The Other Bear in Berlin

I have no idea how long the American Forces Network radio affiliate in Berlin (West) Germany was called 'The Bear and the Best' but in all the years I lived on the cutting edge of the sword of freedom (should have told you to pack your waders!) that's what it was known as. And no, we're not wandering down (yet) another byway of my misspent youth, adulthood and dotage auf deutsch, though, based on our history together you'd be correct to assume that was the case. Besides, AFN Berlin signed off another lifetime ago, lebe voll!

Today is as good a time as any to mark the passing of another bear (lower case deliberate) in Berlin, Knut, the hard-luck polar bear this past Saturday. Knut, say the press accounts, led a short and sad life (of sorts) rejected by his mother at birth (his twin, also rejected, died). Knut was fed by hand by his trainer, Thomas Doerflien, who predeceased him in 2008.

His survival made him wildly popular (okay, not so much with PETA), inspiring tributes such as this one, whose use of the theme from Dallas utterly confounds me until it's followed by He's So Fine (note the similarity to My Sweet Lord? Zoology, current events and musicology all for the same low price, now how much would you pay? Doo-lang, doo-lang).

It's too bad Knut couldn't read because I'll bet he'd have gotten a real kick out of the order of the headlines in this report, though if the story is to be believed perhaps he'd have been more aptly named Randy. I'd always wondered about his Mona Lisa-like smile, perhaps I now have my explanation. And if that bothered you, let me share a site, courtesy of the always Pulitzer-Prize worthy wizards at People Magazine where tawdry and tasteless collide.

If the aliens arrive tomorrow, I want to hide all the Silly String, Chia Pets and everything published by what once was called Time-Life. Or they'll eat us hair and all. It's a fine line between Knut and cute and now I've crossed it. "Who would think a boy and bear could be well-accepted everywhere, it's just amazing how fair people can be."
-bill kenny

I Don't Mind the Sun Sometimes

Last week was Sunshine Week, no particular SPF was needed or recommended, but, in truth, every week should be Sunshine Week. If you're not seeing the level of transparency in your government (national, state or local), you need to speak up until joined by neighbors and friends who'll speak out to get it changed. When silence equals consent, too much has been surrendered.

This morning at nine, in the Rose City Senior Center on Mahan Drive it's a regular (I guess) meeting of the Senior Affairs Commission who last met in October of last year (they usually break, it seems, from November though March).

At 7:30, is a regular meeting of the City Council in City Hall and I'm delighted to see Children First Norwich on the agenda for a presentation (I'd hope) on what they do and how they're doing at it. Of course, having a website that does some/part or all of that would be nice too, but I can't have everything it seems. Speaking of which, I very much like the proposal to close off the connector street between Washington and Broadway that gets abused a lot by people as a shortcut, to facilitate the expansion of Monument Park (which is and which will always (sadly) be, needed.

I'd suggest for the Council's consideration, in keeping with idea of remembrance, working with the Public Safety Director, consider eliminating ALL parking on Washington Street that borders the Chelsea Parade. Almost fifteen years ago, two children were struck and killed by an automobile on Washington Street as they attempted to cross the street. At the time a lot of fine words were said about making the Parade safer for everyone, but nothing was done for anyone. This might be the moment to repair that omission.

Tuesday afternoon at three-thirty, in their basement conference room in the Central Office (across from the Norwichtown Green), it's a regular meeting of the Norwich Public Schools Board of Education Policy Committee. Later, at five, in the City Manager's Office (Room 219) in City Hall it's the Harbor Management Commission whose most recent meeting was in January, judging from the minutes.

And at six, in their offices at 16 Golden Street, it's a regular meeting of the Board of (Norwich) Public Utilities Commissioners. While also at six, in Room 335 of City Hall (= sit ALL the WAY Up Front if you want to hear anything), it's a special meeting of the Commission on the City Plan (Plan of Conservation and Development Subcommittee). They will also meet Wednesday evening, again at six and again in Room 335, for a second special meeting.

Wednesday, head for the Planning Department's conference room in the basement of 23 Union Street as there are back to back meetings, starting at 5:30 with the Reid & Hughes Committee followed at six thirty by the 751 North Main Street Committee (if we moved the former to the latter, we could have one less meeting).

In between, at six, in the Recreation Department building near Dickenman Field (across from the tennis courts) it's a regular meeting of the Recreation Advisory Board, who are undoubtedly well on their way to planning the Summer of 2011 Activities.

At seven, in their facilities on New London Turnpike, it's a regular meeting of the Golf Course Authority. Also at seven in their offices at 77 Main Street, the Norwich Community Development Corporation, NCDC, hosts a public hearing on the refinements and suggestions still being accomplished on the downtown economic development bond passed last November. It will be very fast, as I read the agenda, since it happens at "Mach 23" (sic; I live in a glass house and have no money for curtains.).

Oh bright early Thursday morning, 7:30 to be exact, in the NCDC offices that are probably still at 77 Main Street from the night before, it's a regular meeting of the NCDC Board of Directors. It seems like just yesterday Jeff and I would rail about the lack of public information about this organization and look at them now, sniffle. (Sorry. I promised I wouldn't get emotional.)

Thursday afternoon at five are a pair of meetings, both in City Hall. The Volunteer Firefighter Relief Fund Committee meets in a special meeting in Room 209 while in Room 319, the Historic District Commission will meet 'promptly' it says here (as opposed to some other way on some other day, I guess).

And Saturday morning at nine, in the Central Firehouse, it's an informational meeting and workshop with the Board of Education and the City Council on the 2011-2012 budget(s). I'm coming prepared to listen to reason-I'm hoping all the participants are coming to be reasonable. I always end up with a bad taste in my mouth."You never know just how you look through other people's eyes."
-bill kenny

When I Step Out, I'm Gonna Do You In

Today is the first day of Spring and this has been a very nice, in terms of temperatures, weekend. Friday, there beneath the blue suburban skies, we flirted with seventy degree temperatures and ADD poster children as so many of us are, we've already forgotten about the freezing conditions we had in the not too long ago.

As I type this, I'm wearing my "I Probably Don' t Like You Either" tee shirt that everyone finds so funny, except the members of my family who bought it knowing I believe every word to be true. I've got on my faded and frazzled Nike black shorts with my David Peckham running shoes and look like a dumpster exploded. My hair, what there is of it, is all over the place as if I'd weekended in a wind tunnel and I haven't shaved since Friday. So what? I'm inside. Later today when we head over to Mystic for their Saint Patrick's Day Parade with the Red Hot Chili Pipers (they'll put the starch in your sporran) I'll be more presentable-I have my wife's word on that.

We all know the difference between inside and outside, or should. Friday near the William Backus Hospital on my way home I passed a fellow who looked like he was auditioning to be Papa Smurf's stunt double. He had a sleeveless sort of tank top in one of those colors of blue that you never forget no matter how many forks you jab into your temporal lobe. The trousers were almost, but (sadly) not quite, the same color. He had Ban-Lon black socks pulled up to his knees and those gee-I-wish-I-had-bought-Chuck-Taylor-Converse-sneakers. Since no well-dressed man will be seen in public without a suitable hat, he was wearing a NY Yankees baseball cap with green dayglo letters so bright George S, coming back from the Great Beyond, would've found him in a New York Minute. His exposed skin (and there was a LOT of it) wasn't so much very pale as practically translucent.

Every spring I hope this is the year we have a law mandating every residence must have a full length mirror and every year, Congress fails to act. Obviously, it's happened again. There's a saying in Irish households (see, you wondered why I had mentioned the Mystic Parade) that first one up is best one dressed. For the sake of all of those whom you'll meet today and every other day, take a nap in the afternoon but, please, make it a point to rise and shine early.
-bill kenny

Scared that He'll Be Caught

This ends a tough week for anyone who's ever picked up, owned, or been named for, anyone in Alban Butler' Lives of the Saints. The main event, of course was Thursday, Saint Patrick's Day. I'm not sure everyplace on earth paints the median strips on main street green as part of the parade or adds food coloring to the beer (or gets into fist fights in New York's forgotten borough over matters of ethnicity and sexual preference) but let's face it, Saint Patrick is the 800 pound gorilla in the room for the month of March.

Which is too bad, because today is the Feast of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary (Mother of God) and (sort of) Jesus' step-dad. I'm envisioning an at-the-dinner-table exchange between the Son of Man (when small) and Joseph that has the latter offer a rejoinder such as "then go right ahead and ask your 'real dad' for a new bike and let's see what happens." And then I imagine The Curia or the Legion of Decency showing up at my house and slapping the cuffs on.

As a grade-school child I missed the subtlety that went into the talk-around as the Sisters of Charity explained 'the Annunciation' and when I got older and it smacked me right between the eyes, I admired even more the cool, collected response Joseph seemed to have had to all of that. Talk about Rainy Day Women #12 and 35. It's a pity we don't roll the Apocrypha into the Bible (sort of a VH-1 Behind the Book) and let Max Von Sydow have another crack at the Greatest Story Ever Told (as soon as legal gets the rights clearances squared away).

Today, the Feast of Saint Joseph, is when the swallows come back to Capistrano. I wonder if the village fathers paint the center stripe on their main street a shade of bird droppings white and grey or if they even have a parade (I think I'd steer clear of the beer, but that's just me). As urbane and world-wise as I like to think of myself, I love the story as much now as a doddering fool as I did hearing it as a child. I find it reassuring and, while my belief in a Divine Being fluctuates wildly (and how screwed am I if Her/His belief in me reflects my faith in Her/Him?), I hope (in a faint-hearted, wimpy sort of way) that Paley is right about the Great Watchmaker.

I say that, mindful (with apologies to Jackson Browne) that 'I don't know what happens when people die.' And in keeping with that point, I have known two very dear people who shared the Feast of Saint Joseph as their birthday. They are both from long ago, at the time when I knew everything (and everything better) when I worked for American Forces (Europe) Network and Bob was my first (and very best) boss in Radio Command Information (together with Sara, Marge and Brian) while Gisela was the record librarian of the most amazing (and amazingly organized) collection of vinyl in the world.

Bob was married to 'local color' as I was to be as well (GI's who married citizens from the country in which they were stationed; usually guys marrying women but NOT always). He and his wife, Erika, had no children but loved as if she were one, a stray dog they took in and kept all its life, Sandy. Erika and Sandy passed away pretty close to one another, leaving a hole in Bob's heart that never healed, filled with a pain of which he never spoke. Bob himself passed a number of years ago and I see him at this very moment in my mind's eye in a beaten beige long coat with a beret he wore in every kind of weather.

Gisela was my translator when the letter of permission from the Standesamt of Offenbach am Main (where Sigrid and I hoped to marry) arrived and I raced frantically from office to office trying to find someone to be my eyes (I was illiterate auf deutsch and vowed to never be that guy again). Gisela put her glasses on near the edge of her nose, and would read a line and then look over the tops to give me the English translation. I still recall the shine in her eyes and her warm smile as she reached the conclusion granting us permission and she clasped both of my shoulders and hugged me in congratulations.

I remember both of them today, maybe more so than Saint Joseph, perhaps because I don't know how many others remember them and I'm sad when I think about what happens to you when the last person on earth to know you dies. So today I tell a little of the story of their lives, as I knew them, to remind me to celebrate their lives and hope the day comes when we can laugh together about all of that and so much more.
Happy Birthday, Bob und Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Gisela.
-bill kenny

Is anybody out there?

Today is the day every one has been talking about for months, if not moments. Okay, some of us have been talking about it only to ourselves but that's fine, since today is National Talk to Yourself Day. And if we've known each other for more than two minutes, you are well within your rights to suspect I may celebrate this every day, and, dammit Janet, I do.

This is not a shocking revelation as I owned up to it, publicly (or as publicly as whatever this is considered to be) some years back and so far, no one has attempted to place me under arrest though my development has lagged for years. From what I can figure out after studying the event page that alerted me to this, there's not a lot of scheduled activities which is good what with the weekend coming on and all.

I think a marching talking loudly band might be nice or perhaps we could persuade the Blue Angels to offer us a missing tongue formation as part of their talk-over to start the festivities. I'm wondering if anyone has invited the Governor (I can think of a former one who's probably free unless the Russians are celebrating Национальная беседа к себе день as well but maybe she can still squeeze us in.

And assuming he's back from rehab for keeps (though how would I know), perhaps we could get Marshall to say a few appropriate words, though I know he's much better at the inappropriate ones-if we're really lucky, it would only be a few words. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Happy National Talk to Yourself Day.

-bill kenny

It Was Death, Starvation or Exile

This is a day that, as full of Irish heritage as I am (along with so much else (maybe more?)), I get more than a little creeped out by the celebrations of all that is emerald even when it's not. There's a claim that there are more persons of Irish descent living in New York City than there are in Dublin, but I suspect that's a statement you can make without (nearly) fear of contradiction about almost every ethnicity who've come to settle here in the The Land of the Round Doorknobs.

Whether your tastes run from Danny Kaye singing Danny Boy to U2 through The Chieftains or Horslips and how you wash down your bubble and squeak, if you're celebrating being Irish or pretending to be Irish, or you just like to bathe with Irish Spring, hope the day is a good one.

When The Gangs of New York was making the rounds, I watched it like a deer in the headlights growing more disquieted and discomfited with each frame. Though I was already old enough to realize history is written by the winners and should have been old enough to know better, I learned of a past of which I had only suspected.

For cinema, the movie had more than an inconvenient truth or two about alternatives to the 'melting pot' (myth) explanation every child received as part of her/his American history classes in grade schools across this country for most if not all of our growing up years. (And I'm not just talking about Leo's accent.)

Instead what more of us learned as we aged was that we have as many dirty little secrets as we have truths we hold to be self-evident (and sometimes the former is also the latter but in that case is always unacknowledged). The stories of the 1863 draft riots in New York City during the Civil War were as well-known in their time as the number of leaves on a shamrock and the animus and enmity directed at 'the others' (of all stripes) is true to this day, a century and a half later.

As it happens, Patrick, maybe there's a deeper reason why you order the beverage you do when we dine out together-we just didn't know it. And whether you're marching down that New York City Fifth Avenue today or in any of the hundreds of slightly out of control celebrations across the nation that we tend to use to get us closer to spring, spare a thought for the Battalion de San Patricio five thousand miles from a home to which they could never return who became a Legion of Strangers to those who would have been their countrymen, but refused.
-bill kenny

Circumstance Has Forced My Hand

In case you'd forgotten, we don't have an operating budget for this country for the fiscal year that began on the first of October. Instead, we've been dime-dancing with continuing resolutions (perhaps to forestall the next revolution), interim financing authorizations, while the two political parties we sent to Washington with our votes duke it out in the corridors of power.

The continuing resolution we are currently operating under expires this Friday. To tell you the truth, with all this Daylight Savings springing forward, take away four and carry the six stuff I'm not sure if it expires at midnight on what you or I call Thursday night into Friday or if it's Friday to start Saturday morning. Broke is broke and that's where we are.

Not that we've been paying a lot of attention here in The Land of Steady Habits where magic bookkeeping and vapor accounting kept us happy for decades in the statehouse until the international economic turbulence that swept away so much for so many in the course of the last two years finally did enough damage to upset all of our apple carts.

We've elected a series of reassuring faces and voices that intoned 'nothing to see here, move along' and we did-allowing state government and its good and services to grow larger with each passing year as the cost of delivering goods and services continued to escalate. Many who could afford to exit the state and set up businesses and lives elsewhere did so leaving behind the very young, the very old, the very poor and, increasingly, the very angry.

To review: no one has any money and fewer still have any inclination to offer up any more of what they have to help right the state's financial ship. Because of how Connecticut is structured, when the state catches a financial cold, its cities and towns risk having the Plague. That is where we are now in The Rose of New England as the various city departments struggle to do more with less, but actually need to plan on a way to do less with even less. Everyone from public safety through public works and public education are trying out recipes for a wish sandwich, where you have two pieces of bread and wish you had some meat to place between them.

When Governor Malloy came to town last week to speak to residents in Norwich City Hall about his budget proposals, the reception was about what you'd expect for a guest who wants his hosts to pay more for what they already think they are paying too much. Everybody, everywhere wants to see taxes lowered-no matter the tax and no matter the amount.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said 'taxes are the price we pay for a free society' but for many, the irony of paying for something that purports to be free has worn very thin. The mantra at state and municipal budget hearings has become 'cut, cut and cut.' The alternate plan proposed by the residents seems to be to change the depth of the cuts.

The challenge for our local elected leaders in listening to what we tell them we want and in what we want to pay for in goods and services for ourselves and our families is that we contradict each other. When they ask us if we want more police in downtown, as economic redevelopment is about to start, or a return of resource officers to the corridors of our middle schools, we tell them 'yes' even though it's not a yes/no question.

If you've driven on many of our local streets you already know it was a hard winter and the surfaces show it. So the question to ask ourselves is how many potholes do we want filled before we start cutting teachers or laying off policemen or City Hall employees, or whatever your personal concern is, because make no mistake, we cannot afford everything we want and may not be able to afford everything we need.

The Norwich Board of Education has adopted a proposed budget that makes no one happy, from educators to property owners and parents with children to those on a fixed income. Expect the same types of request from other municipal departments to receive similar reactions from across the city. "We're all on our uppers, we're all going skint. I used to suck cigars now I suck polo mints. Art takes time and time is money. Money's scarce and that ain't funny. Millionaires are a thing of the past, we're in a low budget film, where nothing can last."

By attending weekend workshops with elected leaders, sitting in on public meetings of the various agencies and departments throughout the city, speaking to our elected leaders on the phone (they're in 'the book' yknow?), sending them letters or email and being willing to speak up and speak against and, sometimes for, a particular position or proposal, we all contribute to the betterment of the tenor and tone of public discussion on issues of importance for all of us. No one wants to raise anyone's taxes or force another family to choose to leave Norwich. But we cannot 'no' what tomorrow costs every time we look to the future.

-bill kenny