I Never Been Much Good at Keepin' a Secret

It's a good thing I've taken off from work in the Blue Smoke and Mirrors Factory GmbH through next year because sitting up late last night, on a school night, to watch the woman who inflicted The View on all of us to get her annual prime time swerve on with "Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2011."

It was nice to see the Lohan-Hilton stunt doubles, the Kardashian Kun-s, Kids, make Bab's list which I suspect always starts and ends with her. I must be getting hip in my dotage (tell me that's not a great name for a band!) as I sort of knew everyone on her list. I was disappointed since I had the impression #1 would be announced live and had an extra chair in the living room and made sure there was room at the curb for the Ku-van uplink truck. Y'know, just in case.

Turns out, of course, I didn't make the cut-I never do but if you're like me you look at who else doesn't make the list, like This Guy, or any of this bunch, and you wonder if the most fascinating thing about those so honored might be how they got chosen in the first place.

In the future, prophesied Andy Warhol, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes (though his fame lasted a lot longer than that) so maybe maybe it's just as well we get the fame game out of the way sooner rather than later. Though if you're Pippa Middleton, you can probably speed the clock up a bit and she won't mind all that much. Especially with this crap. The home of Chaucer, Drake and Shakespeare (and David Beckham) is reduced to this? A.maz.ing.

Maybe next year's list can be done alphabetically. By height. I'm looking forward to it (especially if I get those stilts for Christmas). Can't wait for the Three Wise Men to follow The Star and get here. I ordered cheesy bread-it should be just a couple of minutes more and worth the wait.

-bill kenny

Leave All Your Love and Your Longing Behind

The distance between who we are and who we hope to become can vary from very great to very small depending on our plans, abilities, aptitudes and perhaps, most importantly, our desire and will to improve. You have to risk something of yourself to close the gap and the fear of making a mistake is, itself, a mistake. Just because we haven't yet succeeded, doesn't mean we won't.

No one ever says 'ready, set, stay!' at least no one who wants to be successful. Everything on Planet Earth must adapt in order to survive and succeed or it becomes history. Cheap gas and affordable automobiles helped change the landscape of post World War II America, with families moving out of cities as vast tracts were converted to housing developments and shops and merchants followed the population and exited downtowns across the country.

Half a century later, the tide of urban exodus has ebbed and escalating costs for services and infrastructure combined with less ready cash and diminished credit have helped spur a second look at cities whose best days were thought to be behind them. Turns out those who'd written off our urban centers may have another think coming. If you abandon a sinking ship that does not sink, you must be an excellent swimmer.

Having lived in Norwich for twenty years, I've been comfortable, if not benumbed, with the idea that as unfulfilled as the promise of this city may seem to many, we have spared ourselves the finality of despair and disappointment by never actually planning and then committing and executing our plan. If we never really try, we can never really fail-at least that's what we'd like to believe.

But in recent years, we've edged, albeit uneasily towards learning to work together towards goals larger than the next election cycle and beyond the next budget year. We've finally conceded when you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. I don't think we've agreed on the destination, but it's starting to take shape and the timeline is looking a lot more like sooner rather than later.

There's a "Vibrant Communities" public meeting at four this afternoon in the Artspace community room at 35 Chestnut Street to develop ideas and insights on how to use a $50,000 community development grant awarded by the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation earlier this fall to target one building and create a strategic plan for rehabilitation and reuse. Not a 'build it and they might come' but more of a pick a point of leverage to move a neighborhood forward.

It's okay to be skeptical that we can create a consensus and critical mass but check your attitude and then your watch because at 6:30 tonight, the formal dedication of the newly renovated Kelly Middle School, under budget and ahead of schedule, could cause you to rethink that 'no, we can't make this work' mindset, because it seems, yes we can.

Speaking of making things work, Saturday morning's One City Forum, starting at nine (I had the wrong time earlier and in a local newspaper today; just getting old, I guess) in the Occum Volunteer Fire Department reviews a year-old outline, the "Norwich Community-wide Economic Plan and Process." The intention is to extract as much manner and method from that proposal and include it in the Plan of Conservation and Development other city residents have volunteered to improve with the understanding that our political leaders have to fully and finally implement.

We can stop looking for lone developers on a grassy knoll. It's not about buildings anymore-it's about building long-term relationships that reflect everyone's interest in our community. I'm not going to pretend Norwich's dark days are over but I believe it's time that together we step closer towards the light on the horizon.

-bill kenny

Walking on the Moon

As I pad about in the early morning hours readying myself for work (that fragment would bewilder my colleagues who truly believe I just stumble in), I have extended conversations with myself-sort of like pep talks, except I know the true nature of the knucklehead with whom I'm conversing. And, let's face it, it's pretty early and I'm not the sharpest spoon in the drawer even in the middle of the day so looking for intellectual sparks in the wee, small hours is a fool's errand. Probably why I'm up.

I've never really figured out what I did to my hands but on mornings when I shave, they've tried to kill me on more occasions than I can count (and not just because I don't want to get all mathy on you but really because it's been a lot of times). It happened yesterday again-I cut myself under my moustache on the left side. Technically my hands cut me, aided and abetted by my fingers while my eyes watched in the mirror and did nothing.

If you own stock in the Acme Stypic Pencil Company, you should be seeing big, fat bonus checks because I go through their product by the boxcar. My father used little dollops of toilet paper-looking like he had papier-mâché measles on some mornings. I'm a 21st Century Man. I always think I may have cut myself usually just under the Fu part of the Fu Manchu (I like to think it's more Sergeant Pepper but what do I know? I have hands trying to cut my own throat) and I'll start reaching for the styptic pencil. I've graduated to the liquid kind mainly because that's what's been in the stores the last two times I've bought it and it works fine. It staunches the flow and I don't surprise my wife by having drowned in a pool of my own blood in the bathroom (ask her about the apple corer).

Yesterday, the cap on the container was so tight I couldn't get it off. I struggled with the damn thing all the while watching in the mirror as the Red River trickled down my chin and headed south. I recited the 'lefty lucy, rightie tighty' mantra repeatedly (and with a growing sense of urgency) while wrapping the wash flannel around the cap to get traction. Only after I did the 'tap, tap' thing you do with jar lids on a kitchen counter to 'loosen 'em up' did I get the cap, to my utter amazement and bemusement.

Reaching work, I had an opportunity to experience moon gravity as I grabbed the massive glass door at my place of work's main entrance and opened it. Whoa! I practically pulled it off the frame! What I didn't know was the little hydraulic doohickey on the top of the door had broken and the door was hanging on by the three hinges. My first reaction was that my half hour regimen every morning at the gym had finally transformed me into Lou Ferrigno or his ancestor, Charles Atlas.

No such luck-I had a better chance of a sudden diminishing of gravity no matter how much spinach I ate or anchor tattoos I got on my biceps. I did get second chance with the door, however, as the facilities repairmen asked me to hold the 'Don't Use' sign as he searched for tape. I was going to ask if styptic sticks adhere to glass but he may have responded with Shylock's monologue, an exercise both of us would have regretted, but mostly me.
-bill kenny

When Winter's Shadowy Fingers First Pursue You Down the Street

The days dwindle down, not helped by how early it seems to get dark. We're all a little distracted right now with Christmas and such and perhaps in these parts we've not yet fully realized we're not really having winter though it is the season for it. Not to worry-it'll get here soon enough, it always does. And all we can do despite and because of it is the best we can.

And the best we can do doesn't take a break for holiday shopping or working to get home for holidays, so spare a thought for the friends and neighbors where you live who work on committees and advisories, great and small, on a hundred different projects that make our cities and towns places we want to come home to.

Making things better gets off to a pretty early start in Norwich this morning at 8:30 in the Norwich Business Park with a regular meeting of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SCCOG) Executive Committee. Here's their November meeting minutes and I find it interesting that it looks like an action item may be the creation of a regional Ethics Committee because at five this afternoon, in Room 210 of City Hall, our Ethics Commission holds a regular meeting. Judging from their November minutes, they have had a lot on their plates.

Also at five, next door in City Hall, in Room 209, it's a regular meeting of the Volunteer Firefighters' Relief Fund Committee. Judging from the city's website, there haven't been any meetings since May.

And what goes with fire better than water? I'm thinking grilled cheese and cream of tomato soup but pay me no mind. At 5:15 in their offices at 1649 Route 12 in Gales Ferry, it's a regular meeting of the Southeastern Connecticut Water Authority whose meeting minutes dried up seemingly after their session in August.

Tuesday afternoon at five in the offices of the Public Works Director at 50 Clinton Street, it's a regular meeting of the Public Works and Capital Improvements Committee. Their most recent meeting minutes (with their 'old' committee make-up) are from September, demonstrating again we know how to put the time in timely.

At five thirty in the Kelly Middle School, it's a regular meeting of the Norwich Public School's Board of Education. If you look here, you'll almost but not quite find the minutes of their November meeting which is where they are required to be, but sort of like that hands-free cell phone thing, it's often more of a suggestion than anything else.

And at six in their clubhouse on the New London Turnpike, the Norwich Golf Course Authority is having a special meeting to pursue hiring a new Head Professional/Manager.

Wednesday is a busy day starting at oh bright early, a quarter of nine in the morning as the Rehabilitation Review Committee meets in the Planning Department Conference Room at 23 Union Street. Their last meeting seems to have been in July so they have some catching up to do, I'm sure.

At four, in a community room at Artspace which is at 35 Chestnut Street it's a two hour investment of your time in the future, a project called Vibrant Communities and you should make every effort to be there. Here's part of the puzzle and a news report in September sparked a good discussion online that I'd hope to have carried further Wednesday afternoon.

At 4:30 the Housing Authority meets in its offices at 10 Westwood Park. Their most recent meeting minutes are from September and may be found here. One quibble (I know, 'only one?), members are present or absent; the charter doesn't care if you're 'excused,' kidnapped or serving under an assumed identity. Be there or be square.

At 5:00 in Room 335 in City Hall it's another meeting of the Emancipation Proclamation Committee who meet every Wednesday, but without the spaghetti that's so central to the North End of Boston and Anthony. Someday the municipal website will tell visitors who is on this committee and will have meeting minutes from all their other Wednesday meetings, but probably not by this Wednesday. Again.

Elsewhere in City Hall at six, the Baseball Stadium Authority meets in Room 210. The members' appointments look like they could do with a once-over and it seems their most recent meeting was in October as those are the most recent minutes posted on line.

Across town in the Wonder Bar, it's a regular meeting of the Greeneville Neighborhood Revitalization Committee. Reading their September meeting minutes, the key topic tonight may well be 'What would make Greeneville a desirable place to live in?' Reading those same minutes I was (sort of) surprised by who wasn't in attendance since the aims of the Greeneville NRC would appear to complement any and all other aspirations and dreams. It's not the singer, it's the song-an ongoing problem here in Norwich.

And at six thirty in ceremonies in the Jacqueline Owens Auditorium, the completed renovations of the Kelly Middle School will be formally, and, hopefully, very loudly, celebrated.

Thursday evening at six, at The Rink, it's a regular meeting of the Ice Arena Authority, whose members' appointment expired over four years ago and none of whose meeting minutes seem to be anywhere near the city's website.

Friday morning at nine, in Room 319 of City Hall, it's another regular meeting of the Chelsea Gardens Foundation. Feel free to search the city's website for any information on members, mission, purpose, creation date, achievements so far.... Talk about YGIAGAM, Your Guess Is As Good As Mine, the difference being neither of our guesses has gotten six figures in grant money from the Sachem Fund Board though when/if they meet again, I want to hear how the proposal outlined on the top of page three of the minutes gets answered.

Saturday morning at 9:30 in the Occum Volunteer Fire Department (if you need a map, let me know) is the next installment of the One City Forum with a review of the draft dated 11-22-10 on the Norwich Community-Wide Economic Development Process (and/or lack of same). You really need to start to come to these meetings, especially this one as we're having holiday treats which, while not pony rides for your birthday, are about as close as You Know Who is going to get to them, I suspect.

And Sunday afternoon starting at one, it's A Joyful Gathering at the Leffingwell House Museum at 348 Washington Street. Not sure how much joy is allowed in Norwich but Sunday's as good a day to find out as any other.

"When the wind is singing strangely, blowing music through your head and your rain-splattered windows make you decide to stay in bed. Do you spare a thought for the homeless tramp who wishes he was dead. Or do you pull your bed-clothes higher, dream of Summertime instead,

When Winter.... comes howling in." See you at something?

-bill kenny

Crap Like Clockwork

I heard that line yesterday as two guys about my age who didn't think anyone was listening were discussing their medical maladies. More ominously, I completely understood it. I can remember as kids we talked about baseball cards, later it was girls and then later, bosses, followed by our kids and our lawns and now as the hour grows even later, internal plumbing and other torments.

Thirty years ago I didn't know anyone my current age. I don't think I wondered what happened to geezers, I just didn't care since I didn't know any. And now I'm a poster child for them. I've reached an age where for most others on the planet I am, for all intents and purposes, invisible. I'm just another shriveled sack of skin, graying and fraying at the temples, around whom life flows without stopping as I shuffle off to Buffalo and Points Yonder Somewhere..

I have a phone smarter than I am, and I'm dumber than a sack of hair so don't get a swelled head, Android. Now when things break around the house, from the computer to the car, not only do I not understand what broke, even after they are repaired I still don't get that, either. The Young Turk I fancied myself to be a lifetime ago has become an Old Fart. I still have my teeth and some of my hair but most of everything else is on permanent loan.

The quiet decline began at some point in my past I can no longer remember or (better phrased) I simply paid no attention to. When does a Second Chance become your last chance? Only in retrospect. You don't miss your water until your well runs dry at which time the boast I overheard yesterday takes on a plaintive and pitiful urgency, until it, too, no longer matters. Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Some ships have already sailed.

-bill kenny

Major Tom and Lieutenant Dan

My heart beats in my chest on the left side. And truth to tell, as if you couldn't already, that's pretty much how I think. Actually, child of the Woodstock Novelty that I am, and witness to some excellent weird shit gone sideways I characterize myself as a Relentless Pragmatist (and don't forget the capitalization!). Neither a Yasgur Farmer nor an Altamont Angel, I was always more at ease as a Watkins Glen Summer Jam Barefoot Boy on the last (or lost) weekend in July of 1973 with The Dead, The Band and The Allmans travelling with Andy K and his roomie, Cosmo, but not Michael Richards' Cosmo.

Cosmo rented a U-Haul truck and filled it with dry ice and canned soda along with boxes of Dixie cups reasoning that if enough people showed up and were thirsty they'd buy soda and he'd make some money. Because this plan came together as he and Andy were heading out to the car from their apartment in Highland Park, some of it was slightly improvised. The only soda Cosmo could get in large quantities was Diet 7-Up. He couldn't begin to afford all the dry ice to keep the soda cold he would've needed and the Dixie cups were only available if you bought them by the pallet. Cosmo never hesitated. Hanged for a sheep, hanged for a lamb.

By the time Summer Jam ended Cosmo had no soda and no money from selling it because he couldn't figure out what to charge for it to cover costs, even though he was majoring in Business Administration at Rutgers. That in literature is what we call foreshadowing; in life it's just another day on the ant farm. Actually by the time Summer Jam started Cosmo had no soda left. That took genius. We'd gotten to the racetrack so much earlier than necessary we were ahead of the now legendary traffic jams that 600,000 PLUS people will cause. They were sure thirsty. And stoned.

But then again, quite possibly so were we. We forgot Cosmo had all those paper cups but people didn't mind drinking warm soda out of a can, so we were safe as houses. Less safe was the truck. We set up shop, so to speak, about 100 feet from dead center of the stage, figuring whoever was in charge would eventually make us move, except, and this is through the haze of 38 years ago (okay?), I don't think anyone was in charge.

As the sound checks for each of the bands became concerts in their own right., people discovered you could climb up the passenger side of the truck, using the window opening as a step to get to the roof of the cab and from there you could pull yourself up onto the flat roof of the box compartment in the course of the two days perhaps half of all those in attendance did just that. I could see the roof over the passenger compartment was horribly compressed; so much so that Cosmo started to figure out how late at night he'd have to return the truck to get any of his deposit back. The answer: no clock had enough hours in the night for that to ever work.

Which was just as well since the box roof, designed by the truck manufacturer to support nothing, had failed on an epic scale and as I think I remember it had holes the size of people in at least two places because that's how some folks ended up in the truck, suddenly, during the performances on stage.

Cosmo had long since sold out of soda and in an altered state, usually referred to as 'near the Adirondacks', about four hundred of us had a paper cup fight illuminated only by flashlights the night before the show that rather neatly used every single one of the six billion or so cups that Cosmo had stacked inside. It was, he offered cheerfully the next morning, one less thing to take home to Jersey.

I met Bill Graham, the concert promoter between acts on the side stage when I went to pick up my wallet which I had misplaced and two people had found and turned it all in, money and everything. They refused to take a monetary reward and were disappointed to learn my soda connection was out. Almost a decade later, I'd meet Graham again in an ante-chamber of the Frankfurt Flughafen for an interview and he not only remembered me, he asked about Cosmo.

I long since lost track of Cosmo though in recent weeks as I watched the Occupy movement ebb and flow-and I don't think we're done with that by a long shot, by the way-I flashed on the realization that all the Wall Street GB's, the greedy bastards, I so intensely dislike in the abstract are my age cohort. The indignities and indecencies we imagined our parents inflicting on us are nothing in comparison to the ethical and moral atrocities we committed against our children and their futures. And if we didn't commit them it wasn't for lack of trying or opportunities.

Why couldn't we make any money all those years ago selling a desired and desirable product at a good price in an environment willing to pay for it? Because we were practicing for the Fall of 2006, when the bottom fell out of the Ponzi Scheme our very bright classmates with MBAs helped create when the rest of us went mentally numb from the roots of our hair down as we became The Old Men Whom We Once Mocked. Looks like we passed the audition.
-bill kenny

Cause and Effect

I love indoor fireworks and small wonders. Don't get me wrong, I'm not immune to the charms of the grand gesture and the big moment but both bombast and bullshit start and end with identical letters and (too) often the former becomes the latter in the twinkling of an eye.

I thought I was going to riff today about the next installment of the personal misfortunes of a true prince among us, Alec Baldwin, except he's not and whatever happens to him (and plenty often does) it's not nearly everything he deserves, in my opinion, especially since he seems to bruise so easily.

Actually I'm the troll. I can't tell you why I dislike him, just that I do. We've never met, nor can I imagine a scenario when we would (obviously it won't be on a certain airline). I was never that big a fan of Kim Bassinger so it didn't break my heart when they married or set it free again when they divorced. He's just broadcasting on FM while I'm tuned to the police calls-don't know how else to put it. Alec, it's not you, it's me and as the Good Book says, let he without sin cast the first stone. But you might want to hold that thought instead of acting on it.

Especially if you're in Linda Vista, California, and then maybe not so fast with the rocks. This is one of those funny but not funny for everyone stories. If you're a parent of this child, you're sick with worry except, if you are the parent of that child, what the hell was he doing throwing stones at cars in the first place? And a crossbow? A crossbow!

Who the heck rides around with a crossbow in her/his car? I will NOT explore the "why?" question at all. And what's the matter with that guy anyway? You call shotgun, nobody calls crossbow! I can appreciate the advantages a crossbow has over a longbow, though I suspect Robin Hood could compensate for the limitations and still acquit himself well, but let's face it, a crossbow says "oh yeah?!" like very little else on earth. Talk about a statement.

Because I lack the will power and attention to detail to continue to follow this story I will never find out how many other cars the kid threw rocks at before he was crossbowed (if google is used as a verb, why not?) or even if authorities ever apprehend the assailants. I hope the RAV4 has cloth seats, because cruising around all day in tights with a crossbow can give you a rash to rival Oblio's point.
-bill kenny