Yom HaShoah

One day last week I ran into someone I've known for awhile who in offering a less than flattering comment on President Obama's trip to the Middle East took a swipe at the nation of Israel as only a snarky wiseass who knows nothing could ever do. (Yeah, sorry, Dave, it did tick me off more than I let on. Surprised? Why would I give you the satisfaction of letting you see you got my goat.)

In my suave and urbane prep school days, I'd have referred to him as a Holocaust Denier and been done with it. Such people are pathetic but for decades their numbers continue to grow. I've never been able to figure out how in the face of all the proof that the catastrophe existed, the deniers persist and insist otherwise. Today is as good a day as any to NOT give up and not give it to that.

Today is is Vom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah, Day of (Remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism, this year marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Thanks to the Cold War that divided Europe when I lived there, I have  never been to Warsaw or Auschwitz or Theresienstadt. Next year in Jerusalem.

I did visit Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, both in what was then West Germany, so for the Daves and all the other luckless, lunchless losers everywhere who sigh when 'something historical' is mentioned and who tell me 'that was so long ago' when discussing crimes against humanity during World War II, it wasn't and it isn't and it never will be.

Genocide never goes out of style. The Nazis wed 'good old fashioned' traditional anti-semitism, around in Europe since the Middle Ages with the mechanized efficiency of the assembly line to give all of us mass murder on a scale and scope unimaginable. And yet it happened.

Jews, mentally and physically disabled, homosexuals, gypsies, socialists eventually any one and everyone those in power came to hate, all went up the chimney. And it keeps happening, to this day, in a dozen different places across the globe and more even as I type this and as you read it. The cast of victims changes, but the movie stays the same.

We have the power to reinvent our world or to trudge on unthinking and unblinking  to the grave, looking neither to the left or right. We can live out our lives with a lie as an explanation or choose to be an exclamation. We will, in either instance, pass from this world but one choice will free us and those around us to be better and to be better always.

That exercise of free will, to choose to be and to do good will mark our place in time for ever. The earth, and this world, will be changed because we were in it.
And that is how we should define heroes.
-bill kenny

A Foreign Body in a Foreign Mind

I very much believe the farther out in space you go, the more alike we all look down here on the big, blue marble. As a prep school dweeb, I remember admiring immensely the celebration of shared humanity that William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice represented with Shylock's soliloquy.

When I learned King Edward I, centuries before Shakespeare, had banned the practice of  Judaism and expelled all Jews from Great Britain, I was struck by how universal feelings truly are that The Bard could capture so eloquently emotions he could only imagine.

We are a species, to my taste, who too often argues over our differences instead of celebrating together our similarities. We, or at least I, often recoil and withdraw from the unfamiliar and less than known, as a means of coping and surviving even when there's no reason or need for that behavior.

I subscribe for the most part to 'get along by going along' and if that means saying or writing something in public and only in private taking a behavior or a decision, I'm usually that guy. I'm aware that 'some people have to be shamed into doing the right thing' and on occasion even practice it but only as a last resort. A hardening of the heart when this approach is used often does more harm than good.

And if that smelled a bit like a disclaimer, you're right, because it is. Here's why.

Now that you've read it, tell me what you think we (all of us) should do and I'll help because I see no other course in light of the totality of the approach and imposition of what can only be seen as torture in a case of state-sponsored revenge instead of justice. How can you be anything other than beyond numb. I know it's only water, but a river of tears will not wash away the sin of our own unthinking and unbending inhumanity towards one another.
-bill kenny

Voted Off the Peninsula

I rarely, if ever, wish I were President of the United States of America. As a child, I figured out how I could be a cowboy, an astronaut and a baseball player with enough time left over to also be the President (admittedly there weren't a month's worth of play-offs when I was a kid and only eight teams (kidding!)). But for the last couple of days, maybe because I'm physically tired and I'm also more than tired of their unending theater, the North Koreans have prompted me to return to my old dream.

Heqq, I still have the saddle and a birthday coming up so the cowboy gig isn't as far out there as it might seem. If I have enough money, someone will put me on a shuttle to the International Space Station (I still think IHOP missed the endorsement deal of the millenium) and one more injury to one more player and the Yankees will let me play any of the infield positions I can name on a quiz (I see Hank Steinbrenner looking at the answer sheet and saying to Brian Cashman, 'yeah, shortfielder-sure, why not?').

That leaves us with the saddest people on earth and Kim Jong-un, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. How'd you like to own the gift shop at Panmunjeom? They have souvenir tee shirts made out of barb wire, I assume and how many picture postcards of the Worker's Paradise can there be (turns out I was joking, it's a lovely place like the Hotel California in practically every respect)?

Through the ubiquitous social media I know (a few) people who live in South Korea and they are very unsettled over whatever shenanigans these guys up North are involved in. And I can't say I blame them. Talk about sucking for a bruise (not sure how the official UN translation of that would sound) but my current favorite line is "The U.S. had better ponder over the prevailing grave situation."

Or what?
If they were to succeed in provoking me to give them my undivided attention, I'd ask everyone in South Korea to 'look away' and in two minutes this is done. Quite frankly, there's no point in being the most powerful nation not only in the world but in the history of the world if you don't intend to use it. And I know just enough about nuclear weapons to know there's an 'all in' setting on them and not much else.

There's no 'nuke attack lite,' for when you just don't have enough time for an all-out tactical exchange. One or Zero. I learned that in Poli-Sci 101. School's out, Supreme Leader. Rodman says grab those erasers and prepare to become one with the chalk dust.
-bill kenny 

Troubled Times on the Banks of the Old Raritan

Turns out bigger isn't better. Who'd have thunk it? All the Rutgers University alumni who wanted the basketball program to win in the worst way possible should be very happy.

Talk about losing sight of the original purpose- and I speak as an RU Alum of '74 (and not 1874)- of college athletics. Mission Accomplished. We destroyed the village claiming to save it and then failed to even do that.

It's Thursday and the Scarlet Knights' Post-Mike Rice Hiring Error has entered its second day. Let's see how long we can prolong the agony and the embarrassment. The only people not laughing at us are the ones who haven't heard the story. Yet. They should be coming up out of the bunker anytime now.

I'll practice my look of surprise-you feign dismay and together we'll fool no one. When we tacitly decided that winning at any cost was the goal, who is to blame when we realized we could not pay the price? We could ask Willie the Silent except he, too, is too mortified to speak.
-bill kenny

Macht die Augen Zu

When we were kids growing up our mother had to referee a lot of niggling fights that invariably had one or the other of us squirts saying 'that's mine!' as if a statement of possession settled everything or anything. Mom would always half-smile and tell us, 'close your eyes. Everything you see right now is yours.'

I was reminded about the magic of ownership this past Monday night as the City Manager offered his 2013-2014 City Budget.  If you judge his budget by how many people are left mumbling and grumbling about it, I'd suggest the City Manager has quite a hit on his hands with very few others trying to claim credit for any of his proposals. And maybe that's as it should be.

Let's face it. It has been no fun in recent years to put together a municipal budget anywhere across this country and most especially here in Norwich. When a decade or so ago times were good across the United States they were 'not so much' right here in The Rose City. And when times got hard, they got hard-er here. And stayed there. And as any property owner will tell you, it's been no day at the beach as a resident whose taxes pay for budgets that provide us with the goods and services we require as citizens.

I'm the first one to concede it's never eaten as hot as it's served (unless you were planning on taking a tour of the White House, in which case bring your own napkin). As a city we are at the very start of the public portion of the budget process. What began Monday night as 'the City Manager's budget' after members of the City Council receive public input (and, perhaps some criticism) along with department head briefings on funding requests, the budget then becomes 'the City Council's budget.'
Of course, all along it's been, and remains, our budget -- one we pay for and one we have to live with (or leave because of). 

You'll have your own opinion on where expenditures need to be expanded or where additional economies need to be imposed-it's the nature of our democracy that there be give and take and informed discussion. Informed being the critical word. Everyone is entitled to her/his own opinion, but NOT to their own facts.

But starting tomorrow night, you can acquire and expand your own facts as the first installment of departmental hearings takes place, in Room 335 of City Hall and (I'm sure) on public access television. If you pay for or use a municipal service, you owe it to yourself and we owe it to one another to have a copy of the City Manager's proposal, available in City Hall and on line, as well as  open ears and a mind to match, for the most important discussion and decision made every year by the men and women we elect to the City Council.

The seven people in the front of Council Chambers deserve to be voted on by far more than 13% of all registered voters and they need to hear from each of us on what we want next year's budget to look like. You can see a golden opportunity or a bureaucratic morass, but close your eyes because what you see then is your chance to change things if you decide to stay home and stay silent.
-bill kenny

Prisons on the Road

I wanted to call this 111-YG_ because that was the plate number on the metallic blue Equinox sports utility vehicle last Tuesday afternoon coming over the Mohegan-Pequot as one-half of a motorized azzhole sandwich with mayo. Yeah, you know who you are with that goobersnot in the Mazda alongside of you as neither one would yield to allow the other to merge into the single lane of traffic going over the bridge towards the Mohegan Sun.

So where there are two lanes of traffic, one in each direction over a ludicrously overburdened bridge from before the era where two of the largest casinos in the world set up shop eight minutes apart from one another, we had three cars, two heading in one direction and oncoming traffic going nuts. I kept waiting for carnage to fill my mirror and was happy to be disappointed.

Then after ALL of us crossed the bridge, I watched the Equinox pass on the left shoulder four of five of us in front of her to include that pesky Mazda from the bridge all while chatting away on her cellphone and then hitting on two wheels the cut-ff to exit for Route 32 heading into Norwich. Does my heart good to think this bozoette could be driving in my neighborhood, probably on the sidewalk with the stereo pumping. Some people are too stupid to be allowed to breed and Madame, you are on my short list of nominees.

We are the only nation on earth who uses automobiles for population control so since I live in fear of getting inadvertently harvested by one of these obliviots,and so too should you. I think preemptive contraception should be applied like Brylcreem, a little dab'll do you. And Happy Motoring!
-bill kenny

Well Played, Sir!

Someone needs to buy the Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball a wall calendar so we avoid having this happen ever again on an April Fool's Day. Today, the greatest game in the world, baseball, begins play for the 2013 season in earnest.

As of today we get to watch grown men on the most brilliantly manicured surfaces (sorry, Augusta!) in the history of turf management participate in a sport for obscene amounts of money that children of all pages play for the sheer joy and joyousness of it for free in open fields and schoolyards everywhere. You're welcome.

Baseball is played in Japan, Taiwan, in enclaves all across Europe where the King of Sport, Football (which we call soccer), watches uneasily at it makes inroads among its youthful minions and everywhere across South and Central America.

I love football, and will watch bad European football, which I define as French (to include Monaco) over every other sport on television except American Major League Baseball. Even between teams about whom I know nothing. I root (in order)for  American League East, National League East and National League West. And then anyone else, to include short-season minor league teams.

Yeah, I know the major league season goes on too long; quite frankly, playing the World Series into the first week of November is stupid. There should be day-night  double-headers, and they should be played every Sunday, with day games on Saturdays. There should be baseball games so kids can watch the whole games and be able to get up for school in the morning as long as it's in session.

But none of that will ever happen because money, BIG money, now rules the game. Going to see a Yankees game can, with food and adult beverages, parking and tickets set you back four hundred bucks for two people. Or more. But at least it's a Yankees game. You can pay similar amounts of money and have to put up with the Oriole or somebody else (kidding!)

It's been all about big money since we started paying the equivalent of the gross national product of Surinam to journeymen middle fielders who are career .220 hitters and wouldn't be Gold Glovers if they won the Krylon "Spray for Life" sweepstakes. You don't want to know what good players cost because if you have to ask you can't afford it. Yankee Stadium cost over 1.6 billion (with a B) to build. Seriously.

But as of today, I refuse to wax wroth over any of that. It's Opening Day, sport, and it should be a national holiday. We could call it Bring your Glove to Work Day. Put bowls of mandatory sunflower seeds at every lunch table, just for today. And let's not forget my personal favorite after work relaxer and near-mantra, Slide with Your Spikes Up. Play Ball!!
-bill kenny