The New Normal

When I was a kid in prep school, Mr. Morgan, who used his lunch hour to nap behind the wheel of his car in the parking lot behind the gym, taught Economics. Based on the amount of currency both in my wallet and bank account at any time since graduation, I fear I may have caught some zzz’s myself.

Economics is something I always feel should be written with a capital E. The fall Saturday in Lower Manhattan a couple of years back, as part of that noble but less than effective gesture, Occupy Wall Street, I wandered among the cavernous concrete monuments to Mammon this country’s financial institutions built for and to themselves in the course of decades of apathetic oversight and lackadaisical regulation.

That after having nearly single-handedly destroyed American capitalism through their rapacious and insatiable greed, these same financial institutions were punished by being bailed out with hundreds of billions of MORE dollars of taxpayer money to compensate them for the mountains of it they had destroyed, is a tragically true cautionary tale, but for the wrong people.

Here in the Post-Gilded Age of Greed, "obscene" has taken on a whole new meaning. If reading this story from the Washington Post doesn't make you angry enough to wonder indeed, as Mao asked Nixon in China, if one revolution was anywhere near enough, then perhaps you really don't have any idea what's going on now do you, Mr. Jones?

Look at the foreclosures on homes in small-towns everywhere, the wounded and wasted former service personnel who die holding for a non-existent appointment at a VA Hospital, empty storefronts where so many brave beginnings became unanswered prayers, and this generation’s college graduates who will spend decades in debt for schooling that was to help them to a better life and a career exported for a third of the salary and no benefits to someplace half way around the world.

We’re reshaping the American Dream to look like a modern day debtor’s prison where the only form of successful enterprise is the buying and selling of the shackles we place on one another. Business is looking up, even if we’ve long ago stopped doing the same.

McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Citi Group, Apple. In hoc signo vinces.

-bill kenny

Rock the Docks

One of the better arguments for suggesting the "second half" of the summer is better than the opening act gets re-visited tonight in Howard T. Brown Park starting at six as Rock the Docks returns.

Kicking off the new season is EasyBaby who in less than two years have become a pre-eminent club and festival fixture across Connecticut, Rhode island and Massachusetts and who burned down the Mystic Blues Festival less than two weeks ago with a set that thrilled their fans and impressed legions of new ears.

Quite frankly, Rock the Docks is tailor-made for local musicians like EasyBaby whose repertoire defies easy categorization and pigeon-holing and have a well-deserved reputation for playing hard to audiences that fall in love with them from the first note.

Rock the Docks itself, as if you needed a refresher, is the collective product of a private/public partnership of agencies and associations who, for lack of a more elegant explanation, got tired of hearing how no one ever came to downtown Norwich because there was nothing to do and set out to prove otherwise.

Rock the Docks is the Mother and Child Reunion answer to the chicken and egg question about feet in the street of Chelsea-and about all the shows last summer, the consensus seemed to be if you play loud enough and long enough people will dance. And come back for more.

We have some great places to eat and drink in downtown Norwich and Rock the Docks gives you a perfect reason to have a night out. With EasyBaby starting at six and the music going until eight, there's enough daylight left to have a sparkling beverage or conversation along with a light snack right there at Howard T. Brown Park.

When the show ends, if your thirst for a good time still needs slaking, there's about a dozen eateries within a five minute walk of the stage and whatever your appetite seeks from Asian through South American, Italian to pub grub, you'll find a plateful of good eating just about anywhere.

So make sure to mark your calendars and spit-shine your dancing shoes as Rock the Docks is an every Wednesday event for the next six weeks featuring the sounds of Eight to the Bar, Coyote River Band, Johnny and the East Coast Rockers, The Fat Cats and Melaena-something for everyone and all at no cost.

There's more than enough free municipal parking in easy walking distance so don't even think about offering that tired old excuse for not coming down to the water's edge and having yourself a time. After all, if you don't deserve it, who does? C'mon, Rock the Docks.
-bill kenny

I Was Once Like You Are Now

I said this as well as I say anything, ever a long time ago and I hope you can forgive my repetition.

Today is the birthday of my son, Patrick Michael. When I type 'my son' or 'my daughter' (when speaking of his sister, Michelle) or 'my wife', Sigrid, I smile, not because of a misplaced pride of possession mentality but because I am truly the most fortunate person on the planet. 

If we've not met, count your blessings-I am NOT likable. Take my word on this-and be assured I could send you a list of folks who could attest to this fact, and that this list would vaguely resemble the census in size and scope, helps underscore my point. 

Being not likable makes it a difficult stretch to be lovable, and yet, my wife, an otherwise sane and logical person, could not possibly be married to me for nearly thirty-seven years, but has. Our two children are the result of her ability to make someone into something they feared they never could be. She not only raised two children, she transformed a self-absorbed obliviot into an Approximate Dad. Considering what she had to work with, she done good.

I was afraid to have children--the actual, 'here's a small human to take care of and worry about for the rest of your life' portion of the program seemed more daunting to me than I could ever handle. I didn't have a lot of happy experiences being on the receiving end of previous Dad and Lad interactions. 

When Sigrid shared with me she (and we, by extension) was pregnant, it was the early winter of what had been a rough year. Having successfully placed half a world between us, I discovered more guilt and anger when my dad died that Spring than sorrow at his passing. 

Sigrid went into labor in the middle of the morning and we drove across town to the Offenbach Stadtkrankenhaus. German physicians in the early Eighties were pretty much an unknown species to me (Sigrid's frauenarzt was cool enough-I still have the black and white Polaroids of Patrick in the womb, ornaments clearly visible) and I was to them as well. 

Their luck came to end with my son's birth and they were pretty good sports about it. As Sigrid's labor continued and the contractions shortened and the delivery preparation's tempo quickened, I was asked where I would be during her stay in the geburtsaal, and I assured the doctors, 'right there with her', which surprised them. 

I attempted to explain in what was better than decent German (I thought) that I had placed the order and had every intention of taking delivery. In hindsight maybe my German wasn't that good-it was like playing to an oil painting, no smile, no nothing, gar nichts.

When Patrick was born, after what's considered a spontangeburt (for the male doctors who can NEVER experience pregnancy, in their opinion, the childbirth was accomplished without labor. Sure it was-from your lips to God's ear, Herr Arzt), Sigrid looked she had just run a marathon and was utterly exhausted. 

I watched while the midwife cleaned up my son and, as she swabbed off the blood, he peed on her. Crying, basically blind, totally helpless in an alien world, he was my son and I laughed out loud in amazement and joy and mostly thankfulness for everything that I had just witnessed. 

The midwife placed Patrick on Sigrid's chest, for mother and child bonding and my disappointment knew almost no words. I'm ashamed to admit that at that moment, I was so jealous of the woman I loved. 

I asked as politely as I could if, after she had 'had enough of holding him', if I could hold him, and was stunned when she picked him up and fixing me with a stare that bordered on a glare (leading me to suspect the geburt wasn't quite as spontan as the wizard in the white coat had thought-and just because it was spontan certainly hadn't meant it was schmerzfrei) handed Patrick to me, saying 'I've carried him for nine months, it's your turn now.'

Patrick Michael was, and is, my deal with God. From the moment I held him, I no longer cared what happened to me-and egotist that I am, that's saying something. I know, your children are beautiful, and smart and talented and handsome and sorry-they're not my children and my son and my daughter are the absolute best not only in the world, but in the history of the world (there's a barn behind a hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that might want to argue that point but no chance, sorry). 

I walked him around that delivery room for the next two hours or so, singing I've Been Working on the Railroad (the drum and piano would have cluttered the delivery room) and really working those Fie-Fi-Fiddly-I-Os, making up in volume what I lacked in pitch. 

I don't know why I sang the song--I'm shaking my head in bemused bewilderment as I type this right now. It seemed like a good idea at the time-actually, it was a perfect idea.

And point in fact, I've gone on for way too long--Patrick was born faster than I'm telling you about it. In many ways, his first thirty-two years seem to have sped by at that same clip. He and his sister, have overcome the handicap of being my children, mostly because they've had the good fortune to have the love and devotion of my wife as their Mom. And, yeah, he's made me crazy, angry, frightened, delighted and every emotion in between--because that's what your children do and will always do.

And as long as you remember to make sure they always know sometimes they will do things you will not like, but that you will always love them, they will be able to do anything, even leave you when they grow up to be adults of their own. There'll be the moments in the living room watching the game when words aren't needed as you both reach for the pretzel rods. 

Other times, there will be phone conversations that start out about one subject and become all that and that infamous bag of chips. And your eyes will fill with tears as you watch them end a chapter of their childhood and begin to write their own novel as the life you have always wanted for them finally begins. 

And it hurts, and maybe the keyboard blurs as I type this because it's really warm and my eyes are perspiring-yeah, that what it is I'm sure. I am so sorry if the folks you work with razz you today for having a dotty dad-but you knew that long ago. 

Happy Birthday, Patrick! Love, Dad.

Hate to Get Mathy on Ya

Now that the last of the bottle rockets has been launched and the last sparkler has been allowed to burn all the way down to the it-almost-burned-my-fingers-part-of-the-wire you hold it by, it's time to pull your socks up and push on through the second half of summer.

I know. I know. Summer started on the 21st of June and ends on the 21st of September-according to the calendar. But let's face it, we've been thinking summer since Memorial Day which makes Labor Day the end and Independence Day the midway point. No math skills are needed and the fewer you have the easier this becomes to accept.

Sometimes your heart knows more than your brain. This is one of those times. If you've been waiting for summer to do that whatever-it-is-you're-gonna-do-thing, best be getting at it because we're burning daylight and that's about to become a rationed commodity as well.

A lot of us  are heading into work today to start the week and mark a return of the workaday after a holiday weekend. May as well play until the whistle, and remember the field is the same length for everybody but if you want it more, you'll miss it less when it's gone.
-bill kenny

Waiting Here for Everyman

Maybe like you, I've had an extended weekend in honor of Independence Day that I made even longer by taking a day off in advance of the holiday (my boss was fine with it and I suspect some at work actually prefer the quiet). Before I head back to work tomorrow here's an image I sort of owe you from our fireworks last night.

A holiday like July 4th can fool you into concentrating exclusively on Big Deeds by Big Men (look at the size of Hancock's signature on the Declaration), and that's okay because history is defined by critical actions at critical moments, but that's not the whole story.

Unless you have a family tree that traces every person to every beginning, none of us can name anyone who perished on either side of the Battle of Gettysburg and more than just Teddy went up San Juan Hill but who can name them.

The Battle of Belleau-Wood was more important to the survivors than those who sacrificed their lives but who among us knows any among either? The Normandy invasion just marked it seventieth anniversary but who has ever had a grandparent tell a story of life in those times.

And so it goes. We remember personalities, like Eisenhower but not the kid who jumped off the first LST too far from the shore at Omaha Beach to ever hope to make it. Over a million men and women in uniform have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan but we only know names like Petreaus and McChrystal.

We are a nation of stories and we're just closing the book on the celebration of the biggest one we do every year. For most of us, the work-a-day returns tomorrow and we slowly accept the idea that the high point of the summer, the Fourth, is now in the rear-view.

But we each have a story and we should tell it aloud to one another or to no one but yourself if that's the only way you can tell it. Yes, the broad strokes on the canvas are important to the scope of the narrative but the filigree and shading that each lonely voice lends to the telling of the tale is what, in the end, causes it to resonate within all of us.

Every life is a song-sing it to the end. The world will wait-it always does.
-bill kenny

Rich on What We've Got

I had hoped I might share with you today some pictures of the very elaborate and well-planned fireworks we have in my town, Norwich, Connecticut, at the mouth of the harbor in the confluence of the Yantic and Shetucket Rivers which produces the Thames River.

Some years, leaders in the city have estimated 50,000 people swarm to the banks of the rivers to watch it all happen. And what a great time they have.

This year, we didn't quite have the rocket's red glare or the bombs bursting in air as rainy weather, pushed by Arthur to our south, postponed the festivities. With any luck at all, we'll have them on Saturday and it'll be a terrific time.

This is what I had just out my backdoor half-way through yesterday afternoon.

Understanding of course that I had the freedom to take a photo, or not take one, is a critically understated aspect of the Independence Day observances.

Being whom we want is something we take for granted as much as the air that we breathe and don't wonder about it until we can't draw our next breath. I get the fireworks-Independence Day is a lot of big things-but more than that, it's a myriad of small things.
-bill kenny

They Say It's (Y)Our Birthday

“Independence Day, often referred to as the Fourth of July, is a national holiday commemorating the July 4, 1776 adoption of our Declaration of Independence.  The Second Continental Congress voted for a resolution of independence on July 2, 1776.  The actual Declaration was debated, revised, and finally approved on the fourth. 

“Historians have long debated, and disputed, whether the Declaration was actually signed on July 4.  Many believe it was really signed on August 2.  An interesting coincidence is that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers to also serve as President, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, the Declaration’s 50th anniversary."

Independence Day is NOT about car sales, beach trips, beer guzzling, barbecued gluttony, or chest-thumping jingoism though we have through benign contempt reduced much of today to variants of all of that shortsightedness. We focus on the fireworks and fail to see them as symbolic of the ordnance expended in deadly earnest that helps preserve our freedoms.

We too often are a nation of people who use our precious gift of free speech to tell others with whom we disagree to shaddup; who understand our freedom of association to mean we can dislike with impunity those with a different religion, sexual orientation, political ideology or skin color sometimes regarding them as somehow less than our equals.

Today, Independence Day, between the grilled hot dogs, keggers, and marathon backyard softball games, should be an opportunity to enumerate and appreciate the blessings that nearly two and half centuries of selfless sacrifice have allowed each of us to regard as our birthright. The freedom to be whomever we choose to be.

Yeah, I know it's a day late but it's a wonderful Calvin & Hobbes.

Happy Birthday, United States of America!   

-bill kenny