Sixty-Six Years On

I've never, yet, had the opportunity to visit the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. I've spoken with the no-longer-young men who were on Arizona before it was part of the remembrance of December 7, 1941. There are so many memorials to those who sacrificed so much in so many wars, I sometimes forget that consciously, and perhaps unconsciously as well, those who fought and died (on all sides) helped shape who we are now, and how it is I am free to sit here and type semi-vacantly into the ether.

I'm told men and women will fight for their country, but will only die for one another, which is an act of such remarkable, selfless, love that it should require of all of us whose lives are made possible (and maybe a little too comfortable) by this act of sacrifice to live lives that truly matter.

As a kid, reading the accounts, I was struck by the ferocity of the attacks at Pearl Harbor. It was years later as a young adult that I first read of those who survived the attacks but who were hopelessly and helplessly trapped in the hulls of destroyed or partially-sunken vessels. I've read reports of survivors lost in twisted masses of metal who tapped, persistently and steadily in absolute and total darkness and probable terror, for days, hoping those 'outside' would find and free them.

I cannot imagine having that kind of courage. Instead, I've allowed my petty concerns and problems to absorb my attention. I've learned to flinch, as Warren Zevon used to sing, and to spend my waking hours fearing footfalls that never come from those whom I'll never know. Instead of living life out loud, I've elevated 'playing it safe' to an art form without ever considering how those who made the hard choices that brought me here might feel about what I've made of the gift they've given me. Unless and until we start to repay the debt of unselfish sacrifice that is the foundation of our world, we'll never be able to build anything of our own to give to our children and their children. Six decades or sixty decades will be as the blink of an eye for those who refuse to see.
-bill kenny

Merle Would Be Proud.....

I don't think of myself as intolerant of others' beliefs or jingoist in terms of politics. Live and let live. You scratch my back and I'll use my hands for something better (or however that cliche goes). I'm a great example of that fine line between laid back and comatose. For the most part.
Only, however, for the most part.

This morning, one of our local papers (the story is in yours, too) has an AP story on "Court Hears Arguments on Guantanamo Case" on the Supreme Court's involvement in detainees' rights and protections. It came with an AP photo, by Lawrence Jackson, of a protester standing outside the Supreme Court, wearing a black hood and an orange jump suit, described as 'prison-like' in the photo caption, as the court was hearing opening arguments.

The photo beautifully underscores a critical point about the protections our Constitution guarantees to all citizens (and to those not citizens as well) and delineates if you're willing to see it, why despite our flaws and warts, we are in many respects the Last Great Hope of the World.
Freedom of speech, to include exhorting and/or encouraging those who would, given the opportunity to destroy our Constitution, do so, is protected by the very same Constitution.
As a comic once noted, "Is this a great country, or what?"

I think what wound me up about the image is my recollection of more than one video with a guy wearing a hood but brandishing a BIG knife slitting the throat of another human, an American, trussed up, helpless and clad in this selfsame orange jumpsuit.

What I DON'T remember are any photos or video of anyone, anywhere, in whose name and faith these cowardly murders were committed saying or doing anything to protest these actions. Meanwhile, I've got this well-meaning maniac mannequin posed on the front page. Does he (or she) think if the situation were reversed, the true believers would tolerate his presence much less allow a photograph or a protest?

As Three Dog Night sang "Well, I've Never Been to Spain, but I've been to Oklahoma." I'm thinking there's plenty of room for that country club, condos and detention center just down the street from The Fightin' Side of Me. Be advised: Alternate side of the street parking rules are in effect.
-bill kenny

from Walden Pond to Flatbush

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Henry David Thoreau.

The NY Times reported (on an inside page) that Christina Copeman was discovered dead yesterday in her apartment in Flatbush, New York. Based on eyewitness recollections of their last time seeing her and the apparel in which she was dressed when found, authorities estimate she may have been dead for the last seventeen or more months.

In a metropolitan area such as NYC, regarded by many as the Capital of the World, there are well over thirty million residents in a small geographic area. So many people in the same device as Indianapolis' Favorite Son, Kurt Vonnegut (he of "Slaughterhouse 5" fame and "Wear Sun Screen" infamy. Hi Ho) once wrote.

Each of us alone in the tiny vessel of our lives, somehow never quite seeing how we are all in the same ocean and that, despite the technology convergences, the email, the cell phone and all the instant messengers money can buy, we work to avoid hearing the sound of silence at the end of the day.

Copeman became invisible to her friends, her family and her neighbors. Her life was somehow outside of theirs, beyond and behind a veil of tears and quiet despair that no one thought or cared to penetrate. Twice in our lives we are alone-in the instant we are born and at the hour of our death. What we say and do in all the moments in between is our song.
We all need verses and choruses and an ongoing joy to live each word out loud.
-bill kenny

"This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius..."

....or not. I guess it depends on what your expectations are for the Norwich City Council to be sworn in this evening at 7:30 in Council Chambers at City Hall. In the November election, did you vote for people and their ideas or against other people and their behaviors? How you answer probably has a lot to do with how you'll look at tonight's events.

I am especially looking forward to the reception after the Council meeting. Possibly there may be pie and pudding. I was hoping for pony rides, but City Hall is an old building and getting the ponies up the three flights of stairs might be problematic with its small landings (and since they lack fingers to push the buttons, the ponies will not be able to use the elevator) and somehow that might involve PETA and that means less pie for the rest of us.

If you're planning on having us start tonight's ceremonies with 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire', you'll want to bring lyric sheets or plan on being a soloist. And stand away from me as I have a medical condition that prevents me from enjoying amateur vocalists (called ears).

My point is, if we burden our new alderpersons with the weight of all our hopes and desires, they may decide tonight that they don't want to serve for two minutes, much less two years. If we can lower both our voices and our expectations and keep them in the more reasonable volume range, all of us can be successful and together everyone achieves more. Which also spells T-E-A-M.

I have always wanted to be a motivational poster-another wish fulfilled.
Maybe I could turn my attention to those pony rides.......
-bill kenny

What were once vices are now habits

Southeastern CT, where I live, has been evolving in terms of how livelihoods are made and who makes those livelihoods for close to two decades. Since the end of the Cold War, this area, the home of the US Navy's submarine force, and all the ancillary industries (and math and science) that support it, has shifted. Electric Boat, one of the two shipyards in the USA that builds nuclear submarines has gone from the employer of tens of thousands, producing two submarines a year, to an employer of thousands and is now on its way back up in workforce size. I imagine in light of folks like EB, like Pfizer and United Nuclear, the region was considered as tech-driven industrial.

And then the Cold War ended and a lot of things changed to include the employment situation. The Eighties, with the gospel of Greed is Good, ended with a large bang (actually, more like a thud) rather than a whimper, and when I and my family got here in the late fall of 1991 from Germany, it was already the winter of many peoples' discontent. Not that long afterwards, it had seemingly gotten very dark, in terms of housing starts, bank failures, home foreclosures, unemployment claims, etc, but it got brighter as one of the Native American tribes opened a casino that became an economic engine beyond even its founders' wildest imaginations. That was about a decade and half (and maybe a skoosh more) or so ago.

It's been interesting in recent months to watch as those running this casino operation engage in a battle for the hearts and minds (and wallets) of those whom they have hired, by the thousands, to be the minimum-wage, but there's always tips and great benefits, work force as the employees fought to either hold on to what they have or to regain what they feel they once had.
The threat of unionization moved a step closer last week, when some category of dealers (I don't know which ones and don't understand enough about casinos to grasp their importance) voted to authorize a local of the United Auto Workers, UAW, to represent them in future negotiations.

The casino operators argued and will now (probably) argue perhaps all the way to the US Supreme Court that they are a sovereign nation and the authorization of such a vote by the National Labor Relations Board is/was meddling in their internal affairs and a violation of their sovereignty. I knew an Army Colonel years ago who counseled me that 'you only have those rights you are prepared and willing to defend. No more and no less.' Thus, I'm not sure how a sovereign nation inside one of the Fifty States intends to press its claim and succeed, but I imagine it'll be interesting to watch and, hopefully. to learn from.

What was intriguing was a letter in a local newspaper yesterday from someone who wrote that he grew up in Detroit in the Seventies, and intimating that all, or nearly all, of Detroit's Fall from Urban Grace, was the responsibility of the UAW. Corporate greed, shareholder avarice, a fundamental shift in how the USA (and the world) built and bought automobiles did not, according to his letter, have anything to do with where Detroit is at this moment. I flashed immediately on a Bob Dylan lyric, "It's sundown for the union and what's made in the USA. Sure was a good idea 'til greed got in the way."
We stab it with our steely knives-but we just can't kill the beast.
-bill kenny

Be the Change you want to see in the world

Popping in and out of stores this morning, kind of like island-hopping in the WWII Pacific Theater, for a variety of projects and with varying degrees of urgency. I was struck by one constant: the sound of a lone bell ringing. Yeah, the kettle collector, so ubiquitous we don't always see him (or often realize it's more frequently a 'her' and NOT a 'him'), ringing that solitary bell outside of many of the stores we frequent.

"Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed."
And serving as a (not especially silent) reminder that while for many, "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades", for too many others it's a hand to mouth existence and the arms are getting shorter and more tired by the moment. It's not that there aren't hard times in the land of plenty (thanks, Omar and the Howlers) the rest of the year, it's just for about six weeks (around Thanksgiving to the end of the year) we celebrate success with excess.
And for for those whose boats have yet to be lifted by the rising tide of economic prosperity, they are more visible this time of year.

That's why it's always a mitzvah to give something to the bell ringer. Be it a penny (I guess, technically a one-cent piece. The English have pennies, we don't in the USA. Guy Fawkes would have been hard-pressed around here.) or a dollar or more. What you can spare, please share. As unhappy with your life as you may be, as unfortunate a turn of events as you may be struggling to survive at this moment, someone, somewhere has it worse.
And we should give with a glad heart and with a prayer for someone who needs all the thoughts and prayers they can get.

John Donne was right:
Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
-bill kenny

The Dangers of "I'm Lovin' It"

I enjoy going to Mickey D's on a Saturday for a little bit of 'off the graph' breakfast. Since being diagnosed a diabetic five plus years ago, I've been more often that not (and way more often than I'd first thought I would be) good about what I eat, how much of it I eat and when I have it.
I do the whole grain, big fiber, low sugar, routine during the week (I think I'd like eating the boxes of cereal more than the cereal itself some days). But I like to get a little footloose on the weekends (and not being a dancer, what should I do? Play Kenny Loggins' Greatest Hits at maximum volume while driving?) and Mickey D's is my idea of getting jiggy with it (I blame my parents, so you should, too.).

The commercials for McDonald's and just about every other good and service we purchase are all filmed on sound stages somewhere in Oz as NONE of the places I ever visit in the real world even vaguely resemble the joint on the TV commercial.
Moment of Zen this morning as the 'team member' (we no longer have employees; we have 'team members' and 'associates') at the counter, who did us all a favor just showing up (based on her attitude and her body language) but was unwilling to do at least me a favor and go home (and stay there) dragged out every order for what felt like hours. The line of customers snaked from the register down the open area near the soda and ice dispensers and then hung a left past some of the tables. Child of the Sixties that I am, I kept listening for the chopper blades overhead signalling the US helicopters had landed on the embassy roof in Saigon as we bid farewell to the domino theory. Luckily, for all of us, that didn't happen this morning (the drive thru would have been unable to accommodate a hovering chopper I suspect).

How often everyday does the gap between the promise and the performance become so obvious? Keep track for yourself and then try to remember if the sound of things falling apart was as loud when you were a kid.

It seems to me we expect things to get goofy and for programs and people to "Go South." No matter what it is, personal, business or government , and no matter how enthused the initial reaction to something is, part of us waits for the other shoe to drop. With my apologies to Winnie the Pooh, we're most comfortable when we can all be Eeyore. We look forward to things not working out and feel reassured when the calamity we projected happening finally comes to pass.
Oh bother. Care for a smackeral of honey on that hash brown?
-bill kenny