Show of Hands

Both my mother and father are/were right handed. I, too, am right handed. I believe my brothers and sisters may all be left-handed. They tend to wear gloves and in some cases, mittens, which doesn't help my situation very much (I can't tell when Jill is flipping me off so I just assume always). My wife is left-handed. Our two children are right handed though our son, Patrick, an avid though more often now erstwhile, footballer, is left-footed.

One of his coaches used to suggest 'he only uses his right leg to help him stand up.' I think he more than made up for that perceived shortcoming with a booming left footed kick that could drive a soccer ball through a wall, though judging by the way defense men moved out of its path, why take that chance?

Our daughter, Michelle, plays a variety of musical instruments, strings and things, all of them in the conventional manner with no restringing required and no mirrors used, a la Paul McCartney and his bass playing, to reverse the finger patterns for placement on an instrument's frets.

I was thinking about all of this a bit more intently and intensely than is normal for me (especially the 'my sister with mittens' part) because I found an article on "The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed" in the Wall Street Journal, the Murdoch media outlet that still makes some sense, that without the Internet I doubt that I'd have ever seen.

I'm familiar with a reasonable amount of the popular literature on handedness, population divisions between left handers and right handers (did you know that 'sinister' comes from the Latin sinistra, meaning 'left'? Finally put those years of prep school dead language lessons to use) and brain lateralization. We are an amazingly complex life-form; pink and soft on the outside, crunchy in the middle, with a gooey filling. And as amazing as left and right handedness may be, it's always more impressive to me to see what we can get accomplished when we join them together.
-bill kenny

East until Your Hat Floats

Today is the feast of Saint Nicholas or Nikolaustag. That probably means nothing to you but in my house it's a means of measuring how far we've come and not just the distance traveled. The first time we celebrated this day on this side of the Atlantic, my wife and children had been residents of Das Land der Runde Turgriffe for less than month. Something familiar from home, or what was to be come their 'old home' was very important and as Sigrid has set aside some small chocolates for both Patrick and Michelle for today, it still is (though I wonder if not more for us than for our now adult children).

I confess to still seeing them as small. I remember hours of hollering "nur Patrick!" and his echo answer of "nur Daddy!" as if it were yesterday. Holding Michelle in one arm as Patrick and I sang "How Much is that Baby in the Mirror" to her reflection every night as part of the going to bed ritual. The bedtime story book with a story for every night-a different subject and a different adventure and how the two of them would sit up in their beds as my terrible German rendered any form of narrative nearly unintelligible for the two of them. And then afterwards we'd all sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and it was lights out.

Es war alles sehr gemutlich and so long ago. Coming out of the grocery yesterday, the shopper in front of me was mumbling about the youngsters, definitely NOT from here, playing under the overhang as their mother struggled to get their baby sister out of the car and into a cart. It's funny when little ones stiffen their arms and legs and refuse to make it easy for an adult to seat them in a shopping cart. Of course it's only funny when you watch; when you're the adult struggling with the child, the humor is quickly lost.

Some people reach an age when you cannot tell how old they are-maybe I already have. Wouldn't want to try to guess his age but I think he needed glasses. I say that because he saw in me, as I walked past him, a kindred spirit who'd appreciate his caustic characterization of where he imagined these children were from and where he wished they'd return. Except, jeder ist ein Ausländer, irgendwo. My response was he attempt something anatomically impossible, and not quite as much a suggestion as a directive. I could have been more polite and gotten the same effect.

-bill kenny

A Big Bowl of Cherries

With the amount going on in most households this time of the year, perhaps it's not so coincidental that Congress readies itself for a holiday break (like any of us would notice they stopped meeting and not getting anything done?) while statehouses across the country empty out so folks can back 'to the district' and the lights in the local City Hall seem to burn a notch or two lower as the wheels of government squeak a little more quietly.

Here in Connecticut's Christmas City (we claimed the title about a hundred years ago and so far nobody else in the Nutmeg State has noticed), you can keep your lamps trimmed and burning as we pare meetings down to some essentials this week, which leaves us plenty of time for sleigh rides and snow angels or jaunts to the local casino to plump up those Christmas Club savings acounts.

This morning, at/about 9:30 (it's complicated, if you want to attend and don't want to be late be there at this time; otherwise show up at 10 and hope they didn't start without you), it's a regular meeting of the Southeast Connecticut Council of Government (SCCOG) Regional Water Committee who meet once a month except when they don't, like last month. And I'd compliment them on their compliance with the public law on the timely posting of meeting minutes, but they're doing a terrible job, so here's to striving for improvement. Good luck with that.

Tuesday evening at 7:30 in City Council Chambers, the new City Council is sworn into office in Council chambers and some basic housekeeping, in terms of appointments and committee assignments are finalized, and then there's a reception in Room 335, so bring your appetite.

Wednesday afternoon at five, in Room 319 of City Hall it's a regular meeting of the Emancipation Proclamation Commemorative Committee, whose membership, purpose, meetings agenda or minutes of any of their previous meetings, remains completely absent from the city's website.

Speaking of which, good news! If you'd put off taking the website survey on the city's website (think: barber shop infinity of mirrors trick), no worries. It's over. You can view the feedback from the less than one hundred people total who took the survey right here. And later you can tell me with a straight face again about why 'nothing ever gets better around here.'

At 5:30 in the Kelly Middle School Library (and you missed a great concert Friday night in the auditorium, by the way), it's a regular (and possibly the very last) meeting of the (Kelly Middle) School Building Committee (dedication is a week from this Wednesday, the 14th, in the same auditorium you didn't go to for the music concert).

Reading their November meeting minutes is a bit like revisiting a Bronte sisters' novel. There's a mention of forwarding "information to the Norwich Police Department in order to seek retribution" that is so American Gothic, we should considering renaming the school for Hester Prynne.

Thursday morning at 7:30 in their offices at 77 Main Street, it's a regular meeting of the Norwich Community Development Corporation, who've had themselves a busy year and will hopefully have an even more productive one in 2012, as they reinvent their own board of directors and expand their focus. Not sure why the municipal website tells when/where the meeting is but doesn't serve as a repository (careful with that prefix, Eugene) for the minutes of previous meetings. You can always get them by dropping a note here, but we can do better and should.

At two, in the Planning Department conference room (in the basement at 23 Union Street), it's a special meeting of the Community Development Advisory Committee, hearing presentations into what projects to reinvest recovered CDBG funds. You can't review the minutes of previous meetings to gain some insight into the decisions to this point because there are no meeting minutes posted. I know what you're thinking and you're welcome.

At four, in the Central Office of the Norwich Public Schools, it's a regular meeting of the Budget Expenditure Committee says the city's website. Here's what it says on the Board's website. I doubt the year is a typo. Seriously. In light of how heavy this committee's workload is about to get as we head through winter to budget formulation season, wouldn't it be nice to not look so goobered up in cyberspace?

And at seven, in Room 335 of City Hall, it's a regular meeting of the Democratic Town Committee. There's a rumor about a rental of a three hundred foot slip and slide and a tanker truck of Jell-O shots. It's taken me all week to get that circulated and I can only hope someone on the committee thinks it's a good idea before Thursday (you might want to wear old clothes and stay thirsty, my friends).

Saturday at noon, consider heading to the Sacred Heart Cemetery if you're in Norwich for Wreaths Across America. It's a national observance, with thousands of sites and lots of people participating. You can find out about it here.

This is the time of the year we linger a moment longer when thinking of absent friends and family members, hold the door more often for one another and generally behave with a bit more of the spirit of the season than we do at, say, Labor Day. Maybe we can start to work harder to be nicer to one another longer. Otherwise, what's a heaven for? I'd hope to see you at something but can well understand if you don't share my enthusiasm.

-bill kenny

I Wish Monkeys Could Skype

That shuddering you thought you felt yesterday afternoon was as real as you wanted it to be as Herman Cain stepped off the stage in Georgia live at the ADD Theatre, a leisure time activity of the Republican National Committee. From the same people who brought you a half dozen or so folks whose existence you've already forgotten, but who wanted to be President, we can add another name to the wall ('the rent is too damn high'? Seriously? Caveat emptor).

It's said Will Rogers never met a man he didn't like and in recent weeks it appeared Cain had never met a woman he didn't grope but I must have it wrong, since no less an expert on the Cain campaign, Herm Himself, sees the real victim in all the media murmuring and if it just so happens to look a lot like the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, well, isn't that amazing?

You might think “(b)ecause of the continued distractions, the continued hurt caused on me and my family, not because we are not fighters. Not because I’m not a fighter” smells like bovine excrement, but I think Herm's a cad who saw no reason to apologize to anyone least of all to his own wife who now becomes a punchline in ways her husband the headline, could have never imagined.

How'd you like to be these folks today? Sure hope they were renting that server by the month though they probably wish it were by the week and, in light of Herm's behavior, it would have been more appropriate had it been by the hour. Talk about adding new meaning to Rock You Like Herman Cain. Bet The Scorpions are heaving a sigh of relief today. (When I say "übertreiben" you say 'over the top', sorta like Herm.)

Yeah, I'm being catty and caustic but make no mistake-people's lives were damaged and perhaps permanently ruined and the precipitant in the whole misadventure is more likely than not to not have a mark on him when this is all over. Cain will pout like petulant child and play the martyr card while the woman he pledged his love to forty-three years ago is left to stand on the stage as the curtain comes down around her and the world shrugs. Nachos and hogwash, indeed.

-bill kenny

Schöne Grüße aus Lippstadt!

At some point Tuesday night past, the distinguished members of the U.S. Senate managed to put an * on the Bill of Rights and should you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Constitution to see what that bugger means, we'll put your ass in jail as a terrorist and let you out when we damn well feel like it.

Welcome to the New Age America. Or is that New Age, America? No matter. Here's what has happened, most of which you know but the details get drowned out by Kim's divorce and who's ahead on The X Factor. If news takes more than a minute to read, listen to or watch, we won't and we don't. Anyway, while you were out....

The legislative and executive branches of the federal government refuse to play together which is at the root of why we're so dysfunctional, fiscally, philosophically, ethically and morally but wait, there's more. The Federal Government's fiscal year should have started 1 October, and it did, but there's no federal budget, just stop gap funding (that's what all that Super Committee hullabaloo was all about) especially for the big ticket departments like the Department of Defense.

This time of year, people of all faiths are familiar with Christmas Trees. In our nation's capital, that's the term when you take one piece of legislation, let's say NASA's budget, and add to it a rider making this National Peach Month, and another mandating the use of the imported air in balloon animal creation stations and perhaps one granting pony rides to those with birthdays. A little something for everyone under the motto of 'you get along by going along.'

Right now, the pinata, so to speak, is the Department of Defense funding authorization bill and lots of different sticks are needed to whack it. But it's not a clean bill-there's all kinds of stuff (nothing about peaches or pony rides but much many in between) but read this, and you'll see immediately where my concern is and why. I'll wait right here unless or until I get arrested.

Allow a former nearly altar boy to give you a quick lesson in Latin, habeus corpus. The most fundamental of a right each of us has under the Bill of Rights that, without putting too fine a point on this, makes every other right in our Constitution work. During the Civil War, a misnomer of epic proportions, Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus arguing exigent circumstances. The result was nearly as tragic as the war that precipitated its invoking. It seems only the current President can remember history.

So alarmed by what the Senate of the United States hath wrought, I wrote to both my Senators, assuming someone on their respective staffs could and would read the letters. From Dick "Ready for My Close-Up" Blumenthal I heard nothing. From Joseph "How Can We Miss You when You Never Go Away?" Lieberman I got a bristling, self-righteous defense of his vote that added new meaning to 'a guilty conscience needs no accuser.'

And since I cited Lincoln, let me be a bit more contemporary in a country where history is a dirty seven letter word. What we are hurtling towards we've already had-at least our grandparents did, in another time and place, Germany in the Dark Years of Nazism. The Third Reich called the process our Senate has created 'nacht und nebel' (night and fog) because it was the legal justification into which dissenters disappeared often to end up in a KZ and then dead.

Once you're arrested, that 'fact' is proof of your guilt. Instead of operating under a presumption of innocence as we have since our beginnings, we will be a nation of suspects. And, says Senator Lieberman and other like-minded thugs, we have no choice. We must do this in the name of homeland security.The line between homeland and Fatherland gets more blurred with each goose step.

Before this country was founded (while we were losted?), Benjamin Franklin offered “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I'd conclude with that before the Thought Police show up and I start asking my cellmates 'does this orange jumpsuit make my ass look big?' but when I begin thinking about nacht und nebel I always end up at Martin Niemoller. I just hope it's not where WE end.

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist; then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me."
-bill kenny

If Al Capone Could See This....

Al Capone was famous for a number of things and probably wildly successful at even more than is generally believed but I've always enjoyed his theory on transactional persuasion, "you get much further with kind words and a gun, than you can with a kind word alone."

I do not own a gun, so I'll assume he has the research to back it up. After all we're not talking global warming (which involves a different Al) so I'm comfortable taking his word. I think Jessie Dimmick might be best advised to read the Book of Al and memorize chapter and verse (and not get hung up on a literal interpretation of 'gun' but think 'weapon'). It's not like he has a lot else he's doing right now aside from knuckle-head stuff like this.

No later than now, his cellmate has asked to be transferred because no one wants to be locked up with a guy who watched Patch Adams (not even Robin Williams' newest nanny) with his hostages until he fell asleep and was awakened by the police slapping the cuffs on him. And if there's NO endorsement deal from either Dr. Pepper or Cheetos, there is no God (not sure of what happens to swearing on the Bible in court).

I admire the chutzpah it takes to sue the people you held hostage for "breech (sic) of promise." My brother, the attorney, has a somewhat jaundiced eye on how some of his colleagues practice his vocation-I cannot imagine how little he enjoys a rank amateur entering the arena, though I suspect he appreciates the self-control to maintain a straight face while filing this suit actually takes.

It's not that I don't understand Jessie's plight. Someone is paying for that surgery (suspect the taxpayers and Jessie is gonna be on laundry detail for the 1,429 years getting that money back), so there's a certain amount of need mixed in with the greed. Of course it's all smothered in stupid sauce so it's hard to see in any light. How's that other expression go, never bring a knife to a gunfight. Unless, like cheesy snacks and effervescent beverages, you have enough for everyone. And never trust anybody named Rowley; pants on fire.
-bill kenny

Manuscripts of Unpublished Rhyme

I guess it's official now, 2011 is in full "Hello, I Must Be Going" mode as this is the first day of the final month of the year. Today is the birthday of my sister, Evan-now you come up with something good about it, too. Yeah, I know, tough going ,right? I just finished counting days and subtracting them from the year and what we have left is all there is. Yipes.

In January, I'd have stuck an ! on the end of that pes but no more. Why waste it now? All the poems, prayers and promises we hoped to enjoy are nearly all past tense and unlike Banquo's ghost, they didn't stick around long enough for us to savor or regret them. Hell, I don't know about you but I can't remember more than a handful of them without digging back through my daily journal and a lot of that reads like a travelogue from Bedlam.

I do know the three people I knew in the 'somebody has to be there' musical playing as far off Broadway as is possible this time last year are all home and dry now. We haven't closed auditions, which would be great news, but I'll take what I can get, when I can get it. If you've got someone in that stew right now, I'll keep them in my thoughts (and wish there were more I could do) as you hold them in your heart.

We're into Advent which means Christmas will be here in a moment and the New Year, which we'll embrace with the same enthusiasm we did its predecessor, will follow in short order. We're so busy struggling to live we don't seem to be enjoying life and that's a tight trick because whatever comes next is more a matter of faith than a statement of fact and that part of the carnival ride seems to be dark and quiet. I hope it's not closed for repairs.
-bill kenny