Closing Time 2023

I grew up with the music of The Sixties (capitalized that way deliberately), most especially the post-Beatles (and all things British) invasion of the pop music charts. I mention that because I can quote rock music lyrics of that era (or epoch) in much the way more religious acquaintances can cite Scripture. 

John Lennon offered, "A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality." When he gave voice to his dreams through his music only then did we discover how many of those dreams we each shared.

As we near the end of another year of tossing and turning, perhaps our resolution, if not revolution, for the New Year might be to decide if we intend to wake up and (more especially) show up when it comes to making a difference or if we intend to treat one another to another heaping helping of more of the same and hope no one says anything that might require someone to actually do something.

I don't intend to fan the flames of communal memory and review the year past through Rose (City) colored glasses, though if you wanted to drink a cup of kindness, feel free, and if there are grounds in that cup of dreams, they came as part of the set. If you're willing to agree we're farther along than we were this time last year, I'll counter by noting we have a long way yet to go.

Somehow as we've struggled to reinvent our street, neighborhood, village, or city, with equal parts economic development, community involvement, and what seems at times to be some sort of alchemy, we've too often forgotten how we got here, separately, and how the only way we can move ahead is by doing so together.

Each of us has a specific reason, not merely emotional and/or physical inertia or exhaustion, that has brought us to Norwich, at this time and which keeps us here. It may be 'only one thing' for you or for me but added together each of our 'only one thing' adds up to many reasons. 

Just as no single drop of rain holds itself accountable for the flood that follows, while we may feel helpless when we feel we cannot do everything, we should realize we can each still do something. But then, as part of that realization, we must also do it.

We are fortunate to live in an area of the country that offers so much so close; from shopping through dining, athletic to artistic and everything in between. Norwich is a wonderful place to raise a family. If history is to be believed we've been doing that for 364 years, each generation in turn mindful of 'each one, teach one.'  

We each have a story to tell, the story of us, the story of how we came to be here and to be here together at this time. So many have waited for so long for "something good to happen in Norwich." Might I suggest perhaps we are the 'something good' we have been waiting for and if that is, indeed, the case, then we have waited long enough.

Let us begin from this instant on, even as 2023 is crawling to its inevitable end, to become the people we believe we can be, living in the city we know we can have. 

This rapidly approaching new year is perfect for a new beginning and for proving that we have a plan, a purpose, and a destination. It is high time we take ourselves along. Happy Next Year! See you on the other side.
-bill kenny

Last Call before Closing Time?

There was a bar, Olde Queens Tavern, steps from the Rutgers College campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey, that had been a hangout for decades when we wide-eyed wonders arrived in the fall of 1970 (when the drinking age in NJ was 21 and we were not) and we adopted it as our own. Maybe it's the fog of war or the haze of alcohol but I don't remember ever seeing people in there who didn't look like me when I went in there.

I think we drove the previous crowd out and, in turn, were succeeded by I don't know how many succeeding student-scholars (if wet tee-shirt contests and dropping shots of whiskey into beer glasses is on the syllabus). The folks who ran Olde Queens, and probably still do, were always very patient with us, and much more kind than they needed to be (in light of our age and the terrible fake IDs we all had) in moving us out when it was to close up. Some of us, I think, probably didn't go home, or have homes to go to, but leave we did.

Long before Joseph Heller, Closing Time was a state of mind and an attitude check. I'm grateful I don't remember more of some of those nights and the state I was in and I am grateful beyond words for somehow not succumbing as a result of behavior that went well beyond 'youthful indiscretion' without harming myself or anyone else. The old man I've been sentenced to become never existed in the fevered fantasies of the young me and I am still amazed how I well I survived that person's excess as if that were, itself, a success. What I do recall makes me shudder and I strive to recall as little as possible for as long as possible.

I was thinking about that yesterday afternoon coming home from work driving through what passes for downtown Norwich as what was left of one of the four rallies the TEA (taxed enough already) parties staged in all of Connecticut was starting to wind down. There were still a fairly large number of people in the area where it had been held and a lot of them looked like one another and looked like me at the same time. I suspect we have more in common than what separates us, but judging by the signs and the horn honking and exchange of looks with people who also looked like me and the TEA party people but who most certainly aren't, we're not going to make any serious effort to bridge whatever the gap may be anytime soon.

We used to joke as little kids that 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' but that is, as we all know, an absurdity and a lie. Words can and do hurt, wounding in a way unlike any other weapon ever can, without leaving a visible scar. And after the echo of the last of the words has died, all we have to do is go on living with ourselves and the consequences of what we have done to one another. "When the old men do the fighting and the young men all look on. And the young girls eat their mothers meat from tubes of plasticon. Beware of these, my gentle friends, and all the skins you breed. They have a tasty habit - they eat the hands that bleed."

-bill kenny