Comes with four paws, like-new condition

Driving into work yesterday (yeah, I know; I have no life-your point is acknowledged), I passed a fellow (I assume; it was early, a bit nippy and lots of outer clothes were called for) taking a dog for a walk. My Uncle Jim divided the canine kingdom into two types, Sooners (those who'd sooner s*it than eat) and dogs. In my (so far) 57 years on this orb, I've had no reason to revisit his position, so I don't know what breed this animal was, except small and hairy.

Actually, it wasn't much of a walk, as the person was carrying the dog. As a parent of two children, I recall when ours were more like lurchers-that's the larval stage preceding toddler where the child stands, wobbly-legged but upright, and the mass and momentum of the body dictate in which direction the tyke heads, with just about no control whatsoever. If you've been a parent, you know the feeling of your heart in your throat as your little one goes down in a heap and you hear that intake of breath as they suck in as much air as their lungs can hold to fuel the scream that sound like an air raid siren in Coventry or Dresden. Of course, you pick your child up-you can barely hear their shrieks until you have them next to your ear.

I don't think the dog was crying so I don't get the point of picking the animal up. It has four legs, a low center of gravity and seems to be designed to traverse the planet using his paws. Heck, Tillman uses a skateboard for crying out loud and doesn't depend on bi-ped power to do much else, I suspect, but open the dog food tins. Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry at the dog-I'm not angry at anyone-but it's against the nature of things, to my mind, to not let natural systems be natural.

Having said that, and invoking the spirit, if not the intellect of Whitman (Walt, not Lowell) and Rousseau (Jean Jacques, not Danielle), I would admit I've tried the 'let nature be nature' argument when the snow falls or when the grass in the yard is need of a machete whack or two to clear a path to the garage. My wife, no less devoted to Rilke than am I to Davies, offers me the 'you had better do' glance in place of her once so welcome 'come hither' look and I realize that being a Sooner isn't just a demarcation of the Animal Kingdom.
-bill kenny

The Ghost Inside

The calendar says for those of us in the Northeast and, at least theoretically, most of the rest of the nation, this winter of our discontent is drawing to a close. Next weekend is the start of Daylight Savings and in less than two weeks the swallows return to Capistrano. The Boys of Summer are already the rounding into shape as the Guys of the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, and not a moment too soon, so this first weekend of the third month of the first year in the second decade of the twenty-first century should, I hope, be the start of better things.

I know it's been a rocky time for many of us for quite some time and you have to look hard to find reasons to be cheerful (if you don't like baseball I'm not even sure it's possible, but to each her/his own, I suppose). I'm thinking another thing that separates us from many of the other travellers here on the Big Blue Marble is our capability to make ourselves and one another happy and willingness to do so. I cannot claim to have ever seen two ocelots doing knock-knock jokes, and can't recall seeing a robin red-breast do a prat fall to cheer up the other birds in a tree, and I've watched a lot of Animal Planet while staying at a Holiday Inn Express.

Dylan offered that it takes a lot to laugh-it takes a train to cry. My mother, world-renowned mom of six of the most thick-headed and strong-willed children to ever walk the planet, demonstrated her smartness to us all when, without consulting the Internet (there was life before ether. Who knew?), she told us it took more muscles to frown than it did to smile. We believed her because she was our Mom and it didn't hurt that she was also right, but how did she know?

So we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up faster (and yeah, Michael, I know where I swapped out one consonant for another and why). I always wear trousers with pockets so I have someplace to put all the fun. We can promise to not miss what we do not have and enjoy our now in the now and look towards tomorrow with hope and not dread. "I'm carving 'em up through the dust in your town. Crawling over rubble just to sound me out. Tend to wonder why?"
-bill kenny

Watching or Selling the Wheels?

That sound you may be hearing over the ka-ching of cash registers is the late John Lennon turning over in his grave. Or not. DISCLAIMER: I am someone for whom the music of the Fab Four was a huge part of my growing up soundtrack and who never, ever, warmed to John Lennon's second wife.

Every time as I've mellowed (that's what the kids call it, right?) in recent years and think I'm ready to finally be mature enough to stop blaming Mrs L to the second power for the failure of my Yankees to execute a suicide squeeze, the lack of pony rides for my birthday or for unwanted late season snow fall (good luck finding that hand, btw), something happens to harsh my buzz.

This particular something, however, may be more of an Everest than a speed bump. John Lennon, who was acknowledged as one of the worst drivers in the annals of automotive history and whose peculiar design desires and decorative tastes are reflected in the customization of his own Rolls Royce is hawking from beyond The Great Beyond, albeit obliquely, a Citroen DS3.

This has become quite a hot button item in the UK as more than some are exorcised at what they see as exploitation and have strong feelings on where the blame should be placed. Lennon's second son, Sean (the one NOT in the photo alongside of Dad, above; that's Julian), has found himself in the difficult position of attempting to defend his Mom against accusations with whom he may actually agree.

As someone who has a near-fatal predilection for self-destructive understatement, let me say right now, "Having just seen the ad, I realize why people are mad" is right up there with 'C'mon Abe, a night at the theater will cheer you up!.' But it is an improvement, I suppose, over initially characterizing complainers as 'peasants' and 'a$$holes' (Son of A Working Class Hero that Sean is, I find the deployment of the sobriquet peasants tres droll. May I have my DS3 now?).

Will the world end over this? Not likely and probably not desirable (depending on how the rest of the day goes). It's a bit unseemly, I concede, watching all of this go on. "Once a thing's been done, it's been done. So while there's nostalgia for the Sixties and Seventies, looking backwards for inspiration-copying the past, How's that rock and roll? Do something of your own, start something new."

Certainly advice for the ages, on the par with "You better run out of here. I'll close my eyes and count to ten and then I'll come find you." Nice voice byte from Norma Jean, by the way. Does Elton know? .

-bill kenny

Arriving Somewhere but Not Here

I relocated my office yesterday. Technically, because of my advanced years and pronounced tendency to dodder, I was overwhelmed with volunteers to help, so numerous that my primary function was decorative rather than functional which widened the gap between promise and performance to a chasm.

I've been in a ground floor office for the last ten years, I realized as the very last boxes of stuff were packed, taped up and made ready for transport...up five stories in the same building I've working in to the 'newly, renovated' (some eight years ago) office space that is, literally, eighteen paces from where I had my first office when I returned to the Land of the Round Door Knobs in the fall of 1991.

Moving, if nothing else, helps keep us from becoming totally possessed by our possessions. I have difficulties letting go of anything, people, problems, paperwork. I work to hold on to all of it for as long as I can, though even I was hard pressed to figure out why I saved a half page of activities from August of 1998. If I believed in reincarnation, and had it in my wallet, I could almost rationalize it, but in a desk drawer, under a bag of finger puppets we bought me many years earlier in the Ikea in New Haven, CT?

Many people think of Ikea as the Swedish furniture store, though I'm not sure in the Twilight's Just About Last Gleaming, much of it is actually made at or near Trondheim. I'm thinking more a half a world away where labor, materials and energy prices help keep costs low and shareholder's returns high. Anyway, Ikea has a great cafeteria with excellent, and cheap, eats and, when you know where to look, a killer assortment of finger puppets. I have a set of ten animals, that actually look like the genuine article, though much smaller to fit on your finger.

The first thing I did after we bought them, was put them on, in preparation for the drive home. A word of advice on finger puppets, from Ikea or anywhere for that matter-you need to have someone with you. You need her to put the second set of five on your other hand-it's really hard to put finger puppets on when you already have some on. But the real reason you need someone is there has to be a person to shrink down in her seat and stare without blinking out the front window as traffic slows to a crawl on 95 North because it was built in 1957 when the rate of flow was 20,000 cars a day and now it's more like 20,000 cars an hour while you amuse yourself and other motorists (you believe) by leading the finger puppets in song.

Actually the other drivers smile at you the way they'd look at Ted Bundy hitchhiking as they frantically try to switch lanes. Almost all singalong songs succeed with finger puppets except rounds, such as Row, Row, Row Your Boat, unless your shotgun is willing to help out on the bridge and she's usually too busy hissing 'everyone is watching us!' in a tone of exasperation that can only mean a frosty evening when we get back to the house.

That means the finger puppets end up in the bottom of a desk drawer, where now, having been rediscovered, they'll enjoy a brief renaissance before being brought home to disappear forever into the basement. I've developed a belief in an afterlife that has room for a Heaven and Hell, as well as Limbo, and a basement. As an example, while many of my tribe of Sixties Kiddies would argue as to the final destination of Richard Milhouse Nixon, I believe (this is religion, after all) basement is the most logical place.

It took less than two hours to pack up ten years and move it. I spent the rest of the day confronting souvenirs of the paths I've wandered in the last decade (a calendar page from 2003 with a red circle on November 14th is yet another unsolved mystery) and now having to decide what to do with them after successfully postponing that until now.
All my designs, simplified/And all of my plans, compromised. I wouldn't be amazed to find the reason for what I do for a living buried in a desk drawer I'll open later in the week, and even less so when I don't recognize it.
-bill kenny

Righting a World Turned Upside Down

When Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington’s Continental Army at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781, history notes that the British fife and drums at the ceremony played a popular tune of the day “A World Turned Upside Down”, in many respects such was the state of the empire of King George III.

Upstart colonists, angered by a monarch who “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent …swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” declared their independence in the summer of 1776, proclaiming the function and purpose of government was to protect the ‘uninalienable rights (of)…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ Two hundred and thirty-four years later, how much happiness can we stand and how much can we afford?

Instead of government at all levels working for us, we toil to pay for it. Pick a program, be it local, state or federal, and work through its budget trying to understand how much is overhead and how much is initiative. We’ve been living hand to mouth in Norwich, and elsewhere, for too many years, we’re now eating our own fingers. Something wrong has got to be righted.

Last week there were news stories on the 1.49% increase in the Rose City’s grand list—an increase that not only does NOT keep pace with the consumer price index, but is possibly overstated in the aftermath of last year’s reevaluation.

The meeting the Saturday before last of the City Council and the Board of Education led even a casual observer like myself to conclude both sides, because of circumstances beyond their, and our, control, are trying to make jet fuel from peanut oil and that no good can come from this effort, no matter how well-intentioned it is.

The Land of Steady Habits, as Connecticut likes to be called, has picked up some terrible fiscal habits most especially unfunded mandates of all kinds used by Hartford to stick municipalities with the check, while special interests celebrate preferred treatment and businesses and the middle class flee our border in droves.

We can no longer, literally or figuratively, afford a bloated state government that invented a form of magic book keeping, securitization, so scary that even voodoo economists fear it because it will, unchecked, shred what’s left of Norwich’s quality of life, be it pavement or police, education or emergency services, in an attempt to save itself at everyone else’s expense. No more top-down dictates and trickle-down mandates. Not a moratorium-an end, period. Turn the page and start again.

Government needs to be repurposed to best support those programs delivering the best quality and lowest cost public services for our collective good. The public trust must stop being the public trough.
-bill kenny

One of America's Great National Past Times

Another Winter Olympics is history and I watched about the same number of hours on the plethora of NBC stations carrying them as Greece, the home of the original Olympics, has Winter Games' Gold Medals (okay, a little more). By now, the entire world knows Canada beat the USA in both women's and men's hockey by, respectively, 2-0 and 3-2 (in overtime) scores. I've yet to read/hear whispers about the men's team drinking beer and champagne and smoking cigars in celebration of their triumph after the spectators left the arena, fueling speculation that not only may Marie-Philip Poulin be twice the man Sidney Crosby is, she has a better smile.

Someone explained that 'hockey is the national sport in Canada.' I don't know if that's an official designation though, whatever the case, I think it's nice and only fitting, in the interests of being good guests that Canada achieved the gold medals in those disciplines. They had to host the rest of the world for the last two weeks and not everyone is as well-behaved and as self-effacing as their neighbors to the South, us. I guess, technically, we are Canada's Mexicans in much the same way as we are Mexico's Canadians. (This is where we could join hands and sing a verse or two of Richard and Robert Sherman's opus, but don't do it near me, okay?)

That got me to wondering what national sport we'll decide is Russia's in 2014 when they host the Winter Olympics. That sound you hear is my mind boggling. And what about US, not just us, I mean the USA. When will the summer Olympics add NASCAR? Why shouldn't Andorra's Olympians have Go Daddy fire suits? Or how about Monster Trucks? Why settle for Greco-Roman wrestling when there's WWE? And don't tell me we're the only country on earth with dogs running the length of docks leaping into the air and landing in the water. I feel a Wide World moment coming on.

Considering the dollars, petro and otherwise, changing hands for the rights to broadcast the Olympics to the farthest corner of the universe where, I suspect, the reaction is often like it was in my house for the last two weeks ("I didn't know the Pro Disc Golf Association channel was an NBC affiliate!"), we might seriously consider throwing the competitions wide open (except for baseball, of course, which is NO longer an Olympic sport while beach volleyball is. I'm thinking someone saw photos of Dave Ortiz and Lynda Street in bathing suits and the race was run...) so put those thinking caps on.

I'm holding out, of course, for that most national of all of our past times, bailing out Too Big to Fails with other people's money. The problem, as I understand it right now is lining up sponsors. No worries, we've got four years to square this away. What's that? Beer Pong? Brilliant!
-bill kenny

And After it Rains, There's a Rainbow

Today marks the start of the third month of what once was a New Year-so much for that oft-advertised petty pace about which we've heard so much and done so little to overcome. At least March, as an acquaintance suggested the other day, is a 'full-sized month', which, with a brother born in February I thought of as a wry, though also unkind, observation.

In Norwich, it's a full week of organized meetings and some less formal arrangements as well (I'm thinking about a Wednesday morning soiree that seems to set direction for a more publicized later in the week meeting, but that may be just me), as Rose City Residents, long time and more recent arrivals, practice working together on a variety of advisories, boards, commissions and committees to make enough small differences that, together, make a big difference for each of us who lives here.

Having said that, there's an early morning (= 8:30) meeting of the Executive Committee of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments in their building up in the Norwich Business Park. Closer to home, as in at City Hall tonight at 7:30, it's a regular meeting of the City Council with a relatively light agenda, though I'm looking forward to the progress report by the 21 West Thames Street Advisory Committee.

Tuesday evening at six, though they're not listed on the city's municipal website (I really like the new logo but I don't quite understand the sizing on the home page), are special meetings of the Norwich Public Utilities Commissioners and the Sewer Authority in the training room, of the NPU building at 16 South Golden Street.

Wednesday afternoon at five-thirty in the Central Office of the Norwich Public Schools, across from the Norwichtown Green is a regular meeting of the (Kelly Middle) School Building Committee. When you review their February minutes it's heartening to read that the weather we've had for most of this winter hasn't adversely impacted the progress of the construction which is still forecast to be completed by February 2012.

Something disquiets me as Norwich is struggling to craft a fiscally responsible municipal budget (not that we're alone in that struggle) for 2010/2011 (unlike a certain Nutmeg state that shall remain anonymous). In light of evaporating revenue streams and escalating operating costs which demand sacrificing more substance than perhaps any of us can afford, how do we hope to support the new capabilities the middle school expansion project will provide our children when we're already eliminating all world languages and other curriculum that would seem to be essential in the 21st Century? We're not talking nice-to-have, but, rather, need-to-do.

Thursday night, at seven in the Planning Department conference room (in the basement of 23 Union Street) is a regular meeting of the Inland Wetlands, Watercourses and Conservation Commission.

And at seven-thirty, maybe, in LaStella's, perhaps, might be a regular meeting of the Downtown Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, whose members' appointments expired in January. Their February minutes, required by Public Law 08-3 to be posted within seven days to the city's website are NOT on line (the most recent, and that's a stretch, are from June 20th of last year), though the January agenda is on the website. It's hard to help push the car out of the ditch when you don't where the car or the ditch is. I applaud the idea of a Chelsea Arts District website-perhaps a link to it, right here, on the city's website is helpful?

Saturday has me a little confused. According to the municipal website, the workshop with Almost All of the City Council (AAotCC) on community and economic development is cancelled though that's not what I understood last Saturday while in attendance at that workshop.

However, the initial convening of the Charter Review Subcommittee will be in the Central Fire House training room from noon through 2 PM. Here's the 'know before you go' item, the charter itself, for your review and consideration so when you attend the hearing on Saturday to offer ideas and comments, you and the sub-committee have a shared frame of reference. The fuzzy feel good generalities I remember from the fall election about alleged shortcomings in our charter will never get addressed, much less repaired, if we aren't specific and honest with one another. Saturday is a good time to start and once we do I hope we realize making things better is a hard habit to get into and even harder one to break.

We can only elect so many people to the City Council or the Board of Education and maybe you lack the time to be on a formal committee or advisory but each of us can be a JetMec, Kathleen, Sofee, Keith, Andy, Joanne, Marterese, Michael, Bonnie, Dr. Robert,Teacher Charles, Dennis, Chris, Karen and so many others across this city. We don't need fair-weather friends, we need everyday people doing extraordinary things to make a difference for one another and for all of us.

"And after it rains, there's a rainbow. And all of the colors are black.
It's not that the colors aren't there. It's just imagination they lack.
Everything's the same, back in my little town."
-bill kenny