Another Moment that Flashes into Nowhere

Rothman, Schekman, Sudhof and Kardashian. Show of hands. How many know anything about the first three? More specifically, how many know that the trio, two Americans and one German were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine last October for their work in “solving the mystery in how the cell organizes its transport system” (i.e., when and where to deliver the molecules the cells produce)?

The fourth name is famous for being famous which is only possible at this moment in our cultural evolution because of the convergence of technology and emergence of a level of self-abnegation and empty lives heretofore unknown to our species.  And now she’s adding author to her resume.

I actually read through the story looking for the redemptive angle of “a share of the proceeds” (the book is $19.95 a pop) will go to ….insert a charity name here (and not Botox for Buttocks, though that is kinda  catchy especially if we place Bimbos after for). Nope, not happening. If the dying children around the world want help, let them write their own damn selfie book.

We are why these things happen, dear Brutus. We eat this pap, rhymes with crap, up with a spoon and clamor for more. And don’t think this tome won’t be at the top of the N. Y. Times Bestseller List next April when it’s published.

So order today if you want to get behind in your reading (didja see what I did there?), operators are standing by. Send your cash or money order by midnight and we’ll get it even faster.    

-bill kenny 

Waiting for Godot or Someone Like Him

There was almost a blank hole here today. I was so wrapped up in other projects that the deadline for writing and submitting the newspaper version of this screed was upon me before I was fully aware. I know, you almost can't believe your good fortune. Sorry to disappoint you and better luck next time

However, if I were to be honest with you and it costs me nothing to so do, it's not that I'm likely to run out of things to write about even if sometimes I sound more like I'm scolding than exhorting. Admittedly, from a distance it can be hard to tell them apart. Quite frankly, in terms of scolding and finger-wagging, Norwich is a target-rich environment.

There's never a shortage of folks, be it on a street corner, or in this section of the Wednesday newspaper, who not only know everything but who know everything better. I'm here almost twenty-three years and am amazed at the hundreds of us who can do a better job than any individual city leader, appointed or elected, you'd care to name.

Of course, unlike those hapless, helpless victims of higher criticism who just don't listen to our sage advice (which we provide so freely and frequently), few of us offer ourselves as candidates for office or (more's the shame) lend a hand as a volunteer on the dozens of volunteer panels ranging from advisories through boards to commissions and committees.

Instead we wait around for someone else to take the lead without ever fully realizing we are someone else's someone else. Sometimes all the help you can ever count on is at the end of each arm-and, to be fair, more often than not, that's all you need.

Of course, if you never risk anything, you never lose anything, but you also never experience the delight of winning either. You can spend an entire life waiting for the storm and you'll never experience the sunshine and who among us would want that?

I would imagine, based on my own observations of the crowds who've turned out that we've had close to 5,000 people each of the last two summers for those Wednesday evening Rock the Docks concerts at Howard T. Brown Park.

Not sure how many of us thought much less believed those shows would be as successful as they are, but somebody else did, and worked to make it happen instead of standing on the sidelines.

The 2014 Rock the Docks season was supposed to end tonight but the bad weather has slid the grand finale to next Wednesday, the 20th, with Malaena, whose slogan is "is music that makes you want to dance." And even if you dance the way I do, which is not to, you should still applaud the civic mindedness and hard work that made these concerts a destination in the middle of a city where we all seem to wait for something to happen.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for the fall and to see what happens next and who makes it happen.
-bill kenny

Flawed and Fragile

In the end, that bastard SGM Dickerson won.

Robin Williams, who made millions laugh from his work in Mork and Mindy, Patch Adams, Mrs. Doubtfire as well as Good Morning Vietnam, and dozens of other major films, succumbed to his own pain and was consumed by the same demons that compelled him to devote his life to making  us smile.

Charles Colton once wrote, "Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console."

Nanu, Robin.
-bill kenny

Hold on to Faith

By the time this day has ended it's probable, because it's also inevitable, that our nearly hometown Women's National Basketball Association, WNBA, team, the Connecticut Sun will be able to start making their post-season travel arrangements unencumbered in any way by their league's play-offs.

For the second year in a row, the Sun will have failed to achieve a berth in the post-season. I don't know enough about basketball of any level to "know" why this happened, except the obvious: they didn't win enough games to qualify.

I saw them Sunday afternoon with our daughter, Michelle (we've attended all but two of this season's games, and they were playing against the Washington Mystics, whom they had failed to beat on three previous occasions this season.  But this time....

In double overtime, because there literally wasn't enough time in regulation to triumph, the Sun topped the Mystics 89-81. Mathematically, the Sun are still a possible playoff team especially if two of the teams ahead of them get lost heading to their next three games and have to forfeit.

This hasn't been the season the team had hoped for. On the other hand, for a lot of us it hasn't been the summer we would have liked. That the team never gave up on themselves was pretty obvious Sunday afternoon, at least to those of us in the upper deck. When it becomes obvious to themselves, we'll see the beginnings of the next phase of their growth. As it is, that's why next season was invented. And that's where we'll see them.
-bill kenny

As Fast as I Can

Heading out for home the other work-day, I glanced into my desk drawer where I stow my keys and was a bit surprised.

Yeah, that's four sets of scissors. I'm not Johnny Depp's stunt double and I don't do a lot of running in the first place so I'm not quite sure what to make of the picture or how so many of one item came to be there. I've since checked and I don't have any huge quantities of other office supplies hiding out in cupboards or drawers. Just the scissors.

I mention this should you ever need to borrow scissors, I'm your guy. And there's no need to thank me or probably even return as I look like I'm set for quite a while.

Don't forget there's a Super Moon tonight-I hope where you live you can see it. I know about this Super Moon because the former mayor of where I live it mentioned it to me Friday evening as we were both enjoying Ramblin' Dan Stevens (always looks more authentic with the apostrophe, don't it?) down in Howard T. Brown Park in Norwich.

Friday was the start of what I hope today continues to be a great weekend of weather, even as the summer starts to wind down. I find myself sometimes not enjoying the moment and being in it as much as I should because I am already fearing the end, or the next, and I'm not sure those who espouse carpe diem don't really have it right.

And if you need to cut either the carpe or the diem into smaller pieces, sort of a 'pass-around pack', borrow my scissors and cut to the chase.
-bill kenny

Tricky Dick's Last Kick

In a culture where knowing the nickname of the boyfriend of the housekeeper on Keeping Up with the Kardashians is considered current affairs, we have become a nation of sheeple with the same sense of history as a cat. I say that not just because I am old, though I am, but because we are.

Forty years ago, today, Richard M. Nixon, re-elected by one of the largest pluralities in the history of Presidential elections, less than two years earlier, resigned the office of the Presidency before he was impeached and removed from office by Congress.

Here in the digital era, it may seem odd that so much could have been made of tape recordings, but as what had been on the miles of tape Nixon had secretly recorded in his own office started to become known, Nixon’s defenders started to bolt for the exits.

I had just concluded my senior year at Rutgers College or Rutgers University as Nixon was boarding Marine One, the Presidential helicopter at the White House. He turned to face a small coterie of well-wishers on the White House lawn as he reached the top step of the ladder to the chopper and offered his final V for Victory wave as a farewell. Stepping into the ‘vertical transport device’ he flew off.

A couple of Sundays ago, one of the local newspapers shared a long conversation it had had with former Senator (and former CT Governor) Lowell Weicker, the sole surviving member of the Senate Watergate committee, on the impact and import on the lives and times of those in DC then, and now, of some truly historical moments.

As someone who watched in fascination hour upon hour of the televised hearings, I found the Weicker interview fascinating perhaps as much for the memories of mine it summoned as well as for the dark corners and recesses of whispered events it illuminated. I’d hope you’d find the time to read it.

I may have intended that last line sardonically as we seem to have no time to read anything anymore. Which may be why I find this so helpful and yet so sad that we would need it. With all due respect to Theodore Dreiser, for my now-grey-and-often-gone generation, RMN (as Nixon called himself) was our American Tragedy.

Four decades later, when national voter turnout hovers at 40%, when more people know the names of the judges on America’s Got Talent than on the US Supreme Court and a complacent and compliant  corporate media offers its glassy-eyed and slack-jawed “consumers” pre-packaged, cross-platform pablum that does little to disturb the zombie-like trance with which so many somnambulate while vested interests on both sides of the aisle malign one another and manipulate those in the middle in a continuing effort to circumvent the Constitution and circumscribe our personal liberties, it’s like Nixon never happened.

“The common sense I sometimes lack has opened up a seismic crack. We've fallen in and I can't pull back and I guess we'll have to stay.” Especially since I fear we’ve lost our way and the reason why we set off on the journey in the first place.

-bill kenny

Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk

I’m still thinking about the humble brilliance of David Walker whose professional bad break, literally and figuratively, I was ruminating about at length in this very ether yesterday (and wondering where the (Detroit) lions are). Talk about the Prayer of Saint Francis-he sets the bar pretty high for the rest of our species, gotta tell ya.

Quick personal inventory, ethical, intellectual and moral, wow not doing so well; I have these opposable thumbs and not much else in my favor and some days I’ll all thumbs. Sure hope if The Rapture is today, we’re grading on a curve.

Then you travel not all that far from NY Giants’ training camp, actually to Stamford, Connecticut another cautionary tale along the Merritt Parkway for what I can only assume is a medical miracle-nothing more and nothing less. Submitted for your inspection, Raleigh Rolex and the EZ Rider.    

Want to just double back for a moment on this project that the Merritt Parkway Conservancy is up in arms about. I came to ‘all stop’ as I was reading the CT Department of Transportation proposal, not only because that tends to happen a lot to me while driving on it, especially as I near the state line with New York and the Tappan Zee Bridge, but out of disbelief that one person would suggest another could hike along the shoulder of that roadway (and a third person would give him over a million dollars to find out what people think of it). Since I promised Mom many years ago that when I can say nothing nice about a subject to say nothing at all, how ‘bout dem Mets?

On the other hand, assuming this scallywag is apprehended (getting air in the tires of his not-needed-except-as-a-prop chariot) I think we should let Rollie make the maiden voyage along the trail perhaps  outrunning a mall security guard, Paul Bart?, zipping along on a Segway. As for the speed of his getaway, no worries. He’s got a Rolex, he can time himself.

-bill kenny