My Corporate Machine Will Call Your Corporate Machine and We'll Do Lunch

When I decided to live forever and cut back/down on products and practices that might keep me from reaching that goal, the fast food places went over the side as practically the first thing jettisoned. Between us, I'm not sure no longer eating in them is really helping me live longer, but sometimes my days sure feel a lot longer which could be the same thing, I suppose.

Anyway. Apparently I'm not alone in skipping the edible landfill complete with drive-through window and, as near as I can tell from a careful reading of this, I and those like me were a topic of Don Thompson, McDonalds' CEO's remarks to the stockholders of McDonalds yesterday at their annual meeting in Oak Brook Illinois .

I still think they should meet in St Louis as long as they promise to make a donation to be allowed to paint The Arch gold for the day of their meeting, and promise to repaint it afterwards (unless the Rolling Stones are on tour and then you've already guessed what color it should be).

The story makes me cringe-not for the news value (though I did notice there weren't any pictures of Beyonce's sister, One Step Beyonce, beating up her husband in an elevator, so how legit is this as a news story?) but by how ham-fisted Don comes across in print.

His defense of how 'quite healthy' his own children seem to be in response to claims of predatory bordering on inexorable marketing of Mickey D's to tykes was breathtaking. And he certainly didn't seem to offer any notable quotables on raising wages for any of those toiling away in the Secret Sauce mines of Ronald's McSweathouses.

Quite frankly, it seemed to me, in reading the article that he's correctly judged his audience-minds are already made up so there's no need to confuse 'em with facts. In a moment reminiscent of how many angels can dance on the head of a French fry, one the stickholders' more memorable concerns isn't about child nutrition or paying employees a living wage but rather "why don't all the restaurants serve biscuits and gravy for breakfast."

I am so lovin' it.
-bill kenny

Reminds Me of Elbows

o·pin·ion [ə pínnyən] 
1. personal view: the view somebody takes about an issue, especially when it is based solely on personal judgment 2. estimation: a view regarding the worth of somebody or something 3. expert view: an expert assessment of something. 

fact [fakt]
1. something known to be true: something that can be shown to be true, to exist, or to have happened. 2. truth or reality of something: the truth or actual existence of something, as opposed to the supposition of something or a belief about something. 3. piece of information: a piece of information, e.g. a statistic or a statement of the truth.

Axl Rose Ranked as "greatest vocalist" ever.

se·ri·ous·ly [ˈsi(ə)rēəslē/]
1. in a solemn or considered manner.
2. with earnest intent; not lightly or superficially.

Seriously? 

 Just me, or do you smell something bovine? Modesty is so over-rated. 
 -bill kenny

To Care for Him Who Shall Have Borne the Battle

When I was a child, you observed/celebrated holidays where they fell on the calendar. The 'let's roll things to the nearest Monday and give everyone a three-day weekend' craze hadn't yet started. Sometimes I'm not sure we might not be better off with a return to earlier times. 

In any event, there's a better than an average I'm the first to wish you the best for your Memorial Day holiday, which will be observed Monday. 

There's a remembrance ceremony dedicated to a Taftville native son Private Michael J. Murphy who died on October 15, 1918, during World War I,  at The Memorial Park in Taftville, around the corner from the Knights of Columbus starting at ten that morning. 

The Taftville VFW Post 2212 and the American Legion Post 104 do a wonderful job of organizing this event. I always find time to attend and hope you will too.

If tradition is any indicator, there will be some remarks by local civic leaders and those who served in uniform around the world in both war and peace and who lived to come home and tell about it, as well as words of comfort from a clergy person.

And if you're like me, you'll look around at the metal folding chairs, all neatly aligned facing the podium and try to figure out how many of those who were there last year made it this year. That's the tricky thing. Memory of sacrifice only survives until the last person who remembers has passed.

You probably have a ceremony very much like it where you live today and for all those who died in this country's wars so you and I could wear "Kiss the Cook" aprons and "I'm with Stupid" tee-shirts, cook raw meat over hot rocks and drink a little too much beer, it's never too late in the day to say 'thank you' so I hope you try to attend.

At the ceremony in Taftville Monday morning there'll be a contingent of Young Marines, who will serve as ushers and perhaps as the color guard and after about forty minutes, we'll all go our separate ways. It's not very much time to honor those men and women who spoke seventy words and meant them in their fullest measure.

The United States has been doing this-memorial remembrances for those who served our nation for a long time--though not by other nation's standards, mind you. 

In comparison to the Great Nations of Europe, we are a snot-nosed kid (admittedly who saved the aforementioned great nations twice in the last century) and who did a remarkable job of rebuilding enemies beyond both oceans, Germany and Japan, while serving as a bulwark against the Soviet Union for decades.

But in the Brave New World, it's long since become 'what have you done for us lately?' And new enemies, far more formidable than any we have encountered before, require vigilance and sacrifice.

The ceremony at Memorial Park will allow those who so choose to make our way from Taftville in time to meet at the parade route from the Cathedral of Saint Patrick on Broadway to Chelsea Parade. 

There, at the end of the marchers' rainbow, of sorts, we'll pause to remember again, those who gave their lives, fortunes and sacred honor so that the rest of us can barbecue, open up the pool, and do the thousands of small things we do at what has become the unofficial start of summer.

These are times of turmoil in the Land of the Free. We have all manner of talking heads, 24/7 TV news stations and websites which pander to every political flavor in the rainbow and tolerance and accommodation are in awfully short supply. 

We've become heavily entrenched in and entranced with our own beliefs and are less interested than at any time since the Nativist movement in what anyone disagreeing with us has to say about anything.

Perhaps as a reminder to take into this holiday weekend and beyond, I can offer the seventy (and four) words which closed Abraham Lincoln's second Inaugural Address. 

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
-bill kenny

Reclaiming the Soul of America

I love New York and was, point in fact, born there though I grew up across the river, on the Jersey side. When as a kid me and my buddies said 'New York' we meant Manhattan (we knew there were other boroughs, but so what?).

It's funny in a way that in the last nearly forty years, I've perhaps spent a total of fifteen hours in Manhattan as my life and loves have taken me in so many other directions but my fascination and affection for it have never wavered.

About three and a half years ago, our son, Patrick Michael and I spent a Saturday downtown on the peripheries of the first wave of Occupy Wall Street. It was a brilliant day, weather-wise and in terms of sheer adrenaline a Top Ten. Having the chance to share one of my favorite places on earth with one of my favorite people still makes me smile.

Less than two years ago, I joined my wife and our daughter, Michelle, in Thelma and Louiseing the Christmas displays and, more somberly, part of the nearly completed work at Ground Zero in a day trip I fear they both think of as "One of the Muppets Tried to Take Manhattan." Admittedly I needed a haircut and let's leave the discussion there.

I don't expect it will be all that long until we do that day tripper thing on Metro North again as the 9/11 Memorial Museum officially opens tomorrow. I will not be amazed if it supplants the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building as "the stop" for visitors as long as those of us who go there respect the memory of all those who remain there from a workday on 11 September 2001 that never ended.

This may be a good way to make sure in a nation that, to me, too often seems to have the same sense of history as a cat, all future generations remember not only the heartache but the heroism, both the atrocity and the altruism, the senselessness and the selflessness. The soul of America.
-bill kenny

Won't Wait Until Wednesday

Don't be fooled by the picture of tranquility that is the Norwich City Hall in this story yesterday on the front page of my hometown newspaper about an item on the City Council's agenda for this evening at 6:30: approval of a municipal bond for $680,000 (plus fees) to purchase a new chiller for the (City of) Norwich Ice Rink.

Staying with ice as a figure of speech, what's NOT on the agenda is of far more concern and disquiet to me than the dollar figure (which is an untruth by the way as far more than the chiller needs to be replaced-add another half million or more to the estimate). I'm not the only one concerned about the magic bookkeeping.

There's this story that should have been a closed book instead of another chapter in a two-decades long money-hemorrhaging operation nearing a million dollars by this point that's drowning in its own sea of red ink.

The chairperson of the Ice Rink Authority is also the President Pro Tempore of the City Council. I have always found him to be an open and honest person who sincerely wants what's best for his hometown. Except.....

In one or the other of his two roles, he delayed the release of an analysis on the rink's operations completed in February (and mentioned in the editorial noted above) preventing his City Council colleagues from having time to study it before asking them last month to approve the bond (that vote was delayed until tonight).

Knowledge is power and I concede power sometimes is intoxicating. No municipality (especially ours of slightly less than 45,000 souls) needs to operate its own ice rink. Seeking a private public partnership was and is the appropriate path.

Anything else, actually everything else, is not for the benefit of those of us who live here. Dear Ice Rink Authority, with my apologies to those who love transactional analysis, it's not you, it's us. It's only been in the last eighteen months that anyone in elected city government gave a fried rat's hindquarters about the money pit on New London Turnpike.

Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan-good luck getting someone to adopt the Ice Rink, but as news stories report, we have three someones prepared to do just that.

And yet, I've concluded we have those both within city leadership and without (the writer is too modest-he was the driving force to get the public to pay for the original bond that built the facility) who cannot or will not take yes for an answer.

So here's what needs to happen tonight. The motion for the bond needs to be voted down-not tabled and no withdrawn. V-O-T-E-D D-O-W-N. Only if the Council burns this boat at the water's edge will it finally be forced to face the reality the rest of us arrived at long ago.

After tonight's  Council meeting, because of  its singular lack of transparency and an intractable attitude that helped no one at a very difficult moment, the current Ice Rink Authority needs to be discharged of its responsibilities with our thanks.

But that's only the half of it. Because of his failure in judgment and casual regard for personal ethics and integrity, Mayor Hinchey should request and accept the resignation of the City Council President Pro Tempore. As Abraham Lincoln once offered, "(n)o man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent." I withdraw mine and encourage you to consider doing the same.
-bill kenny

The Aging Yuppie Ate Jumbo Shrimp

Fill in the blank:

_____ is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements which appear to be contradictory. I gave you two examples in the title.

Here's a news story that embodies the whole concept, perfectly.

Oxymoron. Also includes that in the year 2014 we can advance a notion that "it's probably the most humane way to kill somebody." When we're at the eye for an eye level, humanity is more insanity than vanity. Dead is dead. Ashes to ashes.
-bill kenny

Taking a Page from Facebook

I'm assuming you Facebook (and am also assuming that wasn't the first ever recorded use of a less-than-real-noun as a verb in the English language). I think Facebook is Facebook in other languages, too. I don't remember receiving a friend request from anyone in Germany for Gesichtbuch but that may have more to do with my not having friends in Germany, or anywhere else come to think of it, than in how it's a universal concept.

My point is that there's all kinds of advertising for everything under the sun running along the length of the right-hand side of the screen. You can join a group or like a page or indulge some of the commercial posters who have convinced themselves that this form of advertising is a fundamental part of their strategic communications plan for their "brand."

These are also the people who emphasize the purchase of lottery tickets as "integral" to their retirement portfolio, along with recyclable can futures. I'm teasing, I think, to some degree on that since I've installed something similar to a pop-up blocker (look at me type this smack like I know what it is!) that culls most of the on-screen ads from the screen at no charge aside from personal privacy and right to it.

Yep, I, too, was incensed at the NSA spying on me, those stumblebunnies, when I give away five times more personal data for free in order to qualify for a chance to bid on an English Muffin almost once eaten by the guy who sings in Coldplay (or some prize approximating that). Even at work, where I don't have the doo-dad on the computer I look but don't see the advertising-you're probably the same way. There's so much of it that it's just part of the scenery after awhile.

The people who create it think they've made art and the rest of us just shrug. So how to explain these whackjobs? These are some of the angrier Mad Hatters running around loose right now and while I'd like to consider myself an advocate of 'live and let live' I admit to less magnanimity when I'm looking at cockroaches and silverfish rather than otters or baby seals.

These folks bear no resemblance to either otters or seals if you're following my drift though once the last of them has been eradicated I may be slightly more mellow. Are we talking exchanging Hallmark on-line cards? Probably not, but there's a degree of difference between blocking them with a click of the mouse and the launching of a drone.
 -bill kenny