an idea whose time has come (and gone and then come again)

I'm not sure why we regard everyone who wanders as lost (and I'm not sure, come to think of it, why so many people tell me to get lost, but perhaps this isn't the right time for that) or why when Person A offers an idea no one likes it, but when Person C does, it's a hit. I smile when people insist an instant of animus is 'nothing personal' when, of course, it is. Even if it isn't personal for them, it is for the person they're disrespecting. Not sure how many bigger lies than 'nothing personal' exist, but it's at the top of my list.

In Norwich, CT, where I live, as one of its last items of business at its final meeting in May, the City Council, in a resolution sponsored by the Mayor, voted to dissolve the Administrative, Planning and Economic Development Committee of the City Council, APED, a committee that the mayor had resurrected after his election to office in 2005.

The folks on that City Council who were part of that version of APED were very nice but a little on the quiet and contemplative side if you follow my drift. If you gave me a dollar for every item of business they brought to the full Council Council or but fifty cents for the spark of any idea they fanned into a flame of innovation, I wouldn't have enough change to get a soda from the vending machine in the City Hall basement. But perhaps I could qualify for a municipal grant?

The City Council we elected in the fall of 2008 brought new people, with (I hope) new ideas and they took their places, enthused and engaged on APED, but just as they got started, their song was over. Concerns about redundancy, additional layers of bureaucracy and confusion about channels of communication were all cited by the Mayor, and others, as the City Council dissolved APED, despite some impassioned pleas by those involved in the process and the lingering suspicion and sense that there was more going on behind the scenes than in front of the curtain. Maybe all small town politics is kabuki theatre-or maybe it's just true here in Norwich. I don't know what's better-if it's the former or the latter. Anyway APED went the way of the Sky-Scraper condemnation Affiliate, antique tables and billiards.

Monday night, having given the whole idea some additional thought (I assume), Mayor Benjamin Lathrop read to the City Council a two page (more or less) letter announcing his intention to develop an ad hoc economic forum whose purpose sounds an awful lot like that of the APED that duplicated efforts and added a layer of bureaucracy while clogging channels of communication that was abolished at his insistence at the previous meeting. The first of this 'new' forum is tentatively scheduled for Monday, 30 June at 5:30 P. M. in Room 335.

I'm curious if the people who stopped going to APED meetings, to include those who received funding of their six figure budget request from the City Council, or those who were actually on APED from the City Council, will show up. I wonder if I might help improve attendance by offering to purchase the refreshments? As Dion can attest, you work up a powerful thirst when you're The Wanderer.
-bill kenny

"With a word she can get what she came for"

Sitting in the Same Day Surgery waiting area at Norwich's William Backus Hospital (quite the talented family, I think what with Jim in the entertainment business and all) the other day as my daughter had her tonsils removed, I came across Golf Week, a magazine, it states on its own cover, "preferred by serious golfers."

I believe in the validity of Mark Twain's observation that 'golf is a good walk, ruined' but I am curious as to what magazine would be preferred by frivolous golfers, or dare I say (or type) it aloud, miniature golfers? And do folks who enjoy mini-golf have to wear the same kind of colorful garb as real 'serious' golfers, only as shorts? Those kind of things keep me up at night-such are the joys of having an empty life.

And, show of hands, can you visualize Tiger Woods trying to calculate the lie on the 14th hole with windmill turning in front of it? Why can't pro golf matches have ONE hole (just one, c'mon!) where such a thing happens-to give all of us at home something fun to watch.

On my way to work, I drove past the Professional Building in Franklin and wondered, and I imagine the chamber of commerce could help me out on this, if there's a separate building for the Semi-Pros or just a lean-to. In a perfect world, the semi-pros should be allowed to be housed in a semi-detached someplace, while us amateurs can live anywhere we want-though I wonder if a case can't be made for each of us being a professional in some field, avocation or endeavor.

We can discuss that topic right after we dispose of this new and improved beverage-but for the life of me I can't figure out which it is...new or improved. And should we use it to wash down a couple of these jumbo shrimp?
-bill kenny

Freedom from Choice = Here and Now, 2008

Last weekend, coming out of a Norwich grocery store, I met a candidate for the CT 2nd Congressional District. He was sitting right there at the exit on a folding chair behind a card table with a clipboard holding a petition (for which he sought signatures) to the State Elections Committee to have his name placed on the ballot in November.

I'm very used to encountering all kinds of people or causes at the exit to the grocery store ranging from the bell-ringers with the kettle at the Christmas holiday season to the Brownies selling Girl Scout cookies (Girl Scouts do not sell the cookies, the Brownies do; why is that? And while I'm wondering about stuff, what is it exactly Boy Scouts, and by extension Cub Scouts, should or could be selling? Jell-O shooters? I'm kidding, of course. In addition to getting a stern talking-to from M.A.D.D., I'd have to deal with a very unhappy Bill Cosby. Plus, we'd have to build bigger exits.)

When you have congressional elections every two years as we do, you end up with folks who may start running for one reason or another, but who, if elected, then start to run for re-election on almost the same night their first term begins for entirely different reasons. Everything costs money, as we all know, and it takes a LOT of money to be a successful candidate for Congress. As recently as 2006, there was a news story that the Center for Responsive Politics estimated it cost $35 per vote to get someone elected. (Cynic that I am, I'll bet it costs less to lose an election.)

I check in on a regular basis with Project Vote Smart because I'm a voter who needs all the help he can get on where various people stand, or sit, on issues and how they would implement their solutions if elected. And in the 2nd District, it would seem we have a 'plethora of possibilities' as one of my prep-school English teachers might say. So while voters in many areas of the country may be saying a 'pox on both your houses' in terms of the choices for voices they have, or don't have, this fall, we on this side of the Connecticut River do have a number of different paths. Depending on where we want to go, we have a variety of roads from which to choose. But if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
-bill kenny

like a book in a language you can't read

I was driving on Sunday on Route 12, which runs from Norwich to Groton (actually it runs for a lot more than that, but that's the only part of it I use. It could, beyond the bend at the Laurel Hill Bridge in Norwich, just drop cars off the edge of the earth and it would be a number of years until I learned of this.) Sunday, once it made up its mind was a very nice day with just about the warmest temperatures I think we've had all spring and some blue skies with high clouds.

I ended up for a number of miles driving behind someone in an old VW Cabriolet, the body style they had in the Eighties, I think, and here it was called the Rabbit (in Germany where it originated it was called the Golf and was, believe it or not, intended as VW's answer to the BMW 2002 series. And then, as luck and fate would have it, BMW changed the question) and was monstrously successful at least for awhile.

This one was green with a light brown top that was down and the windows were all up and the driver was wearing a ball cap. To me, sort of like taking a shower while wearing a raincoat. Those tops weren't automatic as I recall so you got a decent work-out taking them down and putting them up (and there was no such thing as an emergency top up in the event of a sudden rain squall--you had to wrestle with these bad boys) so I'm trying to understand what the point was of going topless if the windows were all up and you wear a hat.

To the driver's credit, unlike a lot of other cars we've seen with them and have reacted with 'Huh?' he didn't have those Connecticut "Early American" (=classic car) license plates. I hate when folks stick those on a loser car, one that's not been restored or preserved-they've just figured out they're allowed to have those tags and they do. Besides, and I react the same way when I see the plates on a BMW or a Mercedes, I shake my head at the concept of an Early American car built in the Rhein-Ruhr Gebiet.

At my age, I could qualify to be considered an Early American--though the cops searched the apartment for years, they never found the raincoat. Willie Dixon said it was a like Zen Stand-Up comedy, but he assured me the little girls understand.
-bill kenny

A Long Pull on a Short Cord

I hear the phrase 'tipping point' in the news a lot these days. The folks who pop up as analysts are very fond of this turn of phrase right now for reasons I don't really understand but they never offer to explain the term because I think they think we already all know or they're gambling we're too polite to tell them we don't.

I'm impressed that we have thousands of reporters and videographers and cameramen (and women) scattered to the four corners of the globe and all points in between so that we can vicariously experience all the major events in our civilization (you don't think that video of Britney with her two kids is major? Well, then stick to that earthquake stuff....), but no one ever asks them 'what is the heck is going on there, Vern/Julie? (wherever there is) instead we get the talking head person back in the studio with....,well not actually news but opinions on news.

Between you and me, I think the term analyst is actually code for 'here's what I think'. When we're in the supermarket trying to figure out which brand of toothpaste gets our teeth whiter or our breath smelling sweeter, we're working the same gig as the fellow on CNN or MSNBC. Except while we're standing in the aisle, staring at the merchandise, nobody puts up our name under our chin like the TV folks do. I'm thinking tipping points might be this year's term for last year's 'hot button issues', or the year before's 'critical factors', but if you have a better definition tell me and we'll go with that. (I'd hate to have a disagreement over 'tipping point' become a tipping point in our relationship, though the irony of that is delicious.)

In a Presidential election year we have tipping points everyday and this year is no exception. I don't know about you but I'm sort of numb from the length of the campaign and the volume and tone of the rhetoric so far and we're nowhere near the end. When did this election actually start, anyway? I didn't hear the pistol shot but it may have been sounded while the Kerry people were letting the air out of the balloons at the Election Night Ballroom in the hopes they could get a partial refund from the caterer.

So far, the tipping points have included 'The War' (we, like the analysts, can become so removed from an event that the actual conflicts of arms in which the various worldwide deployments of our armed forces are engaged gets reduced to one abstraction. Shame on us when that happens), health care, immigration control (and the lack thereof), the price of gasoline, oil and petroleum products in general, the mortgage meltdowns and tightening credit, No Child Left Behind, little American flags in jacket lapels, who said what about whom in which Church (Do you suppose God really cares who the President of the United States is? I suspect about as much as he cares that there are pro basketball players who make the Sign of the Cross before they shoot a foul shot, but when I die and stand before him and he's wearing a Rasheed Wallace jersey, I'll bet I'm not smiling so wide as I am as I type this, thinking about that jersey and (of course), Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers (we're talking old school AND Old Testament)) but that's just now.

We have all Summer and almost all Autumn so brace for impact. There's an even-money possibility that we'll be caring deeply about issues, tipping points if you will, that haven't been invented yet. I'm thinking there might be some money to be made in having Velcro bumper stickers just so I don't ruin the paint job. And the spot where you grab 'em to tear them off the car, I'm thinking of calling that the 'ripping point.'
-bill kenny

Change, not just for couch cushions anymore

I sometimes wonder if "change" is anything like Sam Phillips' definition of rock and roll, "I know it when I hear it." I think there are different amounts and types of change--in our personal behavior, in our relationships, in our places of residence and work and in our perceptions of our government (and that might also have something to do with the level as well, I'm not sure).

Change is one of those 'let's try to nail Jell-O to the wall' exercises when it comes to a definition--it can be easier to measure than describe. And sometimes talking about change is a little bit like singing about football. At other times, sadly, we convince ourselves that talking about change and change itself are the same thing. I think that's why we get a little frustrated with ourselves in how our lives unfold.

Tonight, in my town, Norwich CT, our City Council, in all likelihood, will approve a budget that they know now, even before the meeting begins, will NOT make everyone happy (and it may not make ANYone happy, oh boy). We the people, wherever we live, are a lot like Goldilocks when it comes to our expectations of municipal leadership. Unlike the three bears who had to manage her whims in series, our City Council members have to deal with us in parallel and sometimes the polarity (especially the bi-polarity) can be a bit intense.

Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. As a resident, I want my trash picked up, my police equipped to do their jobs, all the firemen we need ('Dalmatian dogs and accessories sold separately'), bright shiny schools populated by driven professional educators working tirelessly with energetic and engaged children to reinvent the world's oldest continuous democracy as an ongoing success story among the nations of the earth. And, if you please, I'd like all of this to happen with a budget that has no increase in taxes at worst and, ideally, actually lowers my taxes. Should I put you down for one of those budgets, too? Yeah, of course, we're human--it's what we do. Our desires increase exponentially as our means do so arithmetically.

Meanwhile back at the Norwich City Council, we have a total of seven people, five of whom were just hired (okay, elected, but you knew that) this past November almost all on a promise to change just about every aspect of the Rose City, except the Rose itself. And they're doing what they can, when they can. We are baby birds in the nest, never sated, and they've discovered being elected to the Council has opened up a can of worms at way more levels than can be discussed here.

So, as you watch on public excess (sorry, Comcast folks, I meant access though most of the time I was right the first time) or if you attend the Council meeting tonight, realize neither of us will be thrilled by everything that's in the budget, or not in the budget. That's how this goes, I know, but it can be hard to be philosophical about the miracle of representative democracy when it's always my ox being gored. Be careful what you wish for (said the guy who always wishes for pony rides for his birthday). Just remember, we wanted change--now we have to decide how much and how fast, and for whom, come to think of it.......
-bill kenny

Grantland Rice may have had a point

Not sure if she had it to say over again if Sharon Stone would offer the same explanation for the recent earthquakes in China, "bad karma", she had the other day (and which went down so well with large segments of the Chinese government). I'm trying to imagine how her character in Basic Instinct sounds in Chinese, but right now her movies are banned (if I'm Michael Douglas do I try to get the authorities to lift part of the ban, i.e., show his parts of the movie but NOT hers?) so that whole idea is mooted in much the same manner as dissent in Tiananimen was mooted. Ms. Stone referred to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet's Buddhists and whom the Chinese government considers a traitor, as "a good friend." In light of the last year, he may be wondering with friends like these....

I can relate to the cause and effect ordering of the universe that she was suggesting, because I subscribe to that same idea. We've all heard "Pride Goeth Before a Fall" (and some of us now know that 'goeth' isn't just 'Goth' with an extra 'e' in it) though I suspect Charlie Pride prefers to tour all year round and not just in Autumn. I don't think any other species calculates their place in the universe this way (I'm trying to imagine a chipmunk choosing between eating an acorn or storing it and deciding, in light of the number of family members who got no further than the double yellow stripe on Route 169, to gorge himself...curse you, Chip and Dale!) so it's another one of those quirky things that makes us human.

Do you remember as a kid worrying when something really good was happening that something not so good might be around the corner? We knew the concept of my karma just ran over your dogma long before it was a bumper snicker. And even as people are 'proving' that no such thing happens, or will ever happen, we still listen for karma's footsteps and hear them more often that not. At the end of every day, people find some reason to believe. Call it custom, call it habit, it's part of our DNA-the imposition of order where random chaos may be the rule.

And with all due respect to the Chinese government and those in search of a spine in the advertising community who were quick, a little too quick in my personal estimation, to distance themselves from Ms. Stone, what if it turns out her theory is on target? All this time, we thought GR's Four Horsemen were Stuldreher, Crowley, Miller and Layden.
What a Revelation to learn otherwise.
-bill kenny