The New, the True and the Unexpected

Mike Wallace who may have had more to do with shaping the public perception of a CBS News TV Show, "60 Minutes," as the television version of Christians to the Lions, died this past weekend, out of the spotlight in which he had lived and worked for many decades. He was 93 years old.

I never met Mike Wallace, and I've never been to Spain, but I had a chance to watch him work many decades ago when American TV news was still intoxicated by the idea of satellite coverage and, during sweeps week (rating periods that measured viewership and, in turn, dictated advertising rates) they'd fly their high profile reporters to the ends of the earth (or someplace from which they could see the ends of the earth) basically to prove they could do it and to attract viewers who'd tune in to see familiar faces in out of the ordinary places.

Wallace and a 60 Minutes crew ended up in the International Departures lounge of the Frankfurt Flughafen for reasons that if I knew, I've long since forgotten, but I'm pretty sure that's not the important part. The chance to be a fly on the wall, from a not inconsiderable distance while he improvised, then rehearsed and finally recorded the bridges, stand-ups and closes, was amazing.

As everything is digital now, in the time of this tale, TV news/features were recorded in the field on videotape cartridges (I'd learned (loose definition) field reporting on Sony Rover decks, portable reel to reel half inch black and white tape machines that weighed about as much as a boat) sealed and self-contained, fully threaded that were loaded into a portable recorder connected to a camera.

Wallace and his 60 Minutes crew had come of age in TV news when everything was SOF, sound on film. Ten years after tape had replaced film, Wallace, force of habit still clapped his hands to conclude a countdown, because in the days of film, that on-camera hand clap had been used to synchronize the audio and the visual on the Steenbeck edit table.  What followed was magic, but very hard work as well.

He spent close to a half hour working on the phrasing, the language and the intonation of what was, perhaps at best, no more than twenty seconds total of on-air material. He had discussions with the cameraman and the lighting grip on sitting versus standing versus walking versus camera movement. He was completely absorbed in the process and an active participant, not a "star" but the guy whose job was being on-camera. He was oblivious to those of us watching him and driven to produce the best possible story elements to put on the air.

And then just as intently and intensely as he'd been working, the segment was concluded and a smile as bright as the sun and as wide as the horizon broke out over his face as his crew packed gear for the drive from Frankfurt to Bonn for a stop at the US Embassy, located in the then-capital of West Germany. He made small talk with the gallery, asking those of us in uniform where we were from in the US and how we liked Germany.

He wasn't so much marking time as listening for clues and motivations, it seemed to me, cocking his head slightly to his left side as if his right ear were stronger, eyes looking straight ahead and fixed on nothing but trying to see what you were saying, and tightening his jaw slightly as you spoke to him, taking it all in.

Just as suddenly as he had arrived-he was gone. And our concerns, battling the traffic back to Bertramstrasse 6 where the A3 became Miquel-Adickesalle and who had charge of quarters duty and who was available to log tape for whatever it was we had been shooting when we returned to the station. Not that our encounter didn't provide us with a terrific story to tell everyone back in the AFN HQ building that afternoon, including people who claimed not to care, when we finally got there.

Remembering all of that (from about thirty or so years ago) I wondered not so much if there is a Heaven (pretty much beyond my paygrade and control) but, rather, if the reaction up there were any different than in these parts so often when it was announced "Mike Wallace is here."
-bill kenny               

The Music of Rebellion Makes You Wanna Rage

There was an interesting story in one of my local newspapers yesterday. Sundays are always good days for newspapers, everywhere. They have a backlog of wire features they stick on pages they've already sold advertising for and while you and me read right past the 'pick the best pizza contest' on the back of the article, the display sales folks get all sweaty and worked-up about the readership.

Anyway, the story was about the success of SiriusXM and it was probably in your local paper, too. Not too many years ago there were two satellite radio services each one making just enough to survive without prospering. When they decided to merge they had to persuade Congress they weren't a combination in restraint of trade as alleged by Clear Channel Communications who were, themselves, regarded by many as an affront to people everywhere who enjoyed music for music's sake.

I have no love of Clear Channel as I'm sure you just realized. In their heyday, they were the successors to Drake Chenault, with no heart at all but now they are no longer the dominant FM music programmer in the USA (I don't know if there are ball caps to that effect anywhere or how much they'd cost). I listened to Sirius when it was just Sirius in the days before car radios had satellite as part of the standard equipment packages which meant a sort of blast from the past, with FM converters of the early seventies when AM radio was king.

These were tuners you plugged into the back of the dashboard AM radio and then tuned to 1600kc or thereabouts which was a part of the spectrum rarely used and at which you could then employ the FM synthesizer to tune in the FM Rock stations who were to dominate so much of the radio landscape for the next decades. The trouble was the folks who owned those stations got bought by the suits who needed more profits and knew how to make that happen: standardization and syndication.

Yeah, it made for sound-alike radio stations that were cookie-cutter creations, but most of us didn't care and in the big scheme of things as pursuit of MBAs became paramount over original thought and independent ethics and morals, it was the perfect soundtrack for the lives we led. Eventually it led to the invention of satellite radio which brings us to SiriusXM and now, reading the article, the next iteration of music delivery and programming. And Jose Mangin should tread more carefully. If he's hanging his hat on the crap and pap that often passes for music on his employer, he'd be best-advised to go bareheaded.

I stopped my subscription to SiriusXM shortly after the two services merged because of the attractiveness of alternatives like Slacker, Pandora, Spotify and, much more recently, Ear Bits. The latter offers me an almost unending stream of new music and musicians whose acquaintance I had not previously made. I can always fall back on one of the other providers when I need a Bruce fix or a dash of Amazing Groundhogs or Frightened Rabbit.

I realize music is a business-but it's more magic than money, or should be. It's one of the wonders of the world that has too often become part of the machinery and scenery surrounding us on all sides of the journey. We are in danger of forgetting it's an expression of our experiences, the good and the bad, and that we should celebrate it always.
-bill kenny     

What Light

If you are observing Easter Sunday today, best wishes and all the happiness of the holiday. Like me, I'm sure you have difficulty explaining the relationship of chocolate, a bunny and the Resurrection of Christ (unless you just choose to overlook all of it). We may not be pulling on the same oar, but we're both in that boat. I think if we put our backs into it, we can still reach shore.

Actually, and I reckon time in this instance by the day, Easter Sunday, rather than the date on the calendar, today thirty-five years ago asked the woman I was seeing, Sigrid Schubert, to marry me-more importantly for the history books, is that today is when she said yes.

Sigrid told me later she had at first thought I was getting ready to break up with her-sounds like a great argument to NEVER play poker for money with me, except I tend to have all the emotional range of Rainman in a coma, so I should be grateful she held on and waited for the ride to get to....

...Here. Where she and I are now is, in some respects, not all that far from where we started. The material conditions have changed-we had a two room cold-water walk-up flat off a bus line in Offenbach am Main a 'small' German city with more people in it than who lived in ALL of New London County, Connecticut when we arrived here twenty-and-a-half years ago. Our home today is across from the landmark park in the city of Norwich, an industrial revolution meets the American Revolution town that is found so often in New England.  That we were here isn't/wasn't part of either of our visions of our future proving again, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

Our wedding rings have both the date of our engagement (technically, that anniversary was earlier last week) as well as of our wedding. I only very rarely take my ring off and actually cannot recall the last time (I just did it to make sure I still can and I can)-and I mention that because I don't especially like jewelry and spend all day putting on and taking off my wristwatch and my medical alert bracelets. The ring is a constant, not that I need the reminder.

We were, with apologies to Erich Fromm, a coalition of two against the world from the beginning. I'm not comfortable with new people, taking forever to warm up to them-with the exception of the two who joined our lives, our children. We were three and then became four and then three again and soon enough we'll be back to just the two of us, where we started and I am with the person in the world with whom I am most comfortable.

Sigrid is, for me, like breathing out and breathing in, though I fear I have given her moments where the judicial application of a pillow to my sleeping face has crossed her mind, and so much for the breathing. And that's fair-actually more than fair. This is a day I usually spend looking at where we've been and where I hope we're going but today, I'm thinking more of enjoying just where we are and what we have, which is, as it has been for thirty-four years, one another. She brightens any room and always brightens my world.
-bill kenny

End of Days

I have never been to the Vatican, nor have I stayed at a well-known motel chain, but I know my way around the Stations of the Cross and the Lives of the Saints. I'm always amazed at the number of people who think Christmas is the origin of Christianity-others consider the beginnings to be Easter Sunday.

If the former is The Promise and the latter The Promise Fulfilled-today, Holy Saturday, is the act of faith and hope that defines you as a Christian. The belief in the Resurrection which the New Testament portrays as  the reward for the faithful is never so near and yet so far as it is today.

The earliest disciples had nothing to go on, unlike we of the Brave New World Order. They had witnessed a crucifixion-one of the most egregiously horrific forms of death sentence at its time. Cowering in an upstairs room, huddled together while fearing any sound and every footfall was possibly a signal someone was coming for them, they had no way to see the glory of Easter Sunday. All they could do was believe.

For them to believe as devoutly as they did between the worst day in the history of the world and its greatest day, remains, for me-loyal son of Holy Mother Church, but a FARC  for more years than I care to recall-the day which created the Christian religion, today.

From childhood on, I struggled against the suffocation that surrender to the traditions and the rites seemed to signify. I took no solace in unquestioning and unswerving belief-preferring what I understood the path of Thomas to be and, finding no one who could answer my questions, absenting myself from the body of believers. How odd that this declaration of freedom has never created a sense of being free.

Not that I don't envy those of faith and think about the comfort that comes from that, especially as I did last night reading  the accounts of the death of Captain Nicholas Rozanski. He came all the way from Dublin, Ohio, to be lost in the fog of war, along with SFC Jeffrey Rieck and SFC Shawn Hannon, on the streets of Maimanah, an otherwise unremarkable spot on a map of a nation we have carried with us as a coward does an abscess for over a decade, unable or unwilling (I can never tell which) to do that which we know we must to conclude that which  we can no longer control.

Captain Rozanski's death should be another reminder to those of us who are alive to redouble our efforts to be the best people we can be in The Now because The Next, as the New Testament illustrates, can be so lonely and uncertain without a reason to believe. Either you have a reason, or you become one for someone else. When you do, every day is Easter.
-bill kenny          

You Oughta Know Not to Stand By the Window

I was summoned for jury duty yesterday to New London's (Connecticut) Superior Court. I haven't been in very many other courtrooms, for any reason, so I don't know how superior it is but I was pleased with the accommodations. I'm not going to tell you about the jury selection process we had to go through (imagine  American Idol without Randy Jackson but with William Hung) or who was picked and why those who weren't didn't get selected for a lot of reasons to include I'm not supposed to.

Perhaps jury duty across these United States is like The Spanish Inquisition only with fewer soutanes. Considering how hard people struggle to get out of it, I can't blame you for thinking it must be horrible. And yet the right to a trial by a jury of one's peers is one of out most cherished Constitutionally protected rights. At least until now. It was a day where I didn't feel very cherished, let me tell you.

Especially since while I'm sitting in the courthouse waiting for whatever is supposed to happen next, unlike the folks I got an eyeful of in the colorful jumpsuits riding in the camp bus (they tell themselves) who don't want anything to happen next except for the present to remain the future just as it is, the Kapital Kids, the men and women we've elected to head to Washington D. C. are at it again.

We should have driven a second stake through its heart, but the Stop Online Piracy Act (and the sabotage and subversion of a stunning number of personal rights as collateral damage) has reared its ugly head again, this time put into play by the President of the United States who vowed the last time to NEVER let it return. Never is a word, perhaps like "sex" fifteen or so years ago for which the White House has a sliding definition.   With apologies to Scully and Muldur, once again we need to fight FOR the future. You can do your part by signing this online petition.

Some people, it seems, will only keep their promises while we watch them. I guess we'll need to start sleeping in shifts or we'll end up in some deep sh*t. Go ahead and turn in, I have the first watch. You can use the rest.
-bill kenny    

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Now summer is here, even if the calendar says otherwise. After some sneaked in opening days (I'm thrilled we play Major League Baseball in Japan; but when are we going to host Japanese teams at US ballparks?), now we can begin. And lest you get confused my little friend, when I say 'we" I mean (of course) the New York Yankees (I heard your sigh), and I understand it.

Please don't point at the scoreboard, or the standings or the calendar. I knew it's first week-but when you've rooted for a team, any team, your whole life, you have hopes and dreams. Actually, in Kansas City or Milwaukee, you have hopes and dreams. In Yankee Universe, you have expectations.

Fans are thrilled in Red Sox Nation, when their pitchers watch a game to the end or when the BoSox make the playoffs. We Yankees fans yawn. Our legion of detractors have figured us out: we not only expect to get to the World Series every year, we demand it. And we demand the team win it. And when they don't, and that happens more often than they do, despite being one of the most successful teams in major league sports anywhere on earth, we deride them for being overpaid choke artists.

That's what we practice during Spring training. You and your team's fans scout players and prospects. We look for scape goats and discuss grey clouds surrounding silver linings. We rant at the owners for not understanding you can't buy a championship team, but expect them to do exactly that every year. And if that post turtle with maximum attitude and minimal smarts, Hank Steinbrenner, needs Tommy Johns surgery on his check writing hand, get a reliever in there!

Unforgivably arrogant-and we know it. Come the last week of the season, you may have a measure of revenge if I don't offer a divisional playoff preview or crow over a starting lineup whose strength I believe ( = fervently hope) will be buttressed by the return of Dandy Andy who retired at the end of NOT last season but the season before. Sure, we'll have to have a new delivery service for our desserts, but that's a part of life, like learning how to lay down a bunt. Or not.

We Yankees fans are insufferable but you love to hate our team. I don't care if it's raining, or (gulp!) snowing-from here on out everyday is a great day for a baseball game. It's so nice, let's play two, but remember there's no singing in baseball (or at least there shouldn't be).
-bill kenny 

Joe Juran and The Rose of New England

There's a very excellent probability you've never heard of Joseph Juran though where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, like so many other entities and organizations, great and small, is a beneficiary of his most enduring observation. Juran was the 'father' of quality management and extrapolated from an Italian economist,Vilfredo Pareto, was instrumental in developing the 80/20 Principle, that held 80% of all achievements are a result of the efforts of 20% of the population.  

I could have just as easily told you Juran was the chairman of the Left Turn on Red Light Sub-Committee of the Norwich Parking Commission and you would have believed me-not because I'm as honest as the day is long, though I am (and thank goodness for Daylight Savings Time!) but because like most of our neighbors, you and I are in that 80% who enjoy the benefits of the work 'others', mostly unknown to us, accomplish on our behalf.

There are at least forty-one agencies, advisories, boards, commissions and committees in Norwich on which  residents can serve (and technically, through city ordinance and/or state law, must serve). I say at least forty-one because when I checked the municipal website, there are two I know of that aren't listed.

This is not yet another hand wringing harangue about voter turnout last November for the City Council and Board of Education elections. We get the government we deserve and if you choose to not vote, you get to live with the choices I make for both of us, because I am always going to vote.

No, I'm not talking the Big Rooms, but what in Las Vegas might be regarded as the lounge acts, all those volunteers with every imaginable responsibility. The headlines are always about the City Council and the Board of Education but the fine print is with the volunteer groups where (at least) 80% of everything that gets done in Norwich (and conversely that doesn't get done), is proposed and disposed of--discussed, debated and implemented.  

The discussion over appointments to the various boards et al and the process used to determine which volunteer is recommended for what position that surfaced at last month's City Council meeting, as so much does in these hectic times, comes back to who has 'free' time and what is that time worth, to themselves and to their community.

In a city of over 40,000 residents where among all voters, those who are unaffiliated outnumber both registered Democrats and Republicans, how, exactly, do vacancies get filled. Once an interested resident fills out an application, and sends it to either the City Manager's office or to the Office of the Mayor, what happens next? Perhaps the question we're currently trying to answer is why should there be any mystery to the appointment process at all?

Let's face it, we 80% need all the help we can get and if the best way to do that is to expand that 20% to a larger number so we all get the benefit of a greater range and scope of talents and abilities, I don't think any of us will feel badly-served by those friends and neighbors who generously share their time and talents for our greater good.
-bill kenny