Less Cuddle More Huddle

No one has asked me to do this, but it's important someone makes the effort. I herewith apologize for all the phucking stupid college football games that have been on television since shortly after the last of the Thanksgiving meal leftovers were consumed. I have been assured by people who know how to read TV Guide and other trade publications that we are nearing the end of this season's broadcast schedule (for the next two hours or so). If there's NO game on the tube right now where you live, go outside and look at nature. Someone will be with you shortly. You're welcome.

If you're under the age of forty it may be difficult to believe this, though it's true, but at one time there were hardly any 'college football bowl games' and point in fact, they all happened on New Year's Day, went off with a factory-like precision one after the other that reminded many of Fleet Week traffic in a Times Square brothel. Now, the list of colleges NOT playing in 'post-season' bowl games is half again as short as the other way round.

I'm not happy with the commercialization of the traditional bowls, the Sugar, the Cotton, the Rose Bowl, et al and the way the sponsor's names are worked into the title. I have no memory of a Fiesta Bowl from back when I was a kid and stuff like the Go Daddy Whatever It's Called Bowl would be better off ignored, except, as Dylan noted, money doesn't talk, it swears.

And now, thanks to the miracle of regional television sports networks, you don't even have to have a winning season to be invited to a money generator like the "Depends Adult Protective Underclothing" Bowl in East Squeegum, Arkansas (you think I jest?), featuring the runners-up of the southwestern division of the Mid-Atlantic and Hyperactive Conference, meeting again for the first time, their traditional rivals from the Dumpster Division of the Southwestern Mid-American and Parts of Rhode Island Association.

My favorite part of many of these telecasts is admiring the creative ways the telecast's technical director and the camera operators develop to NOT show the forty-seven thousand empty seats in a fifty-one thousand seat arena because neither of the teams on the field are located in the same time zone as the facility and their fans are too hungover from end of semester and end of calendar year carousing to walk upright much less travel to the game.

Relentless optimist that I am, and believing in convergence of technologies as I do, we're only years away from being able to stage any athletic contest at whatever level you choose. As an example, the Wabash University Rabid Wombats squaring off against the Vatican Curia Cardinals in competitive mumblety-peg, without any actual human involvement of any kind, on your Wii, Xbox or PlayStation, followed by highlights from NBC's The Biggest Loser.

Perhaps you'd like to see Leonidas take on Patton's Fifteenth Army, two out of three falls on the Plain of Jars in between segments of Project Runway? Brought to you by the folks in your hometown who bottle Coca-Cola! Coming right up! Give us a chance to finish loading the graphics packages and then hit reset, blood. We be jammin' now. Ba na na na...Hey!
-bill kenny

Westward Leading

I walked to the corner yesterday afternoon to post a letter after I came home from work. With the shortest day of the year in my rear-view mirror, I enjoy the opportunity to catch the (very) last rays of the (extremely) late afternoon sun before it disappears and another winter's night descends.

I expect to encounter Alfred Hitchcock as I turn onto Sachem Street and walk the block and a half to the post box by the beauty salon (the look of despair in the hairdresser's eye as I pass is disquieting) but I am always disappointed. I think of Alfred, "Al" I like to call him now that he's dirt, because as the shadows grown longer all the crows, and (I imagine) the other birds as well, start gathering to settle for the night. In the cold winter air their calls carry for miles and if you pass the wooded area they have chosen for the night while there's still daylight you can see hundreds and more crepe shrouds and shapes on branches shifting as they make themselves as comfortable as they can get.

I passed a discarded Christmas tree, trunk first stuck standing in what remains of a snowpile (after the flash thaw this past weekend, the chilly temperatures have returned) and realized today is the Feast of the Epiphany and for many, like that tree, the end of the Christmas season. Those tidings of comfort and joy sure had a short "use by" date, eh? The season came and went so fast the bananas are still green. Must have been all the myrrh.

As a child I loved singing "We Three Kings of Orient Are" making up in volume what I lacked in melodic convergence and content. I'm not sure how much those around me enjoyed my rendition though they certainly seemed appreciative when I stopped. Around these parts, it's all over for the shouting but in many cultures 3 Kings Day is savored and celebrated with far more than pitching the pine to the curbside.

Perhaps, as so many of us wanted to believe as children, if the Magi had brought Frankenstein, instead of frankincense, as one of the three gifts for the Christ Child, the holiday season might have outlasted even the deepest of snow piles. And given the gift of gold a real run for its money.

-bill kenny

I Own My Own Shoes

Let's suppose you and I went bowling this afternoon. We get to the center and prepare to bowl a few lines, but before you start I walk to the far end of the alley and just before the pin set-up I erect a curtain across the lane. I then invite you to bowl. You search for the perfect ball realizing as you look down the lane you can't see the pins, but with the best of intentions and to the best of your ability, you let the ball fly. It rolls down the lane, under the curtain and you hear a crash.

A moment later, I come out from behind the curtain and shout "three!" You stare at me for a moment and then ask if I meant you had struck three pins or that you had missed three pins. I don't actually answer you but shout again "three!" and then I insist you bowl again. This time, I invite a diner having coffee at the snack bar to stand behind the curtain and report on your success. Again you bowl, again the ball goes under the curtain and again you hear a crash. This time a different number is shouted to you but you still don't know what it means. To complicate matters, I'm keeping score and you can't see the tally sheet.

After awhile, your enthusiasm for bowling starts to wane. You have no idea what your score is, how well you're doing or how much longer the game will go on and decide you've had enough. When I complain you're a quitter, you tell me you it's impossible to bowl without seeing the pins. I conclude you are a sore loser and vow to never go bowling with you again, even if you do own your own shoes.

I was thinking about bowling without seeing the pins earlier this week as the discussion warmed up about a performance evaluation by the Norwich City Council of its sole employee, the City Manager. By charter, the City Manager is the city's Chief Executive Officer, who serves at the pleasure of the City Council. The challenge in successfully developing a performance evaluation may be in determining just what constitutes pleasure. And how often that definition needs to be adjusted.

Through the years, though you might not know it from looking at downtown, times and circumstances have changed. To help put that into perspective, remember only one of the seven alderpersons who hired the current City Manager thirty-seven months ago is on the current City Council. It's highly possible, if not probable, that the performance goals and measurement standards of the City Council who did the original hiring could be (quite) different from those of the current council, to say nothing of the financial circumstances in which the city finds itself.

A performance review should be a road map of where, together, a City Council and its City Manager should be headed rather than a souvenir book of where they've been. The Council and the Manager should develop an ongoing on-the-record dialogue which facilitates (and documents) a candid exchange of desired capabilities and demonstrated capacities that define mutual expectations.

Every successful enterprise creates an environment of excellence in which members know what success looks like in terms of personal achievement even as the organization benefits from professional enhancement. No one should ever have to bowl without seeing the pins. "I'm on your team, but I never know when you're not."
-bill kenny

Tell a Story of a Future that's Void

I used the clerical error in our Sunday weather (ordered: December winter; delivered: February thaw) to walk across Norwich in a semi-serious inventory inspection. Walking down Washington Street, through downtown past the Mercantile Exchange and Howard Brown Park, near the courthouse, over by the Wauregan Hotel, alongside the Otis Library and the former YMCA and up the hill past St Joseph's School, I was bewildered by yellow plastic bags strewn every place. There were many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them.

My first thought was, over the holidays, we'd been carpet-bombed by a telephone company since the yellow bags had phone directories in them. I feared they must each weigh a ton or more because it was obvious they hadn't moved from where they had landed. Sunday was a zero gravity day (thank you Kurt Vonnegut!) so I could pick up the bags easily and pitch them from sidewalks and walkways in front of houses and businesses onto porches and front lawns.

For the owner of the very agitated German Shepherd the size of a horse near Cliff Place, sorry for irritating your dog-though I think just breathing was enough to get him started. I'm kidding a little (not about the dog). Obviously, we had gravity on Sunday. For whatever reason(s) no one felt any reason to pick up debris on the sidewalks and streets where we live. And I don't mean to beat up the phone book folks.

How come we can carry a full Styrofoam coffee cup or a cold drink container but the moment it's empty, it's too heavy to hold and ends up as litter? Happens everyday and someone has to be doing it. It's just not you or me, right? Nope, not us. I have a fantasy that only those old enough to have watched a man walk on the moon can have: just beyond the range of the camera at the Sea of Tranquility is an empty cooler and all around it are empty bags of chips and beer cans. Because that's how we are as a species.

Maybe we are why we can't have nice things. And maybe we should remember what Mom said about picking up after ourselves, while we still have ourselves to pick up after. Waste not, want not.

-bill kenny

Living One Word to the Next

As we continue to amble towards double digits in this new year, we're easing (more or less) into the Norwich municipal meetings calendar with a low profile start to get the year underway.

Tonight at 7:30 (before the meeting of the City Council says the agenda of the City Council) is a report and presentation by Derrell Wilson on his opportunity to "see the president of the United States as a delegate of the 2010 US Senate program." In the course of the actual meeting will be Mayor Nystrom's State of the City address with, perhaps, more granularity for the downtown economic development initiative approved in November.

A further glance at tonight's agenda indicates the City Council will initiate its first ever annual performance review of its sole employee, the City Manager, will consider modifications to the provisions of the volunteer firefighter's relief fund and now that the house at 21 West Thames Street is torn down, may disband the advisory committee who managed that project.

Wednesday morning at 7:30 in Room 335 of City Hall is a Team Norwich informational meeting-this time with what the agenda calls a "LEARN Presentation" (it's actually part of the Norwich Public School's NEXTT School Design). Not sure what to make of the "economic development strategy" note at the bottom of the on-line page. Happy to see we're posting the notice of the meetings-not sure where the minutes of the meetings are going but it doesn't seem to be anywhere near online.

Speaking of the Norwich Public Schools, there's a regular meeting of the School Building Committee (overseeing the expansion of Kelly Middle School) at 5:30 Wednesday afternoon in the Kelly library.

According to the municipal website, there's a meeting Thursday at 5:30, your guess on location is as good as mine, of the Downtown Neighborhood Revitalization Zone (NRZ). No, I don't know why there's no "D" for Downtown in the acronym just as I can't tell you where on the city's website, you might find current or even recent meeting minutes. I assume the NRZ is a critical player and significant component of the effort to revitalize Chelsea, but the Feast of the Assumption is in August, so you do the math.

Thursday night at seven in the basement conference room of the Planning Department at 23 Union Street, it's a regular meeting of the Inlands Wetlands, Watercourses and Conservation Commission. I've been unsuccessful in finding anything more recent than October (special) meeting minutes, which are right here.

Saturday morning from nine until noon in the Occum Volunteer Fire Department, it's the first Mayor's forum of 2011. Bring some coffee, your questions and an open mind for some give and take discussion. I've got a thermos, so I'm one out of three which isn't too shabby in a universe where sometimes nothing works and sometimes nothing shines. See you at something?

-bill kenny

Thoughts of You Warm My Bones

There's far too much of 2011 to go to already be defeated by the scale and scope of what could be. I mention this because I ran into someone yesterday morning (when the year was still in the single digits in terms of hours old) who was already fretting about how things he has yet to do may turn out and how he might never be able to compensate for misses of shots he hasn't taken.

It's hard to jolly up someone who's that committed to being sad, it really is; and one of the things I've promised myself for this year is to stop wasting my (finite) energy on helping those who do not wish to be helped. I came home after encountering this Eeyore type person and caught up, via Facebook, with a Norwich neighbor and his wife as their baby (only days old) was facing a health challenge. I was struck by the upbeat tone of his typed words on the screen as he shared his concerns.

He and she expected only one outcome and in the course of the day that proved to be the case and I smiled, reading his update later, thinking about how blessed that little one is to be raised in a family with a relentless sense of optimism about what tomorrow and the day after tomorrow may hold. There is a difference between seizing the day and embracing it and everything that comes with it, good and bad. Perhaps this should be the year we each make it a point to find that out for ourselves. Let's get lost, me and you-an ocean and a rock is nothing to me.

-bill kenny

Nothing Changes on New Year's Day

The last day of the old year wasn't half bad weather wise here in the middle part of the upper third of the Original Thirteen (Southeastern Connecticut. I just wanted to see how tortured a description I could write. Not too shabby, imho). It got pretty close to 45 F which will never be confused with Spring, but for this time of year around here isn't too bad. I'm hoping our luck holds through summer realizing I shall be disappointed.

If you partied, here we are and welcome to the end of your first hangover of the year. One of the nice things about not drinking alcohol anymore is that the looking out the window today at the first day of the next year isn't as dog-awful as it's been in decades past. It wasn't that I drank that was the problem. It had a lot more to do with the fact that I swallowed. Even now, the sunshine bores the daylights out of me but I'm also deathly afraid of the dark, hence my dilemma.

So clear-eyed and empty-headed, I look out on the first day of our new year and can already see the gap between the promise and the performance at every level-personal, professional and political. I think I even got them in the correct order, for me at least. Your mileage may vary.

Did you make resolutions? And have you already broken one or more of them? I don't think the Guinness Records people keep track so you can safely claim whatever you wish and however you will. Of course, escaping your own judgment will be harder to do since you know best your own tricks and traps.

I have hopes for 2011-not resolutions. I hope this year to be a better person to people I've known already in my life and to whom I have been less than kind. Unless they're a$$holes, in which case, no deal (I threw that just in case someone who has taken advantage of me thought I was going soft in my dotage and wanted another bite at the apple). I'll also add that I'm not going to allow the past to color the future and recognize I cannot be forgiven for sins I've not yet committed.

This is Day One. We can go anywhere and do anything. We just have to decide and then agree on what anything will look like. Let's go.

-bill kenny