We May Make It through the War

At a moment so long ago it reads as if it should start 'in a another galaxy, far away,' on this date in 1941 (= before 73% of all people on earth right now were born), Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked by the Imperial Armed Forces of the Japanese Empire.

Their goal, a pre-emptive strike that would eliminate the United States' armed might from the Pacific theater so that Japan's Co-Prosperity Hemisphere ambitions would sweep everything before them, wasn't realized and the USA, awakened from the slumber of self-indulgence and indolence, reinvented its own industrial base and used it as the fulcrum to overwhelm the Axis powers of Japan, Italy and Germany.

In less than four years (and uncounted killed, wounded and missing in action on all sides later), the Japanese home islands as well as massive amounts of Western and Eastern Europe were in rubble and ruins. The map of the world was to change shape, if not size, for decades afterwards as ripples from the pebble in that pond travelled the surface of the globe altering, if not improving, the definitions of nationhood and redefining the aspirations of people and cultures.

If, as some social historians have argued, World War II marked the emergence of the United States as the first among equals in the community of nations and signaled a new direction and level of involvement by the (relatively young, in comparison to other, established, nations) North American democracy in the rest of the world, we must, if we are true to ourselves as Americans, see the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, as, in many respects, a continuation of a conflict whose roots are nearly seventy years old but whose themes are as timeless as the foundations of our Republic.

While today we should pause to remember those in the US Military who lost their lives on "A Date that Will Live in Infamy" let us remember as well, those half a world away whose sacrifice and separation from their loved ones is just as real and as profound as for those of the "Greatest Generation" who secured our liberties with their lives a lifetime ago. We owe all who serve our truest measure of devotion and gratitude.

We must resolve, because of their sacrifice, to double and, if necessary re-double, our efforts to maintain the position of the United States as the world's best hope for all seeking a better life for themselves and their families around the world. We have lived for too many decades as the last resort to abandon our dreams and our hopes now.
-bill kenny

All My Favorite Places Reduced to Parking Spaces

It's not coincidental that during the holiday-gift-giving season, there'd be so much attention this week on the municipal meeting calendar to revenue streams and money matters. The good news on revenue streams, if you have yet to go out and purchase waders, attend tonight's informational meeting at 6:30 in Council chambers and you'll discover there's no need to buy them as the stream doesn't come to our ankles.

Unless and until we stop not talking about this 800 lb gorilla in the room, almost anything and everything else we do in any city across Connecticut, and, I suspect, elsewhere, is a waste of time. The City Council meeting itself, which follows at 7:30 has a report on a visit to Wuxi, China, by former Congressman Rob Simmons. The report mentions that the region has 3,000 years of history which, in light of our own 350th anniversary in 2009 and the huge boost in tourism that was promised, equates to how many Tall Ships, I wonder?

At 8:45 Wednesday morning in the Planning Department's conference room at 23 Union Street, there's a regular meeting of the Rehabilitation Review Committee but you'd be hard-pressed to know it by checking here on the city's website (Pointless is a word that best describes most of the note). Of course, if you wish to get both confused AND angry at how badly our city government shares information, you can go here.

Note that every appointment to this committee has lapsed and if I gave you a Bajillion dollars for every meeting's minutes from this calendar year posted online, my wallet would never leave my pocket. Moment of Zen: I spoke with a member of this committee Saturday at how poorly maintained the city's website is and he agreed. So, between us, who is the bigger dope? That was a rhetorical question, but thanks for the thought.

At 4:30 is a special meeting of the Housing Authority at 10 Westwood Park, though since they normally meet the second Wednesday of the month, I'm at a loss as to why this is a special meeting. Unless, it's because for the first time I can remember, there's actually information on the meeting's agenda, though a check here on the city's website turns up zero minutes from any previous meetings so I'm not sure how optimistic anyone should be that we've turned a corner on compliance with state law when it comes to postings.

The Norwich Baseball Stadium Authority has a regular meeting at six in Room 210 of City Hall. And if the previous minutes are any judge (here's October; I couldn't find November), best be on time because these folks don't dawdle at their meetings.

Also at six, crosstown at the Wonder Bar, it's a regular meeting of the Greenville Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, whose October minutes mention a November meeting though its minutes aren't available which is only fair since the June minutes were accepted as the first new business in October, it says, but those minutes aren't posted either. Yeah I know, every penny of it....

At seven in the Huntington School Library is an organizational meeting for the Norwich Public Schools Foundation.

I get confused easily, I admit, especially when there's a listing for a 7 PM meeting of the Public Safety Committee (and a local newspaper tells me it's at the Yantic Fire House) but then I click on the link, here, and the notice says the meeting is next Tuesday (the 14th) and is at the Laurel Hill Fire Department. Symptom or problem? Chicken or egg? Sekt oder Selters.

At 7:30 Thursday morning in their offices at 77 Main Street is a special meeting of the Norwich Community Development Corporation, though I'm discomfited by 'special', since the agenda should state what the 'new business' is because a special meeting can only be on items articulated on the agenda (= 'new business' isn't specific enough). If you're going, there's an update on the Intermodal Transportation Center that should of interest and value.

At 5:15 in Room 210 of City Hall, it's a regular meeting of the Mohegan Park Improvement and Development Advisory, that's actually last month's meeting rescheduled. The agenda includes (I assume) an attempt to permanently close a road that folks (it's said) use as a shortcut through the park. I remember the firestorm at a city council meeting, directed at an alderman who asked this, but where is the traffic study to back up this assertion? With the road closed all summer, where did this speeding traffic go instead of through Mohegan Park? We should have a reason for everything we do and this might be a good time to start insisting on this. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. If there's data to support this decision to close the road permanently, make it public and verify it. If there's no data, either do the research or drop the proposal.

And this Saturday morning, starting at nine in the East Great Plains Fire Department, is the first in a series of citizen forums with the Mayor and members of the City Council, so bring your concerns, criticism and suggestions and be prepared to talk and to listen. My mom used to tell us as children we had two ears and one mouth in that proportion for a reason. It's amazing how wicked smart Moms can be and how slow their children often are.
-bill kenny

Stop Worrying about Shopping Days

Never mind the calendar or the circulars in this morning's paper. Yeah, it's the Second Sunday of Advent, which means how many more shopping days (I'm no better at subtraction than I am at long division) until Santa Claus is born? The link says this is the Sunday of Peace-I suspect ONLY if you don't have a mall and a COSTCO near you.

I'm no longer worried as I'm on to a bigger countdown. And even though this is the time of year I should be putting the credit cards in the freezer to cool them, not this year-because with a little luck the light at the end of the tunnel will be (finally!) an oncoming train. For those down in the mouth about the lack of job growth, crushing national debt and the world of crazies out to get us that seems to be having a membership drive, rejoice and kick back.

Did you buy a 2011 calendar yet from one of the temporary joints in the local mall? I know, sixteen bucks for Taylor Swift or Kittens in a Blender or an official San Francisco Giants datebook. Here's the funny part, we're NOT even gonna need the whole thing!

According to We Can Know.com (I resisted the temptation to download their toolbar; I ain't here on business, babe, I'm only here for fun) and circle the date, they figured out that Jesus is returning on May 21, 2011. Ayup, one hundred and sixty-seven days from now (one day sooner if you're reading this in Guam or anyplace on the other side of the International Date Line) and it's time to put out the Big Light. Those holding out for a leap year and one more day, well, better luck next--hang on, we won't be able to say that, I guess.

Just in time to save some big bucks at the holidays. All those electronic gifts I'm getting folks that come with those ninety day guarantees? I'm skipping the extended warranties you buy at the check-out. I won't need 'em! By the time the coffee-by-the-cup brewer starts behaving like a barissta on crack, it's Rapture Time! And who cares if your LG Blu-Ray DVD player is on the frizz-the Lord Is Come, dude, and you will definitely have more to worry about than watching Narnia.

It's more or less an all your eggs in one basket situation if you think about it. If all of this End of the World As We Know It and I Feel Fine stuff actually happens on the 21st of May, there's going to be some very long faces at Citibank and American Express because, and you can do what you want, I'm not making that monthly payment and I'll bet I won't be alone. What are they going to do?

There's a bumper sticker, but I'm not sure if putting it on your car is analogous to the blood of the lamb on the doorjambs of the Israelites in the Land of the Pharaoh or if we announce your license plate, you have ten minutes to call us here at K-MOO Mineola where you could be a winner in our grand prize drawing radio contest. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, and I'm not sure buying billboards to tell us when He's coming back is part of that whole mysterious ways package or not.

Now, if it happens that IT doesn't happen, I'm thinking we should start now to get our stories straight for those explanations to the credit card companies. I'm telling you, those penalties for missed payments will make you yearn for the Red Sea to just swallow you up.
-bill kenny

Giraffe Necks

This story starts over here and ends up waaaay over there. And while I'm telling it today, it happened yesterday but started the day before. Sorry.

I forgot to stop at my market (yeah, sign says "Bill's" in big red letters on the front of the store; the manager says if he catches me tagging one more time I'll need surgery to remove the spray can) to get a salad for my next day lunch. Actually, I thought I had a project I would be working on through lunch (it's not like I can't afford to miss a meal), and, somewhat chagrined, discovered I was done before the supper bell chimed.

Usually I eat lunch at my desk-I can catch up on other work (I'm assuming my boss is reading this, so don't make that face when I type stuff like that and stop muttering 'butt shark') and organize the afternoon. But here I was hungry and with no lunch. About a three minute hike from the office is a snack bar with a couple of tables so I figured I'd give it a try.

I wound up sharing a table, after asking (I wasn't raised in a barn), and as you may have suspected I have a finite supply of people skills, so small talk at meal time requires effort and is rarely worth it. I stick to tall talk. I thought I was okay since the free chair was at a three-person table and the two guys shoveling down streak fries with cheese and chili seemed fascinated by the utensils and I hoped for smooth sailing.

Except (unseen by me; I've now spent another ten minutes looking for it in the mirror), somewhere on my forehead, is written 'include me in your most private conversations! Nothing is too embarrassing to not be mentioned!' (I have a high forehead, to allow for capital letters) or at least I assume it's written there, based on the discussion I walked in on.

The pair were comparing notes on personal grooming-not that either was what anyone might regard as hirsute, if you follow my drift. Yeah, that was a good guess but try lower. LOTS lower. As the discussion continued about the going price for this service and the frequency of maintenance visits, I stared into my tomato salad and balsamic vinegar dressing like the keys to the universe might be at the bottom of the dish and shifted uncomfortably in my chair as if--never mind why. Talk about creep show.

It was the longest lunch I may have ever had and in terms of awkwardness even more so. Too long in windowless booths of broadcast radio land (because when people reject you by changing the dial you don't see it or feel it) have left me unwilling to make eye contact with most people in close quarters. I haven't lost anything so I have no reason to look for it especially in another person's face.

I found myself listening to the semi-scandalous soundtrack of an adult movie without having any idea as to whom either of the actors might be. I wasn't sure what could be worse-discovering I had been included as carry-on conversational luggage by two guys I didn't know or (gasp!) by men whom I did know and who now knew I knew their ultimate, intimate grooming secret.

Years later (or so it felt), they gobbled the last of the steak fries (and no, I, too, never understand how you run out of chili before you run out cheese and fries) and pushed their chairs away, stood up and bussed their own trays as they headed back to work, wherever it is people worry about giraffe's necks are employed. I don't think it's at the zoo though before lunch I might have thought otherwise. I couldn't be positive they were really walking funny or if I just wanted them to be walking funny out of sheer meanness (and maybe sheer is a poor choice of words).

-bill kenny

World Cup Soccer Has Balls

I may have mentioned at various times that I am fond of football-actually what we here in The Land of the Round Doorknobs call 'soccer.' I do NOT, as has been rumored, call in 'well' to work on days in past World Cups when the Deutsche National Elf or Team USA have been engaged in matches, but that's beside the point. When you stop by my desk on those days, you had better have a really good reason to be talking to me, like, I don't know, the building is on fire, Claudia Schiffer is auditioning tonsil hockey partners, something on that magnitude.

That's why, and I appreciate George Vecsey's admonition, I will sulk dammit about Qatar hosting the the 2022 World Cup. And, for the record, me and Sepp Blatter will NOT be going shoe shopping anytime soon (wow! That link is a little extreme, yipes!). Okay, now I'm over it.

There are over six billion really good reasons why the International Federation of Association Football, FIFA, should attempt to spread their sport to the farthest corners of the globe (and based on the note,"Editing of this article by new or unregistered users is currently disabled until December 8, 2010 due to vandalism", I guess 'carrying a grudge' transcends language barriers.) and between now and 2022, we'll hear each them at least twice.

Qatar is the smallest country to ever host the World Cup. They themselves have never in the history of the World Championships qualified to play in a single World Cup match. The temperature in June and July in Qatar averages 96 degrees, Fahrenheit, with highs in excess of 120. You can look this all up here. Did you know the FIVB will hold the Women's World Championships there next week? Brought to us by Coopertone suntan lotion and London Fog raincoats. Spike! Spike! Oh, serve first! Sorry.

All over the world, since yesterday afternoon, footballers have been watching this clip and asking themselves, WTFO? The good news is that no one on the pitch during this match will still be playing in 2022, except maybe for the New York Red Bulls or FC Dallas in the MLS. Which will work out well for David Beckham who may not be still playing by that point though it's even money he'll be mayor of Los Angeles.

The bad news is that when the world gets to Qatar and 2022, assuming both of those things actually happen, US soccer fans will still be as ignorant of the world's game as we are today. But hopefully we'll have learned some manners-and behave at least as civilly as the epitome of sportsmaship, the French National team, did in South Africa.

Look at it this way, the 1.1 million Qataris (rhymes with Ataris, I believe) have a decade to learn what "hooligan" is in their native tongue. And the Nivkheret Yisra'el BeKaduregel doesn't have to worry about where they place in their UEFA qualifying matches because the only way they'll be going to Qatar is if hell freezes over and they skate from Tel Aviv.

-bill kenny

And the Beards Have All Grown Longer Overnight

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," offered George Santayana who was not the program director at Clear Channel who pioneered the "classic rock" radio format (though ADHD as so many of us are, you can be forgiven for thinking he was). Welcome to more of the same, but remember, different is NOT better, just different.

It's not even a month since the elections and we're back to same shi(r)t, different day. I grabbed this link out of thin air, though there are thousands of reports you could sample. If the tenor and tone of the quotes from the 'leadership' on both sides of the aisle inside the story don't depress you, how about the 'reader comments' that too rarely transcend 'hanny nanny doo-doo' in terms of logic, eloquence, command of fact and lucidity.

Pay attention! We have over a hundred thousand uniformed men and women in harm's way around the globe so Capital Clowns of every stripe can give one another wedgies on TV talk shows. We, and they, should be neither amazed nor amused by this circus, especially looking in the center ring at the pile left after the donkeys and elephants dance.....

And lest you shake your head in dismay, allow me to be the ghost Christmas Past (even though it's the first day of Chanukah): we did this to ourselves. At some point, we walked away from Politics is the Art of the Possible espoused and embodied by Everett Dirksen, Howard Baker, Mike Mansfield, John Chafee, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller and all the other tall poles in the Big Tent concept (wirklich? Otto, du alte bengal!). Talk about cold comfort for change.

We discarded the art of the deal and decided not only that "half a loaf is better than none" was an idea not fit for RINO or DINO, but, given half a chance, we'd rather burn down the whole damn bakery than put up with any more crap on a cracker. Take that Marie A and hope to heck, beyotch, that AJ nails you with banana-cream-otherwise you'll starve before we'll feed you.

We're going to spend (pun intended) the next two years alternating between Howie and Betty as we pretend this is our legislative/executive interaction process at its very best. For the sake of variety and the illusion of progress, we can alternate the direction of the circles we'll all be heading in. "There's nothing in the street looks any different to me, and the slogans are replaced by-the-bye. And the parting on the left is now parting on the right and the beards have all grown longer overnight." Just in time for those mall Santa jobs.
-bill kenny

When We Had Imaginings

"Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire." And for the previous two evenings this week, residents of Norwich have had an opportunity to help start a blaze that will, hopefully, illuminate a path for the city, not just for its school children but for all of us, to last into the next century.

The Board of Education working with LEARN, the regional education service in Old Lyme, has started on the reinvention of the Norwich Public Schools system, Norwich Education Excellence for Today and Tomorrow (NEXTT), where everything, from school facilities through grade configurations to curriculum scope and reach are on the table for examination and evaluation.

It was last spring, as the Board struggled to fill funding gaps that resulted in the closing of two elementary schools and the relocation of the alternative high school and the adult education center, that provided the impetus, and urgency, to this reinvention effort.

The economic situation then dictated our schools could no longer do business the way they had-and the forecasts for this budget season are for even more turbulence. The hard fact is we cannot afford literally or financially to do business the way we always have. Adapt or die-no one said life is pretty. Baby steps are now out of fashion-all strides must be undertaken in seven league boots.

Norwich takes great pride in its schools and in the achievement of its students and, as measured by the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT) and progress reports that underpin No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the city has continued to be successful even as the costs to achieve that success continue to escalate. We have learned well the lesson that a public education doesn't merely educate a public, but also creates one, as our schools have become the centerpiece of their neighborhoods looked at the way the fingers of the hand look to the thumb. We may have thirty plus languages in our community, but we all only have one school.

A hundred and fifty years ago, in the Industrial Age, mill operators looked for rivers to power their factories. Fifty years ago, in the Age of Technology, companies sought rail and highway connections to ship raw materials and finished products to and from markets. Today, in the Knowledge Age, with the convergence of technologies and applications, business, be it government, art, commerce or science, can be conducted from anywhere and a successful education becomes essential in creating agile, life-long learners who can constantly, and consistently, adapt and adopt.

If this doesn't sound like the school house we attended as children, that's because it isn't. In our day, schools and the communities they served were separate worlds, but today, everything, in many ways, has become everything else. Our children enter schools designed for a different world and a different time where events happened sequentially and not simultaneously; where rote learning was group learning and progress could be precisely mapped and measured.

Today's students bring different learning styles that require flexibility of instruction and classroom interaction as a minimum. What else is needed will be discovered as all of us across the community sit together, and with educators and other key members of our city, to build the next school system-not so much from bricks and mortar, though that is important and will remain a community cornerstone but from skills, tools, techniques and opportunities that both reflect and simultaneously shape the world in which our children and theirs will live.

The two meetings this week were a start and there will be many more along the way until we see what we need to do and how to best accomplish it. There will be a lot of hard work because tomorrow cannot be built in a day, but rather, will be lived one day at a time for the rest of our lives. We all want it to be tomorrow today but none of us want it to start at this moment.
-bill kenny

PS: The Happiest of Birthdays to my sister, Evan Hubner. When you see her today please wish her the happiest of natal anniversaries and if you don't know her, assume the next person you meet is she and be nice to them. It'll get back to her, trust me on this.