Choice, Chance and Change

We're at that annual point in the calendar where festive feelings and festivals of hope and happiness are everywhere. A week ago last Saturday the Norwich Winterfest Parade and lighting of City Hall thrilled throngs from across the city and around the region. We've already observed the first Sunday of Advent and this Saturday evening at sundown, 25 Kislev, we celebrate the beginning of Hanukkah. 

Most of us look forward to this 'most wonderful time of the year' as an opportunity to renew old acquaintances with friends and family and sharing memories of happy, past times while looking forward to better days yet to come. 

This is a season ideally suited to underscore and reaffirm the importance for each us, both as individuals and as residents of a city with a rich past and unproven future promise, the importance of Life's 3 C's: Choices, Chances and Changes.

Each of us must make a choice to take a chance or our lives will never change. Some people feel the key lies in the change but I believe making and owning that one conscious choice is critical to recognizing an opportunity or a chance and then building on that to create a new circumstance and a different situation, in other words, a change.

Opportunities can be missed or can be golden. They cannot be both and once the Rubicon is crossed the decision is made and managing the consequences becomes the chance to change. Continuing to discuss the would've, could've and should've is wasted effort unless we choose to act and embrace change. Nothing ever happens if you don't make it happen.  

Saying 'no' as we did in this city a month ago to a bonding initiative to build a new public safety building is not the last word either on the community's commitment to public safety or on the importance of elected and appointed city leaders in defining and defending their vision of our  downtown's growth and improvement. The decision made was a first, not a final, step on a journey that we will make either running toward our future or from it. There's no standing still.

The holiday season is one of hope and you know my feelings about that word (hope is NOT a plan). We have three and half weeks left in a year that began, as they all do, with so much promise. How much progress we measure as the days draw down is, of course, important not only because we need to know where we are but to better decide where we go next.

Ray Bradbury, of Fahrenheit 451 fame, offered "living is jumping off the cliff and building wings on your way down."  Isn't it time we trusted ourselves to soar? Choice, chance and change or lather, rinse and repeat. You decide; I already have.
-bill kenny

Brevity is the Soul of Communications

I did not know that yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the first Short Message Service, SMS. If you had sent me an SMS over the weekend to alert me I'd have probably looked at it cross-eyed trying to guess what you had typed. I'm not a fan of them at all. I understand them, at least in theory, but in actual practice, the atrocious spelling they seem to perpetuate and carry over into non-SMS situations at the very least leaves me cold.

It's hard to believe the flood of revenue cellphone service companies receive every day from texting all began quietly in a barn near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in a crisp December not unlike this one when a non-union carpenter, Joseph, sent his great-with-child wife, Mary, that simple phrase 'Merry Christmas.' From such humble beginnings we have scaled the dizzying heights of  OMG, YOLO, ROFLMAO creating whole conversations out of words that aren't words in any language, ever. Makes me want to punch a penguin (that's a seasonal reference) or a nun (though the latter will punch back).

If the other species on this planet find out what we use our thumbs for (and how often), Jack Horner will wish for something other than plums. Perhaps he should tell it to the Marines who probably have thousands of Twitter followers-Twitter being to communication what Justin Bieber is to The Beatles.

And yet, having said that, I have to backtrack and note that His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, is about to embark on his solo twit (I have no idea how to phrase that and neither do you so spare me). The difficult challenge for him may be in keeping the tweets to under 140 characters. I'm thinking about the loaves and fishes and how quickly these things get out of hand.

As a FARC who may have more than a casual interest in leveraging the technology to access the mainframe of heaven, I wonder if he'll hear confessions and what Penance might look like: #OMGURsogoing2hell.

And, sad to say, 'can I get an Amen?' will seem less magical as a retweet. I suspect 2GB a month isn't going to cut it and soon enough he'll be hemorrhaging overages.  
-bill kenny

Anarchy Under the Sleeves

I'm not sure how much less attention it's possible to pay sometimes than whatever it is I pay whenever it is I do it. On a good day I am close to oblivious to both the kooky and the spooky that is part of our everyday lives thus, that both the morbid and the mundane elude my notice shouldn't be that much of a stretch.

I made a discovery yesterday that if it doesn't make me King of the Obvious at least elevates me to the medal round. My deodorant has a name; not just a brand which I actually did know and tend to buy for the most part (I go for shape if we're being honest and their container has always had the same shape, I think), but the aroma/color has a specific name.

If pressed, I'd have told you (before yesterday) 'blue' when asked; now I know it's 'Anarchy.' In much the same way as I don't know why a Miata is called that or how we came up with Screaming Yellow Zonkers, I have no clue as to why the folks who make the deodorant think anarchy is the name to sell it.

As I remembered going to the store a couple of weeks ago and getting a two-fer on a new pack of it, I went to double-check the name and learned I blew it. The double-stuff sitting on a shelf in the little room under the stairs that we call (surprise!) 'the little room' is the same color of 'Anarchy' and seemingly the same fragrance but is called 'Phoenix' and purports to be  '24 hour deodorant stick' though it wears no watch.

Not that you've asked, but it's my opinion that the folks making this stuff have way too much time and money at their disposal since their website is more complex than a Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical offering but with a dearth of snappy toe-tapping tunes. The costs of dry cleaning alone for the costumes in The Pirates of Penzance must be staggering, though considering their product I would hope not too high (I originally typed that as 'Prats;' awkward if not Freudian).

It's sort of like the guys I work with who periodically overdose on PowerPoint and obsess about including an animated slide that flies in from left to right on the screen (other way when we're talking to folks from Asian cultures and countries) to tell me that Six is Greater than Three. I knew that but I guess somethings you just can't know often or good enough. I'm looking forward to the pop-quiz; already have my own answers.
-bill kenny      

A not too desultory phillipic

I'd like to say I found something interesting to read out here in the ether where everything you read is a truth or a falsehood or on the way to becoming one or the other.

Sometimes, it seems more like one and the other. Except, I didn't find this; it was shoved at me. Technically, I shouldn't sound so aggrieved as it was carpet bombed on a bunch of us. I don't know what anyone else made of the entreaty but I followed the recommendation and enjoyed.

As a fan Camus' The Just (Assassins), I was predisposed to liking it and then about mid-way through it, and you'll get to it as well and (I hope) enjoy the deliciousness of the wordplay, I came across this: "... he would see a calm man—no, a great man, deserving of respectful service, and only traditional sauces."

I don't think I will ever see myself as a calm man, nor will anyone else, ever. I tend to veer more towards manic and mayhem, but that's not my (main) point (I think). The movie in my head this writing inspired is much more interesting than anything on the big screen, I-Max or 3-D, at your nearest multi-plex.

Literature is where so much of our movie collection actually got its start and the terrific thing about the written word is there are no sprockets to pop or film gates to lose track of which is just as well as I've lost my harmonica, Albert.
-bill kenny

Narrowcasting

There are instances where I celebrate large events-my Yankees winning the World Series or John Boehner's tanning lamp breaking but today is more of a quiet riot and doesn't actually involve you unless today is (also) your birthday or you know someone, or of someone, whose birthday today (also) is.

My sister, Evan Dolores, has a birthday today. My sister, 'the boss of the dog,' has a husband and children and grands as well (I'm not sure why I lose sight of that) and will, I hope observe the completion of the earth's annual orbit round the sun in a manner best suited and most pleasing to herself.

If you stop in here on  regular or irregular basis (you might want to see a doctor about that irregularity, by the way and add fiber) and are wondering where this is going, zu spat! Erbarme sich! As I already told you, it's my sister's birthday and I hope she has a  wonderful time. And I probably hope you do, too, but you're not  kith and kin so if you don't, you don't.

I remember a ridiculously long time ago giving someone a lift to see these guys back when they were absolutely amazing and, for the most part, still got along. Unless you remember the name of the other passenger in the car with us, roll the window back up and move along. Nothing to read here.
-bill kenny

It's a Wonder We Can Even Feed Ourselves

There's often a strange sense of detachment you have, sitting someplace, Norwich, Connecticut, that's more or less a backwater, unless you're from Preston (there's hospital joke in there someplace and it's on the voters) viewing national events and realizing the turbulence and turmoil happening on the big stage is reflected here.

The large splash when the Greedies who ran the Wonder Bread/Hostess Snacks company (and ran it into the ground) has ripples in a little tiny pond like here because we have/had one or more of the thrift stores that sold the DODs (day old doughnuts). Make no mistake, I, too am a capitalist (just not a very good one), not to be confused with other people who are free-market whores (but who are very good at it, if that's of any solace).

Speaking of which, for all of his bow-tied snarkiness, George Will that clueless bozo, despite his acerbic assertions to the contrary, is a rich bastard-apologist by profession. I think I've been grudging for him since he decided he was a Bruce Springsteen fan and misread Springsteen about as badly as is possible to do without actually being Ronald Reagan. My theory at that time was Will's bow tie was so tight it cut off the blood flow to his brain. I know better now.

As I said, we have/had a Hostess shop locally-don't go there much anymore but we did. A penny saved is a penny earned and my last name rhymes with it so I spend a good deal of time figuring out ways to stretch them as far as they'll go. As the Twinkies Tsunami gained momentum, local reaction, as angry and less than informed as so much of it was/is nationally, made its way into our community discussion much like it did yours. 

And now of course, there's this which has reduced me to efforts at slow and even breathing and full exhalation so as to slow the rise of gorge in my veins. The same insouciant, inconsiderate 1% who looked askance at the vagrants and vagabonds of Occupy Wall Street sixteen months ago when the latter were coming for their Grey Poupon have offered all of  us another example of how to rob without a gun and why rules are for people who simply don't know better.

Which is odd because I dimly remember talk of a rule someplace, I believe it was Golden or perhaps that was just the calf. Now it has been replaced by one involving hooves and legs but we are all equal, though some more equal than others. Next up will be the Number of the Beast who will soon enough be howling like an idiot wind.
-bill kenny

Our Supplies of Surprise Are Running Low

We sort of had our first snowfall in New England the other day, at least the part I live in. I see myself as a 'Jersey Guy' though technically, arithmetically, I've lived longer in Southern New England than anywhere else on earth in my entire life, which is quite an expanse of days when added together. Strange Days indeed.

I tend to think of CT Guys (is there even such a thing?) as folks who drive Volvos, wear deck shoes instead of sneakers, have ball caps from yachting clubs and drink Michelob-though NOT all at the same time. Yep, my people-though they're probably not too thrilled about the use of that pronoun.

I wouldn't even mention the sort-of-snow not only because if you pay it attention it never goes away, but because we'll probably have far more of it by the end of this sentence, much less the end of the winter. Although, and I'm smiling as I write this, if we have last winter again, somehow my heart will carry on (I have never stopped).

Memory plays tricks on us geezers so maybe we had more snow all of last winter than we had the other day, but I think not, and I'm not upset about it. I made my wife and children promise years ago to NEVER get me a sled for Christmas so I don't care if there's ever snow and for most of last winter, it worked out great for me. If you're a penguin or a polar bear, get yourself an agent and a lawyer (insert Cold Case Files joke here).

And we needed that around here (here being Planet Earth). In New England we have all four seasons. Always have to my knowledge and always will, though after I shuffle off this mortal coil what you do is your business. And yet in recent years, the first snow becomes a cry to man battle-stations. Soon, our humble technology permitting, we'll broadcast live the descent of the first snowflake to the earth-perhaps if we can have one that Tweets, that can be live, too. And of course, we'll have an app for your smart phone as well.

Phones may as well be smart as we never are. Once the weather models on TV start talking about snow we flock to the stores to buy milk and toilet paper not always in proportionate amounts to one another or to anything resembling reality. And let's not forget this year, we have the Mayan End of the Calendar hanging over our heads-so any snowstorm could be our last one, if the end of time is actually next month. That every day's the End of Days for some goes unnoticed as we line up cheek to jowl in express lanes whose lines stretch to the horizon with our purchases.

I'm wondering if this is how the dinosaurs met their end. Were they staring up at the sky wondering what had happened to the sun when cavemen, wearing yachting caps and driving Volvos, descended on them like Plague and Pestilence. Suddenly Wilma and Betty weren't quite so giggly anymore and Darwin had his proof. Again.

-bill kenny