Sing this all together (see what happens)

I'm wondering if we might not have better and (or?) more productive meetings, from the local municipal level right through to hearings in the Senate or House chambers if we staged them as musicals. If we were Singing the Dolphin Through, perhaps our actions would make more sense, or then again, perhaps not-but they'd be more entertaining. At least here in The Rose of New England, Norwich, CT , where we, on more occasions than we'd like to admit, seem more like a cast party from a Gilbert and Sullivan production.

On tap for tonight at 6:30 in the DAV room of the Buckingham Memorial (near the Otis Library) will be an effort to resuscitate the Greater Norwich Veterans Council. I heard it about in an email from State Representative Christopher Coutu and imagine if you need more information, you can contact him. Our international adventures in recent years are producing Sailors, Airmen, Soldiers and Marines who are returning to CivLife with very different needs for reintegration than any generation since Vietnam. If you are a veteran or have an interest in how we treat those who serve in our defense, this could be worth your attention be it for you, a family member or your city.

Tuesday night at seven is a meeting on the Commission of the City Plan that among other topics looks like the next chapter in the discussion on the Bentley Avenue "Sober House" that started out below the neighbors' radar (but didn't stay there) as well a request to start the bonding process to buy the 'old' Simon Ford property (and take it from the tax rolls) to build a new police station we don't have the money to construct (yet. But that Powerball investment could pay off at any time. Gluck auf!)

I'm still trying to understand why, at their last meeting, the City Council went into Executive Session to talk about this property purchase. As I understand the rules for Executive Session, everyone has long known this is the #1 site for the new police station and that we can bond up to 800K without going to a referendum (and we sure aren't planning on doing that, are we?). So, with all the elements already known, why the secrecy of Executive Session? There is no other location and 800K is all the money we have. I'm assuming we did out of force of habit. As I read the CCP agenda there is NO provision for public comment except during public hearings and there are NO public hearings listed.

Also Tuesday at seven (which is a theme), it would appear there's a meeting of the Downtown Neighborhood Revitalization Zone (all of whose members are, I assume, in the Witness Relocation Program because they're not listed on the city's website) perhaps in the Otis Library and perhaps not because aren't any recent meeting minutes or agendas. Helps explain some of the questions I've always had about goings on, and lack thereof, in "Down City."

At seven (there's a surprise, right?) in room 206 of City Hall, is a regular meeting of the Personnel and Pension Board, whose efforts, in light of the continuing economic turbulence, are, I'm sure, appreciated by those whose investments and pensions those efforts protect (btw, minutes of your meetings on the city's website would not only be nice, it's also the law).

The City Council meeting, normally on Monday has been rescheduled for (wait for it) Tuesday at seven because of the President's Day holiday and starts with an informational session at 6:30 on an item that shows up as resolution five on the agenda. I mentioned earlier the purchase of property for a new police station. On the council's meeting agenda as a Petition and Communication #1 is a different approach to policing from the "Community Committee" (I googled "Ferris By the River" and came up with zilch).

Oh yeah, quick critique: the draft minutes of the 2 February City Council meeting are superb!! The rendering of remarks delivered by two aldermen, under a suspension of the rules early in the meeting, is one of the finest editing jobs I've ever encountered. Not one scintilla of cloying self-pity or feigned injury in getting caught red-handed by the local newspaper (which was really what both speakers were all about), clearly evident to anyone watching the council meeting, remains in the draft at all. A casual reader would conclude we had just another night in the Rose City Circus.

At 8:30 Wednesday morning it's a meeting of the Southeastern CT Regional Council of Governments, whose agenda isn't posted, but whose minutes from special meetings with Senator Dodd and Representative Courtney are. "Regionalization" and "Sharing Resources" are the 2009 fiscal buzzwords--and these folks have been walking the walk while the rest of us have been learning the talk for a long time. Sorry we took so long to get here, and thanks for waiting.

Also Wednesday morning at nine o'clock (okay, a different Wednesday and a different o'clock), in the meeting room of the Dime Bank at 290 Salem Turnpike is a meeting of the Norwich School Readiness Council (Children First). I guess the name encompasses both the agenda and the accomplishments, but it would be nice to have some specifics, though none are presented. I am quite taken at a listing of past and future contributors; I'm not sure how they know what they know, but I hope their confidence is contagious.

Thursday, at 5 in Room 210 of City Hall is a regular meeting of the Historic District Commission. I know the members are our neighbors, but wouldn't it be cool, just a little bit, if they held their meetings in costume, sort of as an homage to the Semiseptcentennial (without the Tall Ships, of course), complete with powdered wigs? Just a thought as you review the draft minutes of their 22 January meeting.

Later Thursday, at 6 in their conference room at the Ice Rink is a regular meeting of the Ice Arena Authority. Perhaps due to global warming, neither minutes of previous meetings nor a copy of this meeting's agenda are on the city's website. Were those polar bears I just saw drinking a soda? One of them was smiling!?! Good Lord, did he eat Bill Cosby? (The line between the South Pole and South Park grows ever thinner, as I well know.)

And coincidence being the way it is, the chairperson of the Norwich Ethics Review Committee which turned in its final report to the City Council eleven months ago, and sat with the alderpersons in September in a workshop that accomplished nothing, has been tireless in pressing the City Council to do something about this report. Meanwhile, we've all spent recent weeks reading local newspapers as the 350th Anniversary looked less and less like a civic celebration and more like well, I don't know what, but it's rather messy and hard to pronounce. Perceptions of reality are reality, a professional porcine wrestler once told me and I believe him.

That being the case, perhaps because of, or maybe despite that, Thursday night at seven the City Manager and the City Council will hold a workshop, seemingly with one another in room 335 of City Hall (the big room with the lousy acoustics where no one on the Sachem Fund Board last month could hear any of Lottie Scott's misgivings. How will Claire B. be able to hear anyone sing her 'Happy Birthday'? ) for a discussion of the Ethics Report. Congratulations Mr. Larry G on never giving up.

I'm sure whoever attends from the Ethics Review Committee will be helping a grateful (if admittedly reluctantly grateful) Council. To me, in light of the effort made by the Ethics Review Committee already, this workshop is like deciding because you need to lose weight, I should take up jogging (and you look marvelous, really you do). "Sun turnin' 'round with graceful motion.We're setting off with soft explosion. Bound for a star with fiery oceans. It's so very lonely, you're a hundred light years from home."
-bill kenny

And a parade of the gray suited grafters...

I can remember as a kid we had off from school on both Lincoln's Birthday and on Washington's Birthday (we also heard from the sixth graders 'they don't celebrate Lincoln's Birthday in the South because of The War'). Children of the Baby Boom, and part of the cohort that was in the first part of that boom, I'm not sure all my classmates understood which 'the war' the sixth graders were talking about.

We had, after all, learned to duck under our desks and turn away from the windows during the air raid drills we seemed to have on a daily basis. I wasn't that old when something happened in Cuba, or near it, that scared the willies out of the grown-ups and we started having drills at school almost every day. Still, I didn't understand what war "the South" was angry about until catching a TV show (I think on ABC) on Saturday afternoons about the The Civil War. It turned my world upside down.

I think we're all similar in that we are, each, the center of our own universe, and we assume the world as it is, is how it's always been. The idea that some of my classmates in Mrs. Hilge's 3B would have been considered furniture a hundred years earlier struck me as surreal. As I grew older (not matured) and I learned how prevalent and historic the slave trade was, and in some places still is, and how much carnage the so-called Civil War created (fought for many different reasons as I was to learn), the more profound became my admiration for Mr. Lincoln.

Who didn't already admire the Father of Our Country, George Washington (though I never did figure out who the mother is)? The chopping down of the cherry tree, the crossing of the Delaware, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen'. It was amazing to me as a schoolchild to have had two Presidents born in the same month with such a profound impact on our country.

And now, see how we run. We have a Monday holiday to honor all of those who have been President to include Warren Harding and Millard Fillmore and John Calhoun. I'm sure each, well and lesser known, has had a hand in making us who we are today. So far, all we've elected to the Presidency are men, and it was less 120 days ago that we, as a nation, finally broke the color line which is, and was, historical unto itself.

I still believe I live in a country when anyone can grow up to be President and that, more than any specific person who's ever been President, is why I celebrate this holiday. It's not a reason to go to the mall and clean up on the post-Valentine's day stuff at Victoria's Secret (in light of those outfits where would she keep anything secret?). It would be nice to spare a thought for the tens of thousands of our best and brightest young, and not so young, men and women we have across the globe in places that make the news every night (like Iraq and Afghanistan) as well as places whose names we probably struggle to pronounce who protect, among other things, the rights of daydreamers to imagine they, too, could grow up to be President.
-bill kenny

I'm driving a big lazy car rushin' up the highway in the dark

Today is Valentine's Day and while I appreciate the history that the link provides, I'm struggling with the meaning which remains probably more personal and individual for each of us than anything else we do or ever have in our lives.

I have an unfair advantage in appreciating this. I had a chance this week to attempt a little skating away on the thin ice of a new day leaving my bride of thirty-one years, Sigrid (K. geboren Schubert) to sit, somewhat ashen-faced squeezing the life out of the armrests of a chair in the Cath Lab on the first floor of WWBackus Hospital, as she braced for the next installation of Wild Billy's Circus Story.

Self-absorbed ba$tard that I am, it wasn't until the following day that the heartaches I have caused the love of my life really hit me. We live in Norwich, CT, in a home we once shared with our two children, one now grown the other thinking she is already grown (and she's closer than I'd like to think she is) far from where either of us grew up, her far more so than I.

I'm from a couple of hours down the turnpike, New Brunswick, NJ (whose current Mayor was my classmate from 3rd through 8th grades. Sometimes it's the journey and other times the destination, I guess) while she came of age in Offenbach am Main, a city in its own right in the shadow of Frankfurt am Main, (West) Germany (it's hard to realize the number of years that have passed since we no longer needed to make that distinction.)

And of all the places she or I thought we might have been had we stayed married, where we are now is not one of those places. We met and married in her country at the height of the Cold War (that raged without waxing or waning even as GI Joe shook hands with Ivan at the Elbe River as World War II ended not with a bang but a whimper) and I never really gave any thought to living anywhere else.

We, or at least, I, lived without plan and for the most part, without care. In many respects, I guess, we are the Ant and Grasshopper of married couples and she has always defined who I am and whom I could ever hope to be. Knowing that she will, and always does, love me despite the egregious stupidity of life with me, ranging from not knowing how to properly close the hallway closet door after hanging my jacket up to the kinds of vapid thoughtlessness that only a spouse can commit, is all the incentive I need to be who I am and do what I do for my livelihood (that can't really be a surprise to the folks who pay me, can it?) and with my life (and you thought I was kidding about being the Thorn in the Rose of New England? Check a phone book for a roster of those who will tell you otherwise).

I've always admired Robert's note to Elizabeth Barrett, "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. And I wasn't alone in my admiration--in both of those instances I wished for half the eloquence that each of those men showed to the women they loved, because I feel that way about my wife but lack the gift to express it.

And awakening with a start in of Backus Hospital Wednesday near midday, checking my watch (because that's a reflex of old deejays) and hearing her ask me me 'do you have someplace to be?' I realized, "I woke up in the darkness scared and breathin' and born anew/It wasn't the cold river bottom I felt rushing over me. It wasn't the bitterness of a dream that didn't come true/It wasn't the wind in the grey fields I felt rushing through my arms. No, no, baby, it was you/ So hold me close, honey, say you're forever mine. And tell me you'll be my lonely valentine." Happy Valentine's Day, my love.
-bill kenny

Can You Tell a Green Field from a Cold Steel Rail?

I had someone the other day, I'm sure with the best of intentions, tell me they liked to stop by and read this stuff, but I needed to understand 'people who tend to read blogs don't really like to read.'

That's okay. I think people who like to write blogs don't like to write, and especially don't like to write for people who don't like to read. Somehow that makes us even though I am rather odd.

He suggested radically shortening everything, condensing it and reducing it; sort of like haiku for IMs or Twitter. He is of the opinion we, as the crown of creation in this food chain, are much akin to goldfish, with memories and attention spans that last all of thirty seconds. And when I read how we whine about our environment, our economics, our national and international relations (or you pick a subject), it's certainly popular to feel that way. Except that doesn't make it right. So stop being a lost soul swimming in a fish bowl year after year. Never mind Wish You Were Here. We are here now. Be. Do. Soon enough we'll be gone.

Here goes: it's Friday the 13th and exactly ONE month from now we'll have another one.
"What have you found? The same old fears."
You said keep short and punchy. I did. Now go play in traffic.
-bill kenny

So now we'll call him A-Roid?

Just in time for spring training, the greatest time of the year for any baseball fan (except for Opening Day, because for just a moment anything is possible. Just ask Tampa Bay) Alex Rodriguez has been shamed into coming clean, literally.

It's been everywhere, except the Home Shopping Network, in the last three days, A-Roid is a cheater (technically was a cheater) using steroids while a Texas Ranger from 2001 through 2003. His conversation Monday night with ESPN Peter Gammons was a little more self-serving than I would like, but I have to be honest, I've never warmed to A-Rod in pinstripes.

I never really cottoned to Roger Clemens as a Yankee or to Randy Johnson, either. For a guy who owns zero % of the most storied sports franchise in the history of the planet, I'm very persnickety as to who wears my colors.

I'm not even sure I actually care if he, or any of these guys are, or were, juiced. All sports are more entertainment of the bread and circuses variety now than a Sport with a capital "S". The line between MLB and WWE is thin at best, and I'll give the WWE operators this: they never pretend to be anything they're not.

To underscore how screwed up this all is, Curt Shilling, the blowhard and/or savior of the Boston Red Sox (another guy I don't like but for three reasons: he beat the Yankees as a Diamondback (twice in the same Series); he beat the Yankees in a miracle start to get the Red Sox to the Series and he announced when he was a free agent he'd sign with anyone, except the Yankees) wants all the names of all those who were tested (and popped positive) in the earlier part of this decade to be publicized and I agree with him.

I'll also point out that a recently-retired teammate (of Curt's, NOT mine) Sean Casey, raised a really good point when he wondered how Sports Illustrated who 'broke' this story Sunday afternoon, got their hands on the secret and confidential results. The dirty and honest answer is because somebody sold those results to the magazine for thirty pieces of silver, or whatever the going rate is these days.

So while we're all wringing our hands and tsk-tsking A-Roid (I like that, I really do) for being a 'bad role model' (is there an endorsement deal for a bong riding on this? I think not) which is NOT what he signed ten year contracts to do, let me make this niggling point about how cheaters never prosper. Yes, A-Roid is a disappointment as are all of the professional (and other) athletes who use chemistry to better themselves. However, Sports Illustrated and all practitioners of checkbook journalism are no better than the freaks whose antics they report.

What if Damon Runyan huffed? What are the chances of that and what would that mean for two hallowed American traditions? We'd need the intercession of the Madonna--no, Alex, the other Madonna.
-bill kenny

All these empty places

I'd like to think it's a Valentine's Day special, except that shouldn't happen until Saturday and today is Wednesday, so I guess I have to admit it's a down payment on a life lived a lot faster and harder than the Manufacturer's warranty stipulated.

I'm in William W. (stands for woo-hoo! Sorry WaMu; we hardly knew ye) Backus Hospital this morning for a heart catherterization. When I met my physician, Dr. N. last week, via a referral from the nephrologist, Dr. C., he explained the background and the reasons for why I'll be somewhat more uncomfortable for awhile today and, best case scenario, for the next couple of days.

I'm a science experiment, of sorts, this morning as millions before me have been, but not as a plaster of paris (why is that stuff called that, anyway?) volcano filled with baking soda. I asked the doctor if the catherterization were actually needed since I did cry watching Beaches, though probably for a different reason than everyone else. (Wind Beneath My Wings is right up there with The Rose as a Bette-Midler-Song-I-Wish-Never-Existed).

I attended a class Monday afternoon on what happens this morning since I do so love coming attractions at the drive-thru. In my case, we're all better off with surprise as an ally. The longer I sat in the lab Monday and got a preview, the more I eyed the exits and the distance to them.

I'd tell you I'm a little concerned for the squirrels to whom I feed peanuts out of my office window because I don't know what they're going to do today, except as we both know, I am so lying it's pathetic. I'm a little tight right now and, with apologies to Robert Frost (Jack's dad, judging by the look of him), I hope I have miles to go before I sleep. And maybe it's the fact that it probably won't be the Sleep of the Just, should it happen, that most bothers me in all of this that has my sweat pumps operating at max efficiency right now.

Genetic inheritance being what it is and lifestyle helping give it the rest, between my father and with my own eyes wide shut, I have, as the doctor explained last week, ALL the indicators he looks for when analyzing stress test results (I studied, I really did). The only silver lining in a canopy of grey sky was that I had stopped smoking three packs of cigarettes almost thirteen years ago. That I had been at it, however, previously for over two decades, as I followed his explanation, pretty much cancelled out the 'hurray!' part of that equation.

I'm planning on being here tomorrow--as I've planned on it everyday for almost fifty seven years, even before I was aware of much more than my fingers and toes. And I'm intending to write something (you may not share my enthusiasm for what I do and that's understandable), but I may work to write ahead just in case stuff goes South Wednesday morning.

It's been a bit of a wrench to share with my brother, same Dad same genetic inheritance, that I could be a shape of things to come for him. Or for me to look at my two children and know that they now know both of their grandfathers, "Opa" with whom they grew up in Germany, and Dad's Dad who died before they were ever thought of much less conceived, both died of heart failure. And that, through the magic of that same genetics, they may have more than just my smile in their DNA.

Haven't ever contemplated my own mortality before, which, egotist that I am is sort of surprising, even to me. When your life flashes before your eyes and it's lots of people you don't know, or know well, it's a little too late for course correction. Just happy to be here, I think, (even if no one else is too happy about that), and I hope as dark as this ride may be today, and I did appreciate the candor of the explanation last week even though I realized later I sure didn't act like it, if life is a raffle, I hope to continue to be present to win, or at least play for a tie.
"The days slide by/Should have done, should have done, we all sigh."
-bill kenny

Two of Five

Maria Muldaur sang decades ago, 'It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion' itself a cover of a decades old song by The Swallows (who knew butchers were so popular even while so many sported 'I Like Ike (and center-cut pork chops)' buttons?). And it was she I thought of the other night while flipping through the TV stations (I'm a hunter, not so much a gatherer, when it comes to video offerings).

Don't remember which cable channel it was but it was two people, turns out they were sitting in the settee area of a bowling alley (in the background you could see a lane and full rack of pins (is that what that's called? You know what I mean). She had way too many teeth for her mouth and he must've been working on an illegal smile (there was NO swimming pool anywhere that I could see) because he was just too happy.

It was time for the wrap, where the on-air talent (there's a kind description) summarizes what we just saw (gives you an idea of the regard in which they hold the viewers when they feel the need to tell me what I just saw, unless I just ended up here on this station in which case, it's wasted because I didn't see it), urges me to come back the next time and says goodbye, the more memorable, the better.

She was pretty straight-forward and I have no idea what he spoke about except it ended with "It's on like Donkey Kong" at which point he stood up and walked away from the camera, towards the lane, grabbed a bowling ball and flung it down the alley where he didn't knock all the pins down. At no point did the camera move-to include zoom out (or in) tilt or pan. Leaving me, the viewer, to stare at the TV with a blank space on the left side of the screen where he used to be in the foreground while she sat there, screen right, looking into the camera like Nipper on the RCA Records label and boy, did all of that seem awkward.

Later, actually hours later, I realized I had heard the phrase before, in a TV commercial from one or the other Manning Football Brothers, or Football Brothers Manning (or some variation thereof), though I don't recall the product (and it's left a void in my life) and, thanks to the Internet, I now know what it means. I can shout it out myself, loud and proud, confident in its meaning while throwing down with my peeps (whatever that is), if I had any (which I don't).

As opposed to Donkey Kong, I'm a big fan of bowling, though I don't actually bowl. I love the idea of rental shoes designed to be so ugly that no one is tempted to steal them, and what other sport lets you drink beer while playing? Chess? I think not, Bobby Fisher.
-bill kenny