He Probably Would Have Ridden in a Lincoln

Guess who didn't make it central Pennsylvania earlier this week for the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address?

Yep, me. And probably you. Stupid work and family stuff, in all likelihood. Hope no one noticed, right? If you feel better we weren't the only ones not there.

Actually a whole bunch of us were missing in action to include the President of the United States who, suggest some peanut butter conspiracy folks, and it's spreading doncha know, deliberately snubbed the event. Wow. De.Lib.Erate.Ly. That guy, huh?

Okay, maybe not so much huh or wow. It turns out despite this piece of doppel-think from the once formidable news folks of CNN. I especially like the initial quasi-oblique reference to the President's racial heritage followed shortly afterward with a more direct note for those of us who missed it the first time, or perhaps who hadn't realized the Commander in Chief is a black man.

Thanks, CNN. I'll stop adjusting the contrast on my TV set now. Explains why everyone else looked like they'd vacationed in Chernobyl.

Except, to return to the original outrage, not to be confused with original sin, well, at least not around here, the 'snub' of the anniversary, check out this, and most especially the next to last paragraph with a complete listing of the Presidents who have been to Gettysburg and, special note to those of the Hard Right Persuasion, your poster child, The Last True Republican, Ronald Reagan, isn't on the list as he never went to Gettysburg, once, during his eight years in office. That guy, huh?

My brother Adam had a marvelous piece on Lincoln, Gettysburg, and all of us on Tuesday. Realizing you probably saw it, here it is again anyway  "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here." Abe Lincoln. Barack Obama. And the rest of us. Those guys, and gals, huh?
-bill kenny

A Family Snapshot

Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. There have been and will be many excellent narratives and accounts of the events that day in Dallas, Texas, and their meaning for us in the here and now.
This is not one of them. I am not apologizing for that.

I was a Child of Eisenhower born just a few months before the General was elected to be the President and, in truth, spent much of my earliest years as blithely unknowing and indifferent to his existence as he was to mine. I was in third grade and have memories of grown-ups talking about Nixon and Kennedy without any comprehension what the talk was about except that Kennedy was a Catholic.

So was I.
I and my younger sister were in Saint Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, New Jersey-it was after lunch (most of us brown-bagged it; I had an American cheese sandwich on white bread and bought a small carton of milk for a dime) and we were back in our classrooms after a recess break on Division Street, always blocked off so no cars could park or drive during school hours.

I was in fifth grade, in a basement classroom with high casement windows so all you could see were the socks and shoes of passers-by on the sidewalk. My teacher was Sister Thomas Anne with, I am guessing now from a distance of half a century, about fifty of us (or more) probably doing arithmetic because I have a memory of doing arithmetic after lunch in every class while at Saint Peter's.

We had no clocks in the classroom or in any classroom. There was a crucifix on the front wall above the teacher's desk and some of the more clever of us would whisper and snicker about how that was what happened to kids who didn't turn in their homework. I realized years later Sister Thomas Anne had undoubtedly heard the whispers and probably from classes long before ours.

I had to look the time of day up, later, much later, because as I said there were no clocks in the classrooms, but just before 1:30, Sister Immaculata, our principal, turned on the speaker high up on the right hand corner of the wall in the front of the room to tell us President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. She told us we should say the Rosary and we all knelt down to the left of desks and prayed, led by Sister Thomas Anne who was crying.

As a Catholic kid, in addition to studying the Baltimore Catechism in preparation for Confirmation, praying was what we did the most if not always the best. When you went to Confession it wasn't unusual to be directed to say a decade of the Rosary and two Glory Be's ('and call me in the morning.'). We had children's faith in the power of prayer and I can still feel the numbness when Sister Immaculata announced on the speaker that the President had died. But we had prayed...

The murmuring in the classroom ceased and a silence settled over us and across the school that seemed to permeate the country as the remains of the day gave way to the evening. Televisions in living rooms across the nation glowed softly in black and white replaying the same snatches of film over and over again as we each gathered around the electric fire of an America so long ago that writing about it now seems like recounting a fever dream.

None of us knew what would happen next, for our family, our friends or our country. We didn't know that everything we had ever known had been swept away.What was to be and what was to come was, as always, unclear and for us to decide, but with a little less confidence and faith in ourselves than we had only a moment earlier.
-bill kenny  

Oh, Those Barnard College Women!

Somewhere, Erica Jong is smiling. Actually, saucy minx that she is, she's probably grinning so wide the whole top of her head is in danger of falling off her neck.

I say that based on this item from the on-line NY Times and I make that 'on-line' distinction as I see little possibility that its subject matter comes close to the "all the news that's fit to print' motto they may indeed still have for the pulp paper version.

As a male who grew up in the vanguard part of the generational cohort that moved recreational sex to Olympian heights in terms of participation and rhapsodizing, I, too, have to smile as I'd argue we've come a long from the ship they call the Mayflower (and the moving van for that matter) yet that Puritan guilt trip, that fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time, clings to us like cheap scent.

If all we are to ever be is what we have already been, what's the point of all of this in-between? Crying out for love could be like crying out for the moon, or pony rides on your birthday-something to say that simply has no meaning beyond the shell of yourself.

There's a quote in the article, you'll find it soon enough but here's the part that struck me as so Erich Fromm meets Robert Frost: "(H)aving somebody that you can call or you can like, whose house you can spend the night in if you don’t feel like you want to be going home alone..." Going home alone...
-bill kenny

This Is Entirely Jeff's Fault

I have reached an age where I've decided I like my standard of living but am no longer in love with having to do what I do for a living to maintain it. I know, "welcome to the human race."

But still, perhaps like you, I sometimes imagine myself in another job, somewhere else (only briefly glimpsed in a moment of reverie) doing amazing things for large sums of money and not feeling guilty about any of it. Suspect none of those idle daydreams compares to this recruiting advert Jeff shared.

I'm puzzling over the turn of phrase 'well-equipped' since I think a saw a road sign back there for Double Entendre  (just beyond the cul de sac) though the notion of being 'a credible voice for reason for nude recreation in the Americas' does sound quite like the challenge I've been looking for.

Of course, in my case, some contents may have shifted and settled in transit and handling, making me a poster child for 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' for those with whom I would be attempting to work; I may well get a cease and desist request from PETA citing frightened turtles.

Aside from some (painfully obvious) limitations, I think either Jeff or I could actually qualify for this position. I'm not where we'd keep our wallets with the business cards but that's only a small matter of concern. Of course, we'd go broke buying suntan oil but not as quickly as those around us from buying dark glasses.
-bill kenny

Verbal Snapchat

For the middle of November, we had a marvelous day weather wise yesterday. Temperatures approached 60 degrees with a glorious and cloudless blue sky you could get lost in with a light breeze and despite the end of Daylight Savings Time, all the sunshine you could ever want.

Was it so nice you needed to put the convertible top down on your Chrysler Terraplane (or whatever model it was)? How about the jet black 'Vette rumbling down Washington Street? I'm not a big fan of the faith of my fathers but I am a true believer in karmic payback so for the record, Oh Great Universal Consciousness (in case there isn't actually a God), I'd point out the Chrysler had MAsshole license plates and the 'Vette was a coffee milk fan. Just sayin', Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine and I don't want anyone else's snow, okay?

Walking back from the grocery, nearing Fanning Street I passed a fellow pedaling a bike much too small for him on the sidewalk, complicating his task by trying to drink a can of beer in a brown paper bag because that's as effective a disguise as pasties on a dancer's chest. I was quite taken with his Boston Red Sox watch cap (101 days until the first spring training game, wicked pissah).

I walked briskly back from the store, as if I know another way to walk, because I'd had yet another encounter with a mathlete in the express checkout line who thought his 18 items was the 12 allowed. I didn't appreciate the way the checkout clerk told me she 'didn't mind, it's fine.' I explained to her no it wasn't; that while she got paid to stand there, I did not and that I'd appreciate it greatly if the Count of Monte Christo on future excursions would be more considerate.

To his credit the fellow in front of me looked he was weighing whether to get into it with me. As he opened his mouth, I am assuming to speak, I assured him in my most unctuous tone that in a battle of wits with me he was unarmed and that if "you succeed in provoking me into giving you my undivided attention, you will NOT know what to do with it."

He decided my public service announcement probably made sense and bundled up his purchases and took off in his shopping cart with what seemed to be at least one square wheel, as I turned my attention to purchasing my items. The clerk offered, while staring into a middle distance I didn't quite understand, that "you really told him, huh?" Yep, sure did, I offered with a tight smile, and guess who's next?
-bill kenny

Wooly Sold Separately

Now that everyone else, except (perhaps) Pope Francis 1, has piled on the National Football League, the Miami Dolphins and Messrs Incognito and Martin (I knew Dean would find a new partner, even in death), leave it to me to find a non-sports take on the situation in this article in The New Republic, that makes me feel awful not just because it's incredibly harsh but more than that it's horribly accurate.
Did I bully my brothers and sisters when we were kids. Yes, and do NOT ask if I still do or I'll ask my attorney to end this interview. Everyone, I say, always did the "I'm bigger and you'd better listen" dance in a family in the apartment house in the neighborhood on the block in the district. It's how we roll over, Beethoven.

I'm not sure why the contention in the article that we do this behavior all over this culture and country (and consequently export it elsewhere like it was a Disney franchise or an MTV channel) unsettles me as much as it does, except that it does.

If I look in the mirror hard enough (my eyes hurt but), I can see a man who has in all likelihood bullied his spouse and children-wait! I'll insist it was for their own good perhaps even suggesting it came from 'a place of love,' but bier ist bier und schnaps ist schnaps and when I look at my right hand, stiff from finger pointing at US professional football, three of the fingers on that hand point back at me. Oh dear. Seriously.

American professional football is the most violent of sports imaginable, with all due respect to hockey which may be as violent but also requires skill (like being able to stand on skates), with more and more former players being diagnosed with debilitating injuries that could have only occurred through high velocity contact over a prolonged period of time, and I'm supposed to put down my glass of malted beverage from whatever sponsor is bringing me the game (they have big horses or very cold trains or perhaps Coltrane and some horse) and be amazed?

These players are somebody's sons and are ending up in body bags in the short or long haul and all we know how to do is think of them as 'real men' and 'true warriors' on Sundays (and Sunday nights, and Monday nights and Thursday nights; damn! we LOVE us some football don't we?) and all the other cliches we make up to make the lies we tell ourselves sound better.

No wonder we never learn to be better than we are. We're not only terrible students we're even more horrible teachers.
-bill kenny

A Wonk's Work in Progress

It's sad but true that when you don't know where you're going any road will get you there. As kids growing up, we would sit wordless and worried in the backseat of our parents' '67 Chrysler Newport station wagon, a massive piece of metal that stretched for days it seemed, on road trips from our house in New Jersey to places that often proved to be more difficult to find than originally anticipated.

Mom would sit in the passenger front seat with the map open in her lap and Dad, grimly gripping the steering wheel, would drive into the teeth of whatever new adventure lay around the corner, always at speeds approaching light, undaunted as Mom would mutter about us having missed an exit or now traveling on a road not on her map and almost always ending with a plea for Dad to slow down.

I can still remember the near manic glee in his voice as he would say to her, and us, both captive and captivated in the rear seat, "we may be lost, but we're making great time!" On more than one occasion since those halcyon days, I have heard that same tone of voice from my mouth in similar vehicular situations.

Don't get me wrong. We never needed to produce passports at international borders or checkpoints and we didn't stay in places overnight where we had to boil the water before drinking but looking back, it seems to me that sometimes we got to where we were going more despite our efforts than because of them.

I got to thinking about the differences and similarities of the journey and the destination in the moments after the polls closed and results were announced last Tuesday night here in Norwich. it looks like we want change, but with a lower case 'c' as we returned three alderpersons to seats on a seven person council, selected another alderperson to replace the previous Mayor (does he end up with business cards that read like that?), returned a former alderperson and added two newcomers.

With apologies to the cliche, something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue (or red, depending on your ideology I guess). Culture wars, if the national media are to be believed (and I do, every word; okay not Fox or MSNBC), are being waged house to house (and Senate to Senate?) in our nation's capital and unless insert name of your party of choice here wins life on earth and in these United States, at least as we know it, will cease. Seemingly. Or not since our mileage may vary.

Makes me glad I'm wearing my after-school playclothes and not my good stuff. Self-serving rhetoric is impossible to get out of corduroy, or Ol' Roy for that matter. Meanwhile at the most immediate level of government to us, the 'we have come to the place where the road and the sky collide' play-at-home edition, change is much more incremental (when I'm being impatient, I say 'glacial' but with winter coming soon enough, that descriptive will get quite the workout).

We campaign with a great deal of civility and courtesy (we are, after all, neighbors not abstractions) and while some folks were, I'm sure, disappointed by results last week, life goes on and already has.

I just thought about Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick and grinned as I can almost imagine trading in my given middle name, Patrick, for something like Peony-but only if the new world order we alternate in embracing and dreading comes with bacon ranch dressing, some chocolate morsels and ever popular, at least with me, pony rides for my birthday. Hi-Ho. Silver.
-bill kenny