Face the Promise

I find myself alone with what passes for thoughts at odd hours almost always in my car, which doddering curmudgeon that I am, is funny because life and times for my generation goes full circle. When I was coming of age, the driver's license and the open road (and all they promised, if not always delivered) was a rite of passage. And here I am, very much as I started, a long way from home on a dark highway, lost but making great time.

It was the era of Springsteen's chromed invaders-GTOs, Malibu SSs, Olds 442s, Buick Wildcats, Mustangs, 'Cudas and Chargers at the top of the list. Gas lines the size of garden hoses and all of us, the dweebs included (present!) knew the cubic displacement and the brake horsepower. MPG at a time when gasoline was thirty-five cents a gallon was a nonsense concept and was never explored.

We traveled in packs but were often alone. Our music was transitioning from AM radio to FM and we struggled to move from converters to tape decks, almost always eight track, with FM receivers. I remember taking the back seat out of a car to make room for ludicrously sized speakers that were very important to me but I can't remember why. Because, I suspect; just because.

Driving a car was only slightly more important than having one of your own. I can tell you as a parent myself, two times over, I've checked the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) and there's nothing in any of them about teenage vehicular operators. But we grimly pursued the quest for an auto as if it were fire, and our offspring churn and burn in the same way for the same thing.

Growing up in the sixties, we were the pioneers who 'experimented' with pot and sex, sometimes at the same time and sometimes not so much. We were all psychedelic capitalists who believed dope got you through times of no money better than money got you through times of no dope. Forty years later we invented the Real Estate Collapse and Stock Market Meltdown (all caps for a reason) and were absolutely stunned when it happened (now I know why we called it dope).

I watched older neighborhood boys sent off by my parents' generation thousands of miles away to places I couldn't say for causes I accepted as good and true because my government told me it was so. A lifetime later, it's my generation sending our children to other wars that are eerily familiar and I know just how good we've gotten at lying-but I don't know who we're fooling.

And now, in the not quite dawn's before early light, traveling from the box where I keep my stuff (thanks, George C) to where I give my time to total strangers for endless hours, I remember the sign on Barbara G's desk, "I am now starving to death on the salary I once dreamed of making" and try to recall what I traded away to get what I have.

I don't calculate the cost or the worth of those transactions, since those may be numbers that are too unhappy at any hour, but especially in the early ones. I think I prefer to drive in the dawning and the gloaming--when you don't know (or care) where you're going, any road will get you there. Those with whom I travel always seem as lost as I and the roads lead everywhere and nowhere. Keep the windows rolled up, crank the climate control and turn the tunes up. It remains what it has always been from the start until now, a dark ride.
-bill kenny

The Past as Prologue or Pretext

The past can be used to build a better future but can also be an obstacle to success. The Norwich Redevelopment Agency (RDA) is positioning itself for a new and essential responsibility in helping the city succeed and when they do, no matter where you live in Norwich, all of us will benefit.

Pocket history: Norwich was settled in much the same way as we humans have covered the planet like a well-known paint trademark. The earliest settlers set up home and hearth closest to the rivers and worked their way inland, leaving in place what they didn't need as they started over. But what became of what was left behind?

Everyone loves new--be it babies, cars or development ideas. And little troubles us more while visiting one of those new developments with our new baby in our new car, than when we drive past abandoned buildings, rotted, rusting and choking with weeds. It's all we can do to look away as the 'new' land we desire for economic development disappears and we're left with memories and brownfields.

Brownfields (as a term) have been with us since the last century, but their management and remediation are rapidly evolving even as solutions and funding for remediation are being reshaped.

The Norwich Redevelopment Agency (RDA) will take the lead in the efforts to reclaim brownfields that can be repurposed and returned to the city's grand list in partnerships with both the federal government's Environmental Protection Agency and with a revitalized State of Connecticut Office of Remediation, now within the Department of Economic Development.

Thinking green is rewarding in more ways than ever. Environmental concerns are still paramount as Norwich will work towards a Remediation Action Plan, RAP, a detailed plan that informs and energizes efforts to rescue and repurpose each property, developed from a community-wide perspective while also defining and prioritizing each end use.

Those end uses will be critical when pursuing grants, loans and private sector partnerships to reclaim the brownfields. Economic development, to include job creation, historic rehabilitation, energy efficiency and employment sustainment or positive impact on neighborhoods through enhanced public safety will now increase a particular project's value when funding is sought, enabling RDA, the City's Planning Office and other municipal agencies to seek money from a greater variety of sources in order to better affect remediation and create positive, permanent change in many Norwich neighborhoods and villages.

Past successes in brownfields remediation such as the creation of Occum Park set the bar for what we can do when we want to and need to. The Redevelopment Agency, city departments and elected leadership are, together creating a critical and important new chapter in the story of our city.

-bill kenny

It's a Flawed Work of Art

Short weeks screw me all up. When we skip a Monday, my week is like Groundhog's Day since I spend most of it trying to get out of the starting blocks. In my case, I cheated even more since I took Friday off as well and so all the stuff I normally get done on Fridays, and should have made some effort to accomplish on Thursday, I didn't and so it sat until today. Ooof! Hope your holiday came to a more gradual, rather than abrupt, end and that you're easing back into the work harness without a lot of strain.

It's a compact and compressed week of municipal meetings in our neck of the woods, and there's a lot to be said for that, I suppose, since these are supposed to be the lazy, hazy days of summer (and I hope they are for you).

Tonight in Council chambers at City Hall, starting at 7:30, is the first regular meeting of the City Council in July with a full agenda (partially as a result of only one regular meeting in June) to include a public hearing on bonding money to demolish two schools we've closed in recent years (I would expect we'll hear various versions of the closures' history as people speak on the one aspect, what next, that has nothing to do with the reasons). I hate to sound uncaring (I know, 'Really? Since when?' OUCH) but even as the dogs bark, the caravan moves on.

I'd suggest in light of the (immediate) future to include that property tax bill you may have received (and what that could look like in future years if we keep doing nothing) you should consider remaining for a presentation on the Downtown Revitalization Program as well as the discussion and vote on item 8 under new resolutions (most of the Council missed a presentation by the Redevelopment Authority two weeks ago on this very topic). Some of us have allergies to making informed decisions; for everyone else there's Claritin (or not).

Wednesday morning at ten is the Farmers' Market in the Howard T. Brown Park.

Later that afternoon at 5:30 though not in the location outlined on the City's website but, rather, in the Kelly Middle School library, is a regular meeting of the (Kelly Middle) School Building Committee; you'll find their June 1 meeting minutes here. I was disquieted to read in the minutes, as I understand them, the auditorium was more than half of the entire new construction square footage.

At seven, in Howard T. Brown Park, it's the second installment of the "Rock the Docks" concert series, featuring The Fat Cats. Karen B, who knows all about this stuff, says they are very good and that you should show up and be in one of the pictures that ends up on Facebook (unless you're Whitey Bulger, in which case, never mind).

Also at seven, says the municipal website, there's a Republican Town Committee meeting in Room 335 of City Hall (and a note about their March meeting that probably never needed to be posted and now most certainly can be removed).

Not listed on the calendar, because technically, it's not a municipal meeting, is a public hearing in City Council Chambers at seven by the bipartisan Reapportionment Committee of the General Assembly to collect input on redistricting required as a result of population shifts reflected in the 2010 census. I found a 'gee, that's interesting but what does it mean?' document from four years ago that made projections about last November's national elections but I haven't come across a state-wide proposal for the here and now. Human nature being what it is, someone, somewhere has a blueprint for what the next Statehouse representation schematic should be; the question is when that will be shared with the class.

Thursday at seven in the Planning Department's conference room at 23 Union Street, it's a regular meeting of the Inlands Wetlands, Water Courses and Conservation Commission, whose May meeting minutes are the most current posted document; based on the length of that meeting, if you're planning on attending, do NOT be late because it could be over.

And Saturday morning starting at nine, it's the next installment of the One City Forum which is a less formal opportunity for anyone, anywhere in the city to share information, ask a question, get an update, petition for a pony ride (and not get it) and basically discover that there's more than just a handful of us trying to sort ourselves out and take back the city. See you at something?

-bill kenny

We've Lived So Well, So Long

An aside to start: Welcome home, SF Sorrow and Chief The Other Bill (and not much longer for The Very Merry Perry's return, either) I'm sure the planes were filled with men and women, like you, concluding another portion of their service in uniform to our country in a place of which the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) had little knowledge. Funny how little has changed in all those years, eh? Enjoy the crowd who greeted you and the embrace of family and friends and the fireworks tonight you might wish to think are in your honor. You've earned them, or what's a heaven for?

There's a story told about a moment in Richard Nixon's historical trip to the People's Republic of China when, irritated by Mao's repeated remarks about the revolutionary changes in the world's most populous society, the President mentioned America's War of Independence adding 'Americans are revolutionaries, too.' Mao purportedly asked, 'how do you know one Revolution was enough?'

I'm not sure what, if any, answer Mr. Nixon offered but three and half decades later, I wouldn't welcome either the question or the answer. Today is the 235th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but, I fear we've journeyed even closer to Abraham Lincoln's 'a house divided' than we fully realize.

We are, as PJ O'Rourke wrote, the only nation on earth founded on the belief that joy was integral to the human experience. Why else, he pointed out, would our nation's founders have defined as "certain, unalienable rights" ideas that to this day stun most of the globe: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Somewhere along the way we've lost our way and our politics in recent years makes me worry if we can ever be found again.

We've sent thousands, tens of thousands, actually HUNDREDS of thousands of our sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, daughters, sisters, mothers and wives to fight wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Colombia and a half dozen other places in every corner of the globe helping to build, and rebuild, every nation but our own.

We've gotten really good at not seeing the broken bodies carried in stretchers from the medevac flights at Dover, fated to spend some variation of forever in physical, mental and spiritual pain because too little can be repaired. The help no longer helps. We turn away as the coffins are carried by the funeral details in countless cities across our country to cemeteries and final resting places often mutely mourned by only family and friends. So much for that oft-heard phrase, 'a grateful nation.'

We accentuate and luxuriate in the ephemera of notoriety and celebrity. And argue passionately about the Politics of Plenty- and let's understand something we still have is plenty, far more than everyone else, anywhere else-and how we always have to have more. Greed is now need. How can the heart remember when the belly was empty, when it never was?

We are the Land of Limitless Possibilities, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. When was E Pluribus Unum supplanted by Nos es non validus facio is hic ullus magis? When did we stop dreaming the same dream and when did all of this become a nightmare from which we cannot now awaken? And what do we intend to do about it and when?

How much success becomes excess, when does that happen and how can we cure it, assuming we even want to? And why, even as we send a generation of enthused beginners, nearly a decade AFTER 9/11 still in love with service to their country, ten thousand miles away to die for principles we've abandoned (if we ever believed at all) can we not find our areas of common ground (and common sense) and launch our second American Revolution with malice towards none and charity towards all and become again the nation the rest of the world has always seen us as being.

The ideals worth dying for everyday since the Founding of the Republic must also always be worth living for. Start today and see where it takes us. Happy Birthday America.
-bill kenny

The Question to Everyone's Answer

I've mentioned repeatedly, if not incessantly, that I grew up in New Jersey where the standard question from a non-Jerseyan (or as they used to say in Sayreville a 'some jamook') is always 'what exit?' In mine it was Exit Nine. And when I was a kid, there wasn't a whole lot going on south of that, but all that changed when Great Adventure opened in Jackson in 1974. Like Jersey wasn't already rough enough to grow up in, someone thought shipping lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) to The Pinelands was a stroke of genius.

It seems something we don't do real well in Jersey is count, since there are press reports this weekend that a runaway baboon has been spotted in the backyards and highways of southern New Jersey, and the thought is perhaps it's an escapee from Great Adventure's Monkey Jungle except they don't. know if one is missing. Terrific-we're just starting to live down The Real Housewives of New Jersey and have given up explaining that the guidos and guidettes on Jersey Shore are jamooks, dammit, and now we have monkey-gate.

If you live anywhere outside a major city in a less than built-up area, this isn't nearly as breathlessly exciting as some of these news reports make it sound. You've probably had more trouble with raccoons getting into your trash on Siena Drive than you'll have with a rogue baboon (seriously? That's what the descendants of Edward R. have come up with, rogue?) running and gunning at the cans you keep behind the garage. It's almost enough to make me think of dusting off my Mickey the Monkey impersonations, which would please some of my siblings and none of my Mother, so I shan't.

As you can tell from reading/listening/watching any of the stories, it's been a slow news week in The Garden State and the rest of us love this kind of sideshow. Despite murmurings to the contrary, there is NO truth that the baboon answers to either Chris or Frank, reviving, however faint, those hopes of bi-partisanship. Nothing like outsiders to help us unite. Now who's curious, George?

-bill kenny

The Not Quite New Orleans Saints

My wife, Sigrid, and I went to IKEA in New Haven, Connecticut yesterday for my son's birthday. That's what I did on the day I played hooky from work, went to IKEA. Yeah, I know, I'm a real gangsta except I'm closer to bug than thug life (and technically, probably most like a night light).

We cheated and skipped I-95 and used Route 80 which takes a lot longer, but it's a day off on the first day of July so what's the rush? Gave me a chance to NOT ride the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry which is fine in my book since I have had a thing about ferries ever since riding a teeny-tiny ferry, not much bigger than my car that was a floatable yo-yo across the Rhein River just about thirty years ago.

Everyone in my house laughs at how I'll drive for three additional hours, like the distance down I-95 in Connecticut and then out onto Long Island 495 rather than take the Cross Sound Ferry but there's good reason to take the land route. I told you about the time, on a previous trip to IKEA, passing a small shop called "Everything and More." Brace yourself because I have an update: they are making the store bigger.

I'm still working on how you can even have an 'and more' after you have an 'everything' and these guys are putting up a new building attached and behind the old one. That sound you heard was my mind boggling. Where's a policeman when you need one? We're breaking the law of conservation of mass and don't even have a permit.

We may have a Papal dispensation since along the way, in Foxon, we passed signs that caused me to work my Google mojo to death for Our Lady of Pompeii Church. Thinking I was pretty familiar with what went on in Pompeii, I was semi-amazed to learn there is an actual shrine (is it sacreligious to wonder if The Lord has a user name and if I should have capitalized User?). And you thought all that was going on was the volcano ('for the financially challenged'?).

Am I thinking that Route 80 is akin to the path Saul took on the road to Damascus in terms of the miracles and wonders on the way through Guilford that has forced the growth of everything to be as vigorous as the multiplication of the loaves and fishes? If so, how much more gooder a miracle is it when a Lekman becomes a Besta Jagra. Screw Natalie and 34th Street, think more like the Generator, First Floor.

-bill kenny

Apogee and Exigent Circumstances

We are, according to the calendar, as far from the 1st of January as we are from the 31st of December at least in theory (actually almost but not quite; but would you have stopped here today if I'd started with that mealy mouthed palaver? Didn't think so.). If it feels like I'm wandering, is it because I've lost my enthusiasm or is it my direction and why am I disquieted that it no longer makes a difference if I push on or turn back? Maybe it's an energy shortage of another kind.

It's strange, to me, at least, because I had a greater sense of resolve and idea of what I wanted to get down as 2010 was bleeding into 2011 and here I am, playing hooky from work, not really, I took a day off (but the ladies love outlaws so there you have it), and half way through this year, I've yet to actually get anything done. And when I look around, it doesn't look like I'm alone in that. I guess I should feel comforted.

In our Nation's Capital it seems most people now have wristwatches that track the national debt (just me or did that scare the bejabbers out of you , too?)--we don't attempt to address the causes of it or find solutions, mind you; just track it. I couldn't tell you the last time I went to our capital city-an awfully long time ago, that's for sure. Truth to tell, some time ago we drove to someplace in Virginia and made sure to NOT go through DC, so I guess that 'my county tis of thee' stuff only runs so long, so good

As a kid, I believe we went to Washington D. C. every year, or every other year, and it was a big deal to sit in the visitors' galleries of the Houses of Congress (we felt very grown up and paid attention but still understood nothing). New Jersey, where we grew up, had congressional representatives like our congressman, Peter H. B. Freylinghuysen, Jr., who passed away the week before this year's Memorial Day, and Millicent Fenwick, who smoked a pipe (how could I make this up?) and was more force of nature than merely a congresswoman. This was back when 'Washington' wasn't the enemy and Mr. Smith went there to do good things for the good folks back home and he had a lot of company.

I wonder if folks like Freylinghuysen and Fenwick would even be allowed to caucus with the members of the party they purportedly belonged to half a century ago. I'm curious as to what the Founders would make of the gift they gave us. Almost two and half centuries ago they risked death by the noose, the going rate for treason, by telling the most powerful man on earth, the King of England, to go pound sand (more elegantly but they had wigs and quills, don't forget). And now we're hoping for good weather after the picnic so we can have the company softball game.

Unless of course the company rightsized and you got downsized. I had a job disappear under me once and couldn't understand the person in charge going on about how 'it's not personal' when it most certainly was. I had a job and now I didn't have a job. I'm a person-next. And we've been told the rough patch we've been through has ended and things are looking up but I'm not sure I understand what that means either or how to know if it's true. The epigee in the cycle of things falling apart seems to be us right here right now, so it looks like all those projects we wanted to accomplish this year will wait another day, at least.

And then, because we're starting down the calendar roller coaster, we can start to add to 'our stuff we'll want to do in 2012' list. And this time next year, it'll be your turn to point out that we didn't get those things done either. But come up with new people and institutions to blame-if you notice I didn't list any- because I'm tired of hearing the usual suspects. Besides, at least one of the folks on your list is probably playing short fielder on my softball team.
-bill kenny