Full Circle

I can remember sitting on the top stair leading to the bedrooms in my parents' summer house in Harvey's Lake Pennsylvania, watching and listening surreptitiously as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It was a remarkable moment to be alive-kids on every continent imagined themselves walking across the lunar surface, daring to dream they could one day do so.

It was a long time ago. The workaday world has ground down most if not many of those dreamers but as of yesterday we now know of at least one exception, a child of the Canadian farmland, incited by Armstrong's efforts to dare to do and not just dream, who grew up and took to the heavens over our heads, Chris Hadfield, most recently the Commander of the International Space Station. Hadfield spent five months on the ISS and used all the social media at his command to reinfuse space exploration with more buzz than it has had since To Infinty and Beyond.

That he capped his return to terra firma by releasing a cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity, a song David Bowie was inspired originally to write by Neil Armstrong's long ago walk on the moon, tells me for every beginning there is an ending and that we must play the game existence to the end of the beginning.
-bill kenny

My, My, Hey, Hey

I have a subscription to Vimeo because I know a few folks who are seriously into various forms of visual expression and vimeo is a platform they use to share their work. They are quite good, said by a man who can barely reach a conclusion and who cannot draw a straight line and I very much enjoy not only their time and talents but the projects of those whom they like and are kind enough to recommend.

Yesterday, I came across a video that is not easy to watch nor is it short. It clocks in at over an hour and is not the most cheerful of subjects (I'd tell you what it's about but I want you to watch it and after I tell you the name I fear you won't). Still, I can hope you will admire the artfulness of it, because the purpose of art is to conceal art and its artful deception is superlative.

I know no other way to sugar-coat it. A Certain Kind of Death.
-bill kenny

An Ounce of Mother Is Worth a Pound of Clergy (Slight Return)

I wrote this a couple of years ago and it's as true now as it was then, except maybe more so. I stole the title from a remembered proverb and with it being both Mothers Day and a Sunday I couldn't resist. After all, I am my mother's son, as well as the husband of my son's mother (and of my daughter's mother as well, but I was on a roll and wanted to balance the sentence).

I've read "The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new." And the image that came with that quote is a beautiful bonus, like one of those 'it came with the frame' pictures we all have in our homes.

Families look to a mother the way the fingers on the hand look to the thumb (said the middle finger of our family, me) so I hope wherever you are today you can reconnect with your family, however you see them, and celebrate both mothers and Mothers Day. I have one, my Mom, in Florida,  (she's very peripatetic and the the last time I looked that's where she was) and one, my wife's Mom, in Offenbach, Germany.

Each of their husbands passed away years ago after being married to them for a very long time leaving them alone, but never lonely, and even from the long distances we are from them, I can feel their attention, their concern and their love in every waking moment. 

I see in their eyes what I see in my wife's eyes when she speaks of our children and know that all mothers' hearts are the same, not just on this day but on all days. Happy Mothers Day.

-bill kenny

Call Me Traction Jackson

By Sunday night I may not have a thrill left in my body. I'm buying new tires today for my car, though it's not really a car, it's more a personal sports utility vehicle for not many, or a PSUVFNM. I call it a Subaru but have no idea what that acronym stands for, or stands against.

I need to get new tires because it's been a long while since I last got tires for it. When I bought it, the Subaru, and it's a Forester, I meant to tell you that earlier (sorry), had Mastercraft tires-I have no idea who makes them or how good they are, or aren't.

At some point in the Sixties we all started driving cars without white sidewalls and I've been sort of lost ever since. The tires on the Subaru now are directional radials. It has been explained to me repeatedly why they are more than superior to conventional radials and vastly superior to conventional bias-ply tires.

Did you see what I just did there? I rolled some tire lingo at you and didn't even blush or stutter. I have absolutely no idea what that sentence meant but it sounded pretty good and I'm fairly certain those were the words used to describe the tires I had. They were excellent tires.

They were completely round and touched the street at all times going forward and backward easily. They were and still are black and went really well in snow and rain and ice and dry weather too and I hope whatever it is I'm getting are as good as what I had. If after they are on,  it were easier to explain why they are good-er, well, that would be cake.  
-bill kenny

Not Sure What Getting Better Looks Like

I've been carrying around a racking cough for the last ten days that caused me to visit my primary care physician twice in a week and a half. The first visit was short fused and I had to see her colleague as she was the only one available. I am an acquired taste and a rapid infusion situation doesn't help me.

I suspect made a very vivid impression on her so much so that when I called on Wednesday afternoon to make yet another appointment to get stronger meds or just have someone smother me with  a pillow I ended up with 'my' doctor.

This time of year we all get those annoying colds-the ones that aren't too bad in the day time but at night you feel like you're gonna cough up a lung. Those are the worst and I have a bad one.

My doctor came up with a cough syrup that puts you lights out in less than an hour after taking it. Not only did I not believe her and slept most of the night in a state of undress some might think of as fanciful because I was ambushed, but it camps out in your head for the next twelve hours.

Most of yesterday I spent walking waist deep in pea soup, or at least that's what it felt like. In fairness I will point out that when the fog finally cleared (around eleven) my cold felt almost gone but I had also eaten about a dozen brownies and could not explain the Steppenwolf's Greatest Hits poster on my office wall.
-bill kenny

A Nutmeg Variation of Happiness

Northern people, John Lennon was once quoted as saying, are blunt. He meant Northern people in England but could have just as easily meant those from New England as well. At least I hope so as we have folks with all the fingertip sensibility of turnips.

The heartbreak and catastrophe of Newtown, and no I'm not about to launch into a a skit on the Second Amendment or gun safety but this is interesting and worth a discussion in the near future, but I could with little provocation, still fresh in so many people's minds, though not very many in the Senate of the United States, what should you think when you see this headline "Connecticut School Board Members To Open Gun Store?"

I would never say Tom Sirard, a person whom I have not met (nor likely shall), is a cloth-eared lout but, hand on my heart, how does the explanation 'the timing appears awkward' sound to you?

I'm leaning towards the word unfortunate but that's because I'm hoping to get that "Soul of Helpfulness" Merit Badge real soon. Point in fact, the irony is so rich in some of this, you'll be tempted to eat it with a fork but please use a spoon, because you'll want to get every drop.
-bill kenny

Life in a Northern Town

When Spring arrives here in New England, it does so often unannounced and in full bloom which is how I see this past weekend. Don't get me wrong, we had some nice days in April-and after some of the ones we had in February we very much deserved them but this year April was all about the promise of spring without a lot to show for it.

Like you, I had plans for the weekend and hoped for good weather and (I think you'll agree) we had terrific weather. If a little sunshine brightens everyone's day, what does a weekend's worth of blue, nearly cloudless skies do for your frame of mind. The only thing broader than the smile on my face were the smiles on the faces of others I encountered all weekend long.

I witnessed a small business grand opening , of sorts, on Saturday as another one man operation, London's Lemonade opened for the season, or maybe it was just for the day on Yantic Street heading towards the Uncas Falls. An energetic mom or dad had crafted a festive sign from colorful crayons and white poster board and, together with a couple of balloons, proudly announced London's grand opening.

The foot traffic towards the Falls and the Heritage Trail was just starting to pickup when I walked by perhaps driven in part by the viral marketing of what I can only assume was London himself shouting "Fresh Squeezed" to cars rolling past on Sachem Street.

Sunday, many of us do what we do best in small town New England, take care of one another. There were different charitable outreaches across Norwich, each separate and yet similar in intent if not the scale and scope.

There was  the 1st Annual Eastern Connecticut Walk Against Hunger centered at Chelsea Parade and involving hundreds of walkers, many local businesses and regional friends in working to rebuild supplies in food pantries at historical and perilously low levels because of the prolonged recession/depression/hard times that have hit so many families across the area.

In recent months, charities have often found themselves helping people who in years past were donating to their causes. Statistics suggest one in seven Connecticut families are at risk for hunger, meaning they don't know where their next meal is coming from and one third of all those receiving food assistance are children. When you can see the faces of your neighbors behind those numbers, it helped you walk a  little faster on Sunday to help raise money.

Up in Mohegan Park, you had an opportunity to do yourself some good and to help others do good as well. The Flying Monkeys Race Team, whom we've seen for years at the Walk for Life races sponsored by the American Cancer Society, were offering a fundraiser that took you around Spaulding Pond or, for the more adventurous (or in my case, foolish), across the park itself.

I enjoy Mohegan a great deal and Sunday was a tremendous opportunity to see up close just how many other people enjoy a taste of the forest life in the middle of our city. There picnickers, barbecuers, birthday party celebrants, fishermen and women and children of all ages, mountain bikers, and hikers, and folks just out enjoying a beautiful day.

We're in the middle of another work week with no promise that this weekend will offer the respite and relaxation of the one just past, but we are fortunate to live where we do with the resources we have to help us enjoy our lives and to build and treasure our memories of great and glorious times.
-bill kenny