Calling All Angels

A couple of days ago, wandering on the highways and by-ways of online Social Media, I fell across a graphic that puckishly summed up a lot of places each of us may have frequented. It seemed at the time I came across it to capture a less than happy aspect of so many of our Norwich Neighbors.

As someone who is accused at times of being a "cheerleader," a label I wear as a badge of honor, by the way, I shared it to a Facebook page I created so long ago there were only three Fast & Furious movies, Celebrating Norwich Connecticut, and started listing points of interest and businesses I've found on my hikes to and from various places here in The Rose of New England.

I could have included the infamous (in my house at that time) 'bit off more than he could chew' walk to and from the Occum Playground for an event that was over by the time I got there.

I did mention my more recent miscalculation that our daughter had to endure when she accompanied me after I had decided on a Sunday to 'walk to Poppy & Rye' in Taftville, from our house on Lincoln Avenue. The rye bread and the pastries were worth the hike, trust me on that.

But I missed the biggest thing: us. We who live here. Brighten yourself up tonight, or any night in the next two weeks or so and walk (okay, drive if you must) around a neighborhood, any neighborhood and check out the lights on houses and shops, and without getting too creepy about it, the living rooms with trees groaning with garland and dazzling with decorations.

Or, as I did over the weekend at a local grocery, casually watch the number of other shoppers bringing bags of donated canned goods and other items to the community volunteers collecting out in front or who added a box of pasta or dry cereal to a belt full of grocery purchases but dropped off an item or two (or three) at the collection point at the front of the store.

It happens all over our city every year at this season, and throughout the rest of the year whenever anyone asks for help. I keep reading "the recession' ended quite some time ago, so I'm confused a lot by what so many of us here are struggling with now.

I don't know what it's called but I've heard names my mom would be surprised I know (come to think of it, how does Mom know 'em?). But no matter how tight times are, or we feel they are, we are always here for one another.

When I worry and wonder about finding our better angels, I have a good idea about the first zip code in which to look.
-bill kenny

Calling All Angels

We in the here and now of Norwich, Connecticut, too often lose sight of how we can came to be here and how the city, as we now know it, came to be here. 

People just like us, centuries, scores, decades, years and/or just moments ago made decisions to be here and/or create the physical structures and organizational/departmental strictures by which the City operates.

Norwich at this moment. 18 March 2015, is a reflection of everyone who has ever been here. We, you and I, are just as much a part of the journey as we are of the destination that brought us to this instant. The choices we make (or choose to NOT make) in the City we will build today are part of the story of the Norwich that those who arrive here tomorrow and everyday afterwards will inherit and claim as their own.

Who we are and who we shall be is driven by our will and our wallet and most especially to use the former to both compensate and complement the latter. We are at the time of the municipal year when all of us need to each become our Better Angel.

Because it is as our Better Angels that we must strive to frame the discussion we need to have with not just the elected leadership of the City of Norwich but with one another on wants, needs and desires as reflected in the next City budget. We should promise one another now to listen with the intention of hearing and less for the opportunity to merely respond.

The self-proclaimed greatest rock and roll band in the world, The Rolling Stones, once suggested  that “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.” Which leads us to, and leaves us with, the inevitable: what is we want as a City?

That’s where we will spend a lot of time in the weeks to come, advocating and (in all likelihood) arguing about how many public safety versus public education versus public works dollars are to be allocated and invested.

We’ll square off to attempt to answer (or fail to, again), questions like, which is more important: textbooks or paved roads; class size or emergency call response time; clean streets or clean water? They are all part of a larger conversation that comes down to which Norwich do you want to come to: the one we are or the one we can become?  

At the risk of becoming just another voice that gets lost in the noise of disagreement on our way to becoming disagreeable, those are all questions of the aforementioned will with little thought or energy devoted to wallet.

Unless and until we commit to examine and help implement the Economic Development Strategic Plan for the City of Norwich outlined by the Mayor Hinchey and scarcely noticed by the general public, we’ll have the same conversations that lead us to the same place. Nowhere or right here.  

-bill kenny