not only are too many of us permanently unhappy, we seem to begrudge others any happiness as well. As if happiness were something so finite and so rationed that every time I smiled or laughed, you lost an opportunity to do the same.

What we have is a system that dictates that for me to look good, you need to look bad (at whatever you do or whomever you are). Everything that is perceived as successful is because of my efforts, and failures are despite my attempts. Each of us is quick to claim the credit but even faster to parcel out blame. 

But the problems of any city are bigger than any one person or one group of persons. Instead of concentrating on creating a definition of our city's economic and political challenges and opportunities (the indefinite article is deliberate), we have little tribes, some larger than others but all working in an intellectual and cooperative vacuum, who each claim to have devised the solution that must be accepted and implemented immediately.

That's when the waiting game begins-the waiting to see an idea fail; not 'if' it will fail, but 'when.' We can then search for the guilty, reward those who were not involved in the attempted and now discredited solution, and become enthused for the next Flavor of the Month proposal that comes along. We may secretly believe it, too, will fail completely, but no one wants to say that aloud and not be a team player.

We value false comity over genuine collaboration. What's needed is a team vision that attracts supporters and a process to produce results for the benefit of everyone rather than at the expense of some. Government that's done for people and not something done to them. Perhaps then we'll start to see happiness.
-bill kenny

B-52's, Clean-Up in Aisle Seven

I was taking a shortcut last Tuesday afternoon, looking for Triscuits in my grocer's. I assume stores in big cities have aisles reserved just for specific products, in my case, Cheerios, Cheez-Its (only the originals; NONE of the variations), and seedless grapes, but then I remember that I live in a small town and we can't have all the amenities we want. Some settling and sharing of contents may occur in shipment, and there's not a whole lot any of us can do about it.

By taking the shortcut, I ended up confronting the lobsters in the seafood department. I should tell you that the Gordon Fisherman needn't brave the dark and rolling sea for me. I eat fish sticks and just about nothing else. 

And if I were to be honest, what I actually eat are tightly compacted breadcrumbs that may or may not have fish in/near/close to them. One of the 'great things' people I worked with always told me as I was preparing to relocate to The Land of Round Doorknobs was how I could now have all the seafood I liked. I never had the heart to tell them I had all the seafood I liked by the time I was five.

Living in Southeastern Connecticut, where the farther north you head up the coast until you're Down East, the wider the A gets in lobstah, I cannot eat them and have trouble even looking at 'em. 

I'm a card-carrying carnivore; pork, chicken, lamb, beef, have napkin will travel. Fish, shellfish, crustaceans (nattily-attired and otherwise) not so much. If you and I were to be marooned on a desert island, you should kill me immediately, since I can tell you right now, I'd eat you right after you'd fattened yourself up on all the fish you'd caught. Doubt me? Doze at your peril.

Staring at the lobsters in the glass tank (why do they have to be kept like that? This is somehow more humane than a box with metal sides? ) I was almost going to type forlorn looking but I have no idea what part of the lobster is the face, though I think I know what the mouth is (but NOT why it looks like they're talking all the time) and I've no clue what a forlorn one would look like in comparison to a joyous one. 

I suspect the easiest way to tell them apart is a joyous one probably doesn't have giant rubber bands around the pincers (claws?) because it's on the ocean floor instead of in a glass tank in a supermarket.

I wanted to ask the guy behind the counter if the store feeds the lobsters before people buy them (and if so, what?), but they were selling so quickly the question was moot. It's strange watching them stacked atop one another, not really grasping the deal with the rubber band and still trying to get at each other in such a confined space. 

If they're capable of thought, are they sitting there thinking 'this is the crappiest day of my life!' Until the hand (and arm) of Fate surprises them and they're momentarily borne aloft and suddenly learn there are worse things in life than being in a glass tank. 

I ducked into the next aisle, Prepared Food, when I flashed on the notion that for all other carnivorous predators on this planet we are unprepared food. Yes, Virginia, there is a free lunch. We're eating it now. Praise the Lord and pass the cocktail sauce.
-bill kenny    

Gather Round, People, Gonna Tell You a Tale

I know I'm old. At a skosh beyond seventy-four revolutions around the sun, I'm less at ease every day in this world that technology hath wrought. I yearn for days past, when sex was dirty, and air was clean. 

When a half-gallon container of ice cream was actually a half-gallon, and when toasters lasted more than the time it took you to bring them home from the store, unless you ordered them online, in which case, have you noticed, the Amazon next-day delivery that you're giving them $139 annually is now more like the day after the next day. Maybe..

Some settling of contents in shipment may have occurred. No shit, seriously?

Stuff lasts less time now than it did when we were younger, and it breaks easier. And we don't fix anything anymore; we throw it away. Or my favorite bit: we put it in a recycling bin where, at some point, it's hauled, we know not where, and meanwhile a third- or fourth-world country gets buried in our unwanted detritus. But it's okay, out of sight, out of mind. And we feel great for saving the Earth. Apparently for dessert.    

Grown-up word from expecting less, and getting it, is entropy. But somehow, that doesn't really cover it. Stuff just doesn't work the way it used to, and if you wait long enough, it will get worse. And no one knows why or can do anything about it. But, to be honest, entropy is much too nuanced a word. Here's the perfect description of the dystopian hellscape we've created, a real grab you by the throat visual. 

Talk about The Ballad of the Night the Clocks All Quit and the Government Failed. Because that's all we can do: talk about it.
-bill kenny 

A Ray though Not of Sunshine

Eighty-one years ago today, the United States dropped a plutonium atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki. Exploding at 11:02 a.m. at a height of about 500 meters, the blast killed an estimated 40,000 to 75,000 people instantly, with the total death toll reaching roughly 74,000 by the end of the year.

Today is as logical a choice, as any day this month to mark another anniversary: when Ray Bradbury first offered this short story in 1950: "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains."

Then it was fiction.

Now, we have global warming, famine and disease across many of the Third World countries; hatred of others unlike ourselves all across the globe, warfare and destruction from the Strait of Hormuz to the Crimea, and greed and cupidity fueling ignorant arrogance everywhere in the land of my birth. 

We're on the path of perdition, paved with perfidy, and don't seem to know or care.
-bill kenny

It's Only Water in a Stranger's Tear

I had someone once explain to me, as if I were not aware of it, that 'Norwich is not ...' (a town in this region known for having Julia Roberts work in a pizzeria). 

The person making that observation looked nothing like Carmen San Diego, who would know these things, but I've lived in southeastern Connecticut long enough to recognize the truth in that statement. 

As a matter of fact, the list of other places that Norwich is NOT is longer than my arm, but I think that's part of the problem that residents, old and new, have with our city and with one another.

"How can we be in if there is no outside?'
We need to agree on definitions of who we are, as residents and neighbors, and why we are here. I will concede some people have settled in Norwich as a result of losing a bar bet; we can probably remove them from this discussion, but everyone else, old, young, male, female, whatever color in the rainbow you choose to be, all the rest of us are in this together, some more so than others.

And if I may, let's define ourselves in positive terms.

As a parent of two young children, when my wife and I settled here in the fall of 1991, neither we nor Norwich are the same as we enter early August of 2026. What we are looking for now, a small city with interesting places to meet and restaurants in which to eat, is different from what those with school children seek, or those working shifts at one of the casinos, or those who lived their lives here and are looking forward to a quiet retirement. 

And all of us look to those who lead the city to deliver to each of us what we want.

Those who have been here for decades have memories and meanings that those who've arrived more recently can't comprehend or understand. Long-time residents look at downtown and see the ghosts of Norwich past and fear that none of what once was can ever return. 

Others, driving through the same downtown to work beyond the city, see potential and promise all along the route even if it's not 'textbook downtown,' while still others see only empty storefronts and defeat. 

Our challenge is not that we each see a different Norwich but that each of our visions of where we live shares a common theme that has us as victims who are powerless to change our own story.

That's where we need to accept that change begins with us and moves from house to house, street to street, and across every neighborhood. We've tried countless variations of "help needs to come from Hartford or Washington or from the lone developer on the grassy knoll." And when all is said, nothing is done. 

Some of us seem to think we must do everything ourselves and wait, somewhat aloof, until the world is ready to find us. Except Norwich has always been at its best when it has been a part of the bigger world. It's when we've retreated into our separate villages and eyed those approaching from beyond our borders with suspicion and distrust that we have failed. We've spent so much time waiting for a moment that we cannot even define, much less recognize.

It's what we do in the space between our birth and death, choosing to be an exclamation or an explanation, that matters. We have become a city of cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Every new idea, every different proposal, is examined to see what benefit 'they' derive at 'our expense.' How about this: who f'ckin' cares? 

Some of us think squabbling is dialogue; it's not, but it is destructive. When we talk to one another, not at each other; when we choose collaboration over confrontation; no matter who we have been until that moment, we all become citizens of the same city, the city we each call home, no matter our language, culture, or color. Let's face it, literally: we are Norwich
-bill kenny

She Was Easily Undone

There are some people you always remember the first time you met them. In my case, my wife and, of course, my two children. I knew the first time I saw her that I'd marry my wife. 

And I tease our children that thanks to technology, I knew who they were long before they knew me (I sometimes wonder if they could have, would we have still met, but I see no reason to start down a path whose twists and turns, and ending, I cannot foresee). We had names for them months before they arrived, and I took enormous comfort knowing I wasn't bringing a stranger into my home from the hospital.

Now, in an era where so much social media and technology have supplanted person-to-person, it's different in terms of 'the first I read your tweet' or the first 'like' someone placed on an image you'd posted. 

I sat alongside someone at an event recently who very politely made it clear as we spoke that Facebook, LinkedIn and Blue Sky were all fine but he still preferred the knock on the door and the 'hello, may I please introduce myself to you?' routine.

As Dylan observed in another life, those who are not busy being born are busy dying, and today will be another busy day here on the ant farm. All mouths, no ears. 

Some blame the pagers and cell phones. I think it's the batteries. Without them, we'd have none of our current devices unless we could accommodate the tether. But perhaps we could, since not even the birds are free; they are chained to the sky.
-bill kenny  

All in All

Our two children were raised on Duplo and Lego. 

This was PPC, pre-personal computer, of course, and the other competitive and complementary activities were books, board games, television, and the Outdoors.

Their minds grew, and imaginations flourished as they manipulated the brightly colored bricks and blocks. Somewhere in our basement, we have boxes full of the bricks, including the pirate ship and the space shuttle, but those two I can remember. Truly magical toys that are something new every time out of the box.

I don't think you or your children had to have ever played with any of that to be impressed by all of this. Just sit back, enjoy, and near the end is a menu of all the others that exist so you can go from one to the other. 

The video takes about forty minutes, and you already know you don't need to ask me how I'd know that, right? Absolute rubbish, laddie.
-bill kenny

Well, The Telephone Was Ringing....

I have the good fortune of rarely remembering my dreams, which would be a disappointment to oneirologists everywhere if I were a public figure of any import whose existence mattered to anyone at any time anywhere.

I say 'good fortune' because I'm wrestling with one I had recently, which I remember all too well and that disquieted me a great deal. My wife and I were home in her country, though I don't know where, and I actually don't know how I know that, as in the dream we never left the apartment where we lived with a third person whom I never managed to identify.

In the dream we had no children-just one another though I have no memory of whether we were young(er) or old(er) than we are now. And everything in the dream was in shades of brown.

I'm not sure in the dream if I realized it was a dream, which, I'm assured, in itself means something though what or why I do not know. That I could have a dream guide on my cell phone 24/7, iPhone or Android, is curiously of little solace to me but does speak volumes about the entrepreneurial spirit and greed of code writers here in what I fear is becoming the last century.

Nothing looked familiar to me, causing me to wonder if I'd become Pirate Prentice as I kept looking to the skies for Gravity's Rainbow, somehow feeling better that if I had seen it but never heard the roaring across the skies, I was safe until Tyrone Slothrop returned from an outing. And even then it could be a stairway to the stars.
-bill kenny

Bloom Where You're Planted

Each of us can summon a hundred reasons in an instant on why things in our lives haven't gone to plan. But the bottom line is that if you want something badly enough, you'll find a way. If not, an excuse.

Be an exclamation, not an explanation.
-bill kenny

Comcast & the 8th Amendment

 

US Constitution

David Figueroa may not be a Constitutional scholar, but he has some real-world experience with cruel and unusual punishment that they never mention in law school. 

Hopefully, he gets his just desserts.
-bill kenny

Beneath the Bottom Line

Someone told me the Good Book cited money as the root of all evil. I figured that made me a Saint, New Orleans or otherwise, but the real eye-opener was the discovery that it's the LOVE of money that's really at the root. 

Internationally, nationally, regionally, and locally across this country, we've gotten ourselves jammed up trying to understand what happens after you throw money at problems that don't go away, and then you run out of money. 

Many of us are living in spaces and places where there are a lot more for-sale signs on front lawns than vote-for signs across our towns as we head into the last month of summer and towards the post-Labor Day Election Scuffle and Shuffle. 

It's not your imagination; we're living in a hellscape, and if the experts are to be believed, it's not going to get noticeably better any time soon.

We're going to elect 435 congressional representatives, 33 Senators, and 39 Governors come November. I'm guessing those CNN poll-takers opted for 'unseat' because 'running out of town on a rail' wasn't an option. More's the pity.

I'm not sure at the macro level; it's not unlike attempting to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. And with all due respect to those in the political prognostication business, a shift in a seat here or there may mean little more than we've traded up for a tablespoon. 
-bill kenny

August Already?!?

Today marks the start of the eighth month of the year.  I can still recall looking forward to the beginning of 2026. Actually, that's a lie; I dreaded its start. I had just begun kidney dialysis and was struggling with it very much, and feared I was nearing the end of my rope.

Winter passed and then spring, and now we're in the last full month of summer. Much of my life has adapted and adopted a new routine that revolves around a cycler for ten hours or so every day (evening). 

I'm grateful I have health insurance to pay for the bulk of all of my treatments and confess to not knowing how people who have no or only a little health insurance can manage to stay alive if they get sick. I'm aware that for many black-hearted and red-hatted fellow Americans, that worry, among others, makes me a Lib.

Challenge accepted.    
-bill kenny

You Make Your Own Chains

"There are those who think that
Life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance."

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears, and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will."

-bill kenny

Microphone Check, One-Two, One-Two

Do you hate waiting in line more in hot weather than in the cool of the Spring or the Fall? Me, too-not sure why, but I sure do. And once I get steamed, emotionally and physically, it carries over into everything I do for hours afterwards. Talk about all revved up and nowhere to go. Need to learn to savor the flavor while I still have a sense of taste.

It's been a free-for-all weather-wise this summer. We've had low water levels in our rivers, lakes, and streams, but we're not farmers around here, so it's not as critical as in Idaho and Nebraska. Here we have crunchy forests because it's so dry, not dust storms that blow lives and livelihoods away forever.

When I want to feel sorry for myself about how unhappy waiting for anything makes me in the heat, I think about how much closer to the end of my life I am than to the beginning. Especially with a phalanx of physicians and a dialysis machine that I'm on. What if, despite my obstinacy, there is a Hereafter and I'm a walk-on in that movie?

In light of how I have felt about Him for lo these many decades, how can I expect The Lord of All Creation to react to my arrival, probably on a very hectic and crowded day when I'm at my most snippy (rhymes with Skippy) (inside joke).
-bill kenny

Grifters, Grafters, and Circus Clowns

We are having weather in my neck of the woods with the edges still on it. That is to say, in years (and decades) past, we'd have gradual warm-ups or cool-downs and rain and snow in measured and moderate amounts. And not just here, but everywhere. 

I'm familiar with those who argue climate change has been a fact of life since before there was life on this orb and there's a certain amount of truth to that statement of fact, but also true is that we, heedless of the consequences to ourselves and others across the planet have been abusing Mother Nature to the point where she has been striking back here and around the world.

In the United States, we're repealing ecological safeguards and guardrails in the name of 'freeing up capitalists to do what they do best,' which is to poison our waters and pollute our air. For those who think the outbreak of cyclospora is some kind of coincidence, think again. Elmo Musk's DOGE eliminated almost twenty percent of the workforce at the Centers for Disease Control, the people tasked with guarding our health. And yet the tainted lettuce and resurgence of measles come as a surprise to so many. Seriously?

If you like to swim in the ocean and think it feels a little warmer than in past years, be grateful you're not a fish or any other marine life because our oceans are taking the brunt of the heat that greenhouse gases have been allowing to pass through the atmosphere. I'm not a fan of seafood, but even I can see when our food is being poisoned. 

Brain Food

"Anybody here see the noise, see the fear and commotion?

I think we missed it.

Anybody here see the love, see the hate being motioned?

Don't give me no hand me down shoes.

Don't give me no hand me down love.

Don't give me no hand me down world.

I got one already."

-bill kenny

Already Worrying about Winter

I am very much a whiner. I have a natural talent for it and after seventy-four years on the ant farm, I've developed a better than rudimentary skill set for it as well. I have a strong sense of self-a very powerful sense of personal hurt (real and/or imagined) and finely honed feeling of outrage about everything in the universe that's just not working out for me (whether it was supposed to or not).

I am a natural victim and the reason you may not have noticed is because you're one, too, in all likelihood. No shame, my brother or sister-it's what we do and how we roll. Besides, who has time for all this happiness anyway? Don't they say Misery Loves Company? And who of us wishes to be alone?

I offer this as my best effort at a cheering thought because we here in the Northeast and, it turns out across the country, are getting steamed and baked all at the same time this summer. Lovin' Spoonful were right on the money and John Sebastian knew whereof he spoke/sang. 

It's almost August. Six months from now, at least in this area, more likely than not we'll be up to our keisters in snow and ice and these days of what feels like a hundred degrees will seem like fever dreams. Except dreams don't leave footprints in snowdrifts. 

Those are mine and mine alone and while you can't see it from that picture, the snow was about twenty-six inches deep before it stopped. Guess what I was thinking about while slogging through it all? Yeah, you're right, that was too easy, wasn't it?

-bill kenny   

"We Are What We Pretend To Be....

I'm fixated on how we seem to be DEvolving rather than evolving. We're louder, less kind, meaner and actually dumber (in my opinion) than the previous one and we 'r not troubled enough about any of it to change direction. 

I think we're well on our way to being a nation of impatient mind-readers. Don't furrow your brow or make that face (I know 'what face? I wasn't making a face!' Were, too.). 

You may phrase it more elegantly (I would certainly hope so) but, with apologies to Beckett, we're NOT Waiting for Godot but rather hoping the other one shuts up real soon so we can talk.

It's taken me forever to warm to texting on my cell phone. I get hung up on spelling all the words with all the right letters in the proper places with capitalization and punctuation for all. 

Such fastidiousness can make you roadkill with hair on the human highway and more often than I'd like, I've been reminded that he who hesitates is lunch.

I've had follow-up texts as I've been struggling to frame a response to an earlier note. It's hard to count to ten and get a grip on your annoyance while holding a piece of plastic with more computing power than our first three home computers had, put together, while some touch typist is kicking your thumbs.

We're about the same in person-to-person communications, too. Those Sunday morning public affairs programs the major TV networks used to have so the FCC would cut them a break at license renewal time, have evolved into snarkfests where folks who remind me of terriers in need of Ritalin just yap at one another when they're not shredding some 'guest' like an old chew toy.

We're all rushing to get someplace other than here and once we're there, wherever 'there' is, we're off again. My German wife calls it kein ruhe im arsch and she would know as she's married to one (mit ohren).

When you next converse with a real, live person try to listen to the interaction between you, not just to the words but to the silences as well, and you may be surprised at how little of the latter breaks up the stream of the former.

I used to tease acquaintances and associates, disquieted at how rapidly I spoke, that people from my home state of New Jersey couldn't afford a pause to catch our breath or collect our thoughts, because with so many in such a small state, if you stop speaking you won't be heard from again for years. 

So now we talk, type and (for the most part) think in shorthand delivered in staccato, acronym and emoticon all masking, while masquerading as, meaning. Instead of technology and our tools helping language and literature to flower as arts and culture flourish, we've continued to dumb down and throw majesty and meaning over the side.

I came across a quote from Indianapolis' #1 Son, Kurt Vonnegut that makes me smile and think every time I read it. If it does half as much for you, it's worth the inclusion, "...do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."
-bill kenny (Class of '74)

A Blast (Albeit Mild) from My Past

I wrote this over a decade ago and have thought about it on more than one occasion. At the time I called it, 

Probably Legos or Farts

I have had a rather hectic last few days (I know, 'welcome to the club!') and have ended up in places with thoughts not unfamiliar to me though the circumstances by which I've arrived at them this time often is. 

I caught myself yesterday afternoon thinking back to the most amazing moment I have ever had with our son, Patrick Michael, whose birthday was earlier this month.

He would not have been much more than two at the time. And he sat in his car seat in the back seat of our car, a white, four-door BMW 518 (not available in the USA) at a traffic signal by Der Grosse Friedhof (the Big Cemetery) in Frankfurt am Main near Eschenheimer Landstrasse.

"Weiss du," fragte er, als wir miteinander blickkontakt hat in dem ruckspiegel im auto, "wenn Mom jemand anderes geheiratet, wurde ich einen anderen Vater hab?"
"Do you know," he asked waiting for our eyes to make contact in the car's rear-view mirror, "if Mom had married someone else, I would have a different father?"

Not only did I not know that then, or now, I could not even begin to trace the logic process that produced such a question. 

As I learned not that as long ago as I'd like to think, kids and human curiosity are the two greatest engines for change in the world. And one always accompanies the other, though how I would know that to be true is something I am not prepared to answer at this time.
-bill kenny