20/20 Hindsight

From the moment I saw the headline on the bulletin flash on-line, I sort of expected what I would read at the bottom of the on-screen page. 

I wasn’t disappointed, just dismayed.

There will be a time and a day for a reasoned discussion on guns and their place in American society. This is not it. 

This is a time to feel sad for two families and for our nation.

-bill kenny

Freedom of Choice or from Choice?

In a sense, summer ends tonight, (even) before Labor Day as Tom Foley and Dannel Malloy meet in a debate hosted by The Bulletin's Ray Hackett in Norwich Free Academy's Slater Museum at seven. Every seat in the building was spoken for before last weekend began so for those, to include me, concerned about an engaged electorate that's good news.

Of course, I can't lose sight of the fact that it's a long way to November and I'm more concerned that we finish strong in terms of energy, engagement and involvement. In recent elections, regardless of the offices being contested, voter turnout has been polite, and I'm being (very) kind with that descriptive.

When you consider the number of threats our democracy has faced and faces at any given time throughout our history and how often we have asked family and friends to defend with their lives our liberties, to include the right to vote, you, too, must concede the level of voter turnout is and remains disappointing.

We’ve all read news accounts of villagers across Afghanistan braving death to cast a ballot because as impoverished as they are in every sense of the word, they know how important the right to choose is.

Meanwhile and I have no data to prove this, but you have none to disprove it, more of us know the names of every member of the Kardashian Family than of the six members who make up our Connecticut Congressional delegation.

Actually I'm being sneaky when I say six, because the census of 2010 confirmed a reduction in our state's population and we lost a Congressional representation as a result and only have five. And yet we're more knowledgeable about the members of the bread and circuses brigade because more of us watch E! than CT-N or CSPAN.

There will in all likelihood be more than two candidates seeking the office of Governor and we should maintain open minds on those who seek our support, as we weigh their positions on where we are and where we should be gong and their respective plans for getting us there.

I'm told those of us with tickets for tonight's debate should plan on arriving early in order to have better seat selection and I'd like to go that one better. Whatever time you were planning on heading over, make it fifteen minutes earlier, thirty if you didn't vote in our mayoral election last year and an hour if you skipped the previous presidential ballot.

Use that time to stop by the monuments at Chelsea Parade to the Norwich natives who've died in our wars from the founding of the Republic to the Global War on Terror and  explain to those memorialized on those stones how and why it is you can't seem to find fifteen minutes on Election Day to cast a ballot.

Sometimes I get confused and downhearted because I'm unsure as to whether we want freedom of choice or freedom from choice. See you tonight at Slater.

-bill kenny

Remaking the World with Words

Today, as you’ll be reminded any number of times and places to include here and now is Women’s Equality Day. It’s an observation marking the adoption in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, that stated simply and elegantly, “(t)he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

If you’re under forty it may be hard to imagine an atmosphere of bi-partisanship and attitude of cooperation that allowed and facilitated our House of Representatives and Senate to work in partnership with the President of the United States for the common good. It's hard to believe, I know, but at one time such collaboration was seen as desirable and the nation, as a whole, benefited 

I was much younger then and my memories have dimmed with time and distance, but we did do things together that today would be regarded as impossible to accomplish alone. Maybe that is what’s meant by the Good Old Days. For women of the United States, not just those born before 1920 and for many in every variation of socio-economic strata we have, there are no such as Good Old Days.

It never ceases to amaze me how a planet, which from space presents all of us upon it as looking so much the same, can be broken into so many synthetic divisions. Together, despite the insanity of our national, ideological or religious vanity, we are so much smarter and gooder* than we are separately that it defies logic why we continue to subjugate one another based on the color of skin, an accident of economic achievement, religious belief, genitalia and/or sexual preference.

You don’t have to send anyone a card to celebrate Women’s Equality Day-you just need to continue to strive to see individual persons as people, fellow travelers on the Big Blue Marble, orbiting the Sun, hanging on for dear life and each hoping we’re not flung to the far corners of the universe before our appointed time.

-bill kenny     

*it should be a word

We Can Twerk It Out

It’s just as well that I don’t hang out at the water-cooler at work (W.C. Fields disincentivized me from so doing) as I’ll stick to the bottled stuff with packets of flavor because naked water tastes so ordinary especially today since I didn’t watch the Video Music Awards, VMAs, last night on MTV. Cynic that I am, most of the music these days on MTV is in the commercials for skin creams and cell phone companies.

Talk about feeling like a football bat. I came of age when rock and roll was white noise on AM radio and now we each have personalized music services on soundclouds (or clowns, I’m never sure which; it makes as much sense, or as little, either way) making me a musical fossil as I still buy vinyl and compact discs and if I do buy a download (not to be confused with downlow, I’m told), I always burn, or rip as the kids call it, a CD.

At the moment in the car’s CD player is Field Mouse, Jess Klein’s recent release, Learning Faith, Ramblin’ Dan Stevens, my most favorite Joni Mitchell album, Shine, and reasonably new (for me) music from a fine band, the Old 97’s (NFSW! I just learned the other day what that means-I am so pleased to be able to use it appropriately. Word to your mother). 

Of course, at this moment, the Field Mouse CD is literally stuck in my car's CD player and short of drilling through the engine fire wall to remove the player from the dashboard there’s no easy means of listening to a whole lot of anything. If you have an idea how to solve this, feel free to holler.

I’m a child of the napalm-scented “we had to destroy the village to save it” generation (can you tell?) which trumps the patchouli-oil aromatic of ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ which, as it turns out, still doesn’t happen as the little boogers run wild in the street and the parents self-medicate

I didn’t bother to watch the VMA’s, it's a tradition of mine. I missed them last year as well and never quite caught up to Miley Cyrus and whatever her antics were about. I have no doubt, since there’s no such as ‘bad’ publicity, something of sorts went on last night with luminaries (I suppose) such as Sam Smith, Taylor Swift, Jessie J, Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande, slated to perform. I almost can’t wait to not find out all about it.

Of course the Emmys are on tonight so I'd better bring a canteen tomorrow and stay in my office. Would someone please pass me the zirconium encrusted tweezers? I think I can get an angle on that stuck CD from here. Are those rotors I hear and tell me again, what does victory smell like?   

-bill kenny

What's In a Name?

There was some good news for one of the genuine good guys of American professional football earlier this week, when the physicians for former Buffalo Bills’ quarterback Jim Kelly who’s been in a much-publicized battle with sinus cancer, gave him a clean bill of health.  

I grew up a fan of Broadway Joe Namath and to this day I can’t muster a lot of love for the Jets’ upstate cousins in Buffalo but Jim Kelly has always been a class act and his willingness to share his trials and travails (and those of his family with him) made me better appreciate what me and mine have and how quickly it can all disappear. His grace under pressure while the trials of Job were being visited upon him is singular and amazing.

I smiled when I first heard the descriptive “Kelly Tough” about his mindset towards his illness because I’m thinking that maybe that attitude has something to do with the name. And by that, I mean another Kelly, probably with her tootsies in the sand even as I’m typing this, oblivious to how much awe she inspires in her own children by always bending but never breaking in the face of enough tribulations to fill three lifetimes. And all she says is “how’s it going?” and then keeps going herself.

Yeah, with all due respect to Jim, I can substitute Joan, and still get to Tough. And the good thing about that is I don’t waste any time helping Thurman Thomas look for his helmet. For all the good it will do him once we find it.

-bill kenny 

Once and Future Diamond Dogs

This is one of my favorite weekends of the summer and not just because I get to watch so many other people’s kids get dragged to stores for back to school clothes, though (of course) that is looming at least around here for next week.

Nothing warms my heart quite as well as watching a gangly young person who elevated barefoot to an art form since school let out in middle June having to get used to wearing shoes and socks again. As an adult with a list of required wear apparel longer than Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq, I say ‘welcome.’

No, today are two very intriguing baseball games that will determine who meets on the morrow in the middle of the afternoon for the 2014 Little League Baseball World Series Championship.

I love professional baseball beyond any beats and bounds and I am always loyal to where the wellspring of the game actually is, on the sandlots across this country and around the world. 

With all the hell and hurt going on just about anywhere you stick a pin on the globe, I am looking forward to this afternoon’s contests (the International division faces off first at half past twelve with Chicago and Las Vegas in the US division at three) as my “gone fishing” sign to everyone and any care for the remainder of the day.

There are/were so many great aw shucks stories and magical moments again this tournament and I hate to see it end, not only because I enjoy the energy, enthusiasm and engagement these young people bring to my favorite sport but because someone, somewhere ultimately has to lose for someone else to win.

The dog pile that goes on at home plate when the last out is made (on Sunday afternoon) is balanced by a sadness from the other dugout whose team struggled through all season to come up just short at the final moment. There’s no shame in losing-only if you didn’t play every second of every game to win and when you get to Williamsport, there’s no danger of that.

Little League baseball, in my jaundiced opinion, is how life should be. People take turns and say please and thank you. They respect the rules and those who enforce them. They try their hardest and give their all. They say ‘way to go’ to team-mates and competitors alike and really mean it and when an umpire says ‘that’s a ball’ or ‘that’s a strike’ they say yes, sir, and nothing more.

Little leaguers are us before all that adult stupid stuff gets installed. You should check it out this afternoon and remind yourself of the way we were when summer days went on forever and you played baseball until mom called us in for supper. Don’t let anyone say that it’s just a game. Batter-up.

-bill kenny          

Nietzsche Nailed It

I neither knew, not knew of, James Foley except in an abstract sense of the word. As someone who devours news and information on and from any number of platforms I am aware of the veritable army of people across the globe engaged without surcease in reporting on the actions and activities of this world, which we call news. 

Mr. Foley was engaged in pursuit of inconvenient truths wherever in the world he found them and wherever in the world they took him. We all know what happened but I’m not sure that any of us have any confidence in what happens next despite opinions masquerading as facts from any and all political persuasions.

There is sadness for his family and friends and the knowledge that the space in their lives he occupied will always and forever be filled by ineffable and unending sorrow and an ache that cannot stop but there are no words for them, him or for us. Just the realization that pure evil exists in our world and that it always has and always will.

-bill kenny