Maybe I'm Amazed

Depending on when you read this, I may have already been married for more than 31 years today. I married at 1020 on 21 October 1977 in the Rathaus on Berliner Strasse, Offenbach am Main, in the Federal Republic of Germany (we called it "West" and the Soviet sector "East" Germany).

I'm sitting here trying to calculate the difference in time between here on the East Coast of the US and Central European Time, struggling to remember if they ever or still do that fall back thing with the clocks we do and when, so I'm not sure specifically where I was in time thirty-one years ago, but I am enjoying the moment of now because it's all I have.

I told you how I met my wife but for the last couple of days I've spent some time reconstructing the day we married. My best man was Chris, who was in the Army in the same unit I was assigned to while I was in the Air Force. Chris was from California and about my age (I've never asked him, come to think of it) whose cynicism made me look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by comparison. He had been married and divorced before he and I met and both of us were, on Christmas Eve night, drinking ourselves senseless (okay, for me that would have been two sips of 3.2 beer, but the Germans had beer like that only to wash their cars, the undercarriages of their cars) when I first saw/spoke to the woman I was to marry.

Chris was my witness at the civil ceremony and he brought Monika whom he had met through my (about to be) wife and me, though mostly through Sigrid who has all the people skills. Moni as we all called her, and Chris were to eventually marry as well. They would have two children, Rebbecca and David, and then one day as part of a routine visit, Moni's physician detected something and by the time the tests were conclusive, the something was cancer and inoperable and they sent Moni home to die in the house she and Chris shared with their children.

Chris, who had stayed in Germany as a civilian because, among other reasons, he realized it was his wife who made where he lived a home and so he remained with her, was to return to his hometown, Whittier, California, with his two small children (and a hole in his heart about which he never spoke) where he remains to this day. I called him once many years ago when there was a huge earthquake in what I thought was his area and woke him up because it was early morning here and I'd forgotten how much earlier it would then be on the Other Coast. Typical Chris-asked me if I owned a watch and then told me he appreciated my call. We exchange cards at the holidays which will be here before I know it and be gone again before I fully appreciate it, like so much else in life.

Sigrid's witness was her childhood friend, Evelyn Fitzsimmons, nee Berz, who was married to Richard "Rick" Fitzsimmons, a tank mechanic stationed in Hanau (Pioneer Kaserne I think) and through them, Rick and I became friendly. As the years went on, Rick remained in the Army and his career took him elsewhere to include Ft Leonard Wood, which is the mothership for Army tank guys, I think. All four of us lost one another and out of sight became out of mind and all that. Rick and Evelyn had a son, Kevin, and they lived in the same apartment house we did (actually they were there first and we moved in downstairs) in a building owned by her parents.

In the last months, Sigrid, through a German variation of Facebook (I say that like I know what that is and I don't. I put the link here, in case you don't know, either.) has reconnected with Evelyn who divorced Rick long ago, remarried and is now back in Germany. I think Sigrid's also chatted on line with Rick of whose whereabouts I'm unclear but all of which proves you cannot trust people to stay in your memory where you put them.

Because I had so little proficiency in German at the time of our marriage I was required by law to hire a translator for the ceremony. Perhaps so I couldn't claim later I was asking 'wo ist die Bahnhof?' oblivious to the five months of paperwork and huge sums of money (as an E-2 in the USAF, it looked like a fortune) it had taken for me to get permission to get married.

And I still almost blew that. As the last step in the approval sequence, the USAF required a written permission from my Detachment Commander, Captain Ted. As Capt Ted reviewed the paperwork (like he would know what he was looking at) he offered somewhat disapprovingly, 'so, you're marrying a foreigner?' To which I responded, perhaps a beat too quickly and more than a tone too sharply, 'no, sir, she is. This is her country; we're the foreigners.'

Luckily (for me) Dewey Weaver, the Detachment admin support guy, who was a TSGT and later MSGT and called everyone, to include Capt Ted, "Junior" (and who was the size of a small building but with a heart to match) hurried me out of the office and suggested I sit quietly in my work space, though his language was much more emphatic than that. After an hour he came back with the Captain's signature and earned the unending gratitude of my soon-to-be bride who baked for him and his family though I often suspected none of the goodies I brought to Dewey ever saw the inside of his house.

At the conclusion of the marriage ceremony the presiding official told our two witnesses where to sign (ordnung muss sein; this is Germany, after all) on the marriage contract and Chris asked the translator, again, specifically where he should sign. She looked at him with absolutely no comprehension and that's when I realized I'd just spent 200 Deutschmarks on a parrot who had memorized the English parts of the ceremony without understanding a word. As a former altar-boy who had done the same thing with the Latin Mass (what exactly does 'intro ibo alatera Dei' mean?). Funny how that switcheroo still annoys me thirty-one years on.

I don't remember often enough to tell Sigrid I love her everyday and there's no guarantee I'll have a chance to ever make that up to her even though do I love her everyday and know I will always love her. "Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time and hung me on a line. Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you." Happy anniversary, angel-eyes.
-bill kenny

Norwich Municipal Meetings Meriting Attention

This is good week in Norwich, if you're not yet a registered voter or have questions about how the ballot scanning devices we'll be using in two weeks work to increase your college of knowledge. I'm not going to give you that Diddy-inspired "Vote or Die" line because that's just stupid polemics.

I will point out many of us have friends, family, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, cousins and neighbors in the Armed Forces defending our freedoms, to include choice through casting a ballot, and the least you can do is be eligible to do so. So, in terms of opportunities this week, pick a day and be the difference. This one is so easy, here goes: Monday through Friday, everyday, at 9 AM in Room 210 of City Hall. Let's not ever need to have that discussion again, ever, okay? (How can you NOT vote?)

There is a lot of interest going on for residents and registered voters (I never said I was subtle) this week, as there is every week. I'm not sure about where you live, but suspect it's true, too. Here in Norwich, we've rolled up our sleeves this week and here's what we have:

Monday Senior Affairs Commission at 9 a.m. in the Rose City Senior Center on Mahan Drive (you can check out the progress on the Norwich Tech/Three Rivers CC campus reconstruction and site swap that's going on while you're at it. It's very impressive).

Also Monday, at four in the afternoon, is a meeting of the Design Review Board, at 23 Union St., that's next door to City Hall (have you ever driven past that concrete hulk of a public parking garage that mars the sight lines around Brown Park and wondered what the heck happened? Folks not paying attention, my friend and that's why the citizen volunteers on the DRB always appreciate your interest. Mine, maybe not so much).

And since you're that close to City Hall, and it is a Monday come early for the informational meetings and stay for the City Council meeting. Before the City Council meeting are three informational meetings--the first at 5:45 is by NPU on the East-West sewer project (there's a reason why so many in Norwich are concerned about sewers but it's too Freudian to get into); there's a School Readiness Council/Children First initiative presentation at six and if children or sewers don't set your pulse racing, at six thirty is an overview and explanation on the nearly-completed property reevaluation in Norwich. The bad news, if stock market fluctuations have negatively impacted your lifestyle, may be that you fear you could soon be living out of your car--the good news may be that the taxable value of your car has gone up.

If you're sticking around for the Council meeting at 7 PM, here's the minutes of the 6 October meeting to read up beforehand. As for tonight's Council meeting, speaking of finances, is a resolution proposing a workshop with the Council and the City Manager in the more immediate here and now to talk about next year's budget in light of the changes (and not many for the better) in every one's finances in the last weeks and months. Bravo to the City Council and City Manager (what is the emoticon for clapping? No idea.) for seeking to define the path early this year as many of us are concerned about our municipal finances.

Tuesday night at 7 at 23 Union Street, the Commission of the City Plan meets, and here is their agenda. You decide how important the issues within the public hearing are, and whether you should be part of the public. (And thanks to Ms. B and Mr. P for their efforts to keep the City's website up to date and in compliance with the changes in public law on meeting minutes and agenda posting. You can click here to see what the CCP did at their Special meeting on 25 September, and at their Regular meeting on the 16th, as two examples).

Wednesday has a meeting of the Housing Authority at 4:30 in the afternoon at their office at 10 Westwood Park. According to the City's web page, there's a meeting of the Board of Review of Dangerous Buildings at 5:30 in the afternoon at 23 Union Street except, according to their own page, the meeting is on a different day and, the minutes of their September meeting don't state when the October meeting is.

Thursday has a meeting at eight in the morning of the Norwich Community Development Corporation at their office at 75 Main Street. Their website, if you just clicked on the link, like Christmas, is coming soon, again. In light of the amount of public money NCDC receives it might be nice to provide a vehicle to allow residents and taxpayers an insight into what happens with that money. Bob Mills, the recently-hired director, seems very personable and affable but I don't expect he'd want to start dropping in on every household for a coffee and conversation.

The Historic District Commission meets at 5 p.m. in Room 319 of City Hall. Checking the website, their most recent meeting may have been in June. "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift--that's why we call it The Present."
-bill kenny

Running Up That Hill

I was watching a very small baby bird, I’m not in the Audubon Society so I don’t what kind it is-to me, ‘small and brown’ is more than enough description-the other day sitting on the ground below my office window. I heard it, through the glass, before I saw it, peeping/chirping or whatever the technical term for kvetching is with birds, as the momma bird (?) kept feeding it.

The baby bird wasn’t that much smaller than the parent which I found amusing as it continued to cry for food. It just seemed to me the baby bird could have flown away at any time and gotten its own food. After all, it had gotten from a nest, someplace, to the ground beneath my office window—and in about twenty minutes, sure enough it followed the parent and flew away.

I started to wonder if the parent were feeding the baby because the baby wanted food or because the parent needed to feed it. Maybe it’s NOT just Holden Caulfield who wants to be the Catcher in the Rye. I then wondered why I had assumed the parent had been the momma and not a daddy bird. I’ve read about the male Emperor Penguins in the Antarctic who hatch their mate’s eggs by carrying them on their feet, under their belly flap, keeping them warm through the darkening winter cold. I suspect it’s a slightly different form of bonding than reading to the embryo from Joyce’s Ullysses.

I have two children who are actually adults in their own right even if I don’t see them that way in mind’s eye. My son, Patrick Michael, is 26 and his sister, my daughter, Michelle Alison, is 21 and they both squirm when I start to get misty-eyed about them as children. There is, I suspect, an excellent reason why we do not remember our earliest moments on this planet: because we don’t want to. And that’s what we have parents for: to remind us at weddings and christenings, at graduations and sometimes at funerals, that we share the same biology, regardless of ideology and that there is nothing more natural than for parents to love their children.

I think my two children (excuse me, our two children. Sigrid has done all the heavy lifting while I’ve perfected the motionless glide that, from a distance, looks like parental involvement but isn’t) haven’t had it easy with me as their dad. I grew up positive I didn’t want to get married, and thanks to physical and emotional limitations, was dangerously close to making sure that didn’t happen. And then, after marriage, knowing I would be the sum of all of my life experiences, I never embraced the idea of parenthood until the physician in the ER at the Offenbach Stadtkrankenhaus told us Sigrid was pregnant. My grin at that moment was so wide, so from ear-to-ear, it was possible the top two/thirds of my head could have fallen off. That might have been an improvement.

Months later, I ran into that doctor again at the hospital, as Sigrid was being prepped for the geburstsaal (delivery room). He asked me where I was going. When I told him ‘to be with my wife’ he seemed puzzled (I guess German men at that time didn’t do those things, but I never got that memo) and asked why, so I had to explain since I had placed the order I should help with the delivery. The look in his eyes told me that despite the differences in language, he had gotten my point but hadn’t gotten it all, at the same time.

Sometimes when one of the two is visiting (and I always appreciate the visits as I can only imagine how much fun our house is when you don’t live in it anymore-sort of like Hudson and Landry’s The Prospectors (I, too, couldn’t live like that)) I’m always tempted to stop in at the local grocery store that has a sign designating some spaces as “parking for customers with children” just to see their eyes roll.

No matter how far we travel from one another we’re always joined by the same sky overhead and the thread of memories. I give my time to total strangers but it’s the home team to whom I always return at the end of the day. That is, I believe, the way it is supposed to be.
-bill kenny

After the Savoy Truffle....

Meaning well yesterday a colleague offered to bring me back one of those ready made in a plastic bowl salads while they were out doing errands. I have to assume my long ears and pronounced teeth, coupled with my fluffy tail led him him to conclude I am a rabbit. Perhaps all those unopened boxes of Trix gave it away.

I appreciated the offer and when he returned with my lunch I was surprised to see one packager's idea of a salad included pieces of a cold, hard-boiled egg. I guess the idea is to just mix it into the lettuce along with the three grape tomatoes and the cubes of turkey breast, cover with cheese and black olives. I think not.

I like hard-boiled eggs, hot, for breakfast. I've yet to sort out if they're still bad for me or if the pendulum has gone the other way, again, for the third or fourth time and now they're good for me again. I wasn't paying attention. I understand many people like to make hard-boiled eggs the night before they go on a picnic, and peel off the shell and eat them with a dash of black pepper. No more for me, thanks, I'm driving, but you can put them alongside of the black olives as another foodstuff I'm not ever eating.

I know it's unfair and unkind to dislike a person you've never met or a food you've never tried. I regard my attitude on black olives, pumpkin pie and most seafood not so much as an unfounded, ignorant prejudice but as a time saver. I know, in the very depths of my being, I will not like any of those foods, so I just skip them. And if you're making a list, add rice pudding to it-that stuff is ghastly, though I've never actually eaten it. Ditto for hot oatmeal, instant or the kind that comes in the canister with the Quaker fellow on the front. Yeah, I know it's good for me-I've seen the TV commercials-but I can't get the spoon past my chin on the way to my mouth.
Thank you, fingers and hands.

Why couldn't God, or nature if you're not an Intelligent Design kind of person, make the stuff that's good for you taste good instead making brussels sprouts (which aren't on my list only because I'd feel bad about it) taste like I'm not sure what. Why can't we develop a hybrid artichoke that tastes like Godiva chocolate and to whom whould I address that suggestion? Ironically, considering how I've lived for many years, you'd think, based on the number of times I've had to eat crow, I'd have grown fond of the taste.
And, you'd be wrong......
-bill kenny

Will Versus Wallet

Have had an interesting exchange in the last couple of days with a well-meaning, active and engaged fellow- resident of Norwich who is, bless him, an optimist, making him a bookend to my nearly terminal pessimism. I've come by my world view honestly-the most wonderful thing about being a pessimist, I've told him, is I can only be surprised and never disappointed.

He, on the other hand, tends to see issues and people from a 'where they should be' perspective and cheers small steps as opposed to my 'where are they right now and what are they doing?" frame of reference. We're at different philosophic points on a meeting held last night about health care accountability. I mentioned it Monday and (between us) wasn't all that surprised when it turned out to be exactly the meeting I feared it was going to be.

My neighbor, on the other hand, was pleased to reaffirm the stances and dedication to a process that almost produced a state wide health care program last session until the legislators blinked when going eyeball to eyeball with Governor M. Jodi Rell. That those days, regarded as 'tough economic times' at that time, now appear in the rear view mirror of memory as halcyon means (to me) less chance of success in creating universal, accessible and affordable health care. All I came away with from last night's meeting, because I'm a half-full glass kind of a guy, was that this year we can't afford glass and the chances of a new paper cup aren't too good either.

I admire his positivism but I wish there were more reasons to be cheerful. We used to say for some social initiatives and programs that 'we have more will than wallet.' That might be true but it shouldn't have meant we hardened our hearts to those in need of help (sort of why government exists, or should be the reason) but, instead we've had a hardening of other arteries. Our moral and political health is in about the same shape as health care for far too many men, women and children in what is supposed to be the wealthiest state in these Fifty United.

When we have a system of publicly financed governance that demands we choose between firefighters and teachers, when some of us eat cat food to pay heating bills or cut medications in half because we cannot afford to live otherwise, it's hard (for me) to see anything but the grey cloud, but good on you if you can find the silver lining. As we muddle along in the third century of our democracy, it sounds preposterous to suggest we are living in a critical time, especially in comparison to our beginnings, the War Between the States and two World Wars that sandwiched a world-wide economic depression, so maybe, by nature, democracies are always fragile and those who live in them are always in danger. That may be more accurate and truthful.

We need to agree that, yes, making an effort is important but so, too, are measurable results. It does no one any good to create healthcare delvery, or smart development or socal services networks if none of us can afford to pay for them. We can neither allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the challenges we face, nor believe that someone, somewhere, will save us from ourselves.

This is the world we created-we need to embrace it and work to improve it everyday. Talking or typing about making things better is fine-the trick is in the doing, and doing it everyday.
-bill kenny

Your call is (almost) important to us

I had to call a business the other day and run the gauntlet of their voice mail. In a galaxy long ago and far away, businesses had people who answered telephones, made on the fly decisions as to whom to route each call and transferred the caller to someone, somewhere else, within the corporation and the wheels of commerce rolled forward triumphantly.

Then we came up with toll-free numbers and Corporate America was inundated with a deluge of phone chatter. Everyone had a number--I can recall to this day a jingle exhorting me to call "Eight Oh Oh, three two five, three five three five" though for what purpose I cannot remember. No matter, were I to call it now I'd be asked in what language I wished to proceed and then advised the voice menu had changed and to ....my eyes glaze over.

If whatever it is I'm calling about were so simple I could resolve it by leaving a message for an unknown person who is never going to call me back, I'd have saved myself the trouble of calling and resolved the issue myself. And while I appreciate the reminder by The Voice (and how much money do you suppose the persons who do the voice work for the voice mail systems in this country make? Is it a flat rate, a piece rate or do they get royalties? How'd you like to be Allie AOL, 'You've got mail!") that 'this call may be recorded for training purposes' whose training?

Certainly not mine as I've never learned to NOT try again and continue to attempt to speak to a human being long after the last light has been turned off in the last USA based call center. And we certainly cannot be training the folks hired to finally respond to a phone call after the caller has mashed the "O" on the touch tone phone at least a hundred times and you discover the person on the other end and you did not go to Bangalore High School in East Punjab together as you had so fervently hoped, as that was the only way you could ever hope to get that charge for a cigarette boat the spa valet ran up on your charge plate while he was parking your car removed or to excise the purchase of that platinum CD set of Slim Whitman and Frankie Laine duets that person you used to date nailed you with as a 'now you'll never forget me, you fink!' going-away present.

Like we don't already feel like we're lost in the shuffle now we have to have faceless bureaucracies, private and public, dutifully assure us our calls are important while simultaneously denigrating us by having us audition like seals with a horn in the circus and if we're lucky, we don't get a fish for our troubles but a human being who is so impressed by our perseverance and the immediacy of our plight they put us on hold because our calls will be answered in the order in which they are received and, oh no!, the hold music playing is a Slim Whitman and Frankie Laine duet, recorded aboard Crockett's cigar boat.
-bill kenny

Leaf Blowers as true Americana

Many of us refer to the World Series as the Fall Classic, while, for others, autumn is a time to watch professional football on televisions every Sunday, and Monday, and occasional Thursday (come to think about it) while high school football happens under the lights on Friday nights and college football is reserved for Saturday afternoons, and evenings and, seemingly random Tuesdays evenings.

None of those are what Autumn in New England is all about. What defines the season here is gassing up the old leaf blower, slapping on the mickey mouse earphones so the roar of the engine doesn't deafen you like those Iron Maiden shows of the early Eighties used to do (still have the tee-shirt, do you? Run for the Hills indeed!) and then you set to work gathering up the falling and fallen leaves, getting them together in large piles and placing them into your compostor (I have two of them in the corner of the backyard along with the active biologicals that I combine with the cut grass and moisture to produce the enriched matter I work into my tomato patch the following spring) and there you have it----

Or not.
Most people with leaf blowers have the gasoline powered versions, because they're just a lot louder than the electric ones and you can go anywhere with those bad boys, and they can blow any and all leaves they find on their property out into the street or onto a neighbor's property, because somewhere in an obscure codicil of the Bill of Rights or an addedum to the Articles of Confederation grandfathered into the Constitution is a provision about your right to arm bears and to be obnoxiously loud, befoul the air with gasoline fumes and poison your relationships with your neighbors.

We just had a beautiful Columbus Day weekend here in Southeastern Connecticut. I'd say it was like like a second Indian Summer, but I suspect the operators of one of the two huge Native American owned casinos within fifteen minutes of my house would take exception so I'll skip it. What I wish the rest of us would have skipped was the Saturday and Sunday battle of the blowers. With the Red Sox and Tampa Bay on Saturday evening and the Patriots playing in the late afternoon of Sunday, many of us could have ourselves a time reminiscent of The Cat in the Hat Comes Back as neighbor A blew the leaves over to Neighbor B's yard and two hours late Mr. B avenged himself on Family A. And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.

Leaf blowers are uniquely American-no one else has them and most people in whose countries I've lived or visited cannot comprehend having a device as pointless and wasteful as a leaf blower. In many ways, it's more perfectly symbolic of the United States than the bald eagle and is the closest thing an appliance could ever come to representing the entire Presidential election campaign.

Except that it wouldn't work, because all successful sports in the USA have television contracts, I can see a new national sports craze where people in golf carts drive around (blindfolded? why not?), talking on a cell phone while a partner in the shotgun seat operates a leaf blower trying to coerce a small animal, perhaps a ferret dipped in iridescent paint (Fox Sports' experiment with the blue glowing puck some years back has made an indelible impression upon me) into a shoebox that closes down with a satisfying snap on the little furry fugitive and points are awarded for the number of passes it takes to herd the ferret into the box.

Of course, everyone would be so busy competing for a place on a local team that leaves might fall unnoticed for decades, renewing the earth and returning to it some of the nutrients and minerals we have thoughtlessly plundered from it in our evolution from the ooze to the cheeseheads and foam fingers we have that differentiate us from the lower primates and others on this orb. And like snowflakes, and leaves, no two of us are alike.
-bill kenny